CalvinDude.com

Some people claim that 2 + 2 = 4 in base 10 math. But think about this for a moment. Someone could claim that 2 + 2 = 5. Or that 2 + 2 = 7,380,934. Now here’s the thing about that. Those people who would say the answer to 2 + 2 is some particular answer or another are typically those people who fit into a certain demographic (i.e., those who come up with counterarguments to poor reasoning may be culturally biased toward stating 2 + 2 = 5). So we can use the OTF to examine whether it is right in treating any answer to 2 + 2 as valid.

Now there are essentially an infinite number of answers you could claim satisfy 2 + 2. Yet certain mathematicians will insist that 2 + 2 = 4 in all cases in base 10 math. Even facing the OTF, they insist their answer could be the only correct one.

Fine. I understand this and I grant it. Even though their particular brand of mathematical solution has a low probability to it they could still have the correct answer after all. At this point though, they are talking about possibilities. Their answer could still be true even though the odds are their answer is wrong. This is sort of like winning the lottery when there are an infinite number of mathematical tickets to draw out of a barrel. The odds are 1 in infinity but that doesn’t give any one of them pause. Even if we pare the possible solutions down to positive whole numbers, acknowledging the rest are negatives or fractions or even irrational numbers, this still doesn’t change much of anything, nor would it give them any pause. Why? Because they have done a dance that I now call The Delusional Sidestep (TDS). Since the consequences of the demographic data are quickly recognized by them to require the OTF they make a quick sidestep to avoid it by claiming they could still be right despite the odds. Wait just a minute!? What about the odds? Ahhh, just ignore them we’re told. There is nothing to see here. Move along. We prefer our delusion to the actual probabilities.

Remember, it doesn’t matter that someone can provide actual reasons why one answer is valid and another isn’t. WE MUST NOT IGNORE THE ODDS! Why, any statistician would agree with me here. What are the odds the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy? Well, there are 195 countries in the world now, so the answer is 1 in 195. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy. What are the odds that Obama is president of the United States? Well, the population of the United States is 307,006,550, so the answer is 1 in 307,006,550. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that Obama is president of the United States.

It’s obvious to any intelligent person that there are far more ways for a factual question to be answered incorrectly than correctly, and therefore the odds that any particular answer is actually true is quite low. Therefore, if you make a factual claim, the OTF says you’re talking bunk so I don’t have to listen to a single thing you say. Only a non-scholar could possibly disagree with my brilliance.

“…this book will destroy Christianity.”

Those words by atheist Michael Martin are located in the blurb he wrote that appears on the back cover of The Christian Delusion, edited by John Loftus (speaking of back cover blurbs, Dale C. Allison, Jr. starts his blurb by instructing us to “Forget Dawkins” and that’s sage advice no matter who gives it). Furthermore, Keith Parsons states of The Christian Delusion that “there can have been few works as effective” at debunking Christianity. Ken Pulliam states: “It demonstrates that those who believe in the tenets of evangelical Christianity truly are deluded.”

The book contains chapters written by a wide range of modern atheists, including Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Edward T. Babinski[*]. (If those names sound familiar it’s because we’ve engaged with each of them many times on Triablogue.) Of his contribution to the book, Carrier slapped both of his chapters with a “tour de force” label and confidently assured us, “I doubt I’ll ever have to write another [refutation of the resurrection].” He says: “My debunking of [Christian claims on science] is so decisive in this chapter, you won’t need to refer anyone anywhere else.”

But such hubris vastly overreaches reality, and Triablogue is here to demonstrate it with The Infidel Delusion.

The Infidel Delusion was written (in alphabetical order) by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays, and Paul Manata. This is a true tour de force. By the time I got to Manata’s debunking of Valerie Tarico’s naturalistic reductionism in chapter two, the perfect metaphor had formed in my head: Collectively, these Triabloggian authors were firing intellectual howitzer shells point-blank into a cardboard shanty town.

Each chapter of The Christian Delusion is thoroughly debunked by Hay’s philosophical and theological acumen, Engwer’s encyclopedic knowledge of history, Chan’s medical training, and/or Manata’s philosophical prowess. Contrary to the tactic The Christian Delusion used—to attack the weakest arguments put forth in the name of Christianity—the authors of The Infidel Delusion dismantled the strongest arguments atheists had to offer. Indeed, if there truly are “few works as effective” as The Christian Delusion, as Parsons claimed, then Triablogue shows atheism to be in a sad state indeed.

A Quick Overview of What’s in The Infidel Delusion
After introductions from Hays, Engwer, and Manata, the debunking of The Christian Delusion begins. In chapter one, Eller’s entire premise is shown to be at odds with the rest of The Christian Delusion, making that book internally incoherent. Eller’s belief that there is no real Christianity, but instead thousands of Christianities, actually destroys the basis for The Christian Delusion by rendering the idea that there is such a thing as Christianity (singular) to refute moot. If atheists are to be consistent, either Eller’s contribution must go or it must stand alone.

Chapter two shows Tarico’s cognitive research to be nowhere near adequate to explain what she thinks it explains. In addition to being self-refuting, Manata makes an excellent case that Tarico doesn’t even understand the issues involved in naturalism and scientific reductionism. Additionally, Chan includes a great deal on the medical issues involved, including debunking the idea that Paul’s vision of Christ on the Road to Damascus could be explained by a frontal lobe seizure.

Chapter three deals with Long’s attempt to show cultural background determines how one will believe. This sort of cultural relativism is a double-edged sword, however. If it works against Christianity, it is only at the expense of destroying atheism in the process.

Chapter four gets us to the heart of The Christian Delusion, the Outsider Test for Faith that forms the key of Loftus’s atheistic apologetic. Hays demonstrates how Loftus doesn’t consistently apply this test since it equally destroys his own view. Engwer shows that the attitude Loftus has about how beliefs are formed doesn’t cohere to Christian experience. And finally, Manata demonstrates that the outsider test is “vague, ambiguous, invalid, unsound, superfluous, informally fallacious, and subject to a defeater-deflector.”

Chapter five reviews Babinski’s flawed view of Jewish cosmology based on uncharitable assumptions about the stupidity of ancient people and their lack of ability to understand figurative language; chapter six shows Tobin’s repeating of common objections to Scripture (creating “dilemma” by ignoring all conservative scholarship, and even most liberal scholarship); and chapter seven refutes Loftus’s claim that Scripture is unclear, ironically in part by showing that if Loftus’s chapter is true, Babinski’s and Tobin’s must be false! But internal consistency is not something The Christian Delusion was concerned with.

Chapter eight deals with Avalos’s claims that Yahweh is a “moral monster.” Yet this once again requires us to reject Loftus’s chapter seven, and furthermore Avalos’s moral relativism defeats his own argument.

Chapter nine deals with concepts of animal suffering as evidence for the non-existence of God. Amongst other arguments, Hays deftly shows how Loftus’s claims are unsupported anthropomorphisms, while Engwer focuses on the ludicrous demands Loftus requires of believers to “answer” this “problem” and Manata shows Loftus’s argument is really nothing short of wishful thinking completely divorced from the Christian theology it was supposed to debunk.

Chapter ten reviews Price’s misuse of methodological naturalism, including the fact that Price actually ignores the vast majority of modern scholarship in rejecting the very existence of Jesus as a historical figure. Chapter eleven examines similar weaknesses of methodology in the claims Carrier makes regarding the resurrection.

Chapter twelve examines Loftus’s poor exegetical skills and his inability to understand even simple Biblical passages in context. In critiquing Christian prophecy, Loftus manages to all but ignore the preterist movement and makes some rather basic label errors on the positions he does look at.

Chapter thirteen deals with Eller’s moral claims, especially in light of his rejection of objective morality. The Infidel Delusion shows how his evolutionary claims are insufficient to create any type of morality.

Chapter fourteen shows that Avalos’s argument that atheism didn’t cause the Holocaust is irrelevant to the issue of whether Christianity is true. Finally, chapter fifteen shows that Carrier’s historical claims that Christians are not responsible for modern science is both irrelevant to the issue of the truth of Christianity as well as focused on the wrong issues, even within the context of his argument.

The last section of The Infidel Delusion consists of ten appendices that give us more detail into some of the arguments presented within the various chapters, as well as a look at some of the specific claims made by contributors to The Christian Delusion outside of the scope of that actual book.

Conclusion
The Infidel Delusion debunks the entirety of The Christian Delusion. This is not to say it addresses every single flaw in The Christian Delusion—such would take multiple volumes. But there is no major claim made in The Christian Delusion that withstands the criticism leveled at it in The Infidel Delusion. As Steve Hays wrote in his introduction, “…if The Christian Delusion turns out to be just another white elephant in the overcrowded zoo of militant atheism, then that‘s a vindication of the Christian faith.”

The Infidel Delusion certainly demonstrates this.

Full disclosure: While I did not contribute any writing to The Infidel Delusion, I did edit, collate, and format the ebook.

UPDATE:
[*] To be fair, Babinski classifies himself as an agnostic.

It’s nice to do nothing. Not that “nothing” is precisely what I’ve been doing; but rather, compared to my normal day, this is like doing nothing. I slept in, got up, read a bit of Calvin’s commentary on Jeremiah, listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll (for reasons which may, or may not, become apparent later), worked a bit on a novel (for Travis’s edification, it was Memorial Stone, which is roughly 40% complete right now—I’ll get back to editing The 13th Prime sometime this week too), and then played Guitar Hero for a bit. Normally, I would have gotten up not so late, rode the bus into town, hit on a girl at the local café (or, if no femmes present, talked about Lost with the guys there), then gone to work, deleted spam, and yell at the scanner machine while sighing about the abysmal reading comprehension skills inherent in both field and service center staff, yelled at the machine some more because of how it always breaks and jams, yelled the design of our new forms which jam more often than our old forms, yelled a bit more at the machine, then gone to lunch, after which I would have repeated everything again.

It’s amazing that my day of “nothing” is so much more fruitful than my typical day. Ahhhhhhh.

BTW, don’t get me wrong. On the whole, I like my job (or I wouldn’t have been there for 14 years and counting). But there’s a reason we get vacations. It’s actually a Biblical reason, and has to do with the same reason that we get weekends. If for no other reason, atheists should be down on their knees thanking God He insisted on Sabbaths.

Several years ago, I heard a caller to a talk radio show make the claim that he could prove God doesn’t exist. Since I am a Christian apologist in my spare time, I wanted to see what this amazing proof of the non-existence of God was (despite the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative).

The caller said that God couldn’t exist because, in his words, “crap exists.” He did not mean this euphemistically, as a reference to bad things—although that might have been a better argument for him. Instead, he meant “fecal matter.” He later also said that a woman’s period proves God does not exist.

This kind of “proof” is enough to make any thinking person go, “Huh?” After all, it would be sorta like saying that unicorns don’t exist because horses have to wear horseshoes. In other words, even if God does not exist, the argument is a non-sequitur. It’s also a bogus argument because, in order for it to be valid, the definition of God would need to include “a being who would not create people that produced fecal matter or had monthly periods”—a definition of God that would be quite unique, to say the least.

There is also the assumption the atheist makes about what the nature of God is. How does the atheist know that God would not do something? It is certainly logically possible for God to design people who give off waste products. So why would this be a problem prima face?

But there is more.

This argument also assumes the purpose for which God would design something. People don’t like dealing with fecal matter because it’s nasty and smelly and unpleasant for us, but that doesn’t mean that fecal matter serves no purpose at all. After all, millions of bacteria live in it. Who’s to say that God wouldn’t have designed people to produce waste material because He had in mind another creation that would benefit from it? It is only if we assume that God’s entire purpose is for the atheist’s comfort that we could accept this argument.

This argument, therefore, is easily dispatched. It is surprising, however, to see how many atheists use variations of this same argument. It goes like this: “God wouldn’t do X, therefore He doesn’t exist.” X can be anything the atheist wants to argue.

But even if an atheist could come up with something else that we can perceive no practical value for, how would that disprove God? Just because you would not design something a certain way does not mean that God would not do so. And therefore, just because something is not the way you would have made it does not mean that God does not exist.

This would be like saying, “If I were to design a computer operating system, I would make it so it wouldn’t crash every fifteen minutes. Windows crashes every fifteen minutes. Therefore, no one designed it.”

While Apple computer aficionados will agree with this just out of spite for Microsoft, it is most certainly the case that Windows was designed by the people at Microsoft. And just because it doesn’t work the way you would have made it does not make the programmers non-existent.

Some may yet take this argument a bit further. For example, some may say the evidence of Windows proves that programmers make mistakes. Therefore, people make mistakes. But a perfect God would not make mistakes. Since God created people who make mistakes, God created a mistake. Therefore, God does not exist.

Can you see how this is the same argument as before? “God would not do X, therefore He does not exist.” Or, “God would not create flawed people, therefore He does not exist.”

This argument has the same problems as the previous one. It assumes both the nature of God (that God, qua God, cannot create flawed people) and the intention for which people are created (that the purpose of God creating people was to make them flawless). Furthermore, this assumes a definition of perfection and automatically defines flawed people as outside of it.

But if God designed the world to have flawed people such that He might demonstrate His mercy and power toward them, then their very flaws are in fact the means for God doing so. And thus, those flaws are not an imperfection in God’s plan. Flawed people may very well fit perfectly into God’s plan.

It is only when you think of God in an anthropocentric manner that you would see any problems arise. But God exists theocentrically, not anthropocentrically. And God’s plans are not just for people, but ultimately for Himself.

With that in mind, it is obvious that the atheist’s entire line of argument cannot stand unless the atheist himself is God. For all he has proven is that the atheist would not do X, therefore the atheist did not create the world.

A conclusion not in dispute.

A couple of folks have requested a response to this post by a man named Luke who has deconverted from Christianity to atheism. As I mentioned in the comments where the request was made, the testimony that Luke gives is very general, and as a result it is impossible to respond to any actual claims since he didn’t really provide any (that is, while Luke claims that things such as contradictions in Scripture, inconsistencies in Christianity, etc. caused him to disbelieve, he does not give examples so it is impossible to interact with those claims). However, one commenter stated he was looking more for a general examination, rather than specifically refuting claims, so I will provide that now.

Luke begins his post by pointing out that he is the son of a pastor. On this point, I can empathize completely, as I too am a PK. Luke also grew up in a relatively small town. He described it as “a town of 5,000 people and 22 Christian churches (at the time).” Having lived most of my life in small towns, I understand where he comes from here as well. The last small town I lived in had roughly 800 people and we probably had 22 Christian churches too (I never did count). My dad was pastor of one of them, and when the summer tourists (read: “Texans”) invaded, I believe our church was one of the largest, if not the largest, with around 60 people.

I should note that small towns and PKs do not mix very well, and it could be that this is where problems began for Luke. Generally speaking, children of pastors are viewed in two diametrically opposed ways. One faction of people view PKs as angels who ought to live perfect lives because they’ve grown up closer to God by virtue of their parents. These people are aghast when a pastor’s son is caught smoking in the boy’s room. On the other hand, there are those who expect PKs to be demons running rampant. For them, it is no shock at all to find the pastor’s son has knocked up the Homecoming Queen.

The reality is that PKs are just like anyone else. We’re neither more of a saint nor a sinner than any other person.

In any case, personal problems can be amplified in small towns where privacy doesn’t exist. Small towns are places where rumors run rampant, and if they don’t begin true they have a way of becoming true (“Did you hear Chuck is an alcoholic?” “No, really?! Lemme buy him a drink.”). Now while Luke’s town is about six times bigger than those I grew up in, I imagine it wasn’t much different there either. These kinds of pressures exist, whether we want to accept them or not.

Luke says that he felt God while he was a Christian. For instance, he writes:

I felt the presence of God. Sometimes I would tingle and sweat with the Holy Spirit. Other times I felt led by Him to give money to a certain cause, or to pay someone a specific compliment, or to walk to the cross at the front of my church and bow before it during a worship service.

I have no doubt that Luke did, indeed, feel something. But since he doesn’t believe in God, obviously he doesn’t believe that he really felt the presence of God at all. On this point, I would agree with him.

By this, Luke exposes one of the problems with the modern church. Christians believe now that you must “experience” God in some manner, and that manner is subjective. Yet most churches never bother to try to discriminate between a typical emotional response to stimuli and an actual feeling of God Himself.

To give one example, a few years back I went to a Promise Keepers event. About a month or so before I went to it, I happened to see a concert that included one of my favorite bands, Three Days Grace. Despite what people might assume from the name, this is a secular band and as far as I know has no Christians in it. In any case, Three Days Grace played with Hurt, both of whom opened for Staind, and it happened to be in the exact same auditorium that Promise Keepers was in.

Why do I bring them up? Because when I watched Promise Keepers and they played “worship music”, the crowd behaved exactly like it had for Hurt, Three Days Grace, and Staind (sans mosh pit). In other words, people got just as into the music in a secular concert, and had the same types of reactions to the performers on the stage, as they did during the “Christian” concert “worship service.”

To put it plainly, standing in the same auditorium, there was no objective difference between the secular concert and the Christian concert as far as I felt. And I doubt my experience is unusual. So when Luke says that he felt the Holy Spirit as a Christian, I have no doubt that he felt something, but I know from Scripture that what he felt was not the Holy Spirit.

Now Luke claims that he did not leave Christianity for emotional reasons, stating:

Looking back, I feel lucky that I left God for purely rational reasons instead of emotional ones. Indeed, all my emotions were pushing the other way.

However, this is impossible to square with other things he’s mentioned. For example, he tells how he went through depression at the age of 19 “probably because I did nothing but work at Wal-Mart, download music, and watch internet porn.” This last part is key, because he concludes:

In many ways I regret my Christian upbringing. So much time and energy wasted on an invisible friend. So many bad lessons about morality, thinking, and sex. So much needless guilt.

It is clear that sexual ethics had a lot to do with Luke’s deconversion. Frankly, it is not at all surprising that someone who does little but listen to music and watch internet porn would suffer from feelings of guilt, and it’s easier to not believe what you’re doing is wrong than it is to refrain from committing sins. This reaction is not atypical at all. Anyone who is in bondage to sin will refrain from fellowship with God.

It is also not at all surprising that Luke would go through depression and connect it to this sinful activity. He had grown up in church and had known that such behavior was wrong, yet he did it anyway. This would cause cognitive dissonance in him. He was doing something that he wanted to do (view pornography) but which he thought was evil to do. Luke chose to ease his conscience by denying the reality of evil rather than by refraining from committing evil.

But this is not a rational decision at all. This is a purely emotional reason. He did not like how he felt when he felt guilty, so he acted to remove the guilt. After the fact, he used reason and logic to try to justify his new position.

The reality is that despite what Luke thinks, he did not become an atheist by thinking, but rather by emotion. The emotion was to avoid the pain and discomfort of guilt.

Now along the way, Luke didn’t get very helpful advice (if what he’s relayed is accurate). Part of the problem was that he attended an emergent church in college, and if there’s one thing the emergent folks lack it’s reason.

Luke’s experience is not atypical there either. One friend of mine (who remains a Christian) has had the same struggles with the rash of anti-intellectualism in most Evangelical churches today. For someone like Luke, who obviously is intellectually oriented, he would not have found anyone in an anti-intellectual environment to respond to his questions in any meaningful manner. Sadly, most Christians are content to let the few intellectualists go to hell rather than learn something that may hurt their brain so they can respond to those intellectualists.

None of that excuses Luke, however, for not having sought out those who could respond to any arguments he brought forward. That we are few does not mean we are non-existent, and he could have used the same internet he was surfing porn on to find answers to the questions he had.

Furthermore, it seems that Luke’s dad wasn’t very helpful either. He chastised Luke “because I was arrogant to think I could get to truth by studying.” If this is an accurate depiction of what happened, it is a travesty. It is also unbiblical. Hosea 4:6 tells us: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” And Jesus Himself said, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). Studying does lead to truth.

Of course, it also depends on what you’re studying, and Luke doesn’t tell us what he was studying at the time. So his father might have had a legitimate reason to complain. After all, one doesn’t learn about quantum mechanics by studying accounting.

One of the biggest problems with Luke’s idea of Christianity is found when he writes:

I know what it’s like to isolate one part of my life from reason or evidence, and I know what it’s like to think that is a virtue.

(emphasis in original)

This does not describe my Christianity. And I’m not surprised that anyone who holds to this form of Christianity would reject it. I would too.

But that’s not what Christianity is. It is, however, what atheism is.

See, there’s a lot of Luke’s story that I identify with. The small town, the depression, the struggle with sin, the feeling that God isn’t there (or that He doesn’t care). Yet these are all things that I expect from my understanding of Christianity. These things are not surprises at all. They are, in fact, inevitable in a fallen world.

But why would looking at pornography on a computer cause you to feel guilty in an atheistic world? Why is it that our sex drive—the very impetus that fuels evolution—causes universal feelings of guilt, even in people who do not believe in God, when it is not used appropriately? Further, what evolutionary benefit would there be to deluding yourself that God exists, as all but the 3% of people who are atheists (according to some polls) do? From purely naturalistic principals, the universality of religion is impossible to explain: it must provide an evolutionary advantage, yet it is supposedly completely irrational! In other words, Darwinism has selected for make-believe, and not for the world as it actually is. And that is something that I just can’t put together rationally in my mind.

And that doesn’t even get into the problem that if Darwinism can select for an irrational worldview such as theism—something that is completely alien to reality, according to the atheist—then how is it possible for the atheist to know that he is not completely deluded in his naturalism?

Luke may very well be beginning to see this, for he writes:

In my studies I uncovered lots of false facts and dishonest arguments from Christians and atheists. Each discovery only deepened my hunger for knowledge, but also my realization that humans know very little, and with little certainty.

I have little doubt that if Luke continues down the path he is on, he will ultimately discover that to reject theism is to reject rationality altogether and to embrace nihilism. Without God, there is only uncertainty and irrationality. And for this reason, even if we discount the other evidence Luke himself provided and assume that he converted to atheism by reason rather than emotion, he will only stay an atheist if he rejects reason as impossible to obtain. Reason itself must become just as delusional as theism.

The only other option he has is to hold to reason for the same emotional reasons he once felt for God.

If any atheists are upset by that, I’m vewwy vewwy sawwwy. Maybe this will help.

Remember…unicorns and puppy dogs.

Image shamelessly stolen from James White.

According to this article, Dawkin’s book The God Delusion is responsible for at least one suicide. In this instance, 22-year-old Jesse Kilgore was reading The God Delusion because a biology professor had challenged him to do so. Independent witnesses confirmed to Jesse’s father that the book had had a devastating effect on Jesse, causing him to question his faith, and led to him shooting himself in the woods near his home in October.

There are a couple of things to note from the story. First, Dawkins in no way intended that his book would cause people to commit suicide. Be that as it may, The God Delusion offers no reason for someone who deconverts from Christianity not to kill himself. That is, the philosophical justifications that Dawkins uses (poorly, I might add) logically lead to concepts of nihilism and despair. There is no reason, purpose, or value in life under Dawkins’ view. In fact, any humanistic worldview can only provide a useful fiction for atheists to pretend is real; nothing more. Reality itself does not contain these values or any purpose whatsoever. Therefore, whether you invent a God or invent a feeling of universal brotherhood, it’s still just your own mental invention. It doesn’t extend into reality at all, and as such Dawkins’ worldview is just as delusional as the religious worldview he abhors.

This is not as much of a danger to someone who is already a nonbeliever. Nonbelievers who read Dawkins’ books only gain reaffirmation of their beliefs. Since they’ve already suppressed the negative aspects of their worldview and blinded themselves to the nihilistic aspects of their presuppositions, reading Dawkins won’t affect them. A believer, however, who comes from a radically different worldview will be more prone to falling into that nihilistic despair if he deconverts because he has not yet deluded himself with false hope for a destitute world.

Since Jesse apparently did some apologetics work on-line, he may very well have been caught in such a quandary here. It could have been something as simple as the fact that Jesse couldn’t believe in Dawkins’ worldview because his apologetic was strong enough to show Dawkins’ false humanistic optimism to be bunk; but at the same time Jesse’s understanding of Christianity was weak to Dawkins’ attack. The result would be that Dawkins’ book would convince him Christianity is wrong, but not that Dawkins was right, and that left him with nowhere to turn to.

This brings us to the second point from the story. Christians need to have a strong understanding of Christian beliefs. One of the aspects I’ve found (and it is obvious from such folks as the Debunkers) is that most former Christians have no concept at all of Christian theism. Most apostates illustrate that they cannot even properly read a verse of Scripture at all; they have no understanding of basic exegesis; they do not even make an attempt to read the Bible in context. The former Christians that I run into, to a man (or woman), attack Fundamentalist caricatures of Christianity and assume that they are actually critiquing Christianity in that process! Look no further than those who complain about talking snakes and donkeys in the comments for evidence of this. (Granted, that’s personal experience, which is merely anecdotal evidence. But on this issue, I think the case is quite strong since it’s consistent anecdotal evidence and not only my experience on the matter.)

If atheists attack a straw man, it doesn’t affect Christianity. The God Delusion is nothing but burning straw and tilting at windmills. The unfortunate thing is that those types of errors can be very subtle and hard to spot. Fallacies are not always blatant; that’s why you need to study them. Sadly, Dawkins has been responded to by many people online and through books, yet Jesse apparently never discovered how shoddy Dawkins’ arguments are.

This brings us to a third point. I do think Keith (Jesse’s father) was a bit too hard on himself regarding how he should have been there for his son. Jesse wasn’t a ten-year-old; he was twenty-two years old. He was an adult. Keith didn’t put Jesse in danger by allowing Jesse to go off to college. Jesse should have been able to discover these resources by himself.

Keith’s other points regarding secular education are valid though. It is the case that public education is anti-Christian. Christians do need to take the effort to educate their children with this in mind. Public education is not an ally (even if they weren’t anti-Christian, public education is so dismal you still couldn’t consider it an ally). Parents need to teach their children the basics of logic so their children can spot logical fallacies. Parents need to ensure their children do understand what Christianity is so they can defend it against atheism.

But this requires that the parents understand logic and Christianity too. And that requires the Church to understand what she teaches. But this takes hard working. Critical thinking isn’t easy. Weighing arguments takes effort. We, as Christians, must be willing to do that footwork. If nothing else, this story shows us that lives are on the line.

Before I begin this post in earnest, I must put forth a preliminary rule. Unfortunately, since the person this rule is directed toward does not listen very well at all, I will have to state this rule several times throughout. For normal readers, I apologize for the redundancies. It will be clear, however, why they are needed.

Thus far, just counting the post Steve did called “An offer he can’t refuse” there are 184 comments. Of those 184, by my count 92 are from Jason Streitfeld. As I pointed out in one of my comments on that post:

Well, Jason S. has proven he’s nothing more than steamroller: make a bunch of wild assertions and the sheer number of errors will be too much for anyone to respond to. This gives the added bonus that when the steamroller runs away with tail between his legs, he can still say, “They didn’t get me on these points!” and think he’s actually won something.

Since Jason (and all references to Jason will be to Jason S., and not to our esteemed Jason Engwer) is a steamroller, and since this post is about him, it is necessary for me to implement a restriction on comments to this post. The restriction is for Jason only. That restriction is this: while he is free to respond in the comments, he is restricted from posting more than two (2) comments in a row.

If you wonder if there will be any grace from me at all, the answer is: the second post IS the grace post.

The intention is thus: Jason needs to be able to respond in a coherent manner rather than his typical drive-by “cherry pick a few sentences and make up whatever you want to make up about the meaning” approach. The only way to encourage this is for me to delete anything after his second comment in a row. (To be clear, he can comment again IF someone else responds after his first two (2) comments, at which point he will have an addition two (2) comments he can post; he just cannot exceed two (2) comments in a row ever in the comments on this post.)

If Jason posts more than two (2) comments in a row, every comment after the second one will be deleted unread by me. In short, Jason, this means if you want to have a dialogue you have to be able to focus. Write your response in one lump form, addressing what you consider the most important issues. Put them up front. And if you forgot something in your haste, too bad. Learn to think before you post. Organize and then write.

And note that this restriction is for my post only. Triabloggers have the right to enforce rules on our own posts. Any other poster can enforce whichever rules they see fit on their own posts too.

So with that in mind, let us move on to the meat of the discussion. In reality, I need not say anything more this first response to Jason (in its entirety):

Jason S. said:
—
I never said every mathematical object corresponds to some physical property of the universe. I said mathematical truths are about the formal properties of patterns in the universe.
—

I think it would help, Jason, if you paused for a second and asked yourself a simple question. Why? Why are there “formal properties of patterns in the universe”?

In other words, let’s play your game for a bit. Let’s say that there are these patterns. Why do the patterns exist as they do?

Note carefully the chain you have to build here. You are justifying logic by pointing to these patterns. Thus, you have patterns -> logic.

But why is it that these patterns behave “logically”? Is there a meta-pattern that keeps patterns in line? If not, why do they behave as they do? If so, is there a meta-meta-pattern? Etc.

Now you haven’t convinced me that you’re able to follow where arguments lead, so I’ll show why it’s important that you ponder this. At some point, everyone must stop. That is, it’s not “turtles all the way down” because at some point you have to escape the redux. (This is because logic itself does not allow for infinite redux, and logic cannot very well be substantiated by that which is its negation.)

At whatever point you stop your redux, you have to deal with the nature of reality at that point. So we can skip through all that and simply ask:

What must be fundamentally true in order for logic to be justified?

As Steve’s pointed out several times, you cannot have contingent logic that transcends that it is contingent upon. Thus, you cannot have logic that is contingent upon human minds before human minds existed.

You try to escape that by pointed to patterns of the universe, but does this mean that there is no logic before those patterns were formed (even if there was no mind to grasp the patterns)? If that is so, why did the patterns form in a way that would be grasped in the form of logic? Was it ad hoc, a mistake, a fluke? Or was there something more fundamental at work?

You can try to keep it surface level and pretend your materialism can account for all this, but at best all you can do with materialism is cut your own throat. At best, all you can say is, “The patterns are the way they are because they just happened to be the way they are.” In which case, there is no impulse or imperative to follow the logic derrived from those patterns, in which case it is no great loss to be irrational. Why would it be problematic to violate THOSE rules of logic? And if our arguments violate them, as you claim, so what? It’s not like they’re meaningful rules of logic.

If you don’t hold to objective logic, why do you care whether we are reasonable or rational people? It’s not like that’s a real standard or anything.

(For the record, I do hold to objective logic, which is why I do care that you’re being irrational in your argument. But this is an internal critique of your position.)

The reason I need not say anything more is that for all his blustering, Jason has left the above unchallenged.

But for more clarity, I also pointed out:

Jason S. said:
—
The patterns–the regularities within the universe–are as they are for whatever reasons. Yes, they just happened to be that way, for all I know. But that does not mean there is no impulse or imperative to use logic (the rules of inference), to use reason and evidence.

On the contrary, the fact that the universe exhibits regularities is exactly why we need to use logic, reason and evidence. If we abandoned all logic, we would abandon our ability to understand the world.
—

In other words, what you are saying is:

1) The universe just happened to be the way it is for no reason whatsoever.

2) That’s why we can understand the world.

Is anyone else puzzled by this?

You claim there are regularities in the universe. But absent something requiring them to be the way they are, you have no assurance they will continue to be the way they are now. For all the atheists talk about how if God can change reality on a whim, you’re left in the same boat. You don’t know why the universe behaves the way it does, yet you assert it will always continue to do so. And then you criticize theists as being naive and irrational. At best you’re a pot mocking a kettle. At worst, you’re flat out wrong.

And:

BTW,

Jason also needs to account for the fact that the human mind is very adept at finding patterns that aren’t actually there.

You know, like seeing faces in clouds, the Virgin Mary in wallpaper stains, and logic in atheistic worldviews.

In which case, you have pattern-recognition that leads to logic based on false patterns that do not actually exist in the universe.

And finally:

Jason said:
—
The point is, the universe does exhibit regularities, and this is why we are able to make accurate predictions and develop scientific theories.
—

No, the point is that the universe exhibits regularities FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. You’re on the horns of a dilemma. If the universe has a reason to behave the way it does, then that reason is the ultimate establishment of logic. But you cannot allow for anything more than the universe, so you have to assert that the universe just does this. Why? Because it does. That’s all you’ve got. The universe acts this way for no reason at all. It just does it.

And if something just happens with no reason whatsoever, then you’d have to be a complete idiot to trust in that to form your concepts of logic. The universe isn’t logical; it just happens to at this point behave in a way that approximates logic. But there’s no logical reason why it should continue to be that way, because it’s not that way due to a logical reason.

Jason has since moved away from the “patterns” to calling them “rules.” But my original argument still stands untouched. The reason I’m quoting the original response above is because I am going to reference it from now on to show that Jason has said much but gone nowhere.

Before we get there, some more groundwork must be done. When he switched to using “rules” instead of “patterns” as his basis, Jason used an analogy of a computer. I found this odd, given that Jason is a materialist, and a computer is most definitely designed (which would imply that his correlation to the rules governing the universe would mean he believes the universe is designed too). I pointed this out to Jason at the time too, and ended with:

BTW, you still need to account for why rules exist the way they do. Is there a reason they do? If so, then what is it? If not, then we’re left with an ad hoc rule once more.

As you can see, I’ve been consistent throughout here (note: I’m also focusing only on the portion that deals with how rules are established; you can read the original exchange for more background on the computer analogy if you wish). Jason responded with:

You say, “BTW, you still need to account for why rules exist the way they do. Is there a reason they do?”

Let’s look at this broadly, okay?

First of all, the only accounting for the rules of mathematics I’ve seen around here is, “God did it.”

That is not an accounting. It’s merely an assertion. It does not explain the rules, or how they came about, or anything at all.

If your position does not further our understanding of the nature and functionality of mathematics, then it is not an explanation.

So, “God did it” does not explain anything.

Now, you ask me to account for the rules of mathematics. What if I can’t? Does that mean God did it?

By what reason?

The way I see it is, mathematics is one kind of thing. It can involve different axioms, and so it is not limited to one set of rules. However, the rules we associate with mathematics are well-defined, based on what they are meant to accomplish.

Why are they defined as they are? Because of what they are meant to accomplish. The rules required by a system are dependent upon what that system needs to do.

For example, asking “why are the rules of arithmentic the way they are” is like asking, “why are the rules of tying our shoes the way they are?”

If you want to tie your shoes, you have to follow the rules defined by the task at hand–namely, loop one lace this way, another that way, and so on. If you want to do arithmetic, you have to follow the rules of arithmetic. It’s that simple.

I responded:

You said:
—
First of all, the only accounting for the rules of mathematics I’ve seen around here is, “God did it.”
—

That’s funny. I’ve not seen anyone say “God did it” until you just did.

Be that as it may, if Christians do fundamentally presuppose that “God did it” is actually true, what is your counter argument? Thus far, all you’ve said is that “patterns did it.”

I’ve asked twice now for your justification for them. You haven’t brought any forth.

You said:
—
That is not an accounting. It’s merely an assertion. It does not explain the rules, or how they came about, or anything at all.
—

Except for the fact that it does, everything else you say is right.

And for all your talk about looking at the issue “broadly” and all, you’re missing the important step.

Forget what the explanation for the rules are for a moment and focus on this instead: what is it that the rules themselves require in order for the rules to be real.

I maintain that God, as defined by the Christian theist, maintains all the attributes needed to sustain those rules. This is not merely an “assertion”; this is a requirement of those rules themselves. In other words, if we assume that your rules exist, then your rules themselves presuppose the existence of God (specifically, the God as defined by Christian theism).

These rules cannot exist unless there exists something with the proper attributes to create those rules. If the rules are to have any relevance at all, they have to be transcendent; which means that which produces the rules must be transcendent. If they are to have any meaning at all, they must be timeless and unchanging; they must be true for all times and in all possible realities; they must be universal. In short, they must be eternal, omnipresent, and immutable…all attributes of the Christian God, mind you. And that’s just for starts.

By the way, you also slip into ID again when you said:
—
Why are they defined as they are? Because of what they are meant to accomplish. The rules required by a system are dependent upon what that system needs to do.
—

Since you’re maintaining that these rules are the basis for such things as logic, and that these rules are actually in force in the universe we experience, you are actually stating that the universe as a whole is a system that has a specific GOAL that the universe is INTENDED to achieve.

Why don’t you just admit you’re a theist? Your argumentation gives you away already.

As you can see, my argument has been the same throughout. But I posted this for another reason. I am going to respond to Jason’s response to me by doing little more than quoting back to him exactly what I’ve already written. In other words, this will demonstrate that Jason has not been responding to my posts at all. I doubt he’s even been reading them (he skims them looking for sentences he can “latch on to” to steamroll, but that’s not reading).

Jason said:

Peter asks,

“what is it that the rules themselves require in order for the rules to be real?”

As I’ve argued, rules are functional properties of physical systems. So, for a rule to be real, it must functionally occur in a physical system.

However, I already pointed out:

These rules cannot exist unless there exists something with the proper attributes to create those rules.

He has not provided those attributes. Indeed, he yet again slips into teleological language (this time using the idea of “functionally” working rules; which requires a purpose and a goal).

More importantly, Jason said:

Peter syas, “I maintain that God, as defined by the Christian theist, maintains all the attributes needed to sustain those rules.”

What attributes would those be? And why should we believe that “God” (as defined by the Christian theist? what definition? which theist?) maintains those attributes?

Let’s play a quick game. Count the attributes I listed in the following paragraph (to make it easy, I’ll put them in bold):

These rules cannot exist unless there exists something with the proper attributes to create those rules. If the rules are to have any relevance at all, they have to be transcendent; which means that which produces the rules must be transcendent. If they are to have any meaning at all, they must be timeless and unchanging; they must be true for all times and in all possible realities; they must be universal. In short, they must be eternal, omnipresent, and immutable…all attributes of the Christian God, mind you. And that’s just for starts.

Note that I specifically listed these as “all attributes of the Christian God, mind you.” Jason has chosen to ignore that completely, as if it was never offered.

Is it a definition? What is a definition if not a list of attributes of a thing? You ask, “What is an apple?” I give you a list of attributes. Jason asks, “What definition [of God]?” and I’ve already provided a (partial) list of attributes.

Jason said:

I interpret this as follows: for a physical system to exhibit the functional characteristics we call a rule, that rule must be able to be implemented at any time and at any place in the universe, and that the rule must exist at every place and time in all possible universes. Is that right?

And, can you explain why that is the case for us?

In my original response, I already explained this:

You can try to keep it surface level and pretend your materialism can account for all this, but at best all you can do with materialism is cut your own throat. At best, all you can say is, “The patterns are the way they are because they just happened to be the way they are.” In which case, there is no impulse or imperative to follow the logic derrived from those patterns, in which case it is no great loss to be irrational. Why would it be problematic to violate THOSE rules of logic? And if our arguments violate them, as you claim, so what? It’s not like they’re meaningful rules of logic.

If you don’t hold to objective logic, why do you care whether we are reasonable or rational people? It’s not like that’s a real standard or anything.

And:

You claim there are regularities in the universe. But absent something requiring them to be the way they are, you have no assurance they will continue to be the way they are now. For all the atheists talk about how if God can change reality on a whim, you’re left in the same boat. You don’t know why the universe behaves the way it does, yet you assert it will always continue to do so. And then you criticize theists as being naive and irrational. At best you’re a pot mocking a kettle. At worst, you’re flat out wrong.

Jason said:

Peter says I am slipping ID into the discussion when I wrote, “Why are they defined as they are? Because of what they are meant to accomplish. The rules required by a system are dependent upon what that system needs to do.”

That’s silly. I did not say that the rules were defined by some supernatural creator. Rather, the rules are defined by systems capable of defining the rules. In our case, that means human beings, though other organisms are theoretically capable of defining the same rules.

In other words, as I originally stated:

As Steve’s pointed out several times, you cannot have contingent logic that transcends that it is contingent upon. Thus, you cannot have logic that is contingent upon human minds before human minds existed.

And:

You try to escape that by pointed to patterns of the universe, but does this mean that there is no logic before those patterns were formed (even if there was no mind to grasp the patterns)? If that is so, why did the patterns form in a way that would be grasped in the form of logic? Was it ad hoc, a mistake, a fluke? Or was there something more fundamental at work?

Clearly, Jason believes that logic is an ad hoc fluke created by human minds, in which case I yet again ask: “Why would it be problematic to violate THOSE rules of logic?” More importantly:

…[I]f something just happens with no reason whatsoever, then you’d have to be a complete idiot to trust in that to form your concepts of logic. The universe isn’t logical; it just happens to at this point behave in a way that approximates logic. But there’s no logical reason why it should continue to be that way, because it’s not that way due to a logical reason.

Jason wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants us to take his rules of logic seriously, but he cuts off all grounds for logic to be meaningful.

Jason also said:

Peter asks, “if Christians do fundamentally presuppose that ‘God did it’ is actually true, what is your counter argument?”

My counter argument is that the term “God” is not well-defined, and that the arguments in favor of “God did it” do not make sense, and do not further our understanding of life, the universe, or anything.

Which, aside from being absurd, falls prey to the fact that I DID define the term “God” with a partial list of attributes (already referenced above) and it DOES further our understanding of quite a lot.

Jason said:

Peter has asked me to justify the patterns that exist in nature. Why does anybody have to justify nature? Nature is what is. That’s life.

Which is exactly what I’ve maintained Jason’s position boils down to:

But you cannot allow for anything more than the universe, so you have to assert that the universe just does this. Why? Because it does. That’s all you’ve got. The universe acts this way for no reason at all. It just does it.

Now, as I said, Jason is free to comment to this post as long as he does not do more than two (2) comments in a row. What he also needs to do is actually provide a justification for why anyone should care about his rules of logic, since they are based on ad hoc random patterns and/or rules of the universe. Furthermore, he must establish why we should care about his rules of logic given that they are just formed by human minds which A) we know err often and B) are capable of seeing patterns that do not exist (e.g. faces in clouds).

As it is, so far all we’ve seen is that Jason knows how to avoid the thrust of an argument by pretending it never happened.

Since we just got through an election and most are still somewhat in a political mindset, I’ve wanted to write a little something clarifying just what the Conservative position is. Of course, immediately we have to acknowledge that there are many different people with many different political philosophies who all try to take the mantle of “Conservative” upon themselves. That is because, as polls during the latest election bear out, “Conservativism” is a “winning” label whereas “Liberalism” is a “losing” label. Indeed, more people claimed to be Conservative than claimed to be Republican in this election; however, far more people claimed to be Democrat than claimed to be Liberal. In other words, in terms of self-identification, Conservative and Democrat are both viewed favorably but Republican and Liberal are both viewed unfavorably.

While anyone can claim to be anything they want to be, I am not interested in those who claim to be something just because it is a winning label. So this post will examine the foundation of Conservative thought. It should be noted that it is certainly possible for someone to inconsistently hold to the major tenets of Conservative philosophy without agreeing to the foundational presuppositions that support it (e.g. many Libertarians on fiscal issues).

What is that foundation then? At first glance, we might be tempted to say it is human rights. That is, Conservativism is born out of a desire to be consistent with our Founding Father’s concepts of the rights of man. Why do Conservatives believe that lower taxes are better? It is not a pragmatic reason, such as how beneficial it is to our economy—even though it is indeed true that lower taxes are beneficial to the economy! It is because Conservatives believe that all human beings have the right to their own property. What I own is fully under my control to do with as I see fit, and no one—no government, no other individual—has the right to force me to do something with my property that I do not wish to do.

Furthermore, we can look at the Second Amendment. Why is it that Conservatives argue that the right to bear arms is something that cannot be taken away by the government? It is not simply because that’s what the Constitution says (although that is indeed what the Constitution says). It is because we have the right to life and liberty, and that means we have the right to protect our life and liberty.

But human rights need to be justified too. We cannot simply assert that they exist; we must argue for why they exist. And that means that, at its root, Conservativism is based not in human rights but upon theistic principals. And lest someone quibble, this is the actual reason given by the Fathers themselves. Before the Constitution was formed, the Colonists had to provide justification for why they threw off the yolk of England. If their rebellion was illegitimate, their Constitution was illegitimate too. That’s why they took such care to write the Declaration of Independence, to provide their reasoned argument as to why they were justified in breaking from England. The Declaration begins:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

The Declaration begins, in other words, by asserting that there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that entitle us to certain rights. Without Natural Law given by Nature’s God, there are no rights. And what are those rights?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principals and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So we see that our rights come, not from the whim of any man, but because we are endowed with them by our Creator. Furthermore, we see that Government is established “to secure these rights.” That is its primary purpose.

It should be noted that thus far we are not concerning ourselves with what aspect of theism fits. After all, while most of the Founding Fathers were Christians and the culture was definitely shaped by Christianity, there were also many Fathers who were only deists, and there were even some atheists who signed on. It is beyond the scope of this post for me to go into the reasons why Christianity provides the strongest rationale for these rights in comparison to other religions. Instead, I will focus briefly on why atheism cannot give us these same human rights.

If we take away rights endowed by our Creator, how do we establish those rights as actual rights? We cannot do so in any manner that escapes arbitrary decrees. For example, it might be argued that our intellect is what gives us those rights; that because man is the rational animal, he has human rights. But if we say that, then those who are more intelligent must have more human rights than those who are less intelligent. If the foundation of our rights is based on intellect, then this is inescapable: the geniuses have more rights than the imbeciles.

Yet we instinctively know that it is not the case that smarter people have more rights. We know that intellect is not a philosophically meaningful distinction when determining rights. We cannot keep someone enslaved, away from education, and claim that we have not violated his rights because we are smarter than he is.

If we instead argue that just as the Fathers said that Government derives its power “from the consent of the governed” our rights come from the consent of humanity as a whole then we still have not escaped the problem. After all, not all humans give the same consent. To cite the overly-used, yet crystal clear analogy: Nazis did not consider Jews to have human rights. We did not consider the Nazis to have the right to act consistently with those principals. Which view is right?

Under the position that the consent of the people determines human rights, neither position is right or wrong. We have two groups of people who disagree; there is no consent as to whether Jews have rights. Therefore, what prevails is nothing but might makes right. Nazis were wrong not because they were philosophically wrong but only because they lost World War II. If the Allies had been weaker, the consent of the world would have been that Jews are not human.

Once again, that concept is alien to us. Philosophically, our rights do not change simply because the whims of a group of individuals have changed. This is not a meaningful reason for our rights to change. Or rather, if it is a meaningful reason then our rights are worthless.

Human rights require a transcendent truth. They require objective truth that all men are, as part of their very being, deserving of specific rights. These rights cannot arise from nature alone. Evolution cannot explain how these rights got there, for man is but one evolutionary branch of billions. There is nothing that distinguishes man amongst the animals other than intellect, and as we’ve seen that would result in the smarter people having more human rights than the unintelligent. The only possible way we can have unalienable rights is if something higher than ourselves has given them to us.

Human rights come about because of the ontology of the human. We recognize them because of our being, not because of anything granted by any government or any group of people. It is precisely because these things do not depend on our size, location, level of development, sex, race, or beliefs that “all men are created equal” is true. That equality is found in our human ontology, and that comes about because man is created in the image of God.

With this in mind, we can sum up the basic Conservative ideology. Man has been endowed with the rights of Life, Liberty, and property (understood as the pursuit of happiness). These rights are God-given rights, not Government-granted rights. As such, any Government that would deprive anyone of those rights without proper justification is an unjust Government. The role of Government is to secure those rights for those who are governed. This means that the Government does have the right to tax its citizens consistent with securing those rights; but any taxes that are not consistent with securing those rights are unjustly depriving citizens of property. This means that Government has the right to defend our country from enemies, both domestic and foreign, by creating a police force and army; but it also means that Government cannot interfere with our own actions to secure our freedoms too (such as our right to bear arms).

Unfortunately, life is never as cut and dried as bare-bones philosophy will make it. To use an easy example, was the War in Iraq based on Conservative principals? It depends to a large extent on whether you believe the War is an attempt to secure our right to Life that terrorists seek to deprive of us. Insofar as we have not had another terrorist attack on America since 9/11, it is quite possibly due to the fact that we are engaging the enemy overseas. This would be consistent with the Government defending us from attack. On the other hand, it is also possible that the terrorists would not have been capable of another attack even had we left Iraq alone. That would make the War in Iraq unnecessary to secure out freedoms in America.

The net result is that it is quite possible for Conservatives to support or not support the War in Iraq and still remain Conservative.

On the other hand, consider abortion on demand (as opposed to abortion to save the life of the mother). Since human rights are based on our humanity, not any concept of “personhood” or the location of the human being or the developmental status, then the Conservative position must always be against abortion on demand. The unborn is a human being; that is the only thing that human beings can create via reproduction. The unborn therefore has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

On the other hand, abortion to save the life of the mother is not against Conservative principals because in that case the objective is not to deprive the life of the unborn, but to save the life of the mother. The unintended consequence is the unborn child also dies. We ought to do whatever we can to minimize the possibility of the death of the unborn, but when it is inevitable it is not against Conservative ideals to support abortion in those cases.

One final word should be noted. It is certainly possible for someone to be Conservative on some issues and not on others. People are, by and large, inconsistent. They tend to have a hodge-podge of beliefs, many of them contradictory, that they subscribe to. So it is possible that someone can be a fiscal Conservative while not being a social Conservative. But the logic of Conservative thought does boil down to our God-given rights, and therefore one is justified in weighing whether any particular issue coheres to those presuppositions. Since people can be (and often are) inconsistent, it should be no surprise at all that there is a wide range of belief amongst those who would call themselves Conservative; but that is no grounds to say that we should accept all those positions as being equally Conservative. Nor is the existence of those contradictory people evidence that Conservativism itself is incoherent or lacks a real presupposition.

Zilch recently attempted to link the atheistic subjectivity of the concept of meaning to the proposed subjectivity of perception by stating (emphasis his):

I think you would agree that perception is “subjective” by your definition: my seeing a red hat, for instance, does not mean that you see a red hat: it is solely my perception. Of course, given the same or similar conditions, we might have similar perceptions, just as we might assign similar meanings to, say, the sight of a car veering off toward a group of deaf students. But my perception is in my mind, and does not affect your perception in your mind, unless I communicate it to you in some way.

The problem with that is perception is not solely in your mind at all (unless you do believe in the brain-in-a-vat theory). Indeed, if you perceived something that was only in your mind, that would be the definition of a delusion, wouldn’t it?

The only way you can link perception and meaning is if you agree that objects have something that makes them meaningful in and of themselves. That is, meaning has to be objective in some way.

Consider it. We see a red hat. Even if the concept of “redness” is different for you than for me (that is, suppose that you see as the color “red” as what I see as the color “green”) the fact remains that the object that we see exists and it exists in such a way that it absorbs all light except for that which we both perceive. That our perceptions are different is irrelevant here. After all, the object emits color X. The fact that your “red” is different from my “red” is irrelevant, because X itself is always labeled “red.” The objective nature of X remains the same regardless of what we perceive.

But your idea of “meaning” is in no way similar at all. In atheism, objects do not exist with “meaning” attached to them in any way. There is no property “X” that conforms to “meaning” which we both perceive. Meaning is completely manufactured by you, and by you alone. Meaning totally exists within your subjective sphere and never shall depart it.

So your illustration is disanalogous.

I also find it interesting that you add: “unless I communicate it to you in some way.” How can you communicate something that is completely subjective? Communication can only occur if you have ideas that transcend individuals, but that requires an objective sense for them. In the color example, the fact that X is objective allows us to communicate X to one another. We give X a specific label: “red.” It doesn’t matter how we perceive that, each of us labels our perception of X as “red” and therefore communication results.

In order to talk about meaning, you have to have an objective concept of meaning in place; but in your atheism, you’ve already said that meaning is itself completely subjective. It doesn’t exist in the object, but in the “meaner.” It is therefore impossible to communicate it.

Consider this: we can communicate colors because we link them to an objective fact. But suppose again that what I see as “red” you see as “green.” This is a literal fact for the purposes of argument. But how do we communicate this to one another?

We cannot. I don’t have access to your perception, so I can never compare it to what I perceive. All I have access to is what the object emits, and we both conventionally use the same label for that. So if our perceptions are different here, it is impossible for us to say they are different. I can never know that when you see color X that is labeled “red” you actually see what I call “green”, because I don’t have your perception.

In fact, the only way to determine that another’s perceptions are actually different from ours is if they are unable to distinguish between the objective qualities of the object. For instance, my father is color-blind. He cannot see the color red at all. The problem for him arises not in the perceptual area, but instead in the objective area. That is, one object emits a color B and we call it “blue” and another emits the color P and we call it “purple.” My father, who does not see the red in purple, says that B = P because to him both are “blue.” We can tell this is wrong because we can see that B is NOT the same as P; there is a difference that he cannot see.

We know the problem not because we have access to his perceptions, but because we have access to the objects themselves. Thus, perception has an objective quality to it.

Meaning, however (according to your own stated views) does not have this objective quality at all. It is therefore impossible for atheists to talk about meaning at all, because meaning can never escape the subjective in atheism.