Posted: Feb 23, 2015 11:59 am
Shagz wrote:Thommo wrote:Shagz wrote:Mr. Chesterson's long-winded bullshit is easily dismissed.
According to Chesterson, people never make shit up, and we have to believe every single thing that anyone says; otherwise, we are either prejudiced towards the teller, or prejudiced towards the story. Well, I have an invisible satyr living in my closet, Mr. Chesterson, and he gives me a hand job every night while I sleep. This must be true, because if you don't believe me, it's either because you are prejudiced towards "peasants" like myself, or you are prejudiced towards stories of satyrs in closets.
I'm slightly wary of this, because although we think of prejudiced as an inherently negative word, there most definitely is a sense in which we are prejudiced against the story of someone who walks up to us and says "I was dead on Friday, my heart hadn't beat for three days, but on Monday I am alive and well". It's exactly the same way Christians are prejudiced against such stories - we've already formed an opinion about the likelihood of such events based on evidence. Although we've never heard that particular version of the story before, we do carry with us a belief about whether it occurs as often as someone, say, stubbing their toe.
The trickery is in claiming that this is a bad sort of prejudice. Clearly a preference for natural explanations (to avoid situations like - I can't see my wife and she said she'd be here 5 minutes ago: maybe she spontaneously combusted, I'd better go and get a death certificate drawn up) is massively beneficial. You can maybe use the word prejudice, but if you use it to imply irrationality or unfairness you're misguided.
I'm not sure if you're missing my point, my friend, or I am missing yours. Prejudice simply means what it is, which is, according to every online dictionary I've just now looked at, a bias against something, preconceived notions probably formed unfairly.
Sure, but it's that word probably which is central to what Chesterton is talking about. Not all prejudice or bias (in at least some senses of the word) is unfair. Sometimes we expect certain outcomes based on past evidence. Neither of us has seen the sun rise tomorrow, it's possible we both won't for some reason, yet I suspect both of us are absolutely convinced that the sun will rise tomorrow. I at least know I would not believe someone who told me it would not.
I think this distinction is probably central to understanding what Chesterton was saying (since as far as I can see he didn't use the words "unfair", "bias" or "prejudice"), I think his starting point is correct - we are "biased" (for want of a better word) by past experience and knowledge of the world. Where he goes wrong is asserting this is a dogma or creed and that he actually does have evidence for his belief. He does not. I actually accept that we often do evaluate claims in a preliminary fashion - "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and all that. What I reject is that this is wrong, and also that Christians and other theists don't do this as well (if they did, they'd accept Muhammed and not just Jesus, to give one of many obvious examples).
Of course, you may not agree. Fair enough.
Shagz wrote:I didn't assert an opinion either way whether prejudice is negative; I merely attempted to show how redonkulous Chesterson's argument is, which seems to be "if you don't believe in miracles, you must be unfairly biased against those who believe, or against the idea of miracles", by applying the same logic to the first ridiculous thing that came to mind.
I think we aren't quite reading him the same way, but that's not really a big deal.