CalvinDude.com

1) The experience of pain is morally evil.
2) To go against moral evil is morally good.
3) Therefore, it is morally good to do that which will alleviate the experience of pain.

However…

4) Stubbing one’s toe on a coffee table inflicts pain on the individual.
5) Therefore, it is morally good to do that which will ensure no one can ever stub his or her toe on a table.

Unfortunately….

6) There are more ways to inflict pain than stubbing one’s toe on a table.
7) It is impossible to ensure that all external ways of inflicting pain are incapable of doing so.

However…

8) Dead things experience no pain.
9) It is inevitable that living things will experience pain.
10) Therefore, it is morally better to be dead than to be alive.

Unfortunately…

11) There are those who will not kill themselves.
12) Those who are alive will experience pain.
13) Since it is a moral good to alleviate the experience of pain, it is morally justifiable to kill every other living thing.

And finally…

14) If you do not act to resist evil, you are evil yourself.
15) Therefore, if you do not kill everyone you are evil but
16) If you do kill everyone you are good.

Thank God atheists aren’t consistent.

One of the things I enjoy most about Triablogue is that we’re not monolithic. Each of us is a separate individual who has his own perspective on various issues. While there is great overlap amongst us, there is also quite a bit of diversity.

I bring that up because I’ve recently been reading over some essays penned by a presuppositionalist who argued that presuppositionalism is the only valid apologetic method. Now, as a presuppositionalist myself, I believe this statement is true in a very limited sense. That is, I believe that those who would use evidentialist approaches to apologetics also rely on presuppositions that they just don’t express. As a result, you cannot escape the fact that at the ultimate level you will need to deal with presuppositions.

However, that is not what this individual meant (note: this is a person I know locally and what I read is not posted anywhere online, so I’m not going to use his name). What he meant was that those who would use an approach different from the presuppositional approach were, in fact, sinning by doing so.

This view saddens me, much like the hypercalvinist view does. In fact, I think that this may be just an example of what James White termed the “cage stage” (only here it applies to someone who just read Bahnsen for the first time rather than a new convert to Calvinism).

This strikes at the heart of apologetics. Apologetics requires us to make a defense for any who should ask. And the fact is that while presuppositionalism is philosophically sound, it probably only works well at converting INTP personalities (a personality type of which I should note only about 2% of Americans are, at least according to the random website I just Googled…). Regardless of the actual percentage, it’s quite apparent that most people couldn’t care less about philosophy.

However, they are drawn toward evidentialist arguments. And while these arguments will never be as “air tight” (as far as the presuppositionalist is concerned) they are often more convincing precisely because they are easier to understand and follow. Jason Engwer does an excellent job at expounding on the evidence for Christianity in such a manner.

But that would just mean that evidentialism is pragmatic, not necessarily that it is not sinful. I would point out, however, that the Bible does use evidential arguments from time to time too. For instance, when Scripture says in Psalm 19:1 that the heavens declare the glory of God, David is referring to how God’s glory is manifested in nature. It is evidenced by nature itself. And Paul echoes that in Romans 1 as well, saying that God’s attributes are seen in what has been made.

Romans 1, by the way, is a beautiful illustration of the wedding of presuppositional thought to evidentialism. That is, we have the fact that the unbelievers refuse to accept what is plainly seen, and what is plainly seen is the evidence found in creation.

That evidence is there. If you offer an evidential claim, you have a reason to do so. Likewise, we know that no amount of evidence is sufficient in and of itself to convince a non-believer of the truth of God. Both must be taken into account.

In my experience, presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating that atheists have no philosophical standing (although see my caveat below). But when dealing with non-atheist, those who accept supernatural concepts and are not limited to materialism, then presuppositionalism is nowhere near as strong as evidentialism. This isn’t to say that presuppositionalism is impotent; just that it is more difficult to employ. To give an example, one could argue philosophically why it is impossible that Tom murdered Fred because of Tom’s nature; but it’s simpler to show the photograph of Tom on vacation in England at the exact same moment that Fred was murdered in Detroit. In the same way, one could argue that the plurality of gods in Mormonism would render the world senseless, but it’s easier to demonstrate historically that Joseph Smith was a conman.

Now for my caveat. When I said that presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating atheists have no philosophical background, it’s not strictly precise. That’s because in reality, presuppositionalism works best when it’s looking at the worldview level. This is most often expressed when dealing with atheists because their worldview is so diametrically opposed to Christianity on all fronts; however, if we got to the level of a worldview (i.e., determining what was appropriate evidence in the first place), then presuppositionalism would flourish against any religious view too. That is, once the unbeliever sees that the evidence is against his position, he will have to retreat to redefine what evidence is or jettison his view. At this point, the presuppositional argument must come into play.

When it comes to apologetics, therefore, I have observed the following (whether it is universal I know not, although it’s certainly widespread here in America). The average person does not care for philosophy, and therefore will be more impacted by an evidentialist apologetic. Those who are most vocal in opposition to Christianity, however, do focus more on philosophy because they’ve moved to the point where the very definition of “evidence” is determined, and those people will be more impacted by a presuppositional argument. In the apologetic setting that T-Blog is usually engaged in (that is, actively engaged with non-believers who are openly hostile to Christianity), presuppositionalism is probably the more effective tool. However, when you’re talking to the average person off the street and evangelizing, evidentialism is probably the more effective tool. (These are generalizations, and not everyone we deal with is a die-hard anti-Christian; T-Blog also provides pastoral posts from time to time.)

One final note. God draws His elect through both methods. There are countless saved by evidential arguments, and there are likewise countless saved by presuppositional arguments (although probably not as many in the latter group). It is not a sin to use an evidential argument. But it is a sin to think that it would be a sin to use an evidential argument. Apologetics must be person-relative. What God uses to convince one sheep to return to the fold is not necessarily what He will use to convince another sheep to return to the fold. God made each of us, and to cite the above (albeit questionable) statistic about the percentage of INTPs in America, God created both INTPs and ESFJs.

So this weekend I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. Why? Because it was 12 degrees inside my room.

I exaggerate only slightly. August is supposed to be one of our hottest months, but we’ve had rain for three straight days and temperatures haven’t even cracked 80 for so long only one word can describe this:

DOOM!

We’re doomed!

The world is going to freeze!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“I see you’ve come back.”

“Yes, Mike. It happens every day after work. Amazing, isn’t it?” Larry stretched and glanced over at the chessboard that Mike had set up. “Another game? You can’t be serious.”

“Indeed I am,” Mike responded.

“But I beat you six times in a row yesterday, and they were all Scholar’s Mates.”

“No you didn’t. And your use of the term ‘Scholar’ there is pejorative.”

“That’s the name of the move.”

“You’re just blustering and pretending to be an intellectual elite.”

Larry sighed. “Look, Mike, I just got back from work. I’m tired. I don’t want to play a game of chess right now.”

“Because you’re a coward and you know you lost.”

“No, it’s because I don’t feel like trouncing you again.”

“You know, you’ve got a real attitude. You didn’t come anywhere near beating me. I beat you each time.”

“When I checkmate you, I win. Not you.”

“Your claims of checkmate were unverifiable. I could still move.”

“Moving the king six spaces is not a legal move, Mike.”

Mike put his hands on his hips. “Oh really? Says who?”

“It’s the rules of chess.”

“Oh, the mysterious magic rules of chess. How convenient for you that they just happen to benefit you, huh?”

“They’re the rules—”

“I can’t see them.”

“What?”

“I can’t see them. They don’t exist. You believe in this mythical thing you call ‘rules’ that you’ve never seen with your own eyes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You know what, Larry? You have a serious problem here. You have to win at all costs.”

Larry rolled his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the object of a game of chess to, you know, win?”

“Yes. But not at all costs.”

“I don’t win at all costs. I win by playing a good offense and a good defense. Yours doesn’t measure up.”

“You really ought to check your elitist tendencies.”

“‘Check’ them. That’s a clever pun.”

“Pun?”

“Never mind, Mike. It was obviously an accidental pun. I should have guessed it, as poorly as you play chess.”

“Now listen here, Larry. Just because you declared yourself the winner by invoking some mystery magic ‘rule’ that floats invisibly up in the air somewhere watching over us while we play a game of chess does not mean that you play chess better than me.”

“Of course not. Rather, it’s my continual slaughtering of your defense and capturing your king that shows my chess skill trumps yours.”

“Such violent metaphors! I’ll bet you beat your wife!”

Larry looked at Mike. “Okaaaaaay.”

Mike stood and gestured angrily at Larry. “I’m not going to stand for this anymore!” He stormed out of the room.

Larry sighed and soon forgot it. Tomorrow was Saturday and he planned to sleep in. Unfortunately, he was woken at eight in the morning by a knock at the door.

“Are you Lawrence Adams?” the man at the door asked.

“Yes,” Larry said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Get him!”

Before Larry could react, he was thrown to the floor. “What are you doing?”

“Dr. Graves has informed us you’re a threat to yourself.” Larry’s arms were pushed into the straightjacket.

“What?”

“That’s right,” Mike said, entering behind the men. “It’s in my report.”

“He’s a psychology PhD,” the man restraining Larry provided helpfully.

“And I’ve made my report. Larry, you exhibit all the symptoms of a disease known as Mania. You have a narcissistic flair or ‘grandiosity’ to your personality. You are quite intolerant of others. Indeed, you have an ego-centric paradigm that means you simply lack the ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of those around you. It’s all about your thoughts and feelings. Sadly, no facts, reasoning, or logic will change you. On the contrary, arguing with you simply increases your mania, and for that I apologize. I have been provoking, perhaps envoking (I’m not sure which word to use) your illness by playing chess with you.

“The fact is, Larry, when you say, ‘I and those who play chess like me are better at chess than you’ then that’s the first sign that we’re dealing with some mental illness, and we must react with appropriate humanity. That’s why you will be taken back to my asylum and given shock treatments from now on.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure after just a few months of those shock treatments you’ll be able to play chess just as well as I can, and then you can reintegrate into society.”

Mike watched as Larry was dragged out of the house proclaiming his innocence. It was sad. The insane never realize they’re not crazy.

T-Stone has written in defense of Dawkin’s idea that theists proposing Intelligent Design would need to have a God who was more complex than the universe is. Important to this discussion is the following point T-Stone raises:

A 1,000 x 1,000 pixel grid of random pixels, on the other hand, isn’t as pretty to look at as a rendering of the Mandelbrot set, but it is much more complex — maximally complex, as it turns out (which is part of why it’s not as appealing aesthetically as a fractal image!). It’s counterintuitive to people who don’t work with information theory and algorithmic complexity, but its a fact of the domain: randomness is the theoretical maximum for measured complexity. You can’t get any more complex than purely random. In a random grid of pixels, we cannot guess anything about any pixels at all. In a rendering of Sierpinski triangles, or the Mandelbrot or Julia set, as soon as we see one level of rendering, prior to any recursion, we no everything about the rest of image, and can reproduce the fractal to any depth of detail without the original program.

Unfortunately for T-Stone, if he paid attention to what he has written here he’d see that he’s soundly refuted Dawkins. After all, if maximal randomness is equivalent to maximal complexity, then it is easy for me to write a program that will generate completely random output. In other words, it is easy for me—a person who is not maximally complex—to produce a program with output that is maximally complex. Thus, if we want to play T-Stone’s game and use complexity in this sense, then Dawkin’s argument must be surrendered.

If I can make a program that is more complex than I am, then God can create a universe that is more complex than He is.

FWIW, I disagree with T-Stone’s version of information and complexity. And despite what his post would lead you to believe, the idea that “maximal randomness = maximal complexity” is not true for all information theories. And in fact, if I were to use T-Stone’s definition of complexity then I would ask him to explain not why there is so much complexity in the universe, but rather why there is so little complexity. If complexity = randomness, then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there’s a lot of the universe that is not random, and therefore there is a lot of this universe that is not complex. Under his information theory, randomness is the default. We do not need to explain random data. We do need to explain structured and ordered data. Therefore, we do not need to explain complexity; we need to explain non-complexity.

T-Stone is just giving a sleight of hand here. It would be like a mathematician saying “a > b” and having T-Stone say, “The greater than sign is inverted with the less than sign, therefore ‘a > b’ means ‘a is less than b’.”

But as soon as he engages in his sleight of hand, we respond: “If the greater than sign is inverted with the less than sign, then ‘a > b’ is no longer true, rather ‘a < b’ is.”

Inverting the operator without inverting the operands does not refute the original expression.

On December 6, 2006, I responded to comments Charles had made responding to a particular person who was responding to a post Steve had written. My response included the following:

I have more reason to believe he is an atheist pretending to be a Christian. He spouts atheist arguments on every single issue, and thus far has demonstrated no ability to grasp basic Christian concepts.Sorry if I don’t buy the whole: If it looks like a goat, sounds like a goat, eats trash like a goat, but says it’s a sheep, then we must believe it’s a sheep. So until [this person] can show me evidence that he actually believes the Gospel (a good way to start demonstrating this would be if he stopped attacking it), I’m going to label him as a non-Christian.

Nor was my judgment unique. Indeed, even before I penned the above, Steve had written of this person (November 22, 2006):

You’re a professing Christian on Sundays, but an honorary atheist on Mondays.

Who is this individual? Why, none other than Touchstone.

So imagine my shock when Jason Engwer informed me that the latest contributor to Debunking Christianity was…you guessed it: Touchstone.

Apparently, we at Triablogue knew Touchstone was an atheist almost two years before he did. Assuming we believe everything in Touchstone’s deconversion story. (Given his loose handling of the truth when he was commenting over here, my bias is to not believe anything he says.)

It is ironic that now Touchstone wishes to make it sound like he was a very strong Christian before defecting. Now he states:

In cases like mine, inevitably, there are questions raised and suspicions launched about the actuality or sincerity of my faith in the first place. For what it’s worth, I claim to be an atheist who was a deeply committed, “sold out” believer for decades.

… I was an avid student of theology, a circumstance which had faith-building and faith-destroying ramifications for me over the years. In any case, I was not a “lukewarm Christian”, one of those who slowly drifted out of the faith. My faith did not fade away, it came crashing down, quite unexpectedly, and frankly not of my own choosing (at least at the start). I was a cradle Evangelical fully immersed, well-read and fully on board. As a poster on a forum for (Christian) homeschoolers commented recent in a large “discussion” over my atheism: it’s the “worst case scenario”. Such is the dissonance for many who have known me, a good share of them have decided I’ve just been lying or faking it all these years, or I somehow just was never saved, never a Christian that “took”.

For those interested, in August of 2007 I wrote The Case Against Touchstone which goes into more detail as to why I never believed Touchstone’s profession of faith. Apparently, this “sold out” believer was so transparent that we had no problems spotting exactly who he really was, and we knew it for two years.

Perhaps Touchstone’s psychology is such that he really thought he was a Christian until recently…but I don’t buy it. You simply don’t make the arguments that T-Stone made, you don’t support the atheist argument in every discussion, you don’t actively attack Christians and promote atheist views if you’re a Christian. The signs were there for years. There’s nothing “recent” about his deconversion, except for his admission of it.

Confession time: I’ve seen The Dark Knight four times at the movie theater. This is the most I’ve ever watched a movie at the theater. In fact, I’ve seen it more times than I’ve seen some DVDs I own.

What makes The Dark Knight so good isn’t just the great acting that Heath Ledger did. It’s the strength of the story that the Nolan brothers wrote. The Dark Knight works well because it’s such a well crafted story that it transcends the superhero genre.

I just rewatched Batman Begins, which was also directed by Christopher Nolan. I remember the several times I watched it before that I thought it was a great movie. Watching it today, I still think it’s a good movie but the growth between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is astronomical. The Dark Knight makes Batman Begins look weak in comparison.

There is just something about a story that is well done, one that has all the pieces in place. It hits on many levels. My friend Travis is letting me borrow the third season of Lost (he’s let me borrow the first two before too, since I don’t watch much TV). Lost is also (usually) very well crafted. In this case, I think it’s because the creators knew the entire story arc before they began. They also made a conscious decision to have a definite end point to the series. They wanted a set number of episodes to tell the story in, and then they’d finish up.

Granted, there are times when you wish they’d get on with the story already, but by and large the tension is enough to keep you going. And when you watch it on DVD without commercial interruption and without having to wait a week between episodes, it works well. Even the episode that Travis said was the most wasted hour of television ever created (the explanation of Jack’s tattoos, for those wondering which one that was) wasn’t that bad in my opinion. I do agree that it’s one of the weaker episodes, but I’ve seen plenty worse on TV.

Having a well crafted story is difficult work. It’s not just the inspiration factor that you have to deal with, it’s communicating that message to everyone else in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. The best stories are those that encompass more, that are not limited to one framework or one view. Because the more people who can relate to your story, and the more often they can do it, the better the story is.

What is the point of a story? Sometimes it’s simply to escape from reality and provide a measure of relief. But sometimes it’s to confront reality in a different way, a way that helps us learn from it. Escapism is great to relieve stress, and there is benefit to it. But when I think about those stories that are the best written, all my examples are in the latter category. They all depict reality (even those that occur in fantasy stories!) in a way that is more than escaping. They’re educational. They’re inspirational. They’re honest. They’re real. They’re true.

Perhaps life itself is just a well crafted story written by an Author who reveals Himself in His work…

On the radio this morning, the DJs were talking about how McDonalds was planning on removing the double cheeseburger from its dollar menu. This led to discussion of the increase in prices in general, and the DJs concluded that it was due to the cost of gas.

It is unfortunate that gas prices have increased recently, because it masks the real reason. Before giving the real reason, consider this. One of the DJs said (paraphrased, of course): “You gotta think that the profit for a double cheeseburger is like 80%.”

I think we can go with this for the moment, because if you consider just the cost of the beef and the hamburger buns and the cheese, it’s not that expensive. But just like when you pay $1.99 for a large drink you’re not really paying for the beverage, when you pay for your hamburger you’re not really paying for the burger either. What you’re paying for is the labor costs for the workers to make your food and to give you your drinks. The costs you pay don’t go much toward the actual cost of the materials, in other words; it’s almost all labor costs.

So, given that, let’s use some common sense.

What are most McDonald’s employes paid?

Answer: minimum wage.

What just increased?

Answer: minimum wage.

You wanna know why the dollar menu might be gone?

Answer: minimum wage.

This has a much larger impact on the cost of food (and everything else) than does $4.00 gasoline.

I wonder who would have predicted this?

The truth behind the Global Warming scam shines forth yet again!

[California] Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.

…

Brown said the company must put its revisions into a new contract with the town of McCloud. He wants proper study of the environmental consequences of the bottling operation, saying the previous draft review had “serious deficiencies.”

He said it failed to include an examination of whether the operation will contribute to global warming through the production of plastic bottles, the operation’s electrical demands and the diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions produced by trucks traveling to and from the plant.

“It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States,” Brown said in a statement. “Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles.”

A blind man could have seen this one coming. The Global Warming scam is just a lawyer trick. Note that once the myth of fuel emissions causing Global Warming becomes legal precedence, every company on Earth will face the same lawsuits. You want to drink a Coke? Guess what! Those are bottled elsewhere and driven by a truck to your supermarket. And then you drive to the market to buy it. (And what do you do with the plastic bottle when you’re done? You, my friend, are part of the problem too!)

But don’t worry. After you’re sued out of your house, you can’t even live in a cave in the ground–who knows what pollutants you’ll be putting into the groundwater supply? And besides, you’re a threat to the brown bears that want to sleep in the same cave.

Since Paul C. is having difficulty understanding why causality is linked to a logical order, not a temporal order, and since others might be interested in seeing why this is the case, I decided to write another post spelling it out clearly. Before I get into the main point, we already know that temporal order is not sufficient to infer causality because that is the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy. A simple example will suffice: the Oklahoma City bombing happened before 9/11 happened, therefore 9/11 was caused by Timothy McVeigh. This is an obvious example of the post hoc fallacy. Others are not so obvious, and we see this many times in movies about crime. For example: The victim is killed moments before the defendant leaves the premise.

So we know that temporal order is not sufficient to infer causality. In this post, I am going to take it one step further. To do so, I must talk a bit about Einstein’s theory of Relativity. In order to follow what will occur, the most important aspect to grasp is the fact that light moves at a constant velocity regardless of the framework of the observer. This is counter-intuitive, and a simple example should show why.

Suppose you are travelling in a car that is moving at 60 miles per hour. If you throw a baseball at 60 miles an hour in the same direction that you are travelling, the ball will look (from your perspective) like it is travelling 60 miles per hour. From someone on the ground, however, the ball will look like it is travelling at 120 miles per hour. That is because the observer outside your car sees the ball’s velocity as the sum of your throw (60 miles per hour) plus your vehicles velocity (60 miles per hour).

Suppose that you saw the observer on the side of the road and wanted to throw the ball back at him after you’ve already passed. Your car is still travelling at 60 miles an hour, but you give a little extra effort and throw the ball at the observer at 70 miles per hour. The observer on the side of the road will have the ball come toward him at 10 miles per hour. (The car is moving 60 miles per hour in one direction, and you throw the ball in the opposite direction (indicated by a – sign), so the result is 60 – 70 = -10 miles per hour; or 10 miles per hour in the opposite direction that the car is moving.)

This makes sense to us because we’ve seen it in action. Suppose, however, that instead of a baseball, the person in the car turns on a flashlight. Relativity states that light will appear at approximately 3 x 10⁸ m/sec for both the observer in the vehicle and the observer outside the vehicle. That is, there is no adding on the velocity of the observer to light. It moves at a constant speed through all frames of reference.

So with this in mind, let me give a slightly different version of Einstein’s train. Suppose there are two people on opposite ends of a train and these people are named Adam and Bill. At the midpoint of the train is a bomb. Adam and Bill both have buttons they can press. This will send an electrical signal that travels at the speed of light to the bomb in the middle of the train. Adam wants to blow up the train; Bill wants to keep Adam from blowing up the train. As a result, Adam’s signal will cause the bomb to detonate while Bill’s signal will keep the bomb from detonating. Furthermore, let us stipulate that Bill is at the front of the train (i.e., toward the engine) while Adam is at the back of the train (i.e., the caboose).

For ease of math, let us stipulate that light moves at exactly 3 x 10⁸ m/s. Let us also stipulate that the distance between Bill and the bomb is exactly 1,000 meters. However, due to an error when the experiment was set up, Adam is slightly closer to the bomb: he’s only 900 meters away. Let us stipulate that from the train’s framework, Adam and Bill press their buttons at the exact same time.

Now it is obvious without even doing math that because Adam is closer to the bomb and because light travels at a constant velocity that the bomb will detonate if both press their buttons at the same time. Nevertheless, let us do the math on it.

If light travels at 300,000,000 m/s, how long does it take light to go 1,000 meters? This is a simple physics problem: t = d/v. In this case, t = 1,000 / 300,000,000 or 3.3 x 10^-6 seconds.

How long does it take light to travel 900 meters? In this case, t = 900 / 300,000,000 or 3.0 x 10^-6 seconds. This means that Adam’s signal will reach the bomb 3 x 10^-7 (0.0000003) seconds before Bill’s signal will reach the bomb.

Now suppose that there is an outside observer named Charlie. The train is moving. But because light has a constant velocity irrespective of the observer, he will see both signals travel at 3 x 10⁸ m/s just like those inside the train. Suppose that at the exact instant (from Charlie’s perspective) the bomb is in front of him, both Adam and Bill press their buttons, what does Charlie see? He sees two signals travelling at 3 x 10⁸ m/s. But he also sees the bomb travelling toward Bill’s position (Bill is at the engine) and away from Adam’s (Adam is in the caboose).

This means from Charlie’s perspective, if Adam and Bill were exactly the same distance apart and pressed their buttons at exactly the same instant, the signal from Bill’s button would reach the bomb before the signal from Adam’s button would reach the bomb. But because we know that Adam is 100 meters closer to the bomb than Bill, we ask a question: how fast must the train be moving so that from Charlie’s perspective both signals will reach the bomb at the same time?

As we calculated above, Bill’s signal will reach the bomb 3 x 10^-7 seconds after Adam’s. And we know that the difference in distance is 100 meters. So we need the train to cover 100 meters in 3 x 10^-7 seconds. However, this distance is split between Adam and Bill. That is, because the signal is moving toward Bill and away from Adam, the train needs to actually only cover 50 meters in 3 x 10^-7 seconds. This gives us 50m /0.0000003s = 1.67 x 10⁸ m/s, or just over 50% the speed of light.

So let us suppose that the train is moving at 2 x 10⁸ m/s, or 2/3s the speed of light. What will Charlie see?

He sees Adam press his button. The signal moves out at 3 x 10⁸ m/s and covers 900 meters. However, when it hits the 900 meter mark (from Charlie’s perspective) 3.0 x 10^-6 seconds later, the bomb has moved. The bomb is moving at 2 x 10⁸ m/s, and it does so for the same 3.0 x 10^-6 seconds. That means the bomb has moved 600 meters further down the track after that 3.0 x 10 ^-6 seconds. Ultimately, this means it takes Adam’s signal 9.0 x 10^-6 seconds to actually read the bomb.

At the same instant, Charlie sees Bill press the button. Bill’s signal travels out at 3 x 10⁸ m/s and the bomb has moved toward him at 2 x 10⁸ m/s too. This means that it takes only 2.0 x 10^-6 for Bill’s signal to reach the bomb. From Charlie’s perspective, Bill’s signal reaches the bomb 7.0 x 10^-6 seconds before Adam’s does.

What will the train do? Answer: it will explode. Even from Charlie’s perspective, it will still explode. Why is that? Because on the train, which is where the bomb is located, Adam’s signal reaches the bomb 3 x 10^-7 seconds before Bill’s signal does. Charlie observes Bill’s signal arriving 7.0 x 10^-6 seconds before Adam’s does, however. From Charlie’s perspective, the signal that causes the bomb to explode arrives after the signal to keep the bomb from exploding should have neutralized it.

So what caused the train to explode? Adam’s signal did. But from Charlie’s perspective, it shouldn’t have. But Charlie is still left with an exploding train, one that does not fit in a temporal causative sense. It does, however, fit logically. He knows that logically Adam’s signal must have caused the train to explode, and that Bill’s counter-signal did not neutralize the bomb.

Naturally, the train had to be going extremely fast: 2/3 the speed of light. Since we never reach those speeds on Earth, cause and effect usually follow the temporal scheme. However, it is a fallacy for us to believe that causes are temporal causes for the reasons illustrated above. The only thing that matters is whether logically they are causes. If we know that A and only A logically causes B, then even if we observe B occurring before A we know that A is the cause of B. This must be the case.

This is also why we can have logical precedence (that is, a logical before) without having a temporal before. This is commonly seen in theology when, for instance, we talk about the decrees of God. The difference between Infralapsarians and Supralapsarians boils down to the logical order of the decrees of God, not the temporal order (since all agree that temporally each decree occurred before the foundation of the world, in eternity past; that is, outside of time). There is no temporal before in causality; there is only a logical before.