The Improbable and the 'Impossible'

Ross Douthat, New York Times August 22, 2010

While remarking on the tendency of Americans to display both ignorance and credulousness in conversations with pollsters (a tendency I’ve commented on before), Matt Yglesias notes that people are much more likely to believe in ghosts, E.S.P. and so forth than they are to think that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Then he adds:

I'll admit that I'm a lot more open to the view that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim than to the view that the spirits of dead people can return in certain situations.

This, I think, is one of the interesting intellectual gulfs that yawns between staunch materialists and more metaphysically minded human beings. The former are more likely to believe in the extraordinarily improbable than in the seemingly impossible; the latter, the reverse. So, for instance, whereas I would happily stake most of my net worth on the premise that Barack Obama is not, in fact, a secret Muslim, I wouldn’t risk much money at all on the proposition that ghosts do not exist. That’s not because I’m a huge believer in haunted houses: It’s just that I think I have an excellent handle on the likelihood (or unlikelihood, more properly) that Obama has been practicing taqiyya all his life, whereas the question of whether ghosts exist or not depends on too many unknown unknowns to fit with the scope of any effective odds-making project.

Naturally, G.K. Chesterton had something to say about this subject:

“It’s what I call common sense, properly understood,’” replied Father Brown. ‘It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr. Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr. Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible. But I’m much more certain it didn’t happen than that Parnell’s ghost didn’t appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand … ‘”

This is, you’ll note, the reverse of Sherlock Holmes’ famous admonition that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Holmes’s dictum is the necessary starting place for any serious scientific project, since the entire enterprise of science depends on the premise that the universe is lawbound and regular, with nothing extraordinary or supernatural breaking in. Whether it’s also the only intellectually serious way to grapple with those aspects of human experience that won’t submit to laboratory experiments, though, is one of the many interesting questions that tends to separate the diehard atheist from both the agnostic and the believer.

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.

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Is it more absurd to believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, or to believe in ghosts?

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AIDS, the closet, and what gay marriage opponents failed to do.

August 19 //

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More on Islam, immigration, and bigotry.

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Why I'm somewhat "tepid" about the fight against gay marriage.

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The Improbable and the 'Impossible'

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