The Warfare Is Mental

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!

Utterly Disappointed, Or, My Response To DD’s Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 1

May 29, 2009

Beginning here, Deacon Duncan of Evangelical Realism (DD) offers a series titled Evidence Against Christianity which compares the predicted consequences of two hypotheses against real-world evidence to determine which hypothesis seems more likely to be correct. The first hypothesis represents how the world should look if God existed and is called the Gospel Hypothesis (GH). The second represents how the world should look if God did not exist, and is accordingly called the Myth Hypothesis (MH).

I see absolutely nothing wrong with DD's approach, and no believer I'm aware of has voiced a problem with DD's methodology. For example, DD says,

One advantage of comparing two hypotheses by measuring their consequences against real-world fact is that this approach allows us to make a clear, functional distinction between honest, unbiased inquiry and mere rationalization. (DD)

I agree. That's all fine and dandy – but there's a catch: When they assume pre-existing premises, hypotheses must be accurate, and I'm not the only one to claim that DD's so-called Gospel Hypothesis is no gospel hypothesis at all.

On Atheists & Blind Faith, Or, False Arguments 27, 28 & 29: Why Prayer Studies Are Not Credible

May 14, 2009

So I locked horns with PhillyChief and John Evo, again, this time it was over the following comment from PhillyChief – who if I remember correctly – claims to be a scientifically-minded rationalist atheist:

Prayer helps no one but the one praying, providing a euphoria and calming effect, which could be comparable to ejaculating.
–PhillyChief

I felt that was an odd statement for a scientifically-minded rationalist to make, but was not surprised that it came from a sarcastic atheist who claims to be "almost always right", and so I replied,

How would you know? Where is that "demonstrable evidence" you're so fond of? Aside from being grossly unscientific, statements like the above appear contradictory alongside appeals to soft atheism as you've recently made on my site.
–cl

False Argument #26: The Emptiness Of Theology

May 11, 2009

I will soon develop this into a detailed, point-by-point response to the source material, but for now, I would simply like to thank Professor Dawkins for providing me with the most easily refuted false argument in this series to date.

In a discussion concerning the "reconciliation" of science and theology, the following atheist sermon was ironically published in Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 18, #2:

A dismally unctuous editorial in the British newspaper the Independent
recently asked for a reconciliation between science and "theology." It
remarked that 'People want to know as much as possible about their
origins.' I certainly hope they do, but what on earth makes one think
that theology has anything useful to say on the subject? …[T]he achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect
anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology"
is a subject at all?
–Richard Dawkins

The first sentence is Dawkins' subjective opinion entirely, and by implying that theology is not a subject in his second sentence, the Professor reasons in a circle. If our definition of subject is the study of an actual phenomena, that theology is not a subject begins with assumptions about the very questions at hand. As someone keenly points out in the thread, even if God is not real, theology can still be reasonably considered a subject – as much a subject as art or creative writing or music.

What do you think?

The Perfect Analogy For MiracleQuest?

May 7, 2009

So, I'm running a bit late on the next installment of the Atheist Universe series, but I happened to have an experience this morning that was quite an epiphany. The experience itself was nothing uncommon, grandiose or mystical, and it was something I'm willing to bet most all non-indigenous people experience quite frequently.

The weather is great today, which always makes the 5-mile skate to the warehouse that much more enjoyable. After I'd entered the front door, and as I was walking upstairs, I heard a very loud and unmistakable THUD coming from an adjacent room. Always naturally curious, I wondered what may have caused this noise, and no sooner than I'd finished wondering, the epiphany came on with such strong force that I subsequently wondered if somebody had slipped me a hit of ecstasy or something.

Can we deduce the specific attributes of a rock lobbed into a pond based solely on the ripples produced? Similarly, seeking to affirm or deny acts of supernatural beings puts one on the same epistemologically untenable level as seeking to affirm or deny the specific cause of the THUD one hears in an adjacent room.

On Seeing What We Want To See

May 4, 2009

Time-warp back to WWI around 1920, Newport (Rhode Island) Naval Training Station. The United States government per the Navy recruited male volunteers to pose as gay decoys to infiltrate the growing homosocial subculture the Navy had come to dislike.

The investigation led to the arrest of over twenty sailors and sixteen civilians, whom decoys then testified against in a series of both naval and civilian trials. One vein of entry the decoys used to gain access into the gay male subculture was the local "cruising areas," which are essentially a phenomenon of any underground subculture. Dopers, pill heads and any other kind of recreational drug user have theirs, as do artists, musicians, writers, bikers and skateboarders. People crave fellowship, and this intrinsic need does not simply disappear because the mainstream disapproves of a particular group.

False Argument #25: What Have We Learned From Religion, Revelation, Prayer?

April 27, 2009

Often in discussions of (a)theism, an atheist or unbelieving skeptic will say, "We've learned tons of things from science. What have we learned from religion, revelation or prayer?"

I've heard several variants of this argument that are more or less categorically identical, and much like the first move of a pawn influences the outcome of a game of chess, the subsequent responses also tend to follow with a uniform predictability: The believer either answers unsatisfactorily or not at all, or if the believer does answer, the atheist or unbelieving skeptic will typically deny that what the believer offered was actually learned from religion, revelation or prayer.

This is where I've seen most discussions on the matter come to a screeching halt. This is unfortunate, as the believer need only to realize that what's going on is an rhetorical farce, then rebut the atheist or unbelieving skeptic with a few quick and sturdy replies.

On Blogging, Passivity, Party Lines & The Pursuit Of Truth

April 25, 2009

If you’re at all like I am, you probably consider the pursuit of truth to be pretty valuable. I think most of us can agree that the pursuit of truth is an important task. That’s the way I see it at least, and as an extension of that principle, I say one cannot accurately call oneself a pursuer of truth if they allow falsehood to remain uncorrected.

With that in mind, I’d like to discuss how passivity, especially selective passivity, can obscure the pursuit of truth – and more specifically – how these ideas relate to blogging.

Public Challenge To Anyone: How Would You Parse This?

April 13, 2009

This morning I'd like to write a post about something that happened a year or so ago, something that pops into my head quite frequently ever since it happened.

It was just after eight o'clock when a buddy of mine who is also a published writer and also likes to drink beer called me up with the equivalent of, "Let's catch the bus down to club so-and-so, and grab a coupla' beers."

"Okay," was my immediate response, and that's how this story starts.

MiracleQuest Continues: Retracing Our Steps At DD’s

April 8, 2009

So I'm part of the lovely little soiree about miracles that's been going on over at DD's for months. The purpose of today's post is to strain some of my points from that debate, and eventually I hope to distill them into one concise listing.

When I entered the discussion over at DD's, I just happened to be fresh off the heels of a similar argument, and my first comment criticized attempts to verify miracles without agreed-upon definitions and criteria. More specifically, in the context of allegedly miraculous healing, I asked how we might eliminate confounders such as spontaneous remission and the placebo effect. Commenters John Morales and jim both chimed in at this point.

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