The Warfare Is Mental

The Evidential Problem Of Evil

August 28, 2011

An evidential POE argument from Peter Hurford of Greatplay.net:

1. Needless suffering, by definition, is any suffering that doesn’t exist because of a higher good.

2. Needless suffering, by definition, could be eliminated with no consequences.

3. Any all-good entity desires to eliminate all needless suffering.

4. Any all-knowing entity would know of all needless suffering, if any needless suffering exists.

5. Any all-powerful entity would be capable of eliminating all needless suffering.

6. Our world contains needless suffering.

7. Therefore from 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and 6, an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing entity cannot exist.

8. God, as described by the major religions is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing.

9. Therefore from 7 and 8, God as described by the major religions does not exist.

I recently said that all the POE arguments I’ve heard reduce to arguments from incredulity, and this argument is no different. Inability to conceive of a higher good is the only thing grounding the claim that any given instance of suffering is needless. 6 is a naked assertion sustained only by incredulity. That alone invalidates the argument in my opinion, but I can make a stronger case.

My Response To, “Does Quantum Mechanics Revive Libertarian Free-Will?”

August 4, 2011

So Matt DeStefano had asked me to comment on his article, Does Quantum Mechanics Revive Libertarian Free-Will?. Truth be told, and no offense to Matt, but I wasn’t very impressed. The main reason is because he pretends his treatment supports the conclusion, “free will is an illusion.” As far as particular gripes, well, first off… the classic materialist canard:

Traditional determinism has proclaimed that since there is causal closure, or there is no physical event which has a non-physical cause, events are wholly determined by their causes.

Aside from the standard allusion to cause-and-effect which we most all accept, this is meaningless tautology, made worse by the fact that no matter what physicists discover, it automatically falls under the rubric of “physical” in the minds of committed metaphysical naturalists.

A POE Related Question

July 22, 2011

Would you accept the presence of evil as evidence of an evil, but not necessarily omnipotent god? Why or why not?

Consistent With The Hypothesis Of

July 20, 2011

Though occasional use is inevitable, I generally try to avoid the words proof and disproof, especially in discussions of epistemology and empiricism. I don’t know how many of you have met him yet, but Peter Hurford is a new commenter around here with a blog of his own, and from what I’ve seen so far, I would highly recommend dialoging with him on behalf of his aptitude and courtesy. He also asks good questions, the kind that get you thinking, as opposed to, say, the kind that piss you off. Recently on another blog, Peter made a remark that I felt compelled to reply to, and I wanted to repost a slight modification of that short reply here, just to see what people here might think of it.

The Problem Of Evil: Where I’m At Today

July 17, 2011

While I’ll still gladly engage anybody on the issue, these days, I’m leaning towards the conclusion that the atheist’s problem of evil arguments are fatally flawed. In the end, all variants I’ve encountered reduce to incredulity: reasoning from premises derived at via conceptual analysis and intuition, the atheist disbelieves that a morally sufficient reason can exist: “There’s no way a good God would allow this much evil in the world.” That’s it. I’ve not seen a single POE argument that doesn’t reduce thus, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether disbelief is sufficient to warrant skepticism in this regard. I say no. I mean, people said the same thing about QM and all sorts of other stuff: “There’s no way light can act as both particle and wave!” “There’s no way an airplane can fly!” “There’s no way man will walk on the moon!” Etc. This is why I like what they attribute to Archimedes: with a long enough lever, one could move the Earth.

Is anybody aware of a POE argument that doesn’t reduce thus?

Probing DD’s Standard: Truth Is Consistent With Itself

July 16, 2011

I recently stopped by DD’s blog to see what sort of arguments are on offer, as I usually do every few months or so. Today, I’d like to raise some questions relating to DD’s standard of evidence as delineated in his post, Alan Roebuck and the Covert Materialism. DD writes:

…if there is some evidence that is better than the rest, believers could and would bring that evidence to the forefront. This fact invalidates the Courtier’s Reply because if there were good evidence, then the dialog between believers and unbelievers ought to focus on that. If good evidence does exist, then there’s no point in complaining that skeptics have failed to study the bad stuff. Bring out the good stuff, and let’s see how they deal with that. And conversely, if it’s all equally bad, then an exhaustive study of all the bad evidence would be merely a waste of time.

First off, we seem to have differing opinions about why people use the so-called Courtier’s Reply. I’ve never been of the opinion that the Courtier’s Reply is for skeptics who haven’t studied the bad stuff. Rather, any so-called Courtier’s Reply I’ve given is usually towards skeptics who’ve failed to study the good stuff.

How Would I Present Desirism?

May 10, 2011

When considering a redesign for some client’s website, I often ask, “How would I have coded this thing?” A while back, I got to thinking about desirism in the same way.

This is no offense to Alonzo, but in my honest opinion, he presents desirism ambiguously, from key tenets right down to the original name, desire utilitarianism. I may be way off here, but I get the feeling Alonzo doesn’t want the heavy burden that typically falls to those making moral claims, and that this may influence him to equivocate on select terms. Most discouraging is that regarding conventional definitions, he claims “moral terms are being used in substantially the same way that moral terms had been used.”

The New Moral Crusaders?

May 5, 2011

Episode 14 of Luke and Alonzo’s oddly named Morality in the Real World is up, and despite its length, I don’t think it said much. Sure, it’s important and commendable to distinguish between the facts of reality vs. the words we use, but they could have accomplished that in a few short sentences. In the positive, the student is starting to surpass–or at least show genuine skepticism towards–the teacher. I find that very encouraging. Though one could argue that it has simply transferred to Yudkowsky, Luke’s infatuation with Alonzo Fyfe seems to be waning. If you haven’t familiarized yourself with the episode, I suggest doing so, else my post might not make as much sense as it could.

Objective Morality: Clarifying The Questions

April 18, 2011

Today I’d like to examine three different questions that come up in discussions over so-called “objective” morality, and I’d like to argue that two of them are essentially worthless in terms of answering what most people seem to perceive as the core question.

Materialism Is A Misnomer

April 17, 2011

Pardon me for asking a silly question, but here I go anyways: If you made salad dressing that was one part vinegar and 10,000,000,000,000 parts olive oil, would it be accurate in any sense of that word to label your dressing as vinegar-based? I’m going to bet that any reasonable person would say no.

Yet, physicists estimate that the atomic material/non-material ratio is akin to a single grain of sand in St. Peter’s Basilica [approximately 163,000 square feet]. So then, why do so many “materialists” assert that “material” explanations can account for all known phenomena when what they call “matter” is actually something like 99.9999999999999% immaterial?

Am I missing something?

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