Thinking God's Thoughts

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

2011-12-16T15:33:00.000-06:00

It was a weird feeling to, while browsing the news on my phone as I attempted to drift to sleep, see that Christopher Hitchens had passed on. It's one of those shocks to the system. A sort of emotional jolt that manifests itself physically. I literally gasped.

I knew it was coming. We all did. It was well publicized that he had esophageal cancer, and the effects of that cancer are also well known. For whatever reason, whether it be his larger than life standing in society or the effects he has directly and indirectly had on my own life, it still came as a shock to me.

I never once rejoiced or found any pleasure in the sickness (and now death) of this long time enemy of my Lord. Whether the cultural offspring of his work (all you atheists) believes me or not, I wanted nothing but the best for this man, and for all of you for that matter.

A good portion of one's life devoted to undermining God's people, blaspheming His name, and harming His kingdom doesn't leave much optimism for his soul, but I do hope that there was a late change. Despite all he wrote about that change being a mental lapse or malfunction, he couldn't predict the future. As I said for Ken Pulliam, I hope Christopher Hitchens' spiritual state was other than it appeared. But God is just and Christopher Hitchens has received a just judgment, wherever he is.

New Argument for the Christian God

2011-12-11T18:26:00.002-06:00

Tim Tebow does what he does in the NFL.

Therefore Jesus Christ is clearly God, and Christianity is 100% true.

Nuff said.

The Evil of Homosexuality

2011-11-26T10:48:00.000-06:00

That's right folks. I said that. Homosexuality, as in acts pertaining to a homosexual nature, is evil. By definition, anything that is an affront to God's nature and against His commands is evil. Of course in the West's quest to erase guilt for sin, this is very un-PC and you'll rarely hear this phrase mentioned by anyone, even Christians. Anyone reading this blog knows I'm not one to stifle my rhetoric and at every chance I get challenge the PC nonsense of our culture.

But just what does homosexuality being evil entail? Well it entails just what any other evil action entails. That in thought or deed, if you perform a homosexual act you are acting against God and are sinning. However, whenever this issue comes up the pro-sin side immediately rattles off certain straw men. Why do you hate homosexuals? Why are you so intolerant? Why do you want to get in their bedroom and interfere with their personal life? In that vein, let's point out what the evil of homosexuality doesn't entail:

It does not entail that you are to hate the person who performs the act. People who have homosexual proclivities, or who endorse it, or who live the lifestyle, are still people made in God's image whom He loves. The very Bible that condemns homosexual acts also calls for us to love people and spread the message of salvation through Christ to them. We aren't to hate them. We aren't to go up to them and condemn them. We are to tell them that they are wrong and acting against God. However, that is usually when the aforementioned straw man is set up. On the contrary, when one tells another they are wrong for what they do, it is usually not out of hatred, but out of concern for the other person. If you hated the person why would you warn them about what they're doing?

It does not entail intolerance of the person. It does entail intolerance of the act. Everyone is intolerant of something. The toleration police simply live in an impossible fairy land. We're all intolerant of something. The ones who want to legitimize homosexuality are intolerant of those who want to continue to point out that it is a perversion. What we can tolerate is each other's existence. But no one should tolerate evil acts such that they don't speak out against them.

It finally doesn't entail that you want bedroom surveillance. Most people who don't want evil acts legitimized are not for infringement of personal liberty or for civil action for all evil actions. If you want to perform evil acts that don't hurt others in the privacy of your bedroom, go for it. That's between you and God. But when a society tries to legitimize certain evils, the morally conscious person has the duty to speak out against them.

Back! Does the Evil God Hypothesis Pose a Problem for Theists?

2011-10-27T11:51:00.000-05:00

Hi all. Life has slowed down a little bit so I thought I'd try to dip my toes back into the apologetics blogosphere.

Dr. William Lane Craig, as all of my readers will know, has been touring Great Britain on his Reasonable Faith tour, debating some of the foremost atheist philosophers in British academia (thank goodness Dick Dawk made himself look so silly, because he'd have been such a poor opponent one wonders if it would have tarnished the whole tour). I've listened to two of the debates, the one against Stephen Law and the one against Peter Millican. In both debates the issue of the Evil or Anti-god came up. I actually went to Dr. Law's blog to comment on how silly I find that proposed analogy to be. Here is what I said regarding that and his overall performance in the debate:

If you were just arguing against Dr. Craig's God, Dr. Law, then why would you bring up the evil god hypothesis? This is one of the worst attempts at sophism that is out there in religious philosophy. How can you consider said evil god to be analogous at all to the Christian God at all, who is the greatest conceivable being? I can conceive of a being greater than the evil one, namely a good one. Further, since most theists posit God's nature as the basis of morality, such that acting against His nature would be to act in an evil way, then you're just relabeling what would then properly be called "good" as "evil." It does nothing to defeat the God hypothesis.

If you can handle some criticism, then to sum up my thoughts on your arguments: they were spectacularly bad. The evil god hypothesis doesn't prove anything, and is a practice in incoherence. You call some of the most scrutinized and well thought out arguments for God "weak," which is silly since if they were so weak you should have been able to argue against them pretty easily. Yet you don't really argue against any of them, Dr. Law. However, you did do much better at preparing for the debate than most atheists. You still stank up the joint.

FYI, if it's not clear it's part of the definition of God to be perfectly good, so arguing against an evil very powerful being is arguing something, but not against God.

2011-09-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

Taking a Break

2011-08-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

Even though this break really already started, for my many (not really) loyal readers who are anxiously awaiting my next post, I will be taking a slight break from blogging. School has started up again, and I have also started two new part time jobs, one being an internship, that will hopefully pave the way to a future career in my field of focus. Perhaps then after a while, God willing, I can look into continuing my quest to teach philosophy or apologetics in a seminary or even a secular university setting. We'll see where God leads. After I feel like I have enough time to dedicate to this blog again I will let you all know where I'm at.

Thanks to all. God bless you and keep you in His grace. Praise Christ the King!

A Quick Dismissal of an Attempted Rebuttal

2011-07-30T01:22:00.000-05:00

In response to BenFromCanada's attempt at a rebuttal to my Quickie on the POE:

First, he tries to dismiss the fact that transferring the necessity of God knowing what will happen to saying it must therefore necessarily happen is fallacious. It's simply the modal fallacy, and is accepted by philosophers as such.

He says that I assume we make choices before the choice is given to us. He continues on this strange path by saying that Jesus told Peter he'd deny him three times, and therefore it has to happen by necessity. But this is just reasserting his initial assertion that foreknowledge entails the necessity of what is foreknown, which is begging the question. That is the fallacious argument. What is foreknown by Jesus in this case is what Peter will freely choose. Jesus sees what will happen. If Peter would choose something else in the future, Jesus would see that instead. What Jesus' prophesy is is what people who've actually studied the issue of free will call soft facts in the past. These are facts contingent on future events; facts that would have been different should different choices happened in the future. To say someone other than Peter made the choice is silly. Who made the choice for Peter? Just because Jesus knew what Peter would do, He all of a sudden made the choice for him? That makes no sense.

Say you're looking at the future in a crystal ball, and you see certain people in the future making choices that you have no control over, and they are done completely freely. Did those people have to make those choices just because you knew about them in the past? How on earth could that be? What you know is what choice they WILL make, but the choice could have been otherwise (perhaps Ben needs to dust up his philosophical vocabulary. Certainty about what will happen is not necessity that they must happen).

He tries to say I misrepresented his post by saying that he said the Bible says we have no free will. But he did say that. And I quote: "there's the fact the bible itself says that free will isn't possible." He shows his (and other skeptic's) utter fail of a hermeneutic by linking to individual verses out of their contexts and saying they are contradictory. Then he reaffirms that he said the Bible says we don't have free will.....

Anyhoo, he shows his ignorance of Biblical translation by citing Isaiah 45 in saying that God creates evil, which of course is translated "calamity" in all modern translations. I never said Adam made us sinful. Adam sinned, which developed in him a sin nature, which is passed to us. No one said the capability to sin was included in original sin (free will gives us that capability). It is the inability to not sin that original sin gave us.

I never said there is no good without evil. God is good, and there was no evil when He existed alone. I said there may not be as much good in this world without some evil.

He claims it's a cop-out to say we lack God's knowledge in criticizing the problem of evil. But the POE assumes that a good God would have no reason to permit any evil whatsoever. But surely an God who sees the end from the beginning and knows the goods that suffering and evil will bring about is justified in allowing them. All Ben has is his immediate sphere to consider, doesn't know anything about the future, and probably only remembers about 20% of his past. So is Ben qualified to make such a huge assertion? He says that God should have given us the ability to see the reason for suffering. Sometime He does, but why should God do that? Who says we should know why we suffer? Ben? If God revealed the reasons for all suffering, then it seems highly probable to me that the good results that would have come from it actually wouldn't. How so? Part of the growth that a person goes through in suffering through something is not knowing how it will turn out. The other aspect is in trusting God through trials with unclear outcomes.

But here's the funny thing, God has told us the ultimate result of the suffering
of those who love Him is eternal bliss and reward.

The free will defense I gave IS the cliff-notes version of Plantinga's argument. The logical POE states that God and evil cannot coexist logically. The free will defense says that if God doesn't control our actions, then they certainly can, because it is logically impossible to make people freely act. Plantinga simply expands on that with numerous examples and uses logical notation to do so.

So in no way do Ben's assertions here hold any water. He's still using fallacious reasoning to assert that foreknowledge is not consistent with free will. He still says the Bible says we don't have free will (don't know why anyone would even remotely trust his Biblical interpretation). He says it's a cop-out to say we lack God's knowledge, but that observation directly defeats one of the assumptions of the probabilistic problem of evil. Just because he thinks God should have told us all the reasons doesn't mean God has to. The fact that God may have justified reasons to allow evil that we know nothing about is enough to defeat the assertion that God has no such reasons.

How is Adam Real if Evolution is True?

2011-07-26T23:28:00.000-05:00

Because I don't want the comment section to get wildly off topic, I will answer a question posed to me regarding Adam that was posted on my last post.

This may be a ridiculous question, but it's something that I've been wondering about nevertheless, and I can't seem to find anything written on the matter. Anyway, do you have any idea how Adam imputed sin to this universe? If evolution were true, then how could an "Adam" actually have existed?

By "evolution" I assume you mean the biological side of the Grand Story, as JP Moreland calls it, which is how certain naturalists put forward as the way life emerged and developed on this planet. This includes a simple organism emerging from some prehistoric puddle and eventually evolving, by the mechanisms of random mutations and natural selection, into all of the various species we see today. You have to assume this Grand Story is true for your question to even make sense, since even 6 day young earth creationists accept that some life evolves, and biological organisms change from generation to generation.

Of course, the Grand Story is far from proven, and I'm not sure that, short of a time machine, it could ever be proven. To take what we have in terms of observations of biological organisms and extrapolate it into this Grand Story requires massive amounts of unbacked assumptions. Add to that the fact that the evidence strongly suggests that the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection seem to be woefully inept at creating small changes in populations, let alone the vast diversity of life and biological function we see today, I don't think there's any reason to even dabble with thinking the Grand Story is true.

However, if it were, and humans were a part of this grand story, you could say much of the beginning of Genesis is metaphor, and Adam simply represents humanity or something, though this would seem to contradict the gospel writers and Paul, who seemed to consider Adam a real and historical person. It would require further explanation to solve those apparent contradictions.

Or, you could say that Adam evolved from lesser primates, and at that point God imported a rational soul into him, or he evolved his soul, or something of that sort, and that's when humanity began. But that seems extremely ad hoc (though not any more so than the Grand Story, ha) and then what do we do about Eve?

Of course I think these scenarios are highly contrived and don't think they're feasible for one that takes the Bible seriously. Frankly, as God's written revelation, the Bible has an epistemic authority that our often pitiful attempts at historical science do not have. When people get it wrong interpreting God's natural revelation, we have to dismiss what they say in favor of what God reveals, no matter how many defend the bad science or how emphatically they defend it. However, since there has been no good evidence that makes the Grand Story even begins to seem feasible, it's not a problem.

I tend to lean toward Progressive Creationism, though I am very open on the issue.

A Quickie on the Problem of Evil

2011-07-22T22:47:00.001-05:00

My brother in Christ and Internet bud Rhology has asked me to give my perspective to someone who has brought up the problem of evil. He's given his response, here is mine.

Note: I tried to post it as a comment over there, but Blogger seems to still be having issues with it's commenting system. It's only been what, like three years?

Bible says free will isn't possible due to prophesy:

It would be nice to see a citation here, because the Bible never comes out and says "free will isn't possible" obviously. You say there are a lot of prophecies that present a problem for the free will position. How does foreknowing what will happen mean that it must happen by necessity, or that God predetermined it? It doesn't. God can know what will happen simply in light of knowing only and all true propositions (omniscience) and propositions regarding the future would be included in that. So, God can know what we will freely choose, but don't have to choose, in the future. In other words, when you say, "If the future can be predicted, everything is predetermined," you are stating a non-sequitur.

Your conundrum is, in fact, an example of a modal fallacy. Just because someone knows something WILL happen doesn't mean it MUST or CAN'T NOT (pardon the double negative) happen. It seems quite odd to think it does. I mean we know things will happen all the time. It doesn't therefore mean that they must happen by necessity, or that we predetermined they will happen.

If you want to delve even further into what God knows, there's this concept called middle knowledge in which God knows counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. So He knows what anyone WOULD freely do if placed in any situation. For instance, He knows what I would, in fact, freely choose to do if given the choice to steal a horse in 1895. He also knew logically prior to creating this world that I would respond to your post if placed in the position of seeing it. Given that, it's not hard to see how God can providentially order the world to achieve His ends and not interfere with people's freedom.

Also I agree that free will and determinism are incompatible, but I don't think free will faces any huge philosophical objections at all.

Is free will a good thing:

Well if God granted it to us then, since all He created was good, yes. There are several other possibilities regarding why God allows evil free acts. It may be that there couldn't be a world with this much good without this kind of evil in it (Christ would never have been crucified for instance, which is an immeasurable good). It may be that He has morally sufficient reasons to allow it.The fact is, we don't have that middle knowledge I was talking about, and so therefore don't have sufficient knowledge to judge whether the evil we see is gratuitous. It's awful presumptuous of us to question whether there can't be a sufficiently good reason to allow what God allows.

A sinless heaven is a violation of free will:

How is that? Who says God "alters" our programming? Our programming was "altered" when Adam imputed to us all a sin nature. Perhaps that is removed. Perhaps being in the very presence of THE GOOD we will no longer have any desire, reason, or influences to do evil any longer. None of that entails that free will no longer exists. You've simply asserted that to be the case.

Also, no Christian says God removing free will would make Him evil. It's His prerogative to do that if He wants. But there's no indication He would want a bunch of mindless puppets to control.

So, to answer your three questions:

1. God has middle knowledge and providentially ordered creation in such a way that we freely choose what we want.

2. Free will is from God, and all gifts from God are good. There's no indication that free will is not present in the eschatos. It's not bad, and God allows it because we'd be mindless otherwise (or at least very one dimensional ;-)).

3. They've been solved for centuries, but especially since Alvin Plantinga tore it apart in the 70's.

Confess Your Sins One to Another

2011-07-15T09:52:00.000-05:00

Sins I've committed:

I've put other things before God and my relationship with Him
I've idolozed things like material items and ideologies
I've taken God's name in vain by cursing
In sinning in other areas, I have defiled the Lord's Sabbath by not consecrating my days to Him
I have dishonored my father and my mother by disobeying them, by insulting them, by yelling at them, by taking advantage of them, by......
I have hated people, which Jesus equates with murder
I have never committed adultery or fornication, however, I have lusted after women, and that is equated with adultery by Jesus
I have stolen things
I have lied
I have coveted other people's posessions

That means I have broken all 10 of God's moral commands given to Moses and Israel. Add to that the multiple other moral violations that I have committed, and you'll see that I'm a rotten sinner.

Sins I bear guilt before God:

As you can see, Christ has taken all of those sins and paid for them with His sacrifice on the cross. The spotless lamb paid for all of my dirty disgusting crimes.

God Can Be Pretty Harsh: Mark Driscoll

2011-07-15T07:42:00.003-05:00

What is Marriage?

2011-07-14T13:04:00.000-05:00

In their paper, What is Marriage?, Princeton University philosophers Robert George, Ryan Anderson, and Sherif Girgis present what is probably the most complete and comprehensive defense of traditional marriage to date. It is available for download here.

Lawrence Krauss: Bigger Sore Loser Than Initially Thought!

2011-06-27T14:04:00.000-05:00

Uncommon Descent links to an interview with Lawrence Krauss regarding his reflections on his debate (and I use the term lightly since it was more of a demolition of Krauss) with William Lane Craig.

So apparently accomplished physicists now, as well as not being able to understand Bayesian probability theory, also have to personally denigrate a colleague who thrashes them in the arena of ideas and debate. He also has gained the ability to search someone's motives and label them as evil and malicious within a debate and give that as the reason he looked like a moron.

Yes, people. Lawrence Krauss says WLC was disingenuous, and Campus Crusade for Christ had malicious evil intents in trapping him with an impossible debate question. MUAHAHAHAAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Oh....er, sorry. My evil inner Christian came out.

Krauss is acting like a small child who lost the playground game and is now calling foul. Wow. Well there's your intellectual atheist folks, and your typical establishment elite college professor (see Barack Hussein Obama and Paul Krugmann for comparison). At least they're useful for a practical lesson and a good laugh.

What Makes one Catholic..err catholic?

2011-06-21T15:51:00.003-05:00

This is a Facebook discussion I had earlier with a Roman Catholic who is a contributor to the blog Called to Communion. For the sake of forthrightness, my wife is Roman Catholic. As you'll see, I think Christians can disagree on doctrinal points and not be separated.

This is the post that generated the discussion.

Bryan Cross: I have explained why making a predicate apply to everyone (such as claiming that all Christians are catholics) evacuates the term of all meaning here in comment #40:
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/commentaries-not-included/comment-page-1/#comment-1831

Me: But that's how the early fathers used the word, Bryan.

Bryan Cross: They didn't use the word 'catholic' of schismatics.
If you want to read what I have written about apostolic succession in the Church Fathers, see here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/11/sola-scriptura-a-dialogue-between-michael-horton-and-bryan-cross/#ApostolicSuccession

Me: Of course not, because schismatics then weren't viewed as Christians. Heretics, it's pretty clear, were non-Christians. The Arians had stepped beyond the veil of essentials, to put it in modern Protestant vernacular.

I consider modern Roman Catholics as properly catholic, as I do Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists, and Eastern Orthodox because they don't hold to heretical views, ie views that would take them outside of Christianity. Ergo, they are all catholic, but not all Roman Catholic.

Course the middle of my web of doctrine, the essentials, is pretty small. FYI, the official Roman Catholic stance on the issue is that Protestants are "separated brethren". Their semantics are different than mine and Michael's, but the idea is the same.

Bryan Cross: Do you agree with St. Optatus on schism?http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/06/st-optatus-on-schism-and-the-bishop-of-rome/

Separated brethren are still in schism. http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2089.htm

Me: Again, using different semantics, Bryan. Anyone who proclaims Christ as Lord and has the Holy Spirit are in communion in my mind. Ergo RCs and Protestants are in spiritual communion. The man made idea of communion, belonging to a specific institution, is a different issue. I think the fathers would agree, and that's why they set boundaries in the councils.

Bryan Cross: That's because you believe Christ founded only an invisible Church, while for Catholics, (and the Church Fathers, e.g. St. Cyprian, St. Optatus, St. Augustine) Christ founded a visible Church.

Me: No I don't, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. The church is visible in the One we proclaim, and in the works that we do. Upon that rock Christ founded the church. ;-)

Bryan Cross: If there were no visible Church, but only visible Christians, what would be different?

Me: The Church is the Christians.

Bryan Cross: I have explained why Protestantism has no visible catholic Church here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/why-protestantism-has-no-visible-catholic-church/

Me: I'll try to read that at some point, but it seems to me you're just begging the question with regard to what the church is. Why can't I say that the RC institution is just Rites, priests, bishops, and Popes, and not a true visible Church? The logic seems the same.

Bryan Cross: Because an organizational unity is something different from a mere conceptual unity [e.g. the set of all Christians]. Tom Brown and I have explained why the Church cannot be merely the set of all Christians, in our article "Christ Founded a Visible Church."
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/06/christ-founded-a-visible-church/

Me: Is it Bryan? What makes the Catholic unity organizational and not just conceptual. Looks like a distinction without difference to me. Because at base, organization is pretty dependent on how we're conceiving of something, which again would make your assertion question begging.. [I realize he's trying to get at the Philosophical concept of what is a proper entity with regard to its constituent parts. The problem he has is that he's begging the question for his view, saying that the protestants aren't composed in the proper manner. My point is trying to get him to see that his "proper composition" of Popes, rites, bishops, etc is no less arbitrary a standard to consider a composed church than is individual believers who have the Holy Spirit. That's why we have to rely on divine revelation to tell us what the church is (1 Corinthians 12:13)]

[The protestant view seems to be supported] by the stress of the Greek word translated into church. Literally, "an assembly" or "called-out ones."

Bryan Cross: Here's an example. A set of atoms scattered around is not a genuine unity, but is rather plurality conceived as a unity (i.e. a set), whereas the set of atoms that composes your body comprise an actual unity, i.e. you.

Me: I agree. Now, why shouldn't one conceive of the body of believers as that unity of atoms?

Bryan, I can't go read through all of your blog posts regarding the issue and get back to you with prompt replies. It makes the discussion too cumbersome. Can you give me your summarized versions of your arguments?

Bryan Cross: I don't need prompt replies, and I don't have time to summarize them in FB chatboxes. I need to get back to work. This issue isn't capable of being worked out in a 30 minute chat session - it takes a long time to read then think about all this. Thanks for talking.

Me: In the meantime, my Biblical argument would start with 1 Cor 12:13.

So no response to my last post? Why should we consider individual men which constitute an institution known as the Roman Catholic Magesterium as properly "THE CHURCH ®" and not consider individual men (and women) who believe in Christ as "the Church"?

I don't see how your argument has any footing.

BTW, I read your post, and it's just relying on your question begging assumption. It's how you're conceiving of what the Church is. It's a semantic and definitional difference, and I don't see it supported in the idea of what the church is set forth by the apostles.

Palin is Such a Dummy....Ohhhh.......

2011-06-20T23:37:00.001-05:00

Clip includes some profanity. HT to hotair.com.

Properly Basically Hot

2011-06-16T21:01:00.000-05:00

Somebody's air conditioner went out, and as a properly basic experience, he was hot...

Hat tip to Matt Palumbo.

The Increase in the Atheist Fringe

2011-06-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

I finally caught up to the most recent Reasonable Faith podcast, and on it Kevin Harris brings up some good points about how atheists have begun to act, not just online but in academic settings as well. Case in point, the questions that were asked in the Craig/Harris debate Q&A session. Apparently a local atheist group crowded the mics at the debate and asked really poor questions, many of which had nothing to do with the debate. One moron went on a tangent about God appearing to him and whatnot, and basically made a big fool of himself.

Harris' poor debate behavior was also an issue, as he really avoided the issue in much of what he said and just focused on getting his pet peeves out while he had a bully pulpit. Thinking atheists everywhere should be ashamed of what happened, and I think some are. But you sure don't see it on any of the infidel websites out there.

You see this happening in most of the blogs that deal with the issue of God's existence in their comment sections as well. A mixture of attempted one-upmanship mixed with irrelevant tangents and ad hominem attacks come forth from the internet infidel fingers. Even once respectable atheist blogs themselves have begun to devolve into Dick Dawk-esque rhetoric.

So I'll repeat the question Harris asked in his interview with Craig; is this what you atheists want? Do you want to ignore the issues, the arguments, the ideas that need to be discussed and grappled with, or do you just want to strike emotional chords and rhetorical victories and achieve your "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment? Is that what atheism is becoming? Because that's not reasonable or intelligent, it's dogmatic and dishonest. What happened to your quest for truth?

In the Meantime

2011-06-09T11:59:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I hope to get back in the groove soon. In the meantime enjoy this promo for William Lane Craig's Great Britian tour, and plea for Richard Dawkins to friggin' man up.

HT Unbelievable

Removed Intense Debate Client

2011-05-17T13:19:00.000-05:00

Because of the bugginess of the intense debate client, I have removed it. I apologize, because with it goes a lot of comments. However, it was preventing me from commenting on my own blog, so it had to go.

Blogger's Technical Difficulties

2011-05-13T16:37:00.000-05:00

Apparently Blogger had some issues yesterday. I think that may have been the reason the comment client was so buggy. I'm keeping it for now, but as someone has pointed out using the reply function can make things more confusing than it's worth. Those commenting and replying to comments just use the new comment box at the bottom of the thread. Don't reply unless it's pretty short. It'll make conversations easier.

God's Outta Time!!!

2011-05-06T22:43:00.001-05:00

A combox discussion caught my eye. I don't have time to read through the whole thing, but the issue of time came up and God's relation to it especially regarding whether His omniscience implies divine determination. I've shown here why that isn't the case. However, to counter the claim that a future time must be already existent for God to know it, and therefore it is already existing, which means that free will doesn't exist, the Arminian in the discussion felt it was necessary to say that God is outside of time.

I've seen this a lot from Arminians when confronted with this argument. However, I think there's a much stronger retort to this deterministic assertion. Pulling God outside of time isn't necessary to defeat the determinist assertion that divine omniscience implies divine determination. Rather, one simply needs to see God's omniscience as innate. As an omniscient being, God knows only and all true propositions. So say God knows that at 12:00 tomorrow, I will go to Chick Fil' A for lunch and enjoy a tasty chicken delight. Does that event have to exist in a concrete way or be determined for God to know about it? Not if He has knowledge of only and all true propositions. That fact alone means that, if the scenario is in fact going to be true, that God knows it.

So the answer to the claim that event E must exist to know the truth of event E is simply an assertion. It seems patently false that a being that knows all true propositions must have that knowledge based on the actuality of the event itself actually existing in that concrete manner.

PS, this is really just the grounding objection re-stated in a different context. I've shown why that objection doesn't seem to hold too much water here and in the comments here.

The Viral Representative's Argument for Homosexual Marriage

2011-05-05T00:31:00.004-05:00

No, this isn't about a sick representative, nor is the modifier "Viral" meant to demean him. Rather, the video I am critiquing has gone viral. State Rep. Steve Simon of Minnesota gives a little speech in the midst of debate on whether to put on the state ballot a measure that would amend their state constitution to prohibit homosexual marriage (*cough* oxymoron *cough*). Oooh, look at that. Liz Goodwin of Yahoo news calls the speech "eloquent" and "impassioned." Wowee zowee this must be something else then, right? Uh, no...

Right from the beginning, he asserts that we shouldn't rely on a religious argument. Why is the religious argument invalid (hint: because it doesn't agree with him)? He never extrapolates on this. Whether or not this country is a "Christian" nation or whatnot, it derives its freedoms from a divine source, and sets laws up around those. Marriage laws are of a certain interest to the state, and giving benefits to homosexual couples doesn't fit into the state interest.

At about 1:00, he states there's scientific data that sexual orientation is fundamentally genetic. First, there's absolutely no evidence that that is the case. Second, it's irrelevant to whether the state should actively support and endorse homosexual unions. There are known addictions and diseases that may have genetic roots, ie alcoholism and schizophrenia. In the case of the former, the government doesn't introduce legislation to encourage alcoholism because it makes some people emotionally fulfilled. Furthermore, people can choose to act against their alcoholism, as they can choose to not have sex. In the case of the latter, we medicate people who have this most likely genetic aberration. Simply saying you're born with something doesn't do anything to show it should be endorsed by the state.

At about 1:20, he asks about the moral implications if God were the one who determined people's homosexual proclivity, which is funny, because he stated 1 minute before that we shouldn't use a religious argument here. Obviously, he just meant the traditional and Biblical religious argument. But a liberal and pagan religious argument is clearly just dandy.

If one concedes that homosexual orientation is God given and innate, then it would have to be considered natural and therefore not a sin. I do not concede this, however, and the onus is on the the dear Representative to show us that God does in fact do that. Even if he could show that, something not being a sin doesn't therefore show that the state should actively endorse the behavior.

From the biological observation, as well as nearly all purported revelation from God, homosexuality is anything but natural. There's certainly no biological benefit from it. That being the case, there seems to be no benefit to the state in terms of continuing the species, which is the main reason they have an interest in marriage. In fact, it looks to me that homosexuality would be detrimental to the society simply because it would result in fewer children. But I digress.

At 1:30, he simply asserts that God is creating people as gay, and that this proves God approves of gayness. Of course he did nothing to show this at all. Then morons in the crowd who apparently can't think applaud. That's right, drink that kool-aid.

1:50, continues with his unsupported argument. Nothing eloquent or spectacular in the least about this segment. Frankly, it's pretty unspectacular.

I want to emphasise how absolutely silly this is. The guy starts by saying that the religious arguments shouldn't be considered because that's not our heritage, and then he gives almost solely a religious argument. I am baffled at how this video has gone viral. I suppose it shows the lack of the majority of the population to think logically about things. Lord Jesus, please help us.

Easter Pagan?

2011-04-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

If you've interacted at all with internet atheist types, then you've run across the old canard that Easter is derived from a pagan ritual. I've never really known what the big deal is, unless they're trying to imply that Jesus never existed and this ritual somehow morphed into what it is today, which is highly implausible, and not even remotely suggested by the majority of historians. It would more than likely be scoffed at.

However, I was curious as to whether Christian did co-opt a pagan ritual to celebrate Christ's resurrection. This article disputes the claim.

The author makes these points:

Even if Christians did co-opt the celebration, so fllippin what? Christians have often tried to redeem the cultures they lived in, and if they took over this so that they could celebrate Christ's resurrection, more power to them.
The earliest claim we have that Easter was derived from a pagan fertility goddess worship ritual is from the 8th century by the Venerable Bede. The culture he was speaking of, however, was converted relatively late to Christianity, and so if Easter was celebrated prior to those dates, Bede's account of Eostre is insignificant. There is in fact evidence that Christians celebrated Easter by the second century.
Professor Ronald Hutton has criticized Bede's sketchy knowledge of supposed pagan rituals, and says that he makes a mistake with Eostre as well.
There is no evidence outside of Bede's account that would support the claim that the pagan goddess Eostre existed.
The name "Easter" was more likely derived from the latin phrase "in albis ("in white")which Christians used in reference to Easter week, found its way into Old High German as eostarum, or 'dawn.'"
The title of the celebration has never been the issue. It is what we are celebrating that is the issue.

Praise God for He is risen!

Good Friday

2011-04-22T21:22:00.000-05:00

Trying New Comment Client

2011-04-12T01:29:00.002-05:00

I'm trying out the Intense Debate comment client to see how it goes. It seems to be more streamlined than the blogger default. Let me know what you think.

The Aftermath of Craig Destroys Harris

2011-04-12T00:34:00.003-05:00

Wow. I want to preface this post by saying how glad I am to be within the tradition of Christian philosophy and apologetics.

Out of curiosity, I meandered on over to a few atheist blogs to see what they were saying about the debate. Several of the big ones are, for lack of a better way to put it, in simple denial.

Take this post at a blog called The Uncredible Hallq. This individual says he is a philosophy graduate, which means he ought to know better. Yet he spends almost 2,000 words praising Harris and denigrating Dr. Craig's honesty and ability as a philosopher. I see a lot of bluster, a lot of personal jabs at Dr. Craig, but no substance. No reason why Craig's arguments were bad, or how Harris had refuted any of them. Do none of the Harris fans have the ability to see that his rebuttal was one long red herring? If this is the state of atheism now, I'm glad to not be a part of it. Furthermore, he says Craig relies on rhetoric to win his debates. And this Hallq guy is supposed to be a philosophy graduate? Does he not realize when someone has left the issue up for debate? Has he not heard of a red herring?

Regarding Craig's rhetoric, Steve Hays at Triablogue had something to say about that:

[W]hile Craig is a fine debater, he also lacks some of the virtues of a great public speaker. He doesn’t have a great speaking voice. He’s not an eloquent wordsmith. He’s not a spellbinding storyteller. He can’t manipulate the emotions of the audience the way a great preacher or actor can.

So, in some fundamental respects, he’s overrated as a debater. You can’t chalk up his winning streak to oratory alone.

Philosophy is really, at base, becoming good at thinking about and making good sound arguments. A debate showcases in a spoken format two people giving arguments for a specific position. Craig not only gave a positive case for his position, but refuted Harris' case. Harris spent his rebuttal period insulting Christianity and religious people and saying religion leads to evil. But he never defended his case after Craig had refuted it.

This philosophy major doesn't make his alma matter's philosophy department look very appealing if this is the quality of thinker they are producing.

As I said at the beginning, I am so glad to be square in the middle of a renaissance in Christian philosophy and apologetics. I am so glad that I don't have to shirk reason to hold the views that I do. I'm so glad I'm not reduced to defending an indefensible position, and cheer-leading for someone who was utterly unable to defend his view that he spend so long putting into book form. If this is what it takes to be an atheist, thank God I'm not one.

BTW, I made the hasty decision to post a part of this on John Loftus' blog, which may have been a mistake, haha. I will enable moderation for a while.

Craig Destroys Harris

2011-04-07T21:00:00.003-05:00

So the debate is over. I tweeted along with it instead of doing it here, so you can check what I and others said as the debate progressed here.

Craig demolished Harris, who was unable to refute Craig's devastating critique of his version of utilitarianism. Craig showed how 1) God provides a sound foundation for morality and, 2) that without God, no sound ground of morality would exist. He pointed out that Harris was simply redefining morality to be identical to human well being, but Craig not only showed how this was entirely insufficient and arbitrary, but also how it was logically incoherent. Harris really blew it by completely ignoring the topic of the debate in his second speech and just talking about completely irrelevant red herrings. I don't even think that Harris' vaunted rhetorical mind games were that impressive. Sure you can call God a big fat meanie pants, but you just start sounding bitter.

Another great showing for Dr. Craig, and great for theism that all four stooges of atheism have been eviscerated by such a keen mind. To God go the glory.

Brian at Apologetics 315 has posted the audio of the debate.

Reviews of the debate:

http://randyeverist.blogspot.com/2011/04/review-of-craig-vs-harris-debate.html

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/audio-and-summary-of-the-william-lane-craig-vs-sam-harris-debate/

Gary Habermas on NDE's

2011-04-05T16:28:00.000-05:00

Brian over at apologetics 315 linked to a talk Gary Habermas did on NDE's a couple of years ago. Very interesting.

Why Discoveries in Neuroscience are not a Problem for Substance Dualists

2011-03-30T12:29:00.001-05:00

Modern discoveries in neuroscience are exciting and fascinating. Recent discoveries have given great insight in how the brain works and processes information. Different regions of the brain have been shown to process different emotions and physical stimuli. But introduce these fascinating discoveries into an increasingly materialistic society and one gets interesting metaphysical claims. Many people simply assume that science has put the philosophical stance of substance dualism (aka Cartesian dualism or Platonic dualism, etc) to rest. Look, you can damage the brain and totally change the way a person acts. Or you can stimulate a part of the brain and cause sensations that look like religious experience. Or you can split the brain down the middle and get interesting results. This proves that the brain simply is the mind, or the mind is a phenomena that is purely caused by the physical relations of the neurons and chemicals that make up the brain, doesn't it?

Well no. In fact, this is blatantly fallacious reasoning of the type that John Polkinghorne has called "confused nonsense" (in a response to a question about Daniel Wegner's claims to have disproved dualism and free will here). What we see in neurobiology is correlations between certain states of the brain and certain states of the mind. When a person thinks of a pleasant thought, a certain part of the brain undergoes a chemical reaction. Does this show that that chemical reaction just is the pleasant thought? Well no. Does it show that the chemical reaction is what caused the pleasant thought? No, it actually looks like the pleasant thought caused the chemical reaction.

The problem here is that some have tried to take a correlation between two events, the brain event and the mind event, and equate them. In other words, to say that the brain is identical to the mind. This kind of reasoning can simply never work. Correlation is never enough to show identity or causation. Therefore it is intellectually irresponsible to proudly assert that neurobiology has made mind/body dualism passé. It has done no such thing.

As an aside, this metaphysical confusion has led to other weird reasoning, such as in the field of artificial intelligence. Some people think that at some point we will program a self conscious machine. Get enough electrical connections together in the right configuration and *poof* a new sentient being. While certain theological convictions keep me from thinking this could happen (I think God has an intimate role in crafting the soul and placing it in the body), I also lack any convincing reasoning from strong AI theorists that would entail that configurations of matter are enough to produce conscious, self-introspective, thinking things. The fact that a machine may at some point mimic human behavior doesn't mean that it is experiencing human behavior.

Emotions Within a Rational Christianity

2011-03-18T06:00:00.001-05:00

I've been pondering lately what role emotions play in our rational acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as our Lord and Savior. This is a bit of what I've come up with.

Emotions aren't bad or don't lead to inherent irrationality if they aren't doing our thinking for us. If one is thinking clearly, then emotional reactions may be the most rational thing to come out of the process. If our emotions are the reason we are making decisions, ie if we decide the doctrine of hell is false because it makes us feel icky, then we're reasoning irrationally.

The crucifixion should evoke a very strong emotional reaction in the Christian if they are being rational. It has driven me to tears many times, and it always evokes a sense of great thankfulness and joy in knowing what my God did to resolve my rebellion. It is very rational to react in such a way when a Person who is not just innocent, but morally perfect and worship-worthy, dies a physically and spiritually excruciating death for your crimes. Anything less than an emotional reaction would be irrational.

Likewise anger at ideas and individuals should crop up in the Christian when the One who did this for us is blasphemed, whether through false doctrines or in denying His reality.

Worship should naturally flow from us not just because of what God has done, but also for who He is. He is the creator, the ultimate reality. He is the very source of goodness, and we exist because of Him and for Him.

My final thought in this post is that the Bible constantly records people of God reacting emotionally to different things. People reacted to the gospel with joy (Acts 13:52). Jesus Himself reacted in anger at people defiling the temple (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-18; John 2:13-22), and He wept when His friend Lazarus died (John 11:35). God created us with emotions to aid in our reasoning. He placed within us the ability to feel joy for His gifts and to become saddened and angry at the state that sin has put the world in. There's nothing wrong with being an emotional person, as long as you're doing so rationally and Biblically.

Is, Ought, and God

2011-03-07T00:08:00.001-06:00

I ran across this somewhere on the internet, but I can't find it again to credit the person for it. I thought it was very simple, yet fairly profound. Some wonder how God would solve the is-ought problem in ethics. There are several good answers to this from prominent philosophers of religion, but this one I think is pretty simple and seems so obvious.

God is omniscient, meaning He knows only and all true propositions. This would include propositions about what we ought to do. For instance, the proposition, "you ought to follow Jesus," would be known by God in light of Him being omniscient. Whether we can actually figure out why that proposition is true is separate from the fact that we can know it's true because it was stated by God.

So, we can know what we ought to do if God tells us.

The "New Atheism"

2011-03-05T11:18:00.000-06:00

So I just wanted to highlight this comment, which was on a post entirely unrelated to its content, for instructive purposes and for the lulz.

kilo papa said...
Just wondering when you might do a post on how the central doctrine of your religion-the offering of blood from a barbaric human sacrifice up to the invisible man in the sky-is not the single most disgusting,
revolting,sickening,evil,Stone Age,Cro-Magnon,absurd,immoral bunch of lunacy that the human mind has ever concocted in the entire history of mankinds existence on this earth?

Did the multitude of cultures that practiced this inane garbage long before your Jesus appeared have the right idea but just had the wrong guy?

If there is a god somewhere, s/he is surely either astoundingly embarrassed or else laughing her/his ass off at deluded morons like yourself.

Is is truly possible that your deluded mind really doesn't realize how stupefyingly ridiculous that your religious belief is?

Bell Hell?

2011-03-04T01:52:00.001-06:00

Recently, there has been an intramural evangelical internet flame war (I think that should be the name of a sporting event) regarding Rob Bell's newest promo video and the comments made by some about that video and Bell's fidelity, or lack thereof, to the orthodox teaching on hell, and the comments questioning whether those comments were justified based solely on the promo video, and not on the book the video was promoting (since it hasn't been released yet). Look at what this has done to even me. It's caused me to publish this terrible run-on sentence!

Joking aside, I must say I'm pretty sympathetic to the Calvinists on this one. 1) Bell has given ample reason in the past to doubt his adherence to orthodoxy. 2) He's taught patently bad theology in his Numa videos and basically said that it wouldn't matter if Jesus hadn't really raised from the dead or hadn't really been born of a virgin in one of his books.

To point out this seeming lean toward universalism even before the release of the book isn't necessarily bad. Could the way the rhetoric was formulated have been better? Perhaps a couple of them could have toned it down a bit and been a bit more charitable, saying something like, "watch out because it looks like Bell could be promoting universalism here," or something, instead of condemning him to hell. However, some of the responses haven't been too spiffy either.

Bell has no one more to blame than himself for this situation. As Michael Patton points out, even if he doesn't hold to universalism, he released that silly video that gives the impression that he does. Look at what this dishonesty has done in causing separation among brethren (Jude 18-19). That alone should tell you something about Bell.

Settling for a Branch

2011-02-23T12:00:00.001-06:00

Many atheists, when trying to ground moral values, appeal to something like human well being as a guide for morality. This seems to be patently insufficient of a ground for morals, because it itself is simply a moral judgment. It is good to promote human well being and bad to stifle it is a moral value itself, and therefore can't be the ground of moral values. As I said to one commenter on Sam Harris' attempt to use this as a ground, "Saying that well-being of some sort is good is simply another moral claim, so it hasn't reached any sort of ontological base at all. If this is Harris' base, then he seems to have stopped short of a true ground for morality and settled for a branch. [In other words] you can't say that a moral value is itself the ground of moral value."

This is why most attempts at ethics today are silly little exercises in futility.

Modern Science Rejects Teleology

2011-02-23T01:11:00.002-06:00

So I'm picking on my ethics teacher again, which may turn into quite a habit for the next 12 weeks or so. This statement (the title of this post) was one of the supposed problems with Thomas Aquinas' natural law theory. My teacher really didn't argue for this assertion. How has Science done this?

Is it because it can now explain how things work? What does that have to do with whether they have an end they were designed for?

It seems to me that this is just an assumption that flows from, at least, methodological naturalism. But even if you accept that science can't access the reason for which something was created, but can only tell us how it was created/works, it certainly doesn't follow that it wasn't created for some reason.

Not to mention that this seems to be patently untrue anyway. Certain fields of science seem to make their living on detecting teleology. Archaeologists do this often.

I must say, some things my prof. states don't seem very well thought out, and when I challenge him he seems incapable of 1) listening without interrupting and 2) understanding what I'm talking about (though I suppose this could be my fault). He's not a dumb guy in the least. I don't get it. I thought this stuff I talk about all the time was pretty well known in philosophy departments...I guess not.

Justin Bieber Will be Attacked

2011-02-16T20:57:00.001-06:00

I'd never heard about the kid until recently. Chalk it up to me not keeping up on the teen pop scene. But someone that makes as much money as he does is bound to be heard of by most people at some point, so yes I am vaguely familiar with him.

Well this kid has more in the way of below the waist spherical objects than most adults in his profession, not being scared at all to give his opinion on abortion. In a Rolling Stone interview he says, "I really don’t believe in abortion...It’s like killing a baby?" (The question mark is apparently maybe being unsure, or maybe it's rhetorical in the way teens typically talk). He also didn't back down when asked about his thoughts on the issue in the case of rape. Of course he's going to be maligned and drug through the mud until he "clarifies" his position, which I assume his agent or someone working around him will convince him to do. But I hold out hope for the young man, and will pray for God to give him strength to stand up for this position in the face of the impending media pounding (which has already started).

On a more negative Bieber note, he jokingly called Americans who think people should have control over their own health care by keeping the purse strings to themselves "evil." Being anti abortion is a tad stronger than being stupid on health care, so we'll say he's slightly above water at this point.

BONUS!!!

Now we'll get to listen to a bunch of poorly conceived, emotionally charged, non-rational arguments for abortion for the next week or so on every station imaginable. YAY!

Are JL Mackie's Arguments Against Objective Moral Values Any Good?

2011-02-16T16:53:00.001-06:00

In my ethics class, we talked about JL Mackie's short essay The Subjectivity of Values. My teacher, while not seeming to be impressed by the first argument I'll go over, did indicate that we could consider the other two as pretty good. I've found that my teacher and I differ pretty greatly on what constitutes a good argument. I'll go over the formulations my teacher presented and critique them here.

Argument from relativity

P1. Moral values vary from culture to culture, from time period to time period, and from class to class in the same society.
P2. Radical differences in normative values cast doubt on the objectivity of moral values.
C. Therefore, there is good reason to think that moral values are subjective.

My first thought about this argument is that it's hard to see how it's even valid. Seems to me that the most we can say from these two premises is C' There is reason to think that moral values are subjective. Why should even radical differences give us good reason to doubt objective morality? It certainly doesn't follow from the premises in a strict literal sense.

Premise one seems to be subtly begging the question for subjectivism. The objectivist would say that moral values don't vary from these cultures, though cultural norms, which may or may not line up with whatever objective morality may exist, could vary in this way. It would be more correct to say that what cultures hold to be the correct moral values may vary from culture to culture, etc.

The objectivist could also say about premise one that it is blatantly false. Though some values may differ from culture to culture, there seem to be some that not only do transcend cultural lines, but are necessary for the survival of a culture (ie the culture would cease to exist in time if something like murder or lying were thought to be morally good). These would be the moral values. They could pass the others off as values of taste.

Premise 2 also seems to be very weak. Who says that differences of these sorts should cast doubt on objective morality? Just because people are behaving badly we ought not to think that they are actually behaving badly? That's ridiculous. Differences in moral behavior doesn't really seem to entail anything with regard to whether moral values are an ontological reality.

So, this argument not only doesn't seem to be sound, but also seems to be invalid, at least in the form given by my teacher. But he didn't really have much good to say about this one either.

Metaphysical argument from queerness

P1. If moral values were objective, then we would expect there to be moral properties out in the world.
P2. There are no moral properties out in the world (for such properties would be very queer and utterly unlike ordinary properties like heaviness, roundness, or numbers).
C. Therefore, moral values are not objective.

While I tend to agree with the first premise, there are objectivists who would classify objective morality in other ways, though I'm not entirely sure how that would work.

Premise two, I think, is really bad. First off, how does something being odd, strange, queer, weird, unlike something else, whatever you want to call it, entail its non existence? The quantum physical world is extremely strange. Does that mean we should doubt its existence?

Furthermore, Mackie is simply stacking the deck here by classifying things so that his argument goes through. Who says that moral properties are queer? Who says they are weirder and utterly unlike the other properties listed? Frankly, you can say that any property listed there is unlike the other. Roundness is not like heaviness in pretty profound ways. Likewise, numbers, as abstract objects, are also extremely strange in the minds of most philosophers. Unless one holds to some sort of reductionist materialism I don't see any reason to support the contention that one of these types of properties is queer to the point that we should start to question its existence.

Epistemological argument from queerness

P1. If there were moral properties in the world, then we would need a separate faculty from perception to detect them.
P2. We do not seem to have such a faculty.
P3. So, even if there are moral properties in the world, we can't know that.
C. Therefore, it is not reasonable to believe that moral values are objective.

I first off would begin by questioning the way premise one is worded. I assume when my prof. says "perception," being a product of latent positivism in the establishment philosophy departments, he means physical perception. What we perceive with our five senses. He needs to make that clear, since I would say there is moral forms or perception, similar to how there is a logical perception (perceiving the logical status of an argument for instance). But, if he means physical perception, then I would agree with premise one.

Premise two is ridiculous. I wonder if Mackie actually ever went outside his office. Moral perception is something that we encounter every day. You can't help but have a moral feeling/perception/sense about anything you hear about. You can simply sit there and think of a moral situation, say someone brutally beating a woman for trying to learn how to read, and immediately and irrepressibly you have a moral sense about that act. Somewhat like your physical senses, it forces itself upon you whether you like it or not. I think it's eminently clear that we have a faculty that picks up on the moral properties some act has. I think Mackie's materialism is undergirding this claim. Because our moral sense doesn't act on a strictly material level, it simply can't be true. But I think our moral sense is more obvious than our physical senses, because there doesn't have to be any sort of external stimuli to judge the moral status of an act, because you can imagine an act in a dark room and your moral sense will react to it. I have no more reason to question my moral sense than I do my physical senses.

Premise three relies on premise two.

My teacher seemed to think that both of the queerness arguments were pretty good here. But I don't think so at all. I honestly wonder where he's coming from, because these arguments, to me, rely on a vary large amount of unbacked assumptions and really are pretty poor. This makes me want to get into a philosophy department in a university or something even more, so I can give another perspective other than this latent assumed naturalism in university philosophy departments. If my Lord is willing, maybe I will!

Why anyone takes Mackie's subjectivism seriously is beyond me.

Yeah, I went there

2011-02-12T18:14:00.000-06:00

New Posts Coming Soon

2011-02-03T15:38:00.002-06:00

My brief lull in posts will come to an end fairly soon. Stay tuned.

Is Christianity 7 Times Incoherent?

2011-01-25T06:00:00.001-06:00

This is a response in part to this post.

1.

Is it consistent to say that a perfect being would create something? A perfect being has no needs or wants, so how could he need or want to create a world and populate it with beings and demand worship and sacrifice from them?

Ambiguity out the wazoo here. You simply assert this without argument as well. Does a perfect being need anything for His existence? No. Obviously not.

Can a perfect being want things? Why not? It isn't impeding His perfection. It has no impact on His power. All it seems to point to is a volitional will. I say your assertion that a want is a sign of imperfection is false.

Does a perfect being require certain things of His creation? If those can be construed as needs, in that regard, I say that a perfect being needing certain things is not an issue either. Next.

2.

Is it consistent to say that an unchangeable being would create something? If God is unchangeable, then he can’t have one set of intentions at one moment and then a new set of intentions at another. And yet God supposedly created at one time, but now doesn’t have the intention to create a universe, because he did it already. The idea of an unchangeable God that creates is incoherent.

On Christian theism, there was never a *TIME* when God changed in His decision to create something. Think back hard, Luke, hard to the Kalam argument and its nuances, like how there was no time without creation. There was no moment when He didn't have the intention to create. Also, even if my first response fails, if God had the intention, “to create the universe and then not create anything else” for eternity, then in doing what He did, His intentions never actually changed.

Also, when people speak of the unchanging nature of God, it is His essential attributes and moral nature. God is personal and has intentions and reactions like other personal beings. In that sense, it's not a problem to say God changes. In the sense He has an ultimate plan and impeccable character, those don't change. WLC says God is in time now. This isn't a problem either, unless you can show how changing in the way I have described is a lack of perfection.

3.

Is it consistent to say that an unchangeable being can be omniscient? If God is unchangeable, then his knowledge can’t change. And yet what is true changes all the time, for example what is true about my age. So an unchanging being can’t be omniscient.

It's like you're not even trying here. Omniscience is knowledge of only and all true propositions. In that sense, God's "now" knowledge is changing, assuming He is in time (and might I remind you, Luke, that as a B theorist, it seems hard to actually see how you hold that things are changing in that way). God, at this moment, knows only and all true propositions. One of those is "Atheist Luke is now x years old." God still knows that "last year Atheist Luke was x years old." As I pointed out in number 2, it's hard to see how this is a problem with the ambiguity stripped from the assertion.

4.

Is it consistent to say that God is transcendent and omnipresent? To be transcendent is to be nowhere in space, but to be omnipresent is to be everywhere in space.

Who is to say God isn't both? If omnipresence is to exist everywhere (even though you are being ungenerous even in that definition) then God would exist everywhere in the universe and anywhere that is beyond the universe as well. Say He created other universes, or in a separate realm of reality altogether as Hugh Ross argues. His power and influence are immediately present in all of those places. Another non issue.

5.

Is it consistent to say that God is transcendent and yet acts in time? To be transcendent is to be beyond space and time, so a transcendent being can’t also be immanent in space and time.

Being transcendent doesn't entail not being able to act within that which you transcend. It simply shows you aren't constrained to that realm. Next.

6.

Is it consistent to say that God is omniscient and has free will? If God knows all the actions he will perform, then he cannot do otherwise, and therefore he is not free.

Fail fail fail. Why determinists (both theists and non-theists) and open theists continue to use this line of argumentation is beyond me, when it's quite clearly fallacious. It is modally fallacious, transferring necessity where it isn't warranted by the rules of logic, as I show here.

7.

Is it consistent to say that God is all-merciful and all-just? A perfectly just person treats every offender with exactly the severity he or she deserves, but an all-merciful person treats every offender with less severity than he or she deserves. What sense does it make to say that God is all-merciful and all-just?

Maybe you've heard of something called the cross of Christ...ring a bell, Luke? Place where God's justice and mercy meet? God is just in that His wrath is assuaged by the willing sacrifice of His perfect Son, and His mercy is shown by taking the sins and punishment of humanity on Himself, and then imputes His righteousness to us? Yeah, that one. Perfectly just and perfectly merciful.

That is one reason why Christianity is the only coherent form of theism.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. If Christians want to say their worldview is logically consistent, they certainly have their work cut out for them putting together a concept of God that is logically consistent.

No, these were all answered quite a while ago. It seems like you just aren't being serious anymore.

Singing With Jesus

2011-01-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

One of my relatives uploaded some of my late grandfather's music to Youtube. He was a passionate and devoted pastor and evangelist with the Free Methodist church for many years. Truly a rare and precious man who now sings with his Savior.

Grounding God's Knowing

2011-01-07T06:00:00.004-06:00

Many determinists and open theists object to free will coexisting with exhaustive foreknowledge on the basis that God's foreknowledge of events implies that He has predetermined the event. They say that God can't know a future event in an undetermined world, but could only know probabilities of future events. They say that God either knows the future because He determined it, or because it is determined by the physical state of affairs as they currently are.

I've never thought that either of these were compelling. I've really never seen a determinist or open theist
argue for either point. They seem to simply assume it. Why can't God know future things simply as part of Him being omniscient? If omniscience is the knowledge of all true proposition, then it seems inherent in the definition that God knows future events without needing to deduce them from current physical states of affairs or personally determining them Himself. Not only that, but that definition seems to include counterfactual states of affairs as well; what things would be like if certain things are different. But it seems to me that, at least on the second option (deducing from current states), God cannot know these propositions, since they don't obtain in this particular world.

William Lane Craig has pointed out that this objection rests on the assumption that a certain form of truth-maker theory is correct. He argues that the person offering this objection can't simply assume something that controversial without arguing for it. I haven't seen an argument to make me think that these CCF's absolutely need to be grounded in the way the objector wants them to be. As Plantinga says, "It seems to me much clearer that some counterfactuals of freedom are at least possibly true than that the truth of propositions must, in general, be grounded in this way."

However, the determinist and open theist also seems to be unaware of the good attempts by libertarian free willers to give a ground to this knowledge. Alfred Freddoso has given such an argument. As Freddoso says, "it seems reasonable to claim that there are now adequate metaphysical grounds for the truth of conditional future contingent Ft(P) on H just in case there would be adequate metaphysical grounds at t for the truth of the present-tense proposition p on the conditions that H should obtain at t."¹ In other words, the metaphysical ground for the truth of a counerfactual proposition is not that the event actually exists, but that it would exist if the certain state of affairs were the case. This parallels the grounding of the truth of future propositions. It is either true or false that my Chiefs will win on Sunday. The truth depends on what actually will occur at that time. That is how it is grounded.

Even if this account fails, the objector still needs to give us a reason for why God's knowledge needs to be grounded like this before it is to succeed.

For more on this, see here and here and here and here.

1 Freddoso, Alfred, On divine foreknowledge: (part IV of the Concordia). Cornell Univ Pr, 2004. Print. 72.

What Does it Mean?

2011-01-06T06:00:00.001-06:00

Hey all. It’s great to be back. I had a great Christmas holiday and New Year, and hope you all did too. I hope my atheist readers were convicted by the grace and mercy shown by our God by becoming a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth for our sake. It is a humbling truth.

I was asked by a commenter to look at this post over at Common Sense Atheism, which is part of a larger project of critiquing William Lane Craig’s work on the absurdity of life without God. I must say, I haven’t been very interested in the content over there lately. While I was initially impressed by Luke’s ability to think more deeply about issues than most atheists I have encountered online and his superb ability to catalog resources both for and against his position, his deconversion account and his seeming unwillingness or inability to respond to objections to his arguments has been a turn off. He seems to be devolving into nothing better than another “new-Atheist” with the same type of ridiculous vitriol. That just gets boring. But since this was a request, I’ll take a look.

Luke starts by citing philosopher Steve Maitzen. Luke says that Maitzen complains that Craig has not defined what “ultimate” means in his chapter on the issue in Reasonable Faith. In his first citation of Maitzen, I really don’t see that objection. I do see that Maitzen doesn’t think Craig has sufficiently argued that temporary things don’t have significance. But that isn’t Craig’s argument. He admits that temporary things may have some sort of temporary significance, but the argument is that significance disappears, and amounts to nothing once its influence has passed out of existence. With the death of all thinking things, all significance will have amounted to nothing and have proven to have no significance. Craig spends pages and pages arguing for that.

As far as what ultimate means, I think one of the common dictionary definitions would be appropriate; perhaps “basic or fundamental” (from http://www.merriam-webster.com) or “Representing or exhibiting the greatest possible development or sophistication” (from www.thefreedictionary.com). Life, on the Christian view, has a reason and fundamentally objective purpose to which it was created. A reason implies a reasoner. The final development of and most sophisticated a person can be is if they are glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. That is why He created us. That is His purpose. And since it is true for all in spite of what anyone thinks, it is objective. Without God, there is no transcendent and necessary being to have this reason for life, and therefore there is no real, ultimate, and objective purpose.

Maitzen is then cited again. He says that he thinks that Craig may mean “unquestionable” when he says “ultimate.” Well to avoid straw men, I think WLC is a better person than I am to answer this question. It seems to me that this isn’t a sufficient definition, but I don’t think it’s important in dealing with the rest of the citation. Maitzen continues,

We know that people often try to make their lives significant by seeking purposes “greater than themselves.” Consider any purpose that might lend significance to an atheist’s life – maybe she devotes her life to feeding starving children. What more noble or more significant purpose could you have, after all? Still, Craig might challenge the atheist on her own terms: how significant is it, really, to postpone for a relatively short time the deaths of particular members of one terrestrial species on a tiny planet orbiting an undistinguished star in a vast, uncaring universe?

That’s true. People do try to invent purpose for their own lives. Craig admits that fact willingly. He says in this post, which may clear a few things up for Luke and Maitzen, “obviously we can have subsidiary purposes and conditional values without God, but my claim is that ultimately nothing really matters if there is no God. It seems to me that there are two pre-requisites to an ultimately meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life, namely, God and immortality, and if God does not exist, then we have neither.” The issue is whether this meaning we invent for ourselves is really objectively meaningful. If it depends entirely on us, then it can’t be. When we die, any meaning we have conjured up for ourselves goes with us. When everyone is dead, there isn’t any meaning. Not only that, all of the meaning we invented hasn’t amounted to anything and hasn’t accomplished or changed the outcome of anything. Everyone is dead and the universe meaninglessly expands into the cold darkness.

So when this rare female atheist that Maitzen mentions decides that feeding starving children is meaningful to her, does that mean that it is really meaningful to feed starving children? No, only to this lady is it meaningful. It’s not meaningful to the kids to feed starving children. What may be meaningful to them is getting fed, but that’s not really meaningful to other people. Of course this is just an example.

Luke then says, “The argument begins with a question like ‘What’s so great about feeding starving children?’ The obvious answer appears to be: ‘It relieves innocent suffering and gives these children a chance to prosper!’... Supposedly, the theist thinks that God’s existence can put a stop to the regress of asking ‘But what’s so great about that?’ But, they say, atheism cannot put a stop to those questions, and thus leads to despair.” He says it is inappropriate for the theist to use this riposte: “Consider the supposed final answer to “What’s so great about that?” that is offered by the theist: ‘Glorifying God and enjoying his presence for ever [sic]!’ But of course this does not stop the question. We can certainly ask of this: ‘What’s so great about that?’”

Here I think Luke has derailed the course of the argument and entered straw man territory. The question isn’t about why some action is great, it’s about why life has objective meaning. So we could say that the meaning of our lives is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But it’s silly to ask why that is objectively meaningful. Life has that meaning because God has created it for that purpose. Similarly, words have meaning because we create them for a purpose. To ask why certain words mean certain things beyond that they were simply created for that purpose is silly. They mean that because they were created for the purpose of describing something. God has set us up with an end goal in mind, and that means we have an ultimate meaning. Simple as that.

So, in answer to the questioner who inspired this post in summary form, what do I think of this article by Luke? I think it misses the point.

A Break

2010-12-20T06:00:00.000-06:00

I will not be blogging until after the New Year. I will be celebrating the birth of my Savior with family and want to devote my time to that. See you next year.

MR Dawkins Doesn't Listen--Or Something

2010-12-18T22:14:00.000-06:00

HT: Chris Shannon

On the Blogger Commenting Issues

2010-12-16T22:13:00.000-06:00

I had one commenter whose been quite fun to dialog with complain about the commenting problems that seem to permeate Blogger.

I actually have no control over the commenting issues, at least none that I know of.

When I get the too many character issue (over 4,096 or something), I just cut and paste into multiple posts. I always type my posts in Notepad or Word and then cut and paste.

The request URI doesn't keep it from posting, just hit back on your browser and it should be there; at least it usually is for me. It's annoying, but it is possible to work around.

Other than that, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Blogger's been doing weird stuff for a few months. I don't know why. I just think the hassle of switching providers would be too much, and I like the Google interconnection.

What's Good for the Hitch is Good for the Dawk?

2010-12-15T15:44:00.000-06:00

So apparently, the guy who shot up the Florida school board meeting and then offed himself was not only an uber-liberal, as evidenced by the V he pained on the wall in reference to that retarded movie V for Vendetta, but he also lists himself as a humanist on his Facebook profile. So let me ask, if it's okay for Dick Dawk and Humble Hitchens to use past committed atrocities done in the name of religion, is it okay for us to use this as evidence for the eradication of atheism?

Why Muslim Immigration Should be Halted

2010-12-14T14:37:00.000-06:00

This post, I think, makes a compelling case for halting Muslim immigration into western countries. This may sound harsh, especially since we've been influenced by the civil rights era and our view of the equality of people. I think it can be argued that controlling immigration is not devaluing human beings, and therefore isn't subject to the same kinds of criticism as racism and American segregation are. Countries have a responsibility to protect their borders and to control immigration in order to maintain cohesion in their societies, and the post I linked to shows that this just isn't possible with Muslims.

Read it before you comment, because I'm not going to interact with people who have obviously not given the post a chance.

Godlessons Slips Up Again

2010-12-13T06:00:00.004-06:00

I decided to watch one of Godlesson's videos on youtube where he goes on about his moral relativism and how there's no proof of objective morality. Of course I had to challenge that. Some cliche things regarding the moral argument were said, but it got to a point where we began discussing one aspect of his video where he criticizes another video blogger for arguing from emotion. I asked him what was wrong with that. He responded:

Do you understand what 'argument from emotion' is? It is a logical fallacy. It doesn't help get to the truth, and if the truth is the ultimate goal, you should avoid it. If the ultimate goal is to sway weak minds, make use of all the logical fallacies you want.

Apparently he hadn't gotten my point yet, so I pressed him on it:

What's wrong with logical fallacies? Who says they are wrong? Who says the truth is what we should get to? Why is it wrong to come to false conclusions?

To which he responded:

I think the fact that you even ask why it's wrong to come to false conclusions shows how little you care for the truth. Why do you argue if you don't think it matters? If you don't think what you believe is true, why argue about it?

I think most of you can see where I was trying to lead the conversation here. He's saying it is wrong to reason incorrectly. As my logic teacher said, there is a moral component to reasoning. It is wrong to not try to discern the truth. My point is that godlessons is adhering to an objective standard here, when he says one doesn't exist. But these moral relativists always become moral objectivists at some point. Just like the Arizona Atheist got upset when he thought I was being rude to him, so has godlessons in the past. They don't really believe this drivel, they only say they do to avoid the truth of the divine judge who sees the sins they commit.

More William Lane Craig Awesomeness on the Incarnation

2010-12-11T23:15:00.001-06:00

Most of these great videos are posted by the person who goes by the tag drcraigvideos. Not enough can be said about the importance of this person's endeavor to post this information in a way that is so easily accessible. They have a blog as well.

My Comments / Refutations on the Claim that Relativity Theory Refutes the Kalam Cosmological Argument

2010-12-10T16:08:00.000-06:00

I have done quite a bit of dialog over at Common Sense Atheism regarding relativity theory and its relation to the A and B theories of time and whether it forces us into a B theory of time, thus nullifying the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I think I sufficiently showed that it doesn't, and I used the findings and arguments offered by many who accept the neo-Lorentzian interpretation of relativity theory.

The comments are found at these posts: What is Special Relativity?, Time and the Light Box, and, A Map of Craig & Sinclair’s 2009 Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I will post all of the comments I made, with most of the quotes I am responding to. For the full context, you obviously need to visit the posts.

Comments on CSA’s relativity posts

What is special relativity

The only way special relativity becomes incompatible with a tensed theory of time is if one adopts space-time realism, that the possibility of graphing points of space-time means that those measurements have an ontological reality. But just because we can graph relations doesn’t mean they’re real in that sense.

Furthermore, general relativity reintroduced absolute simultaneity into physics.

My second intuition – that I could use a microwave oven on a distant planet moving very fast relative to Earth – turned out to be correct.

Well earth relative to that planet is actually the one moving that fast on special relativity. So which one is actually moving? One would have to find a privileged reference frame. Perhaps this microwave radiation could be a privileged frame?

Lorentz explained the Michelson-Morely experiment by pointing to the contraction of length that the measuring rods used in the experiment would experience. Whichever arm of their interferometer was parallel to the direction of movement would be contracted, thus giving the appearance that the earth is stationary within the aether (since the light had a shorter distance to travel when the arms were contracted). I don’t know what the justification is to posit that there is no aether based on that, though.

Hermes,

Bossmanham, do you have support for your claim that “… general relativity reintroduced absolute simultaneity into physics”?

No, I just say things. Of course I do. William Lane Craig (theist) and Quentin Smith (atheist) point it out in their introduction to Einstein, relativity and absolute simultaneity. “The hypersurface of homogeneity and isotropy is the preferred hypersurface for the formulation of the laws of physics and the measurement of space and time” (Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith. Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity. New York: Routledge, 2008. P 8). This frame is used to measure the age of the entire universe. So when people say the universe is 13.8 billion years old, they aren’t using an arbitrary frame of reference, such as their house, they are using this cosmic age of the universe.

I’m talking about actual simultaneity. This reference frame would be privileged.

Hermes,

I ansered the question in italics. If there is a priviledged reference frame, as the “Hubble flow” (as it’s known) could be, or as God would be, then there actually is absolute simultaneity. It’d be silly to call it “absolute” and not mean it.

Second, what does it matter if the claim is on page 8? I’m pretty sure Smith and Craig, who have spent large portions of their careers studying relativity and the work behind it, aren’t going to be so silly as to state something that isn’t true in their introduction. Furthermore, arguments critiquing absolute simultaneity on both sides are found throughout the book.

Modern physicists aren’t always trained in philosophy, which means they may have certain presuppositions that they have picked up that are unjustified, such as the one I mentioned above about graphing space-time and thinking it therefore is an ontological reality. Why should we think that there is no aether? What was Einstein’s reasoning? It was pure verificationism. He gives no argument, he just discards it de facto. This is the problem with that interpretation, it presupposes this debunked positivistic mentality without justification.

Also, there are several things in physics that are good grounds for a privileged frame. The microwave background radiation (mentioned above) that permeates the entire universe, and is amazingly isotropic, and against which the speed of the earth has been measured (380 km/second in the direction of the constellation Leo). Why shouldn’t this be considered the aether against which we measure events? The quantum mechanical vacuum, which underlies all of reality, could be a privileged reference frame (as this article and this article mention), and has produced test data that supports absolute simultaneity. Why shouldn’t that be considered?

Not to mention you completely waved your hand at what was offered, while giving no counter argument. I consider that a weakness on your side of the argument.

Michael,

You are not using the term “preferred frame of reference” the way that physicists use it: a special frame of reference where the laws of physics are different than in other frames. You are instead using “preferred” in a common way to mean “given a choice, people would pick it”.

I am saying it is a frame by which to measure the laws of physics and absolute simultaneity.

The quote you trot out is a cute way of saying that the frame of reference in which the cosmic background radiation is at rest is a preferred frame. Well, no competent physicist would make that claim: only a conman equivocating on “preferred” would write that. True, a frame of reference where the CMBR is at rest makes some measurements easier, but Special Relativity has absolutely no problem with that and that is not what physicists mean by “preferred frame of refefrence.”

Give me an argument for that, Michael. Why shouldn’t we consider it a privileged frame of reference? Because you prefer the status quo interpretation? The neo-Lorentzian interpretation I tend to think is far better grounded philosophically fits in perfectly with the mathematical core that makes up special relativity. All you’ve done here is say I’m wrong because you and this other physicist say so. WHY shouldn’t the background radiation be considered the frame that used to be called the aether? Why shouldn’t the quantum vacuum? There are physicists, such as John Field from CERN, who think it should. What makes their interpretation incorrect? This isn’t about the data or the measurements, it’s about how to interpret them.

The theory of special relativity is based on the principle that there are no preferred reference frames, In other words, the whole of Einstein’s theory rests on the assumption that physics works the same irrespective of what speed and direction you have. So the fact that there is a frame of reference in which there is no motion through the CMB would appear to violate special relativity!

Einstein and Murkowitz’s interpretations are based on that, yes. Einstein simply presupposed, without argument or justification, that there is no preferred reference frame (PRF). If you say there is no PRF because SR is based on it, you’re incorrect and begging the question. Einsteinian SR is based on that, Lorentzian isn’t. There are good arguments out there for the PRF’s I have suggested. You need to present an argument to the contrary that isn’t begging the question.

To repeat, all of the empirical data fits with either Einstein or Lorentz’s interpretations. Einstein based his interpretation off of a verificationist scheme, which is why many philosophers who study the arguments for relativity have come to reject his reasoning.

However, the crucial assumption of Einstein’s theory is not that there are no special frames, but that there are no special frames where the laws of physics are different.

Yes, which is what I am questioning. He really gave no argument to support that presupposition, yet you all just happily accept it and move along as if nothing’s happened.

Hermes,

I never claimed you had to choose sides in anything. All I said is I’d answered your question and gave even more reasons for why I would argue for this interpretation. I gotta wonder what’s wrong with me taking the words of two philosophers (and more who contributed to that collection of essays) on what they said about general relativity, when you seem to be taking the word of random atheist bloggers on the subject?

Muto,

So all arguments you can’t understand are “trickery”? Craig isn’t the only one who makes this argument, as I’ve already pointed out that Quentin Smith, who Craig has famously debated, also argues along similar lines.

I think it’s about the intellectually weakest thing to do to accuse someone that you disagree with of trickery. You lose debates that way.

Muto,

You do not need arguments, but experimental data

Experimental data is useless without arguments that explain the reasoning behind how to interpret it. Furthermore, the data is the same.

RE: trickeryYou accused Craig of trickery, and I’ve seen that several times from different people on this blog. Seems to me some people, when in a corner, are reduced to accusing their opponent-in-ideas of trickery, which is just bailing out of the argument.

Hermes,

So, it’s a convention for explaining things not intended to be taken as a description of reality? If that is what you meant, I’m fine with that. You need explain nothing more

No, I’m speaking of this as reality. I’m not sure where scientific anti-realism was even hinted at here. This is a frame that is coextensive with the universe and is isotropic (see here. That would be a universe-wide frame of reference. I’m not sure what else to say.

Except for one detail. I asked for modern physicists. Your reply ignored that, and answered as if you were addressing my question.

I ask you for modern physicists that explain why the burden of proof isn’t on them. I did mention a modern physicist who holds to a view like this. I just linked to a paper of more. One wonders what else I could offer before you just start looking hard-headed.

Chip,

So what you mean is that cosmology has a preferred frame, not that general relativity does. The whole point of general relativity is to write the laws of physics in a way valid in all reference frames.

The hypersurface of homogeneity and isotropy that is part of general relativity is said privileged reference frame. This is why we can refer to the entire universe as 14 billion years old without relying on the earth’s frame of reference.

The CMB frame might be a good frame for cosmology, but it’s a lousy frame for, e.g., NASA calculating trajectories for satellites.

So what? Then you use different reference frames for that stuff. Galilean and Lorentzian relativity would still be viable in this view. Besides, practicality != true.

Do you think the laws of physics look any different in the “preferred” frame than any other? If so, then this contradicts general relativity, instead of being supported by it.

I’m not sure what that means. I think the laws of physics are constant throughout the universe. I do think that from the priviledged frame, things would objectively experience length contraction and time dilation. Craig explains what an observer in the priviledged frame would observe here. Search for the paragraph that begins: “There are, after all, other physical interpretations of the Lorentz transformation equations that constitute the mathematical core of STR which are empirically equivalent to the received interpretation and which, if correct, would lead to completely different conclusions when applied metaphysically.”

Hermes,

You made a claim. I asked for support from you of your claim from the relevant experts; physicists.

I gave it.

Why should anyone take your claim as the default? Are you a relevant expert?

Because it’s never been supported with argument but is rather assumed. Arguments for a privileged frame have been given, and general relativity supports the contention. I’d say the burden of proof lies elsewhere.

You asking for physicists to explain why you aren’t right, and then pushing me to do that research is a clear shifting of burden.

No, I’m asking for an argument to simply assume that there is no privileged frame of reference in the universe. I’m aware that many physicists simply adopt the status quo.

Are they in the consensus among relevant experts (GM focused physicists)? (If so, provide some evidence that they are.)

This constant moving of the goalposts is somewhat amusing, and just adds to my impression that you’re just being hard-headed here. You keep changing and adding to the standard.

There’s rarely a consensus opinion on new and innovative interpretations of data. See Gallileo, Copernicus, Darwin. Consensus != good arguments or support. Furthermore, how many defunct theories enjoyed a huge consensus of agreement? Global warming, classical Newtonian physics, etc. Nothing would change if we always required a consensus view on things.

Is the conclusion you say they came to accepted as the most likely option or is it one of many? (If so, provide evidence that it is the consensus opinion relevant experts.)

It doesn’t matter if it’s the better argument. It is far better philosophically grounded, and meets up with all of the observational data, ergo it is the preferred theory. Certainly, it would basically make Luke’s assertion that the Kalam argument fails because the B-theory of time is correct just about null, since it doesn’t show anything of the sort.

If you reference something more recent, that would be good too. +35 years is a bit out there. If the authors of that one paper are still alive, they may not even say what you say the +35 year old paper said.

You do realize that Einstein’s work is from 1905, and it is still valid? Most of this stuff is based on years and years of research. Field’s stuff is within the past 10 years, and Smith, Tooley, and Craig’s stuff is also. This is recent work done by people who are unsatisfied with the verificationist assumptions of Einstein and the strange ontologizing of the Minkowskian interpretation.

Bossmanhan, I take it that your silence is due to you reconsidering the issues? If so, that is encouraging. Feel free to post your updated thoughts on this

Actually, it’s more due to me being too busy to get on Luke’s blog for a few days.

I haven’t really been given a reason to reconsider the conclusions I’ve been coming to since beginning my reading. I took physics a few years back and simply accepted the relativity taught there because I hadn’t read up on epistemology. Once I did, and then reconsidered Einstein’s assumptions and read the critiques by some philosophers like Craig, Smith and Tooley, and physicists like Field, I began to think that Einstein’s assumption is unjustified and that the neo-Lorentzian model is far better grounded. No scientific theory is too sacred to be reexamined and scrutinized. I’d think skeptics would appreciate that.

Rick B,

bossmanham in my opinion is starting to sound trollish- he’s not arguing for his position and refuses to support it with evidence. He also rejects the evidence provided by others.

So then the arguments I’ve provided, and the evidence I’ve cited, aren’t arguments or evidence? You may want to read through the thread again, though I’ve found this tactic to be quite common when atheists don’t have an argument.

But, to summarize the discussion so far, for your exlusive benefit, Rick B:
–
Luke claims relativity theory proves the B theory of time.

I say it doesn’t, because there are interpretations that would support a Newtonian type of absolute time, and base it on neo-Lorentzian interpretations.

People ask for reasons.

I say that Einstein’s assumption that there is no privileged frame of reference is unfounded, and stems from positivism, which is a defunct philosophy.

People say that special relativity requires that assumption, so it’s necessary.

I point out that’s begging the question. Then give evidence from general relativity and quantum mechanics that there is a privileged frame.

People say to name some modern physicists who accept this. I did. People challenge me to link to articles. I did.
–
Not sure you’re up to date here, my friend.

SR is supported by evidence; its implications mean that for all known frames of reference the laws of physics hold [excluding the well-known problem of quantum mech. disunity]. That this is so indicates there is no privileged frame of reference.

SR, like all theories, is supported by certain assumptions. The neo-Lorentzian interpretation conforms to all of the same evidence, without making the same strange assumptions. And you’re just asserting that there is no privileged frame based on a theory that ASSUMES that there isn’t to work, which is textbook begging the question.

Believe it or not, many physicists also are deeply aware of the philosophical implications of their work; but you’ve merely stated that other interpretations of the mathematics of the theories on question do not imply that there are no privileged frames of reference. You quoted philosophers. You didn’t show the philosophers are good enough at mathematics to dig through the physics; you didn’t use recent references; you didn’t prove anything

Is it ironic that you’re doing what you accuse me of doing? First off, one doesn’t have to understand all of the relevant mathematics to understand what relativity theory says. Second, the interpretation of the mathematical core of the theory isn’t one in the same with the mathematical core of the theory. Neo-Lorentzian relativity relies on the same core evidences. Third, one doesn’t need to understand the mathematics to see the philosophical assumptions and their faults. Fourth, you assume that Craig, Smith, Tooley, and others don’t understand the math, but they cite it quite a bit and then expound on it in their essays and books. Fifth, there are physicists who have developed the neo-Lorentzian model.

Hermes,

Rick B, thank you. It is hard to argue with your comments.

Heh, cheer leading for the home team are we?

And until there is some wrangling with the things I have mentioned, I can’t do anything else for you. Again, the hard-headed impression is still pretty apparent

Time and Light Box

This is all true for events that are relative to, say, us as observers of different frames of reference here in the universe, but you’re simply assuming there is no privileged frame of reference, and then make the metaphysical conclusion that, therefore, time is truly relative (which then leads to your grand metaphysical leap into the equal ontological reality of all moments in time, which is really weird).

I’ll grant that physical clock times are relative, but this does nothing to prove that time itself is segmented or is a block and is a physically distinguishable dimension. But, I’d like to know what evidence supposedly proves that. All of these experiments show that clock times are relative to different reference frames, but it does nothing to show that there isn’t a privileged frame.

It seems intuitively obvious to me that, as I am writing this, there are events happening on one of the moons of Jupiter simultaneous to my tapping on the keys on the computer. To tell me that light rays may reach these events at different times and then reach me later than you, or vice versa, is completely irrelevant. We’re not talking about light signals or the time it takes for them to travel, we are talking about what happens at a moment of time.

It seems to me that this continued endeavor to “disprove” the A theory of time using SR is to either be ignorant of the true discussion, or to be ignoring the counter arguments being offered. My contention is that there is a universal time by which distant events actually are simultaneous with each other and which does pass moment by moment. I’ve already cited several empirical evidences of that on previous posts, and there are good philosophical reasons to reject a B-theory and to accept an A-theory. It just isn’t the case that special relativity disproves the A-theory.

Tarun,

Special relativity tells us that both spatial and temporal intervals are relative to reference frames

Special relativity doesn’t really show this, but rather it assumes it.

Shane McKey,

Of course, that is not in any way to undermine your point that WLC does not know his physics

Of course, you must be ignorant of Craig’s several works on relativity theory, found:

here and here and here, among others

In response to: “Special relativity only assumes two things: (1) The laws of physics take the same form in all inertial reference frames, and (2) The speed of light is fundamental constant. Based on these assumptions, it tells us that spatial and temporal intervals are relative to reference frames.

Also, it is true that you can consistently maintain that there is a privileged rest frame while still acknowledging the empirical adequacy of special relativity. This rest frame will be epistemically inaccessible, so postulating it seems otiose, but I will grant that it is an available move. But this seems to get far more complicated when we move to the general theory of relativity, where spacetime itself plays a dynamical role (not just space but *spacetime*). If you don’t grant the existence of any times except the present (or the present and the past) it is completely unclear to me how you could possible account for this dynamical role. It seems you would require a quite radical revision of our best theory of gravitation. Again, you could postulate a preferred foliation of spacetime (although again this seems otiose), but I don’t see how you can claim that only one slice of this foliation actually exists.”

And #1 assumes what we just said, does it not, since that would not be the case it there were a privileged frame, as I understand it.

I agree, special relativity certainly is empirically viable even under the form of relativity I adhere to. While I don’t think it’s the case that it’s epistemically inaccessible any longer, with the advent of general relativity that introduces the hypersurface of isotropy and cosmic time, I would add that even if we didn’t have that, we’d have the issue of Einstein’s SR not really being completely empirically adequate. The length contraction and clock retardation that is observed is left unexplained, and is simply derived from the equations. On forms that retain a privileged frame, these are explained (see Prokhovnik’s Light in Einstein’s Universeas I am completely unqualified to explain the fine details).

My main complaints are not the empirical data, as the model of relativity theory I think is correct is empirically equivalent to Einstein’s, but the philosophical assumptions that underly the status quo interpretation.

Kyle,

I lose track of where I’ve posted here sometimes, so I hope you see this answer.

Chroma asked me : you say that special relativity cannot explain length contraction or time dilation. What have you been smoking?

Einstein’s SR does not posit the physical reasons for length contraction and clock retardation. Rather they are almost just brute facts derived from the equations. Lorentz’s does and I referred everyone to a physicist’s paper which explains it. I really don’t understand it yet.

Plus, you said that special relativity simply ‘assumes’ that time and space intervals are relative to reference frame – epistemic libel born from ignorance.

Not sure what he’s trying to say here, but Einstein is very straightforward about this.

Moreover, you think that a preferred frame – whatever that is – would make simultaneity absolute, but fail to recall that absolute is short for not [variant] on frame of reference, and thus are oblivious to simple fact that the question of good-looking frames is moot for the relativity or absoluteness of simultaneity

Again, not completely clear on what he’s trying to say here, but when I use the term absolute, I am using it in the cosmic sense. On a cosmic level, the level God would view, there would be events that happen at exactly the same instant. This would be measured against this absolute frame. Of course you could still have arbitrarily set frames that you could still measure other frames against within the larger frame, but the existence of this privileged frame would do away with the confusion that Einsteinian and especially Minkowskian models introduce as it relates to the intuitive concept of time.

On top of this, you ask where the ‘proof’ is of the idea the universe is a spacetime block, while failing to recognize the fundamental purpose of the entire idea is its immense explanatory power.

Explanatory power alone isn’t enough to verify a theory’s truth. Solipsim would have immense explanatory power about the existence of the world (all in your mind), but is almost certainly not true.

Where is the proof or evidence of an (a)ether?

I’ve given this in previous posts Luke has done, and on my own blog. A couple would be the microwave background radiation, the hypersurface of simultaneity that general relativity posits, which introduces a cosmic time (and btw, this argument about SR is really just academic, because GR overtakes SR).

Given this level of misconception coupled with your level of (still apparently tentative) confidence, I suspect you might be operating or partially operating on an agenda with regards to this issue.

I am pretty new to the whole deal, I’ll admit. But I find the arguments of the neo-Lorentzian physicists very persuasive, especially since Einstein’s interpretation was borne out of logical positivism. There’s no reason to just eliminate the aether, especially when doing so is so problematic on a metaphysical level.

This debate isn’t about the empirical data. The data is compatible with either interpretation (except for the proposed special reference frames). It’s a philosophical debate about what is an appropriate interpretation of the data.

Hermes,

I get the impression that you are only re-stating the comments of Craig and other apologists

So? In this field where I have no more experience than a beginning physics course in college, I’m going to rely on the work of those who have studied it. That’s what most people do when arguing for a position. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here.

That said, it doesn’t mean I haven’t thoughtfully considered the arguments and reflected on their cogency. And my only agenda here is to get at truth, and the truth is that the theory of relativity doesn’t force us into a B-theory of time.

Hermes,

Who said I didn’t understand the source? Just because I didn’t completely develop the argument doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. I have to have some grasp of it to formulate it for the context of this discussion. I don’t know all of the mathematical equations, but you don’t have to to understand the differing physical interpretations.

Furthermore, if we’re demanding original content now as a standard of reliability or whatever, then about 99.9999% of everything written today needs to be scrapped. We build off of people’s work most of the time.

How to fix this: One way to make an idea your own is to give an example or analogy that the original source did not give but that still illustrates the ideas found in the original source

I have done this. I have restated the arguments in my own words as I understand them with it in mind to make it understandable to an audience that may not be completely familiar with it.

Now, if you’re done patronizing me and critiquing the way I present arguments, maybe I can see you actually interact with them?

Fringe and Mind Body Dualism

2010-12-09T22:35:00.000-06:00

Fringe is my favorite show on television right now for several reasons. First, I love sci-fi, and there aren't enough shows that do it as well as Fringe does. Second, it addresses philosophical issues in a profound way. It gets you to consider different philosophical issues by opening up the imagination and exploring how certain things could be if certain other things were true. Like how should personal identity be thought of if there are alternate versions of yourself in a parallel universe. Third, Joshua Jackson has the best five o'clock shadow thing going on ever.

Tonights episode, Marionette, brought up a subject that I am somewhat interested in, and that impacts Christianity. An obsessed admirer of a suicide victim collects all of her organs that were donated to other people and puts them back in her body. Then, in an homage to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, he revives her.

What I thought was very interesting, and am surprised that the writers actually got right, was that when she was revived, it was clear she wasn't human, or at least wasn't what she once was. Later, the guy who revived her said that he looked in her eyes and knew what he brought back wasn't who he loved. I think this is obviously a recognition that the mind and the body are not one in the same, which the Bible constantly affirms. It also is interesting that the episode makes clear that it isn't possible for us to reunite these two things; the mind and the body.

Scripture teaches that one day, all who have died will be returned to their bodies and be judged by Jesus (Revelation 20:11-15). Those who are found to be in Christ will live with Him forever. Those not found in the Book of Life are cast into the lake of fire.

So in the end, the separation of soul and body will be rectified, and when we're resurrected we won't be empty husks like the girl in this episode of Fringe.

Blog Name Change

2010-12-04T14:45:00.001-06:00

Famous early astronomer Johann Kepler said about his research, "I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."¹ I have attempted to make this my goal in composing this blog. I feel I have learned much by posting and discussing things here, along with my personal reading in philosophy, theology, and apologetics. I hope to continue this with a new blog name that reflects Kepler's goal in thinking God's thoughts after him and have purchased a new domain name, thinkinggodsthoughts.com. I hope to attract more visitors and continue my learning process and hopefully help others come to think our Lord's thoughts as well.

1 Madison, Henry. Men of science, men of God: great scientists who believed the Bible. Master Books, 1982. 11-12. Print.

Response to Common Sense Atheism's The Science of Morality

2010-12-01T13:25:00.000-06:00

I'm actually surprised that there is someone out there who thinks we can discover moral truths by performing scientific experiments, but Luke from Common Sense Atheism thinks we can. As I understand it, most ethicists would deny that science has this ability, and I'll explain here in my response (which I'm also trying to post as a comment on his blog, but am having issues), why this fails.

Luke says:

Now, I want to point out right away that that’s a strange claim to make, because usually, the phrase “OBJECTIVE moral value” means something like “moral value grounded in something beyond the attitudes of a person or persons.” Right? If what you’re calling “moral value” is just based off somebody’s personal attitudes, that’s called SUBJECTIVE morality.

I've seen this from you a couple of times, and despite it being answered even by fellow athesits it seems you still think it's a pretty strong objection.

Here are the issues. 1) It's a straw man. Theists, at least those who hold to the divine command theory you're attempting to critique, don't think that moral values are based in the attitudes of God, but in His very nature. His attitudes toward behavior flow from this essential part of His being. So you misled this audience.

2) It doesn't destroy the objective nature of the moral values that we are defending. These morals exist in spite of what anyone thinks, what anyone desires, what makes anyone happy, etc. All people are bound by them and all people will be judged by them in light of being made in the image of God. Innately, all people whose mental faculties are functioning properly apprehend these morals even if they don't believe in God; hence the common belief that some things are really wrong.

3)Who says that the well being of conscious creatures is a good thing; good enough to base our concept of morality off of? People all around the world would debate your assertions about "whether legalized abortion promotes the well-being of conscious creatures. There’s an objective fact of the world about whether or not female genital mutilation promotes the well-being of conscious creatures." What are you basing these personal opinions of yours on, Luke? Do you realize that the Muslim cultures that practice the latter are far outpacing the western nations that cringe at this practice in spreading their genetic code? Further, they would say it does produce the well being of those in their society because it keeps the women in line. You're just assuming your western ideals, fostered in a Christian context, are the thing that is the best for people. But the Mullah in Pakistan is going to ask, "who the heck are you?"

Even if the Nazis had won World War II and brainwashed everybody into thinking that killing people who aren’t white Europeans is okay, it would still be an objective fact that killing non-white people would NOT generally promote the well-being of conscious creatures. That would still be an objective fact.

The Nazi's thought it would, and that's why they acted on it. They thought the well being of humanity hinged on eliminating the Jews. Those who owned slaves and subjugated the rights of women thought that advanced the good of conscious creatures. It's subject to the prevailing perception of what is beneficial for conscious creatures. That isn't objective at all, Luke.

Further, who grounds the assertion that the well being of conscious creatures is worth promoting. Who says? What do conscious creatures have over non-conscious creatures? That sounds like specie-ism.

4) We do science? To discover morality? Really? Science can't tell us what actually should be considered a benefit to conscious creatures, because that is a personal opinion dependent on individual notions of what is beneficial. And that is just an arbitrary definition anyway. Does the moral fact that "we should advance the well being of conscious creatures" have some basis beyond the human mind? If not, it's subject to those human beings who think that way. There isn't actually a moral code that is objectively true and binding for all people, rather your formulation here is just as subjective as any other secular moral theory.

GK Chesterton Describes the "New-Atheists" in 1925

2010-12-01T02:55:00.000-06:00

"They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith."

Atheists: The Bible is HOPELESSLY CONTRADICTORY!!!!11!!11oneone!!1eleven

2010-11-29T16:56:00.001-06:00

I saw this a little more often this week in the uh-mazing atheist blogosphere. Of course I rarely see any passages put forward as being hopelessly contradictory. The last one that someone was actually able to point out was Exodus 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:20. Apparently atheists don't know how to apply contextual hermeneutics to what they read. Well, they get by in everything but the Bible, so maybe they're cherry picking.

Of course Exodus 20:5 is a part of the 10 commandments and is speaking of the covenantal consequences of idol worship for the Israelites. Ezekiel 18:20 is recounting the law of the Pentateuch which is dealing with individual punishment for breaking the law. One speaks of the consequences of God removing Himself from Israel for their breaking the covenant. The other is the immediate judicial punishment for breaking a law. This is even evident today. Children may suffer from consequences of their parents breaking the law, but we don't charge those children with breaking the law their parents actually broke.

But what did the inerrancy skeptic do here? He took two separate verses from two books written hundreds of years apart by different authors in different situations. You can't do that with literature and have anything make sense. I'd love to see the stuff atheists write held to this ridiculous standard.

Atheism is Boring

2010-11-24T21:44:00.000-06:00

Sean McDowell has posted on his blog arguing that atheism as an idea leads to very boring conclusions. He announced he was working on it on Facebook yesterday, and I figured this would be the direction he would take. As I said to him on Facebook, "I think atheism must be the most intellectually mundane experience that anyone could partake in. What's the point of acquiring any knowledge at all if we're just sophisticated conglomerations of matter? That is boring." Check it out.

Summary and Review of Does the Universe Have Purpose Debate (Dawkins v. Craig)

2010-11-19T00:41:00.000-06:00

If you don't like subtle sarcasm, you may not like this summary. But I couldn't help myself.

Speech 1

Matt Ridley - Uninteresting first speech. Seemed to agree that there is no ultimate purpose in the universe.

William Lane Craig - Laid out the two contentions that the theists would defend. "(1)If God does not exist, the universe has no purpose, and (2) If God does exist, the universe does have a purpose." Typical great opener massively constrained by time.

Michael Shermer - Annoying, irrelevant, and churlish. Somehow gay marriage came up in a debate about whether the universe has meaning. Simply asserted that we're all just stardust. Where's the argument for that?

David Wolpe - Passionate speech. Challenged the methodological naturalism and scientism that Craig said pervaded the conference. Gave props to intuitions about objective meaning.

Richard Dawkins - Goes on about how there actually isn't purpose, no matter how pervasive it is in human intuition. Ad hominem; essentially called the theists childish. Apparently his argument for purposlessness is that most people grow out of thinking that way. Gave no argument or evidence for that. Attacks Aristotelian teleology. Contradicts his earlier assertion when he says that we do see purpose in things. Asserts that evolution == no purpose with no argument. How the heck does that follow? Asserts his unscientific philosophical assumption that all things developed unaided and unguided with no argument. Dawkins is devoid of substance. All rhetoric, and not very good at that. We don't know what caused the universe, but we KNOW that science did it.

Douglas Geivett - Restates the two contentions. Gives brief reasons God is a good explanation. God is interested in all individuals and wants a loving relationship with people. This is the only way that a truly purposeful and meaningful life is possible. Shermer's "meaning" isn't meaningful. No God, no intention for anything in the universe. Human history and behavior has no meaning. Free will isn't possible on atheism. The concern people have with purpose is evidence for God. How would a simple collection of atoms consider any purpose?

Speech 2

Craig - Notes the agreement that the atheists have with the two contentions. Atheists have given no arguments against God; answered argument from evil and evolution doesn't disprove God. 10 arguments for God have been given. Dawkins is silly for saying "why questions are silly." Dawkins just believes we're "animated chunks of matter." If God exists, these are meaningful questions. Don't miss God. That would be the ultimate tragedy.

Ridley - RAAHHH!!! "I'm only hearing straw men!!!!" Completely misses half of the debate, apparently, because he claims he just looks at the universe to see if it doesn't have purpose, not because God doesn't exist. [But if God does exist then the universe does have a purpose. You must argue that God doesn't exist.] *Snarl* We don't agree!!! We can live purposeful lives without a purposeful universe or God. Order can come from orderless chance. Yay. Flying spaghetti monster appears. Synthesized urea disproves God. DNA disproves God. Genetic code is simple [ha]. We have the same genes as a mouse [Shakespear uses the same letters as you do, that doesn't mean you're Shakespere].

Wolpe - The answer depends on what you think about yourself. If you agree with atheists, then you must agree that there is no purpose. The universe doesn't have intention. But you may know that there's something special about you, and you and your hopes, dreams, loves can't be reduced to simply mechanistic terms. We lazy religious people acknowledge the mystery of humanity and the purposes of God.

Shermer - THE universe doesn't have a purpose. Mostly stars. [Yeah, that's a good argument Sherm]. Assumes that there is no God without argument again. We can find purpose. This is all just an argument for ignorance. Our own selfish silliness is purpose enough!! We should love people for the sake of love! Pretend there's no God. Did you just lose your purpose? [Uh, yes]. I claim to know what you would do in that situation. Yak. Shermer is a tool.

Geivett - Ridley says there are patterns, but no purpose. Says there's progress that we experience. But what is progress without value? We must be progressing toward some value, otherwise it's just change. Where's the argument that life has no purpose even without God? Saying it's possible that things can come bottom up doesn't mean it's true. Hasn't even been shown that it's possible. Top-down is better explanation. Shermer says no purpose because of stars and helium. This is necessary for our living. Dawkins cherry picked medieval design arguments. Ignores the fine tuning of the universe.

Dawkins - The other side is just emotional. Craig thinks it's intolerable that death is the end. [Yeah, that's all Craig said]. Wolpe claims a monopoly on love. They think I don't love things. I think the milky way and microscopes are awesome! Then he describes his own view and says it somehow means we're meaningful because we have brains. We make our own purpose. [Craig is just laughing at this silliness]. EVOLUTION!!!

Interim

Michio Kaku - One side, 100% certain that there is no purpose and no God. One side 100% certain there is purpose and God. [Get ready for the dumbest thing ever]. They're both wrong. Yeah, I'm on the science channel and I think I know things, but basic philosophy escapes me, apparently, because there's this thing called the law of the excluded middle. [Either there is a God, or there isn't. There can't KIND OF be a God]. Pathetic. My cell phone'll fall if I drop it. Whether God exists is undecidable. Can't know scientifically. Can't disprove unicorns. [Don't even consider that maybe some scientific evidence could allow us to infer a designer]. String theory is awesome. *Facepalm*.

Speech 3

Ridley - I agree with mystery. Mystery != God. Unfortunately, that wasn't the argument. Fail. Unicorns are cool. I like talking about them.

Craig - Notice the shift in the atheist side? They've been claiming that we can make our own purpose and feel good. That means we can pretend that there's purpose. That's make believe. That purpose is illusory. The atheists have been arguing from emotion. The only rational arguments given have been for God. Atheism is unlivable.

Shermer - *Groan* Dawkins was wrong. Jealousy is green. Bwahaha. Kaku is right that we can't prove there's a God, but these dumb ol' theists think we can. Spouses would know if we were faking our love. I completely missed the point of the argument. Fail ran out of time. HA.

Wolpe - Points out atheist straw men. I never said good manners and argument are only on our side [heh]. I've been close to death many times, myself and through others. We don't claim we can PROVE God and purpose, but we can infer through them that there is an afterlife.

Dawkins - HEY I'M BRITISH! Wolpe is just thinking wishfully. Nice != true. Godidit is obviously not true, and it's lazy. Darwin proved everything that makes me a big strong man. God of the gaps is dumb, but Science of the gaps is TOTALLY VIABLE!!!!!111!!!oneone!11eleven!!

Geivett - Kaku is wrong. No one claimed 100% certainty. All our arguments are probability arguments. God is likely, and therefore the way we should think. Science isn't the only source of knowledge. We can infer the existence of God through other arguments. Dawkins has given the most emotional arguments. Not argued that God doesn't exist. Not refuted our arguments. Only said that idea of God is "pathetic. That's emotional."

There are some more comments by some of the other guys, and some closing remarks from the debaters. Craig urges the audience to not get sucked into Dawkins' religious bigotry. In philosophy and other areas there are many outspoken and intelligent theists. Dawkins has the final word, which is dumb and basically says that science is da bomb and is the only worthy goal.

This was a lot of us online apologist's wish for a long time; that Craig would get a shot at Dawkins. I think it's obvious who would win a one on one encounter between them, as Dawkins lacks any substance whatsoever. The debate was entertaining, but the speeches were frustratingly short and the speakers weren't able to elaborate much. I'd still love to see a one-on-one between Dawkins and Craig, and I hope Dawkins doesn't think this gets him off the hook. This will have to do for now, I suppose.

AA Simply Doesn't Get That Moral Argument

2010-11-16T18:24:00.000-06:00

I've taken a little break from the Arizona Atheist for several reasons, the main one is that this back and forth gets time consuming and time is something I don't have a lot of lately. Another reason is AA's lack of civility and his inability to reason in a straight line. It's clear he really hasn't studied the fundamentals of argumentation or logic, because he can't follow a simple argument, as is made clear when he shifts back and forth so dramatically from saying there is no objective morality to condemning me as "f[expletive deleted]ing insane" for differentiating between murder and a killing that is not murder. But, I will respond here for those it may actually benefit. I will respond to his woeful attempts at interacting with the teleological and ontological arguments in the weeks to come.

In the most recent post dated 9/14, AA begins, "Because of Brennon’s obvious lack of ability to engage in discussion without his immature ridicule I’ve decided not to respond directly to him, though have replied here for anyone who might happen to wander from his blog to mine seeing if I've responded." This is AA's main modus operandi when he can't understand some argument, or can't respond to it; play the victim. He seems to have trouble differentiating between a terse critique of his logic, and a personal attack on him. No one is personally attacking him, I critique his argument, and it is surprisingly weak, if not disoriented. But here's the thing, AA doesn't think that there are objective morals. So my question is why is he getting mad even if I did insult him? What's wrong with me insulting someone if I personally feel it's okay to insult? The fact is that AA is a rigid, almost dogmatic, moralist but he has to say he's not to avoid the conclusion of the moral argument.

He continues, "This argument [that morality is subjective] may seem troubling to Brennon, but this gives away Brennon’s ignorance. Atheists make moral assertions by making rational, thought out (ie. subjective) choices about what is right and wrong, sometimes by following atheistic (godless) philosophies." I'm not sure what I'm ignorant about here, since I know this. How atheists arrive at their moral judgments has never been at issue in this debate, rather the debate is about whether there actually exists objective moral values and duties that all people are beholden to whether they know it or not. This is just a mini red herring.

He goes on,

Given the fact that objectivism regards things that exist independently from the human mind, this seems to be falsified both philosophically and scientifically...All things depend upon a conscious agent to bring things into existence and that includes moral values. If no human being were alive none of our moral beliefs would exist. Say another species evolved that species very well could have very different morals than us. Even other human societies have differing moral values and so this is also falsified without even bringing up Prime.

I don't know if AA is aware of what he just said here but, "All things depend upon a conscious agent to bring things into existence and that includes moral values" sounds like the cosmological argument to me. But we'll pass that off as an innocent misstep on AA's part and focus on the meat of this paragraph. First off, it seems ridiculous to say that things can't exist apart from the human mind. Obviously the universe does. Now, if AA actually meant perhaps that abstract concepts can't exist without the human mind, that also seems ridiculous. Would the laws of logic still hold in no human minds existed? I think they would. I can imagine a universe devoid of human life where modus ponens still was valid. But this is actually getting into the Transcendental argument for God. Since the laws of logic were still valid when and where there are no human minds, there must be a transcendent mind where these laws originate. But I digress.

I'm not sure how he thinks that objective morality, which is a metaphysical position, could be invalidated scientifically. I'd also like to see the philosophical argument that invalidates the position. "If no human being were alive none of our moral beliefs would exist," is just begging the question, since that is exactly what is being debated. He needs to argue that is the case. On the contrary, we all know, as AA shows himself in this very post, that there are things that are always wrong. It's always wrong to murder people. It's always wrong to torture innocent people.

He says, "Say another species evolved that species very well could have very different morals than us. Even other human societies have differing moral values and so this is also falsified without even bringing up Prime." Yes! That is exactly the point. If God does not exist, then our morals have evolved due to socio-biological pressures. But I'm sorry, if it turns out that extraterrestrials exist and they come to earth to rape our species in order to spread their own, it is still wrong, regardless of how their evolutionary history progressed. The Nazis evolved a society where it was right to kill Jews and homosexuals, but even if they had won and had eradicated the notion that that was wrong, it would still be wrong. Does AA disagree that the holocaust was wrong? He'd have to if moral relativism were true.

He then goes off into the discussion we had about slavery. This was a digression from the main point that came up because he wanted to show that morality is relative by showing that people in the past defended slavery. But I'm done arguing about that, as I have already shown that Thomas Aquinas did not have in mind the slavery where all humanity is stripped from the slaves, because Aquinas accepted that all humans have intrinsic value. The thing is, as I stated in the post he responded to, "simply offering examples of people who thought a certain moral abomination was morally good does not prove in any sense that morals are relative or that what that person did was right in any way. All showing past moral abominations does is show that moral abominations happened in the past." So the slavery thing isn't at issue here. Rather we are trying to determine whether some sort of slavery is objectively wrong.

AA says, "The moral argument no more proves god’s existence than someone arguing that moral absolutes mean that fairies exist. Brennon calling me ignorant is ignorance in itself! It’s more than clear that it is he who doesn’t understand logic." Actually, the moral argument is deductive, so if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. He must show that the premises are false to defeat the argument. He's been attempting to argue against premise 2, but he constantly reverts to some objective morality when he's offended by what I say and wants to criticize me for it. Why can't he be consistent here? I think it's because he intuitively knows that there are objective morals. Otherwise he has nothing to criticize me about.

Here again is where theists run into road blocks with morality. Human beings ourselves create the rightness or wrongness of an action. It’s been done for thousands of years, with laws being passed in various states and rules being changed throughout time. In one state something is illegal but in another state it’s legal. In one country something is legal; in another it isn’t. In one period of time slavery was legal and now its condemned by nearly everyone. Our moral values change over time, and despite Aquinas’s views on feudalism most christians throughout history owned slaves and freely participated in the slave trade. But over time their views began to change. The idea of slavery is relative to the time and place in which one lives.

Laws may reflect morality, but they obviously don't create morality. There has to be some reason why we institute certain things as laws, and it's obvious the laws against murder are there after everyone knows that murder is wrong. Laws also don't always deal with morality, but on social conventions. Yes, some states institute laws that say we are to drive on the right hand side of the road while others direct us to drive on the left hand side. It's obviously not intrinsically good or bad to drive on one side or the other. These are just social conventions.

Furthermore, it's obvious that some governments can institute morally bad laws, such as the United States institution of slavery or modern Muslim countries who subjugate the rights of women. Laws may reflect morality, but it's obvious they don't create it. And is AA saying that slavery was right at one time, since that was the social leaning of the culture? If that's correct, then those who were fighting against slavery were committing a moral crime, which doesn't seem right at all. There are so many problems with this kind of morality, and it's obvious that not even AA can live consistently with it.

AA then goes on and seems to say that rape is okay if the culture approves. Really? I've got to say, I think that there is something seriously wrong if he thinks that is the case, and ought to look into counseling. I think it's clear to anyone whose mental faculties are operating properly that rape is always wrong in every case because it is a direct attack and defiling of a human being. But, it's true that if AA is correct and there is no objective morality, then rape isn't really wrong. Great white sharks forcibly copulate all the time. It helps their genetics spread. We're no different than sharks ultimately if God does not exist.

AA says,

According to Brennon, I guess the several religious Inquisitions were considered wrong by those performing them. Of course, that would not be accurate. They believed they were doing god’s work by torturing people and suppressing heresy. So, no Brennon, torture has not always been “wrong, no matter what culture you’re in” or time period.

Apparently, AA is saying that it was right for the church to kill heretics for things they believed, since at the time this kind of thing was not thought to be bad. Well as unprovable as that is, since I'm sure at least the ones being subject to the Inquisitions thought it was bad, it isn't relevant to whether objective morals exists. Again, showing that certain people did bad things doesn't disprove objective morality, it just shows that people did bad things. Just as I sense that there is a computer in front of me right now, I also sense that it was wrong for the church to do what it did, and it has always been wrong and will always be wrong. I have no more reason to doubt that than I do that the mind-independent world exists, and I think everyone knows it.

He tries to resurrect the Euthyphro dilemma again, but I've already shown how this fails, since things are neither right because God declares them, nor are they right separate from God, but they are right because they match up to God's nature, which itself is the good. Therefore, morality is what it is because God is who He is. He then gives us moral duties in the form of divine commands that flow necessarily from His essential nature.

I took each and every source possible that I could use to determine god’s nature: the bible, nature, and peoples’ actions and sayings. They are all contradictory, so how in the hell can Craig simply declare god’s nature as “good”??!! Brennon, due to his blind devotion to Craig, apparently couldn’t see a logical argument if it landed on his face.

It doesn't matter if sources that propound moral advice contradict one another to whether there actually is an objective moral reality. Craig can declare that God is the good because 1) reason tells us that the greatest conceivable being would be the good and 2) God has revealed it.

AA then examines my explanation about moral values and duties as they come from God as it relates. I said,

If our moral duties come about because of the commands of God (which flow from His nature which is the good) then we are obligated to follow those commands. So I have no right to take an innocent life because God has said so. However, God does not issue moral commands to Himself because He is the locus of morality. He can give and take life as He chooses. That's why we accuse people who think they have that right with "playing god." God is under no obligation to allow anyone to live any longer than He chooses.

So that means that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites whenever He sees fit. The problem isn't, then, that He took the lives but that He commanded the Israelites to take the lives. Now you'll say "so He commanded murder!?!?!" No. He commanded something which without a divine command would have been murder.

Said another way, unjustified killing is murder, but with a divine command we have a justifiable reason to kill. Therefore, a divinely commanded killing is not murder.

To this, AA responds,

Brennon’s argument is literally insane. He is giving the same justification for murder as many christians throughout history. It’s scary some people still think like this. Also, despite his semantics what he is talking about is moral relativism. It’s relative to god’s commands! The very issue the Euthyphro dilemma refutes!

First I want to point out AA's consternation at my defense of God's command to kill the Canaanites. Why is he so upset? He doesn't believe there are objective morals. What, then, is wrong with this and what is wrong with the Christians throughout history who have killed people? The only way this would be wrong is if there is an objective standard by which to compare it.

Second, whether things are objectively right or not are not relative to God's commands, but rather God's commands adhere to His necessarily moral nature. His commands to us to not murder (unjustified killing) flows from His essential goodness and justice. Now, God does not issue these commands to Himself. Further, God is not obligated to let us live any longer than He wants us to. It is His prerogative. But it isn't our prerogative. Now, if God does command us to kill someone, then we have a justifiable reason to kill them, ergo it isn't murder. Similarly, there are other times when killing is justified, such as in self-defense.

To this reasoning, AA let fly his, "You are f[expletive deleted]ing insane, Brennon. You sound like a christian terrorist and it’s scary!" When you know you've lost an argument, to save face often one resorts to the ad hominem. I think it's interesting that AA is apparently appealing to some objective moral standard to say that what I have said is evil or something. If there is no morality, AA, then there's nothing wrong with Christian terrorism (which we all know is a huge problem in this world; hoooo-ee!). What are you basing this critique on?

Anyway, it's obvious that AA wants to have his cake and eat it too. He's failed to recognize that past examples of immoral behaviors don't show that there isn't objective morality, he's defended past acts of immorality by saying that it was right at that time (totally making moral reformers like Ghandi immoral for their time), and then he attacked my morality as insane. Clearly, AA can't even keep his own thoughts straight on this issue. Until he actually gives some reason to think that the moral reality we all sense isn't a reality, but an illusion, then he hasn't refuted anything. But that isn't surprising at all.

William Lane Craig on "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not."

2010-11-06T15:58:00.001-05:00

Albert Einstein visited Princeton at one point and was informed that D. C. Miller, a famous American physicist, claimed he had detected the ether wind relevant to special relativity (SR). Einstein said the above quote to emphasize the common complaint of many physicists that if there were such a thing as the ether, then nature would not conspire to make it undetectable. William Lane Craig says of this:

One difficulty with this objection is that it seems to be guilty of greatly over-exaggerating the extent of the alleged conspiracy. After all, SR is a restricted theory of relativity: it is only uniform motion relative to the privileged frame that fails to manifest itself. But in all other cases of motion, the absolute character of that motion is disclosed. This is not to say that acceleration or rotation proves the reality of privileged space, but it is to say that, given the classical concepts of time and space, nature does not at all conspire to conceal either absolute motion or the privileged space from us. Moreover...there are modern equivalents of the classical aether which serve to disclose a privileged frame. Indeed, when Einsteinians complain that no evidence of a privileged space and time exist, one wonders what it would take to convince them of the contrary (Craig, William Lane. Time and the metaphysics of relativity. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Netherlands, 2001. 184.).

New Book on the Resurrection

2010-11-03T12:58:00.000-05:00

Michael Licona's new book examining the resurrection of Jesus historically is now out. It looks to be one of the most exhaustive studies on the issue. Licona has been working on this all through his doctoral studies till now. It's exciting to see his work finally come to fruition. I plan on getting the book soon and urge all of my readers to as well.

Something to Think About When Voting

2010-11-01T23:32:00.000-05:00

A Sad Day

2010-10-31T16:19:00.002-05:00

Today, while we remember the tragic but necessary split that occurred in 1517, I am also sad to hear that Ken Pulliam has died. I hope and pray that his spiritual state was different than it appeared. God is merciful and just and will judge Dr. Pulliam as He sees fit. Keep his family in your prayers, please.

There are several posts on Reformation day that I want to link to (just because I link to something does not mean I agree with all that is said):

http://www.patheos.com/community/returntorome/2010/10/31/reformation-day-2010-is-the-reformation-over/

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/10/stanley-hauerwas-on-reformation-sunday/

http://reasontostand.org/archives/2010/10/31/happy-reformation-day

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/10/30/here-i-stand-3/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+between2worlds+(Between+Two+Worlds)

http://arminiantoday.blogspot.com/2010/10/happy-reformation-day.html

If you've seen any more good ones, please put it in the comments.

What Does the First Amendment Say?

2010-10-19T23:58:00.001-05:00

Wow, I wasn't initially going to post on this, but this article by one Ken Paulson of one First Amendment Center has so infuriated me, that I've got to comment on it.

Paulson starts the article correctly, the first amendment is pretty misunderstood, mainly due to the liberal obfuscation that has gone on in the past, oh, 75 or so years.

Paulson says,

Democratic candidate Chris Coons was quick to tell O'Donnell that religion and government are kept separate by the First Amendment.
"You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?" she responded.
Indeed it is.

Indeed it is, Mr. Paulson? Really? Let's see what the first amendment says with regard to the subject matter at hand. The religion clause says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Well at first glance, I see nothing to suggest that the constitution says "separation of church and state" at all. It does say that congress can't make a law that establishes a religion, and can't prohibit the free exercise of religion. Seems to me that the restrictions here are pretty specific. But let's see what Paulson has to say to us in his article.

He asserts in big bold letters, "Keeping government out of religion and religion out of government is a core principle of the First Amendment." Okay, well, this kind of thing will certainly have a good argument to support it, since the actual document he claims says this doesn't actually say it at all. After quoting the establishment clause, he continues, "James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, would later explain the need for this separation, saying, 'religion and Govt. will both exist in greater purity, Â the less they are mixed together.'" Okay, so one quote from James Madison proves his point? Where does Madison here say anything about a separation of church and state?

Well let's look at the context of Madison's quote here to see what's being talked about. Immediately following what Paulson cites, Madison writes, "It was the belief of all sects at one time that the establishment of Religion by law was right and necessary; that the true religion ought to be established in exclusion of every other; and that the only question to be decided was, which was the true religion."¹ Um, that doesn't look to me anything like the total abolition of religious recognition by the government, but rather a discussion about establishing, "by law," a religion of the state. There's nothing here about not acknowledging God in government at all. and certainly nothing there about teaching creationism in schools.

James Madison was a fierce proponent, as we all should be, of the first amendment. He was against the intrusion of the government into the life of the individual, as we all should be, especially on matters of religion. He battled legislation that would have instituted things that favored certain religions, like collecting taxes for specific churches.² It's also patently obvious why forcing a religion on people by mandating it by law is a bad idea. First off, religion is about individual conviction, and the Christian religion is about a relationship, which cannot be coerced.

But this James Madison also said things like,

I have sometimes thought there could not be a stronger testimony in favor of religion or against temporal enjoyments, even the most rational and manly, than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and [who] are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ; and I wish you may give in your evidence in this way.³

He thought that it would be a positive thing for men in positions of power to publicly pronounce their allegiance to the Christian religion. So, state religion bad; acknowledgement of religion, not bad. There is a marked difference between making a state religion, and teaching creationism in school.

Paulson then says,

The phrase stemmed from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. He cited the language of the First Amendment and said that it built "a wall of separation between Church and State." This was not just some poetic flourish. This was one of the nation's founders and author of the Declaration of Independence explaining exactly what the First Amendment means.

Paulson refers to truth, but gets it wrong. Yes, Jefferson, in response to the Danbury Baptist's fear of government intrusion in their worship, said that the government will not interfere because there is a wall separating the church from the state. But this was to assure them that the state will not infringe upon the rights of the people, not that God is to be extradited from the public square and relegated to chapels and bedrooms. Congress opens in prayer for Pete's sake.

To top it off, Paulson states, "The separation of church and state means that teachers in public schools can't teach their faith to their students." Oh come on. He argues that since teachers are public employees, they can't preach their faith to students. This assumes some pretty ridiculous things. 1) It assumes that creationism is a religion. It's not, it's a position on how the universe began that happens to be a part of a religion. 2) It assumes that if teachers mention something from a religion in class, it is preaching their faith. This is absurd.

Why is it that people like Paulson are so worried that big bad creationism could be mentioned in schools? If the theory that is propagated in schools today has such rousing evidential support, then certainly reasonable people will come to the conclusion that an alternative is wrong. Why is it that when the dogma of neo-Darwinism is questioned, there is such virulent and misleading things written about those who would criticize it? And why do people who fancy themselves experts on the first amendment attribute things to it that it doesn't say?

What does the first amendment say? It doesn't say what the left would have it say.

1 Madison, James. Letters And Other Writings Of James Madison, Fourth President Of The United States. Vol 3. Philadelphia: JP Lippincott & Co., 1865. 275.

2 Loconte, Joseph. "James Madison and Religious Liberty." The Heritage Foundation, 16 Mar 2001. Web. 19 Oct 2010. .

3 Letter to William Bradford, September 25, 1773

How to Define Atheism

2010-10-17T23:22:00.000-05:00

For a while now, atheists have labored to alter the definition of "atheism" so as to give the impression that the default state of anyone is atheism, therefore placing all of the burden of proof on theists. I recently pointed out elsewhere that this position pretty much strips the word of any sort of force at all. Simply filling people in on your current mental state isn’t very interesting at all. We could argue semantics I suppose, but that would be equally uninteresting. Heck, my 3 month old daughter would pretty much be an a-everything, since she lacks all sorts of beliefs.

Not only that, but it makes the atheist position basically no threat to theism at all. Theists argue that there is a God, that God actually exists. If atheists are simply people that lack this belief, then their position suddenly becomes of no consequence to the theist. Okay, you lack that belief, so what? There's nothing to argue with there. They haven't really taken a position, they've just told us what their mental state happens to be.

So, if this is what atheism actually is, then more power to them. Atheists just lack belief in God. Great. Apparently they lack the testicular fortitude to make up their mind about whether He actually does exist as well.

Relativity, Time, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

2010-10-08T08:33:00.002-05:00

Many people are aware that the Kalam cosmological argument, made famous by Dr. William Lane Craig, depends upon the A-theory (tensed) of time. This view of time postulates that temporal becoming is real; the past no longer exists and the future is mere potentiality. Only the present is real, and has a real ontological priority over the past and future. But the opposing view of time ,the B-theory (tenseless) holds that all points in time are equally real and we only experience temporal becoming as sort of a purely human conception. There are many problems with the B-theory that many people see, but the A-theory seems to be impossible on modern interpretations of Special Relativity, and many physicists. I have just begun to study this fascinating field of philosophy and physics, but I can already tell you that those who deny what most people would say is the "common" view of time, the A-theory, depend on certain unjustified presuppositions and misunderstandings of what the evidence has actually been pointing to.

There are three prevalent interpretations of Special Relativity (SR): Einsteinian, Minkowskian, and Lorentzian. Einstein's and Minkowski's interpretations seem to lend themselves better to the B-theory of time, but there have been some who argue that that view is not necessary even on those interpretations of SR. Lorentz's interpretation, however, lends itself far better to the A-theory than the other two.

Many philosophers have pointed out that Einstein's interpretation, where he ruled out the privileged frame of reference that Lorentz accepted, relied upon the philosophical presupposition of logical positivism. Those who have held to this recently maligned epistemology think that the only things that are meaningful are those that we can verify empirically through our five senses. Philosophers as of late have rejected that assumption, partly because it is a self defeating proposition. You can't verify the statement "the only things that are meaningful are those that we can verify empirically through our five senses" by its own standard. Einstein thought that since the aether (which was the privileged reference of he and Lorentz's time) wasn't empirically verifiable, it was useless to talk about. Lorentz, on the other hand, did not agree. He thought that, while we may not be able to test for the aether, we have many reasons to believe that reality is not fragmented (as the Einsteinian interpretation would entail), among other things, we should not accept that there is no privileged frame.

The Minkowskian interpretation takes the points that are conveniently plotted onto graphs to kind of explain the relation of space and time makes that into an ontological reality. But, many point out that interpreting relations on a graph as having ontological reality is sketchy at best. For instance, we can likewise plot the relation between temperature and pressure on a graph, but that doesn't mean that there is some reality known as temperature-pressure, and while this isn't the only reason many physicists adopt this view, it's one of them.

Lorentz's interpretation, it should be noted, is equal in predictive power to Einstein's. All of the calculations that result in length contraction and time retardation are completely intact in Lorentz's interpretation. Theists have good prima facie reasons to accept Lorentz's interpretation, because God would certainly be a privileged observer. Others should recognize that there have been other things put forward to support the proposition that there is a privileged frame of reference. "The hypersurface of homogeneity and isotropy is the preferred hypersurface for the formulation of the laws of physics and the measurement of space and time" (Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith. Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity. New York: Routledge, 2008. P 8). This frame is used to measure the age of the entire universe. So when people say the universe is 13.8 billion years old, they aren't using an arbitrary frame of reference, such as their house, they are using this cosmic age of the universe. The microwave background radiation that permeates the universe is very isotropic, and the speed of the earth has been measured against this frame. The quantum mechanical vacuum, which underlies all of reality, has produced test data that supports absolute simultaneity.

The B-theory faces other issues, namely that it smacks against the common experience. How could it be that I actually exist as 1 year old Brennon just as much as I do 12 year old Brennon or current aged Brennon? The process of temporal becoming in my own consciousness smacks against the claims of B-theorists. General relativity is said to have reintroduced absolute simultaneity into physics. The notion that physics has proved the B-theory is not true at all, and is based on a misinterpretation of the evidence and certain presuppositions of positivism that are unjustified. I think more physicists, before adopting the status quo interpretation, need to read a bit on the philosophy of time to see the underlying presuppositions behind the B-theory, as it seems that ignorance of this is why many take the stance that they do.

I'll write more on this as I read more about it, but for now if you run across someone who claims that relativity theory has proven that the Kalam argument is a no-go, know that they are speaking beyond the evidence.

Kai Nielsen on the Atheist's Burden of Proof

2010-09-27T22:38:00.001-05:00

"To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false...All the proofs of God's existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists. In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough by itself. It may still be the case that God exists."
(Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 143-4. cited at: http://www.origins.org/articles/craig_tooley_3.html)

How is God the Basis for Objective Morality?

2010-09-21T13:53:00.001-05:00

Luke at common sense atheism has posted a transcript of his ongoing discussion with Alonzo Fyfe, the originator of the hip and cool online meta-ethical theory of desire utilitarianism, about morality, theism, and atheism. I responded as such (their words in italics and colored):

I imagine somebody telling a parent who loses belief in God, that without their belief they just aren’t going to care anything about the welfare of their child. It’s absurd.

What does this have to do with the theistic pov?

Tell me, when you lost your belief in a God, did you suddenly become indifferent to the welfare of your friends and family? Did you acquire this urge to rape and kill just for the fun of it?

Is this what Mr. Fyfe thinks Craig's position is? I have other thoughts on what is absurd.

But that’s just silly. Losing a belief in morality doesn’t suddenly change our desires.

But it may give you the justification to fulfill certain desires you normally wouldn't, like unbridled sexual activity or making a superior race of people by systematically eliminating those who most people desire to eliminate.

Obviously, someone doesn’t have to believe in God or even believe in morality to act morally. However, it still might be the case that God is necessary for morality to really exist.

Which is why we theists always clarify "The question is not: must we believe in God to live moral lives? There's no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may not live what we normally characterize as good and decent livess" (Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008: 175). The question is do moral values actually exist in the absence of God?

I mean, think about it: How it is that morality could be grounded in the attitudes of a timeless, spaceless, supernatural being who is defined as being the opposite of everything we know and understand?

1) We're made in His image. 2) Moral values would actually exist in said being. 3) All would be subject to said omnipotent and omnipresent creator and sustainer.

That’s just crazy and incoherent, or at least it’s way harder to justify that than other theories of morality based on less controversial and confusing features of our world. So adding God to the picture doesn’t help give us objective morality, it just makes everything way worse.

Luke, this is a bald assertion lacking argumentation. I just gave three reasons this would ground OMV's. You need to construct an argument to support this assertion.

Why does God’s disapproval make it wrong for me to eat pork? If God doesn’t like pork, that’s fine, I’m not going to force him to eat any. But if they’re saying that I shouldn’t eat pork because God doesn’t like it… How does that work?

Because it goes against the objective morality that is a necessary property of said God (assuming eating pork is actually wrong). It's quite similar to why, on a purely state institutional level, it is incumbent on you not to serve foodstuffs that the state has deemed illegal. If the state doesn't like serving cat to people, and has written it down in law, then it is objectively against the law to serve said cat.

look, if a perfectly good God allows all the suffering we see around us, that implies that maybe we’re wrong about the idea that we should be preventing suffering.

Should we prevent all suffering? I think it is incumbent on us to prevent needless suffering that we actually could prevent. Who says God allows needless suffering? Who says He could prevent it given human freedom?

I can think of several reasons to allow some suffering to occur.

Let’s say I look out my window and see my neighbor’s daughter drowning in the pool. Am I supposed to know that I should rescue her?

Well dur. Life is intrinsically valuable since said girl is made in God's image. If she hasn't done anything to merit drowning in the pool (like mercilessly killing an innocent person or something) then it's a no brainer WHY you should save her.

Maybe God has a reason to drown her. If she does drown, that’s what they’ll say.

Or maybe we'll say it was her own fault for drowning? Assuming she is old enough to be responsible. If not, then it is the parent's fault for no being vigilant.

Further, you're assuming that these kinds of evils won't be rectified in the afterlife.

So if I rescue this girl, then I would be thwarting this higher purpose that everybody would be claiming that God must have had, and everything would be ruined just because of me.

You must assume that God caused her to drown for this to be the case. However, God is not subject to the duty that we are with regards to life. He has the right, as the creator and sustainer of life, to take it in any way He deems it necessary. We don’t have that right. He has given us moral duties as it pertains to protecting life.

Besides, if I, as a mere mortal, have no way of understanding God’s infinite wisdom or why he does things, then I have no way of knowing whether or not to save the girl. It wouldn’t be the first time God killed a child.

And Mr. Fyfe has lapsed into the confusion of moral epistemology with moral ontology, as is so common.

It’s worth reminding people that God-based morality is a subjective moral theory, because it’s grounded in the attitudes or nature of a person: namely, God.

But if God is the ultimate reality in which moral values have their ontological basis, then they would apply to all. Especially seeing as we're made in His image.

Well, like I said, God-based ethics grounds morality in the attitudes of a person. That’s what subjectivism is.

First, the morality is grounded in the person of God, and His attitudes would flow from that. Second, if all are made in his image and are subject to God, then this morality IS objective, just as the federal laws of the single institution of the United States government would be objctive for those subject to it.

Individual subjectivism grounds moral value in the attitudes of each individual

Except the analogy falls apart since individuals aren't subject to other individual's personal opinions. We would be subject to the laws of a lawgiver, would we not?

Yeah, so it is universal it’s just not objective.

Um, so it being true of God's character that murder is evil and the duty to not murder applying to all those made in His image wouldn't be objective?

Right. Well, for me, whenever I hear people talk about God and morality, the problem that I have always had with it is that there is no God. God doesn’t exist.

Then objective moral values don't exist. Just because Mr. Fyfe thinks his morality is important doesn't mean it extends beyond himself. For something to be objective, it must extend to all people. All people don't have the same desires. All people are made in God's likeness, and all people are subject to God's moral character.

There's your objectivity.

Why Do Atheists Lose Debates?

2010-09-20T21:28:00.001-05:00

I've seen a few atheists on the internet discuss why their side typically loses debates against theists, and they offer some theories, including the lack time to clarify their positions, their presentation of a weak case, etc. I must say, as a theist, these sound like pretty lame excuses.

Do atheists lack time to explain their cases?

It is supposed on the linked to post that "atheists often lose because theirexplanation for morality or consciousness or cosmogenesis or fine-tuning or whatever takes a heck of a lot longer to explain than 'God did it.'" In a debate, the atheist has as much time to prepare their case, lay out their case, and respond to objections about their case. Does a debater really need more time to explain why he thinks making more people happy as a result of your actions is where morality ought to lay in, as utilitarians would? Does a Randian objectivist need 15 more minutes to lay out why they think that selfish interests would work as a moral code for society? Not if they are well studied. There are plenty of philosophers out there who have debated people like William Lane Craig and Dinesh D'Souza who ought to be able to present a succinct case for why morality could work in some other way, if it is a good argument. That is the mark of an intelligent person; to be able to take a complex subject and work it down into an easy to understand argument.

Furthermore, this objection presupposes that all the theist has to say is "goddidit!" This really amounts to nothing but a one sided assessment from an atheist who is frustrated. When theists present reasons for placing moral ontology in God (to continue using the same example) they need to, and most of the time do, explain why God is the most plausible ground for morality. If presented with a counter meta-ethical theory, the theist should be, and most often is, able to point out why the counter theory is inadequate to explain morality. This should be the case with any argument, and if the atheist wants to show their position to be better, they need to do the same if they can.

I just don't buy that it should take the atheist more time to present his arguments. The theist's arguments require just as much explanation and defense as the atheists.

A poor case

There really isn't anything to argue with in this sentence from the post:

atheists often lose because they present a weaker case. Maybe all the theist’s arguments are terrible, but to win the debate, the atheist has to show why his arguments are terrible, and (in some way) must give some good arguments for his own position. The atheist often does poorly inboth these respects.

I agree completely. Here's the thing. Luke says later that atheists are often woefully inept at philosophical concepts, but many, if not most, of these debates with atheists are with philosophers! In fact, William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga and other theists have debated philosophers whose field of expertise is ethics (moral argument), or cosmology (cosmological arguments and/or teleological arguments), or higher Biblical critics and historians (argument from Jesus' resurrection) and they still win the debate.

Preparation is perhaps an issue. But really!? All of these atheist specialists in philosophy or other fields all fail to properly prepare for a debate? Come on.

My assessment

Atheists just have an inadequate worldview. That's the best explanation for why their arguments are so quickly and easily defeated. Since the demise of the logical argument from evil, atheism is an untenable case. Sure, some atheists try to show that the concept of God is incoherent, but they've never been able to construct a convincing argument, and the probabilistic problem of evil is too presumptuous. At best, if atheists were successful in tearing down all of the classical theistic arguments for God, the only rationally justifiable position to take would be soft agnosticism, as hard agnosticism is also very presumptuous. How do you know that no one can know about God? How can you say you can't know anything about God, because saying that is positing a knowledge claim about God!

However, since theism so ably presents a coherent, consistent, and complete view of reality, it seems to me that the atheists frustrated with the constant loss of debates should consider the theistic case. Stop holding to such a rationally incoherent position and join us theists! It is far and away the most plausible and most interesting worldview.

Then repent of your sinful stubbornness and accept the loving embrace of the Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.

Evidence is the Best Way to Discover Truth

2010-09-13T14:17:00.001-05:00

So say many atheists who adhere to scientism. But this statement is obviously self defeating. I assume they think that statement itself is true, but there's no way to verify it by its own standard. There's no empirical data that could be collected by which to verify this assertion. It's just one of those pesky unfounded presuppositions that atheists throw around.

Refuting the Refutation: Part 4 - The Moral Argument

2010-09-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Getting back to the Arizona Atheist's attempt to refute Dr. William Lane Craig's arguments for the existence of God, we now come to one of the most troublesome arguments for atheists to deal with; the moral argument. This argument is elegant in its simplicity in that it shows that if God doesn't exist, there is no basis of objective morality, a morality that would apply to all people no matter the time or majority opinion. But most atheists make profoundly moral assertions.

The argument is deductive, and follows the form of modus tollens.

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist

3. Therefore, God exists.

To start here, AA attempts to simply get rid of the second premise by asserting that there aren't objective morals, but that morality is relative. AA cites a book that is explicating the history of slavery in the new world. The author describes briefly that St. Thomas Aquinas accepted some sort of slavery that was the basis for the attempted future enslavement of American Indians. Apparently AA is trying to imply that Aquinas was a-ok with slavery and this shows that objective morality is indeed an illusion. While I will shortly defend Aquinas' view, I must stress that this example does nothing of the sort. Simply offering examples of people who thought a certain moral abomination was morally good does not prove in any sense that morals are relative or that what that person did was right in any way. All showing past moral abominations does is show that moral abominations happened in the past.

Aquinas' view on slavery is far more subtle than AA is letting on here. Part of the reason for confusion is the ambiguous nature of the word "slavery." What exactly was Aquinas referring to? Aquinas is not referring to a slavery based on racial subjugation, but is referring to servitude in which one person has authority over another. Professor Hector Zagal from the Mexican Catholic institution, the Panamerican University, writes,

the Greek doulos, the Roman servus and the Medieval servus do not have the same meaning for the simple reason that the Aristotelic doulos is contextualized in a pro-slavery society and the Thomistic servus in a feudal society. We must not forget that feudal servitude is not equivalent to Greek slavery, since when Moerbeke translated for Saint Thomas the term doulos for servus, he was making a literal translation without considering the social context.¹

In other words, Aristotle's slavery (which Aquinas is analyzing) is not the same thing as Aquinas'. Zagal goes on,

Thomas considers servitude something just, yet he distinguishes two kind of justice: justice simpliciter and justice secundum quid. Servitude is not just simpliciter, since all men are equal by essence, even more since all men have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Human nature is not predicable equivocally for every individual. Servant are as humans as their masters. Every man is truly a human person and, subsequently, is an individual substance of rational nature with an eternal destiny that is loved personally by the Creator. Attending to human nature considered in itself, all men are equal and, because of that, there is no preeminence of one over the other. The master as participant of the human nature has no domain over the servant. Servant and lord are essentially men.²

So Aquinas clearly didn't approve of the early American kind of slavery that atheists always anachronistically read into pretty much every historical setting.

AA then again reveals his ignorance about logic when he states, "This is a perfect example of my claim in my paper Against the Gods that just because all of your premises are true, it doesn't mean your conclusion is true, ie. god exists." AA needs to take an introductory class in logic. I do not say this to be mean or nasty or to insult him in any way! It is simply true. AA needs to understand how logic works. If the premises are true in a logically deductive argument, then the conclusion is true whether anyone likes it or not. That is why he needs to attack the truth of one of the premises. If he admits that the premises 1 & 2 are true, then he isn't an atheist.

He then immediately says, "This moral argument does nothing to prove god because there clearly is not any objective moral standard that we can call upon." Ok, so this is the premise he wants to attack; number 2. But this statement is baseless. It isn't clear that there is no objective morality. He says simply because most people believe in doing the right thing doesn't prove there's a god. No one is claiming that is how the argument works. The argument is deductive; unless there is a God, there is no right and wrong. Then he says that evolution created our moral intuitions. If that is true, then morality is relative, and saying it's wrong to kill babies for fun has no meaning. If morality is relative, then it's simply a matter of personal preference how one acts. Some people prefer to love their neighbors, others prefer to eat their neighbors. There's no moral value to any of those acts.

However, I think we all know that objective morality does exist. It's always wrong to torture people for fun, No matter what culture you're in. No matter what time period. As I've pointed out before any argument that can be given against objective morality, a parallel argument can be given against the external world. But I apprehend these moral realities just as I apprehend the reality of the external world. Why should I let those whose moral sense is deficient make me question the existence of an objective realm of morality? I don't question the external world's existence because there are color blind people.

He then moves on to the Euthyphro dilemma, which really hasn't ever been an issue for Christian theists, and Plato, who himself was a moral realist, in no way "demolished the moral argument." AA claims that splitting the horns of the dilemma by positing that God's nature is the good doesn't work, but then doesn't say why. He simply ridicules the notion. Sorry, AA, ridicule isn't argument. He says, "God is simply "good" by nature, and therefore he wouldn't command anything immoral? Right. Is that why many people have claimed to hear god speak to them, and they then commit horrible atrocities?" What does that have to do with anything? Because some people do evil and claim God told them to that proves God did it? Sorry, but the weakness of AA's argument here is glaring.

He then moves on to a better question. In essence, he asks if God is good, then how do we go about knowing this good nature? Well, we are made in God's image, so innately we would have some sense of what His moral attributes are. We can also find out what God's duties to us are from His special revelation in the Bible. AA mentions this, but then brings up the incidents in the Bible where God orders the killing of people. Why is this a problem for God? God says that murder, which is unjustified killing, is evil. If God commands someone to kill someone else, that killing is justified. God orders the killing of people for just reasons. God has the power over life and death, so while it is wrong for us to kill willy nilly, God can take the life of anyone He wants. I go into quite a bit of detail in this combox discussion.

In assailing God for these killings, AA has revealed that he actually does believe in objective morality. If he doesn't, then what is he complaining about what God did for? Maybe God just wanted to kill someone. Who is AA to tell anyone else what they are doing is wrong? After all, right and wrong really don't exist. He says, "Even though morality is relative, it does not mean we can do whatever we wish. We still have a responsibility to our friends and family and there are various secular moral systems that have been developed throughout history that can guide us through this morally relative world." If we have a responsibility to our friends and family, then AA has pinpointed a moral reality that is objective, unless he's willing to admit that this is not an objective imperative, to which I'd ask why he brought it up in the first place. If this family responsibility is objective, then by the deductive reasoning of the moral argument, God exists.

He says, "After all, even religion's morality is relative. It's dependent upon god's commands." He's either being dishonest or still doesn't get it. If morality is based on God's nature, then it is objective. It is a real reality that exists independent of any of us. If God created us, then we are obligated to follow His moral nature or face the consequences. Also, the moral duties God gives us are not arbitrary, but flow directly from His moral nature.

So, AA has shifted back and forth to wanting a moral objectivity when it comes to assailing God, to denying moral objectivity. But he's failed at giving us any reason to think morality is relative, he's failed at refuting the theistic response to the Euthyphro dilemma, and he's failed at refuting this argument in any way.

1 Hector Zagal, Aquinas on Slavery: An Aristotelian Puzzle, http://www.e-aquinas.net/pdf/zagal.pdf, 5
2 Ibid. 6

Have You Forgotten?

2010-09-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

A Dumb Idea Reveals Historical Ignorance

2010-09-08T15:14:00.000-05:00

I think it's a dumb idea for the Florida pastor to be burning Korans on 9/11. It's only meant to provoke anger, and that isn't Biblical. That said, I am also surprised at some Muslim's ignorance of their own history. If they want to get mad at someone, get mad at the guy who held the first Burn the Koran day shortly after Mohammed's death. After Uthman ibn Affan gained power, he had all versions of the Koran that he didn't like burned, which is the only reason there aren't more Koranic variants. There were several suras that are just gone (an early Koran contained 117 suras).

So why let this get to you, my Muslim friends? The early Muslims didn't!

HT: Mike Feller

Does the Indeterministic World Objection work with an Omniscient God?

2010-09-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is the first time I've recorded a response, but I'm getting sick of typing the same thing out over and over again, and it seems to be hindering communication. Basically, my point is that if we're in an indeterministic world, then God can't change people's free choices and them remain free, and if He isn't changing people's choices, then they have alternative possibilities, just as the PAP requires.

Kane writes, "if free choices are undetermined, as incompatibilists require, a Frankfurt controller like Black [or God in this case] cannot control them without actually intervening and making the agent choose as the controller wants. If the controller stays out of it, the agent will be responsible but will also have had alternative possibilities because the choice was undetermined. If the controller does intervene, by contrast, the agent will not have alternative possibilities but will also not be responsible (the controller will be)" (Robert Kane. A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. New York: Oxford, 2005. 88.)

So, omniscience is really irrelevant to whether this works or not.

Quick Thought on Frankfurt Counterexamples

2010-09-06T20:01:00.000-05:00

I'll write more on this subject when I feel like it down the road at some point. I wanted to quickly jot down one reason why these examples don't really affect those of us who are indeterminists about free choices and our adherence to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). Frankfurt counterexamples require that some controlling agent have access to the the mind of a creature where they are able to see prior states that would give some "tell" about what the chooser will in fact choose. Since they can see this, they would be able to flip a switch or something to cause the person to choose differently if the person isn't going to choose to their liking. If the controller doesn't have to flip the switch (because the chooser is going to choose according to the liking of the controller) then the person is still responsible for the choice, since no coercion was applied.

Here's one reason why this fails. Indeterminists claim that there can be no prior states that give the "tell" that the Frankfurt examples use. As William Vallicella points out, "Suppose Black has all the powers of a Laplacean demon: in a deterministic universe he can predict any state from any temporally prior state. These powers won't help him, however, in an indeterministic universe. Before Jones chooses, Black cannot predict what he will choose" (found here). In other words, we must assume that compatibilism is possible in order to grant that these Frankfurt counterexamples even have a chance at disrupting our confidence in the PAP. But in an indeterminisic universe, the controller has no way of definitively knowing what the chooser will choose. He has to wait for the choice to be made. In that case, libertarian free will (LFW) exists, there is simply a coercive agent who will make the chooser do what he didn't choose if he uses his LFW in a way that is displeasing to the controller.

Swift Responses to Hawking

2010-09-03T22:37:00.002-05:00

Hawking has popularized the old "the universe created itself" canard in a recent article on his forthcoming book.

Scientist John Lennox has responded here.

Also, check out these videos from William Lane Craig and Robert J. Spitzer on this strange idea. (here and here)

See my blogger buddy Rhology's assessment here.

Another blogger friend here.

I think there are about a zillion other responses out there. Feel free to post them in the comment section.

William Lane Craig on Being Open to the Truth

2010-08-24T02:47:00.000-05:00

AA Simply Doesn't Get Those Cosmological Arguments

2010-08-23T16:21:00.002-05:00

While working on part four of the refutation of AA's supposed refutation, he has posted supposedly what is a refutation of my refutation of his refutation. I don't have the time or desire to deal with everything he presents, but I will deal with a few ridiculous things he said.

One point he makes (that I didn't bring up in my post at all) is that David Bohm's deterministic model of quantum physics isn't widely held by physicists. So what? Most of the models of quantum physics are deterministic, and just because perhaps most physicists use the indeterministic model at the moment, it does nothing to prove that it is the correct model, and neither the argument from contingency nor the Kalam argument are damaged by the indeterministic model anyway. Both of those arguments work just fine on an indeterministic model of quantum physics; namely because the quantum world needs to exist for this activity to occur, and it didn't at one point.

AA then says,

As I’ve said before just because our “common experience” tells us something is true doesn’t make it so. Where is the evidence that this event has a cause? Brennon has once again utterly failed to do this and is that not also a basic principle of the scientific method? Base your theories on evidence? Something that Brennon is not doing. He’s simply saying there must be cause, but he’s just speculating and has given me no evidence why this might be so. So it’s not I who is disregarding the scientific method, but him

If AA were to remain consistent with this view, there would be no way he could function in life. First off, unless there is a great defeater (ie some evidence) for what is common experience, it is unjustified, irresponsible, and frankly stupid to deny it. Common experience tells us it isn't a good idea to fall out of an airplane. Just because I lack first-hand empirical data of this, I'm not going to deny it. He accosts me for not providing evidence for my position (which is silly, since the big bang model enjoys the most evidence of any model), but the irony here is really mind boggling, as there is no evidence that things can happen uncaused! Even on indeterministic quantum physics, the cause of the random elementary particles appearing and disappearing is the highly structured quantum vacuum, which is a sea of energy and is bound by physical laws. The quantum vacuum and the energy therein is the cause of these particles. The whole reason cosmologists are trying so hard to develop eternal models of the universe is to retain the intuition that all events do have causes!

He then cites more of retired (since 2000) cosmologist Victor Stenger. Stenger has been out of the loop for 10 years, and as Craig showed in his debate with him recently, hasn't really been keeping abreast of current cosmology. He cites Stenger,

Craig has retorted that quantum events are still “caused”, just caused in a nonpredetermined manner - what he calls “probabilistic causality.” In effect, Craig is thereby admitting that the “cause” in his first premise could be an accidental one, something spontaneous - something not predetermined. By allowing probabilistic cause, he destroys his own case for a predetermined creation.

If there was some quantum existence prior to the big bang singularity, Stenger might have a point. But Craig's whole point that the universe has come into being uncaused out of nothing, and this is supported by modern cosmology. The big bang model isn't the postulation that there was this dot in outer space that exploded at some point. Rather, it is a model of the universe suddenly coming into being, all time and matter and space, at a single point and then expanding rapidly beyond that. As Richard J. Gott has put it, "The universe began from a state of infinite density."¹ Just think about infinite density and what that would entail. Density is how tightly packed together a group of objects are. In this case, all of the universe would be infinitely dense. If something is infinitely dense, then its measurements are 0. "Infinite density" is synonymous with "nothing."

PCW Davies comments,

If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.²

Cosmologists J. Richard Gott, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm, and Beatrice M. Tinsley write of the beginning of the universe that, "Space and time were created in that event and so was all the matter in the universe."³ Craig also cites John Barrow and Frank Tipler (cosmologists) as saying, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo."⁴

The rest of Stenger's quote just misses the whole point. Events happening in a purely probabilistic context at the quantum level still have causes. They are not deterministic causes, but are causes nonetheless. There is a similar analogy to this in the human mind. Those who hold to an agent-causation view of libertarian free will say that there are undetermined causes of human thoughts and actions, namely the mind behind them. Indeterministic causes are no problem for either cosmological arguments.

I know AA wants to find some source that will undo Craig's premise here, but Stenger has failed to do so. His arguments really aren't that impressive. And, since none of his counterexamples to Craig's premises are supported by anything but a very hazy and theoretical segment of science, all they are are possible counterexamples. So AA's contention that he has "disproved Craig’s scientific arguments" is just hubris-laced rhetoric. None of these things are proven at all, and aren't counterexamples anyway.

He then goes on to say how science has disproved other things that seemed to be the case, such as geocentricism. First off, I don't think geocentricism would have ever been a common experience view, since common experience rarely deals with things at that level. Common experience for most people at that time would have had nothing to do with how the earth moves in space. However, there were pre-Gallilean scientists who did think that the sun moved around the earth. This was their model, which was shown to be faulty. Science is constantly morphing their theories and improving (hopefully) their models.

AA says, "And as I noted in my paper refuting Craig, even if everything did happen to have a cause, the universe included, it's an illogical leap to automatically assume god did it." I've already explained this several times, and it has gone ignored.

Amazingly, AA then says, "And science does not always follow logic, just as I explained with the example of the earth being in the center of the universe." This really just makes one want to facepalm. AA is conflating the rules logic with "consensus view" here, one which may not follow the other. The rules of logic must be followed if the scientific method is to be accurate. If the rules of logic are broken, then something is wrong with the model science developed. Both the geocentric and the heliocentric models of our solar system MUST follow these rules if they are to be valid scientific models. And they do! It's just that one explains the empirical data better than the other. Seriously, if one can't understand that, then they have no business attempting to refute anyone's arguments.

On the cosmological arguments not proving the Christian specific God, AA again asks, "How does any theist know that it was even their god that was the cause?" I'm not sure if there's some sort of mental block that is keeping AA from getting this or not, so I'm going to write this in really big bold text: COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS AREN'T INTENDED TO SHOW A SPECIFIC GOD, BUT ARE PART OF A COMPREHENSIVE CASE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE!!!

What the cosmological arguments do show is that if all space, time, and matter were brought into being by something, this being couldn't be bound by the universe. The thing that causes all of space, time, and matter to come into being cannot itself be in space, time, or made of matter. Therefore, it must be an immaterial, timeless, extremely powerful, personal causal agent. Ockham's razor would shave off unnecessary duplicates, and, therefore, we are left with a description of the God of monotheism, which could be the Muslim, Jewish, Deistic, or Christian God.

On my question on why we shouldn't think that things can come into being uncaused out of nothing, he says, "I rejected the first premise because, again, it was asserted without evidence as I noted in my paper." What!? Are you kidding? We have no evidence that nothing comes into being uncaused out of nothing? How about every single thing that happens in life? How about we know for a fact that these computers we are using had a cause for their coming into being? The very text on the screen has a cause for its coming into being. He is also referencing his "rebuttal" to the principle of sufficient reason, which is silly, since this is not that. This premise is "everything that begins to exist has a cause" which is not equivalent to the PSR (though it is somewhat similar) and cannot be lumped in with it. The fact is, the burden of proof is on the person that says things can come from nothing, and there is nothing in the universe that resembles that claim. If AA wants to reference indeterministic quantum events again, then he has missed the point.

AA again ignores the philosophical arguments against actual infinites existing, which means that he has not even begun to refute the argument. I'm still waiting...

AA then gives a weak response to my refutations of some alternate models of the beginning of the universe. He leaves the Hartle-Hawking refutation untouched (I cited my source) and then says, "During the discussion with the scientists [Vilenkin and one other, I believe] I was privy to, they said how Craig’s description of the theorem was simplistic and Vilenkin outright said that the theorem doesn’t disprove an eternal universe." Thing is, Craig never says the BGV theorem disproves a past eternal universe. He says, as does the theorem, it disproves the past eternal universe which is on average expanding. Another straw man.

AA then brings up Anthony Aguire's model, which does avoid the BGV theorem. But, as Craig and Sinclair point out, Aguire's model temporally and causally disconnects previous universes from our own. "The other side of the de Sitter space [outside of our universe] is not our past. For the moments of that time are not earlier than t or any of the moments later than t in our universe. There is no connection or temporal relation whatsoever of our universe to that other reality."⁵ In other words, other universes have absolutely nothing to do with ours, on this model, and so wouldn't "connect" to make an infinite past universe.

I've dealt with this quote ("The very idea that the big bang was the beginning of the universe is a distortion of what the big bang is.") above in citing many different cosmologists who obviously disagree with how Victor Stenger apparently portrays the Big Bang model. Fact is, the Big Bang model shows the coming into being of all space and time and matter from nothing, and does answer most of the questions brought up. Modifications can and are being made to this standard model, but the general scenario the Big Bang model presents us with is an absolute beginning of the universe. With the philosophical arguments that show that an actually infinite past is incoherent, this is what we should expect to see.

He brings up Hawking's model which relies on imaginary time, but fails to recognize that Hawking's model does include a closed universe, just one with a beginning curve instead of a beginning point. As John Barrow points out, "This type of quantum universe has not always existed; it comes into being just as the classical cosmologies could, but does not start at a Big Bang where physical quantities are infinite."⁶ Barrow still says this is a creation out of nothing, but without a "definite point." Quatnum models imply the beginning of the universe as do the standard models.⁷

He then cites Vilenkin (who for some reason doesn't know how to spell Craig's name) as admitting that his theory presupposes a B-theory of time, which is unsubstantiated. The Kalam argument presupposes an A-theory of time. If the B-theory is correct (which there is little to no reason to accept) then we would fall back on the Argument from Contingency, as the eternally existing timeline would be a contingent feature of the universe.

Concluding his quote from Vilenkin, AA says, "Since it’s obvious neither I nor Brennon are experts in this field it’s essentially come down to an argument from authority and each one of us can argue until we’re blue in the face that what each individual says is accurate, but I suppose Craig will just have to duke it out with Vilenkin if he wants." Well that is something we agree on, and I would love to see Vilenkin and Craig discuss their thoughts on the issue. But this doesn't undo the philosophical arguments Craig provides also, which have not been addressed.

I address his entire next paragraph above. He accuses Craig of cherry picking, but obviously has not read Craig's comprehensive works (from Reasonable Faith and the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology) where he addresses Hawking's theory. He doesn't use support without saying why other theories fail.

Vilenkin then addresses how Craig and Sinclair handle Aguire's model (as I have cited above) and apparently doesn't get the point.

The point is we don't have an actually infinite past! With that model, you have multiple finite pasts in different, unconnected universes. AA then mentions that Vilenkin has a forthcoming book where he addresses some of Craig and Sicnlair's points. Well, since neither of us can get the book yet, it's a bit presumptuous to say that what they wrote has been refuted. AA then says, "It’s very good and makes a few of the same points I do coincidentally, such as the argument that philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world." 1) How could he say that a book that hasn't been released is very good? 2) He says that logic can't tell us anything about the world? Well, then we can't know anything about the world, because philosophical logic is the basis of Science. We use the methods of induction (which are always logically fallacious) and deduction that we get from philosophical logic. I seriously doubt that Vilenkin said anything so ridiculous.

So, as we have seen, the models that propose to show an infinite past either actually have a finite past or lack sufficient evidence for them. They also fail to deal with the philosophical arguments that show an actually infinite past is an incoherent idea, and thus can't exist in reality! Just as philosophical logic shows that a married bachelor cannot exist, so too does it show that a past infinite is incoherent. I don't know why AA wants to deny that things that come into being have causes and then at the same time defend that the universe could be eternal. If things can pop into existence uncaused out of nothing, he doesn't need an eternal universe, and vice versa! He's simply being inconsistent.

Despite all his practiced rhetoric, AA hasn't refuted anything.

*Update*

I took it upon myself to email Dr. Vilenkin to see if he actually said what AA says he said. I asked what he does with the philosophical arguments against actual infinites, to which he replied, "Multiverse explanation of fine-tuning does not rely on the existence of actual infinities. For the explanation to work, the universe does not have to be infinite; it just has to be very large -- and in inflationary cosmology it becomes arbitrarily large with time." Apparently there's some confusion here, since I was not asking about the fine-tuning argument, but about a past-infinite universe.

I then asked if he actually did say that, as AA put it, "philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world." Dr. Vilenkin said, "No." (Apparently I mistakenly attributed this to Vilenkin when AA meant it to be attributed to Stenger, though I'm not sure Stenger would ever agree with that statement either, as it's ridiculously naive and simply incorrect).

Dr. Vilenkin also informed me that he has not read Craig and Sinclair's piece in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, and has had only limited correspondence with Dr. Craig.

1 Quoted in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008) 127 (footnote 60)

2 Quoted in Craig, 126

3 Quoted in Craig, 127 (footnote 60)

4 Quoted in Craig, 127

5 William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, "The Kalam Cosmological Argument," in William Lane Craig and JP Moreland, eds., Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009) 157 (emphasis theirs)

6 Quoted in Craig, 135

7 Ibid.

Infallibility Without Inerrancy?

2010-08-21T13:50:00.000-05:00

Since Dr. Roger Olson recently posted his views on the doctrine of inerrancy, myself and a few other bloggers have been discussing it at Arminian Today.

One thing that really hasn't come up in that discussion is can you even consider something infallible if it contains errors? Now, when speaking of inerrancy, one isn't speaking of things like rounding numbers or possible spelling errors, one is speaking of what the text is teaching, asserting, and affirming. I could accept that the original documents of scripture could contain spelling errors and still be inerrant. What cannot be in error is what the scripture affirms as the truth. But when many give up the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible, they want to continue affirming that it is infallible; that it won't lead you astray.

Assuming that inerrancy is how I've defined it here, and not some strict wooden literalism, if you do give up that doctrine, how do you maintain the doctrine of infallibility? If the Bible contains errors in what it asserts to be the truth, does that not de facto lead one astray? Even if it's on something minor, like what King Saul said to David at some point, does that not lead you astray on what happened at that point? How could you maintain infallibility without inerrancy?

Refuting the Refutation: Part 3 - The Kalam Cosmological Argument

2010-08-18T06:00:00.003-05:00

On to one of my favorite arguments in Natural Theology.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The Kalam cosmological argument is a deductive argument which has premises that are more plausible than their negations. AA begins this section by boldly asserting,

As I will prove below, his premises are not true. I also must point out how slyly he sets up the argument. After he argues for his conclusion (that the universe has a cause) he wants to convince the reader that the cause must have the attributes of his christian god. How convenient. As I'll show later, even if the universe did have a cause there are plausible naturalistic scenarios that explain how it may have happened.

He's going to prove the KCA's premises aren't true? That's a pretty bold statement. He also calls into question reasoning to the conclusion of a Christian deity using the KCA. But, as Craig has said (quoted in Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator in this case; he's said it in multiple places), "the kalam argument can't prove everything about the Creator."¹ This is why classical apologists construct a comprehensive case. The kalam argument shows the existence of a monotheistic God, which does narrow the argument down to three religions, but it does not argue completely for the Christian God, and nobody has ever claimed that it does. Finally, as it pertains to the naturalistic scenarios, we'll see that there actually aren't any plausible ones.

On Premise 1 - Everything that begins to exist has a cause

AA writes:

Craig attempts to justify his first premise:

Premise 1 seems obviously true—at the least, more so than its negation. First, it’s rooted in the necessary truth that something cannot come into being uncaused from nothing. To suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is literally worse than magic. Second, if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it’s inexplicable why just anything and everything do not come into existence uncaused from nothing. Third, premise 1 is constantly confirmed in our experience as we see things that begin to exist being brought about by prior causes.

Craig argued, "Third, premise 1 is constantly confirmed in our experience as we see things that begin to exist being brought about by prior causes."

As I noted in Craig's first argument, despite what we think happens is not always accurate. As I said, ideas must be tested, and things can seem to happen without cause.

AA ignores the first two points about premise one, and chooses to assert something about the third. But go back to the first two points. (1)Why should we ever seek to reject the notion that nothing comes from nothing? When we experience anything in our lives, we never would conclude that it popped into being uncaused out of nothing! As I said in my last post, can you imagine what that kind of thinking would do to science? (2)Also, consider the second point. If we are to reject the intuition that everything that begins to exist has a cause, then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn't simply pop into existence uncaused out of nothing. Craig often uses the example of a horse suddenly appearing in one's living room and defiling the carpet. The reason we leave our houses not worrying about these kinds of things is because we know things don't pop into existence out of nothing.

Premise 2 - The Universe Began to Exist

In response to Craig's argument from the scientific evidence of the big bang, AA writes, "Again, as I've said already, just because Craig can't imagine an infinite universe doesn't mean it's impossible. Simply arguing that it's impossible without any proof is no argument." This is an example of the flippant dismissive rhetoric that AA uses. After citing a long step-by-step presentation of some of the reasoning in support of the second premise, he says that Craig is simply saying that an infinite universe is unimaginable. That is ridiculous and dishonest. Craig gives both scientific and philosophical arguments to support the second premise. The former uses the vast scientific support for the big-bang theory while refuting those who try to craft infinite universe models, and the latter uses arguments that show an infinite number of events is a logically incoherent idea (The Impossibility of an Actually Infinite Number of Things and The Impossibility of Forming an Actually Infinite Collection of Things by Successive Addition).

AA continues, "Second, Craig quotes Alexander Vilenkin from his 2006 book Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes and argues that because the universe cannot allegedly be past-eternal it implies a god, however, Vilenkin himself denies this interpretation just a few paragraphs after the statement quoted by Craig." The fact that Vilenkin doesn't agree with Craig's conclusions about the implications of his own theorem does nothing to take away from the fact that those implications exist. Vilenkin, I believe, has attempted to construct other cosmological models, the quantum fluctuation model for instance, which itself fails to refute Craig's second premise and has been shown to be an implausible model (as explained by Craig and Sinclair here).²

The Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin theorem shows that if a universe is expanding, it cannot be infinite in the past, but requires a past space time boundary. This precludes many of the models developed in the 80's to explain away the seeming singularity of the big bang model from being past infinite, including many inflationary models.³ Victor Stenger, who AA quoted in his post, presented the Hartle-Hawking model in his most recent debate with William Lane Craig a few months ago. Among other problems, Hawking admits that this model can be interpreted to have come into being out of nothing.⁴

AA then mentions a correspondence he had with Vilenkin, who seemed to dance around the implications of his theorem, saying,

[I]f someone asks me whether or not the theorem I proved with Borde and Guth implies that the universe had a beginning, I would say that the short answer is "yes". If you are willing to get into subtleties, then the answer is "No, but..." So, there are ways to get around having a beginning, but then you are forced to have something nearly as special as a beginning.

As ambiguous as this statement is, Vilenkin seems to be saying that there are people who are continually working on models to try to "fix" the past boundary of space time that the discovery of the expanding universe has implied. Sounds a tad like cosmology of the gaps, but I digress. The fact remains that with each new model that is offered up till now, it has failed in some respect to show an infinite past to our universe. The big bang model on the other hand has withstood the test of time and still remains the standard model used by many contemporary cosmologists.

AA then moves on to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He starts his "rebuttal" by saying Craig ignores the first law. This is simply a red herring. Even if Craig is being inconsistent, it still doesn't follow that the second law doesn't apply. But, I think Craig could easily reconcile the first law with creation ex nihilo by pointing out that these laws apply to the physical universe once brought into being by an omnipotent Creator. AA quotes some more of his conversation with Vilenkin, where Vilenkin promotes his view of how the so called "false vacuum" could provide a way out of this. This, I think, seems to be the "baby universe" hypothesis. Craig writes about this theory,

Is there some other plausible way of holding onto the eternality of the past in the face of the universe's disequilibrium state? Speculations have been floated in eschatological discussions about our universe begetting future "baby universes." It has been conjectured that black holes may be portals of wormholes through which bubbles of false vacuum energy can tunnel to spawn new expanding baby universes. . .The conjecture would require that information locked up in a black hole could be utterly lost forever by escaping into another universe. One of the last holdouts, [Stephen] Hawking finally came to agree that quantum theory requires that information is preserved in black hole formation and evaporation. The implications? [Hawking says,] "There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe."⁵

Craig also addresses Vilenkin's false vacuum theory on his website, in case what I have quoted fails to completely lay out the case.

I would encourage Dr. Vilenkin to read through Craig and Sinclair's comprehensive study of the failures of alternate cosmological models to lead to a universe that has existed for an infinite amount of time. I would think he would find little to quibble with. AA's contention that Craig is wrong because the scientist he cites disagrees with his conclusion is first of all a non-sequitur (as it could be Vilenkin simply hasn't realized the implications of his own theorem) and second of all incorrect because Craig has cited other sources that show that Vilenkin's way out is a dead end. Craig and Sinclair present a chart that summarizes the general main models and why they rule out a beginningless universe here.

All of this, however, is based off of very speculative evidences and theories that are constantly in flux. Who knows if cosmologists will ever stop formulating newer models to explain the origin of the universe? But based on the philosophical arguments against the actual existence of infinites, I don't think there will ever be a successful model that will emerge that shows the universe is infinite in the past. If there is, it should be rejected since an infinite number of past events is simply logically impossible. Until all of these considerations in this section are completely overturned, premise 2 is far more plausible than its negation.

Conclusion - The Universe has a Cause

If these two premises are true (and it seems to me, based on this research, that they are far more plausible than their negations) then it follows that the universe has a cause. The cause must itself be uncaused, since positing a cause of this cause, by Ockham's Razor, is unnecessary. Since this cause must logically precede the universe, it cannot be material, because it brought all space and time and matter into existence. It would also have to be personal, since the only immaterial thing that is able to cause something would be a mind, as abstract objects, such as numbers, are causally effete. A personal agent, however, is not causally effete, but can be causally active. This personal being must be extremely powerful, because it brings all space and time into being. It must also be changeless and timeless. But all of these properties start to sound an awful lot like the God of monotheism, which would show that atheism is false.

1 Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004) 109. emphasis his

2 William Lane Craig and JP Moreland, eds., Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009) 183

3 Ibid. 141-142

4 Ibid. 178

5 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008) 145-146 (see the links Craig footnotes here and here)

Refuting the Refutation: Part 2 - The Cosmological Argument from Contingency

2010-08-17T18:01:00.001-05:00

The Arizona Atheist starts "refuting" Craig's formulations of several theistic arguments at the argument from contingency. AA uses the form that Craig has posted on his Question #26 on his website, reasonablefaith.org.

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3).
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God (from 2, 4).

On Premise 1: the Principle of Sufficient Reason

AA starts by going after premise 1, which is pretty much just the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). He says,

According to modern physics, however things can seemingly happen without cause. There are several things we observe that appear to have no cause. For example, "[w]hen an atom in an excited energy level drops to a lower level and emits a photon, a particle of light, we find no cause of that event. Similarly, no cause is evident in the decay of a radioactive nucleus."

Actually, according to modern physics, there may (emphasis on MAY, see my comment here) be some indeterministic events at the quantum level, but there is certainly an explanation for why those events can happen, namely because the necessary framework needed for the events already exists. In this example (taken from retired cosmologist, Victor Stenger) the atom exists to emit a particle of light. But let's examine the example further. Stenger says that when an atom that is in an excited state drops to a lower level, it emits a photon, and that is an example of a causeless event. Um, really? Seems to me that the cause of the atom emitting a photon is the drop to a lower energy level. We may not know exactly why it happens, but it seems to me in just examining the quote that we don't have an uncaused event.

But even if there are events that seemingly are inexplicable, should we then jettison the PSR? I don't think so. In fact, this seems to amount to nothing but an appeal to ignorance. We don't know the cause, therefore there isn't one. I think, based on our common experience and the strong intuition we have that all things have a sufficient reason for their existing, we should reject the conclusion that there are uncaused events. Can you imagine if scientists started settling for this answer, as the Arizona Atheist has, and saying, "well at first glance we can't figure out the cause, therefore there most likely isn't one"? That would destroy all avenues of science. Just think of the ramifications in criminal forensics!

Not to mention that the scientific data really doesn't support his claim. Another example that has been cited by some atheists is radioactive decay. But, as a friend pointed out, we see that the environment affects how these isotopes decay, suggesting that there is a correlation in nature, which would suggest a cause.

Also consider that if the PSR weren't the case, then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn't simply exist for no reason, or why events don't simply happen uncaused. We always always always look for causes in association with events and existing things.

Premise 1 is also much more plausible than it's negation, which is another property of a strong premise. Consider Richard Taylor's story of finding a translucent ball in the forest. It is ridiculous to state that the translucent ball just exists there without a reason, and increasing the size of the ball up to the size of the universe wouldn't allay the need for an explanation of its existence.¹

Attacking Logic

AA then goes after Craig's statement on the logical validity of this argument. It is true that this argument is logically airtight. It is a deductive argument by which the conclusion follows necessarily if the premises are true. AA says, "logic by itself [and by extension, philosophy] while extremely helpful and right much of the time, can sometimes get you into trouble." Well yeah, and that's why Craig explains what constitutes a good or bad argument. If AA wants to discredit Craig's arguments, he either needs to point out a logically fallacious step in the argument (which none of Craig's arguments have) or dispute one or more of the premises. Simply saying that SCIENCE® defeats logic is ridiculous. Logic is at the base of almost every, if not every, discipline, including science. Science relies on, and wouldn't exist without, the rules of inference and deduction that logic presents us with. Empirical data is useless unless there is some means of interpreting it, which means logic must exist for science to exist. That also means that science must agree with logic if the conclusions are true.

Some of AA's fellow atheists apparently attempted to tell him this, by which he responded, "The fact that something is philosophically valid or "logical" doesn't make it true." Well yeah, nobody would argue with that. Recall that Craig said that the premises in a sound argument must be true.

AA continues, "Craig goes on to discuss his other premises, but given the fact that either they require no comment or they hinge upon the first premise, I don't think I need to go through the others. I've taken the very legs of this argument out from under Craig." AA is correct that the PSR is a necessary premise for this argument (which is the definition of a deductive argument, making the statement a little redundant, but I digress). But if he's correct, then AA has just postulated that the universe doesn't need an explanation for its existence. But AA's beloved SCIENCE® goes against that assertion, as does common intuition, but we'll flush that out in the next post on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument.

1 Richard Taylor, The Cosmological Argument: A Defense, http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/taylor.html

Refuting the Refutation: Part 1 - On What is a Good Argument

2010-08-16T17:33:00.001-05:00

Part of the Arizona Atheist's challenge was to address his arguments against God. Well, in searching through his blog, I actually didn't see many. I did see attempted refutations, specifically of William Lane Craig. As I have noted to AA, refutations of an opponent's arguments are not positive arguments for your own position. An opponent's arguments could all fail, and your opponent's position could still be correct. To show that they are wrong, one needs to provide arguments for one's own position. As of now, I don't see any positive argument's for his position. I will, however, deal with his attempted refutation of Craig's arguments. I have personally studied Craig's arguments quite extensively and think I have a pretty good handle on them.

AA first addresses Craig's (and most other philosopher's) criteria for a good argument. He quotes Craig as saying,

[L]et’s get clear what makes for a 'good' argument. An argument is a series of statements (called premises) leading to a conclusion. A sound argument must meet two conditions: (1) it is logically valid (i.e., its conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic), and (2) its premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But to be a good argument, it’s not enough that an argument be sound. We also need to have some reason to think that the premises are true. A logically valid argument that has, wholly unbeknownst to us, true premises isn’t a good argument for the conclusion. The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us in order for a sound argument to be a good one. But how much warrant? The premises surely don’t need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence.

AA's response to this is, "this is precisely part of Craig's problem. As I argued in my post Against the Gods, just because an argument is valid philosophically, and follows from it's premises, does not make it true. As even Craig says, the premise must have some solid evidence for it, and it naturally follows that if it doesn't, it should be discarded." How is there a problem for Craig when he acknowledges what AA says is a problem precisely in the quote that is being used to criticize the position?

From my familiarity with Craig's work, he is not so naive to think that a simply valid logical argument means that the position is true. He states the criteria in this very quote. An argument is sound if, "(1) it is logically valid (i.e., its conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic), and (2) its premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises." Craig also has a recent post dealing with what makes a good argument here.

Please note: William Lane Craig is a professional philosopher. What constitutes a good argument is entry level philosophy. I think it's a little funny that we have a blogger critiquing a professional philosopher's definition of a good argument. AA may disagree with Craig's arguments, but Craig thinks they are sound; the premises are more plausible than their negations and the conclusions do follow logically. To refute them, AA must either show that they are logically invalid (ie break the rules of logic making them fallacious) or that at least one of the premises are false.

We'll see that he attempts this, and will critique his attempts and see how successful they are.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

2010-08-14T18:13:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately, I am not a bird, nor am I early that often. I've been fairly busy as of late, so several posts I've been thinking of have taken to the back burner.I'll get to them when I can.

A Couple of Arguments Against Immaterialism

2010-08-09T17:44:00.005-05:00

A couple of deductive arguments I came up with to interact with immaterialism.

Unless we have great defeaters for a common sense view, we should hold that view.
We do not have any great defeaters for the belief in the material world, which is the common sense view.
Therefore, we should hold the view that there is a material world.

God is perfect and would not create us so that we are deceived at the most basic level about the nature of the world.
If immaterialism is true, then we are deceived at our most basic level about the nature of the world.
God created us.
Therefore, we are not deceived about the nature of the world.
Therefore, immaterialism is not true.

**Update with a third argument**

If the Bible asserts something, then it is true.
Paul, in the Bible, asserts a distinction between the material world and the immaterial world (Romans 15:27; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; and any time the body and the soul are distinguished).
Therefore, there is a distinct material world and a distinct immaterial world.

Samuel Johnson Refutes Bishop Berkley's Idealism

2010-08-08T00:54:00.000-05:00

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- 'I refute it thus.'"

(http://www.samueljohnson.com/refutati.html)

Marriage For ALL!!! NOW!!!

2010-08-07T12:56:00.001-05:00

Since the definition of marriage is now fluid, I think that it's high time people's "right" to get married is no longer squelched on any level. By golly, we ought to have schizophrenic marriage! If one person's multiple personalities loooove each other, then they should also be able to marry! The Japanese can marry their pillows! Pillow lovers should no longer be denied their rights. Why are those nasty religious fanatics so bent on keeping lonely men from marrying their video game characters?

I think other thing's rights should be expanded as well. I demand that married bachelorism be legal!!!!!!

**Update**

William Lane Craig gives some great thoughts here.

Topping Off the Conversation With Godlessons

2010-08-04T20:09:00.002-05:00

Godlessons, in response to the modal argument for dualism, has strangely tried to refute it by claiming that it relies on modal axiom S5, which he claims always begs the question. I assume that this cropped up in his head due to his scant time spent "refuting" the ontological argument, some forms which do use axiom S5. But the modal argument for mind body dualism does not use that axiom. That axiom speaks of necessarily possible things. The modal argument for dualism does not, as seen here:

The modal argument for dualism is really strong.

1) Definition of identical: If x=y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa.
2) Possibly, my mind can exist without my body.
3) Therefore, my mind is not identical to my body.

The mind possesses the property of possibly existing without the body. Since the body lacks that property (since the body can't exist without the body) the mind can't be identical to the body, because it possesses the property that the body cannot posses. Therefore, the mind isn't identical to the body.

What the modal argument does rest on is the definition of what constitutes identity. I don't know anyone who would disagree with that definition of identity. Nor am I aware of anyone even remotely studied in logic who would say that axiom S5 isn't valid, but since it's not even in question here, it's irrelevant.

Not to mention the batch of questions and issues he has yet to respond to. Plus he hasn't presented any evidence to support his position, which I asked for. Plus he conveniently dropped his silly claim that, "All of this shows first that you don't understand modal logic and classical logic are not compatible," which is an odd claim, seeing as modal logic is simply an extension of classical logic.Then he, without saying how, accuses me of making a category mistake.

Yet I have addressed every single thing he mentioned. These are the signs of one who has clearly lost the argument, and in desperation is trying to save face by using emotive rhetoric. Let the reader decide.

Godlessons Doesn't Think Logic Exists

2010-07-31T13:54:00.001-05:00

The Atheist at Godlessons has a post on whether God can be said to exist being that He is immaterial. He says, "When we speak of immaterial things, we are speaking of something that has no physical substance. Now, if you think about this, everything we know to exist has physical properties."

Not to mention that this is a very recent definition of what it is for something to exist, formulated by logical positivists of the 19th and 20th centuries, it also would nullify many of the concepts that Godlessons wants to use to disprove the existence of God, namely the laws of logic. Do the laws of logic exist? If they do, then they are not material objects, rather they are ideas. They are what philosophers refer to as abstract objects. They obviously exist, because they determine how we determine truth. But they aren't physical objects.

Mind-body dualists also have no issue with thinking that immaterial beings exist, as we are partly such beings. Not to mention that objects we conceive of in our minds, such as pink elephants, don't exist materially, but within the immaterial area of our minds.

Also, the proposition, "everything we know to exist has physical properties," itself is an immaterial object. Propositions exist whether we bring them materially into being by typing or writing them down. The proposition 2+2=4 would exist whether or not anyone else did or not.

Another bad atheist argument.

William Lane Craig Explains the Premises of the Ontological Argument

2010-07-30T21:05:00.000-05:00

Answering the Challenge From Arizona

2010-07-27T23:45:00.000-05:00

Google has led me to the blog of one Arizona Atheist. He has posed a challenge to theists to deal with what he's written. He's written a lot, and I'm not sure I want to go back and read it all and then respond to it all, so I hope we can focus on one or two topics if he responds to me. I really want to see an argument from him for atheism. Then I would like to take his objections to some of the more famous theistic arguments and defuse them.

My initial comment on his challenge:

From what I've read, what you've written interacting with scholars such as Bill Craig has been spotty. You've offered meager responses to his work and have ignored the vast amount of material he's written to deal with the very objections you've put up.

For instance, in dealing with his cosmological argument, you've written, to dispute the first premise that everything that begins to exist has a cause, "According to modern physics, however things can seemingly happen without cause. There are several things we observe that appear to have no cause."

This is just ignorant. You would seemingly claim that things, in this case, can come into existence uncaused out of nothing and that quantum physics has corroborated this. But this isn't the case at all. For starters, the quantum vacuum where these particles seemingly pop into existence is not nothing. This quantum vacuum is demonstrably not nothing. As Craig writes, "a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. This is not "nothing," and hence, material particles do not come into being out of nothing. Popular presentations of these models often do not explain that they require a specially fine-tuned, background space-time on the analogy of a quantum mechanical vacuum. The origin of the observable universe from this wider space-time is not a free lunch at all. It requires an elaborately set table, which must be paid for," and, "a quantum vacuum...is a rich physical reality possessing physical properties: it is not creation from nothing."

That's not to mention the sketchy waters we get into with quantum vacuum models, since there are several that take the same data those who present this indeterministic model and develop deterministic models.

That's just one instance.

To respond to your questions here:

I welcome one and all to attempt to refute any argument I place on my blog

Ok. Please point me to one of your arguments for atheism. A refutation of an argument, which I've seen you have attempted quite a few of, is not an argument for your position. Could you give me a good positive argument that there is no God?

Do you think you can prove the existence of the supernatural

It depends on what you mean by "prove." This word has become very vague since the epistemologic systems like verificationism and logical positivism were introduced. It is near impossible to prove 100% much of anything. Can you prove to me that you're not a brain in a vat being stimulated to sense the external world? What kind of evidence could you give for that?

Now, I could give you some good reasons to think that there is a realm of supernatural activity, some would be philosophical arguments such as the cosmological or moral arguments. I could give you good reasons to think that the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event.

can you prove that atheism caused the atrocities by the communists

That's for historians to decide, I suppose. From my reading, most communists were atheists and their philosophical worldviews did lead them to do things those who look to a higher moral authority might not have otherwise done, but the question is ultimately uninteresting when it comes to the question of whether or not God exists.

do you think you can prove any god exists (the one exception being a Deistic god)

Again, depends on what you have in mind when you say "prove." Can you prove God doesn't exist?

**By "evidence" I mean factual, scientific proof

What do you mean by factual and scientific? I think there are truths that are untouchable by the scientific method that we can know to be true. Do you mean empirical evidence? How do you know empirical evidence is a good means of discovering truth? Empirical evidence is useless unless it is examined and interpreted. This seems like deck stacking, and it's not fair in a debate to set the boundaries to your presupposed epistemology.

Dealing With a Dealt With Deal: An Overview of the Author of Sin Controversy

2010-07-22T12:26:00.000-05:00

Even though many of us Arminian e-pologists (as we are affectionately known) have dealt with this issue (see here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here), it is still thought to be just the death blow to our argument.

Here's how it goes. We say, "determinism means God is the author of sin, because everything that happens happens because God has made it happen." The Calvinist says, "well so does Arminianism because God knows about sin and lets it happen anyway!"

Okay, imagine the worst sin you can imagine. The worst evil that could ever happen. Now, imagine that a guy named Evil Evanston is performing this heinous act. If Evil Evanston has free will, in that he is not under constraint by a force outside his own will to act, and has it within his power to not act as he will (the power to do otherwise) then it is Evil Evanston who is choosing for himself to sin and then carrying out that sin. He authors the evil. If God, on the other hand, did not grant us free will, but has deterministically ordered the universe such that everything that happens HAS TO happen, happens necessarily, then God is the origin of all events and choices. God is the one who came up with the evil thought and evil act that Evil Evanston is going to commit, and nothing but what God has determined to happen could otherwise occur. Evil Evanston is just carrying out the pre-scripted programming that God set up. God, in this case, authors the evil. The author of the evil is the morally responsible party.

The Arminian knows, as the Bible teaches, that God only does good. All good things are from God. In fact, since God is by nature good, it is logically incoherent to think He could make evil. We measure acts against God's nature to determine if they are evil. If all acts are from God, then no act is evil. But we all know there are evil acts.

"But," the Calvinist will interject here, "God allows evil to occur on the Arminian view! He just stands there and watches Evil Evanston commit his heinous act, which is obviously in the same ballpark as determining it will happen!"

I'm not sure if Calvinists have had their coffee when they say something like this. Allowing a sin is tantamount to making the sin happen? That's just bad logic, as I pointed out in my response to James Swan. Say I knew what Evil Evanston was going to do, and I had the ability to stop him. Would I, as Swan says, "share responsibility" for the sin that Evil Evanston commits? No. There would be two separate actions taking place; Evil Evanston's sin and my allowing his sin.

Is allowing someone to sin a sin in itself? It depends on a whole host of things. Parents sometimes will allow their children to sin to allow them to experience the consequences of that sin. The police will sometimes arrange a situation where they know a criminal will sin so they can arrest the criminal. In other instances, I think it would be utterly negligent to allow sin. If someone was going to kill someone and you had the power to stop it. There are obvious instances where non-action would be negligence (which is a separate sin than the sin committed).

Okay, so the Calvinist must be saying that God is utterly negligent on Arminianism because He isn't stopping sins He knows about and has the power to stop. Is this the case? No. As creatures of God, He has charged us with certain moral duties, one of which is to help people when we can and not be negligent. That is a moral duty that flows from God's moral nature. But, as the dispenser of moral duties, God does not issue command to Himself. God has no duties to follow. He holds the power over life and death and has the right to take away the life of whoever He wants whenever He wants. Obviously, we don't share that right. In fact, that is one of the things that makes His grace and mercy so amazing. God had no obligation to rescue us from our sins, to conserve us in being, or to ever show anyone any grace. But He does!!

Okay, so can we say that something is still wrong with God allowing evil? Would an all good God do such a thing? If God has decided to give us free will, then there may be no way for Him to create a world where no evil happens. Free creatures may always choose evil in no matter what set of life circumstances they live in. Could God stop them? Well, if He has decreed to make them free, no. It is logically incoherent to speak of making someone freely do something. It is as nonsensical as speaking of a married bachelor or square circle. Beyond this, it is probable that God has morally sufficient reasons to allow the evils that currently happen.

But, on deterministic Calvinism, you can't postulate that God possibly couldn't create a world where free creatures always did good, because if Calvinism is true, we don't live in a world of free creatures. God could have created a world where no evil happens if He is making everyone do what they do.

So, it is impossible for God to make sin. God allowing sin is far different than causing sin. God has no duty to stop all sin. He may not be able to create a world where we all freely do good. And He may have morally sufficient reasons to allow sin. But what could possibly be the benefit of causing all sin?

Arguing From Analogy

2010-07-20T18:00:00.001-05:00

Apparently, the basics of philosophy are lost on some Sophistic boy-children around the internet. I figured I'd clear something up here. Of course I'll potentially be called dumb or arrogant for doing so, but such is the penalty of speaking the truth, I suppose.

One of the first things you're supposed to learn in logic is different argument forms. One of those forms is the argument from analogy. It is one of the less precise forms of argument, but used the correct way it can be a powerful tool.

William Paley came up with one of the more famous arguments from analogy, the watchmaker analogy. Paley posited that if we were to discover a watch, we would observe its complex movements and parts that are in specified places in order for it to function. We would never attribute that to blind chance, but would conclude that someone designed the watch. Likewise, we can see other things with complex intricacies which seem to necessitate an intelligent source.

Now, obviously the argument from analogy is never a perfect science. Things you compare are never identical to one another, otherwise they would be the same thing. Rather you notice that the things are similar, and as such have the same kinds of properties or operations. It's never a perfect match. So if someone says about Paley's argument, "well, the watch has gears and hands that tell time, but this cell (or eye, or universe) doesn't and works differently than a watch does," it would be a terrible way to refute the argument. Of course we know that every aspect of a watch is not going to relate to every aspect of something else you are comparing it to to infer design. The point is we are taking one thing that we know is designed and pointing out that another thing has similar complexities, therefore that thing is designed. It's never a perfect match, but it's not meant to be.

Occasionalism = Pantheism?

2010-07-18T17:25:00.000-05:00

If occasionalism is true, then God is truly the only will that acts in the universe. But then doesn't that make everything merely an extension of God? And doesn't that sound a bit like pantheism?

Concurrentism = Occasionalism?

2010-07-15T21:10:00.000-05:00

Over at Billy's blog, Steven has stated that:

Concurrence leads to occasionalism. You can't paint a nude without painting her a specific way; you can't carve a wooden flute without carving it a certain way; so also, God couldn't will that something exist without willing that it exist a certain way, with determinate features. But then everything's being the way it is at any point in time is explained entirely in terms of God's willing it to be so at that time, in which case (1) there is no need of secondary causes, (2) God actively wills evil events to occur and so is directly responsible for them, (3) there is no libertarian freedom of the will. I've written a few posts on my blog on occasionalism, if you want to see more in-depth arguments for (3).

This, I think, is naive and is not a very careful consideration of the difference between concurrentism and occasionalism.

The doctrine of divine concurrence holds that for any even that happens, at the exact moment of that event, both the creature and God are causing the event at the same time. So when it comes to acts of free creatures, the creature has a distinct will that chooses something, but God is at the same time enabling, providing the power for, and carrying out the event.

Occasionalism holds that for every event that happens, divine causation is all there is. It is maximal, and there exists no causation by a separate agent.

So, when Steven says that, "You can't paint a nude without painting her a specific way; you can't carve a wooden flute without carving it a certain way," he is not recognizing that on the concurrentism view, it requires that a separate agent need to exist to decide to and also take part in the painting or flute carving such that God would only be causing the events that the other agent had chosen to carry out. As Arminius stated, "The concurrence of God is not his in, mediate influx into a second or inferior cause, but it is an action of God immediately flowing into the effect of the creature, so that the same effect in one and the same entire action may be produced simultaneously by God and the creature."¹

Arminius further explains that when God has decided to permit a rational creature to act, He obviously would not refrain from giving the power to carry out that act. "Though this concurrence is placed in the mere pleasure or will of God, and in his free dispensation, yet he never denies it to a rational and free creature, when he has permitted an act to his power and will. For these two phrases are contradictory, 'to grant permission to the power and the will of a creature to commit an act," and "to deny the divine concurrence without which the act cannot be done.'"²

Arminius explains how this separates God from the sin He concurs in carrying out:

But this concurrence is to the act as such, not as it is a sin: And therefore God is at once the effector and the permittor of the same act, and the permittor before he is the effector. For if it had not been the will of the creature to perform such an act, the influx of God would not have been upon that act by concurrence. And because the creature cannot perform that act without sin, God ought not, on that account, to deny the divine concurrence to the creature who is inclined to its performance. For it is right and proper that the obedience of the creature should be tried, and that he should abstain from an unlawful act and from the desire of obeying his own inclinations, not through a deficiency of the requisite divine concurrence; because, in this respect, he abstains from an act as it is a natural good, but it is the will of God that he should refrain from it as it is a moral evil.³

In other words, God first permits the sin, and is then the effector of it. If the rational creature had not have chosen to sin, God would not have concurred with it and it would not have happened.

I think it's obvious that God working with a free creature in causation is leaps and bounds separate from God being the only cause, and that concurrentism does not entail occasionalism.

I personally am not even sure if holding to divine concurrence is necessary. I think the third option other than occasionalism and concurrentism, conservationism, is also a viable position. I think God has so ordered the universe so as to be completely in control and yet does not need to cause all events, yet He must conserve all things in being for them to actually exist. He must allow all events, and in the case that His ordering of events actualizes them He in a far removed sense is a reason for them coming about. However, that view doesn't seem to be one that has been traditionally held to by classical theists. Maybe someone could explain the reasoning to me?

1 James Arminius, WORKS OF ARMINIUS - THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE CONCERNING EVIL, http://www.godrules.net/library/arminius/arminius28.htm

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

Argument From Discovery

2010-07-15T14:13:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if anyone has argued along these lines or not. I was just thinking of this yesterday.

If atheism is true, then we evolved solely to survive (premise).
If we evolved solely to survive, then we would behave such that we avoid things that could kill us (premise).
We have evolved such that we desire to discover and explore the unknown (premise).
Exploring the unknown is extremely dangerous and could kill us (premise).
We follow our desire to discover explore the unknown (premise).
We do not behave such that we avoid things that kill us (follows from premise 4)
Therefore, we did not evolve solely to survive (modus tollens from 2 and 6).
Therefore, atheism is not true (modus tollens from 1 and 7).

I think premise 1 is uncontroversial. 2 I think is not as uncontroversial, but I think if naturalistic evolution is true, then we should see behavior geared for survival. I think that is inexplicable why, in a world where we all our behaviors are tuned so that we survive, that we would be compelled by an urge to discover things and knowingly put our lives in danger for those ends. We climb mountains, go on voyages across the ocean, fly 30,000 feet in the air, leave the earth's atmosphere to explore space and go to the moon. We have this insatiable urge to know things, and people purposely put their lives in jeopardy so that we can learn new things which may be ultimately neutral or detrimental to our survival.

On Glenn Beck

2010-07-14T11:44:00.001-05:00

I watched Glenn Beck's show last night and saw something that I never thought I'd see. Someone on a mainstream secular news channel (the most watched cable news channel actually) talking about a perversion of Christian theology (liberation theology) and correcting it. I listened very closely when Beck, who consulted Richard Land and Anthony Bradley for the show, described what the gospel actually is. He was pretty spot on, saying, "salvation is an individual relationship between a person and God through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Jesus said, 'I am the way, and the truth and the light [sic].' I can't be saved for someone else and they can't be saved by me." He also mentioned at one point that our sins were placed on Jesus. This was a very evangelical sounding gospel message.

He was also spot on on how liberation theology twists the entire gospel message of personal forgiveness of sins by grace alone. Liberation theology teaches that the oppressed minority is saved, and for the rich to become saved they need to give to the oppressed minority.

Glenn also recognized that there are those who would question him because he's a Mormon. It is true that I scrutinized the episode for any hints of Mormon theology. Beck let none get in there.

Now let me say that I am a big Glenn Beck fan, and have listened to him for about 6 or 7 years now, and have known he is a Mormon for about 5, I think. I think Beck, especially in the last year and a half, has been an indispensable resource for the conservative movement in America. I think he's sincere and honest and has the personal qualities that so many in his position lack. I just like the guy. He's awesome.

However, I do believe that, theologically, he has a lot of problems. I'm honestly a little surprised that he's still a Mormon, because the man reads--a lot. I would have thought certainly, in his studies somewhere, he would have run across the issues Mormonism faces, at least archaeologically.

Let me just be clear here: I don't believe the Mormon church is a Christian denomination. I don't think salvation can be found in that world view. Mormons believe a number of false doctrines that do conflict with essential Christian beliefs.

To list a few:

God (aka heavenly father) is a created, material being who was once human, like us
God created the universe out of preexisting material, not ex nihilo as orthodox Christianity teaches
Heavenly father isn't the only God, there are many gods.
Heavenly father and heavenly mother procreated many spiritual children, including Jesus, Satan, and all of us (meaning we are all brothers of Jesus and Satan).
They deny the orthodox teaching of the Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons and the one true God) and teach that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate gods (Jesus and the Holy Spirit being offspring of heavenly father and heavenly mother.
Jesus was conceived by a literal sexual intercourse between heavenly father and the virgin Mary
To reach the highest realm of glory (the celestial kingdom) one must earn their way there by doing works, which flatly contradicts the Bible's teaching of a grace based salvation
Shortly after the apostles died, the entire church apostatized and was not restored until Joseph Smith in the 1830's (which goes against all historical records)

I do know that in recent years, Mormons have sought to dialog with evangelicals. I also know that many of their professors and theologians have questioned previous teachings by the church. I hope and pray that Mormons will come to a true understanding of Jesus Christ and will abandon their false teachings.

I don't know where Glenn Beck stands on these doctrinal issues, but since he is a Mormon, I assume he believes them all. These teachings are a corruption of what true Christianity has taught for 2000 years. Much historical revisionism was required to lead these people down this road. I'm going to continue to pray for Glenn Beck and all Mormons.

Questions for Anti-Molinist Inerrantists

2010-07-13T19:42:00.000-05:00

How do you explain how God knew the two divergent paths that God foresaw if Zedekiah either chose to surrender to the king of Babylon or not (Jeremiah 38:17-18)? Assuming this was a free choice, God told Jeremiah to tell Zedekiah that if he chose to submit to Babylon, he, his city, and his family would all live. But God also foresaw the other possibility; what would happen if Zedekiah did not surrender, namely his death and his city's destruction. God obviously knew what would happen, and which choice Zedekiah would make. But God also knew what would happen if Zedekiah made the other choice.

How did Jesus know what Sodom would have done IF His miracles had been performed there in Matthew 11:23?

How did Jesus know what would happen if the disciples cast their net to the opposite side of their boat (John 21:6)?

Oh, and those of you who reject Molinism because of James White's weak polemic, you really need to repudiate that ridiculous picture he has floating around the web with Craig and the Pope. That's a pretty blatant genetic fallacy if I ever saw one.

The Power of Prayer to Jesus Christ

2010-07-09T23:26:00.000-05:00

Our new daughter has been having issues with breastfeeding (latching on and whatnot). We've started praying every time she has issues that Jesus would help her and rebuking the devil, and it WORKS! Jesus answers prayers both big and small.

Special Delivery!

2010-07-08T20:55:00.000-05:00

William Lane Craig on the Self Defeating Nature of Determinism

2010-07-05T23:03:00.000-05:00

From http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8111

Universal causal determinism cannot be rationally affirmed. There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true; but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed, since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation (emphasis his).