Surviving Philosophy: Objective & SubjectiveHave you ever been in one of those conversations where somebody defines the word God so loosely that it becomes near-meaningless? If so, how did that make you feel?
Here’s the thing about philosophy: it’s great for sharpening one’s wit. It’s excellent for exploring the history of human questioning. It’s useful in that it can lend itself to both personal enrichment as well as social edification. However, as a means of uncovering truth, philosophy has disadvantages. Severe disadvantages.
Desires Cannot Fulfill Or Thwart Other DesiresIn his post Living Without A Moral Code, part 3, Luke Muehlhauser writes,
Now, it seems straightforward that my carnivorous desires are immoral. Surely my desire to eat meat tends to thwart more and stronger desires than it fulfills. It certainly thwarts the desires of the animals I eat, both by way of their death and by way of their horrifying lives packed into factory farms.
That is incorrect. Desires cannot fulfill or thwart other desires.
Scientific Anti-Realism?Modern society is so entrenched in scientific realism and scientism that I just assumed intelligent people had no viable options other than aligning with those camps or being ridiculed. Enter the philosophy of scientific anti-realism. I can hear the insults now: “Science works you jackass!” “Oh great, another Jesus-lovin’ science denier!” “Tell that to the computer you just used to type this POS blog post you crea-tard!”
From the little bit I’ve read on this so far, one of the central premises of scientific anti-realism seems to be something like: That our best scientific theories are successful is no warrant to believe they are true.
Desirism NotesIn lieu of jumping straight into my second post on Fyfe's desirism, I thought I'd spend some more time talking through my own understanding of the theory. My goal is – again – to show that my understanding of desirism's premises, scope and definitions is sufficient to establish both the positive and negative appraisals I pay to the theory. I have a strong desire to avoid meaningless discourse on this or any topic, and though other commenters can always misconstrue our statements no matter how articulate we write them, I believe that demonstrating an impeccable understanding of the theory is the best insurance against that problem.
Response To DD’s “What Biblical Inerrancy Really Means” Pt. IVHere, here, and here, I've responded to DD's post, What Biblical Inerrancy Really Means (WBIRM). DD has responded to those responses, and I think now would be a good time to revisit DD's original post that prompted my responses in the first place. There's quite a lot going on in DD's original post, so let's try to strain the pertinent arguments from his personal opinions. DD makes 4 claims in WBIRM that I feel the need to respond to:
Response To DD’s Unscientific AmericaHmmm…. I'm not sure, but I believe Deacon Duncan considered my response to his Unscientific America trolling, and deleted it. I suppose time will tell. What is it with atheists and censorship, anyways? Do the dissenters now fear the dissent they were once so fond of championing?
DD's post was about the great American intellectual decline, and of course, he blames religious influence – and only religious influence – for the current problems facing our education system. I've noticed that many otherwise educated individuals erroneously brand religion as the convenient scapegoat for society's ills-du-jour, and for me, such usually comes across as rhetorical stretching, just like when religious individuals blame evolution for society's problems.
I felt DD's argument had a tincture of merit, but was also grossly oversimplified. I figured I might as well post my thoughts somewhere else they be wasted, so my response follows. I'm mostly interested in your thoughts on the great American intellectual decline, but I'd also like to know if anyone can speculate on why this comment might have been deleted.
The Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis: StrategyFirst, in light of yesterday's definition of the MGH, I submit that the following describes DD's GH's problem summarized: It includes just enough baseline doctrine for DD to make his case, but not enough baseline doctrine that his Myth Hypothesis constitutes a reasonable basis for rejecting the truth claims of Christianity. In short, DD's disproved DDanity – and among others who've said the same – I don't care.
“…by demonizing those he seeks to refute and ignoring their valid criticisms, DD’s authoritarian approach begins with and proceeds by disagreement in a spirit of hopeless futility that agreement will somehow ensue."
You Can Lead Atheists To Water, But You Can’t Make Them Think*Comments are closed on this post because it was moved here.
For the past weeks, I've foregone Rebutting Atheist Universe to debate Deacon Duncan (DD) from EvangelicalRealism over his series, which for some still-undisclosed reason he's titled Evidence Against Christianity. It was bad enough when DD gave Dominic Saltarelli (not arguing as a believer) credit for making the exact same argument three people (all arguing as believers, incidentally) made in the first two weeks of the discussion. It was bad enough when DD denied that his GH was Christianity, yet absolutely refuses to this date to explain why it consists of distinctly Christian pre-conceptions about God. It was bad enough when DD claimed that all people who apply the tools of reason consistently and without bias in biblical exegesis are skeptics. It's bad enough that many of DD's commenters are so on the man's nuts that they can't see clearly and end up focusing near-exclusively on me. It was bad enough when DD eschewed my invitation to one-on-one, real-time debate.
It was bad enough when DD crafted an entire sub-series titled The Loser's Compromise in direct response to his perceptions of my arguments, then denied that the posts were aimed at me. Now, folks – as if it wasn't bad enough already, as if it could get any worse – DD's latest "argument" has left me truly baffled.
Utterly Disappointed, Or, My Response To DD’s Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 1Beginning 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.
MiracleQuest Continues: Retracing Our Steps At DD’sSo 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.