Atheism is not inconsistent with the scientific method

Triablogue, never tiring in its quest to prove that all things non-Christian are just so much crazy nonsense, links to an article (here, here)  saying atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method.  The physicist in question is Marcelo Gleiser.

I now respond to the relevant portion of that article.  Genereally, Gleiser does a liberal tap dance, and spends no time whatsoever showing any contrast being basic atheism and the scientific method.  Instead, he notes that some atheists are too extreme and end up embracing scientism.  Let's just say I didn't start shaking with nervousness because the guy attacking atheism was a "prizewinning physicist".  However, I noted that by putting "prizewinning physicist" into the title of the article, the author correctly believed it would hook a lot of people who routinely and happily commit the argument-from-authority fallacy.

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

Then there is nothing to debate, because all statements from prizewinning physicists are by logical necessity self-evidently true.  Did you notice how I pissed myself with worry upon reading the title to that article?

Why are you against atheism?
I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration.

First, I attack the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus by critiquing the arguments from Mike Licona, Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig.  Paul admitted that to falsify Christianity was to turn Christians into false witnesses (1st Corinthians 15:15).  If those arguments are successful, the best the Christian could do to save face would be to invoke the YHWH of the OT (i.e., just because Jesus didn't rise from the dead doesn't mean there's no god). 

That's correct.  But if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that turns Jesus and Paul into "false witnesses".  Assuming the true god does not inspire falsehood, then the OT YHWH must be presumed to view Christianity as heresy.  Even assuming Jesus and Paul worked genuinely supernatural miracles, the OT still condemns them to the death penalty:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 18 'I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.   (Deut. 18:18-22 NAU)

The point?  If my arguments against Jesus' resurrection are reasonable, I am equally reasonable to believe that the OT god is just as pissed off at Christians as he is at atheists.  At least we can say the bible doesn't make the death penalty for atheists anywhere near as clear as it does the death penalty for false prophets.

Second, atheism need not be categorical.  Atheism simply means lack of belief in god, or a belief that no god exists.  That's all. Atheism does not dictate the level of dogmatism that an atheist should have about atheism's truth.

Third, "belief in non-belief" was intended to make the reader draw the conclusion that atheism harbors a self-contradictory premise.  Not true.  Atheists do not deny the fact that belief exists.  They simply reject one of those beliefs.  If you deny the existence of the tooth-fairy, are you guilty of belief in non-belief?  No, you are only asserting that one particular belief is unworthy of your assent.

Fourth, atheism is not guilty of "I have no evidence for or against".  You probably deny the existence of the tooth-fairy.  Does her non-existence mean you "have no evidence for or against"?  No.  Rather, your basis for denying the tooth-fairy is clear:  the evidence in favor of her existence is horrifically unpersuasive.  Wel gee, guess why atheists don't believe in 'god'.

But in science we don’t really do declarations.

That's right.  And as shown above, atheism is simply a belief about a proposition, and like science, atheism doesn't dictate the level of dogmatism with which atheists should consider the proposition true.  Scientists disagree with each other all the time on whether some proposition is true, false, better supported than others, etc.  Atheism doesn't demand that its followers be fanatical about it.  it isn't like there is some magical book out there in support of atheism which says "be ye transformed by the renewing of your brain" (Romans 12:2) ..."blessed are they who have not seen and yet have disbelieved" (John 20:29), "whatsoever is not of disbelief is criminal", (Romans 14:23), nor do atheists think the only way they can better themselves is to gather in groups on Sunday with other people who agree that one magic book has all the answers to life, etc, etc., and they usually don't hurl the worst possible curses at other atheists merely for disagreeing with them about certain beliefs (Galatians 1:8-9).

We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that.

One reason I am a "strong" atheist is because the word "god" is, like 'spirit', incoherent.  it refers to nothing demonstrably real, and produces about as much good as does debating the concept "creation from nothing".
Since Christians refuse to believe their god can be physical, they cannot refute atheism by speculating the existence of advanced space aliens with god-like powers.  If they wish to say God can be physical, I would not be as opposed to that as I am to the idea of an "immaterial" god.

This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys

I would agree that there are serious problems with some of the fodder thrown around by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  But the "new atheists" are not necessarily consistent with the basic definition of atheism.  Atheism doesn't recommend publishing books about how religion poisons everything, or books on how matter not guided by any intelligence still ends up becoming more complexly organized when there are certain types of energy inputs.  Atheism is just atheism.  How far you want to take the concept, is, like Christianity, up to nobody but you.

—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation.

yup, there's money to be made off the fact that people disagree about religion.

It’s not just me; it’s also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank, and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.

That's your first problem:  Unless you define "spirituality" in material physical terms, you'll be talking about something that has no demonstrable tether to the real world.  Making one wonder why human beings are so dependent on their 5 senses (which detect nothing but physical realities).  Something tells me that at the end of the day, paying more attention to physically sensed realities is probably going to be better than paying attention to "non-physical" stuff. 

So, a message of humility, open-mindedness and tolerance.

Sorry, I cannot be openminded to the possibility that an incoherent concept is an actual reality.

Other than in discussions of God, where else do you see the most urgent need for this ethos?

You know, I’m a “Rare Earth” kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism—the ‘principle of mediocrity’ that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, “You know what? It’s time to get beyond that.”

No, I argue that the universe is infinite in size, and therefore, the earth is about as unique as a grain of sand on a beach.  See here.  The idea that there is a limit the amount of 'stuff' in the universe is just plain foolish.  In one of my rebuttals to Frank Turek, I quoted:

"There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

See my full rebuttal to Turek here.

When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing.

We naturally cease to be amazed at x if we have reason to believe x is very common.

And maybe, yes, there are others out there, possibly—who knows, we certainly expect so—but right now what we know is that we have this world, and we are these amazing molecular machines capable of self-awareness, and all that makes us very special indeed.

Life forms naturally prioritize their own importance.  To do otherwise is to perish, which is the exact opposite of the body's tendency to try and continue living.

And we know for a fact that there will be no other humans in the universe; there may be some humanoids somewhere out there, but we are unique products of our single, small planet’s long history.

As an atheist, I argue that we have a theory of human worth superior to that of Christians:  most people agree that worth arises from rarity.  The more rare or unique something is, the more we either value it in money-terms, or desire to have it in our possession.  Many collectors of antiques would not wish to sell.  In this atheist universe, yes, that which makes up you is probably never going to happen again.  That's how you draw legitimacy and purpose from temporal significance, even admitting that it doesn't sound as yummy and exciting as drawing legitimacy and purpose from ultimate significance. No fool avoids going to the store to buy a candy bar merely because this would not be significant on an ultimate or cosmic scale.  Every single one of us recognizes how important it is that we often look away from the clouds and make sure we aren't driving the car off the edge of a cliff.

The point is, to understand modern science within this framework is to put humanity back into kind of a moral center of the universe, in which we have the moral duty to preserve this planet and its life with everything that we’ve got, because we understand how rare this whole game is and that for all practical purposes we are alone.

Except that this does not follow unless you care about future generations of human beings, and we can manifest such care in ways that do not involve taking care of the dirt.  I care about future people enough to write rebuttals to false fundamentalist religion, but not enough to convert my car from gas to electric.

For now, anyways. We have to do this! This is a message that I hope will resonate with lots of people, because to me what we really need right now in this increasingly divisive world is a new unifying myth. I mean “myth” as a story that defines a culture. So, what is the myth that will define the culture of the 21st century? It has to be a myth of our species, not about any particular belief system or political party.

That means you refuse to see Christianity as true, which means Triablogue's posting the link to your article indicates Triablogue has gone liberal.  Go ahead and let the devil babysit your kids.

How can we possibly do that? Well, we can do that using astronomy, using what we have learned from other worlds, to position ourselves and say, “Look, folks, this is not about tribal allegiance, this is about us as a species on a very specific planet that will go on with us—or without us.” I think you know this message well.

The stupid presuppostionalists at Triablogue would disagree and say you aren't engaged in 'true' learning if you attempt to take in naturalistic knowledge absent a specifically Christian philosophical foundation.

I do. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment, only because earlier you referred to the value of humility in science. Some would say now is not the time to be humble, given the rising tide of active, open hostility to science and objectivity around the globe. How would you respond to that?

This is of course something people have already told me: “Are you really sure you want to be saying these things?” And my answer is yes, absolutely. There is a difference between “science” and what we can call “scientism,” which is the notion that science can solve all problems.

Exactly, and I've never heard of any atheist who thought science can solve all problems.  Humanity, being what it is, does not appear likely to ever evolve to a state where they no longer disagree with each other.   So I see no basis for thinking science can solve all problems.  And the universe being infinite in size is definitely something that science will never be able to "solve", since it takes limited human beings to measure the universe, and we can never be knowledgeable of everything existence has to offer.

To a large extent, it is not science but rather how humanity has used science that has put us in our present difficulties. Because most people, in general, have no awareness of what science can and cannot do. So they misuse it, and they do not think about science in a more pluralistic way. So, okay, you’re going to develop a self-driving car? Good! But how will that car handle hard choices, like whether to prioritize the lives of its occupants or the lives of pedestrian bystanders? Is it going to just be the technologist from Google who decides? Let us hope not!

Now you know why I agree with Joseph Tainter that because America incessantly insists on becoming more and more complex, American society is certain to collapse.

snip.

Wow.  I've suddenly stopped being an atheist.  And all because a "prizewinning" physicist thinks atheism inconsistent with the scientific method.  LOL.  All he did was prove the admitted stupidity of certain extreme forms of atheism that misrepresent science's abilities.

Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's stupidity in pushing the Enfield Poltergeist

Jason Engwer can't seem to get enough of the Enfield Poltergiest case.  See here.

Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.

I've got news for Engwer.  There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.

For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.

1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead.  So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years.  In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected.  Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!"   Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in.  How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?

Let's inquire anyway:  What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?

Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise,  would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).

But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:

First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable".  That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".

Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT?  Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence.  How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him?  Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?

Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists.  Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.   (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)

But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence.  Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death?  It doesn't.

If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.

In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are.  If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.

Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life.  The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap.  As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist. 

This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".

And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are?  We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.

A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say.  Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years. 

For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence.  After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?"  And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9).  The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities".  Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.

Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years.  Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history.  Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.

Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive. 

This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.

Triablogue: Steve Hays' lies about his perfect moral character

This is my reply to a blog post by Steve Hays at Triablogue, entitled

Why not commit apostasy?

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The primary reason I wouldn't commit apostasy is because the case for Christianity is overwhelming, based on multiple lines of evidence, direct and indirect, public and private.

Sorry, Steve, but you are forgetting your own Calvinism:  The ONLY reason you allegedly find the evidence for Christianity to be overwhelming is because God has foisted irresistable grace upon you.  Consult your own irresistible grace interpretation of 1st Cor. 4:7 and John 6:44.  Your audience would have gotten a bit more honest of an answer had you said that it is only by god's grace that you are capable of appreciating the force of Christian apologetics evidences.  But the answer you gave makes it appear that you are capable of recognizing, on your own, without grace, that Christianity is true, no less than a jury is capable, without divine grace, of appreciating the force of an attorney's argument.

But for now, your attempt to sound as if you can independently vouch for the persuasiveness of the gospels, contradicts your own Calvinistic belief that you can do nothing, at all, except what God has infallibly predestined you to do.  So in your view, the ultimate reason you find Chrstianity persuasive is the same as the reason the atheist finds it unpersuasive:  God predestined us to believe the precise way that we do.  Since that predestination-decree was "infallible" (i.e., incapable of failing, see dictionary) then my espousing atheism, and your espousing Calvinism, were worldview choices that were incapable of failing. 

But either way, a skeptic could just as easily assert the contrary, that they will never convert to Christianity because the evidence is so weak.  That's exactly what I say:   After reviewing the apologetics arguments set forth by the likes of Licona, Habermas and Bill Craig, I feel supremely confident asserting that the hypothesis that Jesus has stayed dead consistently ever since he died on the cross, has far more explanatory scope and power, and is thus more likely, than the supernatural hypothesis that he resurrected.

Of course, you are a Calvinist and thus a presuppositionalist, and you will assert that my denial of theism (and other things like Total Inability) is precisely why I cannot see the power of resurrection evidences. What you are obviously missing is that I don't just opine that Licona, Habermas and Craig are wrong.  I have specific articulable reasons for finding many of their arguments fallacious, or their evidence unpersuasive.  The only fool here is the idiot who thinks Romans 1:20 is the answer to why unbelievers think the gospel is false.  At least I'm not resorting to the words of some 2,000 year old pagan rambler to "explain" why Steve Hays doesn't see the truth of naturalism.

But there are additional considerations:
i) It would be a betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline.

Then you cannot fault skeptics if one of their reasons for refusing to apostatize from skepticism is that it would be a "betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline."

I care what happens to them.

Skeptics also care what happens to the younger generation of skeptics.  If such care is sufficient to justify your own stability of worldview, why wouldn't it be sufficient to justify my stability of worldview? Is there some law of the universe that says only bible-believing Christians are allowed to make use of convenient excuses?

It would be as if I know the way out of the cave, but I keep that to myself. I refuse to show lost men, women, and children the way out of the cave. I leave them there to die in the dark, leave them there to die of thirst. Even if I personally wanted to commit suicide in the cave, I have a duty to show the lost the way out of the cave, and go back for more.

We skeptics feel the same duty to show the lost the way out of the fundamentalist cave.

ii) As a Christian blogger, I've had enormous exposure to apostates and atheists.

As a skeptical blogger, I've had enormous exposure to Christian apologists.

I find them repellent.

I find Christian apologists repellent.

Even if I lost my faith, I'd far rather continue attending church than spend my time in the social company of apostates and atheists.

But since you couldn't attend church as an atheist being honest about your atheism for very long before the congregation sees you as an "apostate" and wants to kick you out, the only way you could avoid being exposed like that is to lie and pretend you are still a Christian.  being honest with them about your apostasy means you'd bounce around from church to church.  Which would then mean that as an atheist you were trying to subvert 2nd Cor. 6:15 and cause your darkness to have fellowship with their light.  Those churches would have obvious biblical justification to demand that you leave, so, like I said, bounce.  Perhaps you meant that if you became an atheist, you'd prefer to attend liberal churches?

Which is exactly why my argument about certain Christian apologists secretly being atheists, but not daring to admit it, is a powerful consideration.  If Steve Hays actually was an atheist, there is no reason to think he would honestly admit it, as he has invested far too much time and energy into getting others to be dazzled at his intellectual brilliance in accepting Christ and defending the faith. 

But for all we know, you are just another Ted Haggard waiting to be exposed.

The day you admit being an atheist is the day you admit that Christianity is so deceptive, even "smart guys" like you can get hoodwinked by it for decades.  You want the world to believe you are a smart guy.  You are not about to honestly admit it if you seriously become an atheist.  Smart guys don't miss the forest for the trees for decades at a time, remember?

They'd make dreadful company. People who think this life is enough are unbearably shallow, and willfully superficial.

Thanks for confirming that you mistake atheism as being limited to the personas emitted by those select atheists who specialize in bashing Christian fundamentalist.  There is no reason to think you have any real-time experience with atheists who stay away from religious debates.  If you were a "smart guy", you'd know that in real life, most atheists do not simply bash Christianity 24 hours per day.  As you admit, your interactions with atheists have more to do with their online presence as skeptics, and little or none to do with living with them on a day-to-day basis. 

Surely a smart guy like you realizes that you don't get a correct impression of a person simply because you see what they blog about.  Reading their posts doesn't cause you to notice other truths that come from interacting with them in real-time face to face.  But your incessant addiction to blogging has probably caused you to mistake your computer screen for actual human compansionship.  You probably get more pleasure from email than an handshake.

And how many would take a bullet for a friend.

That's a rather useless comparison, you have no fucking clue whether "Christians" would be more willing to die for each other than atheists would be willing to die for each other, especially given Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace's constant dirge that today's Christians are falling away from the faith faster than they did in previous generations. See here.

But in fact the comparison is invalid, as you are assuming that "true" friends would be willing to lay down their lives for each other, when in fact what friendship "must" minimally consist of is horrifically subjective, there is no absolute moral that says one's relationship iwth another cannot be "friends" until they both agree that they would die for each other. 

Two guys meet at Starbucks and become "buddies" who sometimes go out chasing woman at bars together, or hand each other work every now and then.  This qualifies as "friendship" even if it doesn't imply that one would be willing to give up their lives to save the other.  Then we have the man who meets the woman, they have sex, they like each other, but not in the relationship way, so they maintain "fuck buddy" status.  Your bible is not their standard, so if they choose to call their interactions "friendship" despite your automatic resorting to the bible, they are not unreasonable, as once again, "friendship" is highly subjective, and isn't dictated by what the bible says.  It's dictated by how two people feel about each other.  Otherwise, you'd have to say kids cannot be friends with one another, since the interactions with each other that they call "friendship" often do not evince the deep concern for other's lives that implies willingness to die for others.

And since atheists don't believe in an afterlife, their prioritizing their own lives above those of their friends is merely consistent with their beliefs, and represents a harsh truth that a lot of people are guilty of lying about.  We can only wonder how many smooth talking Christians ("I'd die for you") would be proven liars if placed in a situation that put that claim to a real test. 

Have fun pandering to the stupid idiot masses that Christianity facilitates that  deeper camaraderie we all wish for, but then you'll be deluged by an onslaught of Christians who will happily testify to how they were shit-canned as soon as the church found out they didn't believe precisely as the church required.  Friends "in Christ" means exactly that and nothing more:  No longer in Christ?  No longer your friend.  FUCK YOU.  

In fairness, there's the occasional atheist who will take a bullet for a friend, but nothing is dumber than idealistic atheists. That's not an attitude I respect or admire.

Then you are just as ignorant about morality's relationship to atheism as Frank Turek is.  I've already refuted his bullshit thesis that atheism leaves a person with no ability to justify having any specific morals.  I've also refuted his bullshit thesis that there are some morals that cannot be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms (i.e., moral argument for god).  See here.

I'm not talking about friendship evangelism or outreach to unbelievers. I'm talking about the notion that the company of apostates and atheists would ever be an appealing alternative to Christian friendship and fellowship.

Then the fact that atheists can be mature adults and yet derive just as much sense of fulfillment from their interactions with one another, as you allegedly derive from interactions with other Christians, opens the door to the highly probable possibility that atheist have a side to them that doesn't involve promoting gay pride parades or other liberal agendas.  I'm an atheist, and I think male homosexuality is revolting.  The atheists who think atheism automatically means duty to jump on the gay support band wagon are just stupid.  What works for two individuals in the privacy of their own home, obviously doesn't automatically translate into good national policy, because certain things that consenting adults do in private have a nasty habit of bring more and more corruption into being.  If I had my way, I'd enforce the death penalty for the manufacture, distribution or possession of alcoholic beverages and pornography, with profoundly persuasive justifications for the collateral damages that would inevitably ensue.

I'm afraid that you think the asshole atheists you've dealt with online constitute the sum and substance of all that real-time interaction with atheists has to offer. It isn't. It's not like every atheist in the world bashes Christianity.  You might try getting off the computer for once in your life and seek out atheists in real time to see how they interact with you where religion and apologetics are never the issue.  You might be surprised to discover that being a slave of Jesus isn't the only context within which legitimate friendship can emerge.  But alas, you only view this from the Calvinist side, you cannot help but maintain consistency and boo anything that might claim authenticity apart from the imperfect apostle Paul.

Hey Steve, how many times did you enjoy the company of an atheist (i.e., waitress, auto mechanic, librarian, cop, homeless, employer, etc,) without realizing that they were atheists?   You don't know, and you'll never know, but the odds are, you probably had plenty of friendly quick interactions with atheists.

Do you pay attention to Paul as often as atheists pay attention to money, fame, sex, power?  If so, then why doesn't the logic that says those atheists are "worshiping" that stuff, also require that YOU are "worshiping" Paul? 

I'd add that some people who lose their faith regain their faith. So maintaining Christian fellowship wouldn't just be a palliative.

I'd add that some skeptics who become Christians regain their skepticism.  So maintaining fellowship with other skeptics wouldn't just be a palliative.

Sorry Steve, but it appears that it sucked being you a LONG time ago.

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? Examining Atheistic Explanations for the Laws of Logic as “Brute Realities”

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Is God Real? 

Examining Atheistic Explanations for the Laws of Logic as “Brute Realities”

January 11, 2019 God

All rational discussions (even those related to the existence or non-existence of God) require the prior foundation of logical absolutes.

Which is precisely why the laws of logic are axiomatic or "brute truths".  If they are the foundation for all rational discussion, then they must be presumed true even for communications that ask about the origin of logic itself.  The only serious answer the atheist can give to "where does logic come from" would be an answer that is logically valid, thus committing the fallacy of begging the question. 

You can, of course, break the circle by giving a non-logical answer to that question, but then the lack of logic in your answer will justify the hearer to ignore the answer.  Hence, logic itself is properly exempt from questions of origin.  Those who disagree simply don't like the idea of "axioms".

Only theism, however, can adequately account for the existence of the transcendent Laws of Logic.

No, when theists 'account' for the existence of logic, the theist, like everybody else, is begging the question, since any answer she gives will have logic inhering in it already.  There is no possible way to appraise logic from the "outside", and we are forced to use logic to test logic, which is why it is automatically fallaciously circular to pretend one can "account for" logic itself.  You may as well use the shovel to dig around looking for the same shovel.

And your comment falsely presumes the laws of logic are "transcendent", which, to your audience, doesn't  mean "axiomatic", but rather "from God".

If God exists, He is the absolute, objective, transcendent standard of truth;

No, the god of the bible is not perfect (Genesis 6:6-7), and in the 1st century imperfect gods were routinely worshiped.  Being 'god' does not automatically prove some absolute objective standard of truth.  But your automatically equating "god" with "absolute" is what lots of ignorant Christians do.

the Laws of Logic are simply a reflection of His nature.

First, fallacy of begging the question.  Your answer is in logically correct form, which means your answer is assuming as true the very question at issue.  If you gave a non-logical answer, this would properly break the circle, but then nobody would listen to you.  You are thus using logic to test logic.

Second, you also say certain human morals are a reflection of god's nature (Frank Turek makes a big deal out of moral realism), but there, you admit we can violate this aspect of god's "nature", while we cannot violate the laws of logic.  That is, your "nature of god" explanation is full of holes.

Third, if logic is an inescapable truth of god's nature, and if people in hell won't be able to subvert the laws of logic, then your god will also be part of hell, when in fact the Christian babies you cater to insist that hell is "separation from God", not merely separation from his love.

We will shortly find out whether you have demonstrated that logical laws reflect 'god's' nature.

God did not create these laws. They exist as an extension of His rational thinking,

So you agree god has a physical brain?  Or will you say "non-physical thinking", then start citing to the Enfield Poltergeist and Amittyville horror to prove that non-material thinking is possible?

and for this reason, they are as eternal as God Himself.

But if fundamentalist evangelical scholars Copan and Flannagan are correct, "kill'em all" in the bible was a case of typical Semitic exaggeration.  We thus have to wonder if those other OT texts you read like a newspaper headline, are also less than literal...such as those texts that talk about how long god has existed...like Psalm 90:2.

Is God real?

No, "god" as defined in traditional theism is a completely incoherent concept, and just like "fairy" does not escape the criticism merely because we invented a definition for it. 

Without God as a source for the transcendent Laws of Logic, this question (and any logical journey toward the answer) would be impossible to examine.

So?  Logic is axiomatic, so the failure of "explanation" is all that can be expected, there is no such thing as accounting for the origin of axioms.

But then again, you only write for Christian babies, you have neither interest nor ability to take on the better informed skeptics like myself, so you likely perceive your "apologetics" arguments as little more than preaching.   So you need to stop wondering why skeptic find none of your apologetics the least bit compelling.

As an atheist, I rejected the existence of God and offered a number of objections and alternative explanations in an effort to account for the Laws of Logic.

Which meant that you were committing the fallacy of begging the question.  It also shows that back when you were an atheist, you either didn't know, or didn't care, what "axioms" were.

In yesterday’s post we outlined the theistic explanation for these laws. Today and tomorrow we’ll examine several naturalistic objections to see if any of them might offer a viable alternative. We’ll begin with efforts to describe the Laws of Logic as “brute realities” of the universe:
 Objection:
Aren’t the Laws of Logic simply the “brute” characteristics of reality? Both material and immaterial things must abide by boundaries of existence in order to exist in the first place. The “Laws of Logic” are simply a part of these boundaries. They are not transcendent laws from a Transcendent Mind; they are simply among the natural boundaries of existence.
 Both theists and atheists agree the Laws of Logic are brute somethings. Atheists might claim Logic is a brute, innate fact of existence, while theists might argue Logic is a brute, innate reflection of the nature and thinking of God. In either case, these laws would have to be eternal, uncaused and necessary.

No, logic is caused.  Logic is relative to language.  Where there is no language, there is no law of non-contradiction.  You may say matter never violates the law of non-contradiction in absence of language, but you cannot communicate that idea without language.  Having logic apart from language is like having spelling apart from letters.

Nothing can exist without the simultaneous existence of these laws. But let’s now look at how both sides account for their existence:
 On Atheism
The brute Laws of Logic simply exist. They are eternal and uncaused. Nothing can exist without them. That’s just the way it is.

Forgetting your "uncaused" falsehood, yes, the laws of logic are axiomatic, and therefore, properly exempt from the question of why they exist, or where they come from, except the obvious fact that they inhere in language.

On Theism
God is eternal, uncaused, omniscient and omnipotent.

You pretend as if classical theism is just as foregone a conclusion as Jesus' resurrection, despite your knowing that many Christian scholars deny God's "omniscience" and "omnipotence".

He is the all-knowing and all-powerful Creator;

same answer.

the necessary, uncaused first cause of all matter, space and time.

Except that there is no evidence, whatsoever, that matter itself can come into existence, and the 1st law of thermodynamics proves that the universe is of infinite age.  The reasonableness of that position is not going to disappear merely because you quote the bible or connect the big bang with Genesis 1:1.  You either show that matter itself can come into existence (which you won't do apart from favoring the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics over all the other schools), or you are forced to agree that there is no evidence that matter cannot come into existence, and therefore, if it does exist, has simply always existed.

He has thoughts and possesses a particular character, essence and nature.

So God has a physical brain?  Or will you cite to ghosts and things that go bump in the night and J.P. Moreland's defense of mind-body dualism to pretend that non-physical thinking is a legitimate concept?

Because He is all-powerful and all-knowing, these attributes are perfected (an all-powerful and all-knowing God has the power to eliminate imperfection).

Sorry, I'm not a classical theist, because the bible authors did an imperfect of job of covering up their god's imperfections.  if you don't need much of a reason to be completely apathetic toward a sadistic lunatic, I don't need much of a reason to ignore the divinely caused atrocities in Deut. 28:15-62, which that god will be "delighted" to inflict on disobedient people, v. 63.  Those atrocities include rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53-57).  No thanks.

The Laws of Logic are simply an attribute and reflection of God’s perfect existence;

But we can break the moral laws that you say are a reflection of his existence, so apparently, if something reflects god's nature, we can break it.  Since we cannot break logic, it probably doesn't reflect your god's nature.  Otherwise, you'll have to explain how humans could have ability to break god's morals but not his logic.  Before you tell the babies that god gave Adam and Eve "freewill", I suggest you consult with Steve Hays or other Christian who is a Five Point Calvinist.  I'll look you up again in about 35 years so I can see whether god's likeminded ones, armed with the same bible, were able to get their act together in how they understand god's "clear" word.

God does not create these laws, they are an innate and immutable aspect of His nature.

And space dust comes from flying pigs.

As God is necessary for all else to exist, so are the Laws of Logic. They are merely a reflection of His Being, and they permeate all of His creation.

You have demonstrated NOTHING.  You are simply insisting that it is so.  I don't feel sympathy for you because you should know enough to realize that when you are dealing with an issue that has no empirically demonstrable ties to physical reality, you are dealing in a horrifically nebulous area highly prone to flights of imaginative fancy.  No, atheists are not exempt from such stupidity. 

Both the atheist and the theist agree something is eternal, uncaused and necessary. But when the atheist says the Laws of Logic “simply exist”, he’s begging the question; he’s not providing an explanation for the eternal, uncaused and necessary existence of the laws (saying they exist does not provide us with an explanation for their existence).

That's because anything that is "axiomatic" is by definition exempt from the question of origin.  Apparently, you think it proper to ask where axioms come from, perhaps indicating your abilities in philosophy are no better than your abilities in apologetics.  But as long as your childish bullshit keeps the money rolling in, makes sense to be childish.

Theists, on the other hand, can make a case for God’s existence from a number of evidential lines, providing a reasonable foundation from which logical absolutes can then be elucidated.

Nope, I've already explained why logic is an axiom, and therefore, not subject to "where did it come from" analysis.

In addition, atheism fails to explain how the Laws of Logic can be eternal and uncaused and what role they play in causing all other contingent realities.

Because those logical laws are axiomatic, and hence properly exempt from efforts at "explaining" their basis or origin.

Theism, on the other hand, accounts for the existence of the Laws of Logic by pointing to the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent uncaused, first cause possessing perfect rationality (by virtue of His limitless power) who also acts as the first cause of all other dependent (contingent) creations.

No, you are just a classical theist who mistakes his classical theism for "theism" proper, despite knowing of other Christian scholars who deny classical theism and adopt open-theism.

Objection:
Aren’t the “Laws of Logic” simply the result of observations we make of the world in which we live? We discovered the Laws of Physics from our observations of the natural world; can’t we discover the Laws of Logic in a similar way?
 The Laws of Logic are conceptual. They only exist in the mind.

Which is physical.

They don’t describe physical behaviors or actions of matter, but instead describe conceptual truths.

Which is why they are nothing more than the function of language.

Logical axioms are statements dealing with conceptual patterns and processes of thought.

Oh, ok:  so you know that logic is axiomatic...so why are you pretending atheists cannot "account for" logic, when anything that is axiomatic is exempt from such questions?  Maybe your desire to preach is greater than your desire to understand correctly?

Consider the analogy to physics as a point of contrast. Newton’s three Laws of Motion (for example) may be conceptual as statements, but they describe actual physical behaviors we can observe. This is an important difference relative to the Laws of Logic. Logical absolutes cannot be observed and do not describe the behavior or actions of material objects.
 Now let’s consider an example atheism might present as proof we learn the Laws of Logic from our observations of the natural world. Someone might argue our careful observations of a sea shell, for example, reveal Laws of Logic. Recognizing the shell exists only as a shell (it is not a fish – nor does it ever become a fish) we might then posit and formulate the Law of Identity or the Law of Non-Contradiction. From this simple example, an atheist might claim the Laws of Logic can be discovered from observations of material objects.

Not this atheist...he knows that when we begin to use language to communicate about the sea shell, we will be presupposing the validity of the very logic that is being questioned.  Logic is axiomatic.  YOU are the one who is in the wrong for pretending we can legitimately inquire into logic's origin. The only thing we can say is that it is relative to language.  There are no "laws of logic" that matter "obeys" in the absence of language.  You have to use language, such as "why don't rocks violate the law of non-contradiction whenever language-producing life forms aren't nearby?"  No language?  No logic, real easy.  But even this attempt to locate the origin of logic commits the fallacy of begging the question since the attempt presupposes the validity of the logic being questioned.

But let’s think carefully about this.

Did you mean "let's use logic to evaluate itself"?

Yes, the shell does not change. And yes, we can observe this physical reality. But we then do something very interesting; we assign a logical absolute to the observation we just made.

Because we have language.

We assign something conceptual to our observation of matter. The mere fact we made an observation and then assigned a logical absolute to the observation does not then account for the existence of all logical absolutes in the first place.

I agree that the kind of atheist you respond to here, is indeed in the wrong.

Our observations may support the pre-existence of logical absolutes, but this does not mean our observations established the Laws of Logic. See the difference?

Yes, but you continue failing to see that because the law of logic are axiomatic, it is fallacious to ask for their basis or origin.  Once again, to even try to do so, is to beg the question, since your comments would be already presuming the very validity of the logic you are otherwise trying to 'account' for. 

We don’t form the Laws of Logic from the observations; we instead confirm the pre-existing logical truths with our observations.

Only if we have language.  Last I checked, bacteria don't wonder about the law of non-contradiction.  You will never demonstrate logic to exist apart from language.

The Laws of Logic pre-exist our arrival in the universe.

No, they are relative to language.  You may as well talk about "quickness" in absence of movement.

We discover them, and in so doing, discover something about the nature of the universe’s Creator.

Atheism's alleged wrongness is irrelevant:  Jesus' resurrection is provably false, which means Christianity is false, which means Christianity has been misrepresenting the OT YHWH for 2,000 years, and since the OT is far more explicit that God hates false prophets than that he hates those who completely ignore him (Deut. 13, Deut. 18), we can be sure that, if the god of Judaism is the god the Christian will fall back on after discovering Jesus didn't rise from the dead, this god is likely more pissed off at Christians than at atheists.

Hence, god's basic existence is irrelevant, even if true.  You simply have no credible evidence that the alleged "wrongness" of atheism is supposed to be some type of urgent danger.  Not so.  Also wouldn't matter if the danger to atheists was real, you cannot demosntrate any such contention.  Well gee, what do you do if you checked the house and found no intruders?  Stay outside forever merely because to be wrong is to risk death?  No.

The Laws of Logic pre-exist our arrival in the universe.

No, they are relative to language.

We discover them,

Because we have chosen to define certain things as opposites. 

Will J. Warner Wallace ever stop pushing his elementary school level apologetics?

This is my reply to yet another "pushing ignorance as knowledge" article by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

“There is no evidence for God’s existence!”

8:05 AM (2 hours ago)

How Would YOU Respond?

I respond to the version I recieved in email.

How would you respond to the objection that there "isn't any 'hard' evidence for the existence of God"?

I'd respond "I agree.  You refuse to take the Mormon view that God is physical, therefore, there couldn't logically be any "hard" evidence for God unless you arbitrarily defined "spirit" as "physical".

This complaint is commonly presented to young Christians

It's also commonly presented to Christians of any age, because it forces Christians to recognize that what they believe in, cannot be "proved" but only "inferred", and as such, is subject to numerous powerful objections.

and we, as their parents, educators and leaders, have a duty to help them respond.

If the Holy Spirit actually did anything more than exist as a biblical concept, i guess he would have a 'duty' to educate you as well.  But unfortunately, like the child who rationalizes Santa's inability to fit into a chimney, you don't care that nothing at all can be rationally credited to the Holy Spirit's direct intervention, you will simply tell yourself over and over that the Holy Spirit never does anything on his own, but only works "through" Christians...that way, you can always pretend that the Holy Spirit's work is real despite the fact that your own efforts are much better interpreted as  purely naturalistic phenomena.  Nothing was ever a more gratuitous afterthought, than "the Holy Spirit".  What are you gonna say next?  Angels are the only reason you weren't killed by a meteor today?

Here is one reasonable response we can give to skeptics, excerpted from a recent "Quick Shot" article:
“What do you mean by evidence? There are two forms of evidence: direct evidence (eyewitness testimony) and indirect evidence (everything else).

You started by addressing the question of "hard" evidence.  Since "hard" obviously means "direct" in this context, we have good reason to deny that "hard" evidence can also be "indirect".

Both forms of evidence are used to make cases in a court of law.

And hearsay is typically rendered inadmissible in a court of law, which would thus dispose of 99% of the biblical 'witness' to Jesus rising from the dead.  And that's just hearsay, when in fact the gospels have already been rendered inadmissible under the ancient documents rule...a rule used in courts that, with good reason, J. Warner Wallace doesn't think can help him in his desire to do what car salesman do...create a problem...sell the solution. That's right, kiddies...you cannot possibly live out your full potential in Christ unless you purchase materials authored by J. Warner Wallace. 

There is a large body of direct evidence for God’s existence, like the testimony of those who observed the Resurrection of Jesus

The trouble being that at best the only first-hand testimony to it is Matthew, John and Paul, everything else in the NT that testifies Jesus rose from the dead is second-hand, or other disqualified phenomena like dreams/visions, or testimonies that have been changed by textual variation.  I'd say 3 first-hand testimonies, whose first-hand nature is even disputed by Christian scholars (in the case of Matthew and John), is a pretty sad case for the resurrection of Jesus.  To say nothing of the other arguments that show them to be liars or deluded, such as arguments against miracles and against the alleged eyewitnesses' identities and authorship.

and the testimony of those who have experienced the miraculous intervention of God.

Sorry, for a couple of years I've been issuing a challenge to Christian scholar Craig Keener to provide checkable documentation for any "miracle" he claims has happened within the last 100 years, that he believes is the best attested. So far, no takers.  See here.  Likewise with every other claim propounded by those in Christianity who happen to disagree with their cessationist Christian brothers. (Isn't that a hoot?  Cessationist Christians believe miracles no longer happen, non-cessationists believe they still do.  Jesus, is there anything beyond Jesus' gender and God's existence that "Christians" agree on?).

There is also a large body of indirect evidence for God’s existence, like a universe that came into existence from nothing,

So god is like the parent who realizes the child is too ignorant to realize how dangerously they are to the camp fire, but who only uses "indirect" discussion and evidence to alert the child to this great danger.   You'll excuse me if I draw the conclusion that your camera-shy god's love for me is limited.

But for a more direct response: Since even Christian creationist organizations like AiG and ICR claim the big bang contradicts the bible and contradicts science too, you can hardly fault atheists who agree that the big bang contradicts the bible.  For example, Dr. Jason Lisle is a Christian astrophysicist who researches issues pertaining to science and the Christian Faith.  He says:

In fact, there are many contradictions between the big bang and the Bible.

...Therefore, for those who believe the Bible, the big bang is not an option. 

See here.  I'm an atheist, I'm not arguing that the big bang is false because it contradicts the bible.  That would be stupid.  I'm arguing that if even other Christians who are more educated on the big bang than J. Warner Wallace, insist that the Big Bang contradicts the bible, then atheists obviously cannot be considered 'unreasonable' to regard the big bang as unbiblical, and to accordingly laugh at J. Warner Wallace as somebody interested in pushing populist crap.  Let Wallace first engage the Christians who have formal education in astrophysics, who find the big bang unbiblical.  Let him host a debate between Christian apologists who accept it and Christian apologists who don't...then maybe his pointing to the big bang will appear to have somewhat more plausibility than the case of a child pointing to a dollar under their pillow as proof of the tooth fairy.

the naturalistically implausible appearance of fine-tuning in the universe,

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't say systems always tend toward disorder.  It says CLOSED systems tend toward disorder.

Evolution and the Second Law
Some critics claim that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because organization and complexity increases in evolution. However, this law is referring to isolated systems only, and the earth is not an isolated system or closed system. This is evident for constant energy increases on earth due to the heat coming from the sun. So, order may be becoming more organized, the universe as a whole becomes more disorganized for the sun releases energy and becomes disordered. This connects to how the second law and cosmology are related, which is explained well in the video below.

See here. Of course I would disagree with the view that it makes sense to talk about something to be true for "all" of the universe, since I view the universe as infinitely large and old, while the word "all" necessarily implies a limitation (all the bread, all the cars, etc).

The universe is full of stars which are sources of energy for the planets around them, so that entropy or disorganization can be stalled or decreased through energy input.  But for proof that complexity can increase without intelligent intervention, when water freezes, its atomic structure becomes more complex.  I guess this is the part where you insist that it never gets cold unless an intelligent god blows cold air?

the miraculous origin of life from inorganic matter,

God of the gaps fallacy.  Every time science admits it doesn't have the answer, you fill that hole with "god did it".  But it was only science alone that weaned you away from mistaking epilepsy fits for demonic possession...unless you wish to say that Jesus has imparted some of his power to epilepsy medication, and that's why this chemcical is capable of holding back the demonic manifestations?

and the improbable existence of information in DNA.

The way you idiots talk about the information in DNA, you would think that we could look at human tissue through a microscope and see various combinations of actual English letters.

All this indirect evidence is most reasonably explained by a Divine Creator.

Not when you remember that you cannot define "divine creator" or "God" in a coherent way without running back to your question-begging security blanket of "god's ways are mysterious".

Maybe I'm just stupid, but sounds to me like nobody is under the slightest intellectual obligation to worry about, or pay any attention to, concepts that cannot be coherently defined.  Pasting definitional labels on God is about as useful in the real world toward the goal of coherence, as would be insisting that Santa is a "special" human being who uses "magic" to deliver presents to the kids of the world.  That's also pasting definitional labels on Santa, yet does precisely nothing worthwhile in the real world.  Since the definition is based upon nothing in the real world, the attempt at coherence is abortive.  What else are you gonna say?  The big bag wolf takes medication for depression?

Do you think you might be interested in examining all the direct and indirect evidence related to God’s existence?”

Do you think you might be able to fulfill your Christian duties acceptably to God without purchasing anything produced by J. Warner Wallace?

As it turns out, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God.

But given that the way you define "god", this thing is infinitely more complex than anything else, thus the concept of "god" would rank as the lowest probable explanation for any phenomena under Occam's Razor...which says the simplest explanation that accounts for the data is more likely to be the correct one. Gee, how "simple" is "infinitely complex"?

Wallace then uses this pic, and I comment respectively:




First, calling the Comos a "room" logically implies there's an "outside the room", but the notion that there is any such place as "outside the cosmos" is foolish....I don't care how often you think about other dimensions, or how often you think your dead grandmother calls out to you from the clouds.

Second, the Big Bang is considered both unscientific and unbiblical even by Christian creationists and apologists.  See above.  Apparently, what exactly the bible teaches or doesn't teach on the subject is far from "clear" and only a stupid person would insist that somebody has an intellectual "obligation" to "correctly" understand unclear Iron Age texts on theology.

The universe does not appear fine tuned.  The creation of stars and planets is understandable in completely naturalistic terms once you know what you are talking about.  There is no such thing as full destruction of matter or energy.  The carbon and iron which result from a dying star flying through space, degrade and eventually get used again in the formation of other stars and planets.  See the First law of thermodynamics: neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.  There is no such thing as brand new creation, anything that exists outside the mind is never more than just the reconfiguration of previously existing atoms.

Abiogenesis has not been proven yet, but the surprising results from the Miller Urey experiments showed that the building blocks of life did not need any intelligent designer to put them together.   See here for a primer, see here for more scholarly stuff.

Personally, given the fact that life is purely naturalistic, while "supernatural" is plagued by incoherence at the definitional level), I don't find panspermia (life originated elsewhere and arrived on earth via aliens or comets) to be more improbable than "god did it".  The truth is that the universe is infinitely large and old, which gives it plenty of time to eventually chance upon the right combination of materials that result in self-replication.

I cover the "limited universe" bullshit in my rebuttal to Frank Turek's objective morality arguments here.

See here for more of my answers to Wallace on similar issues.

If biological organisms display attributes of intelligent design, then apparently the reason carnivores inflict misery on other creatures is because god wanted them to be this sadistic before sin came into existence (see here).  Genesis 1:31 says God's creation, before the Fall, was "very" good, and this has created a storm of controversy among Christian apologists and creationists, because if the old-earth creationist model be correct, then the pre-Fall world, which God was calling "very good" was at that time filled with carnivores inflicting misery on other animals merely out of need to eat (i.e., God thought a world full of carnivores that inflict misery on other animals was "very" good)...which conclusion the young-earth creationists insist makes God into an evil sadist, since they say carnivorous attributes didn't start forming in animals until after the Fall. See  Kent Hovind clobber Dr. Hugh Ross on this point here at time code 1:28:00 ff.  Hovind says he doesn't think it "very good" that a lion should rip the guts out of a zebra...to which Ross had nothing much to say except how that the new creation, still in the future, would be "better"  (despite the obvious objection that if God is perfect, then whatever he created in a pre-fall world would have been not only perfect, but morally perfect, so that since nothing can be better than perfection, nothing in the future could ever possibly be "better" than the pre-fall state of life).

Wallace says 'evil and injustice persist' but this is only because he has a child's view of god's love...in the bible, the "loving" god sometimes takes "joy" in inflicting death, disease and torture on his followers when they stray (Deuteronomy 28:63).  the Christians who blindly assume abortion is sin apparently never read that part of the bible where god credits himself with all death (and since god is perfect, anything that god does, is morally perfect, such as doing what he does behind the scenes to facilitate killing).  See Deuteronomy 32:39.  I do not ask whether God can be morally good to kill.  I ask whether God can be morally good to cause one human to kill another.  But if you say the mob boss was morally good to plan and authorize a killing, you just said the punk who actually pulled the trigger was doing something morally good.  So that if you seriously believe that bible verse, then you are morally justifying all human murder, even if you don't realize it.

If you insist that the analogy to the mob-boss and his punk is not sufficient, maybe you should ask yourself why you bother attempting to use "human reasoning" in the first place, since in fact you'll quickly toss it out the window merely because it rebuts your theology. You are like a cashier who decides, based on her  mood, whether or not she will employ correct math when handing change to the customer.

Wallace then says ""Outside" the natural realm"", apparently aware that the concept of "outside the natural realm" is incoherent and would only be found plausible by those who already believe such "place" exists, despite the sheer lack of evidence for any such thing.

Wallace then says transcendent objective moral truths exist, but I've already destroyed Christianity's most vocal champions on that point.  Matthew Flannagan could not answer my criticisms of his objective-morality model and quietly stopped responding when I turned up the heat and asked him why he assumes child-torture is absolutely immoral.  He simply thought his position necessarily true and those who disagree with it necessarily wrong, no need to actually prove anything  See here.  I also clobber Frank Turek's best efforts to show objective morality.  See here.

Wallace then says "humans possess free agency", thus playing into a very popular concept held by people for reasons having nothing to do with actual study of philosophy.  But the term "freewill" begs the question "free from what?".  Free from the laws of the physics?  Free from the brain?

The trouble for the libertarian and others who believe in genuine free agency is that such absolute freedom logically results in irrationality...that is...when you wish to eat fast food and on the way you eventually decide against Burger King and for Taco Bell, genuinely free agency means there was, ultimately, no reason that compelled you to choose the way you did.   Your agency was just a coin standing on its edge, it happened to fall over toward the Taco Bell side of things, and there is no "reason" why it fell that way...just "just" decided at the moment to choose that choice.  Thus to say our agency is truly "free" is to say it is also free from the laws of causation, which automatically puts the libertarians in the same fantasyland as Eden and "other dimensions", and therefore imposing not the slightest scintilla of intellectual obligation on the materialist atheist to bother with such stupidity.

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that individuals have consistent personality characteristics.  Did you ever wonder why it is that kids, even twins, raised in the same house by the same parents, often display very different personalities even in infancy?  Since you cannot blame their environment, you have no other option except to blame the only other possible culprit...genetic predisposition.  This is why some kids survive abuse just fine, while others are turned into criminals because of it.  While I understand crime victims who say 'I was abused as a child too, but I didn't turn into a criminal because of it", the scientific truth is that a person's ability to counter the influences of their environment cannot be anything other than their genetic predispositions..

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that ingestion of physical chemicals can cause us to make much different choices than we normally would.  The child who climbs the walls all day long is doing so for chemical-brain reasons which we now call ADHD, which can be controlled by Ritlan.  What...does Ritlan have a spiritual effect on a child's freewill?  Did God invent Ritlan, or toss it down from heaven? Of course not, our decision- making mechanisms in the brain are nothing but pure electrochemical reactions.  That's precisely why physical substances are capable of causing us to decide things in ways we normally wouldn't.  Depressed people stop being depressed when they smoke drugs.  The good girl can be convinced to act immorally at the party if she drinks enough alcohol.  Calm people can be short-tempered if they drink too much coffee.  Etc, Etc.

Wallace will say that the brain's being affected by physical substances doesn't completely cancel the possibility that perhaps the mind merely comes into the body using the brain as an interface, and when the interface is chemically damaged, the resulting choices and personality are too.  But the stupidity of this response is found in the question "comes into the body from where?"  You guessed it...from another dimension.  Christians literally believe the mind originates in the twilight zone. They also believe in other stupid things...like the idea that atheists are under some sort of intellectual obligation to "answer" bits of ignorance like this.

Also, only stupid people think babies have freewill, so since everybody agrees babies don't have freewill, and most people think adults do, the question naturally arises:  why don't human beings exhibit freewill from birth...if in fact freewill is "free" from physical limitations, coming as it allegedly does from the spiritual dimension?  The honest answer is that our ability to make rational choices is an attribute we gain over time and growth, which therefore means the ultimate basis of our will is firmly rooted in the physical world, leaving Christians and their 'spiritual dimension' crap out in left field.

Finally, that the bible is of no help whatsoever in answering this question is clear from the fact that the bible did nothing to resolve the Augustine/Pelagius debates, and did nothing to resolve the Calvinist/Arminian debates, and did nothing to resolve the disagreement between Luther and Erasmus on the nature of the will, and has done nothing to reconcile the current church splits over this doctrine that these prior debates spawned.

Did those debates do anything to help today's apologists come to resolution on the issue?  No.  James Patrick Holding wants the world to view him as a "smart guy", yet adopts Molinism (the abused child produced by the Calvinist/Arminian stalemate), a stance that Calvinist "smart guys" Steve Hays and Dr. James White consider ridiculous and unbiblical.

And for the Christians who foolishly equate the mind with the spirit, they will find their dreams dashed under 1st Corinthians 14:15, where Paul necessarily distinguishes the mind from the spirit, which thus leaves open a biblical door to the possibility that the bible will allow for the "mind" to be purely and wholly physical.

And don't even get me started on the fact that Christians also disagree on whether the bible says man is a dichotomy (body + soul or body + spirit), or trichotomy (body + soul + spirit). Google "trichotomist debate".

So you are a rather stupid fuck if you think opening your bible will do anything toward guiding you toward "truth" about the matter of human freewill.  What...maybe you think the Holy Spirit is more interested in guiding YOU into the truth of such matters than he was in guiding past Christian giants like Augustine, Calvin or Luther?

Finally, Wallace says "consciousness exists in the universe", but even pretending for the moment the naturalistic explanations for this are weak, "god" remains an incoherent concept, so that because the naturalistic explanations are less incoherent, the rational person should favor them above the "god did it" excuse.   Learn how the advocates of various views respond to each other in Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer, eds., In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005; 2^nd ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).  See Christians disagreeing with each other about trichotomy here.

And I do not concede the weakness of naturalistic arguments for consciousness.  The discussion about freewill, supra, also shows the purely naturalistic and physical nature of the mind.  If a person can undergo a major personality change due to brain injury or disease affecting the brain (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, including old folks forgetting names of family and forgetting who they are or where they live), then we do not immediately leap to "but couldn't there be another dimension that the mind comes into the body from, and when the interface is damaged, it falsely makes the will appear to be physical only?"

Instead, we draw a conclusion similar to the one we draw when we notice that a person's bicep is responsible for their during curls in the gym, and when that muscle is severed or severely damaged, they can no longer do those curls:  We conclude the basis for muscular power is purely physical...we do not conclude that maybe the muscle power comes into the bodily tissue from another dimension, and the physical injury giving rise to weakness merely inhibits the spiritual aspect from manifesting itself fully.

However, you can bet your life savings that if the bible had said the power of our physical muscles comes from the spiritual world, every Christian apologist in creation would be insisting my above-logic is merely "worldly" and "incorrect" and "not according to Christ".

Schooling theists on the stupidity of objective morality

"Capturing Christianity" invited Dr. Anne Jeffrey to write an article on the following subject:

CC021: If God Does Not Exist, Why Be a Moral Person?

I responded there, and somebody ("T.N.") who parrots Frank Turek's "argument for God from objective morality" challenged me with the typical "why should one bag of chemicals care about another bag of chemicals" stuff. See here. So far (July 31, 2019), TN has complained that my asking him/her/both/other to agree to the dictionary definition of "objective" made our debate more complicated than it needs to be

!?

Just in case that forum deletes the discussion, I cross-post our exchange here to make sure it is preserved.  Let's just say that Frank Turek will probably think it best to drop trying to prove god from "objective morality" if he gets hold of this discussion.

I already trounced Christian philospher Matthew Flannagan on the same subject, to the point that he stopped responding right exactly when he was hit with the hardest questions the relativists can ask.  See here.

from Barry

Not sure why Christians think it impossibly difficult for atheists to give a rational and normative justification for acting morally while denying god’s existence. If even Christians themselves disagree on a large host of moral issues (i.e., death penalty, divorce, birth control, gun control, the minimum age for marriage, the point when pre-marital petting becomes fornication, how often to bathe, how often to attend church, how disastrous or trivial “sin” is, etc, etc), then it doesn’t matter if a quick “God’s mysterious ways” can help you save face at that point; those Christian in-house disagreements about morality still rationally justify the skeptic to say it is more than likely that those disagreements exist because there is no god in the first place, therefore, there is no ultimately transcendent source of morality, therefore, being without ultimate guidance, mammals on this earth who compete for resources are naturally going to be in a perpetual state of moral disagreement. We are nothing but roaming dogs growling at each other after we both spot a fresh kill at the same time, we are merely a higher developed type of mammal. Asking how we can know which person is “right” as two people fight, is about as stupid as asking how we can know which bug is in the “right” as a spider attacks a fly. There is no reason to posit there is any moral “right” in the first place, therefore, the question is invalid, except in the uselessly subjective sense of which participant we think has views closer to our own standard of morality.

Furthermore, if you think morality is “objective”, you aren’t doing your job by presuming child rape to be objectively immoral, then asking the atheist to explain why they find it to be immoral. YOU are the one asserting such act to be “objectively” immoral, therefore YOU have the burden to demonstrate such. You aren’t demonstrating such by blindly appealing to the fact that “most people” think child rape is intolerable. If that act is “objectively” immoral, then because “objective” means “true for reasons independent of human opinion”, you should be able to demonstrate such objectivity without appeal to any human-based opinion or belief.

Finally, the atheist-argument that “god” as viewed in traditional religion, constitutes an incoherent proposition, necessarily makes any coherent naturalistic explanation for morality more likely or plausible. If the naturalistic explanation is at least coherent, it has much more going for it than any “god did it” explanation.
In short, not only does the atheist have good arguments for the purely naturalistic origin of human morality, but the atheist remains rationally justified even if they choose to cut off the discussion before hearing every last little trifle the apologist can marshal.

from T N

Barry,

When you say “Christians” or “theists” claim this or that, I would say you are pointing to people who happen to be largely philosophically incompetent (of which there are admittedly many). The question of whether or not God is necessary for morality can be understood in two senses: One is the question of whether or not a person needs to be an explicit theist in order to be moral, and, quite obviously one need not be (I believe you are arguing against this sense). The other is whether or not one can show by philosophical argument that morality is necessarily the result of a transcendent cause (i.e. God) independent of whether or not a given person understands morality as having its origin in such a cause.

As an Aristotelian I have no problem with arguments that base morality on natural causes such as “enlightened self interests”, or “survival of the herd”, or what have ya. But, this approach does not complete the argument because these claims lead to further questions as to the nature of “enlightened self interests”, etc. all of which can be shown to further depend on irreducible causes. For example: you offer an argument for the relative nature of morality and its indeterminacy, but you presume your analysis itself to be objective, abstract, and mind independent. Why? If morality is merely the product of some given neurons zigging instead of zagging, why do you presume your evaluation of the question to transcend merely material causes? In the act of denying objective morality, you are asserting that your opponents are objectively wrong. If you believe your position, you cannot assert that “wrong” exists. Your opponents are merely chemicals that produce a given result. There is no basis for claiming that chemical reactions can be “wrong”.

barry
Well, I just deleted several pages of detailed reply to you, because I sometimes overlook my own higher goal to resolve my disagreements with people like you one tiny step at a time. Most mature educated adults realizing that the more comprehensive the reply, the greater risk that important points will be avoided, lost or skipped…especially in the context of back and forth bickering on the internet and not on the context of the controlled confines of an academic debate.

My rebuttal to you was objective, but only on the condition that the dictionary has correctly defined “objective”. I wasn’t claiming pure objectivity, I was merely assuming you agree with me that the dictionary correctly defines the word “objective”.

Do you agree with the “being outside of the mind and independent of it.” definition of “objective” as provided by Merriam-Webster, yes or no?

T N
It’s not that complicated; simple English works fine. The question is why get mad at chemicals? Suppose I said that toothpaste is “wrong” because it doesn’t do photosynthesis. How does it make sense to say that chemicals have violated some hierarchy of values? Theists (and atheists) are merely chemicals that have their respective properties, how is it “wrong” for chemicals to possess the properties they have? What standard has been violated?
If you believe your position, you should just say you think what you think because your brain chemicals have that property, not that your brain chemicals can identify some objective, mind independent standard that has been violated. No?

barry
You said: “The question is why get mad at chemicals?”

I reply: No, you asked me to reply to your criticism of relative morality.

I made clear in my reply that I will be proceeding one baby step at a time.

I am taking one baby step at a time in order to establish as much common ground between us as possible on the issue of morality.

People who have more common ground on an issue are more likely to successfully resolve their differences, than people who have little or no common ground on the issue they argue about.

I will not permit you to jump away from my criticism just because you fear you cannot answer it without creating horrific empistemological problems for yourself.

The question is

Do you agree with the “being outside of the mind and independent of it.” definition of “objective” as provided by Merriam-Webster, yes or no?

If you object that using the dictionary to establish common ground between us on the issue of word-meanings unnecessarily infuses extra complications or confusion into the debate, please say so.

If you object that asking you to agree with the dictionary definition of “objective” is fallacious or otherwise somehow unnecessarily diminishes our ability to establish common ground here, then just say so.

If you think establishing common ground is a bad way to attempt to resolve your disagreement with another person, just say so.

What I fear from your latest reply is that you appear to think proceeding in baby steps is a bad idea (!?), when in fact because our positions are so radically opposed to one another already, our coming to agreement on as many possible facts about morality as we can, would obviously be crucial to resolving our dispute (or enabling the reader to more clearly determine who “won” this debate).

T N
Yes.
Does “mind”= brain?

barry
Yes. Does “bodily strength” = muscle? Or would you deny this common sense because some ancient text insists that bodily strength comes from another dimension and merely manifests using the muscles as a mere interface?

T N
Following your lead with “baby steps”, please cite any claims I made about “ancient texts”? Once you do that, I can answer your question about what my point is.

barry
I have no obligation to help you distract the discussion about your alleged prior claims about “ancient texts” as I never expressed or implied that you ever made any such claims. Go read my post again. I was “asking” you whether you would deny a common sense thing because of something written in an ancient text. The comment you refer to was in the form of a question, a question you chose to avoid answering.
Now that I’ve “done that”, do what you promised, and answer my question about what your point is, that is, your point in asking me whether I think mind = brain.

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-------will update later.