Apr 15 2011
The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question – a Conversation with Vincent Bugliosi
One of the nation’s leading prosecutors, Vincent Bugliosi, has a new book called ‘The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question.’ As the title suggests, Bugliosi tackles the controversial subject of God, the Christian faith, and atheism. Claiming that there is no way to ever know whether there is indeed a God, and that there is also no way to know whether there is not a God, Bugliosi makes the case for Agnosticism – that the only logical approach to God is to assert that there is no way of knowing whether God exists. He lays special emphasis on the Christian faith, pointing out glaring contradictions about the existence of God through the concepts of an all-knowing, all-powerful being, as well as the power of prayer and whether humans have free will. But he also takes issue with well known atheist authors like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, laying bare their theses on the non-existence of God. Divinity of Doubt is likely to be Bugliosi’s most controversial book. He warns that those who are deeply religious may not want to read his book, and the same holds true for the interview you’re about to hear. Vincent Bugliosi is best known for prosecuting Charles Manson about which he wrote the best-selling book Helter Skelter, which went on to sell over 7 million copies and become the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history. He also wrote Outrage on the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, and more recently The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Vincent Bugliosi has won 21 out of 21 murder cases and 105 out of 106 felony cases. He spent the past two years working on his new book Divinity of Doubt which we’ll spend this hour hearing about.
GUEST: Vincent Bugliosi, author of The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question
8 Responses to “The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question – a Conversation with Vincent Bugliosi”
I heard the interview this morning. Based on this alone, it seems as though he is treating “God” as an unambiguous term. Confining the discussion to “the Christian God” helps, but does not entirely solve the problem. Also, he cites Einstein, without acknowledging Einstein’s primary source on the subject: Immanuel Kant. The omission of Kant (who maintained that we never know, even physical objects, as they are in and of themselves), could only hurt his argument for agnosticism. He also cites an argument from Spinoza’s Ethics (that what ever is itself own self cause) and incorrectly attributes it to Aquinas. But the basic notion goes much further back to Aquinas’ favorite philosopher, Aristotle, who talked about an “unmoved mover.” And just as “God,” as noted above, is far from a univocally defined term, so too “causality.” Spinoza’s understanding of the term is worlds apart from Aristotle’s. Last but not least is Mr. Bugliosi’s failure to realize the importance method– specifically the dialectical method in Darwin, and Darwin’s major influence, Hegel in the earlier third of the 19th century. In Hegel, the dialectical method is applied to the human spirit (Geist in Hegel’s original German), resulting in a 600+ page story as to how the Spirit evolved, and continues to evolve (The Phenomenology of the Spirit, 1807). Darwin’s contemporary and good friend Herbert Spencer (the creator of “social Darwinism”) forgot about the human spirit, and instead put the focus upon physical matter generally instead. For Spencer, the entire cosmos is thus to be understood in evolutionary terms. Darwin restricted that somewhat to living things. In any case, the point I am here making is that the dialectical method, which orients one toward looking at things in terms of conflict and resolution (in a way that assimilates the original competitors), is a matter of human philosophical choice. The dialectical method is one method among others, all equally valid. The operational method, for example, a method of discrimination, works, in a way opposite to that of the dialectical method. This is Hume’s method of skepticism that Kant says woke him from his dogmatic slumbers. The logistic method of Descartes and Spinoza is a method of construction, whereas the problematic method of Aristotle and Aquinas is a method of resolution of problems. These are important to note because all 4 of these methods have been used time and time again by different writers in discussing “God.”
Perhaps the ultimate reason for reaching Mr. Buglosi’s conclusion is one he hinted at in the interview, but did not explicitly state: that the it turns the ultimate injustice, and therefore the ultimate evil (the murder of Jesus Christ) into the ultimate good (the salvation of mankind).
How come of all the world’s religions how come he zeroed in and trashed the God of the bible only and the Christian faith? What happened to the God of the Muslims, the Jews, the Chinese/Japanese, the Eastern religion God, Zen, Buddha, the animists, Satan, I mean we can go on and on. What a sorry twisted excuse for a prosecutor’s confabulated mind. He thinks just because he’s so smarter than most 5th graders that’s probably what he thinks of people of the Christian faith just because he spent 90 hours a week microscoping the book of Hebrews to disprove the existence of God that he got it right. And the 1 billion people are so sophomoric because of their simple faith in Christ. My son is a lawyer. I hope he will not reach a point in his own life where he will walk the same sad sorry and cynical path to hopeless eternal future this man is living the rest of his life for.
Ever heard of the “Stink of Enlightenment”? Perhaps Bugliosi qualifies.
As defined:
There is a phrase that is the **stink of enlightenment**–
a prime example of it is …. Reaching a point where one
can say all the right things BUT thinking one is above the
world and now they are some type of higher being and
that the world is going to cater to them… There is no
**mundane** versus not, and no one is above the world —
one is in the world but not of it — that doesn’t mean
above it though… it simply means that one is not deluded
or drawn in or lost within some false view of the world…
One enters into the Play of God — it ALL becomes Lila no
matter what one is doing it doesn’t mean one runs away from
responsibilities. That one is above it.
If one spent 90 hours a week week after week month after month focused on disproving the existence of the Christian God perhaps
what he’s trying to do is to shift the direction and makes himself enter into the PLAY OF GOD, assuming he can be a god himself since he figured out the ultimate knowledge of proving there is no cosmic Christian God after 6 thousand years of traditional belief in it. So then he has the opportunity of putting himself the ‘enlightened one’ side by side with all the other world religious “gods”. Wow! I think I cracked the code!
I’m unemployed, and need work, so here’s my offer. If someone will pay me just $2400.00 per month, for the next three months, AND if they will give me just 1% of what they make off me after that, I propose to write a best seller, using shear logic as good or better than Vincent’s, which contends against Mr. Bugliosi’s agnostic reasoning to the full satisfaction of his critics. I will entitle my book: “Bugliosi’s Religion” along with some catchy subtitle beneath that heading. It’ll make me rich, and whoever hires me richer. A lot of people would feel a lot of satisfaction to see Mr. Bugliosi’s logic blown out of the water. For someone like me, who’s more intelligent than Mr. Bugliosi, it’s not going to be hard to do.
@TaxG Do you think the answer to your question may be that Christianity is the predominant religion of the USA, the country in which the man lives? Do you think it just might be that practitioners of this particular religion spend spend more time spreading the “gospel” of homophobia and other sorts of intolerance, than the gospel of peace and love? Do you think it just might be that practitioners of this religion act on their own to make US foreign policy, and ultimately cause deaths of innocent UN workers, by burning the sacred books of other religions?
If you want to believe in a book that says slaves need to obey their masters, or in a God that consistently votes Republican, that is up to you. But for me, “turning the other cheek” is no core belief. Nor is creationism, sexism, racism, nor homophobia. Nor do I need to be told every day that some guy who died 2000 years ago and then supposedly blasted off into space like a rocket ship loves me. As the old saying goes, if you fundamentalists can’t take the heat of rational criticism, get out of the kitchen.
So now Mr Ptrick C. you also want to jump in into the pool of the stink of enlightenment like Mr. Bugliosi. That’s fine you can share the space. BTW Im Asian and your presumption about who and what I should believe is insulting to say the least. Youre looking at the prism of American politics and religion in your presumption. There are about 200 countries in the world with all kinds of dominant religious affiliations between most of them. Christianity is just one of them. So why would you even insinuate that the ghastly imperfection you have seen and heard about this particular religion is true in every other nation? What a small mind you have or I daresay racist as well? What about the homophobia pervasive in nations like Iran and other Islamic religious nations? In your mind they are illusion. They either dont mean harm or they are just ignorance with the true teaching of their own religion.
@TazG People from Iran and “other Islamic Nations” don’t generally meddle in politics here. More importantly, members of the other religions you mention do not try to evangelize me. For these reason, I don’t worry about these good folks.
I thought it was interesting, that one of his biggest points was that in Christianity there is no free will. So wether you do bad or good, is up to God, and if its up to God, then when you do bad it is him making you do it.
I wonder if he has ever read or tried to understand the Quran. One passage from the Quran came to mind when he made this argument: Surat Al Insan (The Man) verse 3: “We showed him (man) the way: whether he be grateful or ungrateful rests on his will. “
God help him!