Mistaken emnity between theists and atheists

[Prodigal_Son]

A message to atheists and agnostics,

I just wanted to let you all know how much of a blessing it is that you challenge the ideas of Christians, and help us clarify our thinking and reasoning. Sometimes, in an argument, we can get the idea that we are somehow enemies, but this is quite false. We are each, I hope, the enemy of falsehood; and many people, unfortunately, both theist and atheist, are quite happy with falsehood.

J.S. Mill defended free speech by saying that free expression of thought made the truth shine through. By speaking honestly and openly to each other, by listening and learning from each other, and even by politely shooting down absurd viewpoints, we reach for a common ground of “all that is true”.

Let me tell you who my enemies are, though. My enemies are these: 1) Anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ and yet has bought into modern materialism. 2) Anyone who argues intellectually purely for fun, and doesn’t care about the truth, 3) Anyone who ridicules another person for their beliefs (or lacks of beliefs).

I would invite us all to remember that it matters more *who we are *than what we know. One of my favorite things about Catholicism is that it recognizes how bridgeable the gap between decency and holiness is. I only wish it were easier to be decent, much less holy.

 

[R_Daneel]

You are a very good person! And your post is very wise. (Now, I would not be me, if I would not recall and share the title of an old Onion article: “Pope urges dialog between Catholics, hellbound”. Just for the uninitiated, the Onion is a satirical paper, and all of their articles are tongue-in-cheek.)

Seriously, however, if I may express my opinion about the major obstacle which makes meaningful dialogs very hard: it is purely linguistical. It seems to me that we are unable to agree on the meanings of simple, everyday terms, like what is “reason”, “faith”, “love”, “suffering”, “good”, “evil”… and I could list many more. Sometimes I fear that we are not speaking the same language. Without having a common vocabulary how could we speak to each other?

 

[Oreoracle]

I agree with R Daneel. All too often members are asked to define terms crucial to their argument and they simply refuse. While it should be obvious that such people either haven’t put much thought into the matter or are prolonging a losing position based on ill-defined or loosely-defined terms, other members seem to eat it up. The person who asked for the definitions is then almost inexplicably accused for asking too many questions.

Personally, I recommend that everyone looks up the definitions of “subjective,” “intersubjective,” and “objective.” Many here seem to take it that “objective” means “consistent” and “subjective” means “inconsistent” but they are mistaken.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Thank you for your responses.

As far as definition goes, it is certainly a frustrating scenario to argue for pages and pages, and then find out that you have a fundamental disagreement on the meanings of terms. There are many people, of course, theist or atheist, who use words like multifunctional tools, which morph in meaning even when the conversation demands a fixed point. This is a fault.

I would suggest, however, that the most significant “language barrier” here is the barrier between naturalist and rationalist understandings of the world. The rationalist will have a harder time defining things, of course, because the rationalist realizes he is dealing with metaphysics, and metaphysical definition is a minefield (to put it mildly).

But the naturalist must walk through that minefield, too, at some point, if he is to justify his ideas about the world. All science is based on logic, but what is logic based on? When a naturalist tells me that logic and mathematics are simply things we have to *assume *in order to know anything, this seems like a tremendous dodge from having to define metaphysical terms. Am I missing something here?

I agree that we have to assume some things to ground any system; we put out concepts out as hypothesis (underpinnings); but aren’t we assuming, then, that the concepts are true? And if they are true, then “truth” is not simply a state of events in the world (because a necessary truth is hardly “in the world”). How does the naturalist define “truth”, then?

Now, I don’t know if you’re a naturalist, R Daneel, so maybe the question doesn’t apply to you. But are there naturalists out there who will enlighten me? I ask, not because I think naturalism is wrong, but because I simply want to understand.

 

[R_Daneel]

Looks like we already have a problem of mutual understanding. What do you mean by “rationalist”? Naturalist seems simple: “someone who considers the natural world as an existential primary” - and yes, I do belong to that category.

Metaphysics is a fun game, to be entertained on long evenings when there is nothing else to do. We are all aware of the existence of the natural world. We are aware that it has certain characteristics, it exhibits order - which should not confused with design. Epistemology, on the other hand, goes down to the nitty-gritty details. Epistemology is the important part of philosophy, not metaphysics.

Non-naturalists assert that the basis of existence is not-natural. There is no physical evidence that it is so. Of course there cannot be physical evidence, since that assumed basis is not physical. But evidence cannot be restricted to physical evidence. In mathematics there are two kinds of proofs, constructive and existential. If you are not familiar with these terms, I will be happy to explain. Maybe there is an existential proof for the non-natural, something that cannot p(name removed by moderator)oint “what” it is, but can logically prove that there must be “something”.

Is there a purely logical proof for a non-natural basis? I have never seen one - and I think I have seen them all. All the purported “proofs” are based on logically unsound premises (not logically incorrect, but unsound). Mostly they are based on the fallacy of composition - they assume that certain characteristics of the natural existence (causation, etc.) are also applicable to the whole universe. Mind you, I am not saying that this is not the case, rather that such a generalization cannot be assumed, it must be proven. Many others are simply nonsensical, for example the assumptions that certain charecteristics of the natural world physically require a non-natural explanation (consciousness comes to mind as an example, or even “love” or “beauty”). These all belong to the God-of-gaps type of reasoning - totally without merit. Just because today we do not have an exact explanation for some aspects of natural existence it is not a sufficient reason to assume that such an explanation is impossible. Our track record in explaining the “mysterious” parts of natural existence is a very good indication that we shall succeed in this regard.

Naturalists do not deny the existence of the non-natural because they feel “threatened”, or because they wish to conduct an “immoral life” - I have seen these abound. Strangely, some believers openly admitted on these forums that they only conform to certain moral standards, because they are afraid of a post-life retribution. None of these are meritable assumptions. Naturalists have their stance, because they see no evidence for anything else. No physical evidence, no logical proof either.

About epistemology. There is one proven method to obtain knowledge about the natural reality - and that is the scientific method of observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. This method works. Non-naturalists assert that this is fine for the natural world, but it cannot be applied to the non-natural. Of course, no one denies that. However, the non-natualists cannot substantiate that there is “anything else”. So why should anyone need an “alternate” method, if there is nothing to apply to?

Now, all this is nice. No naturalist would worry about the assumed non-natural (I certainly would not), if the non-naturalists would not wish to export their private beliefs into the public arena. If they would not wish to make us to conform to their world-view, if they would not be adamant of having a legal system which is based upon their unsubstantiated views. This is the problem. As I have seen on a good bumper-sticker: “Against abortion? Then don’t have one!”. That is all. Let’s all live in peace, mutual respect and let’s not try to force the other side to conform to our private world-view. Live and let live should be our motto. Then we can engage in mutually interesting conversations, maybe even learn from each other.

 

[Sair]

Looks like we already have a problem of mutual understanding. What do you mean by “rationalist”? Naturalist seems simple: “someone who considers the natural world as an existential primary” - and yes, I do belong to that category.

Metaphysics is a fun game, to be entertained on long evenings when there is nothing else to do. We are all aware of the existence of the natural world. We are aware that it has certain characteristics, it exhibits order - which should not confused with design. Epistemology, on the other hand, goes down to the nitty-gritty details. Epistemology is the important part of philosophy, not metaphysics.

Non-naturalists assert that the basis of existence is not-natural. There is no physical evidence that it is so. Of course there cannot be physical evidence, since that assumed basis is not physical. But evidence cannot be restricted to physical evidence. In mathematics there are two kinds of proofs, constructive and existential. If you are not familiar with these terms, I will be happy to explain. Maybe there is an existential proof for the non-natural, something that cannot p(name removed by moderator)oint “what” it is, but can logically prove that there must be “something”.

Is there a purely logical proof for a non-natural basis? I have never seen one - and I think I have seen them all. All the purported “proofs” are based on logically unsound premises (not logically incorrect, but unsound). Mostly they are based on the fallacy of composition - they assume that certain characteristics of the natural existence (causation, etc.) are also applicable to the whole universe. Mind you, I am not saying that this is not the case, rather that such a generalization cannot be assumed, it must be proven. Many others are simply nonsensical, for example the assumptions that certain charecteristics of the natural world physically require a non-natural explanation (consciousness comes to mind as an example, or even “love” or “beauty”). These all belong to the God-of-gaps type of reasoning - totally without merit. Just because today we do not have an exact explanation for some aspects of natural existence it is not a sufficient reason to assume that such an explanation is impossible. Our track record in explaining the “mysterious” parts of natural existence is a very good indication that we shall succeed in this regard.

Naturalists do not deny the existence of the non-natural because they feel “threatened”, or because they wish to conduct an “immoral life” - I have seen these abound. Strangely, some believers openly admitted on these forums that they only conform to certain moral standards, because they are afraid of a post-life retribution. None of these are meritable assumptions. Naturalists have their stance, because they see no evidence for anything else. No physical evidence, no logical proof either.

About epistemology. There is one proven method to obtain knowledge about the natural reality - and that is the scientific method of observation, hypothesis forming, prediction and verification. This method works. Non-naturalists assert that this is fine for the natural world, but it cannot be applied to the non-natural. Of course, no one denies that. However, the non-natualists cannot substantiate that there is “anything else”. So why should anyone need an “alternate” method, if there is nothing to apply to?

Now, all this is nice. No naturalist would worry about the assumed non-natural (I certainly would not), if the non-naturalists would not wish to export their private beliefs into the public arena. If they would not wish to make us to conform to their world-view, if they would not be adamant of having a legal system which is based upon their unsubstantiated views. This is the problem. As I have seen on a good bumper-sticker: “Against abortion? Then don’t have one!”. That is all. Let’s all live in peace, mutual respect and let’s not try to force the other side to conform to our private world-view. Live and let live should be our motto. Then we can engage in mutually interesting conversations, maybe even learn from each other.

Great post, R Daneel. You have explained the position I hold much better than I think I have so far done on these forums.

Cheers!

 

[James_S_Saint]

All science is based on logic, but what is logic based on? When a naturalist tells me that logic and mathematics are simply things we have to *assume *in order to know anything, this seems like a tremendous dodge from having to define metaphysical terms. Am I missing something here?

“Logic” is based on non-contradiction of concepts. So it isn’t really a dodge. If you accept the contradiction of concepts then you can’t say anything or think anything of any value. It would be much like Quantum Mysticalism, “Schrodingers cat is both alive and dead until we observe it.”

 

[Touchstone]

I can appreciate the sentiment in this thread. While Catholicism, and Christianity more broadly, has done much good in the world, it continues to be a force for evil as well in the world, and not in the “some of the followers are badly behaving humans” sense (that’s to be expected for any human institution), but rather that many of its core ideological tenets are wicked, unjust, perverse.

That leaves plenty of room for reasonably civil and thoughtful debate between the parties, however, and for all the criticism I have for the Catholic Church, they deserve credit for adopting a culture that is much more open, unafraid and serious in engaging on ideas than their Protestant co-religionists, particular those that dominate American culture, the conservative evanglicals and fundamentalists.

But I have to implicate myself as your enemy in a direct sense, unfortunately, given your statement 3) in your initial post: I do and will ridicule ridiculous beliefs. I am a libertarian, and an ardent defender of free speech and freedom of conscience, but that is not a commitment to lie or put my brain in neutral. Much of what gets accepted and embraced by religionists is patently ridiculous, and the way that those (think young earth creationists here) ideas persist and continue to spoil things is because of the immunity to appropriate criticism advanced for those ridiculous ideas; many ideas here on this forum, for example, merit nothing more than ridicule. Not ‘sent to the camps’ – this is free society – but ridicule for such brazen foolishness.

So, I’m your enemy then, as I won’t simply grant that all beliefs are “sacred” or somehow immune from ridicule (ridicule is a powerful, and peaceful social tool); some beliefs are patently ridiculous, and we are better off acknowledging that. Catholicism, for all it’s high views of philosophy, reason and systematic thinking, remains an apologist of the ridiculous in many cases. If you adopt enemies on the basis of who’s willing to ridicule beliefs, then the enmity between us must be real, and not mistaken, unfortunately. That’s a commitment to dishonesty and error that I can’t abide.

I would suggest, however, that the most significant “language barrier” here is the barrier between naturalist and rationalist understandings of the world. The rationalist will have a harder time defining things, of course, because the rationalist realizes he is dealing with metaphysics, and metaphysical definition is a minefield (to put it mildly).

Naturalism is as thoroughly metaphysical in its grounding as as rationalism. The reason supernatural definitions are more problematic is precisely because they are metaphysically dubious, intractable. Rationalism, for example, has far fewer challenges on a naturalist rendering in this area than a supernaturalist one.

But the naturalist must walk through that minefield, too, at some point, if he is to justify his ideas about the world. All science is based on logic, but what is logic based on?

This is incorrect. “All science” is NOT based on logic. Logic is just a tool, an extraordinary powerful, necessary tool, but just a tool. Science is a research program, a competing set of models, and in science the “illogic” of models that seemingly confound our logic but prevail empirically and predictively win out every time. Evidence and observation trump “logic” in science, and I put “logic” in scare quotes there to indicate that the evidence and emerging models often lead to an improved, underlying logic, what we think is “logical” is really just ignorant intuition.

When a naturalist tells me that logic and mathematics are simply things we have to *assume *in order to know anything, this seems like a tremendous dodge from having to define metaphysical terms. Am I missing something here?

It’s not a dodge, anymore than assuming linguistic capabilities as transcendental to communicating in English. Would you call the assumption of one’s language faculties a dodge as the predicate for posting this or reading this post.

We have meta-representational brains. So we can fashion concepts and models as tools in any of innumerable ways. Logic, math, and analytic/objective criticism are tools we’ve found to be enormously useful, and in many cases necessary, for producing knowledge.

I agree that we have to assume some things to ground any system; we put out concepts out as hypothesis (underpinnings); but aren’t we assuming, then, that the concepts are true? And if they are true, then “truth” is not simply a state of events in the world (because a necessary truth is hardly “in the world”). How does the naturalist define “truth”, then?

That which corresponds to the actual state of affairs in the extramental world. Experience and observation are the arbiters of that correspondence. Hypotheses are taken on as provisionally true, and accepted or discarded in relation to their performance against real world tests.

Now, I don’t know if you’re a naturalist, R Daneel, so maybe the question doesn’t apply to you. But are there naturalists out there who will enlighten me? I ask, not because I think naturalism is wrong, but because I simply want to understand.

Conceptually, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s really just a mind-bender for those that have an insuperable faith in their own intuitions, and cannot loosen their grip on those to consider models and constructs that overturn their cherished intuitions. Once one has a little control over the white knuckle death grip on “what I just know”, enlightenment can happen. Naturalism is also a challenge because it demands the intellectual rigor of dealing with unkowns as unknowns. Since there’s no magic or superstitious agents to appeal to, truth is necessarily incomplete, proximal, non-ultimate.

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

While Catholicism, and Christianity more broadly, has done much good in the world, it continues to be a force for evil as well in the world, and not in the “some of the followers are badly behaving humans” sense (that’s to be expected for any human institution), but rather that many of its core ideological tenets are wicked, unjust, perverse.

I’d like to hear more on that assertion on some thread.

 

[Touchstone]

I’d like to hear more on that assertion on some thread.

Oh it’s the usual suspects, nothing new there – anti-homoseuxal, anti-contraception, irrational/unjust on pro-life issues, part of the problem in fighting AIDs in Africa (and elsewhere) rather than the solution, etc. These are positions people of conscience should oppose strongly, and these are not “bad priests doing bad things because they are sinners” – that’s a terrible circumstance indeed but not intrinsic to the faith – but moral failings, pursued with the massive weight of such a large institutions, that go right down to the core of scripture and/or ancient (barbaric) traditions.

-TS

(P.S. I’m a pro-life advocate, strongly opposed to abortion after 14 weeks (or some safety period before the cerebral cortex lights up, and Catholic dogma – the irrational, unsupportable idea that a zygote is a fully vested human in terms of claims and capabilities to the legal protections of personhood is a despairing position for the cause. It thwarts the actual protection and defense of human persons, and causes over-compensation, the legalization of murder, just for the Catholic indulgence of their dogma. They aren’t pro-life for its own sake, but pro-life in service to Catholic dogma, meaning that real, pragmatic protections of human life can’t work, in large part because of Catholic “all or nothing” dogmatic stances on such an important issue.

Maybe that one is thread worthy, but I add that lest you think my “usual suspect” there was somehow favoring any and all abortions. Catholics, due to their dogma, are a highly problematic friend of the fetus, and really no friend at all… more “righteous pose striking” while defeating the very goal they claim to pursue.)

 

[James_S_Saint]

Oh it’s the usual suspects, nothing new there – anti-homoseuxal, anti-contraception, irrational/unjust on pro-life issues, part of the problem in fighting AIDs in Africa (and elsewhere) rather than the solution, etc. These are positions people of conscience should oppose strongly, and these are not “bad priests doing bad things because they are sinners” – that’s a terrible circumstance indeed but not intrinsic to the faith – but moral failings, pursued with the massive weight of such a large institutions, that go right down to the core of scripture and/or ancient (barbaric) traditions.

-TS

(P.S. I’m a pro-life advocate, strongly opposed to abortion after 14 weeks (or some safety period before the cerebral cortex lights up, and Catholic dogma – the irrational, unsupportable idea that a zygote is a fully vested human in terms of claims and capabilities to the legal protections of personhood is a despairing position for the cause. It thwarts the actual protection and defense of human persons, and causes over-compensation, the legalization of murder, just for the Catholic indulgence of their dogma. They aren’t pro-life for its own sake, but pro-life in service to Catholic dogma, meaning that real, pragmatic protections of human life can’t work, in large part because of Catholic “all or nothing” dogmatic stances on such an important issue.

Maybe that one is thread worthy, but I add that lest you think my “usual suspect” there was somehow favoring any and all abortions. Catholics, due to their dogma, are a highly problematic friend of the fetus, and really no friend at all… more “righteous pose striking” while defeating the very goal they claim to pursue.)

I started a thread for this topic so as to not derail this one, but so far, all you have mentioned is about Christendom, not Jesus’ tenets.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Looks like we already have a problem of mutual understanding. What do you mean by “rationalist”? Naturalist seems simple: “someone who considers the natural world as an existential primary” - and yes, I do belong to that category.

By rationalist, I just mean someone who believes that certain things can be known without being observed or (a posteriori) inferred.

We are all aware of the existence of the natural world. We are aware that it has certain characteristics, it exhibits order - which should not confused with design. Epistemology, on the other hand, goes down to the nitty-gritty details. Epistemology is the important part of philosophy, not metaphysics.

Well, whether we take a naturalist view or a theistic view, it’s pretty astonishing that nature – in the form of human beings – is able to do either epistemology or metaphysics. The fact that universe became aware of itself is a powerfully compelling fact! If it is not surprising enough that “that which is” exhibits order, it is very surprising indeed that “that which is” *notices *order.

But evidence cannot be restricted to physical evidence. In mathematics there are two kinds of proofs, constructive and existential. If you are not familiar with these terms, I will be happy to explain. Maybe there is an existential proof for the non-natural, something that cannot p(name removed by moderator)oint “what” it is, but can logically prove that there must be “something”.

Is there an existential proof for the “natural” world? You might say “There doesn’t need to be one, because it is so obvious”. But I would say the same thing about moral truths.

Mostly they are based on the fallacy of composition - they assume that certain characteristics of the natural existence (causation, etc.) are also applicable to the whole universe. Mind you, I am not saying that this is not the case, rather that such a generalization cannot be assumed, it must be proven.

Well, of course, it cannot be proven. Neither can it be proven that causation exists in the physical universe (see David Hume, if you have questions). This is where we come to rationalism. A principle such a *ex nihilo nihil fit *cannot be proven, only explicated, much like theorems in geometry. The analysis of the concepts (in this case, the concept of nothingness) leads to the conclusion.

Many others are simply nonsensical, for example the assumptions that certain charecteristics of the natural world physically require a non-natural explanation (consciousness comes to mind as an example, or even “love” or “beauty”). These all belong to the God-of-gaps type of reasoning - totally without merit. Just because today we do not have an exact explanation for some aspects of natural existence it is not a sufficient reason to assume that such an explanation is impossible.

I agree. I actually think the concept of “supernatural” is entirely useless. It would be more accurate to say that religious explanations are about “metanature”, the nature of nature itself. In that sense, I cannot criticize a person who says we can do without them; of course, we can. This is a matter of levels of causation. Personally, I never try and convince people that Christianity is *the *rational position, but rather that it is *a *rational position. When a marionette moves, the explanation that the strings changed position is true, but unenlightening. A person like myself wants to know why the strings changed position – whether this is simply a physical process, or that and something more.

Strangely, some believers openly admitted on these forums that they only conform to certain moral standards, because they are afraid of a post-life retribution.

That is a fact of human psychology. Most people who are moral are moral out of fear of punishment or lack of antisocial impulses. Neither of these are praiseworthy, but – as Aristotle says – habit always precedes virtue.

None of these are meritable assumptions. Naturalists have their stance, because they see no evidence for anything else. No physical evidence, no logical proof either.

Can we only be justified in believing things we can prove?

Now, all this is nice. No naturalist would worry about the assumed non-natural (I certainly would not), if the non-naturalists would not wish to export their private beliefs into the public arena. If they would not wish to make us to conform to their world-view, if they would not be adamant of having a legal system which is based upon their unsubstantiated views. This is the problem.

Well, I agree that we shouldn’t force our personal views upon others, but certainly the government is quite a different issue. In a democracy, private views, of any kind, are public. Should we restrict gay people for legislating against discrimination? If not, how can we restrict Christians from espousing their views in the public arena? You seem to have a problem with freedom of speech here, not Christianity.

To be clear, take “teaching religion in a science class”, for example. I agree, by the way, that evolution need not be supplemented by equal time for creationism, which is utterly unscientific. But the problem here is that public schools are the arm of the government. Lawmakers can make students study gum chewing, if they like – the schools are provided for free. Who else but the elected officials of the people should designate what the people pay for?

Live and let live should be our motto. Then we can engage in mutually interesting conversations, maybe even learn from each other.

Nice talking with you.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

(P.S. I’m a pro-life advocate, strongly opposed to abortion after 14 weeks (or some safety period before the cerebral cortex lights up, and Catholic dogma – the irrational, unsupportable idea that a zygote is a fully vested human in terms of claims and capabilities to the legal protections of personhood is a despairing position for the cause. It thwarts the actual protection and defense of human persons, and causes over-compensation, the legalization of murder, just for the Catholic indulgence of their dogma. They aren’t pro-life for its own sake, but pro-life in service to Catholic dogma, meaning that real, pragmatic protections of human life can’t work, in large part because of Catholic “all or nothing” dogmatic stances on such an important issue.

Maybe that one is thread worthy, but I add that lest you think my “usual suspect” there was somehow favoring any and all abortions. Catholics, due to their dogma, are a highly problematic friend of the fetus, and really no friend at all… more “righteous pose striking” while defeating the very goal they claim to pursue.)

Well, I agree that certain abortions are inhumane, but that’s not the only reason why abortion is wrong. Your assumption that my position is “righteous pose-striking” is rather presumptuous. Some Catholics may consider a position justified because of dogma, but most Catholics think their way through their position. The real problem in the abortion debate is a problem that the federal government has impeded the states from their prerogative to define their own interests.

 

[Touchstone]

I started a thread for this topic so as to not derail this one, but so far, all you have mentioned is about Christendom, not Jesus’ tenets.

Ok, didn’t see that before responding here. I added more development of the idea over there.

-TS

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I can appreciate the sentiment in this thread. While Catholicism, and Christianity more broadly, has done much good in the world, it continues to be a force for evil as well in the world, and not in the “some of the followers are badly behaving humans” sense (that’s to be expected for any human institution), but rather that many of its core ideological tenets are wicked, unjust, perverse.

Yes, of course. :coffeeread:

That leaves plenty of room for reasonably civil and thoughtful debate between the parties, however, and for all the criticism I have for the Catholic Church, they deserve credit for adopting a culture that is much more open, unafraid and serious in engaging on ideas than their Protestant co-religionists, particular those that dominate American culture, the conservative evanglicals and fundamentalists.

I particularly enjoy what a friend of mine calls “Bible deists”. Not a very “open” bunch, they.

But I have to implicate myself as your enemy in a direct sense, unfortunately, given your statement 3) in your initial post: I do and will ridicule ridiculous beliefs. I am a libertarian, and an ardent defender of free speech and freedom of conscience, but that is not a commitment to lie or put my brain in neutral. Much of what gets accepted and embraced by religionists is patently ridiculous, and the way that those (think young earth creationists here) ideas persist and continue to spoil things is because of the immunity to appropriate criticism advanced for those ridiculous ideas; many ideas here on this forum, for example, merit nothing more than ridicule. Not ‘sent to the camps’ – this is free society – but ridicule for such brazen foolishness.

Ah, but you are not ridiculing them for their beliefs, now, are you? You’re ridiculing them, unless I am mistaken, for their methods of coming to beliefs. I would agree that these methods can be quite ridiculous. That is, if someone simply told you they believed the “young earth” hypothesis, I certainly hope you would not commence in ridicule, *only when they seek to defend *their hypothesis empirically.

Catholicism, for all it’s high views of philosophy, reason and systematic thinking, remains an apologist of the ridiculous in many cases.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” - 1 Cor.

This is incorrect. “All science” is NOT based on logic. Logic is just a tool, an extraordinary powerful, necessary tool, but just a tool. Science is a research program, a competing set of models, and in science the “illogic” of models that seemingly confound our logic but prevail empirically and predictively win out every time. Evidence and observation trump “logic” in science, and I put “logic” in scare quotes there to indicate that the evidence and emerging models often lead to an improved, underlying logic, what we think is “logical” is really just ignorant intuition.

The perfect theory entails the phenomenon; that’s modus ponens. The exceptional observation proves the theory false; that’s modus tollens. Logic is just the way we think, but how do we know that the way that we think is accurate?

It’s not a dodge, anymore than assuming linguistic capabilities as transcendental to communicating in English. Would you call the assumption of one’s language faculties a dodge as the predicate for posting this or reading this post.

I would say that, *if *we are to be able to say things that are true, then this raises almost insuperable metaphysical problems. But, of course, we can hardly assume that everything we say is false. So we must consider the problems, then.

That which corresponds to the actual state of affairs in the extramental world. Experience and observation are the arbiters of that correspondence.

But this excludes the content of thoughts from your ontology, then (“Bob is thinking of a tomato”) – surely you didn’t mean to do that? Nor does it include logical laws. What if I were to start reasoning like the following…?

If A, then B.
B.
Therefore, A.

This is false (invalid), but not because it fails to correspond to states of affairs in the extramental world. Are laws of logic neither true nor false, on your view?

Naturalism is also a challenge because it demands the intellectual rigor of dealing with unkowns as unknowns. Since there’s no magic or superstitious agents to appeal to, truth is necessarily incomplete, proximal, non-ultimate.

Yes, well, so does non-magical theism. It is illegitimate to, whenever you come to a philosophical problem, invoke God’s omnipotence as the solution. You won’t find serious Christian philosophers doing so.

 

[Touchstone]

By rationalist, I just mean someone who believes that certain things can be known without being observed or (a posteriori) inferred.

Well, whether we take a naturalist view or a theistic view, it’s pretty astonishing that nature – in the form of human beings – is able to do either epistemology or metaphysics. The fact that universe became aware of itself is a powerfully compelling fact! If it is not surprising enough that “that which is” exhibits order, it is very surprising indeed that “that which is” *notices *order.

I do have a similar intiution, I guess. The “I must be disembodied in some sense becuase I can’t apprehend the embodiment of my mind or fathom the origin of such a setup” idea is a natural [sic] one, I’ll grant.

But someone just yesterday was explaining their shock and amazement to me about the power of “Turing Machines”. I won’t bore you with computer details here, but a Turing Machine is a conceptually simple model of a device that is theoretically capable of unimaginably complex and sophisticated (and diverse) computational tasks. It’s a generalized model of computation, meaning it’s amenable to new and unanticipated applications.

The human mind, due to the remarkable development of its meta-representational cognitive faculties, is something similar, capable in a general way. It can point its focus and processing at abstractions and all sorts of unanticipated (er, undemanded by evolution) subjects and inquiries.

Once you have meta-representational cognition, though, none of this is really remarkable, but rather just inevitable, in the same way a Turing-complete language would inevitably be used to solve all sorts of interesting, and (by Turing) unanticipated problems.

Is there an existential proof for the “natural” world? You might say “There doesn’t need to be one, because it is so obvious”. But I would say the same thing about moral truths.

The natural world is self-evident, in the most overwhelming sense of “self-evidence”. Moral truths are not self-evident, and are quite something other than self-evident. The more we learn – the hard way, and through grueling, tedious trial and error and testing – the more evidence accumulates that humans do have an “innate moral grammar” that is “designed” into them by evolutionary processes. These are “moral truths” in a natural sense; young children get upset at unfairness without apparently need to learn the concept through language or teaching. Give all the other kids but them a cookie, but leave this one child out, and he will elict a “moral truth” of human nature: you unfair me!

This innate grammar is then self-evident in the sense it is part of our physiology, but it’s quite general and emotional, as opposed to being proposition or principled. That doesn’t make it any less a fact of reality, but it does discredit the idea that anything beyond the most general propositions are self-evident as moral truths. We can observe that ‘living things wish to remain alive’, generally, and that humans are no exception. But we cannot recognize something like “abortion is wrong” as self-evident, or that stem-cell research is unethical; those may be good moral principles to arrive at and apply, but they are not self-evident truths, any more than “all objects are made of atoms” is in terms of apprehending the natural world around us.

Well, of course, it cannot be proven. Neither can it be proven that causation exists in the physical universe (see David Hume, if you have questions). This is where we come to rationalism. A principle such a *ex nihilo nihil fit *cannot be proven, only explicated, much like theorems in geometry. The analysis of the concepts (in this case, the concept of nothingness) leads to the conclusion.

These are both inferior standards – “proof” is a fiction, an unachievable standard, and logic-as-intuition is detached from accountability to the real word. Ex nihilo nihil fit is a classic case of ignorance on the part of man. We have no idea if that applies or not, and are spectacularly mistaken to suppose that our local, physical observations necessarily map to some “metaphysical truth” that entails that.

Instead, we embrace models, and we test them, and judge them by our experience with them to assess their utility and value. We don’t give a whit for Hume’s point that we can’t know the sun will come up tomorrow morning; we totally understand and approve of the technical argument. But the model of a persisting chain of sunrises, and the physics behind that is what works best, all comers considered. The “illogic” of it is pure sophistry if posed as some kind of barrier to accepting the best model.

Rationalism apart from (and unaccountable to) empiricism is a means of self-deception. It’s a crucial force multiplier for the empiricist, but once it supposes itself independent of or superior to empirical accountability, it’s just mental diddling, something detached from the real world.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

I agree. I actually think the concept of “supernatural” is entirely useless. It would be more accurate to say that religious explanations are about “metanature”, the nature of nature itself. In that sense, I cannot criticize a person who says we can do without them; of course, we can. This is a matter of levels of causation. Personally, I never try and convince people that Christianity is *the *rational position, but rather that it is *a *rational position. When a marionette moves, the explanation that the strings changed position is true, but unenlightening. A person like myself wants to know why the strings changed position – whether this is simply a physical process, or that and something more.

OK, fair enough. But that want is a temptation to error all its own, and a strong one. It begs you to indulge in confirmation bias, to fall in love with fluffy explanations that are as appealing to you emotionally and pyschologically as they are fatuous as a matter of reasoning and disciplined thinking. This is where the intellectual courage to accept unkowns as unknowns is demanded of the mind, and where accepting facile “god of the gap” answers impedes the mind from the quest for actual answers on that question some day.

That is a fact of human psychology. Most people who are moral are moral out of fear of punishment or lack of antisocial impulses. Neither of these are praiseworthy, but – as Aristotle says – habit always precedes virtue.

Can we only be justified in believing things we can prove?

No, because you can’t prove nothin’. That’s a red herring this idea of ‘proof’. What we can be justified in believing are those things that are justified. That is, justification is the measure of reasonable embrace for an idea. Many ideas are justified in an ‘iffy’ way – there’s reasonable evidence to suppose X, or something like it, is the case, but it’s a bit shaky, and would not support high confidence levels, or commitments we are not prepared to alter or revise easily. So we embrace on that basis – tentatively, with much more caution and less conviction than other ideas which are much more thoroughly justified and established. It’s not a “yes|no” question, but a kind of scalar, where our confidence gets plotted on a spectrum, from “reject” to “embrace with high confidence”.

Well, I agree that we shouldn’t force our personal views upon others, but certainly the government is quite a different issue. In a democracy, private views, of any kind, are public. Should we restrict gay people for legislating against discrimination? If not, how can we restrict Christians from espousing their views in the public arena? You seem to have a problem with freedom of speech here, not Christianity.

No, free speech is as close to a “sacred” thing as I know of. That’s not the problem, and is in fact how peaceful, civil societies promote the good, and ridicule and shame the bad, which is why it’s so important to me to reserve the right to behave as what you call your “enemy”; ridicule and social stigmas through free speech are how we reform as a free society without bloodshed. Catholics, unfortunately, are the modern “racists” of yore, tied to a cruel and irrational demonization of homosexuality. We don’t want violence or any kind of physical retribution.

What should happen is that anti-homosexuals, like the racists of several decades ago, should just be called out for the offense to decent, moral society that they are. Catholics should be villified as social pariahs to the extent they embrace and promote their demonization of homosexuality, just in the way a storm of condemnation awaits the person who says a black man should not vote because his skin is black nowadays.

Free speech is how we grow without spilling blood. The bad guys get painted as such, and they either reform, go away, or die out, leaving a new generation that hopefully does better than the last.

To be clear, take “teaching religion in a science class”, for example. I agree, by the way, that evolution need not be supplemented by equal time for creationism, which is utterly unscientific. But the problem here is that public schools are the arm of the government. Lawmakers can make students study gum chewing, if they like – the schools are provided for free. Who else but the elected officials of the people should designate what the people pay for?

No one else! That’s the best (if imperfect) model we have. But the “will of the majority” is a tyranny in its own right, if its not held in check by a constitutional framework that defends the liberty and rights and EQUALITY of that individual against the majority. It doesn’t matter what Catholic or any other religious dogma says, there’s no god or dogma in a free society that can justly impose such inequalities as has been visited on blacks, women, homosexuals and other cultural undesirables just by virtue of majority consensus. That’s how slavery survived as long as it did in this country – the cruel tyranny of the majority at the expense of individual rights and equality under the law.

Nice talking with you.

Same here! It’s a pity such enmity is forced between us by dogma!

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Well, I agree that certain abortions are inhumane, but that’s not the only reason why abortion is wrong. Your assumption that my position is “righteous pose-striking” is rather presumptuous. Some Catholics may consider a position justified because of dogma, but most Catholics think their way through their position. The real problem in the abortion debate is a problem that the federal government has impeded the states from their prerogative to define their own interests.

Well, I’m always open to new ideas. I’ve encountered lots of arguments for the “full personhood” (not “full humanity”, that’s a different concept) of the zygote, but none that don’t stand on religious dogma. It’s hard to impute the salient features of personhood to a zygote in natural, objective terms, after all. Supernatural explanations (the “endowment of the soul”) must be invoked, and thereby is the real cause of the fetus harmed. With advocates like that… well, the results speak for themselves.

That’s all I meant by religious poses, there. Catholics, just like Protestants, would rather feel “Godly” than effective in pursuing the cause of human rights of the fetus that does meet objective, reasonable criteria for personhood, and the protections that attend it. By injecting irrational dogma, the Catholic position “feels good” and “strikes a pious pose”, but it ultimately condemns more real human persons to die an unjust death as the bloody price for its religious indulgences. It feels good, I know – I’ve been there as a Christian – to take an extreme position for God, but here, it comes at the most profound cost to the most innocent and unprotected among us.

-TS

 

[R_Daneel]

By rationalist, I just mean someone who believes that certain things can be known without being observed or (a posteriori) inferred.

I am not sure I understand. Naturalists accept that there are basic principles that are held without a formal proof. For example, the existence of the external universe, or the reliability of our senses. However, these basic principles are validated by a-posteriori observations. I see ideas on these boards which are definitely alien to my internal thinking. This is an a-posteriori affirmation that these ideas are proposed by entities who are distinct from “me”. Without an a-poteriori observation they would simply “hang” in the air.

Well, whether we take a naturalist view or a theistic view, it’s pretty astonishing that nature – in the form of human beings – is able to do either epistemology or metaphysics. The fact that universe became aware of itself is a powerfully compelling fact! If it is not surprising enough that “that which is” exhibits order, it is very surprising indeed that “that which is” *notices *order.

Again, I am confused. Why is there any “surprise” here? We must survive in this natural world, and if we draw incorrect inferences from our observations, then we die.

Is there an existential proof for the “natural” world? You might say “There doesn’t need to be one, because it is so obvious”. But I would say the same thing about moral truths.

The proof is our observations. We hear and see ideas which are alien to our thinking. The assumption that these alien thoughts, ideas are simply the product of our brain leads to the assumption to our own insanity, and that is something that no one can accept.

Well, of course, it cannot be proven. Neither can it be proven that causation exists in the physical universe (see David Hume, if you have questions). This is where we come to rationalism. A principle such a *ex nihilo nihil fit *cannot be proven, only explicated, much like theorems in geometry. The analysis of the concepts (in this case, the concept of nothingness) leads to the conclusion.

The principle of causation is based on observations. It is not an a-priori concept. As a matter of fact, observations in the mirco-world seem to contradict that causation is universal. But that was not my point. The “first cause” type of arguments are all based upon some kind of unproven assertions.

I agree. I actually think the concept of “supernatural” is entirely useless. It would be more accurate to say that religious explanations are about “metanature”, the nature of nature itself. In that sense, I cannot criticize a person who says we can do without them; of course, we can. This is a matter of levels of causation. Personally, I never try and convince people that Christianity is *the *rational position, but rather that it is *a *rational position. When a marionette moves, the explanation that the strings changed position is true, but unenlightening. A person like myself wants to know why the strings changed position – whether this is simply a physical process, or that and something more.

You mean: “is there a puppet master who manipulates the strings”? (to use your example). Certainly, that is a valid question. As long as we have no reason to assume that there is, we are not justified to assume that there is one.

Can we only be justified in believing things we can prove?

Prove, or substantiate or find evidence for… yes. Why should one hold true something that cannot be proven, for what there is no evidence, which cannot be substantiated? I have no problem to see such stance, but I cannot hold it reasonable. Someone may assert that he is really Napoleon, but that is neither here nor there.

Well, I agree that we shouldn’t force our personal views upon others, but certainly the government is quite a different issue. In a democracy, private views, of any kind, are public. Should we restrict gay people for legislating against discrimination? If not, how can we restrict Christians from espousing their views in the public arena? You seem to have a problem with freedom of speech here, not Christianity.

To express one’s views is a far cry from enacting legislations on their behalf. Much as I despise the view of white supremacists, I will support their rights to express their views, and I would fight their endeavors to enact legislations to put their views into practice. As for the rights of homosexuals, that is a different issue. Since they only wish equal acceptance, not the denigration of heterosexual couples, I see nothing wrong with their designated goals.

Indeed I support the believers to express their views that abortion (for example) is wrong, but I do not support to put their views into laws.

To be clear, take “teaching religion in a science class”, for example. I agree, by the way, that evolution need not be supplemented by equal time for creationism, which is utterly unscientific. But the problem here is that public schools are the arm of the government. Lawmakers can make students study gum chewing, if they like – the schools are provided for free. Who else but the elected officials of the people should designate what the people pay for?

This would lead to a wholly different discussion. My favorite definition of democracy is: “when two wolves and one sheep vote, what should be the dinner tonight”.

 

[Touchstone]

Ah, but you are not ridiculing them for their beliefs, now, are you? You’re ridiculing them, unless I am mistaken, for their methods of coming to beliefs. I would agree that these methods can be quite ridiculous. That is, if someone simply told you they believed the “young earth” hypothesis, I certainly hope you would not commence in ridicule, *only when they seek to defend *their hypothesis empirically.

I think that’s a fair (and possibly quite important) distinction. The ridicule is aimed, on my part, and the reckless and vain methods many among us help themselves to. And that includes many an atheist, just so we’re clear. But if a Christian (or an atheist) can’t be bothered to take their own ideas and beliefs seriously, I’m not about to put a halo on that – that deserves pointed, sustained riducule; I hate God and that’s why he doesn’t exist is as laughable and worthy of ridicule as “I just know all this was created by God”.

But you’re right, a belief is not ridiculous in its own right; what’s true may be mind-bendingly strange or even crazy (I recently tried to explain ‘spooky action at a distance’ to one of my older children, and quantum entanglement does invite a bit of an instinctual ridicule on first consideration!). What’s salient here is the method, and Caholicism, as “improved over some religions” as it may be at lower levels of the model, is as “methodically unserious” as all the rest, at the end of the day.

I do make a distinction between to different cases, though. I think it’s unsupportable to believe in the resurrection, for example, but I do NOT think that is ridiculous on its face. What is ridiculous, by comparison, is the young earth creationist denialism or anti-evolution denialism that goes much farther in its utter lack of serious or respect for the truth, toward CALLING BLACK WHITE. Denying the compeling evidence that IS there, rather than believing things happened that we just can’t see or support evidentially.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” - 1 Cor.

Ahh, more enmity fodder. This destroys the common ground of human reasoning, and justifies all manner of foolishness and vanity in the Christian mind. This is itself a form of wickedness, embracing this kind of claim. People who claim this, unfortunately, really are enemies, enemies of reason and positive interactions for human beings. This is right up there with the conceit that says “Jesus told me we’d be persecuted for the truth, so all this flak I’m getting just proves I’m on the right path”. That is a patently ridiculous rationalization, worthy of harsh ridicule.

The perfect theory entails the phenomenon; that’s modus ponens. The exceptional observation proves the theory false; that’s modus tollens. Logic is just the way we think, but how do we know that the way that we think is accurate?

We only can judge it by the jury of our experiences. What does your model predict and explain in a novel way? How does it fare over competing models, based on your experience? That is what we have to go on.

I would say that, *if *we are to be able to say things that are true, then this raises almost insuperable metaphysical problems. But, of course, we can hardly assume that everything we say is false. So we must consider the problems, then.

There’s always analytical knowledge available. 2+2=4 is a true statement BY DEFINITION. It tells us nothing about the real world, but we do always have true statements available to us, because we can define tautologies at will.

Even so, ‘true’ in a natural sense is always just a expression of our confidence, confidence which may be relative (more confidence in X than in *Y, *for example), and as such doesn’t have anything ‘cosmic’ or absolute about it. That Abraham Lincoln was a US President is a statement we can likely agree to, and with a fair amount of confidence. But such a statement isn’t ‘cosmically’ or ‘religiously’ true. It’s just the overwhelming verdict we come to from the available evidence.

-TS