SeN isn’t obsessed with Christopher Hitchens

[Rivendale]

"Indeed, it appears that DCP evinces a rather idiosyncratic preoccupation with the misuse of Christopher Hitchens and the subject of atheism, does he not?"

Maybe he should try some Johnny Walker mixed with Postum.

[Marcus]

Billy, you’re one of the few worth reading in the CHOB’s comment section. I would simply make a short comment over there asking Dr. Peterson to release your earlier comment from the filter.

Seriously. Billy shear's comments are always an intelligent, well spoken addition to the comments there. Easily the best part of the SeN blog.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Comments get stuck in automatic filters routinely. Might not be nefarious on Dan's part.

[Physics Guy]

I haven't read Hitchens and I probably won't read him, but talking about Fred Hoyle in connection with religion and cosmology is tricky. To someone who learned popular science in the 50's and 60's, Hoyle might seem like a significant figure, because he had some prominence then. He had been one of the first people to recognize that all the elements heavier than hydrogen and helium had been formed by nuclear fusion in stars, and that gave him status in his day. Hoyle used his prominence to champion crackpot ideas, though, and he had been an obscure footnote for decades when he died in 2001.

Hoyle objected to the Big Bang on philosophical grounds that might be considered religious, but the presupposition that determined his view was that there could not have been anything like creation by God. He wanted no first cause, no unmoved mover; he was an explicit and outspoken anti-creationist. Hoyle was also explicitly aware of the issue of religious prejudice in cosmology. He felt that all the data and math of Big Bang cosmology were really just fig leaves for Genesis 1.

As far as I can tell, Hoyle's alternative "steady state cosmology" was never taken seriously by professionals. It was after all a blatantly ad hoc violation of thermodynamics just to avoid uncomfortable implications from a clear convergence of theory and observation. Insofar as Fred Hoyle is a case study in how religious views can prejudice scientific conclusions, he's a case of what not to do.

All his issues are out of date now anyway, not only cosmologically but in comparing religion and science. The great struggle of the 19th century had been to accept that the world was not just a few thousand years old, but some billions. By the twentieth century, everyone had learned that true explanations of nature were all ongoing processes, not special single events. The processes might have trends and cycles, but the rules by which the processes ran were eternal. The late Victorian reverence for progress saw this shift from events to processes as a basic advance in human thinking that was more important than any particular detail of nature.

For non-religious scientists, abandoning God in favour of natural law was merely one aspect of the grand shift from explanation by special event to explanation by continuous process. It was a hard-won triumph for modernity over medieval superstition, and nobody was expecting to have to backpedal from it. Religious scientists, on the other hand, had survived a hard-fought retreat, agonisingly revising theology to create ways for God not to be a Creator. So religious scientists in the early 20th century were if anything more zealous than their atheist peers to avoid the superstition of creation. Like the early modern doctors who prized their rational medicine of bodily humours in balance, and saw the theory of germs as exorcism trying to come back, almost every serious scientist in the early 20th century, whether believer or not, was set against anything like the Big Bang.

It took a while for the pendulum to swing back, but I think that the eventual acceptance of Big Bang cosmology actually makes most people come out looking okay. Perhaps the pendulum will swing again in the future, and Big Bang cosmology doesn't say anything about what caused the Big Bang, but this is how things look now. Religious scientists don't look crazy for considering a Creator. Non-religious scientists have proved able to accept evidence that doesn't fit expectations.

Fred Hoyle couldn't get points in either of those ways, however. He was an anti-creationist who stooped to creationist tactics. Depending on how much of Hoyle's story Hitchens got right, and how much he got backwards, Hitchens might deserve a lot of credit for understanding and explaining something subtle, or he might deserve all of Peterson's scorn.

[Billy Shears]

Depending on how much of Hoyle's story Hitchens got right, and how much he got backwards, Hitchens might deserve a lot of credit for understanding and explaining something subtle, or he might deserve all of Peterson's scorn.

Thank you for the background information on Hoyle.

To put this into perspective, in your post about Hoyle above, you wrote 640 words. In contrast, in the entirety of god is Not Great, Hitchens says 75 words about Hoyle:

It is true that scientists have sometimes been religious, or at any rate superstitious. Sir Isaac Newton, for example, was a spiritualist and alchemist of a particularly laughable kind. Fred Hoyle, an ex-agnostic who became infatuated with the idea of “design,” was the Cambridge astronomer who coined the term “big bang.” (He came up with that silly phrase, incidentally, as an attempt to discredit what is now the accepted theory of the origins of the universe. This was one of those lampoons that, so to speak, backfired, since like “Tory” and “impressionist” and “suffragette” it became adopted by those at whom it was directed.)

Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great (pp. 109-110). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

That is everything the book says about Hoyle. Every. Single. Word.

The truth is I'd quibble with Hitchens's word choice here, and would be more inclined to say "It is true that scientists have sometimes been religious, or at any rate superstitious believed strange things." But in either case the point is the same; in context, Hitchens's point in the surrounding pages is that you don't need the God hypothesis to understand reality. In Hitchens's own words:

we have come to the realization that we also know something about the future of our system, including the rate of its expansion and the notion of its eventual terminus. However, and crucially, we can now do this while dropping (or even, if you insist, retaining) the idea of a god. But in either case, the theory works without that assumption. You can believe in a divine mover if you choose, but it makes no difference at all, and belief among astronomers and physicists has become private and fairly rare.[emphasis in origional]

Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great (p. 119). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

If you've read this post this far, you know everything god is Not Great says about Hoyle, in context.

Now compare that to how Peterson summarizes what the book says about Hoyle:

By the way, one of the very many egregious factual errors in the late Christopher Hitchens’s regrettable 2008 bestseller god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is his supposition that Sir Fred Hoyle was a religious believer whose famous resistance to Big-Bang cosmology was motivated by his (Hoyle’s) anti-scientific theistic creationism. In reality, Hoyle, who was an outspoken agnostic if not an atheist, proposed his “steady-state theory” of cosmology as an alternative to the Big Bang, which he regarded as too reminiscent of Genesis 1:1. (It was, in fact, Hoyle who invented the term Big Bang, which he meant to be derisive.)

My point on this is simple: Hitchens did not say or insinuate that "Sir Fred Hoyle was a religious believer whose famous resistance to Big-Bang cosmology was motivated by his (Hoyle’s) anti-scientific theistic creationism." That is a lie.

I originally thought Peterson simply misremembered what the book actually says and wasn't deliberately lying. When I corrected him, he said:

My supposed "obsession" with Hitchens's polemic is perhaps illustrated by the fact that I haven't so much as laid eyes on my copy of the book for several years now.

I certainly don't have it with me at my current location, so I can't consult it. But I've managed to locate this handy list that highlights some of his almost innumerable errors: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/com ... itchens_a/

And this passage from the list is particularly relevant:

This one is just incredible. Hitchens classifies the great (agnostic) physicist Fred Hoyle as a "creationist" for supporting the "Steady-State" theory that was the main rival to the Big Bang theory... When it reality Hoyle opposed the Big Bang Theory partly because of its implied confirmation of Genesis 1:1 (According to Hoyle, it was cosmic chutzpah of the worst kind: “The reason why scientists like the ‘big bang’ is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis.”)! The Big Bang Theory which was first hypothesized by Georges Lemaître... a Catholic priest!!! Not only was the Steady-State theory perfectly legitimate and respected in its time (before it was disproven by Hubble), but Hitchens has somehow taken an agnostic physicist opposing a physicist priest's theory because it sounded too theistic, and turned it into a creationist's dogma-fueled denial of the "true" science! It would have been impossible to be more wrong had he actively tried to be! (p.65) [Keating, Brian. (2019). Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393357394.]

It's surpassingly odd that the author of the list seems, quite independently, to have misrepresented Hitchens in precisely the way you say that I misrepresented Hitchens. Weird!

When I then provided Peterson with what Hitchens actually said, I expected Peterson to thank me for disabusing him of his false recollections of what the book says. He didn't do that. Instead, he decided to gaslight his readers with this gem:

I suggest that you re-read your own quotation from Hitchens, which does say essentially what the "blogger" and I say it says.

That is gaslighting. A lie. Hitchens did not essentially say, "Sir Fred Hoyle was a religious believer whose famous resistance to Big-Bang cosmology was motivated by his (Hoyle’s) anti-scientific theistic creationism."

[Gadianton]

I had to re-read and think about this a bit before arriving at the conclusion that Billy is right, and Dan is abusing the Hitchens quote, and doubling down on being wrong.

The heart of the disagreement is whose side must own Hoyle's wrongness. Dan is accusing Hitchens of claiming Hoyle to be a religious nut, and he's saying "no" this isn't the case, he's squarely on your side, non-believers. You own it.

What Hitchens means by "ex-agnostic" isn't clear. If he's saying that due to pseudoscience, he's not ours, then Dan's objection is partially understandable. We can't just say when a scientist becomes unreasonable and offers pseudoscience, that he's being religious. Newton was religious not so much for his alchemy, but more for his significant theology, beliefs about angels, and his Bible commentary. I believe it's the 7th Days who still use Newton's writings on Daniel for their last-days timeline.

Dan says Hitchens underpins Hoyle's steady state theory with his notorious creationism. This is where he goes way off the rails as Hitchens' mention of steady state appears incidental, in order to identify who Hoyle was in science. This is fascinating. Dan is projecting in top form. Dan has it locked in his mind that Hoyle's steady-state theory was a big farce motivated by Hoyle's agnosticism. I believe there is truth to steady-state entertained by cosmologists in fear of implications of God. And so he simply reads Hitchens as trying to steal this point off the scoreboard, Hitchens must be doing the same thing Dan is doing, making his wrong theory of steady-state a direct function of his alleged beliefs about God. "Nuh-uh! Hoyle didn't go steady state because he was a hopeless creationist, but because he was, in fact, an atheist!"

It's a doubly weird accusation to double down on, because it makes so little sense. Why would Hoyle's creationism directly inspire contempt for a model suggested by a Catholic Priest proving God? And so, it's not just projecting, but projecting in the face of counter-intuition that should have provided a check against the projection.

[Billy Shears]

It's a doubly weird accusation to double down on, because it makes so little sense. Why would Hoyle's creationism directly inspire contempt for a model suggested by a Catholic Priest proving God? And so, it's not just projecting, but projecting in the face of counter-intuition that should have provided a check against the projection.

Exactly. Hoyle isn't a very good example of a scientist who has "sometimes been religious, or at any rate superstitious" (a better example would be, say Henry Eyring). And calling him an "ex-agnostic" is at best ambiguous. But Hitchens's actual point is a valid one that Peterson agrees with: "it is true that scientists have sometimes been religious."

But picking a bad example of an uncontested true thing isn't an "egregious factual error," and me pointing this out isn't defending Hitchens.

[drumdude]

It's a doubly weird accusation to double down on, because it makes so little sense. Why would Hoyle's creationism directly inspire contempt for a model suggested by a Catholic Priest proving God? And so, it's not just projecting, but projecting in the face of counter-intuition that should have provided a check against the projection.

Exactly. Hoyle isn't a very good example of a scientist who has "sometimes been religious, or at any rate superstitious" (a better example would be, say Henry Eyring). And calling him an "ex-agnostic" is at best ambiguous. But Hitchens's actual point is a valid one that Peterson agrees with: "it is true that scientists have sometimes been religious."

But picking a bad example of an uncontested true thing isn't an "egregious factual error," and me pointing this out isn't defending Hitchens.

This is the type of nuanced position that is completely nonexistent at SeN.

[Physics Guy]

The Big Bang was indeed first proposed by a priest, and although it doesn't actually say anything about why the Bang happened, it obviously does kind of look like Creation. It even features an early epoch in which the expanding universe suddenly fills up with light. There have nonetheless been some atheists who have identified divine creation so closely with modern American Young Earth creationism that they've counted the Big Bang on their own side, as a scientific account of creation that obviously doesn't need God. I've met at least one person who seemed to think this way, anyway.

So I don't think it's quite a straw man accusation to suggest that some modern atheists might have mistaken Hoyle for a religious creationist just because he and Young Earth people were all against the Big Bang. If this was Peterson's take on Hitchens, it wouldn't have been a completely bizarre thing to read into Hitchens.

It wouldn't have been a fair or reasonable thing to read into Hitchens, though, either. Young whippersnapper creationists may have been railing against the Big Bang in recent years, but Hitchens must have learned of Hoyle's views in the 1970s, when Hoyle was a grand old man of astrophysics whose views got accurate press. Anyone who feels they know enough about the modern history of cosmology to comment on Hoyle ought to have assumed, just from Hitchens's age, that Hitchens probably knew his Hoyle, too.

[Doctor Scratch]

Dr. Peterson has invested an enormous amount of time and effort into demonizing Hitchens. The accusation that he’s “obsessed” with Hitchens is not wrong: I would be willing to bet that Hitchens’s name gets mentioned as often or even *more* often than DCP’s name gets mention on the so-called “Peterson Obsession Board.” And if we adjust the numbers, so that we are only dealing with the mentions made by distinct individuals (and not the board as a whole)? I would imagine that the situation would be even mor stark.

Letting go of his hatred for Hitchens would mean that he’s have to defend the Church’s “good deeds” on their own terms, but that’s apparently a bridge too far.