A Gift From God: May 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

Dan's 2nd response to Marty

I have included Marty's complete comments (in italics) for clarification:

1. A. "The definition of truth, as I use the term, is that which corresponds with reality."

This is the quandary I arrived at via relative truth long before I ever submitted my life to Christ: If your truth is in opposition to my truth, I know we cannot both be right. In other words, if what's right and true for you is right and true for you, and what's right and true for me is right and true for me, and what's right for each of us is that the other is wrong (in this case most conspicuously "the God question"), then obviously we can't both be right.

I’m not arguing for “relative” truth. I believe, as apparently you do too, that there is a single reality, and that we are both, in some way, interacting with it.

The way I got to this quandary originally was by coming to the conclusion that if any given event occurs, even though there may be one hundred or more differing accounts of said event, there is still what actually DID occur, regardless if it matches any of the accounts testified about it. There HAS to be objective, ultimate truth (what really IS and what really HAS been and DID happen, etc., and I believe it can ONLY be THIS which TRULY corresponds to reality. This may indeed correspond with what we perceive through our senses, but only IF there is some way for us to interpret our senses in a manner that corresponds with ultimate truth.

I agree with you until you introduce “ultimate truth”. Reality simply is, and a statement is true in as much as it corresponds to reality. To posit an “ultimate truth” suggests that there is a mere pedestrian truth that corresponds to some common reality, while “ultimate truth” corresponds to an “ultimate reality”. No doubt this ultimate reality is spiritual / supernatural. But such a proposition is totally without merit. If we are to have any truth, then we must believe that our senses are interacting with reality… the one and only reality.

Enter reason. Yet, reason also must be based on that which may correctly correspond to actual reality. What mechanism do we have biologically that "codes for truth" as some have put it?

We are biological organisms, and we have mutually agreed to the meaning of truth. Therefore we “code for truth” when we compare the evidence to the proposition. Now the context in which the “coding” question typically is raised has to do with a moral obligation for truth. In this sense determining true statements from false statements has survival advantages, and if your goal is to survive, then you ought to seek the truth.

B. I asked if we must arbitrarily accept/assume that your interpretation of reality is correct and you replied,

"No, of course not. You can use the same procedure, and by inference I can conclude we are accessing the same reality."

But, once again, how do we resolve problems that arise if my interpretive conclusions about the same real event differ from yours? One could say, "Consult the evidence." but what if we both have had equal access to said evidence yet come to opposing conclusions? How can you say you have truth if it differs from my interpretation which I also claim to be true? I see this only resolved via the existence of ultimate or objective truth.

I think you give up much too easily. If we both have different conclusions about the same event, then we can re-examine the evidence, find more evidence and/or re-check our chain of reasoning. In addition there are psychological biases that we deal with that may cloud our judgment or elevate dubious evidence while dismissing compelling evidence. Quite simply there is an inexhaustible range of errors or missed evidences that could prevent us from improving our understanding, and bring us closer to mutual agreement. To simply assume that there is some ultimate arbiter of the truth that is accessed by a book or through meditation is an unjustified appeal to authority.

2. I asked you, "On what do you base your assumption that you can match your claims for what is true to reality?"

You replied, "The foundation, or the end to the infinite regress if you would, are those things that I believe because of the impossibility of the contrary."

On the surface, this seems a fair enough answer. But what I can't seem to overlook is that there are still huge jumps being made between senses and reason and being able to justify how we know our reason is valid in order to understand such things as a logical contradiction. Back to "How do chemical reactions code for truth?" What mechanism can you point to that accounts for this and how exactly could it have evolved PHYSICALLY?

I believe I answered the “code for truth” question, but the question of “how” it evolved can be a very long and complex answer. Cosmologists can trace our universe back 13.72 billion years to when all matter was in a pre-atomic plasma state. Since that time matter has grown colder (on average) while there are localized increases in complexity as a natural consequence of energy dissipation. The process from pre-atomic plasma to humans is a giant conceptual leap that many people find too difficult to comprehend. But as the Chinese proverb goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and the more you understand the forces involved, and the vastness of time traversed, the more you can begin to appreciate our cosmic origins.

3. A. I asked what is the known mechanism for reason and how did it originate, and you replied, "The form of your question seems to assume that reason is some type of product manufactured and shipped out to the universe. Reason (logic) is a description of an aspect of reality. To ask for the origin of reason is like asking for the origin of “red”. “Red” is just a description of some aspect of reality."

That doesn't seem to quite work for me. There are red mammals and birds and reddish reptiles, etc. and there are red-haired human-beings and even some with reddish skin (my neck is currently rather red from working outdoors under the sun lol) but fish, frogs, cats and dogs and even chimps have shown no ability to reason to truth. I am not simply saying that reason was "shipped out to the universe", but rather that reason was implanted in human kind when God made the first man "a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). That makes sense to account for reason and how we can code for truth--- if the One who knows ALL implanted a mechanism into us whereby we might correctly interpret our senses and trust our reason--- evolutionary naturalism seems directly at odds with it.

I’m not sure what animal research you are referring to, but animals reason correctly all the time. When my dog watches me put on my shoes and jacket he excitedly runs over to his leash. He’s just used his senses to make a logical inference. Humans may have the largest pre-frontal cortexes, but this is just one type of evolutionary adaptation. The Cheetah is the fastest runner, and the elephant survives by being large and having complex social structures. Animals adapt to their own environmental niche, and there is no reason to believe that our cognitive abilities are anything other than a straight forward evolutionary adaptation like any other animal.

B. I wrote, "From your worldview you can be no more certain of your reason than the patient at Bellevue strapped to his bed."

You replied, "I can be confident in my perception of reality, because as I mentioned above, we can infer that others perceive the same reality. After all, one of the reasons someone would be in Bellevue is because their perception of reality differs in some dramatic way from those around them."

So the question then becomes, How do you KNOW that you are not one of the Bellevue patients whose perception of reality differs dramatically from those around you?

The same way I know anything… my sense information indicates that I am sitting in my living room about 400 miles from Bellevue.

I think you would say (as you wrote later on), "I start with the necessary truths, the beliefs that I accept because the contrary is incoherent. From there I use evidence from my senses and my understanding of reason to establish what I know."

But, once again, we have leap-frogged how and why reasoning exists and how it codes for truth, straight into "It exists, therefore..." That is fine if you have no curiosity concerning the "big questions in life" (who are we?, why are we here? what is the meaning and purpose of existence? Is there an afterlife? etc.), but it is totally unsatisfying to most, myself included. My entire being from my earliest remembrances cried out for meaning and purpose. This seems strange if we are really merely the children of starguts that exploded across the universe and somehow became ALIVE and then conscious and then a living being with thoughts and reason and a means of communicating and expressing ourselves.

You seemed to have missed my example of “red” earlier, so let me try it again here. Apply the how and why questions you say I leap frogged regarding reason to red. Why is red red. How did red get to be red. I’m not talking about why a light is a particular wavelength, but from whence did a particular wavelength of light get its redness? If this sounds like nonsense, it’s because it is. How and why don’t apply to descriptions, other than to say that we labeled something that way. A particular wavelength of light exists, and we label it red / rouge / rojo / vermelho.

I’m also not sure why you would conclude that I’m not interested in the “big” questions. I find it quite inspiring to think of humans as possibly the first conscious creatures to contemplate our origins in the universe. As I’ve heard it put, we are the universe becoming conscious of itself. What meaning will I create? How can I act today that will ripple through time when I am gone? What new way is there to conceive of reality that opens up greater understanding?

You are making a purely emotional appeal to speculate of our origins as being “merely the children of starguts”. Not only is the fact that every atom on our bodies came from an exploded star apparent from the evidence, but understanding that we have a physical connection the universe and such amazing origins sure beats a mythical story about a deity blowing into a clump of mud.

My God lives in no imaginary gaps. There is ONE "gap" and it is filled and enveloped by the living God revealed in nature and Scripture. There is no way any of it makes sense otherwise. LOL, now I am using your "because believing the contrary is incoherent" argument--- but I have a basis for it: In, by and through the One by which we "live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

The difference here is that those axioms I accept as foundational are the only coherent option. Not only have you opted for an argument from ignorance (whether one gap or many), you have rested your “impossibility of the contrary” at a point where the contrary is still quite coherent, and therefore not impossible. Take ominipotent for example. Is it coherent to speak of a less than omnipotent god? Of course, therefore an omnipotent god isn’t the only coherent option.

Nonetheless we can still have common ground. The verse with which you end your last response for example…”by and through the One by which we ‘live and move and have our being’”. Yes, the “One” is reality / existence / the universe itself.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Marty's 1st response to Dan

1. A. "The definition of truth, as I use the term, is that which corresponds with reality."

Enter reason. Yet, reason also must be based on that which may correctly correspond to actual reality. What mechanism do we have biologically that "codes for truth" as some have put it?

B. I asked if we must arbitrarily accept/assume that your interpretation of reality is correct and you replied,

"No, of course not. You can use the same procedure, and by inference I can conclude we are accessing the same reality."

2. I asked you, "On what do you base your assumption that you can match your claims for what is true to reality?"

You replied, "The foundation, or the end to the infinite regress if you would, are those things that I believe because of the impossibility of the contrary."

B. I wrote, "From your worldview you can be no more certain of your reason than the patient at Bellevue strapped to his bed."

So the question then becomes, How do you KNOW that you are not one of the Bellevue patients whose perception of reality differs dramatically from those around you?

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Dan's 1st response to Marty

I'll put Marty's questions in italics:

What is your standard for truth?

You have stated that your standard for truth is reality.

So then I ask:

1. When you say your standard of truth is reality, how are you not begging the question that your reasoning of what reality actually is, is valid?

The definition of truth, as I use the term, is that which corresponds with reality. The question then is; how do I know that a statement is true? This is the question tackled by the epistemological methodist, in which the criteria for how we know are established in order to determine what we know. Knowledge, being a justified belief, then requires us to determine what justification entails in order to elevate our beliefs to knowledge. Because our only avenue to reality is via our senses, we are then obliged to rely on our senses for justification.

Must we just arbitrarily assume your interpretation is accurate?

No, of course not. You can use the same procedure, and by inference I can conclude we are accessing the same reality.

2. On what do you base your assumption that you can match your claims for what is true to reality?

The foundation, or the end to the infinite regress if you would, are those things that I believe because of the impossibility of the contrary. I call them axioms. For example, that my senses are at least provisionally valid; I exist; the law of non-contradiction is valid, etc. I don’t consider these knowledge claims however, because the idea of having sensory justification for my existence, for example, would be begging the question. But I believe the axioms because believing the contrary is incoherent; therefore they are anything but arbitrary.

3. As you have no known mechanism from a strictly atheist/naturalist worldview for even the ORIGIN of reason much less the implementation of it, to say it exists, therefore it exists, therefore it works, is begging the question.

The form of your question seems to assume that reason is some type of product manufactured and shipped out to the universe. Reason (logic) is a description of an aspect of reality. To ask for the origin of reason is like asking for the origin of “red”. “Red” is just a description of some aspect of reality.

From your worldview you can be no more certain of your reason than the patient at Bellevue strapped to his bed.

I’ve driven past Bellevue, but I can’t say I’ve ever been inside. I can be confident in my perception of reality, because as I mentioned above, we can infer that others perceive the same reality. After all, one of the reasons someone would be in Bellevue is because their perception of reality differs in some dramatic way from those around them.

Or can you? CAN you KNOW things for certain? If so, what do you know and how EXACTLY do you KNOW it?

The how part I think I’ve covered, but just to restate… I start with the necessary truths, the beliefs that I accept because the contrary is incoherent. From there I use evidence from my senses and my understanding of reason to establish what I know. As far as certainty, that increases as the quality and quantity of the evidence increases. Now I understand that you probably mean an absolute logical certainty, which many Presuppositionalists claim via an omniscient entity. I’ll gladly explain why omniscience is not a coherent concept, and even if it was, why it wouldn’t help achieve the absolute certainty that is claimed. But I’ll save that for another reply.

Martin's opening on a new debate

Today we start another debate on the existence of God with Martin, a self described Presuppositionalist. Martin hits the ground running with a number of questions as follows:

Dear Dan,
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and also your gracious offer to debate via your blog. I don't know if this qualifies as an opening statement, but they are questions I have for you.

What is your standard for truth?

You have stated that your standard for truth is reality.

So then I ask:

1. When you say your standard of truth is reality, how are you not begging the question that your reasoning of what reality actually is, is valid? Must we just arbitrarily assume your interpretation is accurate?

2. On what do you base your assumption that you can match your claims for what is true to reality?

3. As you have no known mechanism from a strictly atheist/naturalist worldview for even the ORIGIN of reason much less the implementation of it, to say it exists, therefore it exists, therefore it works, is begging the question.

From your worldview you can be no more certain of your reason than the patient at Bellevue strapped to his bed.

Or can you? CAN you KNOW things for certain? If so, what do you know and how EXACTLY do you KNOW it?

Sincerely,
Marty

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Caleb's final response and summary

I want to thank Dan for allowing me to express my beliefs.

I took this debate because in one of his YouTube vides Dan referred to this type of apologetics as the last ditch effort of a dying faith. This showed me that Dan doesn’t really have a grasp on what has been taught or defended in Christianity over the last two thousand years or the fact that Christianity is exploding in the intellectual community whether at oxford or Notre Dame, a generation of Bible believing Christians are thriving in their scholarly fields without having to sacrifice their faith and even more so, they contend for it on the highest academic levels. As our discussion has deepened I also came to realize that Dan doesn’t really understand Christianity, or apparently has not taken the time and effort to read a commentary or two since for much of this debate he has consistently used verses from the Bible completely out of their historical context. When Dan tries to explain what the Bible or the Christian God is like he would be hard pressed to actually find someone who thinks that way. I would recommend that instead of taking his queues from the “televangelist atheist” such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris he actually make the effort to know how Christians have understood and wrestled with things for thousands of years.

Dan has made the assertion that the laws of logic “just are.” He offers no justification for this view, he just asserts it. If we are allowed to make assertions I can think of a couple I would like to make as well. But instead I’m going to suggest that universal, unchanging, constant laws such as the laws of logic are justified by their lawgiver. You do not get universal laws without a universal lawgiver.

In order for Dan to be consistent with his world view he has been reduced to absurdity. In his closing statement he told us he could not be certain that he actually exists. I find it fascinating that the foundation he stands on is so flimsy he cannot even intellectually say the he can be certain of his own life. What is even more amazing is that he then has the wits to say that those of us who are certain are “kidding themselves” but of course, he wasn’t certain about that either. Perhaps in certain circles where you need a dictionary to keep up with the conversation such ideas might sound relevant but for me personally it’s absurd.

What it really comes down to is that Dan does not have anything that disproves my premise because he actually agrees with it, he just says that to look any further is unnecessary. This is just another assertion and the opposite of freethinking. I think we could honestly just toss out all of the arguments given by a person who says they are not even sure they are the ones making the argument.

Dan has spent a lot of time of the morality God because his real argument is that he simply doesn’t like the God of the Bible. But as I said before he apparently hasn’t even taken the time to understand the bible in context. There are almost too many red herring’s to address on this issue because Dan seems to have thrown intellectual honesty out the window and is just quoting the sound bites of so many who have come before him. For example, Dan mentions that Hitler was a professing catholic in good standing. Well, I would agree that the Catholics need to be held accountable but the genocide committed had nothing to do with Hitler’s belief in God. Hitler had a very negative view of Christianity and shared with his general that Christianity and Nazism were “incompatible” Hitler was simply working the system but all those who were close to him and from many of his own quotes he hated Christianity.

Dan wrote, I can objectively say that there was a net decrease in psychological and physical health (well-being) from Hitler’s actions without any reference to a “higher moral law”.

How can someone be objective when things like psychological and physical health can be subjective? You would have to have a universal standard in order to make such a claim. The wars against the German army caused physical harm to German soldiers, was that immoral too? I know this is a closing argument so I don’t want to pose a bunch of questions and not give Dan a chance to answer but I think we can see the flaw in his attempt to throw his definition in with all the other atheist struggling to define morality outside of God. But I would pose one more question, does physical well-being apply only outside the womb or does it apply inside as well?

When dealing with our presuppositions we find what our ultimate sources of faith are. Dan and I are both men of faith. That is all the word “Axiom” means, it’s a statement of faith. However, in Dan’s world view his faith is totally unjustified. He cannot account for the very laws of logic that we have been using this entire discussion. But how could he? He cannot even know for sure if that he exist. Without God you are reduced to absurdity, Dan will continue to use logic and reason and morality as though they are certain universal constants, and when he does so he will be borrowing from my world view.

Dan wants a God that fits into his pre decided conclusions, however any god that bows to the whim of every skeptic, especially to those who fail to even begin to treat the material honestly, would be a weak god. I know Dan attempted to try and respond to the design argument and a few other points but I wanted this to be more of a summation on my part than a rebuttal. I think Dan is terribly confused when it comes to modern cosmology on the views of the beginning of the universe. He like many, appeal to multi-verse theories and new time theories in a hope to somehow explain how everything came from nothing. Even if any of these are true you only push the problem back one more step. You cannot escape the problems that an infinite regress of time is impossible. He also does what Stephen Hawkins did in his last book and redefine nothing to mean “something”.

Dan knows God exist. He lives according to the Christian theist world view every day of his life. Our faith is not just some blind wishing that we hope is true, we can have reasonable faith in the God who has revealed himself through scripture and Jesus Christ. If Christ did not rise from the dead as Paul said, “then we above all men should be pitied.” However, the evidence shows He did rise and because of that we can have forgiveness of sin and unity with God.

Dan closed with a quote so allow me to close with one that I find a bit whimsical but relevant to the conversation.

“But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.”
― Douglas Wilson

Friday, May 10, 2013

Dan's final response and summary

This is my final response and summary. I want to thank Caleb for agreeing to this debate. We agree on very little, but I respect Caleb’s willingness to share his views in this open forum.

I’m going to quote quite a bit of your last response, so I am putting your comments in italics for clarification.

I want to begin where Dan left off and then I will cover the rest of his remarks.

He ended by saying,

“The idea of absolute certainty may make you feel good, but you’re just kidding yourself.”

I would simply ask him if he was absolutely certain about that.

The answer is no, I’m not absolutely certain of that, but the argument I laid out makes a compelling case that absolute certainty is an illusion. I don’t see how, even in principle, you could make a case for absolute certainty. I do, however, have a very high degree of confidence, which you might call psychological certainty, that the idea of absolute certainty fills an emotional need in many people while never being achievable in practice.

No, I do not claim absolute certainty regarding the axioms. I accept the axioms as true because of (what appears to me) the impossibility of the contrary. I am open to the idea that I do not exist, but before I would accept it I would have to understand how “I’ could be taken out of the equation. If you can explain to me a situation in which the law of non-contradiction doesn’t apply, I’m all ears. Until then I will consider non-contradiction foundational to all knowledge.

So he can uses the laws of logic which he knows to be true and totally disregard any conversation about their justification because he claims these are just things we all know based upon the impossibility of the contrary. However, impossibility implies certainty and Dan has given up certainty.

You’re assuming a whole lot of things about my position here. When I say “impossibility of the contrary” I do not mean that I claim absolute (logical) certainty, but that from my perspective the opposite is not coherent. After all, I only have my perspective, so I don’t normally explicitly state it.

Yes, I would consider myself a naturalist, although we may disagree on some specific meanings of the term. I’ve never made the argument that nature is the “creator and sustainer” of any laws. You made the mistake of arguing that the laws of logic are the product of God, therefore creating the problem of God preceding logic, and requiring some type of process in which logic was produced (created). I understand that the laws (logic, physics, etc.) are simply descriptions of how nature behaves.

If the natural world is all that there is then we can’t know anything, we are the accident. The universe is simply time and chance acting on matter that came into being out of nothingness.

If by chance you mean without conscious intent, then I agree we are the result of undirected natural interactions over vast stretches of time. But I never said anything about matter coming out of nothing. In fact even cosmologists, when using the term “nothing”, often mean empty space which we have learned is not “nothing”, but is a sea of quantum “foam”. We simply don’t know if mass/energy is eternal, or what form preceded its current form… or even if that makes sense considering the possibility of time having multiple directions.

The Christian God, on the other hand, is said to have created everything from nothing. That’s quite a claim, and begs the question…how?

We find ourselves coming back to the verses from Numbers. Dan said that Christians should read the bible front to back and see that the God of the Bible is some kind of moral monster.

I did not say that Christians should conclude that God is a moral monster from reading the Bible. Although I’m confident that many will come to this conclusion, the only thing I suggested that they should do is decide for themselves.

No Christian would believe that these punishments that were given only to Israel as part of the old covenant which they willingly entered into, in any way apply to all mankind; especially to those of us under the new covenant.

So the slaughter of Midianite women and children and the taking of the virgins by the Israelite solders in Numbers 31 was first: Moral because the Midianite army was allegedly pursuing the Israelites (despite the fact that the atrocities occurred after the Midianite’s military defeat), then second: Moral because the virgins needed to be taken in for their own good (despite the fact that the Israelite’s were specifically commanded to kill the families of the virgins making them orphans), and now third: Moral because it only applied to the Israelites and doesn’t apply anymore. This clearing of the slate with a “new covenant” undermines the very notion of absolute morality. If moral pronouncements were only good for one group of people, at one specific period of time, then in what sense are they absolute? This “new covenant” concept supports my claim that Christian morality is entirely subjective. Not only can God supposedly change what is moral, but according to Christian doctrine He already has. This is exactly the type of subjective moral relativism that theists often rail against.

…if the Jewish army had not stood up to the armies that had opposed and tried to destroy the blood line through which Jesus was prophesized to be born Gods plan would have been destroyed. But because God loves Dan, he kept the enemy from winning and protected his plan to save us not just for this life but for the life to come.

Now a fourth reason why killing Midianite women and children was moral…to save Jesus’ blood line. First, the supposed blood line was through Joseph who, according to the story, wasn’t even the biological father of Jesus. Second, an omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe needed a desert tribe to defeat and slaughter other desert tribes so that the eventual non-biological Father of a supernatural, spiritual God/man son could grow up to be temporarily killed by the Romans in order for Him to forgive the sins that I would commit 2,000 years later if I profess belief in this story and He grants me forgiveness for which I will never be worthy. And if I find this story just a little bit absurd, and in good conscious believe that it is a product of a superstitious, pre-scientific society, then I will be tortured forever…because God loves me.

Dan also mentioned that if this was an act of Gods love then he wants no part of it. However, you cannot divorce justice from love. A judge who lets a rapist go because he wants to be loving is in fact the opposite. God might seem mean to those who want to destroy him just as criminals don’t like policemen.

In this analogy God isn’t merely like a human judge, but He will supposedly torture the rapist forever. Even if you grant that God did not create or control the circumstances in which the rape occurred (or otherwise decide not to intervene); how is infinite torture in any way proportional to a finite crime? How is torturing someone forever even remotely loving? This punishment occurs completely out of sight of every living human being, undermining its deterrence, and the rapist is already removed from any potential victims, so he could not re-offend anyway. What then is the purpose of the torture? Wouldn’t a loving God simply implant a certainty in our minds that eternal torture awaits those that sin, and then simply whisk everyone to heaven whether they sinned or not?

My objections are both intellectual and emotional, just as your acceptance of Christianity is both intellectual and emotional. Our passions do not invalidate the logic of our arguments.

Though we may say [that homosexual’s] lifestyle is a sinful one we are told to love our enemies.

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that you would consider gay people “enemies”. How about if we just agree to be loving toward everyone, and try to think of everyone as our brothers and sisters and dispel this notion that they are “enemies”. While we’re at it, maybe we can agree that Leviticus 20:13 was wrong then, and is wrong now.

Notice he still hasn’t said what well-being is but insist that it is the basis for morality. This notion is just one of many competing ideas in the atheistic community as to what morality might be. But how does Dan decide between the well being of Hitler over the well being of the Jews? Hitler rationalized that what he was doing was for the well being of Germany and it’s people. Of course Dan will object to Hitler’s actions but he has to appeal to a higher moral law than just mans well-being. To claim that the well-being of humans is superior to that of the well-being of army ants is to be guilty of Speciesm (assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species).

Interestingly the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews was the culmination of centuries of anti-Jewish bigotry by European Christians. Hitler himself was raised Catholic and never ex-communicated. The SS belt buckles and much Nazi armor read “Gott Mins Uns (God is with us)”. There were many bad actors, but how much easier is it to commit such atrocities when your own holy book glorifies multiple genocides commanded by the same God to which you pray?

I did explain that well-being is analogous to health, but with a broader context. Hitler’s actions were objectively contrary to well-being on every level…from the individuals killed in the gas chambers to the large scale destruction of many countries. From Hitler’s own death in his bunker to “shell shocked” GI’s returning from battle. I can objectively say that there was a net decrease in psychological and physical health (well-being) from Hitler’s actions without any reference to a “higher moral law”.

Dan wrote, “The main problem is using terms like “sustain” and “govern”. Both of these terms imply an intentional cause. And why not? You’ve already decided that there is an intentional agent; why not give him something to do? But when scientists speak of the laws of physics, they’re simply describing how mass and energy interact. What they’re not saying (as you are) is that the laws control how mass and energy interact.”

I have not just decided there is an intentional agent; it’s the only reasonable explanation.

This is the classic argument from ignorance. Since no other explanation makes sense to you, God must be the answer. Not only have I provided a reasonable explanation, I dare say that you have not examined every other available explanation. Nor can you possibly know what future explanations may be forthcoming. Despite this you claim absolute certainty of an explanation that is not even coherent.

I agree scientist observe these laws at work but they must observe them consistently in order to do science at all. You have to remember this isn’t just the god of the gaps, it is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Why is there something instead of nothing and furthermore how is it that something came from nothing? From nothing you get nothing. To infer a transcendental cause is totally justified.

If I haven’t made this point clear I apologize, but I have never claimed that the universe started from nothing. Ironically that is your claim. You claim that God, who is supernatural and therefore not part of the universe, somehow created the universe from nothing. Furthermore, your claim of inferring “a transcendental cause” is not justified. A logical inference is when you take specific evidence and construct a general rule. But what evidence of existence itself being caused do you have?

Dan wrote, “The statement “logic is a process of the mind, which means it is conceptual by nature” we’ve already covered, and it makes the classic TAG error of confusing our understanding of logic (its conceptualization) with logic itself.

Logic is a label we put on an attribute of reality. Apply your questions to “soft”. How much does soft weigh? What color is soft? These questions don’t make any more sense than applying them to logic. Soft is a label we put on some aspect of reality, which is then conceptualized in our brains, and can then be organized and communicated via language to others. So is “soft” a word, a concept, or an aspect of reality? The answer is yes to all three. Soft, like logic, does not simply sprout spontaneously from our brains (or minds), it is rooted in reality. The TAG conclusion that logic must be a product of a transcendent mind ignores logic’s origins as an aspect of reality.

Logic is not something outside of God our use of it is simply a reflection of what God is like.

So you are apparently now changing your position and conceding that logic is not a product of God, but is instead an aspect of His nature. This puts you right back at God being a metaphor for reality (nature). Simply substitute nature for God and you get, “Logic is not something outside of [nature, but] our use of it is simply a reflection of what [nature] is like.” If this sounds familiar, it is because this has been my argument all along.

It’s true that early Christians were not calculating the odds of life existing based on physical constants, but their conclusion was the same…that the world was created for human life. But this conclusion isn’t any more compelling, because humans already had to exist in order to make the claim. There are way more black holes in the universe than humans. Does that mean that the universe was created so that black holes could exist? The idea that you can point to anything that exists and claim that it was the intended outcome of the universe is meaningless.

Now there are only three ways to account for this remarkable fine-tuning of the cosmos for intelligent life: physical necessity, chance, or design. The contemporary debate is over when it comes to which of these is the best explanation and it is design.

I agree the debate is over, but design never even got out of the starting gates. Ask yourself this question: If everything is designed by an intelligent creator, how would you be able to distinguish between what occurs naturally and that which you know to be designed? How would you tell, for example, a rock from a tool? The answer is you couldn’t. We infer design from specific patterns and combinations, and we know that things like watches are designed precisely because the combination of materials and attributes of the watch do not appear in nature.

Post diction fails as a rebuttal because this is not the only observable world. We can look at all the other planets and observe what naturally occurs in the universe and from that the improbability of a planet capable of sustaining life is immeasurable.

And an alien on some planet in some far distant galaxy, some vast time in the future will look out, and unable to detect any other life, will decide that the universe was created expressly for their existence, rendering your argument nonsense. Or in the 100 billion stars in each of 100 billion galaxies there could be no other life, in which case the solar systems containing life at this moment is 0.00000000000000000001% (1E-22). This is the universe specifically created for life?

I would like to say one final word about Dan and his love of axioms. Dan is true when claiming we need these in order to do any real dialogue. But if you ask him how he knows that he quickly reminds you it is not a knowledge claim. This is somewhat of a philosophical word game. If you define the words in such a way so that they always support your argument it’s not a search for real truth but a justification for unbelief.

On the contrary, I wish only to have my view of reality match with actual reality as closely as possible. I am not wedded to any position. I would gladly accept God if there was a coherent definition and evidence to support the claim. It makes no difference in my life whether the big bang occurred 13.72 billion years ago, or whether it never happened at all. Christians on the other hand very often are raised from birth to believe that a God exists and had specific attributes as described in the Bible (as I was taught). Christians often have strong emotional experiences encouraged by their religious community that are further rationalized and interpreted through the lens of their belief. Christians then have a strong bias to believe, and virtually no incentive to question their faith. There is however one overwhelming motivation that so many Christians simply cannot suppress. This is the motivation to understand reality as it actually is. This is the motivation to want a coherent, consistent understanding of reality that religion is unable to provide.

Dan is certain that logic is an axiom but remember, being certain of anything makes you foolish according to his own statement.

I’ve already made clear my position on absolute (logical) certainty, so I’ll simply close with a quote from the famous author and former Czech Republic President Vaclev Havel:

“Keep the company of those who seek the truth – run from those that have found it."

Monday, May 6, 2013

Caleb's response # 3

I want to begin where Dan left off and then I will cover the rest of his remarks.

He ended by saying,

“The idea of absolute certainty may make you feel good, but you’re just kidding yourself.”

I would simply ask him if he was absolutely certain about that.

Dan does have absolute certainty about many things such as his existence and the laws of logic but he uses the technical term “axiom” and claims that the truth of these axioms is not a knowledge claim. So he can uses the laws of logic which he knows to be true and totally disregard any conversation about their justification because he claims these are just things we all know based upon the impossibility of the contrary. However, impossibility implies certainty and Dan has given up certainty.

Now, let me cover some of these other areas and I’ll finish covering more of that later.

I guess I should just ask Dan if he is a naturalist. He using transcendental laws of logic and even appealing to moral absolutes but when he took the verse from Romans and tried to flip it around so that “nature” is the creator and foundation of all things he appealed to naturalism. Of course we would have to ask, how could nature be the creator and sustainer of the laws that hold nature together? If the natural world is all that there is then we can’t know anything, we are the accident. The universe is simply time and chance acting on matter that came into being out of nothingness.

We find ourselves coming back to the verses from Numbers. Dan said that Christians should read the bible front to back and see that the God of the Bible is some kind of moral monster. I agree that we should read the Bible, Dan is not the first person to read these verses and he is not the first person to be shocked by them. But unlike what Dan has done I would also encourage you to read it in context. Notice he said, “Fortunately for all of us, most Christians no longer take seriously the Biblical calls to stone to death disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18) or to punish someone for wearing two types of fabric (Leviticus 19:19).” This is just being intellectually lazy when it comes to refuting the book you claim to disagree with. No Christian would believe that these punishments that were given only to Israel as part of the old covenant which they willingly entered into, in any way apply to all mankind; especially to those of us under the new covenant.

This is a great opportunity to address what Dan stated when he said, “it shouldn’t matter for you if abstinence before marriage increases well-being, because well-being isn’t part of your equation for morality.” What Dan fails to recognize is that Gods morality is for our well-being.The difference is this well-being is not merely a physical one but a spiritual one as well. Take for example the verse inNumbers Dan keeps mentioning, if the Jewish army had not stood up to the armies that had opposed and tried to destroy the blood line through which Jesus was prophesized to be born Gods plan wouldhave been destroyed. But because God loves Dan, he kept the enemy from winning and protected his plan to save us not just for this life but for the life to come.

Dan wrote, “Is it any wonder that every type of bigotry, hate and violence has had a religious sponsor?” To me this shows that Dan’s objection to God is not an intellectual one but an emotional one. Simply because people abuse an idea does not make an idea invalid. The interesting thing is between the two of us I’m the only one who can objectively identify counterfeit morality. I can easily show that those who act with hatred towards homosexuals are not being biblical. Though we may say their lifestyle is a sinful one we are told to love our enemies. Notice he still hasn’t said what well-being is but insist that it is the basis for morality. This notion is just one of many competing ideas in the atheistic community as to what morality might be. But how does Dan decide between the well being of Hitler over the well being of the Jews? Hitler rationalized that what he was doing was for the well being of Germany and it’s people. Of course Dan will object to Hitler’s actions but he has to appeal to a higher moral law than just mans well-being. To claim that the well-being of humans is superior to that of the well-being of army ants is to be guilty of Speciesm (assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species).

The very fact that he lumps in the actions of faith healers who let children die with the traditional Christian faith shows that he is not willing to deal intellectually with the difference between reasonable faith and un reasonable faith. If someone claims to be a Christian but then acts contrary to what scripture teaches then simply by calling it faith does not justify his or her claims. Where I live lots of people preach that if we have enough faith God will give you a nice car and a big house. This faith is completely disconnected rationally from the very sources they claim to stem from.

The picture Dan has tried to paint of the Christian God is a god I would reject because it is not the God of scripture.

I have not just decided there is an intentional agent; it’s the only reasonable explanation. I agree scientist observe these laws at work but they must observe them consistently in order to do science at all. You have to remember this isn’t just the god of the gaps, it is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Why is there something instead of nothing and furthermore how is it that something came from nothing? From nothing you get nothing. To infer a transcendental cause is totally justified.

Dan wrote, “The statement “logic is a process of the mind, which means it is conceptual by nature” we’ve already covered, and it makes the classic TAG error of confusing our understanding of logic (its conceptualization) with logic itself.

How much does logic weigh? What color is it? If you can’t answer that then it is immaterial. If it is not conceptual then what is it? Dan will no doubt claim it’s an axiom and he doesn’t have to know where it come from because it’s not a knowledge statement. If it is not a knowledge statement then what is it? It is something he has to assume because of the impossibility of the contrary. For something to be impossible is to be certain of it’s implausibility, and Dan has already said I was “kidding myself” for being certain.

Dan wrote, “I still don’t see an answer to how God produced logic, or if God was logical in the process.” I know Dan has been told this before and I will simply state it again. God is logical by nature. Logic is not something outside of God our use of it is simply a reflection of what God is like.

Two thoughts on the fine-tuning argument. You gave some great illustrations but I think they fail. You claim it is just a post diction, but this is not the case since this has been the belief of Christians before modern cosmology understood it.Now there are only three ways to account for this remarkable fine-tuning of the cosmos for intelligent life: physical necessity, chance, or design. The contemporary debate is over when it comes to which of these is the best explanation and it is design. Post diction fails as a rebuttal because this is not the only observable world. We can look at all the other planets and observe what naturally occurs in the universe and from that the improbability of a planet capable of sustaining life is immeasurable. Atheist Dan Barker once comment that the fine tuning argument is probably one of the best arguments for theism.

Dan is certain that logic is an axiom but remember, being certain of anything makes you foolish according to his own statement.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Dan's response # 3

Just a quick note to our readers. I’ve switched from referring to Caleb in the third person to addressing him in the second person. This change was made to give my responses a more conversational appearance. Caleb has stayed with addressing me in the third person (which is OK by me). The change may make the debate sound a bit strange, but I hope it won’t distract from the interesting conversation.

Let me first address your claim that I insist you have blind faith. I have not stated or implied that you have blind faith. In fact I accept our assertion that faith (as you practice it) is inductive inference. The point of my argument, and the reason I supplied a link to a story about a couple that relied on “faith healing”, is to point out the broader understanding of the word. If the couple that tragically relied on “faith healing” over actual medical care did not in fact have “faith”, then I would have expected you to point this out. Instead you said “they had faith that God would heal them.” Perhaps you were being sarcastic, but it seems to me that you are saying that these “crazy people” were making a perfectly rational inductive inference.

Evidence or not, the fact that faith is considered a virtue and is promoted by the Bible has not been challenged. Also not challenged is that faith, even by your definition, is the opposite of doubt. It was the assertion that Christianity promotes doubt that I am contesting.

Regarding morality and the system by which I evaluate whether an action is moral, you ask, “Where does Dan’s set system come from?” Then you conclude, “It simply comes from Dan.” Although I am providing my understanding of morality based on the common notion of the term, I am not the source of the “set system” by which to evaluate what is moral. In fact I am advocating an objective (versus your subjective) standard. By using reason and evidence we can best determine which actions increase or decrease well-being. If the Christian God is the source of morality, then morality is by definition subjective, and not necessarily tied to well-being.

You also said, regarding Numbers 31:17 that I “…think(s) God is acting cruelly” and that I used this verse “for its shock value.” Actually I think that the Israelites were acting cruelly, and that, along with many Christians, they rationalized their behavior by appealing to their imagined deity. Indeed I do use this verse for “shock value”. It is shocking because if hacking to death women and children, and hauling away the virgins like stolen property can be rationalized as “moral”, then it’s hard to imagine what would be “immoral”. It’s also interesting to note that your first excuse for the Israelite’s behavior was that they faced a “pursuing army”. But when I pointed out that the atrocities occurred after the Midianite army was defeated, the excuse became that the virgins were taken for their own good. How noble of the Israelites to take in these poor orphaned virgins, when it was the Israelites that killed their defenseless mothers, brothers and sisters… making the girls orphans in the first place!

Numbers 31 exposes the type of naked rationalization that occurs when moral responsibility is divorced from the consequences of one’s actions. Is it any wonder that every type of bigotry, hate and violence has had a religious sponsor? In addition to promoting genocide, the Christian Bible explicitly endorses the discrimination of gays, treating women as property, and slavery. The Bible is the last place we should get our morality. If you’re a Christian reading this… please read the Bible. Don’t just read it selectively, but read it cover to cover. Then decide for yourself. Fortunately for all of us, most Christians no longer take seriously the Biblical calls to stone to death disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18) or to punish someone for wearing two types of fabric (Leviticus 19:19).

You also muse “I would be interested to see that if I could give Dan enough evidence that abstinence until marriage increases well-being if he would become an advocate for such a cause?” The answer is yes, I would. But that’s because evidence is critical in determining well-being, and thus morality. But for you, the evidence is completely irrelevant. I shouldn’t matter for you if abstinence before marriage increases well-being, because well-being isn’t part of your equation for morality. In fact as long as you believe that God commands it, the evidence could point to consequences completely contrary to well-being and the action would still be moral.

In referring to my understanding of the transcendence of logic, you mistakenly claim that I have “accepted a transcendental cause for transcendent laws.” This is an error in ascribing a prescriptive sense (cause) to a descriptive term, which you go on to repeat throughout the rest of your response. I’ll come back to this, but you next accuse me of redefining the term atheism. I agree with you that the most common dictionary definition of atheism is a claim that there is no God. But you and I, and most atheists I know, understand that a positive claim of non-existence (of anything) is not rationally sound. In fact the Christian conception of God is not even coherent, so it would be nonsensical to claim the non-existence of something that cannot even be rationally defined. By the same token it is not rational to claim the existence of the same incoherent concept. It would be like arguing over which is faster, an invisible pink unicorn or a yellow quantum whisperer. The only rational position is to seek a coherent definition of God and then to withhold belief until evidence is available for that “thing”. To accept that the Christian God exists is simply an irrational (dare I say it) leap of faith.

I understand that you are a Bible believing Christian, and there are certain attributes of God that you likely hold. Yet my desire for you to describe these attributes comes from my wish to address your definition, and not some straw-man version of your beliefs. I’ve recently heard three different definitions of omnipotent from three different “Bible believing Christians”, so I had no desire to waste my time debunking someone else’s version. Fortunately you have given me the following definition of the Christian God; “all knowing, all loving, all powerful, unchanging, and perfectly just creator of the universe who has revealed himself in time, thought, and history and in the person of the God/Man Jesus Christ.”

If Numbers 31 demonstrates God’s “love”, then we need go no further debunking this alleged attribute. As for all-powerful, you already said that “I don’t fully understand it…”, but then go on to state that “saying that God cannot sin does nothing to limit his power just as saying that God cannot make himself not exist would [not] limit him.” I can’t fault you for not understanding how God could be limited by sin and logic and not limited by sin and logic at the same time. It’s a direct contradiction and inherently incoherent. What I do fault you for is asserting a contradiction as fact.

OK, so back to the prescriptive/descriptive error. You said “Unless there is a being that sustains the governing laws of the universe…”. The term “being” will quickly dissolve into meaninglessness when pressed, but I’ll leave that alone for the moment. The main problem is using terms like “sustain” and “govern”. Both of these terms imply an intentional cause. And why not? You’ve already decided that there is an intentional agent; why not give him something to do? But when scientists speak of the laws of physics, they’re simply describing how mass and energy interact. What they’re not saying (as you are) is that the laws control how mass and energy interact. You make the same mistake with the so-called uniformity of nature argument when you state, “proving something would never actually prove anything since the same experiment could be conducted with different answers every time.” This assumes that the universe is inherently non-uniform, and that something must impose uniformity. But non-uniformity isn’t even a coherent concept. What would a non-uniform universe look like? More importantly, why would it look that way? If you said that matter wouldn’t interact at all, then isn’t that simply a description of another way that matter would behave? Isn’t that just another form of uniformity? What if you said that non-uniformity meant that gravity would sometimes be attractive and sometimes be repulsive? But what would be the cause for the switch? Would this cause be imposing non-uniformity? And on what basis would you select non-uniformity as the default when everything in our experience points to uniformity? Uniformity is axiomatic because without it you end up down a rabbit hole of contradictions.

At the end of your string of prescriptive/descriptive errors, you posit “an immaterial, universal, unchanging mind.” I understand “mind” as a description of what brain does, but saying that there is a mind devoid of a brain is like saying that a rock is incredibly brave…it just doesn’t compute.

The statement “logic is a process of the mind, which means it is conceptual by nature” we’ve already covered, and it makes the classic TAG error of confusing our understanding of logic (its conceptualization) with logic itself. You also give a hint of seeing how logic can be prescriptively applied when you say “If (logic) was of a human mind then it would vary from person to person.” Indeed, we can apply our understanding of logic to test our arguments, and here it does vary from person to person. But again, this is not logic itself.

You also said that “by no means do I suggest that logic or any other law come before God.” I agree, you suggesting exactly the opposite. By saying that “God’s mind” produces logic, you are saying that God comes before logic. How else could He have produced it? I still don’t see an answer to how God produced logic, or if God was logical in the process.

In saying that “the fine tuning of the universe show intentionality” you are displaying what is called hyperactive agency detection… a perfectly natural, evolved trait that takes some discipline to overcome. Maybe more interesting is the fine tuning argument itself. It fails on many fronts, but the most straightforward is that the odds of the appearance of life (that’s apparently what the universe is tuned for) is a post-diction. In other words, it’s a supposed prediction of something that we already know has occurred. The odds of anything that has already occurred happening are exactly 100%. For example, I can make the case (just as the fine tuning argument does) that the odds of me writing the letter “A” are so small as to be impossible. First, I picked the letter random, so the odds start at 1 in 26. Now multiply that by the odds that the particular sperm from my Father would meet with a particular egg from my Mother to create me. Multiply the odds that my parents would meet, and marry, and that they would come from the particular sperm and egg from their parents, etc, etc. The odds become incalculably small in no time. Yet there it is… the letter “A”. Now imagine the solar system 5 billion years ago. There’s no life anywhere, and the earth hasn’t even formed yet. Would you say that the universe is obviously tuned for life? How could it be?... there’s no life! But it’s the same universe, with the same laws. Post-dictions are nonsense.

You suggested that I didn’t know why we should be concerned with the well-being of others. I don’t know where you got that idea, but I do believe that our well-beings are interconnected, and as social animals we all do better when we practice compassion and concern for each other. In fact, I agree with you that God wrote right and wrong “upon our hearts”. I understand this metaphorically, however, as in the fact that we have evolved traits that give us a moral sense, and generally encourage behaviors that foster group cooperation. I makes good evolutionary sense that groups that cooperate are more likely to survive then groups that don’t.

Perhaps where we can find the most common ground is where you state:

“Scripture tells us that we have these [laws] because they are a reflection of God, so much so that they alone are enough evidence for those who are seeking. Romans 1:19 says, “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

You have eloquently stated my position, and substituting the metaphorical language, you get:

“[Nature] tells us that we have these [laws] because they are a reflection of [existence], so much so that they alone are enough evidence for those who are seeking. Since what may be known about [existence] is plain to [us], because [nature] has made it plain to [us]. For since the [emergence of the universe nature’s] invisible qualities – [its] eternal power and [all-encompassing] nature – have been clearly seen, being understood form what [is], so that people are without excuse.”

Your previous response finishes with a flourish of misrepresentations of my positions. First;

“Dan has stated in previous debates that because knowledge comes from his senses and that his senses could be wrong it’s totally possible that Dan is wrong about everything.”

False. I’ve said that I could be wrong about everything that I claim to know. It would be meaningless to be wrong about the axioms which I don’t claim as knowledge.

Second, “He insists that logic is the only axiom.”

False. I’ve never made this claim, and in fact I have stated that “I exist” and “my senses are provisionally valid” are just some of the axioms to which I hold.

Finally the strange idea that without absolute certainty we can’t have any knowledge at all. We can have psychological certainty, as in a belief held with such conviction that its falsity is unimaginable. But that’s not what we’re talking about. You are insisting on logical certainty… certainty without the possibility of error. This is an illusion. Even your claimed knowledge of God, which comes to you through your fallible senses, has no path free form the possibility of error. You could understand something simply by applying logical principles (without sensory input), but even this process is prone to error in the application of reasoning. Even, for the sake of argument, if you had an omniscient, omnipotent friend that told you something, you couldn’t be certain that the friend’s information was correct because you would have no way of verifying that you weren’t being deceived. Does this mean we’ve given up knowledge? No. We simply recognize that knowledge comes with degrees of certainty based on the available evidence.

The idea of absolute certainty may make you feel good, but you’re just kidding yourself.