Metacrock isnt saying anything very important either

Between 1999 and 2002, I posted regularly at CARM.  I was using the alias "ohwow".  The one Christian that I battled with the most was "Metacrock" and all of his stupid trifling "you-can't-refute-the-studies" bullshit.

This page identifies Metacrock as "Joe Hinman", so unless somebody else is using the name, I strongly suspect it is the same guy.  I've now reviewed some of his arguments and he does indeed appear to be the same person.

I was asked by somebody else to respond to something Metacrock was arguing, and that reminded me of Metacrock's "atheistwatch" blog, so I went ahead and copied and pasted some of his arguments below, and respond respectively.

First, Metacrock constantly focuses on "god" as if this is supposed to be some sort of heart-stoppingly important subject, when in fact at the end of the day, he is a liberal, he doesn't think atheists will endure any afterlife fate worse than Christians, and therefore, he must always fail in showing atheists to be irrational. Metacrock may as well insist that the temperature of Pluto is vitally important, and then chide everybody who, for lack of any danger, don't see the relevance of the subject to their daily lives, and accordingly choose to ignore it wholesale.

Monday, July 1, 2019
(1) Is just plain wrong. The ordering in a snowflake or salt crystal is efficient and dependable, but due entirely to natural processes. 

that  is totally begging the question you have no proof that it;s natural you have no evidence you are asserting it because it deals with nature you assert a prori no God therefore no God

"you have no proof that it's natural"?  Metacrock hasn't changed one single bit in 20 years:  he may as well say that we cannot prove that matter itself is natural. In normal thinking you favor the empirically demonstrable stuff over the stuff that only rides on "you can't prove it false" crap.

you also misunderstand atheism's most powerful argument.  the reason we a priori dismiss "god" is because the dfinition of that word is not based on anything in the empirical world, and is no less fabricated than the "definition" of Bugs Bunny.

(2) "Usually"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

why? minor exclaims would not disprove the perponderemce of evidence

I think he meant "minor exceptions".  But either way, I've graduated far beyond Meta's concern with "god".  I've shown that the resurrection of Jesus has lower probability than any other naturalistic hypothesis, and I did this in the context of reviewing stuff like Michael Licona's "The Resurrection of Jesus: A new historiographical approach".  Even if God existed, the fact that Christianity is false would mean, at best, that Christians are no less likely to be in severe trouble with god too, not just atheists.

(3) and (4) are basically the sad out argument that a law of nature needs a law maker, failing to realise that a law in nature is quite different to a legal law. 

wrong on 2 commits: (1) I don't argue from a lawmaker analogy,I never assumed it;s a legislator and say that.(2) saying indicative of mind does not make it the legislature analogyy .The law-like dependability is that the thing being described (assuming Physical laws are observations of universal behavior ) is unfailing as though obeying.  mind is indicated due to purposiveness but not from analogy but from the behavior of the universe,

From the fact of supernovas and asteroids colliding with planets, I'm not seeing anything about the behavior of the universe that exhibits intelligent "purpose".  For one thing if you can get intelligent purpose out of "the behavior of the universe" you could also get it from why a rock breaks up the way it does upon hitting the ground, in which case because you see intelligent purpose in literally everything, you have left open no possibility of unintelligent purpose, and therefore your position proves too much.  You also soud like a Calvinist, since if there is intelligent purpose to the way the universe works, there's also intelligent purpose behind why the dice rolled the way they did.  The only reason people win or lose at craps is because God is there, causing the dice to fall the way they do.

Regardless, the god of the bible is a sadistic lunatic, so i would no more serve him merely because of his privileged power, than I'd sever equally sadistic space aliens if they came to earth and started flaunting their power.  If God wants me to believe in him, he apparently has the willingness to use his power to make me change my mind (Ezra 1:1) so you could also say my atheism is in part arising from god's being guilty of parental neglect.

(5) "fits the major job description"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

Ot's spot on and you know  ot/ Again your assumption is a priori no God therefore a prori no god. it is such an obvious fit you can;t have it,  you reonl yspoiuting ieologicalbroimides at it

Sorry, this is incoherent.

Then (6)... Well, it turns out that you do use the word "warrant" when using this argument too! 

  Not in the argument, but as the decisions making paradigm is exactly how Isaid it is sed, you do not understand the issues involved .

 Same answer.

So your claim that you do not use "warrant" in all your arguments is based on two arguments, both of which do exactly what I said! 

It's not in the argument dumb ass it;s over it,
Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 8:14 AM No comments:

Same answer.

once again, Metacrock's belief that atheists are irrational to deny god's existence is a complete waste of time even if true:

a) so many Christians complain of god's hiddenness, it's enough to justify the atheist in saying that if spiritually alive people struggle so much with this, only a fool would "expect" a spiritually dead person to understand such mystical bullshit;

b) being irrational about a belief doesn't really contribute to one's harms in life, therefore, the fact that one's belief is "irrational" doesn't even "require" that they "worry" about the belief possibly being incorrect.  Let's say some dipshit believed the Bermuda Triangle is caused by space aliens.  However, he never says these aliens are going to make your life miserable if you don't believe in them (like Metacrock and his deaf, dumb and mute god).  He never says these aliens desire for you to see them (like metacrock whose god doesn't have anything to say about being "seen").  This Bermuda Triangle apologist simply carps that you are unreasonable to disbelieve his thesis because to accept it is to become more loving (like Metacrock says about atheists).

Well gee, does that mean you forget how to eat, where you work, who your kids are, or perhaps that drinking bleach would help get rid of the flu, all because one of your beliefs is "irrational"?  No.  I've been an atheist for more than 20 years.  I am not plagued with any problem that don't plague a million mature fundamentalist Christians and a million mature liberal Christians.  Ok, why should somebody worry in the slightest that their belief or lack of belief is irrational, when this alone doesn't imply the least bit of a threat to anything they care about?  It isn't like atheism is going to turn somebody into a child molester (atheism doesn't preach a morality, so an atheist's morality derives solely from whatever moral system her genetic predisposition leads her to favor).

Metacrock is merely doing what he's been doing for 20 years: screaming his head off about the serious importance of a type of "experience" that proves itself to be horrifically unreliable and deceptive.

If I wanted to believe that soda pop only comes from the planet Mercury, why should I give a fuck that the belief is irrational?  There are no hurtful consequences to such belief, so why should I give a shit whether it is "rational" or "irrational"?  I can hear Metacrock now grabbing the mic and doing the karaoke version of "Aquarius", and "expecting" the people at the bar to start acting like members of the Mormon Tabernacle choir.

Metacrock also forgets that because people are human psychological creatures, the mere fact that they gain a sense of daily fulfillment believing the way they do is precisely why "argument" alone is often very ineffective in changing people's minds.  That is, Metacrock is not going to change an atheist's mind by insisting that mystical Christian experience is found by empirical testing to enhance one's sense of love.

I'm also suspicious that Metacrock favors the liberal "love" view of God in the bible, when in fact the bible is replete with proofs that its god is a sadistic lunatic who delights to inflict harm and misery on children who disobey.  Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63...and don't forget that liberals like Metacrock automatically and arbitrarily dismiss anything in their bible that they don't like.

Metacrock also forgets that one's choice to deny religion might be the way their brain fights back against prior past abuses.  While the previously raped woman is unreasonable to thereafter think that every man is a potential rapist, you also cannot really blame her, given the hell she was put through.  It is similar to Christianity: while it might not be reasonable for the person who came out of an abusive form of Christianity to say that entire religion is a 100% bullshit, you also cannot really blame such a person for reaching such a broad-brushing conclusion.  While I find Christianity to be false, I refuse to say that anybody who joins the cause is therefore unreasonable.  Mormonism is false, but if the single girl chooses to join and just wrap her life around it because Mormon ideas of family are closest to her own, I'm not going to call her unreasonable.  People tend to go where they are loved, and they do so for reasons that often do not include "compelling argument" beyond the fact that everybody yearns to be loved by others.  And given that "theology" is about as important as the Cheshire Cat, the person who joins a church more for the empirically demonstrable social benefits and less because of its "theology" is not being unreasonable.  Mammals need food and social roots far more than they need "theology".

Are you starting to notice that Metacrock is irrational for pretending that irrationality of a belief is some show-stopping important danger?  If your belief that your peanut butter sandwich talks to Elvis, doesn't cause you to become an unsafe driver, or to set your house on fire, or let your kids starve to death, etc etc, then why should anybody care any more about that belief, than they care about what your favorite Disney character is?

Metacrock also forgets to note that his own dogshit bible encouraged people to do things that encourage their minds to become irrational, such as the biblical command that you give suffering people free alcohol for the purpose of helping them forget their troubles temporarily:

 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, It is not for kings to drink wine, Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
 5 For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
 6 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, And wine to him whose life is bitter.
 7 Let him drink and forget his poverty And remember his trouble no more.
 (Prov. 31:4-7 NAU)

Sure, Metacrock doesn't like bible verses that encourage alcoholism, but given that bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, I don't really give a fuck if the alcoholism interpretation of this passage contradicts anything else in the bible, that interpretation is certainty justified by the grammar and context, and the single solitary reason Christian commentators hem and haw about this is because they know a straightforward obedience to this verse would contradict NT ethics. I have already steamrolled the fuckhead who tried his best to pretend that "give" doesn't mean "give" in this passage.  See here.

So far, I haven't seen Metacrock answer the argument from religious language, to wit: "god" constitutes an incoherent concept, because the only basis for the dictionary definition is even further ad hoc postulates that also cannot be shown to be true.  It is like pretending "Casper the Friendly Ghost" is "coherent" because somebody somewhere defines him as a "non-physical life form that likes to tell jokes".  When the definition of a word is not tethered to anything empirically demonstrable, you are ill-advised to pretend this crap you believe in is as true as the existence of trees.  That is, you are ill-advised to act like a Christian.

I'll do a few more, than I'm done with this.

from http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/, Metacrock pitches his book as follows:

Arguments for God from religious experience have always been considered a secondary level of argument.

That's because the diverse nature of the alleged experiences makes their purely naturalistic basis far more probable than the trifle that they experience the same god in different ways, and since all people tested are human mammals, the traits all such experiences shared can also be explained in purely naturalistic terms.  Show me a mystical experience that gives the experiencer new knowledge they more than likely couldn't have gotten in a naturalistic way, and I'll start giving a shit about somebody else's hallucinations. Deal?

And as a reminder, once again, all Metacrock is doing is "arguing for God's existence", when in fact Jesus' remaining dead for 20 centuries makes god's existence irrelevant even if true.  IF jesus didn't rise from the dead, the fact that so many billions in history thought he DID, testifies to the horrifically deceitful nature of religion...as if Catholicism and modern Christianity didn't already.

It's always been assumed that their subjective nature makes them weak arguments.

Then you cannot fault a person for becoming a Mormon, and thus denying what you think is the "true" gospel, because they had a private religious experience they interpret to mean the Holy Spirit was telling them the Book of Mormon is true.  As soon as you say other empirical evidence shows that experience to be false, you render the experience completely unnecessary to consider.  You can know from empirical evidence alone whether a religious experience is true or false.

One also wonders what Metacrock would have to say to Aborigines and others who for centuries were happy to smoke drugs so that they could, in their subjective religious experience, talk to the spirits.  Does empirical evidence falsify their drug-induced fantasies, yes or no?

The atheist scared to death of subjectivity.

Because being led around by subjective religious "experiences" provides not the slightest protection against false belief, especially given that the bible has not motivated even thousands of "cultists" who believe in "Christ", to fear that their subjective experiences are deceptions from the devil.  Once a person chooses the subjective over the objective, there's no telling what degree of stupidity they will fall into, while with empiricism, your concern to interpret the real world correctly is a somewhat more laudable goal.

This work, compiling empirical scientific studies that show that religious experience is not the result of emotional instability but are actually good for psychologically, constitutes a ground breaking work that places religious experiences on a higher level.

Nice to know that you approve of the Mormon religious experience.  I can understand why you are a liberal.

The Trace of God is an exposition (445 pages) employing both philosophical investigation and social science research. The book analyzes and discusses a huge body of empirical research that has up to this point been primarily known only in circles of psychology of religion, and has been over looked by theology, apologetics, Philosophy of religion and more general discipline of psychology.

In other words, the religious experience of Christian "apologists" did not open their eyes to these studies that would help promote their cause...almost as if the god who is guiding them is actually dead....or doesn't care...or finds it funny to prevent his followers from knowing the best arguments...

This body of work needs to be known in each of these interested groups because it demonstrates through hundreds of studies over a 50 year period, the positive and vital nature of the kind of religious experience known as “mystical.”

Except that Jesus stayed dead, which means any "god" that is actually out there, is so utterly amorphous as to be undeserving of serious concern.

Even though most of the studies deal with “mystical” experience, linking studies also apply it to the “born again experience” as well as “the material end of Christian experience.”

What's funny about the Christian religious "experience" is that not even a combination of this and a copy of the same bible used by everybody else, is sufficient to prevent these people from disagreeing with each other, even to the point of insisting that each other's religious experiences are false.  You'll excuse me if I conclude that private religious 'experiences' heighten a person's tendency to espouse false doctrine.

Read Jeremiah 17:9.

The book opens with a discussion as to why arguments for the existence of God need not “prove” God exists, but merely offer a “warrant for belief.”

But since "warrant for belief" does not render the opposing position "foolish", your warrant for belief does not form any degree of intellectual compulsion upon the atheist, which means YOU are the fool for pretending that your case is so overwhelming.  Hell, Mormon apologists can show "warrant for" Mormon belief, but does that put you under the least amount of intellectual compulsion to adopt their beliefs?  NO.

It discusses why there can’t be direct empirical evidence for God and why that is not necessary.

In other words, the world needs to know that the literal interpredtation of the OT which most of the Christian church adopted for 2,000 years, was false, despite whatever smarts they obtained from their religious 'experience'. That is, their religious experience deluded them.

It also lays out criteria for rational warrant. In Chapter two it presents two arguments that are based upon religious experience and then shows how the various studies back them up. This is not an attempt to present directly empirical evidence for God but to show that religious experiences of a certain kind can be taken as “the co-determinate” or God correlate. It’s not a direct empirical view of God that is presented but the “God correlate” that indicates God, just as a fingerprint or tacks in the snow indicate the presence of some person or animal.

Then you misunderstand science.  Fingerprints would be direct evidence of some person, and that directness doesn't fade merely because the print can possibly be forged.  Anything can be forged or misunderstood...does that mean there's no such thing as direct evidence?

Religious experiences of this kind are the “trace of God.” These studies demonstrate that the result of such experiences is life transforming.

So far, Jesus wants you to become a Mormon, because look at how transformed the lives of Mormons are.  Nice going.  But as a liberal, you actually embrace Christian diversity despite the fact that the NT in large part condemns the idea that Christians should be divided on doctrine.

This term is understood and used to indicate long term positive and dramatic changes in the life of the one who experiences them. People are released form bondage to alcohol and drugs, they tend to have less propensity toward depression or mental illness, they are self actualized, self assured, have greater sense of meaning and purpose, generally tend to be better educated and more successful than those who don’t have such experiences.

Are you fucking kidding me?  Its as if this dumbass never heard of "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

I have to wonder whether Metacrock's book deals with the fact that the vast majority of Christians do not claim a supernatural ability to deal with life's problems, or the fact that non-Christians notice that Christians appear to be just as limited to physical means as anybody else in trying to cope with life's issues.  Apparently, becoming a Christian involves nothing more mystical than adding biblical theology to the stuff one studies on Sunday.

These studies prove that religious experience is not the result of mental illness or emotional instability.

Studies also prove that dreaming during sleep isn't caused by mental illness or emotional instability. But its fantasy-land nonetheless.

The methodology of the studies (which includes every major kind of study methodology in the social sciences) is discussed at length. One of the major aspects of the book is the discussion of the “Mysticism scale” (aka “M scale”) developed by Dr. Ralph Hood Jr. at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The importance of this “M scale” (that is a test made up of 32 questions) is that it serves as a control on the valid religious experience.

But since "god" cannot even be coherently defined, testing for valid religious experience is sort of on the order of testing for valid alien invisibility.

One can know through the score on the test if one’s experience is truly “Mystical” or just “wool gathering.”

Except that since nobody can show increase in knowledge solely by "mystical" experience, it ultimately draws from the person themselves, not from anywhere else.

Without a control we can’t know if one has had a true experience and thus we can’t measure their effects.

Contrary to your own bible that says there IS a way to determine whether somebody's mystical experience is valid.

Being able to establish that one has had true “mystical experience” one can determine that the effects of that experience are positive and long term.

God wants people to be Mormons.

Thus that sets up the rationally warranted arguments for God.

Which are irrelevant because Jesus stayed dead, at which point you really couldn't say whether the "god" who allegedly exists finds atheism or Christianity to be more worthy of his wrath.

... It also implies that God is working in all faiths.

I think I just found out why Metacrock has never gained any traction with any serious Christian ministry.  he thinks the Mormon's "experience" is more important than the doctrinal truth that Paul said was important enough to divide fellowship over (Titus 3:9-11).  I suppose Metacrock gets rid of bible-based rebuttals by simply disagreeing with whatever part of the bible he doesn't like.

The Author, Joseph Hinman, is a Christian and he does believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ but he also recognizes God’s prevenient grace to all people.

Metacrock must think apostle Paul was a fool...the "danger" of rejecting the gospel is nowhere near the urgent level that motivated Paul to go buzzing around as if he were trying to save screaming children from burning buildings...and getting himself martyred in the process because of his intolerably high level of fanaticism thereto.

I guess the most powerful rebuttal to Metacrock's obsession with irrelevancy is the same one I hurled at him 20 years ago:  You have not demonstrated the significance of "god", nor have you demonstrated that atheism poses the least bit of a "threat" or "danger" to anybody.  You have not demosntrated that a person who would rather live life as they like instead of signing up for some mystical self-help course are "irrational" or "unreasonable".  You are instead simply screaming out that something you choose to waste your time researching is of paramount importance...only to find out later that all we are missing out on is "sunshine and candy lambs".

I'll pass.  The historical evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection is pitifully weak, and nothing about your message indicates the danger or loss of ignoring mystical experience is any worse than the danger and loss that looms when one stares at one's zits in the mirror.  Finally, too many Christians have decried the alleged "loving" benefits of being religious, for me to believe your song and dance that only good things will happen if I start telling myself the key to happiness is religious mysticism.