CalvinDude.com

exbeliever thinks I’m an idiot. 

Since he’s opened the can of worms, let’s look at his “argument” under the blog entry:

Is Atheism Rational?

The first thing to note is that exbeliever is addressing a specific question.  He wants to know if atheism is rational.  However, you can look long and hard throughout his entire blog post, but you will never discover a definition for “rational.”

Instead, exbeliever assumes that you can read his mind.

exbeliever defines atheism as: “Atheism (as I have defined it) is, per se, the absence of a belief in a god or gods.”  This definition is not very precise, however.  I assume what exbeliever means is “The absence of a belief in the existence of a god or gods” (as opposed to, for instance, a belief in the concept of a god or gods, etc.).

The closest we come to being able to identify what exbeliever considers “rational” is by extrapolating back from these quotes regarding what he considers “reasonable.”  I maintain that given exbeliever’s statement linking the terms “reasonable” and “rational” when he said: “I claim that this ‘general human position’ is reasonable/rational.”

So what has he said regarding what is reasonable?

“What underlies this absence of belief, however, is the idea that it is not unreasonable to suspend belief in the existence of a being that is outside of one’s experience“(emphasis added).

“Is it more reasonable to uncritically accept the existence of a being outside of my experience or is it more reasonable to take a skeptical approach to this being’s existence (like I take toward the existence of fairies, Big Foot, etc.)?” (emphasis in the original).
And:

“There is a belief underlying this question. It is the belief that it is reasonable to be critical of the existence of beings that are outside of our common experience. It is the belief that one is justified in asking for evidence of the existence of beings that are outside of one’s experience” (emphasis added).

Thus, exbeliever’s definition of “reasonable” boils down to “one’s experience.”

But by this definition, it is actually reasonable for the schizophrenic to believe his delusions that dogs can talk because he has experienced such delusions!  On the other hand, it is reasonable for us to be “critical” regarding whether Julius Caesar once existed, since none of us were around to experience his existence.

I daresay that exbeliever probably accepts the second statement above (that we should be critical of Julius Caesar’s existence–meaning only that we require outside evidence that he once existed), but that he would most certainly reject the first statement.  But if that is the case, then exbeliever is relying on some criteria other than experience to make his determination that the schizophrenic is unreasonable.

Of course, exbeliever may try to ressurect his poor definition by saying that for the schizophrenic, it is reasonable to believe in the delusions; but for us it is not, since we do not experience them while the schizophrenic does.  In fact, this appears to be the very tactic he takes in the following quotes:

From my perspective, then, the existence of the Christian God falls into the same category as sprites and fairies. For the same reason that it is not irrational for me to take a skeptical stance on the existence of these creatures, it is not irrational for me to take a skeptical stance on the existence of the Christian God. From my perspective, it is perfectly reasonable to ask for some reason to believe in the existence of such a creature. I am reasonable in withholding my belief in a god or gods until I have been provided with some reason to either formulate the belief “A god or gods exist,” or “No god or gods exist” (emphasis in the original).

And:

“The Christian thinks there is reason to believe in the existence of a god. Many of them believe that they have* seen, heard from, touched, smelled, and/or tasted God. One could certainly question the probability of these sensations as being actual or imagined, but this is beside the point**” (*emphasis in original; **emphasis added).

Thus, we can say that for exbeliever it is unreasonable to accept the existence of a God, but for the Christian it is not unreasonable to accept the existence of God.  But this also means that for the schizophrenic, it is reasonable to accept his delusion, while for the non-schizophrenic it is not reasonable.  This doesn’t seem very helpful for determining what is “reasonable” though. 

So, perhaps exbeliever would say that the schizophrenic is unreasonable because most people disagree with the schizophrenic.  He seems to imply that here:

“I have the feeling that both Christians and atheists alike generally believe my assertion that it is reasonable to be critical of the existence of beings that are outside of our common experience.”

And:

“This is a general human position that I cannot imagine most people disagreeing with. To disagree with this premise would be tantamount to accepting the existence of a myriad of fantastic beings that are generally thought to be figments of the imagination.”

Unfortunately, exbeliever has no way to determine what “common experience” is.  He cannot experience the experiences of other people.  He can only take their word for it as to what those experiences are.

Furthermore, he forgets that the person who experiences a hallucination does just that: he experiences it.  Figments of the imagination are still experienced through the imagination.  If they were not experienced, they would not have been “seen.”

A further problem lies in the fact that the vast majority of people are theists of some kind.  This means that, according to exbeliever, the vast majority of people are unreasonable (from his perspective) to begin with.  Is it reasonable to accept the “common experience” claims of those who are “unreasonable”?  (Naturally, exbeliever might make a distinction and say that these people are unreasonable in their belief in the existence of a god or gods, but reasonable in their belief in their experiences–but exbeliever would still need to give us a reason for the distinction if he chooses this path.)

Our conclusion has to be that basing “reasonability” on experience is not very appealing.  And when one thinks about it, it is self-refuting.  exbeliever did not experience the notion that “experience is reasonable.”  That is something he assumes; but he assumes that it is reasonable to trust experience.  His idea of “reasonability,” therefore, preceeds experience.  It is not actually based on experience at all, but instead is based on his presuppositions that then filter his experiences.

Thus, we can reject exbeliever’s argument:

If it is conceded that it is generally true that it is reasonable to be critical of the existence of beings that are outside of our common experience, then the atheist cannot be accused of being irrational for taking this skeptical stance.

Those concessions have not been given exbeliever.  His argument at this point simply becomes: “If you concede that I am right, then I am right.”  But I do not concede exbeliever’s implied definition of reasonable.  And, since experience = reasonable is self-contradictory, even exbeliever does not accept his implied definition of reasonable.

Thus we can look at exbeliever’s final conclusions: 

To discover if one is being irrational in rejecting the existence of the Christian God, the reasons for believing in his existence must be examined.

Now rationality is related to “reasons for believing” instead of “common experience.”  But of course, these “reasons for believing” are ultimately experiential, as detailed here:

Contrarily, if the Christian believes the Christian God exists without sound reasons, he may be questioned about why he believes he is justified in rejecting the general human practice to be skeptical of the existence of beings outside of one’s experience.

exbeliever’s position, therefore, rests on self-refuted premises.  He likewise admits that his position is held relatively and not absolutely when he finally gives us a syllogism:

Being more of a relativist, however, my reader will have to forgive the more tentative and personal statements.

P1: It is reasonable for someone to be critical of the existence of beings that are outside of one’s common experience.

P2: The Christian God is outside of my common experience.

C: It is reasonable for me to be critical of the existence of the Christian God.

Like exbeliever said, this is a relative argument and thus it cannot be expanded to a universal one.  In other words, even if the above were sound, it would not mean that belief in God is irrational for anyone else.

Thus, we see that exbeliever has not done his necessary groundwork to make his claims.  He needs to provide us with a concise definition of “reasonable” and if it includes experientialism, he must demonstrate how that definition can be experienced.  Furthermore, he needs a more precise definition of atheism.  Only then can he actually answer the question: Is atheism rational?

I commented on exbeliever’s blog at Not Many Wise. I think exbeliever’s response is quite telling.  He deleted my comments.
Another victory for free thought!

Here’s what I originally wrote:

 

I think you misunderstand the application of Romans 1 here in your paragraph that starts: “There seems, however, to be anecdotal evidence against this claim.” 

The “anecdotal evidence” you present actually supports the Reformed claim.  It is not against it.

When you note “it the Christian God did exist, we would still not worship that God” and “the Christian God is repulsive to us”, this is exactly what is meant by the Romans 1 passage.

Psychologically speaking, it is evident that you do not want God to exist.  You are starting from the position that God is abhorrent.  Therefore, you are hardly standing from a neutral position and weighing all the evidence.

Instead, you are in a position where you hate the God of the Bible.  You find Him repulsive, and you’ve said so yourself.  You don’t want to be around Him.  You prefer there be no God rather than the God of the Bible. 

This must color your thinking as you weigh the evidence for and against His existence.  It is impossible for it not to.  So when you weigh what is more reasonable, belief in God or non-belief in God, you have to consider not just the reasons that Christians present (which are important), but also the reasons why you inherently do not want that God to exist (which are also important).

In other words, the atheist position is not an idealic netural starting point where you are causually waiting for evidence to sway you either way.  Instead, you (and I mean you specifically here) are starting from the position that the God of the Bible is evil.

Thus, when you say that the Christian needs to provide reason for his belief, that is true.  But you likewise need to acknowledge that you are not in a neutral position to judge that evidence.  Some of your disagreement could stem from weakness in evidence, but some could also stem from the fact that the evidence is frankly hostile to what you believe about who God ought to be.

 

exbeliever responded to that (but he has since deleted his response as well as mine, and I did not copy his response).  After my second comment (in response to his response to my above comment), exbeliever erased everything in our exchange, although he was kind enough to leave a profanity-laced comment on my blog (which, due to the regulations of my host, I had to edit his profanity with the [expletive deleted] tags).  You can read that comment here. exbeliever was nice enough to quote my second exchange with him, so you can see my “evil” action.

Frankly, his response needs no response from me.  Both he and Loftus think “You’re stupid” and “You’re an idiot” are valid logical rebuttals.

So, given that, both exbeliever and John Loftus are stupid, moronic, and idiotic dorktards.  There.  According to their standard of debate, I’ve just beaten them in a philosophical discourse!

Hurrah for free(d from) thought!

If you’ve been keeping up with the comments over at this Triablogue post, you’ll notice that I’ve re-challenged John Loftus to a debate.  He, in his characteristic humility, responded with: “I don’t make it a point to debate stupid people like you.”

This is par for the course for Loftus.  You might wonder why, then, would I ask him to debate?

There are a couple of reasons for this.

1) I know that Loftus talks big but lacks coherence in argumentation.

2) I know that Loftus knows 1) is true too.

3) Therefore, I know Loftus cannot possibly accept the debate challenge because he would lose badly.

4) Loftus doesn’t want this to come out, so he calls me “stupid” instead; thus, when I offer him a chance to debate, it proves that his name-calling does not stand up to argumentation.  This, in turn, allows others to realize the truth of 1) above.

Thus, I can challenge Loftus to a debate without ever fearing that I would need to actually engage in said debate, since Loftus will work his magic skills to avoid a debate at all costs (all the while maintaining that I am stupid).

I would rather Loftus accept the debate because it would allow me to demonstrate 3) above.  But since he never will, everyone else can still infer 1) quite easily.

Loftus aside, debates do serve a useful purpose in academia.  Debates are focused discussion on a particular point, minimizing extraneous issues that are irrelevant to the main point.  Thus, a debate on an issue allows exhaustive inquery into that very issue without the fear of the opponent escaping on some bunny trail long enough to distract you into forgetting what the original point was.  Secondly, debators need to present their evidence for their position and thus they cannot get away with snide comments and dismissals such as “CalvinDude is stupid.”  Instead, the person who has no clue what he is talking about in the debate is exposed on an island all alone.  Thirdly, debates are not done for the sake of the two debators, but instead for the benefit of those third-party individuals who can stand aside and see the two sides present their best argument and then they can make an informed decision.  Debates, therefore, are not about convicing the other person to agree with you; they are about convicing everyone else that your position is sound.  Debates are a great way to introduce a topic and a way of thinking to people who are “fence-sitters” or who have not heard either side of the issue before.

So debates are worthwhile, even if Loftus is not.

From this article (my comment at the end in bold):

“People can’t tell other people what to do and make decisions for them,” said Jan Nicolay as she told other people what to do and made decisions for them.

NYC reggae concert canceled after protests.

What protests?  Apparently, members of two of the bands have made anti-gay statements in their lyrics.  Gay activists were angered at this (with good reason).

But instead of focusing on the fact that people have the right to say whatever they want to say, even if you disagree with it, organizers feared there would be violence so they cancelled the event.  Thus, there is no free speech.  Speech instead must be filtered through the PC lens before it is “acceptable.”

Now I’m not saying I agree with the speech used by these bands (although I haven’t listened to either of them so I really don’t know what they said in the first place).  But they ought to have a right to say it, even if it just proves they’re stupid.  Intimidation techniques are a bad thing for free speech because some day, it’ll be your ideas that are “dangerous.”

I saw a link for the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible along with the comment that someone said it provided the first reason he doubted God’s existence under the “let there be light” section.

So I looked at it.  It says:

“Let there be light”
God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them?

I’m sorry.  I read this and the first thing I think is…every night when the sun goes down, I create light without creating the stars or the sun.

And as to the “evening/morning” issue, I interpret this typologically anyway.

In any case, seems a rather pathetic reason to doubt the existence of God.

Read the first paragraph of this tripe.

Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the “iron curtain” that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Spare me.  Gorbie didn’t do any such thing.  It was Ronald Regan.  But don’t expect to find Regan’s name anywhere in the article.  Instead we read: “Gorbachev found a partner in former President Bush in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

This sort of pathetic liberal bias and re-writing of history just makes me sick.  But that’s okay, cuz Gorbie is now claiming “Americans have a severe disease — worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex.”

This from a loser.

Give him a microphone and the CBS Evening News chair and he’d be Dan Rather.

Continuing with my blog Perception of Distinctions, let us look at a materialistic view of how these perceptions of distinctions in objects come about.  (Before you read this, you ought to read the previous blog entry, since I will be refering to the camera/computer analogy etc. from it.)

The materialist view is that everything reduces to “material.”  Thus, the “programming” of the computer that enables the computer to “see” the red ball is itself materialistically based.  The programming must arise from the materials involved.

Let us imagine a red ball on a blue table.  The light reflected off the red ball is a specific wavelength.  The blue light comes off at a different wavelength.  The camera, therefore, “picks up” these two wavelengths and differentiates between them because they are different objects that cause different reactions on the lens.

Thus, “red light” is distinct from “blue light” because they have different chemical reactions when the light waves interact with various chemicals, they go through a lens differently, etc.  The perception of the difference, therefore, is because the chemicals do not have the same reactions in both instances.

Thus, materialistically, the “perception” is nothing more than a different reaction based on one wavelength than a reaction based on another wavelength.

But this actually only suceeds in moving the issue back one step.  How do the chemical reactions or the lens or what-not ”perceive” the difference in light?  Why would Chemical X know to react one way to blue light and a different way to red light, for instance?

The materialist will move us back a step to answer this.  Chemicals react that way because they have to react that way.  When a certain level of energy is put into the chemicals, reactions occur.  These reactions vary depending on the amount of energy.

Naturally, one could then ask, how does the reaction know how much energy is put into it in order to behave in a certain manner?  Perhaps then the discussion moves to the subatomic level, but the question still remains: how do the sub-atomic particles “know”, etc.

Most materialists do not procede this far in their thinking on the manner because it seems “obvious” what the answer is.  “Matter reacts differently because that’s the way that matter is.  We don’t have to answer ‘why’ it does it; it just does it.  It can’t help but do it.”

In other words, matter must exist in such a manner that no matter what it will behave consistently depending on various levels of energy, etc.  Because matter behaves consistently and differently depending on these variations, chemical reactions occur differently.  Because these chemical reactions occur differently, they can be “viewed” differently.

We cannot determine “why” this happens.  Indeed, we are at a properly basic point.  Matter must behave this way or else we cannot explain how the perception of differences comes about.  In short, we have ended at a simple “say-so” point.  There must be some material aspect (whether it be substrings or sub-substrings–whatever point you reduce matter to) where matter simply behaves differently under different conditions and that’s final.

What is important to note is that there cannot be a reason why matter would act this way.  The “reason” is found in its very existence.  It exists that way, and thus this aspect of matter is self-existent.

Furthermore, our logic (which is based off the distinction between objects) is only valid if this material stuff is consistent.  Thus not only is this aspect of matter self-existent, but it must also be immutable.  If the core character of the matter changed, we would have no certaintly of our logical conclusions based on it.

This material behavior must be universal too.  It must be true wherever this material is located.  Thus, it is omnipresent.

In short, materialism ultimately reduces to soemthing very similar to the attributes of God in Scripture.

As before, I will have more to say on this later. :-)

I was originally just going to leave this in the comments section…

But it’s too funny considering this guy thinks he can mount an attack on Scripture.

In response to my Loftus and Education entry, Loftus asks the brilliant question:

1. John Loftus Says:
   July 11th, 2006 at 2:22 pm e

   Are you still in High School, or not?

My answer:

Wow, that’s a great question John. Let me help you out here since this involves “logic” and “connecting the dots” so it could be a little difficult for you to grasp right away.

Above I wrote:
—
2) CalvinDude has not finished high school*

* Premise 2 is false, but Loftus never lets truth get in the way of his argument.
—

Premise 2 is “CalvinDude has not finished high school.” This is why I included the footnote (indicated by the “*”) immediately after the premise.

Premise 2 is false.

That means it is not true.

That menas that “CalvinDude has not finished high school” is not true.

Yes, that involves a bit of a double-negative and thus makes it a little more difficult to understand (but I wasn’t the one who created the premise in the first place). In English, double negatives cancel each other out (unlike some other languages which serve to emphasize the negative). Since I wrote in English, the assumption is that I am using English and not some other language. Therefore, we can conclude that the double negative cancels itself out.

So let’s see…if it is not true that CalvinDude has not finished high school, then it is true that CalvinDude has finished high school.

So it is true that CalvinDude has finished high school. Here in America, if someone has finished high school that person no longer attends high school. Thus, he is no longer “in” high school. So:

CalvinDude has finished high school. Therefore, CalvinDude no longer is in high school.

Now, CalvinDude writes this blog. Thus, when you ask the question “Are you still in High School, or not?” the “you” referenced in the question is identical with CalvinDude. Thus, it is the case that the “you” in the question most certainly is no longer in high school.

This wasn’t really that difficult. In fact, I think elementary school kids can follow that logic.

Join us next week as we delve into more in-depth topics like what CalvinDude’s favorite color is and why that doesn’t mean his arguments are wrong simply because Loftus disagrees with his favorite color!

 

The past few days I’ve gotten to read some more intensive philosophical books.  This is always fun for me, since I love philosophy.  There is only one drawback to reading such books: I tend to have trouble falling asleep because of how many thoughts go racing through my mind after an evening of reading philosophy!

Anyway, as is often the case, I got to thinking about philosophical issues that really have nothing to do with the topics of the books I’m reading (although I suppose in a way they do relate superficially).  For instance, I just read a bunch of linguistic philosophy, as well as philosophy on libertarian free-will.

So what did I think about while I tried to go to sleep?  The idea of the perception of distinctions.  Don’t ask me why :-)  But I thought it was an enjoyable mental exercize nonetheless.

Several years ago, when I had a different domain, I had an informal discussion board where quite a few atheists joined.  For some reason, the atheists tended to be Ayn Rand devotees.  I remember one of them, who now runs a blog called Incinerating Presuppositionalism, bringing up the typical Randian arguments of “A is A” etc.

Naturally, I agree that A is A.  This is a useful tautology as it is the Law of Identity.

At question, however, is this: how do we know that A is A?

By this, I do not mean ”how do we as humans know that A is A?”  This is one of those “self-evident” truths.  We see an object and we can tell that an object is what the object is.

Instead, what I mean by this question is something more fundamental.  What is the process by which consciousness can detect distinctions in objects?  Human beings are already built with the necessary “equipment” to enable us to recognize distinctions in objects; but how did this come about?

This is extremely important when we deal with our presuppositions, especially as we deal with atheistic presuppositions.  But in order to see it correctly, perhaps it is useful to give a demonstration first.

Let us suppose that there is a computer hooked up to a video camera.  The video camera functions as an “eye” and the computer as a brain.  Suppose that the camera is placed on a black table facing a black wall so that the only thing that shows up on the computer screen is a black box.  Now suppose that someone puts a red ball on the table. 

Does the computer determine a distinction between the red ball and the black background?

Let us look at this as basically as possible.  If the computer reproduces the image on a computer screen, we can say that the computer does “see” a distinction between the red ball and the black background, and that distinction is found in the recreation of the red on the computer screen.

But what is required in order for the computer to “see” the difference so that it can display the difference?  There must be some programming in place that allows the computer to tell the difference.  There must be programming that enables the computer to take the sensory data given through the camera and filter it to “see” that section X is “red” and section Y is “not-red.”

Thus, there must be programming pre-existing in the computer in order for the computer to differentiate between a red ball and the black background.  This programming is necessary even if the camera records the objects perfectly.  The hardware can work, but if the software does not know what to do with the “impulse” the screen will stay blank.  The method of gaining the visual insight is not the interpretation of that visual data.

Our minds work the same way.  Supposedly, logic arose when a prehistoric man looked at a rock and thought, “Rock” and looked at a tree and thought “Tree” and figured out that a “Rock” was not the same thing as a “Tree.”  In other words, logic began when prehistoric man realized identity and could tell “A is A” and “A is not non-A.”

The only problem with that is, as demonstrated with the computer analogy, the mind of the prehistoric man must have already been “wired” to see that there was a distinction in order for prehistoric man to know that there is a distinction.  Simply having good enough eyes was not sufficient.  The mind had to be able to make the determination in the data before the mind could understand there was a distinction in the data.

If a mind does not know that there is a distinction between “red” and “black” then even if the eye sees a ball on a black table, the mind will not perceive the distinction.  The ability to make distinctions must precede the actual distinctions.  In order to “see” a distinct object, the mind must somehow know that there ought to be a distinct object.

How does the mind come to this knowledge?  It cannot be through the distinction because it must pre-exist the distinction!

I will have more to say on this later, but for now I am out of time :-(