The Warfare Is Mental

Anyone Know Of A Computer I Can Debate With?

February 13, 2009

I'm actually serious in asking that question. Besides skating the streets with zero cars on the road, another one of my fantasies is a supercomputer that can deduce the logical correctness of any argument. Don't get me wrong, I love debating with humans of any and all stripe. In fact, some who know me might say this is an understatement. Yet no endeavor is likely to persist in the absence of a worthwhile payoff, and every now and again I find myself getting really discouraged and sullen about debate.

Right now is one of those times and there is one simple reason for this discouragement: Humans are prone to motivations above and beyond the resolution of pure logic. Unlike computers, humans possess the peculiar ability to deny truth, and the reasons humans do this are as many as the stars in the night sky. If I ask a computer, "Is (X) = (~X)", I'm going to get a straight and honest answer. The computer can't stop to think, "Well, if I admit / deny that (X) = (~X), I'll look weak / wrong / unintelligent / contradictory."

More Lee-ky Responses To Strobel & Co.

February 11, 2009

For the past few days, I've been evaluating various responses to Lee Strobel's questions that were posted on FriendlyAtheist. My latest stop was at a blog whose title I liked, Life Before Death, and is hosted by "biology student, secular humanist, beekeeper and Swede," Felicia Gilljam.

Now, in all honesty, those of you expecting something new here might be let down, and that's where perhaps most people on all sides can agree on Strobel's questions. Many are admittedly the same old washed-up ontological arguments one has already heard, especially if they've been even remotely following philosophy, religion and/or science for the past few years.

But what also discourages me is how overconfident many on the atheist & skeptic side seem to be in the perceived validity of some responses. Most every skeptical response I've seen to these questions contains some degree of logic-leak from drip to wave, yet in threads, too many skeptic backpatters rally around their dead fish like Piggy and the archetypal boys on Goldman's Lord of the Flies, proud and gleeful that they've pulled such beauts out of the barrel and aptly skewered them!

But how skewered are they? Let's take a look at three more and find out.

And We’re Back At Square One! or, My Response To “The Big Guns”

February 3, 2009

So atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel apparently offered to answer questions from the thread over at FriendlyAtheist, and I think Hemant (the site owner) has a really cool thing going by having this little dialog.

However, if you want to stump atheists with tough questions, the first thing you don't do is dust off the same batch of washed-up ontological arguments and let them go extra rounds. Although we can agree on lots of other issues, Greta wrote a recent post whose subtitle was Greta Answers Some Theologians. I gotta admit, when I first saw the title in her email notice, I immediately wondered with awe and even a bit of fear: Uh-Oh! Who'd she talk to? I imagined her giving Ted Haggard or somebody similar a proper railing! At the very least I'd envisioned an actual dialog with a theologian, much like what Hemant and Strobel have done.

On The Doctrines Of Freedom And Individualism

January 27, 2009

I went and paid a visit to my friend The Ghost today, and I'm glad I did. Whenever I need respite from the stupidity of polemical arguments and fruitless banter, I visit him. The Ghost writes about real talk, straight-up soul-stuff that forces you to step back and examine yourself, your actions, and the world around you, and more importantly, how each of those things intertwine in their inherently symbiotic, causal relationships.

For a long time I've had a certain train of thoughts going through my mind, thoughts about freedom, individualism, and their intrinsic weaknesses. See, don't get me wrong, I love freedom in any and all forms.

Qualifiers Are Important, Aren’t They? or, My Response To, “What’s So Bad About Religion?”

January 20, 2009

I was recently debating with the chaplain about the importance of qualifiers in logic and debate, when she decided to bring up some old stuff. About a year ago, I made my first visit to the chaplain's blog, pointed there from another blogger who suggested that I read chaplain's essay titled, What's So Bad About Religion?

So what's so bad about religion? Of course, different people are certainly going to answer this question differently, and any attempts to create hard-and-fast rules seem counterproductive to say the least. At any rate, let's take an in-depth look at some of the chaplain's answers to this question.

False Argument #18: Personal Anecdotes = Empirical Evidence, or I Believe Mother Teresa, Not George Bush

January 14, 2009

Please, somebody help me determine that I am not crazy, mentally deficient, or possibly worse. I've now heard the following argument in the blogoshpere two times, and I immediately pegged it as a fallacious case of special pleading with absolutely zero bearing in logic whatsoever.

What do you think? Here's the argument, from a website titled, Why I Hate Jesus:

Is A Screwdriver Better Than A Ratchet? or, My Response To Evidence-Based Faith vs. Evidence-Free Faith

December 7, 2008

So I stumbled across this article in the blogosphere yesterday, which argued for the superiority of reason in formulating our worldviews. More specifically, the author was responding to claims that the validity of logic and reason have to be taken on faith. Apologists often criticize atheism as a faith-based worldview, which may be true in a trivial sense. However, such does not necessarily level the playing field and what the author of EBFVEFF correctly notes is that even in the restricted sense that atheism is a faith-based worldview, it's based on a different type of faith; faith that proceeds from empirical, observable evidence.

Even so, does this make evidence-based faith inherently superior to evidence-free faith?

Out-Of-Scope Claims & Falsifiability: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, III

November 27, 2008

In Part I & Part II I alleged that significant biblical oversights compromise the integrity of the arguments contained in A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM), unfortunately rendering the piece little more than an extremely well-written and well-researched strawman / either-or fallacy.

Now I’d like to address a few more of the author’s statements, aiming to show that even when facts themselves are completely authoritative, interpretations are surely not always so. Although I don’t expect to convince any skeptics of the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ if any skeptic will concede that my tripartite interpretation is at least internally consistent, or at least that the following paragraph contains genuine difficulties, I would consider such a success.

The author begins the second section of AGITM with:

“The evidence shows that (aspects of consciousness) are completely determined by the physical configuration of the brain, and that a change to this configuration can alter or eliminate any of them. In short, I will show that, as the materialist position predicts, every part of the mind is entirely dependent on and controlled by the brain.” (paren. and ital. mine)

The Biblical Doctrine of Salvation: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, II

October 5, 2008

In Part I we discussed the first pivotal misunderstanding of religion I claim compromises the validity of the main thesis in the rather well-written A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM). The second implicit misunderstanding we ought to discuss relates to misinterpretations of salvation, the peculiarly culturally-resilient notion that,

“If the person has been virtuous, the soul is admitted to Heaven for an eternity of reward; if the person has been wicked or sinful, their soul descends to Hell for an eternity of punishment.”

Although the author did not explicitly assert this to be the Bible’s position, this is not a biblical teaching, and it is unclear from the essay whether the author understands the biblical perspective, although many of the questions asked in the case studies raise legitimate concern. The above is nevertheless an erroneous interpretation of scripture frequently straw-manned by critics of all stripe in the general public and academia alike, not surprisingly with little or no counter from theism. I say “not surprisingly” because as the author of AGITM is apt to notice, many pious do not know the Bible with the same degree of expertise they expect of its critics.

As with yesterday’s discussion, this apparent misunderstanding of salvation potentially undermines AGITM’s overall argument and even further lessens its relevance to theism. Although less relevant to AGITM’s main thesis (the argument against spirit / soul), this point of contention is relevant to many of the sub-arguments and questions of whether salvation would be granted under the unfortunate conditions experienced by those in the fourteen case studies. Many and possibly all of the sub-dilemmas raised fall apart when salvation is delineated in a manner compatible with scripture. For it is only in the misunderstood context of the biblical ‘soul’ and the rewards-and-punishments system that such questions as these arise at all:

“One must ask whether these people’s disabilities will affect their eternal fate. Would a Christian, Jew or Muslim who lost their automatic speech be held accountable by God for failing to say the prayers he has demanded of them, through no fault of their own? What about a deeply religious individual who loses the ability to speak except in profanities?”

…or the following from the discussion of frontotemporal dementia (FTD):

“..will God damn people for their genes?”

The Biblical Distinction Between Soul And Spirit: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, I

October 4, 2008

Ebonmuse has on his site another much-talked-about essay titled A Ghost In The Machine which is a valiant argument against Cartesian duality, or the generally-theist idea that humans have a soul substance that can survive or somehow transcend the death of the physical body. While leaving a comment in the thread of On Expertise I noticed another comment by Heliobates which read,

“…if you want to read what I consider to be THE SLAM DUNK argument against theism, check out our host’s A Ghost In The Machine. Without Cartesian dualism, religion is dead in the water.”

To this I responded,

“IMO the error… is in assuming all religion dependent upon the Cartesian paradigm. Yes, I can and will offer a detailed counter-explanation, but it is far beyond the scope of the thread..”

So here we are. I said I would offer a detailed counter-explanation, and now I’ve got to stick to my word.

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