Whoever Wants To Discuss Creationism, Let’s Get Down
September 4, 2010
No post here, this is an open thread for whoever wants to discuss creationism.
September 4, 2010
No post here, this is an open thread for whoever wants to discuss creationism.
September 3, 2010
Just yesterday I told somebody I was burnt out on blogging. Then, of course, I woke up with an inspiration. Nothing full-fledged, but more like a little mini-inspiration.
Yesterday, we traded banter over what it means to say that a moral theory is prescriptive. This got me to thinking about other instances where people use that word, for example, the doctor. When a doctor prescribes some treatment for a patient, it is an admonition declaring what the patient should or ought to do. Of course, that the patient has a desire to increase their own well-being is implicit in the scenario. So, according to that which the patient values [an increase of well-being], the doctor is justified in prescribing a treatment. If somebody wanted to be pesky and demand that the doctor justify the prescription, the doctor could reply something like, “Patient X seeks alleviation from condition Y, and there is general consensus that treatment Z is the safest and most effective means of remedy.” That would constitute a reason for the doctor’s prescription, and that reason would amount to something more than intuition or bias. I think the salient point here is that something like a social contract exists; an implicit agreement between doctor and patient that “increasing well-being” is at or near the top of the value hierarchy.
August 5, 2010
According to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic moral value. Rather, moral values of good, bad and permissible are determined by a desire’s relation to other desires [which I find odd in itself, as desires don’t affect people unless acted upon, but let’s leave that aside for the moment]. If this is the case, then isn’t it possible to have a state of affairs where racist and sexist desires are morally good? [cf. Cartesian’s Nazi example] On the other hand, if under all circumstances we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racist and sexist desires can be morally good, isn’t the only valid conclusion that racist and sexist desires are examples of intrinsic moral wrongs? When are racism and sexism morally good? According to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic wrong. Rather, moral wrongness is determined by one desire’s relation to other desires. If this is the case, then there must be a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good. If we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good, then we seemingly accept the notion of intrinsic right / wrong.
Months back on CommonSenseAtheism.com, commenter Cartesian offered the following argument against desirism, and I felt it was appropriate to repost here on the promise that I find the original link. Though I assure you I copied it verbatim, I agree that it’s professional to use first-order sources wherever possible, and promise to find the link. There’s also a technical reason I want to post it here instead of CSA. I’ve noticed that links to individual comments don’t work. That is, even when I used the direct URL for a particular comment, the post still loads with the page at the top, which forces the user to search for the quote his or her self. For this reason, it’s good to quote sources numerically at CSA, i.e. “So-and-so’s fifteenth on post X…”
At any rate, here’s Cartesian’s Nazi example:
Suppose the Nazis had killed or brainwashed anyone who disagreed with them, and succeeded in conquering the world. They keep a handful of Jewish people around in zoos, just to torture. Suppose the most popular television show in Naziland features ordinary Nazis — selected by lottery from among the Nazi population — torturing these Jewish people just for fun. The billions of Nazis in the television audience absolutely LOVE it. It’s like American Idol to them. They look forward to it all week. It’s what they want most in life: to see those Jewish people tortured. These Jewish people are kept in a pretty sorry mental state (due to nearly constant torture, and perhaps even some drugs), so that each of their desires not to be tortured is weaker than each of the Nazis desires to torture them.
You and your friend Jerk live in Naziland. Jerk is a typical Nazi: he really badly wants to win the lottery so he can appear on this television show and torture some Jewish people. You, on the other hand, don’t. You’ve done some thinking lately, and you’ve concluded that torturing people just for fun is awful, and you want no part of it. (Naturally, you keep these opinions to yourself, for fear of being taken in for “re-education.”)
Clearly, in this situation, your desire is good and Jerk’s desire is bad. But, in this situation, only Jerk’s desire tends to fulfill more and stronger desires than it thwarts. (His desire, if satisfied, would fulfill the very strong desires of billions of blood-thirsty Nazis, while thwarting the weaker desires of only a few Jewish people.) Your desire, however, actually tends to thwart more and stronger desires than it fulfills. So, according to desirism, *your* desire is bad and *Jerk’s* desire is good.
But that gets things exactly backwards. So desirism is false.
I agree wholeheartedly, and submit that’s an apt explanation of why good must mean something more than, “tends to fulfill the desires in question” or “tends to fulfill more than thwart other desires” or however else one wants to phrase it.
July 5, 2010
I recently discovered a blog called Unequally Yoked, maintained by Leah, a Yale student. In her post Your Faith Is Vain; Ye Are Yet In Your Sins, Leah invites believers to answer a few questions regarding their faith. Here are my initial offerings:
1. What earthly evidence could cause you to reject your faith (if any)?
I was just thinking about this [yet again] the other day, and while I'm hesitant to say any of the following would cause me to reject my faith, each would certainly cause me to have stronger doubts:
1.1 If recorded history could be reliably proven to extend back hundreds of thousands of years, as opposed to 6,000;
1.2 If scientists could prove that the universe always existed;
1.3 If there were no such thing as entropy;
1.4 If we had an absence of spiritual accounts instead of a consistent abundance of them spanning across multiple cultures in all times;
1.5 If the Jewish race had been exterminated or otherwise died off;
1.6 If humans lived to be significantly older than 120 years without the aid of science.
2. Have you researched these possible disproofs yourself/read the work of scholars in the field?
You bet.
3. Does your faith make any empirical predictions about the earthly world? What are they?
I believe the Bible makes quite a few empirical statements about the future of the earthly world. Here are a few off the top of my head:
3.1 The writer of Hebrews states that the cosmos will "wear out like a garment." That's certainly an empirical statement, in fact, one that seems empirically verified [hence my 3 above];
3.2 The Bible states that the Jewish race would be extant up until the final hour;
3.3 In Revelation, John of Patmos describes a state of affairs where nobody will be able to buy or sell goods without the "mark of the beast."
June 23, 2010
A few weeks back, I came across something I wanted to post here for future reference. The following core principles of source criticism were formulated by two Scandinavian historians, Olden-Jørgensen (1998) and Thurén (1997):
1) Human sources may be relics (e.g. a fingerprint) or narratives (e.g. a statement or a letter). Relics are more credible sources than narratives.
2) A given source may be forged or corrupted; strong indications of the originality of the source increases its reliability.
3) The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened.
4) A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source, that is more reliable than a tertiary source and so on.
5) If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.
6) The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
7) If it can be demonstrated that the witness (or source) has no direct interest in creating bias, the credibility of the message is increased. (source)
June 19, 2010
A buddy of mine often reminds me of how much he likes short posts, so here's a quick one on a philosophical classic: the Is/Ought distinction.
In my experience, the person who says, "You ought to do X" in response to some desire Y is saying something that reduces to, "I believe that if you do X, you shall fulfill desire Y." Example: your desire is to go surfing, and your neighbor offers you a ride to the beach. If you take the ride (X), you'll likely fulfill the desire to go surfing (Y). One might say you ought to take the ride. This is ought in the pragmatic sense.
What would make "you ought to take the ride" true? In my opinion, it is the juxtaposition of 1) the fact of a desire to go surfing, and 2) the means of fulfilling that desire.
However, in my experience, the person who says, "You ought not X" in response to some desire Y is saying something that reduces to, "Even though it would fulfill your desire Y, X is not the right thing to do." Example: you desire your neighbor's goat, and when your mother discovers your intentions, she uses the tool of condemnation to plant within you an aversion to stealing. IOW, she says some variant of, "you ought not X." This is ought in the moral sense.
In your opinion, what would make "you ought not steal your neighbor's goat" true?
June 16, 2010
Is there anybody out there who hasn't heard some debater quip, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?"
I'm betting not.
How many people actually stop and consider the rhetorical device they're using?
I'm betting not that many, else we'd hear it much less!
At any rate, I've got a very simple and straight-forward example of an instance where the claim, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" can easily be shown false.
June 15, 2010
Over the past six months, the arguments I've read and wrote have led me to what I believe to be a logically-valid, undeniable argument for DCT's superiority over any other moral theory. As such, I state confidently today that all contemplation of "the best moral theory" is actually a quest for second best.
June 12, 2010
I’ve decided to compose an index of posts I’ve made substantial contributions to at Common Sense Atheism from January 1st, 2010 to the date of this post, 6-11-2010. (NOTE: the index is now current through November 16th, 2010) It is not necessarily meant to be exhaustive, e.g. I omitted threads where I only made a single comment or two. I’ll be updating this list, as well as expanding on key posts where I think certain arguments deserve a closer look, and eventually distilling the best arguments into the homepage.