The Argument from Reason as a Theistic Argument

III. The Argument from Reason and Natural Theology
We might ask the following question: In what sense is the argument from reason a piece of natural theology. The job of natural theology is supposed to be to provide epistemic support for theism. However, the argument from reason, at best, argues that the ultimate causes of the universe are mental and not physical. This is, of course, consistent with various world-views that other than traditional theism, such as pantheism or idealism.
It's a good idea to look at what happened in the case of the argument from reasons’s best-known defender, C. S. Lewis, to see how the argument contributed to his coming to belief in God. Lewis had been what was then called a "realist", accepting the world of sense experiece and science as rock-bottom reality. Largely through conversations with Owen Barfield, he became convinced that this world-view was inconsistent with the claims we make on behalf of our own reasoning processes. In response to this, however, Lewis became not a theist but an absolute idealist. It was only later that Lewis rejected absolute idealism in favor of theism, and only after that that he became a Christian. He describes his discussions with Barfield as follows:
(He) convinced me that the positions we had hitherto held left no room for any satisfactory theory of knowledge. We had been, in the technical sense of the term, “realists”; that is, we accepted as rock-bottom reality the universe revealed to the senses. But at the same time, we continued to make for certain phenomena claims that went with a theistic or idealistic view. We maintained that abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth, that our moral judgment was “valid” and our aesthetic experience was not just pleasing but “valuable.” The view was, I think, common at the time; it runs though Bridges’ Testament of Beauty and Lord Russell’s “Worship of a Free Man.” Barfield convinced me that it was inconsistent. If thought were merely a subjective event, these claims for it would have to be abandoned. If we kept (as rock-bottom reality) the universe of the sense, aided by instruments co-ordinated to form “science” then one would have to go further and accept a Behaviorist view of logic, ethics and aesthetics. But such a view was, and is, unbelievable to me. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (San Diego, Harcourt Brace, 1955), 208.

Lewis did not, however, embrace theism at this point. Instead, he opted for Absolute Idealism, a philosophy prevalent in Oxford in the 1920s, although it is not widely held today. He wrote of this again in Surprised by Joy:

It is astonishing (at this time of day) that I could regard this position as something quite distinct from Theism. I suspect there was some willful blindness. But there were in those days all sorts of blankets, insulators, and insurances which enabled one to get all the conveniences of Theism, without believing in God. The English Hegelians, writers like T. H. Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet (then mighty names), dealt in precisely such wares. The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anyone else….We could talk religiously about the Absolute; but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us…There was nothing to fear, better still, nothing to obey.

Nevertheless, further considerations drove Lewis out of idealism into theism. He wrote:

A tutor must make things clear. Now the Absolute cannot be made clear. Do you mean Nobody-knows-what, or do you mean a superhuman mind and therefore (we may as well admit) a Person? After all, did Hegel and Bradley and all the rest of them ever do more than add mystifications to the simple, workable, theistic idealism of Berkeley? I thought not. And didn't Berkeley's "God" do all the same work as the Absolute, with the added advantage that we had at least some notion of what we meant by Him? I thought He did. So I was driven back into something like Berkeleyanism; but Berkeleyanism with a few top dressings of my own. I distinguished this philosophical "God" very sharply (or so I said) from "the God of popular religion." There was, I explained, no possibility of being in a personal relation with Him. For I thought He projected us as a dramatist projects his characters, and I could no more "meet" Him, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. I didn't call Him "God" either; I called Him "Spirit." One fights for one's remaining comforts.
So did the argument from reason that Lewis accepted make theism more likely in his mind? It certainly did. In his mind it gave him a reason to reject his previously-held naturalism. Now you might think of Absolute Idealism an atheistic world-view, but is does deny the existence of the theistic God as traditionally understood. However the playing field was now considerably narrowed.

Consider the following argument:
1. Either the fundamental causes of the universes are more like a mind than anything else, or they are not.
2. If they are not, then we cannot make sense of the existence of reason.
3. All things being equal, world-views that cannot make sense of the existence of reason are to be rejected in favor of world-views that can make sense of the existence of reason.
4. Therefore, we have a good reason to reject all worldviews reject the claim that the fundamental causes of the universe are more like a mind than anything else. 

Now if you want to hold out the idea that a idealist world-view is nevertheless atheistic, then my argument merely serves to eliminate one of the atheistic options. But suppose someone originally thinks that the likelihoods are as follows:
Naturalism 50% likely to be true.
Idealism 25% likely to be true.
Theism 25% likely to be true.

And suppose that someone accepts a version of the argument from reason, and as a result naturalism drops 30 percentage points. Then those points have to be divided amongst theism and idealism. Therefore the epistemic status of theism is enhanced by the argument from reason, if the argument is successful in defeating naturalism.

The New Homophobia

From a sermon by Rev. Drahcir Snikwad, of Hellfire Baptist Church in Georgia:

I think we should probably abandon the irremediably gay precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven't really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.

If it doesn't make them straight, it should at least keep them in the closet. 

Plantinga on the "courage" of atheists

The God Delusion is an extended diatribe against religion in general and belief in God in particular; Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (whose recent Breaking the Spell is his contribution to this genre) are the touchdown twins of current academic atheism.1 Dawkins has written his book, he says, partly to encourage timorous atheists to come out of the closet. He and Dennett both appear to think it requires considerable courage to attack religion these days; says Dennett, "I risk a fist to the face or worse. Yet I persist." Apparently atheism has its own heroes of the faith—at any rate its own self-styled heroes. Here it's not easy to take them seriously; religion-bashing in the current Western academy is about as dangerous as endorsing the party's candidate at a Republican rally.

Does religion lead to violence? Yeah, and so do lots of other things

Here. 

One little point about religion and violence. If you are counting up the tendency of religion to lead to violence, don't you have to subtract all the cases where someone REFRAINED from committing an act of violence out of obedience to, say, the Sixth Commandment.

Berkeley's arguments against matter

Can Berkeley be refuted? Lewis said that his arguments were unanswerable.

A redated post.

On kicking the stone

Someone mentioned Johnson's refutation of Berkeley. This is a discussion of it.

Keith Parsons on the positive impact of Christianity

I can name several atheist websites on which you would NEVER see anything like this. That is why Secular Outpost is head and shoulders above most all other atheist sites.

Here. 

It's so obvious, or is it dogmatism? The Presumption of Amatterism

One of the differences you will notice in reading the writings of C. S. Lewis, if you are someone familiar with present-day philosophy, is the extent to which, in his time, Idealism simply had to be taken seriously. When Lewis accepted the Argument from Reason, he went, not to traditional theism, but to Absolute Idealism. 

At one point, philosophers not only were idealists, but thought it was obviously true, as Ed Feser points out in an entry from 2009. 

But has idealism been disproved? Consider this comment from a commentator at Debunking Christianity: 

I've been hanging around Mr. Loftus' Debunking Christianity for many years, and now my default position is that Christianity is thoroughly debunked since no Christian can show any Christianity-specific claim to be true. 

Hmmm. A position is fully and completely debunked if no one can demonstrate that any of its basic posits are true. 

Well, how about the existence of matter, the central posit of philosophical materialism. Has anyone refuted idealism, which denies that matter exists? So, by this reasoning, materialism is debunked, since no one can prove that matter is real. If we ought to accept the presumption of atheism, the view that we should be an atheist unless we can prove that God exists, shouldn't we equally accept the presumption of amatterism. 

Christopher Hitchens' attack on Mother Teresa

Before there was God is not Great, there was this. 

Richard Dawkins interviews Peter Singer

Here. 

What would C. S. Lewis say to Richard Dawkins? Peter S. Williams

Here. 

Is Young Earth Creationism disproven?

Even on an issue like this, absolute proof doesn't exist. For example, it's possible that God created the world in seven days, just like the Bible says it he did. However, he also put a bunch of fossils in the ground to make it look like evolution, knowing that scientists would come along and make fools of themselves by developing the Darwinian theory. The evidence is at least consistent with this possibility (though a God who did that would be hard to love). 

The next step-go after the tax exempt status of religion

Here. 

Lewis v. Tolkien on Marriage

Here. 

Are scientists more valuable than people in the humanities?

D. H. Mellor says no.

Does Same-Sex Marriage Leave Marriage Intact?

The picture many of us have of same-sex marriage is that homosexual couples will be doing the same thing as heterosexuals, but with the same-sex partner to which they are attracted, as opposed to an opposite-sex partner. For at least many gay activists, this is perceived as stifling and limiting. At one point I had the idea that same-sex marriage might be a good thing because it would push gay people in the direction of lifelong faithfulness and discourage promiscuity. Many in the gay community don't want to be pushed in that direction, however.

This is an admittedly pro-family site, but the question still arises.

But I wonder if people in the gay Christian community react this way.

Was the American Revolution a Just War?

A week early, but see here. 

What is the characteristic blindness of our age?

When we read the writings coming from previous centuries, we say "Typical Victorian. Typical Medieval. Typical eighteenth-century." But then we have to start wondering what the characteristic blindness of our age is. We can see the problems with other ages because we aren't in them and we haven't absorbed the typical prejudices of that time. We have, however, absorbed the typical prejudices of our time, and those are hard to see. How much of what we say is going to be read by people in the future as "sooo early twenty-first century?" That's what C. S. Lewis talks about in his introduction to a fourth-century theological treatise:

Can Mosque and State be Separated?

This is discussed here. 

From diversity to accepting racism: a paradox

If you accept diversity, shouldn't you accept the racist, too? Being a racist is one more way of being diverse?

What does it mean to judge someone?

A redated post.

What does it mean to judge someone? Is it to form an opinion concerning the rightness of an act that someone performed? Or is it to form an opinion regraded the character of the person who performed that act?

If we are talking about the first concept, then if we have a moral standard that proscribes actions that other frequently perform, then we end up often judging others. But I don't see anything wrong with "judging" in that sense. The idea that we have to dumb down all standards of morality for fear of being guilty of judging others seems to me to be ridiculous (though popular). It is more difficult to draw inferences concerning the character of others, however, and so there is a reason to refrain from making these sorts of judgments. But very often we are told we ought not to judge, which ends up meaning we ought not to hold moral standards that would result in our disapproving of the conduct of others.

Larry Gilman objects to my argument

Here. 

Lewis’s “Argument from Reason” gives me that fishy feeling I have whenever someone tries to get the jump on science by the power of pure reason.  As I learned from reading Lewis himself, logic only tells you that if you have one penny in a drawer and put another in, there must be two pennies in the drawer; it doesn’t and can’t tell you whether there is a penny in the drawer.  To know that, you must look.  Logic alone, no matter how pure, no matter how apparently compelling, can never tell us what is physically real, in a bureau, in a brain, or anywhere else.  We must look, and that looking we call “science.”  Lewis and Reppert, in effect, rule on what science can find before science has looked — whereupon I cry Foul.  Lewis even thought he could exclude a purely naturalistic, evolutionary origin for the human brain on the strength of the Argument from Reason (Ch. 3 of Miracles).  That’s an awful lot of biological history to settle without leaving one’s easy chair.  But despite my gripes, I think that the Argument from Reason draws attention to a fascinating and knotty class of problems.  If it were reclassified as the Problem of Reason, I would have no quarrel with it.

But my argument does not directly conclude that naturalism is false. What it concludes is that it cannot both be the case that the world is naturalistic AND that we make the rational inferences that constitute the scientific enterprise. There are two possible worlds, one with scientists in it which is not naturalistic, and a world without scientists which is naturalistic. Science is not a presupposition-free enterprise, it presuppose that there are scientists and that scientists do infer conclusions based on evidence. 

And, many people think that science is only allowed to appeal to materialistic explanations, otherwise it isn't science. That seems also to be deciding scientific questions without actually doing the science. 

Mavrodes' moral argument

Mavrodes' argument from the queerness of morality. 

Here. 

The Poison of Subjectivism

A C. S. Lewis doodle.

God is not willing that any should perish

This post from ten years ago has been getting some attention from a whole new set of commentators, so I am redating it.

One of my firmest theological convictions is that a perfectly good God would do everything possible to enable people to be saved. A God who, before the foundation of the world, determines that some will suffer everlasting punishment, simply because this would be to his own greater glory (why would it be to his own greater glory anyway?) is as God whose motivations I absolutely do not understand. It isn't just that there is something mysterious here, it is that this kind of conduct is completely opposed to any ethical values that come from God's own commandments. God expects people to care deeply about the salvation of the people of the world, yet God could save a lot of people but just decides not to? Imagine the tortures of the Nazis extended through all of eternity. To say that this kind of torment will go on not because the damned make choices that make it impossible for God to save them, but rather simply because God has chosen this fate for them, is to attribute to God characterstics that, to my mind, conflict utterly and totally with the character of God revealed in Christ. The Bible does not say "For God so loved the elect, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." And so when I read "God is not willing that any should perish" in II Peter 3:9, I take it to mean that, quite literally, God does not want anyone going to hell. Period, end of story. God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

But Scripture also seems to indicate that the way people come to be saved is by being evangelized. They come to salvation by hearing the Good News of Christ and believing. And if this is how God saves people, then it seems that an Omnipotent being is, in the face of things, slacking on the job of bringing people into his Kingdom. I know that there is a lot of evangelism going on. But if we make the assumption that the people who die without accepting the evangelistic message have been lost, while those who have accepted it have been saved, we reach some disturbing conclusions. If Satan wants everyone to be lost, and God wants everyone to be saved, then Satan is winning the numbers game. This two-bit fallen angel (everyone is two-bit compared to the Almighty) is getting more people into his kingdom that the Omnipotent one is getting into his. And this can get really upsetting for Evangelicals who have to bury their unconverted loved ones, since the most obvious conclusion they have to draw is that the person who has died has gone to hell.

It is here that some kind of second chance after death seems like an appealing idea, an idea fictionalized (but not actually endorsed) in Lewis's The Great Divorce. People can escape hell if they are willing to give up their greatest sins. But I think maybe you can accept the underlying idea here without actually having to believe that there is a real second chance after death. We assume that time works for people who are dying in the same way it works for the rest of us, so if one minute has elapsed when a person has passed into eternity, then presumably that one minute would not be long enough for God to do anything in that person's soul. But do reports of near death experiences, for example, support this idea of simultaneity? Could God pack years of evangelism into those final seconds, and offer everyone a chance to be saved, if only they will give up their most precious sins, while the person is still alive? If this were so, this would reconcile "Salvation only through Christ," "No second chance after death," and "God is not willing that any should perish."

All I want to say is that the possibilities that occur to us humans from our own limited perspective probably do not exhaust all of God's options.

An ethicist's nightmare

There are ethical problems with some research. Let's take, for example, selective breeding of human beings. The issues surrounding racism are made a lot easier by the fact that there is really no such thing as a superior race. But, if we started breeding superior human beings, then there would be a superior race in reality. Then what would our duties of the superior race be to the inferior race? That would be an ethicist's nightmare. 

But a certain famous scientist keeps playing around with the idea. 

Keep your ethics at home

What Milton Friedman says here sounds like what some of you are saying about the photographer case.

Strange bedfellows.

Here. 

Marriage legal and moral

Some people would argue for a distinction between the legal acceptability of same-sex marriage and its moral acceptability. Consider the following case: a man leaves his wife and three kids, and runs off with a Playboy bunny half his age. He divorces his wife, and goes down to the courthouse to get a license to marry his new girlfriend. The courthouse won't ask any questions about whether he was moral or not in starting this relationship which began as an adulterous affair. They just check to see if his divorce is final, and if it is, they issue the marriage license. But if a photographer who knew about how the relationship starter, and who believes in the Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery) was asked to photograph the wedding, would such a photographer be reasonable in saying "I recognize that you are getting married legally, but I can't be part of the celebration of your new union, given what I know about how you got together. Sorry, please find another photographer." 

(Interestingly enough, the above case seems to be one of the stronger reasons in support of same-sex marriage, since it points out that in heterosexual cases like this one, the government doesn't hand out licenses based on what they perceive to be moral or not, either on religious grounds or on any other grounds). 

If that is reasonable, then could someone who object morally to a same-sex marriage do the same thing, since they are being asked, really, to be part of the celebration of something they don't feel right about celebrating? 

C. S. Lewis's Man or Rabbit

Here. 

The laws of logic and the laws of physics

To reason is to hold a belief governed by logical relations and logical laws. But matter is governed by the laws of physics, not the laws of logic. A entailing B, or A's being evidence for B, has to at least some of the time be causally responsible for S's believing B. But if the laws of physics determine everything, the laws of logic and evidence are inoperative in the formation of belief. How are the laws of logic, laws that are not spatiotemorally local, have anything to do with the formation of beliefs, when all the causes of what anyone believes are spatiotemporally local?

Attempts to "naturalize" the mind always fudge categories.

Any attempt to reduce intentionality to something nonmental will always fail because it leaves out intentionality. Suppose for example that you had a perfect causal account of the belief that water is wet. This account is given by stating the set of causal relations in which a system stands to water and to wetness and these relations are entirely specified without any mental component. The problem is obvious: a system could have all those relations and still not believe that water is wet. This is just an extension of the Chinese Room argument, but the moral it points to is general: You cannot reduce intentional content (or pains, or "qualia") to something else, because if you did they would be something else, and it is not something else." (Searle, Rediscovery p. 51).

Uncritical?

Some claim that Christians uncritically accept their faith. When I hear this, I think, "Have you ever heard of adolescence?"

Apparently even Sean McDowell, Josh's son, was far from uncritical.

The argument against ridicule

Loftus completely ignores my argument for what I said, which has to do with the principle of charity. An argument for something, if it is done right, does the best it can to state the other side's position as fairly as possible, and to even to make a better case for the opposing view than even its advocates make before launching the attack against it.

The Principle of Charity is a methodological presumption made in seeking to understand a point of view whereby we seek to understand that view in its strongest, most persuasive form before subjecting the view to evaluation.
http://philosophy.lander.edu/o...

Ridicule, on the other hand, seeks to present the opposing view in the most negative light possible before attacking it. How can you be charitable and ridicule at the same time?

Counting the indifferent

May I point out one other basic issue. Of course atheists are going to come out better if they claim all the people who are religiously indifferent. And I think those people constitute the vast majority of the "nones" in our society. It's like claiming all the babies as atheists, which is what I have seen done. Next thing you know they'll be claiming my cats. Even Hemant Mehta spoke out against that one. Most people who are nonreligious are not nonreligious as a result of critical reflection. In fact, a lot of them have some godish belief like the belief in a "force out there." (May the Force be with you).

Why Ridicule and Debate don't mix

JWL: Hey Vic, what exactly is wrong with doing everything I can to disabuse Christians of their faith when I know that 1) their faith is terribly wrong, and 2) their faith is harmful for our future?

All one has to do is have the passion I do and share 1 and 2 above.

You don't like this? So noted. It's the same organized disrespect the Church has handed out to anyone who disagreed WITHOUT THE TORTURE AND VIOLENCE TO COMPEL BELIEF! Ours is based on knowledge plus persuasion, which includes--at times--ridicule, just as we ridicule the KKK and believers in Zeus.

Cheers.

Oh, and complaining about those who comment on my blog smacks of the "You Too" and the "guilt by association" fallacy


VR: No John. If I believe that faith is right, and that it is beneficial to the future of those who believe, there are still certain things that I ought not to do to promote it. I follow Lactantius on this:

"Religion being a matter of the will, it cannot be forced on anyone; in this matter it is better to employ words than blows [verbis melius quam verberibus res agenda est]. Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty . . . . It is true that nothing is so important as religion, and one must defend it at any cost [summa vi] . . . It is true that it must be protected, but by dying for it, not by killing others; by long-suffering, not by violence; by faith, not by crime. If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion. (Divine Institutes V:20)"

Yes, I am saying you too. I am saying that Christians have the same reasons for not going onto your site as "thoughtful atheists" might have for going onto mine. Only, in my estimation, it's far worse, because the disrespect is a strategy, and the ad hominems are far worse. Unlikes Jeff Lowder, You are in no position to lecture people on my site for their manners. You asked me once to ban Crude. What if I told you I wouldn't consider doing that unless you banned Articulett and Sir Russ?

You can debate and discuss, or you can use other means. But debate and discussion involve following certain rules, in particular, the principle of charity. So some people can debate and discuss, and some people can ridicule, but they don't mix, if not in theory at least in practice, because argument requires the principle of charity and ridicule precludes it.

A softball question

I always thought that the question of whether it is possible to do the right thing if there is no God is kind of a softball question. Of course you can, since we have social motives for moral behavior. A more interesting question is whether anyone is going to be want to be moral if a) we lack sympathy for other people and b) we have nothing to gain socially from doing the right thing. 

Naturalism or not?

In response to what Jeff was asking let me make some clarification of my views.

To me, naturalism is not a transparent idea by any stretch of the imagination. What is it that makes something "natural?" I could say that I was a naturalist, but that my naturalism includes a lot of things most naturalists don't believe in, such as a psychons (which used to be called souls), angelons (which used to be called angels, and one triune theon, who used to be called God. The guy that directed my doctoral dissertation once came up with the idea that the "physical" or " is just what scientific theory quantifies over, some scientific theories quantify over God, therefore that would make God physical, (and therefore natural).

Is location in space and time sufficient to make something natural or physical? Well, I think it likely that the soul has a location, so does that make the soul physical? Or maybe the soul is some different kind of physical particle that science hasn't discovered yet. Surely science hasn't found everything, so we can't say that all that exists is what science has found already.

My concept of what is required for naturalism is as follows:

1. The base level, whether we call it natural, material, or physical, is causally closed.
2. Everything above that level supervenes on the physical/material/natural.
3. Physics is mechanistic. The base level lacks intentionality, purpose, normativity, and subjectivity.

An interesting question is whether Thomas Nagel comes out as a naturalist on this model. He's not a theist, be he does want to put the mental on the ground floor of reality, so he wouldn't qualify on my view. But he's an atheist. (A real one). I would recommend J. P. Moreland's response in Philosophia Christi to Mind and Cosmos.

Hitchens vs. D'Souza on Is Christianity the Problem

Here. 

Organized Disrespect

John, do you actually read your combox? When I got into the David Wood discussion, I was called intellectually dishonest, a Liar-4-Jezus, and then we get this gem from Sir Russ:

You, Victor, are one of the people doing evil things due to religion. He said that I was one of the people who put meat on the bones of the claim that philosophy is dead.

And how about this one?

What did your PhD actually prepare you for? To ignore the world around you while you lie to perpetuate ignorance and superstition?

And he gets all sorts of applause when he says things like this? Some called it his finest work.

And you complain about Ilion???? I didn't think it was possible to make Ilion look like Miss Manners, but I see it done every day on Debunking Christianity.

And it's worse than this. This isn't an accident. You advocate ridicule, you support doing more than just criticizing religious arguments, you advocate philosophy departments taking philosophy of religion out of their curriculum. You don't want to criticize religious beliefs, you want them marginalized, so that if people hold them it's OK, so long as they shut up about it and keep it out of the public square.

This goes beyond not being nice. It is a programme, instigated by Dawkins in his TED speech in 2002, of what I call organized disrespect. All sorts of ridicule can be done in gentle and humorous ways which is not particularly offensive, and is not designed to express contempt.;  I even ridiculed myself with a Dennett Lexicon entry:

reppert v. To enhance the reputation of a popular apologist by "finding" sophisticated arguments in his writings. "Who are they going to reppert next, Francis Schaeffer, or Josh McDowell?"

But Dawkins (and you follow him on this) advocates "sharpening barbs so that they really hurt." It is ridicule designed as propaganda to persuade without real argumentation. It is an attitude that makes real and honest exploration of our religious disagreements an impossibility. This is not honest and passionate debate, this is the behavior of a schoolyard bully. And I think reasonable atheists should see it for what it is. In the course of honest debate, particularly where there is such passionate interest on both sides, people can lose their tempers and be rude. Or they can be trigger-happy in their charges of intellectual dishonesty. But this is a bridge further, and it needs to be identified for what it is. Christians should realize that in dealing with this sort of thing, that their opponents do NOT want to meet them fair and square on a level playing field.

Do you believe in magic

• I don't believe that reason could arise from nonreason, therefore I think that reason is at the foundation of the universe. According to the naturalistic view, the normative arises from the nonnormative, the logical arises from the nonlogical, the universe exists without an explanation for its existence even though it looks contingent as all heck, the universe was finely tuned for intelligent life, purposes arise where none existed before, consciousness comes from a lack of consciousness. The very foundations of science don't even seem possible in the irrational universe that atheists believe in. Even the very fact that our thoughts are about something else is something that can't be captured by basic physics. It has always seemed to me that the atheists, not the theists, are the ones who believe in magic.
  
  
  
  

Loftus on David Wood's Conversion Story

Here. 

I guess if you don't believe there is a God, the redemptive power of God to convert the soul needs to be doubted as well.

The truth will set you free, or will it destroy you?

Christianity promises that the truth will set you free, of course claiming that Christianity is the truth. Can atheists claim the same thing? Isn't it at least possible that, even on the assumption that atheism is true, the truth of atheism could destroy a person, or every person? I can easily imagine thinking both that atheism is true, and that I hope most people don't find out that it is. 

Atheism had nothing to do with it? That's not what they said: Wurmbrand's Tormentors and atheism

This is from Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ. 

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The Communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflected on prisoners.8

There are moral pits that Christians can fall into. Here is a Chesterton Father Brown story that describes one. But there is the "everything is permitted" moral pit that requires atheism. And it is a deep one. It is far from the case that atheists must fall into it. But I think it delusional to deny its existence, or to deny that it was partly responsible for the horrors that took place behind the iron curtain. 

Atheism and Communism

This is the best attempt I have seen to argue for a disconnection between these, while using the history of religious violence against religion.

Without a doubt, the crimes of professed communist regimes were terrible. But it is important not to lose sight of what caused them. This is the first major misconception: that the communists attempted to understand the world through reason and science rather than faith, and that this was the error that caused the crimes they committed. Communism was categorically not a reason- or evidence-based view of the world. Quite the contrary, it was a dogmatic, anti-rational ideology every bit the equal of fundamentalist religion, where certain propositions were taken on faith and were not allowed to be debated or questioned. Although the communists congratulated themselves for their liberation from superstitious thinking, in reality they had not escaped dogma; they had merely transferred their dogmatic beliefs from the tenets of religion to an equally rigid and inflexible set of political beliefs.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/red-crimes/#ixzz3YkceohnH

But doesn't this presuppose that if you remain evidence-based, you will always be able to persuade others. But what if you can't, and you think it's really important that people accept the results of you reasoning if they don't reason their way into it themselves. And you have the power of the sword in your hands.

Are all religious arguments a bad basis for laws?

It seems to me that the expression "religious argument" can mean one of two things. It can mean that the argument is based in its entirety on the specific teachings of a particular religion, such as the teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses that blood transfusions are wrong, or of Catholics that birth control should not be used. These make bad laws, to be sure. But it could only imply that human beings have a purpose for their existence which is not of their own making. Would an argument that implied that "religious" in the negative sense and therefore an inadequate basis for law? This would be affirmed, it seems to me, by most any theistic religion, and rejected only by atheists or materialists (the doctrine that everything is matter). Is it necessary for a claim to be acceptable from the standpoint of materialism in order to be acceptable basis for law? 

Dawkins' TED talk that started New Atheism: the case for militant atheism in 2002

Here. 

Crude on whether atheists are as moral as theists

Here. 

One 'trick' I'm particularly tired of is this: "Atheists are just as moral as theists, so you theists better say this if you want any dialogue with atheists." Except A) Who wants dialogue with atheists, particularly New Atheists who are bound by politics more than anything? And B) On what grounds do I say atheists are as moral as theists? My stock reply is, oh, so atheists are typically against abortion, gay marriage, premarital sex, and other things I view as immoral? And that usually seems to shut down that move, if only for that particular moment. 

This raises an interesting issue-when you compare atheists and theists morally, how can this be done when the parties don't agree on what morality amounts to.

The Catholic Encyclopedia on Fideism

•As against these views, it must be noted that authority, even the authority of God, cannot be the supreme criterion of certitude, and an act of faith cannot be the primary form of knowledge. This authority, indeed, in order to be a motive of assent, must be previously acknowledged as being certainly valid; before we believe in a proposition as revealed by God, we must first know with certitude that God exists, that He reveals such and such a proposition, and that His teaching is worthy of assent, all of which questions can and must be ultimately decided only by an act of intellectual assent based on objective evidence. Thus, fideism not only denies intellectual knowledge, but logically ruins faith itself.

Banning

I am going to have to ask two people, whose names I don't think I need to mention, to stop posting here. I do this with great reluctance. The reasons are two. One, I think your positions are better represented by other people who agree with you for the most part. Second, your contributions always make discussion more inflammatory than they need to be, and you don't bring out the best in the rest of us.

I love the idea of a "free speech zone" but you end up dominating the conversation here. And even when I want to address a position like yours, I think other representatives of your views better represent them.

Vallicella on the Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

Here. 

Creedal Discrimination

"Creedal discrimination" is now illegitimate at Vanderbilt University. Political correctness uber alles.

Eternal accountability

I don't think atheists appreciate the force of the doctrine of eternal accountability in restraining evil. Unless there is eternal accountability, either of the Hindu karma-birth-rebirth kind, or accountability before a monotheistic God, if we get away with it on earth, we get away with it period.

Vallicella on Dennett's Dilemma

Here. 

Lenin on the suppression of religion

"Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class."

The difference between atheism and religion with respect to violence

 Is that while religions like Christianity offer the answer to the major questions of life, atheism on the other hand is a claim concerning what the answers are not. An atheist who wants to use force to suppress religious belief wouldn’t be doing so to make people accept the true meaning of life, but rather to prevent people from getting a certain kind of wrong answer to those questions. But neither theism nor atheism actually answers those questions, since bare theism also does not tell us who God is or what God expects from us.


Nonetheless, someone could certainly use violence to prevent someone from getting the wrong answer just as easily as one could use it to make sure someone gets the right answer. 

 

What's so great about rejecting Christianity? The moral standards are lower!

Loftus: Today I am pretty much guilt free. That is, I have no guilt in 

regards to the Christian duties mentioned above. I am free of the 

need to do most of the things I felt I had to do because I was

 expressing my gratitude for what God had done. And yet, I am still

 grateful for my present life, even more so in many ways. I love

 life. I’m living life to the hilt, pretty much guilt free, primarily 

because my ethical standards aren’t as high. In fact, I believe the 

Christian ethical standards are simply impossible for anyone to

 measure up to. Think about it, according to Jesus I should feel

 guilty for not just what I do, but for what I think about, lusting, 

hating, coveting, etc. I’d like every person who reads this book to 

experience the freedom I have found. It is to you that I dedicate 

this book.

There are no ordinary people

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Why the new atheists are right, according to Aquinas

Here. 

Creation in the image of God and the limits of Christian homophobia

It seems to me as if when we see people as created by God, and as being whom God has an interest in making happy for an eternity, then we will be more, rather than less likely to take their interests seriously here on earth. "Endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "Endowed by evolution with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" makes no sense whatsoever.

Christian homophobia, for example, has to be limited by the fact that, given Christianity, homosexuals are human beings created in the image of God for the purpose of eternal salvation. That are not just biological accidents doomed to drop out of the gene pool since they can't reproduce. 

Religious Freedom Laws

For the record, I am not a fan of religious freedom laws, simply because they would be too easy to abuse. Anyone who wanted to do something could just say "It's my religion" and get away with just about anything. I think they are based on legitimate concerns, but the devil is in the details in writing these laws. 

Is there a way to get these laws to work so the floodgates won't open? 

The lessons of history

Secular societies are happier are they? Like the USSR and the People's Republic of China? 

Or in Denmark, the child pornography capital of the world? 

Although many atheists maintain their moral sense, the moral pit of "everything is permitted" thinking should not be underestimated. 

Communism began, I believe, with Marx's secularism combined with a genuine concern about economic injustice and the intent to do something about it. And the results are now in the history books. If you really think that secularism can make life better, the first thing I want to see is that you have figured out what the lessons were from this massive failure and have learned those lessons.

It would be paradise on earth

Atheists don't believe in the secular paradise? Really?

Sheahen: You've said that baptizing a child or saying "this is a Jewish child"—that is, pasting a religious label on a child—is child abuse. In your letter to daughter, you ask her to examine what she's told based on evidence. What do you hope the world would be like if all children were raised without religion, according to your theories?

Dawkins: It would be paradise on earth. What I hope for is a world ruled by enlightened rationality, which does not mean something dull, but something of high artistic value. I just wish there were the slightest chance of it ever happening. 

Francis Beckwith on excluding religion from legal reasoning

Here. 

The (Under) Population Bomb

Here. 

Is Empiricism Self-Refuting

Bill Vallicella thinks that Bertrand Russell has a good argument to this effect.

Why would you WANT and SSM opponent photographing your same-sex wedding???

You have to wonder about people who sue a photographer who doesn't want to do a same-sex ceremony. I mean, there are plenty of photographers out there, and why would you WANT an opponent of your same-sex wedding photographing it? Wouldn't it hurt the quality of their work?

If I were a gay couple, I would avoid photographers who had a Christian fish in their advertising, because they wouldn't be as good as a non-evangelical photographer. 

If I were a photographer opposed to SSM, and someone asked me to do one, I would begin by unrecommending myself on just these grounds. But I think I would do it if they insisted. 

Imagine the secular paradise? That really worries me!

I'm perfectly willing to see this is as a pretty idealistic song. But if someone is serious about trying to bring it to pass, then I get worried. I can understand someone being an atheist, believe me. What I find insane and dangerous is the idea that somehow the departure from religious belief will lead to some sort of secular paradise. With a religious paradise, it takes God to bring it into being. With a secular paradise we can, and are supposed to do it ourselves. If you take a vision of the secular paradise, and then you accept a combination of "everything is permitted" and "the end justifies the means," and you have a formula for bloodshed that will permit you to outstrip the body count of all the religious killings in the history of the human race.

The Dark Ages Myth

Here. 

Five Islamic Philosophers

Islamic philosophy, and even Islamic science, has a great past.  I hate to ask, but what happened?

Dion DiMucci on Lennon's Imagine

John Lennon was a beautiful man, but Imagine represents a huge failure of imagination. In 1971 we didn’t need to imagine atheistic internationalism. Communism was living and active, in a least two forms, and it wasn’t producing peace.  . . . What made it possible for so many leaders to issue the orders for atrocities over the course of a half-century and more? They feared neither heaven nor hell. Imagine that.
— Dion

Sexual behavior is not a choice, but religious belief is???

I-S: People are raised to be Christians, so to some degree, it is who they are. Yet it is possible to decide that you will no longer be a Christian. On the other hand, we don't get to choose our sexual orientation, and we can't just decide to change it. Most of us are heterosexual, and we never faced a decision to become heterosexual. It just happened that way, and we have no choice in the matter.

VR: I think there is a lot that is problematic about this statement. 

First of all, many atheists (Dawkins is an example, but there are others) deny the existence of free will, but this contrast won't float unless we do. 

Second, traditional Christians don't typically claim that homosexual orientation is a sin. They often claim that homosexual acts are sinful.  So, if your orientation inclines you toward members of the same sex, they may say you cannot engage in morally justified sex. Christians have also traditionally claimed that heterosexual acts by persons not married to one another are also sinful. Since not everyone is in a position to enter a marriage, that means that those persons are also barred from sexual activity. 

The critic of Christian opponents of homosexual activity, therefore, are assuming the view that persons have a moral right to fulfill their sexual desires in accordance with their orientation. But, thus stated, this argument comes into problems. We have to then get clear on what constitutes an "orientation." Richard Carrier has recently "come out" as polyamorous and has said that this is his orientation. And if we accept his claim, then what is next? Sadomasochism? Pedophilia? At the very least with the last category, I think most of us would be inclined to say that people with that orientation are obligated to remain celibate rather than act out this orientation. 

But we can surely choose what we do about our sexual orientation, whether to pursue sexual activity, or not. 

Atheists, often in response to Pascal's wager, tell us that they couldn't will themselves to be Christians if they wanted to. I don't think I could turn myself into an atheist by force of will, either. 

Hence, I don't think the contrast I-S wants to draw will work, at least not the way he wants to draw it. 

Is separation of church and state a myth?

This writer says that "The people did not want freedom FROM religion, but freedom OF religion."

Serve everybody?

Should A Print Shop Be Forced To Sell "God Hates Fags" Signs To Westboro Baptist Church?

This question was asked by Rick Santorum, but it is a good one. 

Being who they are

Does as person's sexual orientation constitute who they are? I am a lot of things. I am a Christian, I like the
Cardinals and the Suns, I teach at ASU West, I am a Democrat, etc.  And I happen to be a heterosexual. People who think there is something wrong with homosexual conduct say that disapproving of homosexual conduct isn't the same as hating homosexuals. In response, defenders of homosexuality will them say "You say you accept homosexuals as people, but you are opposed to them being who they are." But doesn't that assume that your sexual orientation is constitutive of who you are in ways your other activities are not. Is being gay or being straight an essential property of a person? 

It is interesting when conservative Christians say that they only oppose homosexual activity and not homosexuals, they are criticized. Sometimes this is a matter of Christians not living up to the "hate the sin, love the sinner" rhetoric. But sometimes it is suggested that this response doesn't make sense because being gay is "who they are."Yet the same people who say "this is who they are" will sometimes say that hate Christianity but not Christians. Why do these two things mix? 

"If there is no God, everything is permitted" in Woody Allen's movies

I think Allen's films (Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point) provide a forceful rebuttal to sanguine claims that are made on behalf of "Ethics Without God." It seems to me that, if we take Allen's message seriously, atheism, even if it is true (and Allen thinks it is true), atheism is ethically damaging in a significant range of cases, in that people can get involved in "everything is permitted" reasoning and never be held accountable by anyone, including themselves. 

It isn't that he thinks that ethics can come only from God. It is just that on an atheistic view it is perfectly possible for them to "get away with murder" and avoid punishment, even the internally imposed punishment of guilt feelings, which, it seems, can be overcome.

Particularly interesting is the difference between the outcome of Allen's movies and Crime and Punishment, which can only be explained in terms of the difference between Allen's atheism and Dostoyevsky's Russian Orthodox Christianity.

There is an ugly side to all of this, in that Allen has been accused of his own crimes and misdemeanors. Not murder, of course, but being a pedophile. 

Of course, Allen has not been proven guilty, but then, neither were his protagonists in the two movies. Did he fall into "everything is permitted" reasoning in his own life? 

Surely, a belief in ultimate moral accountability is hardly the only motive for being moral. More often than we realize, it does deter the evil in the hearts of men (and women). 

Papalinton likes this quote: "If religion cannot restrain evil. it cannot claim effective power for good." M Cohen, American professor of Philosophy and Law.

But I think that in many many, many instances, it does restrain evil. Of course, when it does restrain evil, it doesn't make it onto the evening news.

See also this discussion. .

A problem Bible passage

 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.   (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

At the risk of giving cannon fodder to resident gnus,  let me ask, how do we interpret this? 

An Essay on Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors

Here.