Why the brain presupposes a mind

Why are mental states not states of the brain? Well, what is a brain, after all? A brain has to be described as a set of particles. No individual particle of the brain is the brain, it is as set. But what makes a set a real object? If you don't accept essences of some kind or another. 

What is a naturalistic perspective on what a "whole" is? Here is David Hume. 

“The WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particular cause of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.” (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

What is a whole? It is a product of AN ARBITRARY ACT OF THE MIND," and not something in the nature of things. If the brain is a whole, then it can't exist without there being a mind. It s a mind-dependent object. 

About that theon

The point about the theon is simply this. You are trying to define naturalism. I maintain that I really have nothing at stake in calling what I believe in natural or supernatural. I know Lewis likes to uses the term "supernaturalism" for his position, and I have no problem with that, but what I do have a problem with is the failure on the part of some to provide some criteria for what is natural. With no principled criteria, I can simply baptize my ontology as naturalistic. If you are trying so say, "You can't being that into science, you IDiot, you can't believe in that, it's supernatural, it's a bunch of woo, etc., then we need some criteria for doing that kind of exclusion. I don't need the criteria, you do. 

What are you excluding?

My AFR argument is perfectly clear on the kind of naturalism that it is attacking. It makes a distinction between mentalistic and non-mentalistic world-views, and it maintains that any world-view that is meaningfully naturalistic has to exclude certain things from the basic level of analysis: normativity, intentionality, subjectivity, and purpose. So whether we use the term physicalism or naturalism or materialism doesn't matter. What matters is what has to be excluded from the "natural" level. If you can't come up with anything that makes something meaningfully naturalistic, then I will advance my Christian theism as a liberal form of naturalism. God then becomes an unusual physical particle, which I will call the theon.

Defining the natural

Well, how do you define the physical, or the natural? I would have no problems whatsoever if, for example, the Apostle's Creed were true, but everything was "natural" in some sense. The word "supernatural" does not appear in the Creed at all. So, maybe it's all natural, but nature has more in it than what we used to think it did.

Is dualism and empirical question?

I am not sure that dualism is an empirical question. The implications of materialism might be such that, if materialism were true, no one would believe anything on the basis of evidence. After all, inference based on evidence logically entails mental causation, but if materialism is true, then all causation is physical, and therefore nonmental causation. Thus the success of science doesn't support materialism, it refutes it. The more evidence we have that science works, the more proof there is that there is real mental causation, which is logically incompatible with materialism. 

Is the claim "No one believes anything for a reason" an empirical question? If we look at the world and conclude that that proposition is true, then that would work only if it is possible to reach conclusions on the basis of reasons, which in turn is impossible unless there is mental causation and materialism is false. Science could never reach the conclusion that it is true unless it is prepared to blow itself up and condemn itself and every other human epistemic endeavor as hopelessly irrational.

We should be tolerant of everyone, except, of course, for bigots

Here.  On the intolerance of tolerance. HT: Bob Prokop

10 Questions for Materialist Atheists

Here. 

1.      Consider this assertion: Nothing exists but those things with which science can experiment. Do you believe this because of scientific reasons, or it is a dogma for you?

2.      Many materialists believe, with Steven Weinberg [1], that the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. Do you really believe that everything is pointless? In that case, why do you get up in the night when your child is ill?

3.      Science seems to have discovered many things about the universe and the world around us. But some materialist thinkers, like Stephen Hawking [2], say that objective reality in unknowable. Do you believe that scientific discoveries are real, or are they just mental constructs of man? In the second case, why does technology work?

4.      Science has discovered that nature is subject to surprisingly simple laws, if they are expressed in mathematical form. Materialist philosophers believe that there is no need to find an explanation for the existence of the laws. They are just there, with no reason.Do you agree with this assertion? Do you have scientific reasons to believe it, or do you believe it without reason? In other words, is it a dogma for you?

5.      The evolution of living beings takes place through a combination of chance and necessity. Materialists say that this proves that there cannot be design in evolution. In our experiments on artificial life (a branch of computer science that simulates the behavior of living beings with a program) we use a combination of chance and necessity, parallel to that in biological evolution. It is evident that our experiments are designed. Knowing this, do you still affirm that biological evolution is not designed? Do you believe it for scientific reasons, or is it a dogma for you?

6.      Materialism affirms that we are not free, that we are programmed machines, thatwhenever we act or think, we have no option but to act or think as we actually act or think. Are you a materialist because you have meditated and found reasons for this position, or because you have been programmed to accept it?

7.      Materialists assert that in nature there are only efficient causes, that there are no final causes or purposes. You are a part of nature. How then can you have purposes, how can you set goals and work to achieve them? Or is that just an illusion? In that case,why should we work to achieve anything, if everything is decided beforehand?

8.      Is man just an animal, as materialists say? If we analyze the matter carefully, we can see that the differences between man and the animals are overwhelming [3]. Are you sure that man is just an animal? Why do you believe that? Is it a dogma for you, or do you have reasons to believe it, apart from having read about it?

9.      To come to the conclusion that God does not exist, have you studied carefully the Christian idea of God? Or perhaps, following Richard Dawkins [4], do you think that, as God does not exist, you don’t have to lose your time studying what other people say about Him? In other words: Is the inexistence of God a start point for you, a dogma?

Antony Flew

10.  One of the most important atheist philosophers of the twentieth century (Antony Flew, 1923-2010) changed his mind in 2004 and published a book [5] explaining the reasons for his decision. Have you read Flew’s book, or  will you take care not to read it, so that your atheistic convictions won’t be in danger?

[1] Steven Weinberg, The first three minutes, 1977, Basic Books.

[2] Stephen Hawking, L. Mlodinow, The grand design, 2010, Transworld Digital. Seehttp://populscience.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-grand-design.html

[3] Manuel Alfonseca, Is man just an animal?http://populscience.blogspot.com/2015/06/is-man-just-animal.html

[4] Richard Dawkins, The God delusion, 2008, Mariner Books. Seehttp://populscience.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-dawkins-delusion.html

[5] Antony Flew, There is a God: how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind, 2008, HarperOne.

What is religion for legal purposes?

If it is unconstitutional to establish a religion, then it might sometimes be important to determine whether something is a "religion" for Establishment Clause purposes.  For example, Malnak v Yogi (1979, 3rd Cir.) considered whether SCI/TM (scientific creative intelligence/transcendental meditation), offered as an elective course in New Jersey public schools, was a religion.  If so, offering such a course--even on an elective basis--might be unconstitutional.  Those challenging the course produced evidence that instructors told students that "creative intelligence is the basis of all growth" and that getting in touch with this intelligence through mantras is the way to "oneness with the underlying reality of the universe."  They also pointed out that students received personal mantras in puja ceremonies that include chanting and ritual.  On the other hand, supporters of the course showed that SCI/TM put forward no absolute moral code, had no organized clergy or observed holidays, and had no ceremonies for passages such as marriage and funerals.  Is SCI/TM a religion?  Judge Adams of the Third Circuit applied these three criteria before  answering the question in the affirmative:

1. A religion deals with issues of ultimate concern; with what makes life worth living; with basic attitudes toward fundamental problems of human existence.
2. A religion presents a comprehensive set of ideas--usually as "truth," not just theory.
3.  A religion generally has surface signs (such as clergy, observed holidays, and ritual) that can be analogized to well-recognized religions.

Here. 

God is not Tinkerbell

Some people seem to have the strange idea that God really exists for the people who believe in God, but does not exist for atheists. No side is in error, reality is just what you believe.

This makes no sense to me.

A debate book on Lewis's apologetics

Here.  My opponent is David Kyle Johnson.

Niceness and productivity

As many of you know, Bob Prokop and I go back a long ways, to our days as ASU undergraduates in the mid-seventies. We were members of a science fiction club called OSFFA, the Organized Science Fiction Fans of Arizona. Bob and our late friend Joe Sheffer were the resident Catholics, I was the token Methodist, and the President, as I recall, was an atheist and Heinlein fan named Bill Patterson. There were a lot of very passionate discussions. I don't think we ever were paragons of disputational civility. In fact, at one of the discussions was cartooned by an artistic member, showing Bill with a T-shirt that said "Heinlein is Power," Bob with one that said "I agree with nothing!" and Joe with one that said "I am wise." (I wasn't there that night).

Alas, Joe passed away in 1989, and Bill passed away a couple of years ago. He was known as the official biographer for Heinlein. And, to my knowledge, he remained an atheist throughout his life. But he ended up being heavily influence by St. Thomas Aquinas, and described himself at one point as a Thomistic atheist. He also was an opponent of abortion.

It isn't just niceness that makes productive discussion possible. But there is a state of mind that really tunes out people on the other side.

On multicultural ethics

Isn't ethics just the business of determining which moral beliefs are right or wrong? Foreign cultures practice

1. Female Genital Mutilation

2. The Caste system in India

3. The forced marriage of prepubescent girls in India

4. The execution of adulterers and active homosexuals, and the flogging of women who engage in suspicious behavior in places like Afghanistan

5. The bribing of rape victims' families in South Korea. 

6. The strict authoritarianism and glass ceilings of Japanese corporations. 

All of these practices have a common element, they treat people unequally based on who they are. So, egalitarianism makes us on the one hand makes us want to treat other cultures as equals, and yet at the same time the very practices of those cultures that we are considering are anything but egalitarian. 

Jeff Lowder

I want to say, for the record, I think people like Jeff do an enormous service to the whole community of dialogue. It was at his invitation that the first Argument from Reason paper appeared on Internet Infidels.

The question that I am concerned with is whether there is a place for an open forum of debate and dialogue between believers and unbelievers. Some people engage discussion in ways that has a tendency to shut down discussion and polarize believers and nonbelievers. In the spirit of I Pet 3:15, and in the spirit of Lewis's founding of the Oxford Socratic Club, I think it wrong for believers or unbelievers to shut down discussion.

He takes as lot of abuse from more militant types taking the position he takes, and has dealt with it with far more grace than I would have.

How do you get good people to do bad things?

You start with a greater good and a higher purpose, and then you buy in on the idea that the end justifies the means, and if they believe in God, that the means are acceptable to God. With Christianity at least, you have a belief in place that people are supposed to have a choice if their obedience is to be meaningful, and that the future course of the great events of history are ultimately under the control of God, not ourselves. Christianity does not encourage people to think that the end justifies the means. 

Just to give you an example, you hear a lot of anti-gay preaching from Christians in America, but even when you hear of queerbashings, religious condemnations of homosexuality, in almost all cases, aren't even used as a pretext, much less a motivation. Why? 

Why were there these mass killings in countries like China, Nazi Germany, and revolutionary France, and Soviet Russia. The French and Russian revolutions started off with what appear to be good motives about overthrowing tyrannical monarchs and fair treatment for workers. The French started with liberty, equality and fraternity and ended up with Madame la Guillotine. The Russian revolution overthrew the Tsar, and put in the Party. 

Some atheists today think that they have a great purpose of saving the world from religion. I am starting to hear "the end justifies the means" reasoning from some of them. Let's be honest, these people have no qualms about stirring up anti-religious hatred. What other than their lack of power to do so will prevent them from doing the kind of harm these previous revolutionaries did, all in the name of reason and science.

Secularism leads to violence

Here. 

An incoherent triad

Believers often look at the atheist demand for evidence, as presented by typical atheists, as a shell game.

 I went over this issue with the link to Shadow to Light, but I want to pursue the same argument in a different way.

The question I want to pose is whether these three positions can be held in a simultaneous, coherent way.

1) Belief in God is not justified unless there is evidence for belief in God.

2) Evidence for belief in God is possible. There are things God could have done, and should have done, to provide evidence for his existence. Thus, the absence of evidence is really evidence of absence.

3) God of the gaps arguments are wrong on principle. If we lack a good naturalistic explanation for something, an explanation in terms of God will not increase our understanding of it.

If God provides evidence, no matter what he does, it seems to me that 3 could be used to dismiss the case for his existence. Thus, it seems to me that you can't hold both 2 and 3 together. One of them has to go.

An interesting question

Here. On a cool Autumn night, you are gazing up at the sky when a being suddenly appears and asks, "What can I do to make you believe that I am God?" What is your answer?

I once asked that question to atheist philosopher Keith Parsons. He told me that if the galaxies in the Virgo cluster were to spell out the words "Turn Or Burn This Means You Parsons," that the would turn.

Real Consent

A few months back John Moore wrote:

 Why not use consent as the moral test for sexual activity? If both parties are mature enough and give their willing consent, then it can't be wrong.

The problem with polyamory is just that it's sometimes doubtful whether all parties freely consent. That's also the problem with polygamy and sadomasochism.

 VR: It seems to me that this implies that Real Consent is more than just saying yes, and as such represents a far more restrictive sexual morality than one would be initially inclined to think. 

It seems to me that Real Consent implies a very strong case against pornography, since the person using the pornography cannot be sure that the actors and actresses are not being raped.  

As Linda Lovelace said, "When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped.

Anyone who uses lies or alcohol to persuade someone sexually, it seems to me, does not have real consent. 

I am pretty sure that real consent is not a sufficient test. But it is certainly a necessary condition, and one that is insufficiently developed. 

How to Defeat Modern-Day Atheism With Three Easy Questions

Here. 

From Shadow to Light.

Defining religious violence, or don't forget to subtract

Hector Avalos writes:

According to my definition, if someone commits violence primarily because of a belief in supernatural forces and/or beings, then I count it as an act of religious violence. For example, if someone says: “God told me to kill gay people” then that counts as religious violence, especially as the person offers or evidences no other reason for killing gay people.

I am not sure about this definition, for various reasons. Persons highly motivated by an anti-supernaturalist world-view, who use violence to advance anti-supernaturalism, it seems to me, are engaged in religious violence. 

Further, the religious factor is hard to isolate in many cases. In the case of violence in Ireland, for example, the political factors and religious ones are hard to separate, and there I suspect the political factor is primary and the religious one is secondary. 

But let's take Avalos' definition and see where it gets us. It seems to me that if we are assessing the tendency of supernaturalism, or some particular version of it to produce violence, then to get a fair assessment, we have to introduce the category of religious nonviolence. Remember that one of the Ten Commandments is "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Now, most of us don't think that the Commandment is the only reason for not killing someone, but surely the disapproval of Almighty God provides a significant motive for those who believe that God exists not to commit certain acts of violence. 

By the way, I am not familiar with any cases of religiously motivated killings of gay people. The most famous case of gay-killing is Matthew Shepard, and in that case not only is there no evidence of a religious motivation, there is good reason to think that this was a case of drug-induced murder, not a gay-bashing. Maybe there are some, but I am not familiar with any. 

How did Christians end up buying in on the idea of using coercion?

This essay lays it on the doorstep of St. Augustine.

Does naturalistic evolution support racism, or inequality of other kinds?

Not exactly. But what if some scientists got together and bred an actually superior race, which has been talked about for a long time? Then you would have a real superior race, and would that superior race feel any obligation to treat inferior races as equal? 

Naturalistic evolution does say that it is natural to pursue your own survival and makes sure your genes, not someone else's genes, are passed on. I know they like to talk about going beyond biological mandates, but if someone is driven by an interest in one's own or one's family's survival, what logical reason is there to prefer some other goal? 

The moral codes human beings developed have had a lot to say about how you should treat your neighbor, but people have limited the class of "neighbor" and said that we treat only some people as "neighbors," namely, those who are "one of us." The motivation to get away from this idea has come largely from the Christian tradition, starting with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The idea, which has been less than fully absorbed even by Christians, is that God created everyone and Christ died for everyone, so everyone needs to be treated the same. But even Jefferson, who wrote those words about equality and inalienable rights, was himself a slaveowner. 

When you take the religion out of it, you are left with the fact that, for the most part, we like societies in which pursue equality. Unless we get into a position to take advantage of inequality. 

Against Marriage and Motherhood

By Claudia Card. Why not make it a trifecta and go after the flag, too.

Does the case for same-sex marriage have implicit religious assumptions?

The case for same-sex marriage seems to be based on equality. But one could certainly argue that any argument based on equality has underlying religious premises. The Declaration of Independence says that we were created equal, which, of course would be false if we were not created. And we certainly did not evolve equally, nor would it make sense to say that we were endowed by evolution with certain inalienable rights. So, if atheistic evolution is true, and we were not created, would that not provide a basis for supporting the race, sex, or sexual orientation that one considers to be superior?

The fundamental divide

I do think that there is a fundamental divide between people who think that atheists and theists have a common goal, a goal of understanding one another better, and those who think that the only legitimate goal is the partisan goal of advancing one's own viewpoints.  I think that is the dividing line between people like Loftus and people like Lowder.  

What is likely going to be the result of the polarization of the question of religion is that even with the enhanced communication provided by the Internet, we are still moving toward a culture in which we communicate seriously only with like-minded people. When C. S. Lewis became the first President of the Oxford Socratic Club he talked about the value of such a debating society for the community of Oxford University. I have often wondered what a certain well-known Oxford atheist would have done had the Oxford Socratic Club were still in existence, and he were to receive an invitation to present a paper and engage in dialogue with the resident Christians (such as C. S. Lewis). 

Since I'm a theist and a Christian, I like to see people become theists and Christians. But I also like to make sure there is an open community of discussion concerning these issues, something I value independently of it as an instrument for getting people to agree with me. 

Is the death penalty soft on crime?

You could argue that the death penalty mollycoddles criminals, it gives them a painless death they denied their victims.

I think I'd take lethal injection over permanent solitary confinement. In a heartbeat.

Are atheists and Christians enemies?

No, according to this atheist.

Retribution and Revenge

 Revenge and retribution are different. When you get revenge, you can do more to the person than they did to you. Retribution is limited by what the person deserves.

Gen 4: 23-24 23 Lamech said to his wives,

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
    wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
    a young man for injuring me.
24 If Cain is avenged seven times,
    then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

That's revenge, but not retribution.

Is the death penalty better retribution?

As an admirer of C. S. Lewis's essay on the Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, I nevertheless have reservations about the retributive adequacy of the death penalty.  I guess the question is whether the death penalty is better retribution than, say, life without parole. I think that people make a mistake when they think that a penalty fits the crime better if it resembles the crime. If we want resemblance to the crime, our current methods of execution give the criminal a painless death which the criminal denied to  his victim. But torturing a murderer to death is cruel and unusual punishment.

The death penalty dilemma

 You also have a dilemma where capital punishment is concerned. If you have it, we feel a strong obligation to enhance the appeal process to make sure innocent people aren't executed, since the penalty is irreversible. But if you do that, then you severely weaken the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and the value of closure for victim's families is also taken away, since families have to relive the crime every time a new hearing or trial takes place. I hear of people being executed today who committed their crime in 1989.

You can't have your Kate and Edith too

The song, by the Statler Brothers, is here. 

I don't think defining religion as a perspective on ultimate reality is uninteresting or useless.In particular in America one of our guiding concepts is keeping matters of religion free of compulsion. Some people on the atheist side want to engage in what I consider to be compulsion, but this often tries to fly under the radar because on the face of things it isn't religion. But, in the sense that matters for things like the Establishment Clause, atheism is very much a religion. 

For example, it is hypocritical to use the Establishment Clause argue against the teaching of intelligent design on the grounds that those who advocate it intend to undermine materialism and support religious belief, but not use the Establishment clause to argue against the use of evolution to attack religious belief and promote materialism.

Atheism is a religion

Here.

And saying this is the way one blasphemes, according to that religion.

Feminists for life

Here.  

A heartening discussion on the resurrection on Secular Outpost

Here. 

Beckwith on Biden on abortion

At Maverick Christian, here. 

From an old post by Gregory on evidentialism

From this discussion.

But the most damning problem with Clifford's thesis is this:

Whatever criterion is used to measure the sufficiency or insufficiency of "evidence", by the very nature of the case, it is not something that is susceptible to evidential verification. Rather, such criterion are "brute" principles by which we must assess the adequacy or inadequacy of evidence. It [first principles] cannot be "proven". Therefore, Clifford's approach is self-stultifying and/or incoherent.

Consider Clifford's statement:

"It is wrong always, and everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

Question: how does Clifford prove his own statement? What does he mean by "wrong"? Are ethical principles the sorts of things that can be scientifically verifiable? Are the methods and principles of science, themselves, scientifically/empirically verifiable?

"Should one say that Knowledge is founded on demonstration by a process of reasoning, let him hear that first principles are incapable of demonstration; for they are known neither by art nor sagacity."

St. Clement of Alexandria in his "Stromata" Bk. II; Ch. IV.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Foundationalism

When I was in grad school, there was a general consensus amongst epistemologists that classical foundationalism was on its last legs. This included Christian, but also secular philosophers. Here is an analysis of foundationalism. 

Is consciousness mysterious?

According to Galen Strawson,


This is the assumption that we have a pretty good understanding of the nature of matter—of matter and space—of the physical in general. It is only relative to this assumption that the existence of consciousness in a material world seems mystifying. For what exactly is puzzling about consciousness, once we put the assumption aside? Suppose you have and experience of redness, or pain, and consider it to be just as such. There doesn’t seem to be any room for anything that could be called failure to understand what it is.

Scientific anti-realism and science-bashing

A redated post.

According to anti-realists in the philosophy of science. 

... a theory should never be regarded as truth...Proponents believe that science is full of theories that are proved incorrect, and that the majority of theories ultimately are rejected or refined. Great theories, such as Newton’s laws, have been proved incorrect.

That sounds like science-bashing to me, doesn't it? But, do scientists take umbrage? No,

This is the attitude of most scientists; they try to ignore the debate and let the philosophers decide the fine details about the nature of reality! 

Nice of them to leave us philosophers with some work to do.

Actually, if you were a complete scientific anti-realist, the whole creation-evolution issue wouldn't even arise.

The freedom from atheism foundation

This should prompt charges of Christian paranoia. Here.

You can do science without believing the science

One remarkable and, to my mind, wonderful thing about science is that you can do very good science without even thinking that the science you are doing is literally true. Many great scientists have been scientific anti-realists. 

Reasonable Faith on Dating Advice for Hermaphrodites

Here. 

What does causation mean?

Causation can mean a couple of different things. Something can be a cause if it guarantees its effect, or if it is a necessary condition  for its effect. When we say smoking causes cancer, we don't mean to say that it is guaranteed that if you smoke you will get cancer. Some people smoke and smoke, and never get cancer.

This is Elizabeth Anscombe's famous essay on the question.

Why the Prove-It Game can't be won

It's the regress problem. Here is a discussion by Maverick Christian.

Suppose we define evidentialism as follows:

A belief B is justified just in case there is a justified proposition C, which constitutes sufficient evidence for B.

I used to call this "the prove-it game." You need proof for everything you believe, and then proof of the proof, and then proof of the proof of the proof, and then proof of the proof of the proof of the proof, and then proof of the proof of the proof of the proof of the proof, until you finally get tired and give up.

Is there such a thing as science, or are there just sciences?

Opponents of Christianity sometimes argue that there is no Christianity, only Christianities. Could we just as easily say that there is no science, only sciences?

Determinism and responsibility

If determinism is true, then given the past, you could not have done otherwise from what you did. If you committed a murder, it is because, given the actual past, you could have done nothing other than commit that murder, and the past stretches back before you were born. If you bravely save people from a burning building, then given the past, which you did not control, you could have done nothing else. Ultimately, if determinism is true, whether we are virtuous or not is a matter of happening to be on the end of a good or bad causal chain. If that's true, how can anything really be anyone's fault, or to anyone's credit, any more than winning or not winning the lottery is to anyone's credit or discredit? 

If morality is subjective, everything is permitted

If morality is subjective, then the belief that it is wrong, always and everywhere to believe anything for insufficient evidence is also subjective. That I should care about truth as opposed to comfort is also subjective. That I should treat gay people as equal to straight people and not discriminate against them is also subjective. Or that I should treat black people as equal to white people and not put up "Whites Only" signs in my restaurant is also subjective. That women should be given equal pay for equal work, and not be restricted to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen is also subjective. That I should have sex with someone only if I have their consent is also subjective. That it is wrong to inflict pain on little children for your own amusement is also subjective. That I should care about the poor and the oppressed is also subjective. That I should want slaves to be freed from bondage is also subjective. That the Holocaust was despicable is also subjective. That 9/11 was morally wrong is also subjective.

DougJC on the teaching of evolution

And I am just as concerned that teaching evolution as a recruiting tool for atheism would downplay legitimate data, downplay certain areas of uncertainty and basically present an incomplete and misleading picture. Educators (along with scientists) should be expected to be superbly trained at leaving personal philosophies at the door of the classroom.

VR: I find comments like this very heartening. I think that people trying to tear evolution apart should be perceived as doing a service to science. The harder a theory has to work to be defensible, the better the science in the long run. 

Something I don't understand about the Kitzmiller decision

As I understand it, central to the argument in Kitzmiller was the claim that Of Pandas and People started out as a straightforwardly creationist textbook, and then was altered in response to Edwards v. Aguillard. But Edwards said that even though you can't teach creationism, you do some other things.




We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. . . . Teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.



OK, so the court says "You can't teach out and out creationism, but you can do this," so someone alters a creationist text in order to do just this, and then Kitzmiller says that it's wrong to do "just this."



This I don't understand.

On the identification of ID with creationism

Here. 

Is teaching creationism to kids child abuse?

Lawrence Krauss thinks so, here.

On our fragile moral existence

This is an account of Langdon Gilkey's book Shantung Compound. One of my favorite questions is the question "Is it hard or easy to be moral." If we think it is easy, is it simply because we have lived much of our lives in relatively easy circumstances?

Five Concepts of Purpose

When we talk about the purpose for our lives, what are we thinking about? It seems to me that there are five conceptions of what the purpose is.

1) A personal goal. That is, a purpose the person selects, because it satisfies a desire of his own. I decide I want to be a fourth-grade teacher, so I start taking classes at Glendale Community College to fulfill that goal.

2) An inherent purpose. Somehow inherent in the object itself is a purpose for existence. If we say the purpose of your eye is to see, perhaps what that means it that the ability to see is part of the nature of eyeness, as it were.

3) A satisfying purpose. It wouldn't make sense to say a rock has a satisfying purpose, but a person is satisfied if it achieves this, and we can also speak of a pig satisfied as well. "You achieved your goal of becoming a millionaire, but you seem dissatisfied nonetheless."

4) A given purpose. Someone who is responsible for our existence has a goal for our existence. This however, might not at all be a purpose that we would select for ourselves. For example, the purpose for which we raise beef cows it for us to eat their meat, which requires us to kill them in order to achieve that purpose. But of course the cows don't want to be killed. On some Calvinistic theological theories, the reason that some people exist is for them to sin and for God to eternally demonstrate his wrath towards them. However, even though those damned to hell achieve the purpose God has for them, they receive no satisfaction from that. One possible thing we might mean when we say that God loves someone, is that we think that the given purpose for their existence, the one God wants for them, is also an inherent purpose and a satisfying purpose.

5) A Darwinian function. A pure Darwinist, one who excludes all intelligent design from the explanation of anything in nature, can say that the purpose of the eye is to see, but what the Darwinian means by that is that the structure of the eye was selected for by the ultimately blind process of natural selection because it made seeing possible, and seeing was helpful in enabling the creature to survive.

Three uses of ridicule

There has been a lot of discussion about the use of ridicule in debates about religious belief. It is my conviction that discussion of this tends to conflate three different ways in which ridicule is used.

The first way is simply to entertain ourselves. Think of the Dennett Lexicon, which lampoons various philosophers by giving humorous definitions to their names. Everyone is getting hit, so the Lexicon isn't really designed to change anyone's mind or get them to reject the views of any philosophers as opposed to another. Mostly, it's about having fun. I even once made up a Dennett Lexicon entry making fun of me.I find it easy to make fun even of ideas that I think are true, but has a ridiculous side to them.

Or consider Saturday Night Live spoofs of politicians. Sure Sarah Palin was lampooned by Tina Fey's impersonation, but Obama doesn't get off scot free either. Now it is quite true that the treatment of Palin in particular did play a role in many people seeing what was problematic about her place on the Republican ticket in 2008. But can you really say that Republicans are lampooned more severely there than Democrats? I understand that George H. W. Bush loved the impersonations Dana Carvey did of him.

There is also the colorful use of reductios ad absurdum. These are really designed to refute positions. But these have to be tested as to their adequacy and accuracy. In addition, what you think seems absurd might be cheerfully accepted by your opponent. I happen to think that materialistic atheism leads to absurd conclusions, namely, I think it leads to the conclusion that no one ever believes anything for a reason. However, obviously materialistic atheists themselves think that they do believe what they do for reasons. This is not ridicule in he sense that I would consider to be offensive. 

This is from RationalWiki, hardly a pro-theistic source: 

Reductio ad absurdum is only valid when it builds on assertions which are actually present in the argument it is deconstructing, and not when it misrepresents them as a straw man. For example, any creationist argument that takes the form of "if evolution were real, we'd see fish turning into monkeys and monkeys turning into people all the time" only serves to ridicule itself, since it mischaracterises the theory of evolution to an extreme degree.

Reductio ad absurdum should also not be confused with appeal to ridicule, although both see extensive use in satire. Appeal to ridicule simply dismisses a position as ridiculous, without explaining or arguing why, while reductio ad absurdum actually pursues the logical consequences of an argument.

Here is a treatment from Freethoughtpedia: 

It's no secret you can short-circuit somebody's brain with shame. How many of us were shamed into doing something stupid in high school?

But why does it work? There are these primitive, lower parts of your brain called amygdalae that controls base, emotional reactions. That's where things like contempt and shame come from, and stimulating it can completely shut down the analytical part of your brain. The gang calls you a coward and the next thing you know, you're wedging a roman candle between your buttcheeks. You'll show them!

You can thank evolution for that. Way back when humans started forming groups and tribes, social status was everything. It's what guaranteed you food, protection and ladies (that is, a chance to pass on your genes). Mockery developed as a "conformity enforcer" to keep people in line.

Making a person, idea or behavior the target of mockery gave it a lower social position, and made it clear that anybody who associated with it would share that lower position, leaving them out of the hunting/eating/fucking that made life in the tribe worthwhile. Thousands of years later, a good dose of mockery can shut down critical thinking and make us fall right in line, no questions asked.

Now let's look at the Dawkins statements I alluded to in a previous post. 

Dawkins: Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott and others are probably right that contemptuous ridicule is not an expedient way to change the minds of those who are deeply religious. But I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious 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.

I must ask, isn't he doing EXACTLY what the Freethoughtpedia says is the Appeal to Ridicule, a fallacy? Getting people to the right result is more important to him than fostering critical thinking and getting to the right result for the right reason. I do find this offensive, which is why my reactions to New Atheists are different from my reactions to atheists of another stripe. 

I was angry with God for not existing

C. S. Lewis wrote “I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.”

Some atheists have maintained that this shows that Lewis was never a real atheist. However, recent social science suggests that atheists really do get angry with God. 

Even those who didn't believe in God were sometimes angry at the deity. College students and bereaved people who were atheist or agnostic reported more anger at God than religious people in the same demographics. The findings don't contradict the participants' agnostic or atheist beliefs, either: The study asked people about past experiences, and many atheists and agnostics had stories of anger dating from their religious pasts. Many of the study questions also asked atheists and agnostics to imagine their feelings toward a hypothetical god.

Full discussion here. 

Vallicella on Homophobia and Carniphobia

Here. 

If I believe that stealing is a sin, does that make me guilty of kleptophobia?

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.