A debate about astrology

Here's a debate about astrology. I have severe doubts that stars can cause effects on earth in the way that astrology says that they must. Knowing how things work in the world, when the moon's being in the seventh house, And Jupiter aligns with Mars, it is highly unlikely that peace will steer the planets or love will steer the stars.

It's George Strait time once again.

if you'll buy that
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
From my front porch you can see the sea
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
If you'll buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free

Hannibal Lecter and moral objectivity

The idea is that if something is the sort of thing where, if there is a difference, someone has to be right and the other side has to be wrong, you've got objectivity. There is a truth independent of the preferences and opinions of people. So if I say the earth is flat and you say it's round, it isn't just flat for me and round for you, I've got it wrong. If I say "Coke is better than Pepsi" and you disagree, we can both be right for ourselves, and can remain right even if I take the Pepsi challenge and remain a Coke drinker.

What about ethics? Is it more like the Coke case or like the flat earth case? With highly vexed issues like abortion, we are tempted to think it is like the Coke case. If we contemplate inviting someone over for dinner and then cooking them as dinner, relativism or subjectivism is hard to maintain. Is my disagreement with Hannibal Lecter on what is morally appropriate to cook and eat a mere matter of taste (pun intended)?

The UK Skeptics on being entitled to an opinion

I don't normally agree with UK skeptics, but this is pretty good.

What does it mean to say "We are entitled to our opinion?"

When we say we are entitled to our opinion, what this means is that if we have a sincerely held belief, the powers of government don’t have the right to brainwash us and force us to change that belief. It doesn’t mean that we are morally justified in the way in which we hold our beliefs, nor does it mean that regardless of how rational or irrational our belief-forming processes are, our beliefs are as likely to be true as anyone else’s. We can have different opinions about whether our injured ankle is sprained or broken, but the well-informed judgment of a doctor is surely more worthy of consideration than the less-informed opinion of the patient or members of the patient’s family.

Was Jesus' Resurrection an urban legend

By Jim Slagle. HT: Laura Warwick.

Habermas on the resurrection appearances of Jesus

Christian, Islamic, and atheist perspectives on Jesus

Islam maintains that Jesus was a prophet, and a true and great prophet. However, his later followers distorted his message and said that he died and rose again from the dead as an atonement for sin, and that he was the Second Person of the Triune Godhead. According to Islam, God would never permit one of his True Prophets to die a criminal's death, and so they consider the Christian doctrine of crucifixion to be a sacrilege against Jesus.

Atheists, of course, think that Jesus had no supernatural powers (since for them nothing supernatural even exists), but many of them do think that Jesus lived and died on the cross. Of course they deny a resurrection, since that would have to be supernatural. My ex-housemate Keith Parsons, who is an atheist philosopher at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, thinks that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, and that the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus and founded Christianity. Other atheists sometimes assert the Jesus Myth thesis, that Jesus never even existed and was made up by the early Christians. I think this is still a minority position even amongst atheists.

But Christians, Muslims, and atheists can all agree on this: that either Jesus died by crucifixion or he did not die by crucifixion. Whatever position you take on that matter, you can be either right or wrong. You can't be both or neither.

Moral truth and moral diversity

If you and I disagree as to whether the earth is round, or whether the earth has been in existence for millions of years or was created 6000 years ago, or whether Jesus died by crucifixion (as Christians believe) or did not die by crucifixion (as Muslims believe), one of them has to have it wrong. So why does diversity show that it's all relative and no one is wrong.

Fact, opinion, and morality

A redated post.

Contrary to what you may have learned in grade school, the terms "fact" and "opinion" are far from clear. In order to have a fact, does it just need to be true or does it have to be provably true. Is there a "fact" about who committed an unsolved murder, even if we can't prove who did it one way or another. After all someone did commit the murder, right? In order to have an opinion, does that mean that it is neither true nor false, or both true and false depending on how you feel about it? Or is all you need for an opinion that it be open to controversy, in which case someone could have a correct opinion or an incorrect opinion (just not a provably correct or provably incorrect opinion).

We have a lot of social consensus about the wrongness of some actions. There was a controversy about whether O. J. killed Nicole and Ron, but no controversy about the rightness or the wrongness of the act of killing these two people. Is it "mere opinion" to say that slaughtering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman was wrong? Does it make sense to say that the only thing that was really wrong with it was that our social group disapproved of it?

Bill Craig Versus Calvinism

It's The Doctrine of Man Part 13. Sorry.

The 1968 Ford Pinto memo

This is pretty awful. It proves that capitalism is hopelessly corrupt and must be replaced by communism. Just kidding. But how should we be protected from these types of abuses.

A Defense of Theism against an argument of Parsons'

Keith Parsons argues from the success of science to the probable nonexistence of God. Paul Herrick disputes this argument.

The Secular Web continues to carry arguments on both sides of the issue, which is much to their credit.

Lovell on the Euthyphro

The Euthyphro objection keeps showing up, so even though I had it up on a previous site, I am making a special thread to deal with Lovell on the Euthyphro.

A theme song for hard determinsts

From the Pirates of the Mississippi

Speak of the devil
He took me out again last night
He got me drunk and he got me in a fight
He was chasing women
I was just there for the ride
Speak of the devil
He took me out again last night

Reply to Ed on the AFR

Ed: Just because "thinking" exists, how do you get from asserting "thoughts exist" to asserting that a whole "supernatural" world must exist?

VR: First of all, it was Lewis who used the natural-supernatural distinction to present this argument. I don't even typically use the word supernatural, at least not until we have some definition of what "natural" is going to mean. And for me, you don't really have an adequate definition of "natural" unless you say that the "natural" is without purpose, without intentionality (or aboutness), without subjectivity (nothing has a point of view at the basic level of analysis) and free of normativity. All of these things are supposed to be "system effects" of a system that is lacks all these things at the bottom level. If you don't like that definition of "natural", and want a different one, that's fine, in which case we simply won't be arguing about naturalism in your sense. Even God is not supernatural automatically. We need a definition of the supernatural that makes God supernatural before we can say that. What is your definition of natural and supernatural?

Ed: Your AFR argument fails to impress because your assumptions about what may and may not arise in this cosmos of matter/energy are mere assumptions.

VR: No, I offer arguments based on what can emerge from a purely physicalistic universe. I have arguments to the effect that if ultimate reality is naturalistic *in the sense that I have indicated above*, then there can be no determinate content to our mental states. There is a lack of strict entailment from the set of physical facts to the set of mental facts, and yet the physical is supposed to determine everything, including the mental. It is a line of argument used by Quine, by Davidson, by Saul Kripke in his book on Wittgenstein, and by Thomas Nagel in The Last Word. It's not an assumption, it's an argument. Reject it if you want to, but it is an argument.

Ed: And because your assumptions regarding the "non-natural" nature of "reasoning" also fail to impress. Certainly a naturalist views the rise of consciousness and making "rational" distinctions among things as to their sameness or differences, as evolving among brain-body systems.

VR: Any arrangement of parts that are "natural" in the sense I have defined is nevertheless going to leave indeterminate the mental state. That is the central argument. So long as it is evolution that is defined in naturalisic terms, it is going to turn out to be the case that we do not literally add, subtract, multiply or divide numbers, because we can never have a thought that is uniquely about the number 2.

I am not going to make even the statement that God is supernatural until you tell me what your conception of natural as opposed to supernatural is. What are the constraints on the use of the term? I think I even had a blog entry once that said that I didn't care whether it turned out that God was supernatural or not. I don't. However, I do think that God, and the human mind, is supernatural in the sense that I have defined above. But not knowing what definition of supernatural you accept, I have no idea what to make of your statements about the supernatural character of mind.

Reply to Hallquist on naturalism and theism

Hallq: I think for many, many people the apparent plausibility of scientific naturalism is a major deterrent to even taking belief in God seriously. Naturalism claims to tie everything together in one ontology and make God unnecessary. Ultimate reality is either ultimately mental, or else the mental is an accidental by-product. Theism, including van Inwagen's theism (and there are actually versions of the AFR which do not require that the mind be non-material, just so long as it is, in the last analysis, intelligently designed), say that the Ultimate Fact that you cannot go behind is mental. The theists have this point right, and the materialistic atheists have it wrong, if my argument is right.

In Lewis's case the argument led to theism not directly but indirectly, because he embraced Absolute Idealism as a "halfway house" before becoming a theist. It isn't a very popular halfway house these days, but I have seen people, like Daniel Hutto of the University of Hertfordshire, who hold this kind of position.

Let's face it, scientific naturalism is the chief rival to theism at the present time. It's evangelists, like Dawkins are influential, and if you go on the Secular Web you will find it is explicitly dedicated to the defense of naturalism. If it is defeated, the naturalists won't automatically turn to theism (maybe we'll have a revival of Absolute Idealism), but theism will gain in epistemic stature if naturalism collapses.

Judgmentalism

What is it to not be judgmental of others. Is it not to believe that their actions are wrong? Is it to disassociate oneself from them because of what we think they are doing wrong? What differentiates, say, a judgmental attitude from a nonjudgmental attitude toward, say, homosexuality?

In fairness to Calvinists

Driscoll's statement does not follow from Calvinism, particularly. It is probably a gloss on I Cor 15: 19, that the Church rests fundamentally on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and is a waste of time without it. That I accept. What I would do instead of be a Christian if I rejected the resurrection is another matter. Probably not eat, drink, be merry and shoot people. So I thought it was a misguided gloss.

However, if one's salvation is predestined and one is either saved or not on the basis of God's choosing to actualize a world in which I am saved or a world in which I am damned, then some would say that one not worry about holiness. In fact a family friend sent their kids to a Calvinist school which, it turned out, had quite a reputation as a party school. The idea was that people were either predestined to be lost or saved, and nothing could retroactively change that divine decision, so why not party hearty?

I think I figured out once that whether this is true or not depends on whether you accept the one-box or the two-box solution to Newcomb's paradox. Whether or not one is holy is going to be evidence of election, so if I were a Calvinist I would probably try to be good, if for no other reason than the fact that I would sleep better at night if I didn't think I was a son of perdition.

Is this where Calvinism leads?

This is from a Debunking Christianity blog post by Valerie Tarico.

A Seattle Calvinist mega-minister, Mark Driscoll, had this to say to his flock: "If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there’s no reason for us to be here. If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there are parties to be had, there are women to be had, there are guns to shoot, there are people to shoot."

Great shaking of the head.

More on the moral argument

First of all, I have an argument addressed to people who are moral relativists, but who nonetheless think there are real human rights. That is, on some moral questions, they give all the relativist responses (who's to say?), but when basic human rights are violated, they say that is wrong. I teach ethics classes, and I can tell you there are plenty of people like that. What they don't realize is that the position is logically inconsistent. If the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are absolute, then there is an objective standard of moral value according to which they are absolute. I'm betting that when you point this out to them, they will admit that they believe in objective moral values, as opposed to relativism.

Premise 1 is a little more complex, in there are obviously moral philosophies do not directly ground ethics in God which are nonentheless objective. However, these systems, as I pointed out in a previous post, make metaphysical commitments that conflict with contemporary naturalism, (Plato's forms which we knew in a past life, and recollect now, is a good example, Aristotelian entelechies would be another), and these world-views lend themselves to theistic arguments in a way that contemporary materialism does not. I do think that attempting to work out these metaphysical systems in a consistent way is going to lead one at least in the direction of theism.

Objects in a naturalistic world are not supposed to have moral properties. That is ruled out by any reasonable definition of naturalism. Particle arrangements are just not going to get you there.

So if we accept the idea of objectively binding human rights, we reduce the number of world-views which are acceptable, and enhance the probability of theism, on which the existence of these values can be easily understood.

A moral argument for God

Here is a moral argument I have developed, based on some ideas that I have presented here earlier.

1. Probably, if there is no God, then there cannot be objective moral values.

2. If there are no objective moral values, then there are no inalienable human rights. A society could either give people rights or not given them rights. In some societies it is considered permissible to enslave other persons. In some societies old people are exposed to death. In still others women are treated like chattel. Unless there are objective moral values, then there are no absolute rights that people in these societies are trampling upon.

3. But these people do have rights, whether their society recognizes those rights or not.

4. From 3 and 2, we must conclude that there are objecctive moral values.

5. 1 and 4, we must conclude that, probably, God exists.

Some basic information about logic

A redated post.

Argumentation about controversial issues is at the heart of philosophy, and logic is the science of studying arguments. The lecture material (which I didn’t write, just so you know), says some things about logic. The fundamental idea that founded the science of logic was discovered by Aristotle, who realized that arguments could you could distinguish the question of the internal logic of an argument from the question of the truth of the premises. He discovered that some arguments had the characteristic of being such that, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, while others do not. The key idea is the idea of validity. There is a common use of the term “valid,” which just means legitimate. So, for example, the you ask me “If I told you the dog ate my homework, would that be a valid excuse” I might well say no that is not valid. But when logicians talk about the concept of validity, what they mean is that the argument is structured in such a way that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Conversely, if an argument is invalid, that means that it is possible that the premises are true and the conclusion is false.

Let’s take this argument:
1) If I say my dog ate my homework, then I have a valid excuse.
2) I say that my dog ate my homework.
3) Therefore, I have a valid excuse.

Even though the excuse isn’t valid in the informal, common-sense sense, the argument is valid in the logic al sense.

Aristotle worked with the logic of classes, so the arguments he considered were arguments like:

1. All dogs are animals.
2. All beagles are dogs.
3. Therefore, all beagles are animals.

This argument is valid, in that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Now the premises are true, so the argument is sound. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises, and when we have a valid argument with true premises, then the conclusion must be true.

But an argument can be valid if it has false premises. For example:

1. All angels are mortal beings.
2. All persons identical to Bill Clinton are angels.
3. Therefore, Bill Clinton is a mortal being.

In this case the premises are both false and the conclusion is true. But if the argument had had the same structure, you could never have and argument with the premises true and the conclusion false. That is the possibility that validity leaves out. One the other hand, some arguments are invalid, in that the premises can be true and the conclusion false. You have encountered this is what you have heard. There are some statements made, and then there is a leap to a conclusion that is not warranted by the prior statements.
1. All beagles are mammals.
2. All dogs are mammals.
3. Therefore, all dogs are beagles.

This argument has a true conclusion, but the same argument form could be used to prove a very different conclusion;

1. All cats are mammals
2. All dogs are mammals.
3. Therefore, all dog are cats.

Obviously a false conclusion. The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises.

Now let’s look at the logic of conditional statements. That is what modus ponens and modus tollens are all about. A conditional statement is a statement of the type “If A then B.” That statements means that if A is true, B must also be true.

Modus ponens is:

1. If A then B.
2. A
3. Therefore B.

Let’s take a look at this:

1. If you study, you will pass.
2. You study.
3. Therefore, you will pass.

This arguments is a valid argument. You can’t accept both of these premises and reject the conclusion. The statements is about what will happen if you do study, namely, that you will pass.

But let’s try this argument.

1. If you study, you will pass.
2. You passed.
3. Therefore, you studied.

Uh, no. Just because studying means that you pass doesn’t mean that if you don’t study, you still won’t pass. Remember the irritating kid from high school who used to ace all his classes without studying? This is an argument form called affirming the consequent. It’s not valid. The premises can be true, and nevertheless the conclusion could be false. The structure of the argument is as follows:

1. If A then B
2. B
3. Therefore A.

Here’s another argument form:
1. If you study, you will pass.
2. You didn’t study.
3. Therefore, you didn’t pass.
Again, no. You could be that annoying kid from high school, in which case the premises of the argument are true but the conclusion is false. The structure here is

1. If A then B
2. Not A
3. Therefore not B.

This is denying the antecedent, and it’s invalid.

The last argument form is modus tollens, and it is valid.

1. If A then B
2. Not B
3. Therefore A.

Let’s try the same concepts again.
1. If you study, you pass.
2. You didn’t pass.
3. Therefore, you didn’t study.

This does follow. If studying is sufficient to make you pass, and you don’t pass, the only conclusion we can draw is that you just didn’t study. The structure is:

So two of these argument-forms are valid, and the conclusion follows from the premises. Two of these argument-forms are not valid. These argument forms involve a leap in logic that isn’t justified. The premise could be true and the conclusion not be true. The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises.

Most arguments can be presented in a valid argument form. In fact, you can present a valid argument for an insane conclusion.

If the moon is made of green cheese, the moon is made of yellow cheese.
The moon is made of green cheese.
Therefore, the moon is made of yellow cheese.

That’s a valid argument, but the conclusion is, well, a little cheesy.

Now let’s take a look a controversial issue.

1. If fetuses are persons, then it is wrong in virtually all cases to abort them.
2. Fetuses are persons.
3. Therefore, it is wrong in virtually all cases to abort them.

The argument is perfectly valid. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. However, both of the premises are controversial. Defenders of abortion often argue that fetuses are nonpersons, so they are abortable. They also maintain that even if fetuses are persons, there are a significant number of cases in which abortion is still justified. However, the valid argument clarifies the debate. An abortion defender has to attack one or both of the premises, in order to defend their position.

Clayton and Doctor Logic on Reduction

Clayton: Here's a standard view for materialists to take. Arguments against materialism in mind fail because they fail to take account of non-reductive forms of materialism.

Doctor Logic: I'm gonna say that non-reductionist emergence is, indeed, poofy. It's no better than dualism because it says that mental properties are inexplicable.

But Arrington is attacking a straw man if he's going after the mainstream consensus. The mainstream view is reductionist, not poofy emergentism.

VR: I find problems with non=reductive materialism because it has serious difficulties accounting for mental causation. Also, it posits a supervenience relationship between the physical and mental, but everything is supposed to supervene on the physical, and the supervenience relation, which has to be real, doesn't supervene on the physical. I don't accept the reductivist position because attempted reductions simply slide over the logical distinction between the mental and the physical. All the physical information in the world is insufficient to logically guarantee that a thought is about P and not about Q.

Reply to Hallq on the AFR

Hallq: Vic: Just because you're a nice guy doesn't mean we have to take what you say seriously, on pain of being considered mean and nasty bigots. I thought your book on the Argument from Reason was an OK critique of materialism, but your attempt to link the materialism debate to the God debate was hasty and flimsy, only a slight improvement over people who fail to realize there's a distinction at all.

As for Wilson, if the fizzing argument was presented the same way he presented the argument here:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/douglas_wilson/drange-wilson/wilson1.html

then it was a truly idiotic argument, for the reasons Blue Devil Knight said, and deserving of ridicule.

I think I have a fairly well-developed idea of how the arguments against materialism relate to the question of God, though I think I have developed them perhaps a little more in some subsequent work than I do in the book.

I start with the question: "Is "the mental" permissible in basic explanations, or not?" If the mental is banned from basic explanations, then the argument from reason challenges those position. Whether matter is the supervenience base, or some mechanistic substrate that somehow isn't matter, is irrelevant. What I find implausible is the emergence of mind either synchronically or diachronically from a purely non-mental supervenience base, and my arguments are designed to show why this is so.

I don't see how you can have a "naturalistic" supervenience base which contains elements of the mental in it. If you have mental and physical causes, though, then the "physical" is not closed and something nonphysical is either interacting with it, or else what we thought was physical (that is, mechanistic and non-mental in nature) was really mental after all.

If materialism/naturalism is defeated by the argument from reason, then perhaps the most popular alternative to traditional theism goes by the wayside. There are alternatives to theism, such as panpsychism, or absolute idealism, or pantheism, which still stand, but all the alternatives, including theism increase in probability if the big heavyweight champion of the non-theistic positions, materialistic naturalism, goes down.

Bonds vs. Rose

Should someone who commits a baseball-related criminal offense be allowed in the Hall of Fame? If so, then shouldn't baseball rethink Pete Rose, a player who, in his own right, earned his major baseball achievements honestly, whatever else he might have done to besmirch the game.

Can anyone think of a good reason to suppose that Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame, while Rose should remain out?

One answer, from a student of mine, said that Bonds should be in because he did not break a rule in place at the time.

An Atheist Echo Chamber

Somebody tried to start a serious discussion on the AFR on this site. They should have saved their energy. The people think they can win the God debate by ridicule.

The Poofy Materialists

Barry Arrington claims that materialist cannot consistently use then "poof" objection to intelligent design, and then appeal to a mysterious emergence when, say, dealing with consciousness.

Explaining the success of science

Science works. Is this fact better explained by naturalism, or by theism? My claim has always been that if naturalism is true, there would be no scientists.

Wikipedia Entry on Pascal's Wager

100 living philosophers of religion

From Common Sense Atheism. I'm in pretty good company here.

Relativism and tolerance

One surprising result is that if relativism is true, then it is a virtue to be tolerant of other cultures just in case your culture approves of tolerating other cultures. If it doesn't, then you are supposed to be intolerant. So relativism doesn't lead to tolerance, it can just as easily lead to intolerance.

Getting clear on naturalism

I have been working through Barbara Forrest's essay "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connections." In this she argues on the one hand that there is a difference between methodological naturalism and philosophical (or metaphysical naturalism). However, the supernatural, if it is real, is not knowable by humans in any systematic, intelligent fashion. Therefore, we must proceed naturalistically if we are to get to know the world around us at all, and this gives us a powerful reason to accept naturalism metaphysically, while leaving open the bare logical possibility that naturalism is false.

The tricky part, however, is getting an account of naturalism that doesn't simply presuppose a conception of the natural. Natural, you know, just whatever ain't supernatural. And you know what supernatural is, right? It's anything having to do with God, that they talk about in church and stuff.

She starts of with a quote from Kurtz:

First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible....

There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture....

OK let's work with these definitions for a minute. The first of these definitions assumes that we know what a natural cause is. Surely, we say, God must be supernatural. But must he? If you are enunciating a principle of methodological naturalism, then it is incumbent on you to tell me what it is about the theistic God that would make him not a part of nature. If nature is what is, and there is a mentally driven what is and a non-mentally driven what is, have we really excluded anything?

The other requires that naturalism maintain that the world is at root physical. Whatever is real either is physical or supervenes on the physical. But now we have to define what "physical" means, and here we have the same difficulties as we find for defining "natural."

My dissertation advisor once said that a scientific theory could possibly quantify over God, in which case it would make God physical. But surely, in defining the physical, or the natural, God is precisely the very sort of being you are trying to exclude. Can we define methodological naturalism in any kind of systematic way, such that advocates of intelligent design can't just embrace the principle?

A piece of political cynicism I put in the combox of an abortion discussion a few months ago

Both parties have turned abortion into a political football. The Democrats can count on a body of voters to vote for them to protect "a woman's right to choose." They benefit from the idea that abortion rights are truly in danger. The Republicans have their army of pro-life voters, and leaders like Karl Rove, who care nothing for fetuses, want to keep this army of voters voting and volunteering. Both sides at least say they agree that the abortion rate is too high, (safe, legal and rare, you know) but neither side wants to alienate their base by doing things that could seriously lower the abortion rate.


Too cynical?

Keith Parsons' critique of the argument from common consent

THE LIE: Heliocentrism

This is funny. I see that nobody has corrected me and pointed out that the lie would have to be heliocentrism; geocentrism is the truth they are purportedly defending.

Another instance of Poe's Law, I suppose.

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

I would just add that the same would have to be true of fundy atheism.

Jonathan Edwards on the Blessed enjoying the Torments of the Damned

When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it! When they shall see how miserable others of their fellowcreatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the mean time are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity ; how will they rejoice!

The link links to the entire essay on why the blessed should not at all be concerned about the fate of people in hell. There either has to be something wrong with him, or something wrong with me.

ET phone home---to Satan??

“I have become thoroughly convinced that UFOs are real....I believe these beings are not only extraterrestrial but supernatural in origin. To be blunt, I think they are demons.”
- Hal Lindsey

Scripture: The word of a demon, or just a Paine for sinners

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon rather than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest all that is cruel (Paine, 1974, p. 60).

What are you doing, Jesus?

I wonder what would have happened if someone were to walk up to Jesus during his lifetime and ask him what he thought he was doing. I can imagine a number of answers, but "founding a religion" is not one of them.

This is a discussion of the Bible and homosexuality

Is the anti-gay reading of Scripture a slam dunk? There are alternative interpretations available.

Is there a morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide?

This is what I call the Melissa Drexler dilemma. She did hard time, but an abortion doctor could have done the same thing and had it be perfectly legal.

Unless someone can explain to me the morally relevant difference.

Does the Argument from Reason have a basis in Peirce?

See this discussion on Bill Vallicella's blog.

The real issue: More arguments that don't mix

I think the discussion in the last post picked up on a soft target in Ross's discussion that is tangential to the issue I wanted to bring up.

Yes, I do have a problem with him saying that if there is an intelligent cause of the universe, it has to be the God of the Bible. I suppose the Allah of the Qu'ran would be equally unacceptable to philosophical naturalists, but would also be unacceptable to Christians like Ross. But this is not the point I wanted to make. The point I wanted to make was to question whether someone could, at one and the same time, accept the multiverse hypothesis as a response to the fine-tuning argument, and at one and the same time think that atheism is to be preferred to theism on the basis of parsimony. That just seems really implausible to me.

The Multiverse Hypothesis

The weight of evidence for a divinely designed universe is now so overwhelming that it has forced astronomers and philosophers who reject the God of the Bible as the Author of the cosmos to propose the existence of an infinite number of universes. - Hugh Ross

Well, there goes parsimony!

Some hallucination debate from the Christian Think-Tank

This is some discussion at the Christian Think-Tank on the hallucination hypothesis.

Welcoming Ilion to the Blogosphere

This is a long overdue development. All of you intellectually dishonest people will welcome the opportunity go comment over there.

An online Meynell paper on rational theism

Meynell's The Intelligible Universe

Meynell wrote a book defending a sort of Lonerganian version of the AFR. I read it around the time it was written; I think Darek Barefoot has referenced it a couple of times in the course of his trench battles on behalf of the AFR on DI2.

I took a class from Meynell during my last semester at Emory's Candler School of Theology. Meynell was then a visiting professor from the University of Leeds. I remember I wrote a critique of Josh McDowell as my paper for him.

Let's stop beating Basil's car: Richard Dawkins on moral responsibility

A redated post.

Ilion linked to this little piece of Dawkiana, in which Our Hero maintains that holding a person morally responsible for their actions is absurd as Basil Fawlty beating his car for not starting. No namby-pamby soft determinism for Dawkins! I guess Dennett's Elbow Room didn't convince him. (Oh well, it didn't convince me either). Of course, that means that the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials (duck-scales from which are, I'm told, preserved in the Salem City Museum), the Great Wars of Religion, and the 9/11 attacks are really no one's fault. It's no one's fault if you don't believe in evolution, or if you invade Iraq without sufficient reason. In fact, it isn't your fault if you have Dawkins burned at the stake. This is sounding better all the time.

Dawkins on agency: Fawlty philosophy

Can Richard Dawkins truly claim credit for his brilliant book, The God Delusion? If he is right, it's a silly as Basil Fawlty blaming his car for not starting.

A redated post.

Is atheism the most rational option

Not according to my former teacher Hugo Meynell, who mentions the argument from reason as a primary reason for thinking so.

A. N. Wilson returns to faith

Maybe he will rethink his atrocious biography of Lewis.

The Coathanger Argument

Regardless of your position on abortion, it seems to me that this argument is just bad. Is it a good reason not to make something illegal that people will break the law and harm themselves in so doing?

I think we can put this one in the applied ethics wing of the gallery of worst arguments of all time.

Frank Beckwith also rebuts this effectively.

A quote from Richard Vitzthum

A redated post.

"Materialism should no longer wink at such nonsense but insist that the foundations of all human thought and feeling are grossly irrational." - Richard Vitzthum, Materialism: An Afiirmative History and Definition.

Talk about handing me my case on a plate.
HT: Triablogue

Some notes in response to Paul

First, my primary argument against Calvinism is semantic rather than moral. I think that there are biblical passages that say that God loves all persons, that God wants all persons to be saved, that God is grieved by sin, etc. etc., that Calvinists in the main don't simply use "reference class" arguments to criticize these positions, but rather accept them and reconcile them with Calvinism. Yes, God loves everyone, but no, that doesn't mean God is out to save everyone. An analysis of the ordinary usage of these terms (and if you accept a verbal special revelation you are bound by ordinary usage) suggests that to say this is to distort the use of those terms beyond all recognition. This argument, you will notice, requires no appeal to moral intuitions.
To defend this objection, I would have to answer the standard "two wills" argument that comes down from Dabney through Piper. But for various reasons, I don't think that argument washes.

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/08/calvinism-love-and-biblical-jigsaw.html

Yes, of course, my moral intuitions tell me that a loving God would not choose a world containing reprobates over a universalist world, assuming there is no need for libertarian free will. That objection is, however, in principle defeatable, although, because of the considerations I presented in the paragraphs above, not in fact defeated.

The "divine noble lie" case I had in mind was the fact that, at least on some readings of Scripture, Christ places a short time limit on his return. He leads the church to believe, perhaps by saying so directly, that He will return within the generation. These sorts of considerations have led exapologist to abandon Christianity. Exapologist mentions one Christian biblical scholar (Allison) who takes this position and says "so what?" and I was trying to see if Allison's position could be defended.

The scenario I sketched was one in which God wants people to spread the gospel, giving them the belief in an immanent parousia is the way to do that, as a result the gospel is spread and salvation maximized, even though the claim of an immanent parousia is false.

The point is often raised in the pro-inerrancy literature (at least when I read a lot of it back when Pinnock was a traditional inerrantist), that God cannot lie. And I have been wondering what sense to make of that claim, given that most of us would agree that lying is sometimes morally justified for humans. Pointing out that there is a argument that could support the claim that God cannot lie is different from actually saying that God did. So don't overstate what I am claiming here.

Steve responds to my paradox

Steve responds to my paradox in the direction I thought the reply would have to go. God, with providential control over the circumstances, can and does see to it that his message is delivered inerrantly. avoiding the necessity of false speaking of any kind. He maintains that God could avoid all situations that would require lying for beneficent purposes. But would a world in which God never utters a false statement be a better world than any world in which He does utter at least one false statement. That's not perfectly transparent to me. Intuitively...., oops, I can't trust those.

Of course the Titus 1:2 in the NIV, whereas in the KJV it says God cannot lie. But this does seem to leave the inerrantist with having to defend perfect divine veracity. But the first reading makes it easier, one can accept my argument that there are possibile circumstances in which God ought to lie, but he never in fact gets into them. And I guess if you accept Steve's view of God's complete providential control, that would be easy to see. Nevertheless, you would think that with that kind of providential control that God could.... oh never mind. God reprobates people but he always tells the truth.

There are the wide range of difficulties, however, in God's getting his message across to prescientific peoples, so that it isn't always perfectly obvious to figure out what would constitute an errantist interpretation and what would not. Inerrantists like Bill Craig oppose lead-footed literalism on Genesis 1, for example.

There can be certainly a subset of divine utterances that God seals with a covenantal promise, where God in effect says "God strike me dead if I'm lying," which of course is pretty effective coming from, well, God. I think that's what the Hebrews 6:18 passage is all about. But I don't think you can argue that inerrancy is backed up by that sort of thing.

Reply to Paul on Calvinism, lying, and God

I was trying to pose a problem for the claim that God cannot lie, indicating that there was an argument against it. I was asking whether there was some way to believe in divine moral perfection, believe that lying is sometimes morally justified for benevolent purposes, and at the same time hold that God cannot lie. The kinds of lies that I have in mind have fairly transparent beneficent purposes behind them, and the overall effect is of course has to be for the eternal benefit of human beings. The title of Kant's reply to Constant is "On the Supposed right to Lie for Beneficent Purposes."

So far I haven't seen any attempt to resolve the paradox. It may turn out that the claim that God cannot lie can be defended. But I wish people would at least take a shot at the argument I provided.

To contrast this with the Calvinism case, you have reprobations which don't seem to have a beneficent purpose. With most of the problem of evil, if I use the range of responses available to someone who believes in libertarian free will, I can get a picture of why God permits various types of evils. There's a dim outline there, even though I can't come anywhere near to seeing how the details work out in particular cases. There's plenty of noseeum, but there is a good deal that I think I can see, which makes my position more acceptable overall, given the positive reasons I have for believing in God.

With reprobations, I'm just blind as a bat. Explanations like "God chooses a world with damned people in it so that the blessed will realize that they are blessed by grace alone" just don't wash at all. So this looks like a serious disadvantage.

This disadvantage could be overcome by 1) strong reasons for belief in God, 2) a strong case for biblical inerrancy and 3) a strong case for a Calvinistic reading of the scriptural evidence, involving not only a) a defense of a Calvinistic reading of the "positive" Calvinist texts, and b) an good explanation for passages which are ordinarily taken to show a universal intent to save. I'm pretty pessimistic about the Calvinist establishing 3b, however.

Dawkins on C. S. Lewis and the trilemma

I redated this post on the God Delusion, in case people think I'm not interested in the substance of Dawkins' arguments.

From p. 92 of The God Delusion

"There are still some people who are persuaded by scriptural evidence to believe in God. A common argument, attributed among others to C.S. Lewis ... states that, since Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he must have been either right or else insane of a liar: 'Mad, Bad or God'. Or, with artless alliteration, "Lunatic, Liar or Lord'.

Wrong already. Lewis doesn't use the argument as a theistic argument. It's an argument for Christ's divinity, or perhaps even less than that, an argument against a certain misunderstandings of who Jesus was.

The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal.

Supporting argument for this claim please?

But even if that evidence were good, the trilemma on offer would be ludicrously inadequate. A fourth possibility, almost too obvious to need mentioning, is that Jesus was honestly mistaken. Plenty of people are. In any case, as I said, there is no good historical evidence that he ever thought he was divine.

OK, so now we get the head-slap argument. There's a third option, he was sincerely mistaken! I never thought of that, therefore I disappear in a puff of logic! Let's see, if I were to tell my intoductory philosophy class that I was God almighty, they wouldn't call the men in the white coats to come and take me away. They'd just figure I was sincerely mistaken.

The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like" 'Who wrote it, and when?' 'How did they know what to write?' 'Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?' 'Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?' Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus' life. All were then copied and recopied, through many scribes who, in any case, had their own religious agendas."

This is how we settle the question of the reliability of the New Testament? An effective refutation of everyone from C. S. Lewis to William Lane Craig to Stephen Davis to N. T. Wright and Joachim Jeremias?? Many theologians and biblical scholars have studied the evidence and the arguments and concluded that the Scriptures are largely reliable. Dawkins makes it sound like there is some kind of a consensus here. There is a consensus amongst those with Humean presuppositions. Big deal.

Lewis himself was one of the leading literary critics of his time. He offered reasons, based on his reading of a lot of ancient literature, that the NT was, as ancient documents go, a reliable document. He could be very wrong, but he can't be refuted by the kind of hand-waving two-paragraph argument Dawkins offers. Read the two Stephen Davis articles on the trilemma, and even the Howard-Snyder essay that is critical of Davis, and contrast it with this two-paragraph demolition by Dawkins, and ask yourself which of these two men has done his homework.

It may be that although Lewis's argument was rhetorically stronger using this multiple choice format, I prefer changing to to a fill in the blank. Given what the Scriptures say that Jesus said an implied about himself, what could he have been if he wasn't God. It's one thing to mention a possibility, it's another to show that, on close examination, that alternative is plausible. Ken Samples offers sevem alternatives: Man, Myth, Madman, Menace, Mystic, Martian or the Messiah. But hey, there could be still more. Bring them on! Fill in the blank.But then show me that, on close analysis the alternative is plausible, that it makes sense of the facts.

The argument may be a bad one. But it can't be refuted on the cheap, without doing your homework.

The following is a link to a set of articles on the trilemma, see especially those by Davis. (Actually, apollos.ws is no longer a free site).

I prefer the old atheism, personally

A redated post from '07.

I recently exchanged some e-mail with Keith Parsons, who told me he was looking into teaching a class on the New Atheism. I told him that I found the old atheism preferable. But honestly, it seems that beating up on God is a good way to get on to the New York Times best-seller list. Harris, Dawkins, and now Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Now I haven't actually read these works, but I have seen reviews of them, and what I have seen disinclines me to read them. I'm sure they are entertaining reads, especially for the people who buy these talking points, but the portions of them that I have read tells me that they never bother to even try get theistic positions and arguments right. Further, they seem to think that the end of theistic faith will result in the end of war or something like that. I've heard those sorts of sentiments before, in the words of John Lennon:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Now this actually sounds pretty good when John sings it, but as sociopolitical analysis it's sheer snake oil. As another singer says:

if you'll buy that
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
From my front porch you can see the sea
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
If you'll buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free

Look, if you want an entertaining anti-religious diatribe that unfortunately, isn't any good at getting religious arguments and positions right, I recommend Bertrand Russell's esasy "Why I am Not a Christian". I'd like to know one good reason why I should read Dawkins or Hitchens (the Josh McDowells of atheism) when I have Russell. If you want some more serious atheist philosophy, read Mackie's The Miracle of Theism or Keith Parsons' God and the Burden of Proof.

Finally, I do speak out sometimes when fellow Christians embarrass me. I find our (then)
"faith-based" President to be a constant embarrassment. Are atheists at least somewhat embarrassed by people like Dawkins?

In defense of the genuineness of NDEs

God, lies and inerrancy

One of the arguments in the inerrancy debate is the assertion that God cannot lie. I want to suggest that although this claim is initially intuitive, (I mean who wants a liar for a God?), there is what seems to me a forceful argument against the claim.

1. God always does what is morally right, and never does what is morally wrong. (The doctrine of divine moral perfection).
2. Possibly, lying is morally obligatory, and truthfulness is morally reprehensible.
(I will call this position anti-Kantianism about lying.)
3. Therefore, possibly God lies.

Now of course you can avoid this conclusion by accepting the Kantian position that if you were hiding Nicole Brown Simpson, and OJ were to come to your door with a knife and ask you where she was, you couldn't tell her that she went to LAX and that if you hurry up in that White Ford Bronco, you might be able to catch her before she leaves for New York. But most of us suppose are on the side of Benjamin Constant on this issue, and accept 2.

But how can you accept 1 and 2 but deny 3? I don't think I've committed some horrid modal fallacy, have I?

P. S. This would neatly solve exapologist's false prophecy problem. God wanted the gospel spread quickly, so he planted a noble lie that he was coming back soon. It worked!

Ben Witherington on Ehrman

BW: One of the problems however with some of Bart’s popular work, including this book, is that it does not follow the age old adage--- “before you boil down, you need to have first boiled it up”. By this I mean Bart Ehrman, so far as I can see, and I would be glad to be proved wrong about this fact, has never done the necessary laboring in the scholarly vineyard to be in a position to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted from a position of long study and knowledge of New Testament Studies. He has never written a scholarly monograph on NT theology or exegesis. He has never written a scholarly commentary on any New Testament book whatsoever! His area of expertise is in textual criticism, and he has certainly written works like The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which have been variously reviewed, not to mention severely critiqued by other textual critics such as Gordon D. Fee, and his own mentor Bruce Metzger (whom I also did some study with). He is thus, in the guild of the Society of Biblical Literature a specialist in text criticism, but even in this realm he does not represent what might be called a majority view on such matters.

Does conservatism go together?

Conservatism seem to revolve around three central ideas. One of the ideas is economic conservatism, the idea that we deserve what we earn unless it was taken by force, theft, or fraud. The second is national security conservatism, the idea of taking threats to our country seriously and being pro-active in dealing with them, as Reagan was during the Cold War and as Bush was when we launched a War on Terror that sent us into Iraq. This, I suspect, doesn't mix terribly well with economic conservatism, since war is expensive, and the money for guns and tanks probably can't be got from bake sales. And then there is social conservatism, the use of the government attempting to uphold traditional values, leading to anti-abortion/gay marriage positions. The last two increase the involvement of government. If government is out there trying to stop abortions fighting enemies, this has to be paid for.

It would be fair enough to ask if liberalism goes together as well. I suppose we could say liberals accept

1) The proactive role of government to alleviate poverty and its consequences.
2) Restraint in fighting against supposed threats to our country (not going into Vietnam or Iraq).
3) Upholding a strong doctrine of the separation of church and state, not attempting to bring the state into controversial question of value.

Bobby Fischer

A really depressing story, to be honest. I'm a chess child of the late 60s and early 70s. Perhaps someday America will produce a top chess talent who is mentally balanced. Perhaps hell will freeze over, or Dawkins will join the Catholic Church.

Right brain or left brain?

Suppose you were under the control of a mad scientist. That scientist told you he was going to split your brain up, and put your left brain into a body that he was going to torment, and the other brain into a body that would be given a pleasant existence. Which one would you choose?

A kind of conservatism

On why we deserve what we earn, and why government should get out of the business of compensating.

A nonhostile question for Calvinists

I have to put it this way because of my history of debating against Calvinists. Here I am just looking for some Calvinist responses. To what extent can a person know one's own election status, if one is a Calvinist? It seems to me that you can go all the way from:

1) We can have no idea whatsoever, prior to judgment day.
2) Acceptance of Christ, and the holiness of one's life, is inductive evidence, but not certain, since we could end up pulling a Loftus sometime down the road.
3) We can be completely certain of our election, if we know Jesus as Lord and Savior.

This is a site where the Hadith can be found

The traditions concerning what Muhammad said or did.

Wahhabism, Islam, and bin Laden

It is frequently asserted that Osama bin Laden is a product of the Wahhabi movement in Islam. The odd thing is, that it looks as if the Saud family also has Wahhabi background, yet we do business with them. This site, and the book it refers to, suggest that the connection between bin Laden and the Wahhabi movement is overstated, and that bin Laden's real intellectual parentage comes for Qutbism.
HT: Joetta Thomas

From C. S. Lewis's The Poison of Subjectivism

From Lewis's The Poison of Subjectivism

If "good" means only the local ideology, how can those who invent the local ideology be guided by any idea of good themselves? The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his creation.

You can read the entire essay on the link.

Understanding the concept of objectivity

• What is it for something to be an objective matter? An objective matter is about which it is possible to be mistaken. Let’s take
1) 2 + 2 + 4 or
2) The earth is round.I
f someone says something that contradicts these claims, we quite straightforwardly say that they are wrong. There is, for example a Flat Earth society, headquartered in Illinois. (If you’ve ever been to Illinois, you might understand why people who live here are tempted to think the earth is flat). These people sincerely believe that the earth is flat, but there is little temptation to say that they the earth is really flat for them, even though it is round for the rest of us.
• Contrast this with
3) McDonald’s burgers are better tasting than Burger King’s
4) Belching after dinner is rude
In the first instance, we are inclined to suppose that the statement in incomplete; in order to assess its truth or falsity we have to ask “better tasting to whom?” It’s a matter of individual preference, and no further debate or discussion is necessary. In the second case, most of us are inclined to suppose that while it may have been true in our home, there are cultures elsewhere in the world where it is manifestly false, where an after-dinner belch is required by good manners to indicate that one is satisfied with the meal that has been prepared. In neither case are most of us inclined to think that the people who differ with us about 3 or 4 have false beliefs.

Russell's Science and Ethics

A defense of the AFR, and the Trinity

From Phantaz Sunlyk. I didn't know this paper was still on the internet.

J. P Holding's Top 10 Fundy Atheist Arguments

OK, it's Holding. But does anyone doubt the existence of fundy atheists?

Exclusivism and Inclusivism

Some information about those terms. If I recall correctly even the ultraconservative Pope Pius IX was not an exclusivist.

Del Ratzsch criticizing a critique of ID

Ratzsch isn't exactly in the ID camp, but he's sympathetic enough to see problems with the standard issue attacks on it. See his review of Niall Shanks' book.

Are temporary marriages acceptable in Islam?

This is an Islamic source on the Muta marriage.

Reply to Scott on Christianity

Scott: The essence of my comment was as follows. The ability to construct a "logically possible" theology around a belief in the supernatural shouldn't be a sufficient reason to claim "you're stuck" with a specific definition of God's nature. IE. what you already believe. Since the supernatural is defined as that which you consider not nature, it is unclear as to what you would consider evidence that it is not true. Sure, things that we once thought were supernatural, such as opening a woman's womb, can cross over when they become transparent, but given the abundance of phenomenon that are still opaque and God's supposed omni-properties, it seems there could always be something you can point as "supernatural."

Well, we could, for example, find the unresurrected body of Jesus. That would cause massive revisions in my conception of who God is, and leave it up for grabs as to where I would go next.

VR (previously): We could not literally do mathematics, which is the very foundations of the science on which naturalism rests its case. If naturalism is true, then there are no scientists, and there is no scientific method, and we're all epistemically screwed.Naturalism doesn't imply that we cannot think of abstract things. Nor does naturalism claim that abstract things, such as circles and squares, have a causal effect on their own, such as creating universes or designing human beings.

The definition of 'naturalism' isn't necessarily limited to physical things with mass. Quantum teleportation allows the polarity of an photon to be transmitted instantaneously without any known method of transmission. There doesn't appear to be any "matter" involved, yet we can repeat it time and time again in a laboratory. it's science, not the supernatural.

In my detailed development of this line of argument, I maintain that there are four things that have to be left out of the causal order at its most basic level: subjectivity (all facts are objective from the point of view of scientific naturalism), normativity (things aren't the way they are at the level of physics because it's better for them to be that way), intentionality (it can't be part of a physical description of something that it is about something else) and free of purpose. If you are putting any of those things on the ground floor of the universe, you are moving in at least the direction of a mentalistic world-view which is creates a significant break with orthodox naturalism.

VR (previously) But if naturalism is true, then everyone has natural, physical causes for all beliefs, and this got to be ten times more damaging than sociological causes.

Scott: From my perspective, sociological interactions ultimately result in physiological changes that shape our beliefs. There is no dualism here. This seems to indicate a misunderstanding of my position as I think they are part of the same system.

VR: I'm sure that is your position. However, if my beliefs have sociological causes, and physicalism is false, then maybe there can be rational inference and mental causation. Hasker and I have argued at length, though, that even if the weakest form of naturalism is true, supervenient physicalism, there can't be any genuine mental causation.

I'm not saying that all beliefs acquired though social means must be wrong, or that such an acquisition method is "bad". It's one of many natural factors that ultimately results in physiological changes which determine our beliefs. However, social factors, geographical location and chronological presentation appear to be a unusually strong factors in accepting a particular religious belief. In addition, religions also make specific, yet conflicting claims about what is reasonable to expect from God and his nature, based on revelation and religious scriptures.

VR: If Christianity depends on a "word" that has to be spread, then some people are going to get an easier access to the truth than others. The same would be true of religious unbelief. It is, I think, less prevalent in Saudi Arabia than it is in the United States.


VR (previously) If naturalism is true, then there is no real mental causation, just physical causation that mimics mental effects.

Scott: It appears that your position is that beliefs are opaque and somehow except from causation.

VR: Nope. The perception of a logical connection between one proposition and another can cause a conclusion to be drawn. However, we are perceiving a logical connection, something that does not exist in a particular place and time. Therefore this is possible only if the physical (or natural) is not a closed system.


Scott: If I were to make an educated guess, this seems tied to the Biblical idea that we are made in God's image or that we must somehow be able to disengage our beliefs from causal factors since God judges us for them.

VR: If you mean that I think determinism is false, and that libertarian free will is true, then I do accept that, but that is distinct from my argument. And of course some of my fellow Christians are Calvinistic determinists who think that God can be the ultimate cause of our actions and judge them just the same, because we wanted to do them.

Scott: It's likely that our decision to distinguish phenomenon as being "mental" was based on our lack of knowledge about neurobiology, it's complex nature and the intimate relationship with have with our thoughts. As such, it seems it would make more sense to say we did the best with what we had at the time. Today, evidence strongly indicates that our beliefs are a culmination of our experiences, which are stored as electro-chemical patterns in our brain.

VR: No. The problem arises because the definition of the physical makes it impossible to make attribute determinate mental states to any genuinely physical system. You have a bunch of non-mental information at the basic level, you have the ways that non-mental stuff is put together, but however you put it together it will invariable fail to entail a determinate result as to what I believe. The reason it appears to do so is that we surreptitiously attribute properties to brains that are not really characteristics that a truly physical system can possibly have.

VR (previously) I think that Christian theism has some problems in the area of the problem of evil, but these are not worse problems than naturalists have in explaining consciousness, for example.

If we currently can't explain consciousness, then a supernatural being created the universe specifically for human life, who is actually three persons; one of which became a God-Man born of a virgin, who died for our sins, was resurrected three days later and ascended to a non-material realm by traveling through the earth's atmosphere? This simply doesn't follow. Instead, "we don't know all the details right now" seems to be the most reasonable response. Until we can gain a more thorough understanding the enormous amount of observable activity going on in our brains, saying that we cannot account for consciousness is like saying you know an particular event doesn't occur in a three thousand page novel despite only having read one word. Claiming an unobservable "God did it" is an argument from ignorance.

No, there's a fundamental problem of property incompatiblility. There is a conceptual chasm, and you can't cross that chasm by exploring the territory on one side of the chasm. What physical facts entail the truth, which I know, that I am Victor Reppert. That statement is false when you say it, even though there is no physical difference which explains the difference.



Vr: Previously: No other religion has the kind of archaeological support that Christianity does. Have they found that battleground in Palmyra, New York, where the book of Mormon says a huge battle took place? Thought not. Is there a good DNA match between Jews and American Indians? You mean they look more like Orientals? Who witnessed Muhammad reciting and transmitting the Qu'ran?

Scott: Out of all religions, Just because Christianity has the most plausible description of God's nature doesn't mean such a description must be accurate or is plausible when compared to agnosticism. If you say we must use faith to "plug the holes" in God's nature, then why plug them with a God who judges our choices based on incomplete information? Why plug them with a God who eternally exiles us from his presence without a chance to learn from such an exile? Why plug them with a God who found the smell of burnt offerings "pleasing" or demanded the violent death of a himself as a man, before he would forgive us of our own nature, which he himself supposedly created?

VR: These are common, but, so far as I can tell, by no means universal theological positions.

VR: Previously" But maybe some naturalists need to take the Outsider Test and see how things look from the perspective that miracles are possible. I could argue that you have been brainwashed by the scientific establishment to rules these possiblities out. But I won't. The world just makes more sense from the perspective of Christian theism than it does from any other perspective.

Did Hume say that miracles are impossible? No. He said it would be incredibly difficult to tell if one actually occurred. Today, his argument is much stronger due to our current understanding of human behavior and our process of observation. And if miracles are possible, then why have they decreased in number along with eye-witness literacy rate and technological advances in reporting, such as video and still cameras, orbiting satellites and a more detailed understating of biology? I'd think these factors would cause reports to go up exponentially, even if the overall number that actually occurred dropped. And why does God still only appear to perform miracles in what could be mistaken for statistical chance, even when our ability to detect them increases? This doesn't seem to really make sense from any perspective.

Maybe God doesn't want to give us demonstrative knowledge of his existence. God doesn't perform miracles to show off.

Anyway, Scott, thanks for an interesting and challenging post!

A self-replicating Jeep?

Mascall's Christmas Carol

Eric Mascall's Bultmannian Christmas Carol--the whole thing this time.

Hark, the herald angels sing:“
Bultmann is the latest thing!”
(Or they would if he had not
Demythologized the lot.)

Joyfull, all ye nations, rise,
Glad to existentialize!
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and Science reconciled.

Lo, the ancient myths disperse,
Hence, three-storied universe!
Let three-decker pulpits stay:
Bultmann has a lot to say,

Since Kerygma still survives
When the myths have lost their lives,
Hark, the herald angels sing:
“Bultmann shot us on the wing!”

…Let us with a gladsome mind
Leave the ancient world behind.
Modern man, rejoice with us!
We have read Copernicus.

While the herald angels sing:
“Bultman ist ein gutes Ding!
”We respond in simple trust:“
Demythologize or bust!”

William Lane Craig on Richard Dawkins

William Lane Craig in his essay "Dawkins' Delusion" in Copan and Craig ed. Contending with Christianity's Critics forthcoming in Broadman and Holman (2009).

Several years ago my atheist colleague Quentin Smith unceremoniously crowned Stephen Hawking’s argument against God in A Brief History of Time as “the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought.” With the advent of The God Delusion the time has come to relieve Hawking of this weighty crown and to recognize Richard Dawkins’ accession to the throne.

My essay, "Confronting Naturalism: The Argument from Reason" is chapter 3 of the book.

Bultmann's case for de-mythologizing

From Kerygma and Myth. I think the Jesus Seminar owes a lot to this guy.

Hark the herald angels sing
Bultmann is the latest thing
They Surely Would if he had not
Demythologized the lot

Why James Sennett still believes

I am grateful to John Loftus for putting this up, though some of the comments feel like a bunch of fundy Christians trying to get Sennett to pray the sinner's prayer. Only, I guess there's no prayer once you accept the Four Atheist Laws.

Cleaning up the outsider test

John: I just think some things need to be cleaned up in the argument. When someone has reflected critically on one's religious beliefs to the extent that I have, you have to wonder when you see something like this "what more does he want." If you are talking about making sure that you don't exempt or privilege you religious beliefs from the sort of scrutiny that you would engage in if you, say, were buying a used car, OK so far. I think it is wrong to criticize someone who finds fault with your test as it stands for refusing to submit their beliefs to scrutiny.

What beliefs, as a class, have to be looked at here? I think it's special pleading to put "religious" beliefs in here by themselves, but maybe "metaphysical" or "world-view" beliefs have to be put in there as well, and these would have to include naturalistic world-view beliefs. Everyone lives as if some world-view were true, so it seems to me that that has to be the reference class at first. I don't think there is a "skeptical" position that's outside the system; if you don't act on any religious beliefs you are in effect acting as if some sort of naturalist is true. As the bumper sticker says "Sleep in on Sunday and Save 10%."

Then you have to take into consideration that some of us hold epistemological theories that say it is rational to hold one's current beliefs in the absence of evidence that they are false. I happen to think this is true of beliefs in general, so I'm not privileging my religious beliefs in any way. Nor would I insist that a Mormon just set aside their Mormon beliefs without first giving evidence against Mormon claims. I'm skeptical of a lot of things, including objective burden of proof claims. I think the burden of proof is on the side of the person who is trying to convince someone else. Your test may have to take issue with my general epistemology, not just my philosophy of religion, if it is to make the sorts of claims.

Finally, there is an argument from the psychological and sociological origin of religious beliefs to their likely falsity. It looks like that is just an evidential argument. I can't see that as being part of the test per se, I think it's got to be an argument that might be given to someone who is taking the test. Resisting that argument, surely is not tantamount to not being willing to subject one's beliefs to scrutiny. I don't think these arguments work, as I indicated in a rebuttal to Keith Parsons, who argued in much the same way.
I think there has to be a pretty sharp distinction drawn between a test of beliefs, and an argument that certain beliefs are false.

Not trying to convert anyone?

A redated post.

Duke wrote: Well, I guess I agree with the basic statement here, but I'm not trying to "convert" you to atheism. Believe in the Christian god, if you want; sure. Believe in Shiva. Believe in the Tooth Fairy. All I'm doing is pointing out that those three beliefs are equally irrational.

Really. Atheists aren't out to earn converts. You should really explain that to Dan Barker, the head of the Freedom of Religion Foundation and well-known atheist. See the link below.

I don't think of myself as engaged in evangelism. I do hope that my work helps to make it possible to believe, but I think the step of commitment to Christ is distinct from that of accepting arguments; it is an act of will, not of reason or the emotions. I actually think that I do most to support the credibility of my religion when I attempt to reflect honestly on philosophical matters pertaining to my religion, which means that I will reject popular apologetical lines if I think these lines lack rational support. For example, I took a lot of flack from fellow Christians a few months back because I opposed the view that there are really no atheists. I personally avoid making irrationality charges against people with whom I disagree. There are substantial arguments on both sides of the question of God, and there are plenty of people who are brilliant on both sides of this question. Do people really think that Christians like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and Robert Merrihew Adams are stupid, similar to an adult who retains belief in the tooth fairy?

I won't say I don't want people to believe the truth, especially the sorts of truths that matter. So do you, or you wouldn't bother to post. I'm sure you don't like seeing people who caught up in ancient superstitions, and rejoice when the leave the fold. I am nowhere near as "evangelistic" about my faith as some people are about getting out of Christianity.

So let's hear no more of this nonsense that atheists aren't interested in converting others.

Addendum 3/27/09. There's something incoherent (Ilion would use a different word), about saying on the one hand thar your belief is just as dumb as believing in the Tooth Fairy, but I really don't care whether you give up the belief or not.

Can you Change the Past?

Another answer would be just to deny that you can’t change the past. So, I go back in time, and put a flying tackle on Oswald, sparing Kennedy from death (assuming there was no one on the grassy knoll that really did the dirty deed). But because of some decisions by Kennedy, I end up dying in 1991, which means I never get to go back and save Kennedy, in which case Kennedy dies, in which case I live and go back to save his life, in which case he lives and I die in 1991, which means that I never get to go back…….

The sensible and the not so sensible outsider test

I think there are some sensible things that you can say under the guise of the Outsider Test, and some things that aren't so sensible. It is something like Russell's The Value of Free Thought in that respect.

I think you have to look at some different epistemologies, like the one that I expounded above, and ask what kind of outsider test you want to use.
If it is just an exhortation to take into consideration that there are other, perfectly intelligent people who don't believe as I do, that's hardly news to me. Being "skeptical" doesn't tell me a whole lot.

The danger here is that the test will be used to establish some strong polemical claims against Christianity on a "hard" reading, but under cross-examination the "test" retreats to its "soft" interpretation.

On the other hand, if someone objects to the "test" that person is told that they are brainwashed and refusing to raise questions about their faith, because they are refusing to absorb the "sensible" point the test makes. The "sensible" point about subjecting religious beliefs to intellectual scrutiny is one that I wholeheartedly accept. That I somehow should think of orthodox Christianity as no more probable that Mormonism when I begin investigating the issue is, in my view, not sensible, basically because I believe in the Decline and Fall of Classical Foundationalism, and I think it requires an artifical neutrality that should not be required of anyone, Christian or not.

Bayesianism and the Outsider Test

At this point I don't so much object to the OTF, as much as I think it is less than perfectly clear what asks me to do. From the minute I had a conversion experience in 1972 I've been as aggressive as anyone in asking tough questions of my faith. I'm the guy who majored in philosophy because if there were any arguments good arguments against Christianity, I wanted to hear about them while I was still and undergraduate, as opposed to finding out about them when I was older. I would have to say that right up there with the works of C. S. Lewis, I would have to put Russell's The Value of Free Thought as one of the essays that has influenced my intellectual life the most, and I read that in 1972 also. My education, except for three years in a liberal seminary, has been spent in secular institutions which have been relatively hostile to Christianity. I've been as skeptical of Christianity as anyone I know, unless skepticism requires actual disbelief.

But I'm skeptical about a few other things, like the human ability to be completely neutral in evaluating anything. We often go wrong when we assume that just because we stop believing something that some of our peers still believe, that somehow this is due to our intellectual superiority or something like that.

I also am convinced that people should continue believing what they do believe unless there is evidence that suggests they should give up their belief. I have doubts about how far it is possible to make ourselves "outsiders" to our own belief systems, be it Christian, Jewish, atheist, or what not. That is why I am very reluctant to issue diagnoses of intellectual dishonesty or stupidity or what have you. However, our belief systems should be open to evidence, positive and negative, concerning what we believe.

We're all in Neurath's boat, and I think taking all the culturally conditioned planks out is going to cause the boat to sink. I'm pretty convinced by the arguments against classical foundationalism, even when the Cartesian quest for absolute certainty is abandoned. If I were to describe my epistemology, I would describe it as subjectivist Bayesian. We start with whatever we confidences we have, and we adjust those confidences based on the evidence has we encounter it. Bias is gradually eliminated in this way, and over time, if the evidence is strong enough, the prior are swamped and everyone agrees. This may take awhile for religion, not because there are a bunch of brainwashed Christians out there, but because of the sheer complexity of the issue, and the emotional involvement of both sides in it.

A good discussion to get into related to this came up with the idea of "freethinker." Russell defined "freethinker" in terms of the methods people use to decide their beliefs, and Jeff Lowder argued in a paper "Can a Christian Be a Freethinker" that we have no good reason to believe that a Christian couldn't meet those criteria. Unfortunately, in one passage in his essay, Russell presumes that if a university were to hire a Christian in its philosophy department, that person could not be a freethinker.

How could the Outsider Test be presented to someone who believes in subjectivist Bayesianism as an epistemology? Are we being asked to accept a set of evidence against all religious beliefs?

What I fear is that there is an outcome-based criteria for whether someone has really applied the Outsider Test, and that is if they leave the fold. Otherwise, they couldn't possibly have applied the test, now could they?

Hasker's argument against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom

Hasker's argument against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom.

•Arguments against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom
1.It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow.
2.It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything which is true.
3.God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow.
4.If God has always believed a certain thing, then it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing.
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast.
6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one.
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow.

Hume's Essay on Miracles

More response to the outsider test

I guess we've got to get some clarification on the concept of being skeptical. If what it is to be skeptical is just to entertain skeptical questions about one's beliefs, to subject them to scrutiny, to take seriously possible evidence against them and to ask what reasons can be given for them, then I have been performing the Outsider Test since 1972. When I was an undergraduate I incessantly annoyed my friends with objections to Christianity; in fact, one of my closest friends from that time remarked that I was an expert at finding objections to Christianity, even though I was a Christian.

If this is a reason to reject the maxim of my undergraduate philosophy teacher (an atheist) "You ought to believe what you already believe, unless you have evidence that what you believe is not true," then I wouldn't endorse that kind of skepticism. If I have to try to find a neutral position from which to do all my reasoning, I just don't think there is one.

Is this an attempt to overthrow Reformed Epistemology and accept some sort of classical foundationalism? The problems for the classical foundationalist enterprise are well-documented.
Further, a religion based on special revelation, unless that revelation is written in the skies or something like that, has to be given to one group of people and then spread. That being the case, there are bound to be disparities with respect to who gets the message and who doesn't. That should be no surprise to anyone.

We have to work from our antecedent probabilities (which are admittedly not objective) and adjust based on the evidence. There's no other way to go about it. We are the people we are, not other people, even if we can do the best we can to put ourselves in the shoes of others.

Testing the Outsider Test

This is John Loftus' most recent defense of the outsider test for faith. I think I have some problems I would like to see him solve if he is going to defend it.

First, it would be good if the argument could be formulated with premises and a conclusion. Exactly what is he arguing for, and what is the basis for his argument.

Second, it would be cheating to have a test and just mark our religious beliefs as the beliefs to be tested. Keith Parsons once asked, "Tell me, do you really think that, had you been born Vijay instead of Victor, and if you were from Bangalore rather than Phoenix, AZ, that you would not now be as devoted to Brahma as you are to God?" And the answer is I don't know. If Keith had grown up in the United Methodist church that I did, and had he discovered Plantinga or Lewis before leaving the fold, as opposed to converting briefly to West Rome Baptist Church and hearing weekly hellfire threats as an undergraduate, would he now be a Christian philosopher instead of an atheist? The "what if" game is far harder than it looks to play.

But I happen to know something about Vijay. Keith and I agree that there is an independently existing physical world. Vijay does not. If either of us had been born Vijay, we would think of the world of experience as maya, or illusion, and we would not see it as ultimately real. So it looks as if external world realism fails the outsider test. Yet I see no reason to be accept external world skepticism because if I had been born in India, I might have been brought up to reject external world realism.

What about moral beliefs? I think that rape is wrong. If I had been brought up in a certain culture, I'm told, I would believe that rape is OK if you do it in the evening, because a woman's place is at home under her husband's protection, and if she is gone she's asking for it. So my belief that rape is wrong flunks the outsider test. This gives me no basis whatsoever for doubting that rape is wrong.

What about political beliefs? I think that representative democracy is a better form of government than monarchy. If I lived in 16th Century Europe, or in other parts of the globe, I probably would not believe that. So my belief in democratic government flunks the outsider test. However, this gives me no reason to have the least doubt that democracy is better than monarchy.

What about scientific beliefs? If I had been born in the Islamic world, or in some Christian churches, I would have been taught to reject the theory of evolution in its entirety. So it looks like the theory of evolution fails the outsider test. Nevertheless, this in itself is insufficient grounds for the slightest doubt about evolution.

Finally, a certain natural conservatism with respect to changing our minds about matters of world-view, or any other issue for that matter, is both natural and rational. I thought the lesson of things like Cartesian foundationalism is that if you throw out all sort of beliefs as unjustified and load the burden of proof onto those beliefs, it's hard to stop and have anything left. Most people thought that Descartes had to cheat to get his world back. If we have to be skeptics about all of our sociologically conditioned beliefs, I am afraid we are going to be skeptics about a lot more than just religion.

An etext of F. F. Bruce's classic The New Testament Documents

A redated post.

Craig vs. Carrier

Apparently Carrier found a debate setting with Craig unhospitable to his verbose style. Why am I not surprised?

What do we want when we want life after death?

To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake”. -Schopenhauer.

Doesn't that make you feel better already.

Poisoned brand

When I was in my financial institution yesterday, I saw an advertisement for AIG financial advisors. That may not play too well with the customers.

A critical analysis of Mere Christianity

On not misunderstanding Judaism: What Kind of a Messiah are They Waiting For

When Christians say this "they're waiting for their Messiah" I get the feeling that Christians think that Jews are looking for someone to do pretty much the same thing Christians claim Jesus does for us.

Evangelical Christians often use the expression "He paid the penalty for our sins" to describe what Jesus does for us. Amongst Jews, there is debate as to whether they are even looking for an individual Messiah, (as opposed to a Messianic Age), and if they are, I seriously doubt that they are looking for a Messiah to pay the penalty for our sins and replace the Jewish sacrificial system. I'm not saying that that kind of Suffering Servant isn't foreshadowed in the Hebrew Scriptures, but I do think that Christians and Jews have different Messiah-concepts. Just because they use the same word doesn't mean they have the same things in mind.

I am supplying a link to the Wikipedia entry on the Messianic Age.

Obama picks the Tar Heels

I, on the other hand, support the missing shade of blue. Actually, my team is maroon and gold Arizona State as usual. Now we need BDK to say that I either have the wrong blue or the wrong Devils.

Bayes' Theorem and the Existence of God

This is an Scientific American article on the usefulness of Bayes' theorem in assessing such things as theism.

Well, well, of course, of course. Bayes' theorem doesn't give you objective antecedent probabilities. So we have to go with the ones we've got, and conditionalize our beliefs based on the evidence we received? Why go with the ones we've got? Can you suggest any others, without introducing an incoherence in our beliefs?

That's why I'm an annoying Bayesian subjectivist when it comes to prior probabilities. Let people have the antecedent probabilities that they have, and let us see what evidence moves the scale up or down.

This raises an issue, I realize, for advocates of the "outsider test." One one level, we can't get outside of our belief system and shouldn't try. Otherwise, we end up in a general skepticism, which is where Descartes should have landed if he had been consistent. But if the outsider test argument works, isn't it an argument attempting to show that Christian theism is less probable than you originally thought it was?