The Warfare Is Mental

How Would You Define A Miracle?

February 16, 2009

In the past few months, via several discussions with a variety of learned skeptics and religious people, I've come to better understand the disparities in our concepts of miracles, and specifically, I've been thinking about how falsifiability and confounders diminish the extent to which an alleged miracle can be considered authentic. It may very well be that proving a miracle is impossible, and on this matter I haven't quite decided yet, but I've certainly concluded that there is a wide range of skeptical positions one might take concerning the concept of miracles, and what we can justifiedly say about them, if and when they do occur.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome regarding alleged healing miracles is developing a reliable method for excluding confounders of spontaneous remission and the placebo effect. Hitherto unexplained, either of these mysterious phenomena would provide good confounding cover for a genuine miracle, and that's not to say that all instances of spontaneous remission and placebo effect are intrinsically miraculous, either. Some skeptics are fond of claiming that only repeatable, observable, systematic instances of miracles would be sufficient to convince them that they were unjustified in their skepticism. This is sounds more like magic than miracle.

Lyell Claims Earth Is 6,000 Years Old! or, False Argument #21: Bible Teaches Interfaith Love Is Sin

February 14, 2009

Alright, so I had stayed up until the morning yesterday writing and backlogging what I feel are three interesting and different posts for the upcoming week, on the decision that I was going to take a 10-day break from posting and blogging.

So what happened?

Well, I woke up this morning and after getting into the swing of things, popped over to DA where what I read in the first few sentences just happened to comprise perhaps the biggest example to date of an exegetical post of Ebonmuse's that completely misses the mark.
So I was overcome with an irresistable force to write, and barfed out the following.

All for the better, I suppose. It didn't take long, and I had been wondering what I would stumble across for #21 in the series. Although admittedly skewering a fish in a barrel, this fits the bill perfectly.

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.

Skateboarding – A Diversion From Desolation

February 1, 2009

Save for skateboarding evangelists, skateboarding and religion rarely cross paths in any sort of real way, but my friend Joe Haircut posted a link the other day to this New York Times article titled Skateboarding in Afghanistan Provides a Diversion From Desolation. The article was the story of young Afghan kids who share a small concrete foundation no bigger than the fountain everyone skates at Golden Gate Park, described as “…a decrepit Soviet-style concrete fountain with deep fissures.”

Despite the active environment around them, a half-dozen or more kids assemble peacefully to skate this thing fully-padded, with an instructor or two to keep an eye out for suicide bombers and other terror-related flare ups.

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.

What Color Is Your Hair? or, Why Atheism Is 9/10 Religion

January 19, 2009

There's a fairly popular saying that many atheists seem particularly fond of quoting lately:

"Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."

I clearly understand why atheists object to their beliefs being encapsulated in the word religion. Of course, individual atheists will have different reasons for this objection, as we can't paint a large group of people with a broad stroke. Nonetheless, the alleged conclusion here is that atheism is not a religion, but I'm going to disagree and show several ways in which I feel this argument fails, albeit with a small amount of reservation. But first the disclaimer: This is largely a matter of semantics and definitions of words.

7 Bones To Pick With C.T. Russell & The Jehovah’s Witnesses

January 5, 2009

"Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you to explain the hope you have." (1 Peter 3:15, ISV)

If you're like the average American, you've been paid a visit by the Jehovah's Witnesses at some point. Although I'm about to deliver a critique of Jehovah's Witness theology, and offer some unsettling facts about one of the founding members of the religion, I have the utmost respect for people who believe something so strongly they are willing to share it with the world, and I realize that Witnesses are coming to my door in love. What troubles me is that when I press them for answers to any of the following, they typically get a frumpy look on their face, clam up and walk away. This is highly discouraging, because if they can't or won't respond to these criticisms, what am I supposed to think? That they don't care? Don't have arguments? The last thing I'm going to think of such intellectual evasiveness is that their religion is something I want to be a part of.

False Argument #17: Bible Claims Those Who’ve Never Heard Of Jesus Go To Hell

December 18, 2008

For the past three days I've been spending way too much time on an atheist forum where over a dozen commenters have taken me strongly to task on this issue. Yet strangely, when asked for scriptural support, they offer nothing but the standard verses relating to salvation.

I agree that the Bible says Jesus is the only way to God. Does this mean that those who have never heard of Jesus go automatically to hell? My atheist opponents cry an emphatic yes.

But even a basic Bible education disproves this idea. If this interpretation is correct, then Moses, Isaac, Abraham, Daniel, Isaiah, David, Solomon and ALL of the other Old Testament figures would ALL be in hell, correct? Yet scripture clearly indicates otherwise, and each of these people lived and died before Jesus ever walked the Earth.

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