Coming from a man who when confronted with rational reality tries to dismiss it as irrelevant; and against University Education as politically inconvenient to him, I can only see this turning into a No True Scotsman argument oh so quickly.
In fact, he starts off with a logical fallacy:
I began to establish the grounds that proved God’s very real presence in our lives. I’m going to make a judgment call here and state that no challenger to this premise offered a sufficient explanation for how God could not exist today in a universe as complex or real as ours is
While one can validly assert that God is real, even a pidgin knowledge of philosophy will remind us that there's quite a difference between asserting something is true versus having anything resembling proof. (and no, the existence of complexity in our world is not by any means "proof" of anything - it is an observation not an explanation - Michael Behe tried to make that stand defending "Intelligent Design" at the Dover trial).
Besides, I can only imagine just what kind of amazing gyrations Matthew is going to have to go through to justify the insane rantings of Fred Phelps, Peter LaBarbera or Canada's own Charles McVety - all of whom claim to be "Christian", just as Matthew does. Or perhaps he'd like to tackle some of the history of the R/C Church during the Middle Ages?
But then, when you are arguing about whose imaginary friend is better, do facts really matter?
H/T: Canadian Cynic
14 comments:
......Over heard on a playground many years ago......
1st Kid: Oh Yeah? Well my Dad's bigger than your Dad!
2nd Kid: Well my Dad can take on your Dad any day....
(apparently Matthew hasn't grown out of that stage)
SB
Besides, I can only imagine just what kind of amazing gyrations Matthew is going to have to go through to justify the insane rantings of Fred Phelps, Peter LaBarbera or Canada's own Charles McVety - all of whom claim to be "Christian", just as Matthew does. Or perhaps he'd like to tackle some of the history of the R/C Church during the Middle Ages?
If you actually took your practical and/or philisophical atheism seriously, what could you possibly have against Fred Phelps, Peter LaBarbera or Charles McVety, or for that matter the moral and ethical conduct of the RC Church in the Middle Ages?
Your allegations of moral and mental defect, whether implied or directly stated, presuppose some sort of fixed criterion for what constitutes proper noetic and moral functioning of human beings. For example, the notion of "insanity" assumes an established benchmark for mental health by which to assess it.
In the same way, complaints about the RC Church in the Middle Ages do not make any sense unless it is objectively wrong to define morality to be the will of the most powerful.
If you were speaking in terms of the Christian worldview, your attempt to assess moral wisdom and noetic dysfunction -- as well as to adversely judge shortcomings in these matters, would be understand and expected because in the Christian worldview there is a universal, objective and absolute standard of morality in the revealed word of God. From the Christian perspective it is also at least internally coherent to speak of things not functioning as they ought to function because they were designed for a purpose. But obviously you do not mean to be speaking as though you adopt Christian premises. On your presuppositions, though, this is a universe of chance/necessity that shows no evidence of design, where "laws" are nothing more than statistical averages describing what has happened, and that the human animal (which would include Fred Phelps, Peter LaBarbera, Charles McVety, and the RC chuch in the Middle Ages) is the result of an impersonal, blind physical process of evolutionary natural selection. So what sense does it make for you to imply that non-teleological, brute physical forces are not functioning as they ought to function? On what basis do you issue your moral evaluations and judgments of mental and intellectual health? In terms of what view of reality and knowledge do you assume that there is anything like an objective criterion of morality and proper noetic functioning by which to find them lacking?
You just take it for granted as an unargued philosophical bias that there is a moral and noetic standard to apply, and that you can presume to be the spokesman and judge who applies it. Your assertions can easily be countered, though, on your own presuppositions, by simply saying that you have arbitrarily chosen the "wrong" standards of morality and "proper" mental function. Fair is fair. If everyone must be granted just as much arbitrariness in presuming to be the spokesman and judge in choosing and applying moral and noetic standards then they can select ones different from yours.
Your moral judgments and mental health evaluations do not cohere with your presuppositions and are self-defeating.
Cordially,
Dear Anonymous@7:15:
You presuppose a few things about my thinking, and miss on the way past.
Your assertions can easily be countered, though, on your own presuppositions, by simply saying that you have arbitrarily chosen the "wrong" standards of morality and "proper" mental function.
Ummm...that's actually my point - the people I cite as being exceptionally vile excuses for "christian" are being arbitrary and selective in their judgments of others - worse, they outright choose to ignore data which speaks contrary to their assertions.
I'm not accusing Phelps, LaBarbera or others of "improper mental function", rather I accuse them of grossly abusing the concept of religious faith in order to justify their positions which are seldom much different than that of the schoolyard thug.
Further, they stand as walking, talking examples of just how far awry any faith taken to extremes can go.
In terms of what view of reality and knowledge do you assume that there is anything like an objective criterion of morality and proper noetic functioning by which to find them lacking?
Ah yes, the "you are an atheist, therefore you have no moral framework" argument. Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. The fact that I don't derive my morality from scripture doesn't mean that I have no moral framework. Nor do I feel it necessary to justify or explain that framework to you.
Sadly, you seem to have utterly missed my point overall though - Namely that even with the relatively finite domain of "christian" worldview, there are enough logical and semantic inconsistencies that someone standing up and claim that there is "one true set of rules" is treading upon unstable ground indeed.
As for my assessment of Phelps and LaBarbera being insane - it's hard to characterize them as anything but. Neither of those characters is exactly rational about things.
Of course you are under no obligation to explain your moral framework or what its foundation is to me. I didn't expect that you would. It's unclear how it is even possible to provide an account of proper noetic or moral functioning from a materialist starting point.
the people I cite as being exceptionally vile excuses for "christian" are being arbitrary and selective in their judgments of others - worse, they outright choose to ignore data which speaks contrary to their assertions.
From the atheist perspective what's wrong with being arbitrary and selective in judgment of others? Of course you have a moral framework of your own, but they are just as much the result of the impersonal, blind, physical process of evolutionary natural selection as you are. What could possibly be wrong with what natural selection has produced? What's "wrong" with them assuming just as much arbitrariness in presuming to be the spokesman and judge in choosing and applying moral and noetic standards as you, and selecting ones different from yours? Theirs might be distasteful to you, but so what? They like vanilla, you like chocolate. What's there to complain about?
Why should you have any expectation of something different with regard to the effect of natural selection on molecular regulators and sensors and effectors and modulators in a couple of pounds of meat that generate highly organized chemistry and patterned impulses in pathways throughout the meat that yield subjective states of arousal in Fred Phelps? You might as well complain about the orbit of the moon around the earth. As Richard Dawkins put it:
"...During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
I'm not accusing Phelps, LaBarbera or others of "improper mental function", rather I accuse them of grossly abusing the concept of religious faith in order to justify their positions which are seldom much different than that of the schoolyard thug.
Again, there is nothing "wrong" with the schoolyard thug unless it is objectively wrong to define morality to be the will of the most powerful.
Cordially,
First of all, you err in assuming that I am so easily categorized as a label like "atheist" would suggest. Such a characterization is flawed, for unlike professed atheists like Dawkins, I do not claim an absolute disbelief in the supernatural - instead I claim it is objectively unknowable, and therefore any claim of "absolute truth" based on that unknowable is highly suspect.
Second, your analysis conveniently ignores the rational and objective fact that Phelps, LaBarbera and crowd are highly selective in their interpretation of the scripture that they claim to hold as "truth". Fundamentally, I accuse them of being "christians of convenience" that ignore significant and important aspects of scripture.
Third, if, as Matthew is suggesting in his various postings on the subject, one takes an absolutely literal stance on the interpretation of scripture, then there is little doubt that one can square much of modern reality with the world described in scripture. I hold up the likes of Phelps, LaBarbera and McVety as classic examples of those whose actions are unquestionably at odds with even a literal interpretation of scripture - unless one conveniently makes the leap of ignoring the very scripture that one claims to hold as absolute truth.
As for who gets to define "morality", in a society that reflects many different religious traditions, I am reluctant indeed to grant any one faith a lock on "correct morality". Faith in such a society as ours becomes a deeply personal matter, and we are obliged to carefully weigh the trade-offs in any matter - likely leading us towards a series of relatively "middling" kinds of results - the sort that tend to really annoy absolutists.
My final point is related to the literalist interpretation of scripture. In purely objective terms, scripture is a series of historical documents that have their origins in sources that range between 2,000 and 4,000 odd years in age. It reflects the society of a particular region at that particular time. Attempting to apply the norms of that society to the modern era is fraught with difficulties that have not been accounted for, and any absolute, literalist approach places itself in double jeopardy, as our ability to correctly interpret and translate some of the source languages involved is extremely limited.
Matthew has repeatedly claimed that he believes in an absolute scripture. As such, I look forward to his attempts to reconcile not just the logical disjoins that such an approach will bring, but also to seeing how he reconciles the acts of others who claim similarly.
(Oh yes, and morally speaking, using "scripture" as a club with which to bully people into some kind of moral submission is, in my view, morally wrong - because it is bullying)
First of all, you err in assuming that I am so easily categorized as a label like "atheist" would suggest. Such a characterization is flawed, for unlike professed atheists like Dawkins, I do not claim an absolute disbelief in the supernatural - instead I claim it is objectively unknowable, and therefore any claim of "absolute truth" based on that unknowable is highly suspect.
That's a fair enough criticism, although in my defense I can say that I did mention practical atheism in contradistinction to philosophical atheism because I did not know whether you held to a position of agnosticism or not.
I would respectfully point out that a claim that the supernatural is objectively unknowable, and therefore any claim of "absolute truth" based on that unknowable is highly suspect appears to be self-refuting because the claim itself that the supernatural is objectively unknowable is a claim of absolute truth.
If the claim is not self-refuting, the question still remains of how one could possibly know enough to know with certainty that something is unknowable? How could a finite being possibly be in a position to have searched everywhere to come to such a conclusion? In other words, the agnostic can be seen as making just as much a positive claim of knowledge as the atheist, just in an inverse sort of form.
Hermeneutical principles of interpretation of Scripture to others is a very interesting subject but I have to content myself to leave that discussion to others more competent than
I.
Cordially,
I would respectfully point out that a claim that the supernatural is objectively unknowable, and therefore any claim of "absolute truth" based on that unknowable is highly suspect appears to be self-refuting because the claim itself that the supernatural is objectively unknowable is a claim of absolute truth.
It is not "self refuting" at all. In fact it invites refutation - but it places a highly rationalist standard of refutation forth. In short, you must be able to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural without relying upon the blanket assertion of its existence.
To date, I have never seen any argument that claims to "prove" the supernatural without starting from the assumption that the supernatural is real.
In some respects, this is a matter of metaphysics which bears close analogues to the mathematical notion of completeness. (For example, Calculus can be used to describe Linear Algebra in its entirety, but Calculus cannot be used to describe Calculus in any formal sense)
I doubt very much that there is a logic which would permit the description of the supernatural in terms of the natural that we experience every day. Hence my claim that the supernatural is unknowable.
The derivation from that is pretty basic - any claim which relies upon the supernatural is founded upon the unknowable, and therefore is itself rationally weakened. (If you will, it is likely to fail the test of Occam's Razor)
It is not "self refuting" at all. In fact it invites refutation - but it places a highly rationalist standard of refutation forth. In short, you must be able to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural without relying upon the blanket assertion of its existence.
...
In some respects, this is a matter of metaphysics which bears close analogues to the mathematical notion of completeness. (For example, Calculus can be used to describe Linear Algebra in its entirety, but Calculus cannot be used to describe Calculus in any formal sense)
Yes indeed, and by the very same token, a "highly rationalist standard" itself cannot be justified or accounted for by rationalist standards either. You cannot account for rationality and the laws of logic a priori - apart from experience, or a posteria - from experience, because as Hume pointed out, you have have no rational basis for expecting the uniformity of nature, or the future to be like the past. In a purely material, contingent universe, there is no basis for the necessity, universality, and invariance of the laws of logic, and thus no rational basis for your "highly rationalist standard".
How do you know that laws of logic are not merely conventional or sociological, like the rules of grammar, or like your description of "society says" morality? If on the other hand you think the laws of logic are universal, invariant and not material in nature, how it is possible to have such laws of logic in the first place in a purely materialistic universe, and how it is possible to justify those laws in such a universe?
There still remains also the epistemological problem with your claim that "the supernatural is objectively unknowable, and that therefore any claim of 'absolute truth' based on that unknowable is highly suspect", simply because you are not in a position to have searched the entire universe simultaneously. It is therefore impossible for you to have the exhaustive knowledge necessary to claim with any certainty that something is objectively unknowable.
Cordially,
You cannot account for rationality and the laws of logic a priori - apart from experience, or a posteria - from experience, because as Hume pointed out, you have have no rational basis for expecting the uniformity of nature, or the future to be like the past.
Look, I don't want to go into a great lengthy discussion of the history of human thought. I've studied enough of it to be fairly comfortable that in fact modern day formal logics are well founded in the repeatable.
My point in speaking about "rationalism" was that I have never seen an argument that claims to "prove" the existence of the supernatural without arbitrarily invoking the supernatural as part of the argument.
Until someone presents an argument that explains the supernatural without invoking its existence as a primary assumption in the argument itself, then I am not terribly willing to accept that argument as having any significant truth value outside of those who happen to share the specific assumptions being claimed.
At most the arguments put forth to date that claim to prove the supernatural put forth the logical possibility of the supernatural - which is miles from a proof.
My claim that the supernatural is objectively unknowable remains firmly rooted in the fundamental fact that there is no presently known way for us to knowingly experience and inspect the supernatural. (Not surprising, given that such would require us to become capable of some kind of "meta existence" outside of our normal sensory universe.) When, and if, someone should put forth a reasonably testable, repeatable means to do so, then I will reconsider my position.
Until someone presents an argument that explains the supernatural without invoking its existence as a primary assumption in the argument itself, then I am not terribly willing to accept that argument as having any significant truth value outside of those who happen to share the specific assumptions being claimed.
Can you account for rationality and the laws of logic without invoking them as a primary assumption in the argument itself? You cannot. It is impossible. Why do you invoke a standard that you do not apply to yourself? You can assert that in fact modern day formal logics are well founded in the repeatable, but with Hume I say, "If you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning I desire you to produce that reasoning." If you or modern logicians have refuted Hume and others like Bertrand Russell on this point, I would like to see it.
Your logical standards of proof and truth are themselves unfounded and without a rational basis in a non-theistic universe. You simply assume the uniformity of nature as an unargued philosophical bias, but it is a bias that does not comport with the materialist view of a contingent universe of chance/necessity that you espouse.
Nevertheless, you say you want to see an argument presented that explains the supernatural without invoking its existence as a primary assumption in the argument. My answer is simply that the proof permeates your posts. Without presupposing the supernatural it is impossible to account for proof itself, as you have so far amply demonstrated. Having noted that your universal prescription of a standard of proof is unfounded on your own materialist world view, my argument is that without assuming God in the first place you cannot make sense out of your experience, your rationality and your truth claims. God is the necessary precondition of any of your intelligible experience, including your logic, your rationality, your science and your morality. Since your atheist world view provides no foundation for the uniformity of nature and the necessity, universality, and invariance of the laws of logic, every time you appeal to logic, to rationality, to morality in your posts as if they constitute some sort of universal, uniform prescriptions you are implicitly relying on the very transcendent reality that you expressly deny. Therein lies the proof that you do not seek.
Either the laws of logic are necessary, universal, and invariant, or they are not. If they are not then they are merely conventional or stipulated, like the rules of grammar. In that case we're both right, and our discussion is unintelligible and meaningless, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you think they are necessary, universal, and invariant then you need to account for and justify how it is possible to have such laws of logic in the first place in a purely atheistic, materialistic, ever changing, contingent universe. You need to justify and account for your own standard of proof.
Cordially,
You can assert that in fact modern day formal logics are well founded in the repeatable, but with Hume I say, "If you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning I desire you to produce that reasoning."
First off, the existence of reasoning and rationality is observable. Short of 'brain in the bucket' arguments, there is little to suggest that human beings are not capable of independent, rational thought.
There is no need, in my view, to attempt to explain this by means of any supernatural explanation. It is perfectly conceivable in my view that such capabilities came about as a result of natural processes.
In short, I am arguing not about the origins of thought. While in depth discussions of Hume's view of things might be interesting, it is irrelevant to my point.
Having noted that your universal prescription of a standard of proof is unfounded on your own materialist world view, my argument is that without assuming God in the first place you cannot make sense out of your experience, your rationality and your truth claims.
Speaking of circularity. You've just made my point for me.
I do not require the invocation of "God" to make sense of my experiences. Sorry, but that is an emotional argument, not one that can be rooted in the rational.
Further, I am not arguing that there is a need to explain or anchor human rational thought in the metaphysical.
The topic of "knowledge" is an interesting discussion in its own right.
Allow me to draw the discussion away from Hume somewhat and into the realm of hard science for a moment. In the fields known collectively as "science", there is a requirement for proofs to be rigorous, and to not invoke the "and a miracle occurs" step somewhere in the progress.
That is what I am asking someone to produce. An argument that is logical, self-consistent and does not rely upon pure assertion in order to validate itself.
You can argue until you are blue in the face about the problem of "how do we know we are rational?" and other problems that people like Hume attempt to address. That is not what I'm talking about at all.
First off, the existence of reasoning and rationality is observable. Short of 'brain in the bucket' arguments, there is little to suggest that human beings are not capable of independent, rational thought.
There is no question that in practice human beings are capable of rational thought, but that is to miss the point. The question is, as Hume pointed out, what is the rational foundation for the inference of universal regularity, which itself is the precondition of all rational thought?
I do not require the invocation of "God" to make sense of my experiences. Sorry, but that is an emotional argument, not one that can be rooted in the rational.
It is not an emotional argument; it is a philosophical argument; namely, that atheism's view of reality cannot provide a cogent reason for what all of our reasoning takes for granted. Further, because atheism has no rational foundation for reason, science, or morality, to require of others what you yourself cannot produce; an argument "that can be rooted in the rational", is philosophically arbitrary.
Further, I am not arguing that there is a need to explain or anchor human rational thought in the metaphysical
I know you are not arguing that. I am. I am not asking "how do we know we are rational?" I am saying, assuming that the walls of the temple of reason and morality are straight, that there must be a foundation under them, a precondition for straight walls. You say the temple has no foundation at all and doesn't need one, the walls are straight without a foundation. And I keep asking, how? How does an atheist view of reality as matter in motion account for or justify laws of logic that are necessary, universal, and invariant? Now, of course, if you don't like tough philosophical questions that are asked you about the nature of laws of logic, how they are justified, and so on and just dismiss them as absurd or irrelevant questions that no one understands and have no meaning, then there's not very much more I can say to you, except that if everyone is granted the same philosophical arbitrariness then you have no ground from which to demand a coherent account or consistent argument from any other philosophy.
You are in effect saying, "there's no need to reason about the preconditions of rationality itself and human experience because I don't have an answer to it, and it's just uncomfortable"
I am not just pulling these issues out of my emotional rabbit hat. These are philosophical questions about the preconditions of human experience that philosophers from Aristotle and Kant to the present have had to ask and wrestle with for millenia.
I must content myself to leave you to your musings. I thank you sincerely for a pleasant discussion, for your courtesy, and I return now to the cyberspace from whence I came.
Cordially,
First off, I did not set out to provide "proof" of the basis of rational thought. The philosophical problems that presents are largely unsolvable without making claims that are pure assertion.
That might be very interesting in another context, but I am not attempting to "prove" (or disprove) the existence of the supernatural - I claim that it is fundamentally unknowable within the confines of human experience and "knowability".
Any supposed proof of the supernatural tends to rely upon the assertion of the supernatural as part of the argument - and that is my fundamental criticism of the claim that there is a "proof" of the "reality of the supernatural".
With all due respect, I'm not particularly interested in the "metaphysics" behind why humanity is capable of rational thought and reason - at least, not in the context of this post.
(yes, I've studied Hume and plenty of other philosophers - while I find some of their musings intriguing, I suspect strongly that their efforts in evaluating the metaphysics of thought are doomed to the same fundamental problem a proof of the supernatural is.
At some point, we must simply accept that there are some things which are unprovable without the injection of significant new information. We cannot, in my view, get very far with assertion or credulity based reasoning.
BTW - one additional point:
If you step back from things a bit, you will realize that I am arguing from the supposition of rational thought. I am not attempting to prove rational thought's existence by asserting its existence.
I have much less trouble with someone who builds their argument using the foundational claim of God's existence and deriving some conclusion from within that framework.
However, claiming to prove God's reality by asserting it as a supposition is circular logic.
Post a Comment