Hope Springs Eternal

From William Lane Craig's calendar. 


Tuesday 25th October 2011
7.30pm Lecture "Is God a Delusion?" A Critique of Dawkins' The God Delusion
[or a debate with Richard Dawkins if he should accept the invitation]
Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AZ

Meritocracy and Economics: Herman Cain on Why You're Not Rich

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!" Cain said. "It is not a person's fault because they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."


One of the main things that, for me, made me doubt and abandon the conservative politics of my high school days, was the fact this just didn't seem true. There were too many luck factors out there to believe that economic advantage is the product of personal merit. I heard about a study that showed that, in today's America, the biggest determinant of your economic success is how wealthy your parents were. 

Part of what may be at the bottom of some of this is the Reagan idea that when the government is helpful to disadvantaged persons, it undermines human self-reliance and creates "welfare queens."   I think conservatives have the idea that markets are meritocratic, that they distribute in accordance with what people deserve, or at least approximately. Therefore, when the government acts to help people lower down the economic totem pole at the expense of the people higher up, the government takes money from people who deserve it and give it to people who don't deserve it.  

Is there something more plausible than this for conservatives to say?

Does Fitting the Crime require Resembling the Crime

Maybe fitting doesn't require resembling. I'm inclined to think that it gives people an emotion. sense of fittingness if there is a similarity between the offense and the crime, but retributive theory just says you're supposed to deprive the offender of happiness in a measure that is calibrated to the wrongness of the act. There is nothing in that that requires that the form of the punishment resemble the offense.

When a murderer is executed, the death of the murderer differs in many ways from the death of the victim. The state makes sure the death is relatively free of physical pain, something murderers don't care about. The person executed has an execution date set on the calendar for years prior, the victim doesn't. So the murderer's experience differs in many ways from that of the victim.

Everyone is under a death sentence, anyway.

Court-appointed rapists

If the punishment has to resemble the crime in order to fit the crime, then what are we going to do with rapists? 

What the death penalty WILL deter

It would probably deter jaywalking better than murder. Murderers have a motive to risk at least life in prison to kill someone, so risking the death penalty is a smaller step further. On the other hand, no one is going to risk being executed to avoid walking a few feet to the crosswalk. 

A "Simpleminded" Response to a Complex Theological Problem

Somebody had to have been the first human. After all, there had to have been a first monkey, a first elephant, a first cockroach. Call that person Adam. That first person could have been in fellowship with God, and blew it. Why does evolution change anything? 

James White vs. my former colleague Lee Carter

Here are the complaints of Christian theologian James White against my former GCC colleague Lee Carter. I don't approve at all of what Carter has said, but I think I would even keep this case out of the courtroom. But if you think that someone can make a case against Gangadean but not against Carter, then I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona, from my front porch you can see the sea.

An Establishment Clause Case against a California High School Teacher

For anti-Christian statements in class. You see, the establishment clause cuts both ways.

Constitutionality and Censorship: Some Questions for Gangadean's Debunkers

I am afraid you don't understand what I have been arguing. I am a former student of Surrendra Gangadean, but not a follower in any sense. I am not, nor have I ever been, involved with Westminster Fellowship.

I have not chosen Romans over the Constitution. I am instead arguing against what I consider to be a tendentious interpretation of the Establishment Clause that I consider to be far removed from the original intent of the founders, and which has implications that I think even atheists should find objectionable.

The framers of the Constitution wanted to avoid the situation where the government had an established church, and they wanted to make sure people could practice religion any way they wanted to. That is the reason for the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the Constitution. I would concede a further point, that freedom of religion includes freedom from religion; that is, that a person is free to not engage in any religious practice whatsoever if they so choose.

The case against Gangadean seems to be centered around the idea that in presenting a rational argument for the existence of God, he is violating the establishment clause. In presenting the argument he does not force students to accept it, and he realizes that some may not. He doesn't say "Believe it because I say so," he asks people to consider the argument and decide for themselves if it is sound, in much the way that any teacher might present an argument for or against belief in God. (If this is not the case, then, of course, we would need evidence that he requires students to accept the argument in order to pass the course. Rumors and allegations won't do here). But, according to the case against him, he nevertheless violates the EC by even doing this.

Now, notice that the MCCCD standards for the introduction to philosophy class says that the course is supposed to cover arguments for the existence of God, as well as the problem of evil. But, of course, there are plenty of classes which cover the arguments where the teacher does not endorse the arguments, and in many cases the teacher will criticize the arguments. So, the teacher has to present arguments for the existence of God, but he can avoid violating the Constitution only by failing to endorse those arguments? That would mean that if a teacher doesn't endorse these arguments, it doesn't mean anything since he couldn't legally endorse them even if he thought they were sound?????

Of course, many teachers present the philosophy of religion section of their class with a desire to show students that their belief in God is irrational. They present the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the existence of God, usually with not much sophistication on the positive side, and then refute them with broadly Humean rebuttals. Then they will bring up the problem of evil, with the implication that failure to explain all evils refutes theism. Then they bring up Kierkegaard's Leap of Faith as proof that Christians themselves realize that their beliefs are irrational.

I have heard some of these teachers say things like "Well, I presented all the arguments for the existence of God and refuted them, and students still believe!" It is clear that in many cases they intend to impact the religious beliefs of their students, but of course, they seek to impact it negatively rather than positively. If someone were to ask them if, in presenting these arguments the way they do, they are impeding the free exercise of religion, they would probably say something like, "If people want to be irrational, I can't stop them. All I'm doing is showing them how irrational they are."

But a teacher who defends an argument in natural theology can say approximately the same thing. He can say "Yes, reason can be used to show that God exists. But I'm not forcing them to become believers in God. If people want to be irrational, I can't stop them."

Even if you accepted these arguments for belief in God, no religious act follows from that. It isn't even like the school prayer situation, where someone in school is pushed by the teacher to perform a religious act he may not believe in doing. Many students that I have encountered have a belief in the existence of God, even when they don't go to church and don't engage in religious acts. So making a case for God doesn't establish or force any religious activities, even on those students who accept those arguments.

If a teacher were to argue vigorously against the existence of God in class, and were also the faculty sponsor of the Campus Humanist Club or the school's Richard Dawkins Society, they would be doing a lot of things with which  I disagree, but the would not be engaging in any pedagogical misconduct. I've even heard students say "If you write a paper for X, and you defend the existence of God, you can't get better than a C." That kind of biased grading would, of course, be poor teaching,  whether done by a believer or an atheist. But it's a whole lot easier to assert this sort of thing than to provide real evidence that it is happening.

Of course, you can say that "Atheism isn't a religion, it's a non-religion, and so attempting to establish the truth of atheism doesn't violate the Establishment Clause, but defending it in class is." This is the "not collecting stamps" argument. But I am sure that is far from what the founders intended. And, as  Finney pointed out in the first thread, atheism has been ruled a religion for purposes of the Free Exercise clause, so it has to be treated as one when considering the Establishment Clause.

As Voltaire (hardly a defender of traditional Christianity) said, "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." A college or university should be an open marketplace of ideas, and the Establishment Clause is being abused when it is used as a tool for censorship.

Follow-up notes on the lawsuit post

A week or so ago, I was looking for a "Debunking C. S. Lewis" site that I had found. I typed the word "debunking" into Google, and instead of finding "Christianity" as the next word, which I expected to be suggested by Google, instead Google directed me to "Debunking Surrendra Gangadean," which is a Facebook page. I was shocked. Why would be be picked out for debunking?

The Facebook page was supposed to be devoted to the fallacies and sophistries of Surrendra Gangadean, but I actually saw no discussion of his arguments, or the arguments in his book. Instead, the site seemed to be devoted to the charge that he pushes his religious beliefs on his students, that he uses his classes to recruit students to a Christian fellowship he heads, and it was there that I discovered the lawsuit that was filed against him based on the Establishment clause. To read that site, he uses his classroom to run what amounts to a cult. 

What seemed to me problematic about all of this is that there are plenty of people who make a case against religious belief in their classes, and this is done deliberately with the intent to get people to give up their religious beliefs. If the Establishment clause can be used to beat religious professors over the head for defending their religious beliefs in class, but unbelievers can bash religious belief all they want, this creates an unfair asymmetry for the believer. 

However, I have been in contact with someone who is a good deal closer to my former teacher than I am, and he tells me that I was insufficiently critical of the factual content of the Debunking page. Professor Gangadean does not use his classes to recruit for a fellowship; in fact, he does not make his own beliefs especially evident in his classes, and often plays devil's advocate against the positions he himself holds. If so, he doesn't operate much differently from the way I do. I do think the description of my former teacher's activities by his debunkers is tendentious at best and deceitful at worst. 

Most teachers have beliefs which they make evident to some extent in their class. After all, we do believe things, and we should be able say that we do believe them. I know fellow Christian instructors who are more forward about their own beliefs in class than I am. If, on the other hand, I thought that many of my students were getting a lot of anti-religious intimidation in other classes, I might advocate more for what I believe than I do. I do feel a primary responsibility to teach the curriculum. I sometimes get asked about my own beliefs, and typically I will defer answering until the end of the semester. I try to make sure that, whatever you are a believer or an unbeliever, you will be able to say when the class is over that your view was competently represented. 

What I am saying is that I could be more of an advocate for my Christianity than I in fact am, and if I were to do so, I should not have to be concerned with lawsuits and the Establishment clause. The marketplace of ideas should be left open to all viewpoints, including religious ones. The idea that religious professors are obligated to lean over backwards to be neutral, while anti-religious can be unremittingly hostile, is a situation which is far from what the Founders had in mind when the laid out the laws concerning the establishment and free expression of religion. 

Was the beginning of the universe uncaused?

Quentin Smith thinks so.

Class Warfare, or Common Sense? Elizabeth Warren on the social contract

"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."¹

 1. "Elizabeth Warren On 'Class Warfare': There Is Nobody Who Got Rich On His Own (VIDEO)," Eric Kleefeld, Talking Points Memo, 09-21-2011.

Columbus and the Flat Earth

The role of the "flat earth" in history is often taught wrong in grade school. People before Columbus already figured out that the earth was round. What they disagreed about was how big it was. Some people thought it was so big that if you sailed west to get to the East, you would be so long on the sea that your supplies would run out and you'd never make it. The other people said it wasn't so large, and you could reach the East in fairly short order by sailing west. The first group, who opposed funding Columbus' journey, were, of course right. What no one realized was that there was a whole different continent between Europe and Asia. Columbus didn't figure it out either. He thought he got to the Indes, which is why Native Americans are called Indians. The guy who did figure it out was Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the Americas are (in my opinion rightly!) named. 

How did the Diamondbacks go from worst to first in the NL West?

Maybe it has something to do with their manager. You get a lot of street cred for something like this, the most dramatic finish to a World Series in living memory. (Except maybe another game-winning hit by another injured outfielder, Luis Gonzalez).

Lawsuit filed against one of my former teachers

Well, not exactly. This suit was directed against the college, and one of his followers who teaches it his college. 

One of my first philosophy teachers was Surrendra Gangadean, way back in the spring of 1973 (!), at Phoenix College. I took a logic class from him. I was 19 at the time. It was interesting to me to meet a Christian in philosophy. However, I spent much of the semester arguing against his Calvinism.

I was rather surprised to learn that a course at his present institution, Paradise Valley Community College, not him, but an adjunct at that college, was sued for using his book as a text, which the plaintiffs thought violated the establishment clause, because it advocated Christianity.

Now, using the classroom to advocate my own positions is certainly not my style of teaching. I have this nutty idea that if I do my best to fairly present all viewpoints, students will have the best chance to reach the truth, which, of course,accords with my beliefs. You can't keep your own positions in the closet completely, however (especially if you're a blogger).  But lots of professors advocate their own positions. A lot of people have the image of the atheist philosophy professor who does everything he can to convert his class to atheism. Some 25 years ago I heard of a well-known philosopher at the University of North Carolina who taught a philosophy of religion classes with the expressed purpose of destroying the faith of his students.

If Mr. Gangadean got sued, why don't these people get sued also? Oh, wait, it doesn't violate the Establishment Clause, because atheism is to religion what not collecting stamps is to hobbies. Yeah, right.

Gays won't inherit the kingdom? Was something lost in translation

Theogeek seem to think that something was indeed lost in translation in the traditional reading of this passage in  I Corinthians.

Is Michele Bachmann a Dominionist? Nope. Next Question?

Left-wing critics aren't terribly well-informed about evangelicalism. I have plenty of objections to Bachmann. But this response by Doug Groothuis is right on target. 

I'm no fan of what is commonly known as the Religious Right. Going from biblical teaching to public policy is incredibly tricky business. But let's get our facts straight, shall we? 

Immigration quotas, an aspect of the immigration debate no one talks about

Sometimes I think that we make mistakes when we tempt reasonable people to break the law. Prohibition would be an example. When I was in a high school debate on legalizing pot,  I came up with an argument that said that since marijuana is a gateway drug to other drugs, we can take its "gateway" status away by making it legal. (I am not now prepared to endorse this argument now, however).

People like to talk about what to do about illegal immigrants (Path to citizenship? Attrition through enforcement?), and we also like to talk about border security (if we give a path to citizenship, and people are still entering illegally, aren't we going to repeat the cycle?), but could we reduce the problem of illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier?

What people sometimes say is we are a nation of immigrants, and that while we oppose illegal immigration, legal immigration is just fine. If that is our position, then we ought to make it easier to immigrate by increasing quotas. If, on the other hand, the real problem isn't just illegal immigration, but immigration itself, then we should be willing to say that honestly.

If guns are outlawed......

"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

"If immigration is oultawed, only outlaws will immigrate."

Is there any way that the first argument can be a good argument against immigration control, but the second is not a good argument against immigration control? 

Most of the people who would defend the first argument would hate the second argument.

Feser on Meta-Sophistry

This, among other things, contains an explanation of the conservative "slippery slope" argument against same-sex marriage in such a way that is doesn't come out as a blatant fallacy.

Deterrence and pickpocket hangings

Ilion likes to argue that the case for the death penalty has nothing to do with things like deterrence, or closure for victim's families. It is about retribution, and only retribution.

That's probably good for the death penalty, because the case for the death penalty as a deterrent to capital crime strikes me as weak. Pickpockets used to be hanged in England, and the most likely place to get your pocket picked was at a pickpocket hanging.

Prayer in Public Schools

A redated post. 

I honestly can't figure out what people want when they say they want prayer in public schools. Imagine the following scenario.

Jerry Falwell's Granddaughter: I'm so glad you worked so hard to bring prayer back into public schools.
Jerry Falwell: Yes, it was a hard fight, but with all the Supreme Court Justices that Bush packed the court with, we finally got that one changed.
Granddaughter: We prayed today in school for the first time.
Falwell: Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!
Granddaughter: We did the most beautiful prayer. I had never heard it before. It goes like this:

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy
womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Be careful of what you ask for. You may get it.

Hate Speech

Should people be prohibited from saying things because they might offend others? Sometimes workplace discourage or even proscribe talking about politics or religion, because of the offense it might cause to some workers. But in the public square generally, can we realistically restrict speech?

Voltaire once said "I do not agree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." But how far does this go? Is it a small step between yelling "queer" at someone you think is gay, to beating up a gay person?

On the other hand, if we make a hate speech law, where does it end? Does one have the right to say that homosexuality is a sin, that Islam is a false religion, or even that Jesus is the only way to be saved and that everyone else is going to hell, without fearing civil retribution? A preacher in Britain was arrested merely for asserting that homosexuality is a sin, and the link on the post's title leads to a discussion of this case.

A Question about Victim's Families and the Death Penalty

Sometimes we are told that execution, like no other penalty, provides closure to crime victims' families. Many victims' families feel that way when the death penalty is being sought. But, after the executions take place, do they actually feel the satisfaction that they were hoping to feel before the criminal was executed?

Is there any research on this?

Defending Buddhism against Loftus

John Loftus: A religion by definition must be about supernatural beings and/or forces. Atheism therefore is not a belief nor a religion. I really don't know how much plainer I can get.

VR: Quite apart from the fact that this was something Loftus said, I doubt that this is true. Buddhism, as originally conceived by Buddha, doesn't make any essential reference to the supernatural. As I understand it, Buddha did believe that there were supernatural beings, but one of the essentials of his teaching was that either those supernatural beings have achieved Nirvana, in which case they won't do you any good, or they are still subject to the cycle of birth and rebirth, in which case they can't do you any good.

I don't see anything in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism that makes any essential reference to the supernatural beings or forces.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

Religion is harder than it looks, certainly to define. You may have to adapt Justice Stewart's dictum with regard to pornography: I can't define religion, but I know it when I see it.

The Global Warming Wager

Metacrock here points out the Pascalian character of the argument for global warming, and then shows that you can't accept global warming argument while at the same time also accepting atheist anti-wager polemics. He also has some useful things to say about the Wager as a tiebreaker for those otherwise undecided about God.

My interview with Backpack Radio is here

A redated post.

Immigration Policy from Leviticus, or what the Bible says about Arizona SB 1070???

Leviticus 19:34 New International Version ³⁴ The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.


Well, I suppose if we took Leviticus for our law, we'd be putting homosexuals to death. 

The End of Faith? Don't hold your breath

This is a CADRE entry on religious demographics.

ID wins in court---for once

Does Gordon Gekko understand, or misunderstand, capitalism in this famous movie speech?

Can you believe in capitalism without making greed a virtue?

How?

Why sexism is obsolete

In previous centuries, people earned their living off the sweat of their brow, and if people fought battles, they fought them hand to hand. So physical strength was at a premium if you were going to survive, and it was more economical for women to be baby-making machines to make sure parents had people to take care of them when they were old. (More precisely, son-making machines). I'm not thinking here of justice, but rather of economics. When your survival is under constant threat, the question of "How can we survive" comes before the question of "What is fair?" With industrialization, this changes. I have never held a job a woman couldn't do as well or better than me.

So, I'm not inclined to be too hard on past cultures for their sexism. But I am hard on people who want to carry sexism into the present day. 

A critique of opponents of biblical archaeology

BK, of Christian Cadre, responds to criticism of claims that archaeology supports scripture.

The Passing of John Stott

John Stott, a leading light of evangelicalism for many years, passed away at the age of 90.

The Problem of the Single Case

I was looking at some exchanges I had with skeptics on Debunking Christianity, and one aspect of my views that was difficult to get across to them was the idea that, without attributing blatant irrationality to anyone, we can allow that different people are going to be able to assess the antecedent probability of something like the Resurrection of Jesus in different ways. These people are accustomed to working in scientific contexts where Bayes' theorem is used as a forecasting tool, and I take it what happens in those scientific contexts is that there are frequencies that are thought to determine what the antecedent probability of something is. So, we can look at how frequently something has happened in the past, and we can determine how likely it is to occur in the future. There is therefore a single, determinable answer as to how likely something is to occur.

However, to do this,  you have to subsume events within a reference class, and ask how likely that type of event is to occur. In the case of historical events, however, all of them are at least in one sense completely unique. How frequent are Kennedy assassinations? The guy could only be assassinated once. So, we receive a report that Kennedy was assassinated. We could argue that since the event was unprecedented, the probability of that event was zero, while the probability of false newspaper reports is considerably higher than zero. Therefore, we ought to disbelieve the report and assume that the newspaper report was erroneous.

On the other hand, political leaders are assassinated from time to time, so if we subsume the Kennedy assassination into the reference class of assassinations of political leaders, it becomes considerably less improbable. If we subsume it under the category of assassinated Presidents, we know that of the 34 Presidents that preceded JFK, three of them were killed by an assassin's bullet.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. OK, can we measure the extraordinariness of the Kennedy assassination? How?

This is from the linked Stanford Encyclopedia essay on interpretations of probability:

Finite frequentism gives an operational definition of probability, and its problems begin there. For example, just as we want to allow that our thermometers could be ill-calibrated, and could thus give misleading measurements of temperature, so we want to allow that our ‘measurements’ of probabilities via frequencies could be misleading, as when a fair coin lands heads 9 out of 10 times. More than that, it seems to be built into the very notion of probability that such misleading results can arise. Indeed, in many cases, misleading results are guaranteed. Starting with a degenerate case: according to the finite frequentist, a coin that is never tossed, and that thus yields no actual outcomes whatsoever, lacks a probability for heads altogether; yet a coin that is never measured does not thereby lack a diameter. Perhaps even more troubling, a coin that is tossed exactly once yields a relative frequency of heads of either 0 or 1, whatever its bias. Famous enough to merit a name of its own, this is the so-called ‘problem of the single case’. In fact, many events are most naturally regarded as not merely unrepeated, but in a strong sense unrepeatable — the 2000 presidential election, the final game of the 2001 NBA play-offs, the Civil War, Kennedy's assassination, certain events in the very early history of the universe. Nonetheless, it seems natural to think of non-extreme probabilities attaching to some, and perhaps all, of them. Worse still, some cosmologists regard it as a genuinely chancy matter whether our universe is open or closed (apparently certain quantum fluctuations could, in principle, tip it one way or the other), yet whatever it is, it is ‘single-case’ in the strongest possible sense.


So, if we can't measure the extraordinariness of the Kennedy assassination, how can we measure the extraordinariness of the Resurrection? 

A treat for oldies music fans

This site has channels for each year from 1950-1989, and also channels for different genres.

Metacrock's discussion of ECREE

An important point is from this quotation from Marcello Truzzi.

The central problem however lies in the fact that "extraordinary" must be relative to some things "ordinary." and as our theories change, what was once extraordinary may become ordinary (best seen in now accepted quantum effects that earlier were viewed as "impossible"). Many now extraordinary claims may become more acceptable not when they are replicated but when theoretical contexts change to make them more welcome.

Are skeptics brighter than believers?

According to this response at CADRE, religion is a nonfactor in IQ.

Lennox replies to Hawking

Emperors, Clothing, and the Courtier's Reply

I think the Courtier's Reply can be effective in certain contexts. Let's take the Emperor's Clothes case. If I someone says that the emperor has clothes on even though he appears naked, and he runs through a long list of different types of invisible fabric that he's wearing, of course, that doesn't cut any ice. If, for some reason, he has an argument for why, in spite of the fact that the emperor appears naked,  he nonetheless really does have clothing on, and is attempting to offer an explanation as to why this might be, then at the very least you've got to get the argument right. Granted, you could use a G. E. Moore type response, (it's evident to the senses that the king is naked, and that is more evident than any reason we might have for thinking he is clothed), but what you can't do is straw-man the argument in defense of the emperor's clothes.

For example, if I don't believe that angels exist, it seems to me that I can hold that belief without knowing a lot of angelology, or being able to distinguish between different types of angels, etc., if I have good reason to believe that there aren't any angels.  However, if someone has an argument for the existence of angels, then I can't use this as an excuse to misrepresent the argument. I have to get it right, if I am to be credited with actually refuting it. I can't get away with presenting a cosmological argument that says "Everything's got to have a cause, so the universe has to have one, too."

Similarly, if I am defending an argument from evil for atheism, then I had better know what the theistic responses are and get them right. Otherwise, I'm just straw-manning.

Following Up The Last Superstition

More Feser on the New Atheism.

Chess Game Leads to Stabbing

I had no idea my favorite game was so dangerous.

An Old Exchange between Keith Parsons and myself over theistic explanations

This is one that appears in my paper on Hume on Miracles, Frequencies and Prior Probabilities. 

Science is unavoidably naturalistic, or atheistic if you prefer. Science operates in terms of scrutable, independently testable entities that operate in accordance with knowable regularities. Supernatural beings, on the other hand, are essentially mysterious; claims made on their behalf are not independently checkable, and there are no "laws of supernature" governing their behavior. Furthermore, "explanations" in terms of supernatural entities are inevitably post hoc and untestable. In other words, proponents of supernaturalistic theories can glibly account for things we already know, but become strangely silent when asked to predict something new, something that would allow their theory to be tested.[18]

Even though the locus of discussions of miracles is historical rather than scientific, if it is the case that supernaturalist hypotheses are inevitably untestable, this would mean that supernaturalist claims cannot be genuinely supported by evidence. But some points can be made in response to this position. First of all, I see no in principle impossibility in "laws of supernature." One cannot, of course, generate deterministic laws governing divine conduct, but one cannot generate such laws concerning the behavior of subatomic particles, either. One can, of course, form probabilistic expectations concerning the conduct of subatomic particles, but, as we have noted, one can generate probabilistic expectations concerning divine conduct as well. It would disconfirm belief in the Christian God if Jim Bakker were to die and rise again on the third day, ascending into heaven a few weeks later. The "laws" of supernature that Christians or other theists are inclined to postulate may not be as detailed as the laws scientists hope to discover in nature, but they leave theistic claims open to confirmation and disconfirmation.

[18] Keith Parsons, "Is there a Case for Christian Theism?" in J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist: The Great Debate (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990) p. 189.

The SLTF

Jesse, I think there's an important point, and that is, "Who's the outsider?" Now, if we take the word "outsider" as meaning, well, someone who's not in fact committed to any particular revealed religion, then Lewis even when he had knelt and prayed, was an outsider, since he did not accept any special revelation at that time, and did not do so for a couple of years.

However, when Loftus actually describes the so-called "outsider," it is an outsider Loftus has created in his own image. For him to acknowledge that a person's religion has passed the OTF, there has to be evidence that at least ought to persuade someone like himself; someone who accepts a broadly scientistic epistemology, etc. But you can be an outsider without subscribing to Loftus's brand of scientism. So it's not an Outsider Test for Faith, it's the SLTF, the Satisfy Loftus (or Articulett, or Papalinton, etc. etc., etc.) test for faith. But if that's the case, why is faith unreasonable if it can't be proven to the satisfaction of its harshest critics? Why are they in the catbird seat, determining the rationality of all beliefs?

Did C. S. Lewis take the Outsider Test?

A redated post.

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." – Surprised by Joy


I don't know about you, but I'd say he passed with flying colors.

Jesse Parrish and Thrasymachus: Two atheist critics of the OTF

Parrish's critique is linked from the title. Thrasymachus' is linked here.

Now, I'm not going to make the argument that since even atheists criticize the OTF, there's got to be something wrong with it. Arguments have to be discussed on their merits. However, I do like these critiques.

Flippancy and Argument

A redated post.

This is C. S. Lewis's description of Flippancy in the Screwtape Letters:

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.

This passage helps me explain the atmosphere that I found in secular philosophy departments when I was in graduate school. It never seemed to me as if people actually had arguments against theism, or dualism, etc. Everyone acted as if the Argument had been made, maybe on the day I was absent. But no one actually made it. "Everyone is a materialist." "Determinism is obviously true." "No one believes that anymore." "God??? How quaint." Etc. Etc. Etc. Oh yes, and my favorite. "We've grown up."

Is it the same way nowadays?

Devilish Advice for Keeping People from Becoming Christians

I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïve? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

Laudan's commentary on the Overton decision

This is a redated post.

Way back then, the judge decided he had to define science. This seems to have happened all over again. This is the text of a philosopher of science's critical response to that.

Who said this?

"As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings."

a. Richard Dawkins
b. Sam Harris
c. Daniel Dennett
d. Christopher Hitchens
e. none of the above

Komarnitsky's Cognitive Dissonance Theory of Christian Origins

An attempt to explain how Christianity could have been founded without a Resurrection.

Boghossian on moral relativism

HT: Bob Prokop

On defining the natural, and the supernatural

In order to understand what the supernatural is, we need to understand what it is to be natural. I have developed a definition of what is natural, which has to do with there not being any mental explanations at the basic level of analysis. If something normative, subjective/perspectival, purposive, or intentional is at the basic level of analysis, then it isn't naturalistic according to my definition. This is, I take it, the basis of what I call the skyhook ban, based on the cranes/skyhooks distinction from Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I have also developed the argument that if everything is natural in this sense, then reasoning and science itself are impossible.

However, I am open to the possibility that this definition of the natural might be rejected. It is the naturalist who needs the notion of the supernatural, because they need to know what to exclude from their worldview. If it turns out that my Christian ontology is real, but that it's all really natural in some sense and therefore not supernatural, I don't really care. Thus, for example, the attempt to exclude all theistic explanations from science on the grounds that they are supernatural is, I believe, a fundamental error. Therefore, I am inclined to reject all "demarcationist" arguments against creationism and intelligent design, even though I don't necessarily advocate those positions. We could in theory discover laws governing what to expect from God, and include those in science. The fact that that would "naturalize" God doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Copan Replies to Avalos

Anti-biblical prejudice amongst biblical archaeologists

God forbid anyone should use the Bible to tell them where to dig.

The New Aphilatelism

Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.



I've heard this a few times. Interesting statement. So, somewhere on the internet, there's got to be a site called Debunking Stamp Collecting, in which people try to get convinced stamp collectors to take the Outsider Test for Stamp Collecting. What is more, there is now a batch of writers out, advocates of The New Aphilatelism, who are attacking stamp collecting as delusional. They are authors of such books as 


The Stamp Delusion
Stamp Collecting Is Not Great
The End of Stamp Collecting
Breaking the Spell of Stamp Collecting
Why I Became an Aphilatelist
The Miracle of Stamp Collecting 
C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Stamp Collecting
The Stamp Collection that Wasn't There
Sense and Goodness without Stamp Collecting
Aphilatelist Universe
The Stamp Collecting Brain
The Stamp Collecting Debates
The Case Against the Case for Stamp Collecting
The Portable Aphilatelist
Letter to a Stamp Collecting Nation
The Blind Stamp Collector: How Evolution Shows a World Without Stamp Collecting
Debunking the Stamp Collector's Bible
The Cambridge Companion to Not Collecting Stamps


I have linked to a post by Matteo at Cartago Delenda Est making the same point. 

Feser on Not Understanding the Cosmological Argument

HT: Tim McGrew

Let's get Aquinas right shall we?

A redated post.

From Theodore Schick's The 'Big Bang' Argument for the Existence of God (1998*)

The traditional first-cause argument rests on the assumption that everything has a cause. Since nothing can cause itself, and since the string of causes can't be infinitely long, there must be a first cause, namely, god. This argument received its classic formulation at the bands of the great Roman Catholic philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. He writes:

In the world of sensible things, we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known ... in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go to infinity, because . . . the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause.... Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate, cause . . . therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name god.[4]
Saint Thomas's argument is this:

1. Everything is caused by something other than itself
2. Therefore the universe was caused by something other than itself.
3. The string of causes cannot be infinitely long.
4. If the string of causes cannot be infinitely long, there must be a first cause.
5. Therefore, there must be a first cause, namely god.
The most telling criticism of this argument is that it is self-refuting. If everything has a cause other than itself, then god must have a cause other than himself. But if god has a cause other than himself, he cannot be the first cause. So if the first premise is true, the conclusion must be false.

VR: Does Aquinas actually use the principle "Everything is caused by something other than itself?" Where is he getting that. This, of course, opens the door to the "Who Made God" objection. But Aquinas is not stupid. What exists contingently is what needs a cause, according to Thomas. This error was, of course, commited by Russell, and has been committed by "refutations" of the CA in thousands of introductory philosphy classes. But I was surprised to find it still surviving in print in 1998.

Atheistic presuppositionalists

The issue wouldn't be inerrancy, but rather something I would call general historical reliability. Using a Bayesian model of evidence, X is evidence for just in case X is more probable given Y than given not-Y.

I would expect accurate reports of miraculous activity to come from sources which make serious attempts to describe the facts, and which have good enough access to the relevant facts to have a great deal of general historical reliability. So, it seems to me that evidence that Scripture has historically accurate content is evidence that the miracle claims contained within are true; that evidence could be outweighed by the overall plausibility of naturalism in the minds of many reasonable persons.

It seems to me you have to distinguish between saying

1) The evidence for X isn't good enough for me

and saying

2) There is no evidence at all.

What I suspect is that, deep down, a lot of skeptics are atheistic presuppositionalists. They think that in order to have evidence for something it has to have a naturalistic explanation, and to use inductive reasoning to support any claims with respect to the supernatural is to abuse the inductive reasoning process.

If that's the case, they shouldn't be saying we don't have the evidence, what they should be saying is that the kinds of claims Christians make are not the sorts of things that it is even logically possible to have evidence for.

Archaeological support for Jeremiah

Here is a Christian CADRE piece from a few years back about some archaeological support for Jeremiah.

Skeptical treatment of archaeological findings is rather interesting to me. When evidence is brought forward that supports the accuracy of the text, we are told that this really doesn't matter, since it doesn't support the supernatural content of the text directly. On the other hand, if there is a lack of archaeological support for what the text says, then we are told that this is good reason to reject the text, and especially, to reject the supernatural content of the text.

Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

Aristotle and Aquinas on the true purpose of life

A redated post. 

Aquinas takes Aristotle as far as he can go, but then argues that human life is only really fulfilled in the vision of God. This has relevance to the argument from desire in Lewis.

Some notes from Notre Dame.

Loftus on bin Laden

I hesitated somewhat before doing another post on JWL. But these statements strike me as bizarre:

Osama Bin Laden was probably a good man; sincere, devout and God fearing. But all it takes to make good people do evil is religion. Keep that in mind. That is the lesson of his life. He was deluded in the same way as other believers. Some delusions cause more harm than others though, and he caused a great deal of it. The problem is he will never know he was deluded. Neither will any of the rest of them. What a waste of a life.


So all that is needed to make good people do evil is religion? So, is that how we explain Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi. Is that why they did so much evil? And how did Stalin manage to do so much harm, since he didn't suffer from and God delusion? 


I realize how crazy Christians sometimes appear to atheists. But this looks to me like out-of-control atheist 
groupthink.


I hope this doesn't touch off a new round of irrelevant Loftus-bashing. 

Bradley Monton's Blog

Bradley Monton is an interesting philosopher, an atheist who is opposed to the witch-hunt against Intelligent Design.

I would put atheists in three categories. There are hostile atheists that make it their mission to smash religious belief. There are apathetic atheists who simple don't put a lot of effort into what they don't believe. And then there are sympathetic atheists who are willing to dialogue with Christians. Monton is clearly of the third type.

An Anonymous Commentator on the Evolutionary Explanation for the Success of Reasoning

I put this up earlier, and it didn't get much response. So I'm trying again. 

 

A few comments to some of Ahabs points:

In fact humans do not tend to respond positively to placebos. 70% or more of those taking them will not get better.

If 30% of those taking sugar pills will get better, then humans often respond positively to placebos. That's quite astonishing and fits well with other reasearch in psychology about the influence of positive thought about the future.

Actually, if one found out that they were taking a placebo they would want the real medicine and consequently increase their chances of survival.

I agree with this, but the point is that the placebo effect promoted survival in the past, not that it does now. Many traits don't serve survival well now but did so in the past (adrenaline in a stress situation).

But now you've jumped from an individual belief to a system of beliefs.

I agree that this is the best objection to the "systematic error" argument. I guess this could be turned into a good argument, but nobody has done this so far.

Natural selection does not select for individual beliefs. It selects for the mechanism which is capable of forming beliefs. A person whose brain is able to arrive at enough true beliefs to increase its chances of surviving the hazards of this dangerous world is, all else being equal, going to have a greater likelihood of passing on her genes than a person whose brain is less adept at good belief formation.

This is the typical answer to any argument from reason. I think the problem with this answer is that it requires and presupposes a huge metaphysical framework that is highly controversal and becomes less and less plausible. It requires the "naive" view of mental causation, the idea that the content of our thoughts directly influence behavior. David Chalmers has made a great case against the kind of mental causation required for this view.

Usually it also presupposes that evolution delivers an explanation for our phenomenological mental life. But this is highly implausible and disputed by many in the philosophy of mind. My zombie twin would have the same advante in natural selection that I have.

I can't make a cogent case against this objection in a comment here because it presupposes so much. But overall it seems to me that the premise of the objection is highly disputed and that contemporary philosophy of mind actually moves away from it. This makes the objection useless.

The reason why this objection is so common seems clear to me. It is very simple and fits very well with ordinary common sense convictions about the mental. This makes it attractive to anyone who is not familiar with the metaphysical problems it causes.

Interesting fellow Mr. Brain. Remarkable what he can do.

The Mr. Brain fallacy strikes again, in this response by Edward Feser to Jerry Coyne.

The OTF, and ECREE

 The OTF is couched in terms of avoiding DOUBLE standards. It seems pretty clear to me that you can avoid double standards and be a Christian. Christianity has, at least as I evaluate the evidence, some evidential advantages over other revelation claims. So the complaint has to be that a person is using the wrong standard, but that's what's at issue. 

Extraordinariness is not strictly quantifiable, and has to be assessed from within some existing belief system. If someone thinks that natural theology is reasonably successful, and that we have

reason to believe in God, then we have to ask if it is possible that God has spoken. Or is he just mutely watching? If it seems likely that God has spoken, we have to find the best candidate as to where and how he might have spoken. 

It's a cumulative case on both sides. I am skeptical of the existence of "default positions," however. Whatever position you start from, there is an initial "double standard" of sorts, in that you can't reasonably expect someone to put what they don't believe on an epistemic par with what they do believe. You can do that as a thought experiment, (If I came in believing X, what would I believe about it now), but it cannot be normative unless you have good evidence that your current beliefs were arrived at in a completely non-truth-tracking way. Just seeing the weakness of how we reason isn't enough to reach that radical a conclusion. To put what we don't believe on an epistemic par with what we do, it has to be shown that our thinking processes that led us to believe what we do are completely non-truth-tracking. 

No, I would not put levitation and bike-riding in the same category evidentially, since I have different priors for each. However belief in both has to follow some general rule. 

I see prior as starting points in thinking, which have to be worked from, not justified. We're stuck with them. If we trade them in for others, we don't help ourselves epistemically. If the evidence is good enough, it should overcome whatever your initial predispositions, if we keep thinking and paying attention. However, some of us will be dead before our errors are defeated. 

Hurtado on Scholarship and Personal Stakes

LH: Indeed, occasionally scholars make much of their departure from religious faith, sometimes even making that a major subject in its own right (I mention no names, as ask any comments to avoid doing so too).  But surely a moment’s reflection should indicate that there is no really neutral ground, and that those in negative reacion against their own faith are in danger of being unduly influenced (skewed?) in their work as any apologist for a given religious stance.

Sam Harris on Killing People for What they Believe

“Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them”


Sam Harris, The End of Faith, pp.52-53. 


Explain to me once again why RELIGION leads to violence. In the Christian community, these kinds of statements went out with the Wars of Religion. 

The Martian Test for Faith

The contemporary atheist is a creature of Christian culture. They have already interacted with it and responded in one particular way. So I don't think of them as outsiders. A real outsider would have to be from another planet.

Mars, maybe?

One More God

SteveK wrote: 


I just believe in one more God than you do.... When you understand why I don't dismiss my God, you will understand why I do dismiss all the others. ;)

An Exchange between Matt Flannagan and John Loftus (actually Paul Bennett)

This is a combox exchange between Loftus, whose comments are in italics, and Matt Flannagan, whose comments are not italicized. 

I think the OTF is seen to fail in the mind of those who are afraid of the implications.
This is an assertion backed up by an ad hominen attack on people who disagree with them.

For those interested in the truth, it’s a good test. Believers clearly set a low bar for evidence when it comes to their own supernatural beliefs, but they raise the bar when it comes to other supernatural beliefs and no evidence is sufficient when it comes to any claim which negates their beliefs. The OTF reveals this bias.

Actually I think it does the opposite, sceptics demand that Christians meet an inordinate burden of proof by proposing the OTF, but then they fail to apply this proof in other contexts, particular to premises they use to argue against Gods existence. I note this in the review.

The believer wants to think that the atheists rejects their beliefs for bad reasons, when in fact, atheists reject the believers beliefs for the same reasons believers reject other religions and superstitious claims.

This is an assertion which has been refuted already on this blog. But note you make it without any proof. If I held to the OTF I should be sceptical of this claim until you prove it.

Obviously, people believe in the magical things they do because of indoctrination, confusing correlation with causation, and confirmation bias. Christians can see this readily when they consider Greek Myths or reincarnationists– but their indoctrination blinds them in regards to their own, equally unsupportable supernatural beliefs. If they are indoctrinated well enough, they become too afraid of thinking outside the faith– afraid that they’ll suffer forever if they do so.
Again we see an assertion, involving a string of genetic and ad hominen fallacies, prefaced with the word “obviously”
If you want to insist on the OTF, I should be sceptical of these claims until you prove them. Where is the proof?

Every cult member can tell you why they are sure their religion is the really true truth– but none can tell you what evidence would get them to believe a competing claim– that’s because no evidence would or could suffice. They are brainwashed. Christians can see it with the Muslims and the Scientologists, but their indoctrination makes sure they deny it in themselves. The OTF illustrates this, however– which is why we see so much kicking and screaming around it.

Again another assertion about others being “brain washed” with you expect everyone to accept without proof. Keep the examples coming your proving my point nicely

The OTF is just a tool to help a believer counteract the biases of his indoctrination, so that instead of endlessly trying to prop us his belief, he’s got a brain more willing to consider whether his supernatural beliefs are any more likely to be true than the supernatural beliefs he rejects (such as reincarnation). As far as the empirical evidence is concerned, the answer is “no”.
I note here you limit your claims to supernatural beliefs and insist on empirical evidence. Why? This is an epistemological claim. If the OTF is true I should be a sceptical outsider to claims like this so my default position is to deny it, until you prove it.
I note the only proof you give is an assertion.
Again, thanks for proving my point.

”I understand why this would bother someone more interested in keeping the faith rather than understanding what is real. Magician, James Randi points out that the easiest people to fool are those who are certain they cannot be fooled. I know I can be fooled. And I don’t feel like fooling myself any more. I think those against the OTF are those with a strong interest in continuing to fool themselves.

Interesting, again we have the OTF defended by an ad hominen. This is apparently the only proof needed when it’s your beliefs that are under discussion. When people question the epistemic stance you adopt, you respond by saying they “have an interest in fooling themselves” and dismiss it.

Perhaps you’ll answer the question I put to you last time we discussed this. Take the claim “women and men have equal rights” or “all human beings have equal dignity and worth” can you prove this with empirical evidence? If I had been brought up in another culture I would probably not believe this. So the OTF requires me to be sceptical of it until someone proves it with empirical evidence alone.

I take it you provide empirical evidence for this claim that meets the standard you demand before on believes in theism, then you need to explain to me why you adopt a different standard here?

How to be Anti-Science

This is an essay on the anti-science movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Madeline Flannagan reviews The Christian Delusion

No surprise, the discussion ends up focusing on the OTF. HT: Steve Hays.

The Argument from the Reliability of our Rational Faculties, or Should We Attack Water Balloons? (With a postscript from a commentator)

This is a redated post. 

IV. Argument from the Reliability of our Rational Faculties
If naturalism is true, it is often argued that natural selection would support the emergence of rational as opposed to irrational belief-forming mechanisms. But it is not at all clear to me that the most reliable belief-forming mechanisms are the most advantageous from an evolutionary point of view.
First of all I argued that simpler procedures often have more selective advantage over more complex cognitive ones. Carrier ridicules the example that I use, which is

If the chief enemy of a creature is a foot-long snake, perhaps some inner programming to attack everything a foot long would be more effective than the more complicated ability to distinguish mammals from amphibians.

Carrier thinks that this commits me to the idea that this creature will attack everything a foot long, including rocks, which is clearly not what I meant. Most universal statements presuppose a universe of discourse; thus if you were to go into a store having a clearance sale in which I find a sign that says “Clearance Sale: Everything Must Be Sold” and proceed to ask the price of the salesgirl, you would get slapped upside the head and rightly so.

But of course very often nature uses short-cut mechanisms to provide for the survival of creatures. In my home state of Arizona we have lots of rattlesnakes, and they are designed in such a way as to track warmth. Very often a warm object will be an enemy, but it need not be one. If you put a hot water balloon outside a rattlesnake’s hole it will attack the water balloon. So I might say “Perhaps nature could give a creature a tendency to attack anything above a certain number of degrees in the environment, and that would be more effective from the point of view of survival than the ability to discriminate between animate and inanimate objects,” and it seems to me that if I said that Carrier could produce all of his arguments ridiculing that claim and saying that of course being able to figure out whether something is alive or not is better from the point of view of survival than just hitting something above a certain number of degrees. Carrier also says

It will always be a more efficient use of resources (energy, time, risk, and tools) to avoid attacking all non-threats and to attack all actual threats—including entirely new and unanticipated threats. And the only means an organism can maximize efficiency in this respect is to optimize its ability to categorize and discriminate objects and events. There is literally no other way.

But if this were the case wouldn’t Mother Nature have hit upon rational creatures a whole lot sooner, instead of using a wide range of other kinds of mechanisms to promote survival? I pointed out in my book that the reason in humans requires the development of large brains which, while providing the advantage of enhanced knowledge capacities, have the disadvantage of making the creature more vulnerable, requiring longer periods of immaturity, etc. The emergence of reason involves trade-offs from an evolutionary standpoint, though of course it can be very well seen why a naturalist might say that trade-off is worth it. If we consider such natural occurrences as the dance of the bees, we find sophisticated ways of discovering where nectar is (and where it is not), without anything like conscious reasoning being involved. It seems just false to say that there is, and can be, no substitute for reason.

Darwin once raised doubts about his own capacities to understand the world accurately on the assumption of evolution by natural selection. The possibility that false beliefs can promote reproductive fitness seems impossible to deny. I don’t know if any scientific studies have been done on this, but I remember high school, and I distinctly had the impression that the guys who held egregiously inflated views of their own attractiveness to the opposite sex tended to have more successful dating lives than those of us who assess our attractiveness more realistically.

Douglas Henry, in the 2003 edition of Philosophia Christi, provides an excellent example of how systematically false beliefs can benefit survival, in his essay “Correspondence Theories, Natural-Selective Truth, and Unsurmounted Skepticism.” He considers the attempt by Ruth Millikan to provide an evolutionary foundation for realism and the correspondence theory of truth. He maintains that the fact that humans tend to respond positively to placebos suggests that false beliefs can, and often do, have survival value. The placebo effect is well-documented in medical literature, showing that if someone receives some medication that they think will benefit their health, then that will benefit their health even though it is nothing more than a sugar pill. On the other hand trading the false belief “This is the latest cancer medicine” for the true belief “This is just a sugar pill” will result in the loss of the positive health effects of believing that a person is receiving beneficial medicine.

If false beliefs about matters that are of immediate concern can be false yet helpful, is it also possible natural selection could, in various ways, incline us toward a whole range of false beliefs? Could our beliefs be systematically false and still adaptive? I see no reason to think they could not.

The Arguments from Reason are far from finished products, either as a result of Lewis’s efforts or as the result of my own or other people who defend them. Far more than I have been able to do already will be required to make a persuasive case to most people that reason is a phenomenon that fits far better into a supernaturalist world-view than into a naturalistic world view. A good deal more needs to be done by defenders of the arguments from reason, especially in addressing naturalistic philosophers like Dennett, Millikan, and Dretske who had attempted to tackle the problem of how reason can exist in a naturalistic universe. There is a long struggle ahead to try to show first that the central elements of reason to which I have alluded are ineliminable, secondly, to show that reductive analyses of these elements of reason are unsuccessful, and third to show that an alternative world-view, such a theism, provides a better way of understanding these phenomena. However, I firmly believe, and continue to believe, that the more we study attempts to naturalize reason the more plausible it will seem that “Something’s rotten in Denmark, ” and that a fundamentally mentalistic world-view, like theism, can clean up the stench.

Postscript: The following comments, by an anonymous commentator some four years later, strike me as very interesting: 

A few comments to some of Ahabs points:

In fact humans do not tend to respond positively to placebos. 70% or more of those taking them will not get better.

If 30% of those taking sugar pills will get better, then humans often respond positively to placebos. That's quite astonishing and fits well with other reasearch in psychology about the influence of positive thought about the future.

Actually, if one found out that they were taking a placebo they would want the real medicine and consequently increase their chances of survival.

I agree with this, but the point is that the placebo effect promoted survival in the past, not that it does now. Many traits don't serve survival well now but did so in the past (adrenaline in a stress situation).

But now you've jumped from an individual belief to a system of beliefs.

I agree that this is the best objection to the "systematic error" argument. I guess this could be turned into a good argument, but nobody has done this so far.

Natural selection does not select for individual beliefs. It selects for the mechanism which is capable of forming beliefs. A person whose brain is able to arrive at enough true beliefs to increase its chances of surviving the hazards of this dangerous world is, all else being equal, going to have a greater likelihood of passing on her genes than a person whose brain is less adept at good belief formation.

This is the typical answer to any argument from reason. I think the problem with this answer is that it requires and presupposes a huge metaphysical framework that is highly controversal and becomes less and less plausible. It requires the "naive" view of mental causation, the idea that the content of our thoughts directly influence behavior. David Chalmers has made a great case against the kind of mental causation required for this view.

Usually it also presupposes that evolution delivers an explanation for our phenomenological mental life. But this is highly implausible and disputed by many in the philosophy of mind. My zombie twin would have the same advante in natural selection that I have.

I can't make a cogent case against this objection in a comment here because it presupposes so much. But overall it seems to me that the premise of the objection is highly disputed and that contemporary philosophy of mind actually moves away from it. This makes the objection useless.

The reason why this objection is so common seems clear to me. It is very simple and fits very well with ordinary common sense convictions about the mental. This makes it attractive to anyone who is not familiar with the metaphysical problems it causes.

Rupert Sheldrake responds to his critics

The Intellectual Rubbish Dilemma

I think there is something I call the Intellectual Rubbish Dilemma, which is the problem we have if we choose to get into discussions with views that we think of as rubbish and unworthy of respect. The difficulty is that an effective critique of an opposing position requires careful and charitable reading of what an opponent has said. To do a good job in critique requires us to be charitable, but to use enough charity to do a good critique sometimes requires us to appear to have more respect for our opponents than we think they deserve. In such situations I err on the side of charity. 

Online Material by C. S. Lewis

This is Steve Lovell's resource.

Loftus misrepresents me again (surprise surprise)

John, why don't you learn to read more carefully. I was very explicit about NOT attributing this to God, or anything like God, so I have never said that the God of the Bible did it.  Nor do I have any certainty about what the explanation is.  I have always found the incident curious. While lots of people go down in spelling bees, the temper tantrum this boy threw is unique in all the spelling bees I have ever been part of. I distinctly remember the time my violin teacher gave for what happened seemed to be exactly the time at which this happened. My teacher spent almost no time talking about clairvoyance, it was never something he was "on about." This was an isolated occurrence.

My memory for these sorts of specifics is pretty good. I can, for example, remember my score in most of the chess tournaments I have ever played in. I can remember three of the four words I went out on in the four years I competed in spelling bees in grade school. I am somewhat

There are clearly three possibilities. One is that he was not aware of what happened at the bee, but that did some fancy guesswork to make it look like he did. The second is that he did have knowledge of what was going on a mile away, but that it has a naturalistic explanation. Or, it could have been something that does involve something over and above what we ordinarily can ascribe to the natural world.

Obviously, I'm in no position to lighten James Randi's wallet. But I still think that skeptical responses to these sort of things are to quick, too easy, and too dogmatic. I did say that this is evidence of the paranormal, but what I am coming to realize is that my concept of evidence may be different from yours. For me, X is evidence for hypothesis Y if experience X is more likely to occur if Y is true than if Y is not true. This is all pretty clearly understandable if there is clairvoyance than if there is no clairvoyance. In fact, I wonder how all of you would analyze the phrase "X is evidence for Y."

That said, I do NOT hold the belief that this is something that is naturalistically inexplicable. I am decidedly undecided on what the explanation is.

The "no evidence" charge

I have often been puzzled by the charge, made by many atheists, that there is NO evidence for God, or for the supernatural, or paranormal, or what have you. The reason is that as I understand evidence, X is evidence for Y is X is a fact of our experience that is more likely to be the case if Y is true than if Y is false. And it looks to me that there are all sorts of things in our experience that are more likely to be there with God than without God. The kind of testimony to the Resurrection that we have, it seems to me, is more likely to be there given the existence of God than without the existence of God. That doesn't mean that there is a God, to be sure, or that the Resurrection happened.

In an exchange on Debunking Christianity, someone said


To a rational, skeptical mind, claiming to have seen evidence of the paranormal is, in and of itself, evidence of 
delusional thinking.


When I said that I had seen evidence of the paranormal, I was referring to the violin teacher incident  that I discussed a few months back. Now I can easily see coming out of that discussion thinking that it wasn't a genuine episode of clairvoyance. What I can't see is thinking that it provides no evidence at all for clairvoyance. It seems to me that of course, it's something that is more likely to have occurred if there were such a thing as clairvoyance as opposed to if there were no such thing, even if it is really wasn't clairvoyance 
after all.

Maybe someone can explain how the term "evidence" is being used here.