The Warfare Is Mental

The Secret Life Of Chaos

January 20, 2010

Just a short one today: you heard of The Secret Life of Chaos yet?

If we say that "simple things give rise to biology and intelligence" then the premise that any designer God capable of designing MEST must be at least as complex as MEST seems fatally undermined. It is not required that explanations be at least as complex as the things they cause and reality contradicts that premise as well (TENS, Grand Canyon, etc.). If we deny the believer the luxury of defining God as "simple" we must either provide sufficient warrant for doing so, or stand rightly accused of special pleading.

What do you think?

*MEST = matter, energy, space, time

Aristotle’s Argument From Kinesis, 2

October 14, 2009

It seems Aristotle’s argument leaves us with three options:

1) potency has been transitioning into act eternally, i.e. infinite regress;

2) the initial transition from potency to act arose from absolute nothing, i.e. creation ex nihilo;

3) the initial transition from potency to act arose from an unmoved mover of some sort.

For those who accept the third choice, the key question becomes which type of mover is the best explanation, which often gets defined as the the more parsimonious explanation. Paring down even further, we find two sub-options for the third choice: either the first unmoved mover is some sort of conscious entity with intent, or some non-conscious, impersonal self-organizing emergent process of matter. Beginning around here, commenter Dominic and myself exchanged along these lines in the Introduction.

In particular, I’ve noticed a consensus among atheists who object to describing Aristotle’s unmoved mover as any sort of conscious entity or God. They typically offer some variant of an Occam’s razor complaint, arguing that such requires “extra steps” or is “not parsimonious.” I would respond that merely asserting that something “isn’t parsimonious” isn’t an argument – it’s an assertion – and I’ll address the “extra steps” claim in today’s post.

Aristotle’s Argument From Kinesis: An Introduction

September 28, 2009

One reason I haven't posted anything new in over two weeks is because we had a really good thread going off the last post. However, that's not the only reason.

Over the past two weeks I've been rethinking positions I'd previously been more or less 100% committed to. At least provisionally, although I am a believer, I still hold that no successful ontological argument for God's existence exists, meaning I do not believe there is an argument that logically requires a skeptic to accept God's existence as the only response. Nonetheless, I agree that at least philosophically, life requires an explanation — and I agree that depending on how they're delineated, First-Cause arguments can certainly be cogent — but I've just never felt they logically required the skeptic to accept God's existence. Today I'm not so sure.

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. I

July 9, 2009

If you've spent more than a passing moment listening to contemporary debates between atheists and believers, you're likely to have heard the claim that there is no evidence for God. I've heard this claim countless times, and I believe that many, most or possibly all who make the claim conflate the two related but distinct concepts of evidence and proof.

I also believe that attempts to resolve the matter are futile without firmly cementing the goalposts before beginning. Whether the responses are single or list, I've not once had an atheist accept anything I've ever suggested or heard suggested as evidence for God, and IMO there's nothing more annoying than, "Here is good evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not you douche," only to be repeated ad nauseum.

Obligatory Osmosis, Or, My Response To DD’s Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 2

June 7, 2009

So, I saw an opportunity to combine a response to DD's Loser's Compromise into the ongoing post-by-post dissection of his series Evidence Against Christianity. According to DD,

There’s a particular approach to the truth that I call the Loser’s Compromise, and it goes like this: “We can’t know the truth about X, so let’s just agree that different people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it.” Considered superficially, it sounds open-minded and fair, because it appeals to a certain live-and-let-live quality that avoids putting anyone in the wrong. In reality, though, it’s a deceptive rationalization, and an excuse for avoiding the truth instead of embracing it.

First, I've never once stated or implied that if we can't know the truth about something, people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it. What I have said and what I still say is that when two or more hypotheses are equally consistent with all of the available data, although provisional belief in either would be rationally justified, truth claims remain unsustainable until further evidence favors one hypothesis over another. Truth claims are entirely different philosophical beasts than rationally justified beliefs!

Two Quick Questions

May 23, 2009

Finals week is officially over, which means more time for life! And blogging. I have two quick questions for today, and by next week we should be back to the regular posting schedule.

I was taking out the trash this morning like I do every week. Every time I do this, our cats get scared, and I always get a chuckle out of watching them freak out. I know they're safe, but they can't seem to figure this out despite the fact it's happened once a week for their entire lives and nothing bad has happened yet. Still, they run the same program every time they hear the garbage man, and it's funny. Now here are the two quick questions:

1) Is it a violation of beneficence to behave in a way that frightens another sentient being if we know for certain they are completely safe?

2) Am I sick or twisted for finding amusement in my cats' fears?

A Problem Of Evil: Did I Violate Omni-Benevolence?

April 19, 2009

I’m one of those people who thinks the Problem of Evil is far from solved. I know, I know… the audacity, right? Skeptics and atheists claim the Problem of Evil logically disqualifies certain definitions of God, specifically the Omni^3 God typically advanced by Judeo-Christian monotheists. I concede that this polemic has been commonly repeated in philosophy circles for over 2,000 years now, but is it true? I cannot consider the Problem of Evil any problem at all sans a reasonable explanation of when and why the allowance of suffering constitutes a genuine breach of omni-benevolence, and I maintain that the burden falls back to the skeptic to demonstrate how or why this is so. Earlier this week, a real-life scenario recalled this question to mind.

I sometimes work in a publishing warehouse where customers can ring a doorbell to signify their presence at the Western entrance. Late one evening this week, somebody rang the bell. I opened up the window and stuck my head outside, where I saw a man and a woman with a baby. I knew instantly that they weren’t our customers, and I made the reasonable presupposition they were here to see a tenant in the residential part of the building. So, being in “work-mode,” I initially ignored them and was about to go “back to work” when the human factor kicked in. Just because they weren’t our customers didn’t mean they didn’t need help, so I returned to the window. My next intuition was to immediately engage them, but that curiously gave way to a competing intuition suggesting I merely observe for a moment, remaining watchful to ensure they got whatever it was they needed, but still granting enough confidence in their independence to assume they can solve their own problems without my meddling. A brief moment passed.

I noticed the Bay cold along with their momentary uncertainty was causing the woman to suffer. The cold itself had been causing me to suffer all day long, and I was certain where I was – inside the warehouse with a hooded sweatshirt on! No sooner than I could ask myself another question or respond to another intuition, a tenant let them inside of the building, and they were once again happy and warm.

Although it’s certainly nice that this story has a happy ending, did I violate the principle of omni-benevolence in that brief moment of observance?

*See Also:

PE/QS vs. O^3 God, I

What Do You Mean By God?

Huge, Flying Rocks In Space vs. Carl Sagan’s Dragon In The Garage

December 8, 2008

So, seasoned readers and veterans in philosophical, scientific, or religious debate are surely familiar with the astronomer Carl Sagan's famous and hypothetical dragon in the garage argument:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me", you say, and I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle – but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon", you ask.

"Oh, she's right here", I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon".

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea", I say, "but this dragon floats in the air". Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless", I say. You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, except she's an incorporeal (bodyless) dragon and the paint won't stick!"

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now what is the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? You're inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

With all due respect to the late Mr. Sagan, although it contains an eminent truth, this argument is also eminently bunk. Now I agree that the inability to invalidate a hypothesis does not prove a competing hypothesis true. However, the following line is correct only in the extremely limited scope
of validating a scientific hypothesis (and even then can break down):

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless..

I hear too many skeptics and atheists cite this passage
foolishly thinking it somehow counters religious claims or the
existence of God. There are several reasons this is incorrect, but first let me counter with my own little story, custom-tailored to address Mr. Sagan's area of expertise: Astronomy.

PE/QS vs. O^3 God: On The Problem Of Evil

November 23, 2008

Also referred to as the Question of Suffering, the Problem of Evil (PE/QS) is an axiom in philosophical and religious circles which claims the fact of evil existing in our world is incompatible with God as described by most Christians: a God that is at least all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing, also described as omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient (o^3). Also referred to as the Epicurean Dilemma, the argument itself has been around a few millenia, advanced 2400 years ago by Epicurus (341 – 270 bce). Epicurus offers three options:

“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?”

Factoring Intelligence Into Assessments Of Morality

November 18, 2008

I think there's a reason philosophy has remained unable to resolve certain problems, and by no means do I claim to have the definitive answers regarding the complicated question of morality. With that being said, I would like to comment on the role our access to knowledge plays in the formation of accurate moral judgments. In order to have this discussion, we need to assume at least the premise that a distinction exists between "good" and "evil" acts, and we'll touch upon our old pal Euthypro, and the question of whether morality is subjective or objective. The essential question is this: Is evil act X always evil? If so, then morality seems objective, but does that make it absolutely inflexible? If evil act X is not always evil, then morality seems subjective or relative.

← Newer Posts | Older Posts →