Guaranteed To Destoy Atheism ~ Christian

[R. S. Martin]

Christian thinks he has brought about The Complete Destruction of Atheism. The essay is here. Commentary is here.

 

Maybe I don't know what atheism is but I read the essay and my lack of god belief is not shaken in the least.

[Dhampir]

From what little I read, this essay appears to state a faulty premise from the outset, and bases it's entire argument on that fallacy.

[Jedah]

Refutation is ironically in a small post that was written with no regards to the essay: http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p...p;postcount=331

 

 

His essay's mindless ramblings come down to saying that without God you have no basis for logic or an understanding of reality. Problem is, you need to use logic without God in order to come to the conclusion that God exists and that he is speaking to you in the first place. Retarded essay. Only worth reading for a few laughs.

 

Then there is the obvious problem that even if the argument did make sense, it would only make sense for a very limited crowd: Atheists who reject both God and the possibility of the supernatural. It does nothing to refute Spiritual Atheists, Deism, Buddhism, Islam, Paganism, ect. It's as if the writer thinks that the only alternative to atheism can be Xianity. This kind of bullshit has no place on a Christian apologetics site

 

...oh wait, Christian apologetics ARE nothing but bullshit...I guess it does belong then.

[Ouroboros]

I just glanced over it, but I get the feeling it's a form of presupposition. Nothing has a purpose, unless everything has a purpose. And since the atheist "worldview" can't provide a purpose for everything, then atheists can't provide purpose for anything, and also it makes theism and atheism as grounds for factual knowledge about the world rather than faith positions. It's made to sound like, we have only the two options of knowing there is a God or knowing there is not a God. The only true option is, even if he refuse that position, is to be unknowing about what exists "beyond" the universe. Besides, the naturalist position he states is very limited, it can incorporate a lot more than just "this universe," even for the atheist. And it doesn't account for pantheism as a third option, or any other religious system, it makes the assumption that atheism and theism are the only two viable positions. And furthermore, if he's right, well, doesn't that mean Islam or Judaism are the true religions, since they believe in only one god, and not three?

 

He says:

There is also no way we can independently verify our sense perceptions. We have no way to take our perception in one hand and independently compare it to part of the world in our other hand.

As an argument against "negationism," so my question is, can the theist? How does the theist independently verify their sense perceptions? Through some out of body experience, or through trust of their "internal" senses like visions, dreams, God speaking to their thoughts? What? He basically make the argument against theism just as strong, not only against atheism. He can't confirm his own subjective experiences through an outside objective force which then can transfer it's objectivity into the subjective person. We are always subjective observers of life, nature, and even spiritual experiences. So his argument is valid against his own position. (I think...)

 

Or, I'm thinking this way. Atheism is based on that we know that we can't have an objective position to truth. We can admit that absolute truth can exist, but we know that we as subjective individuals can't really know what is an absolute or objective truth. And since we admit this, and know this, then we admits to know something for sure, i.e. absolutely, and we break our own statement of not knowing any absolute truths. So maybe the answer is, we can know some absolute truths, but they're very limited? We can know that our own knowledge is very limited and subjective, and hence any universal truth have to be looked at with very careful eyes before accepted as to a high degree reliable truth. But the thing is, this is valid also for the theist. They can't just believe everything, but have to scrutinize and analyze just as much as anyone else. Hence they're bound to be using natural laws and insights to understand their God. As an atheist, we can know this, but the theist deny this and live in a delusion that they can know a supernatural, spiritual being, who exists outside our space-time! How can they claim to know this, unless they have a direct experience of being in that dimension? (just thoughts... I don't know if it make sense or not.)

[Legion]

Ruby, Dhampir, Jedah, and Hans what this guy calls metaphysics I know by the term epistemology. I suspect there may be a few accurate points he has made, but his conclusions seem odd to me.

 

I don’t subscribe to solipsism, but of course people are free to adopt it. However I do recognize that as dim as my awareness is of my own self, I am can be more certain of those things which comprise my self than I can be of anything else (e.g. my emotions, thoughts, will, imagination etc.). But I also subscribe to the notion that there is a world external to me. And if one wishes to call this an article of faith then that doesn’t bother me.

 

In an attempt to take skepticism to its most extreme Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum.” By “cogito” I think he meant all the activities and attributes of his own mind. It seems to me that a next thing to ask is… Why mind? Or what entails the mind? Or as the Buddhists might put it… What are the dependent originations of the mind?

[Ouroboros]

I probably will add thoughts about this one as they come to me, but not saying that my counter arguments are completely valid or solid.

 

He brings up an objection to his argument:

Objection 1— “You are in the same boat as I am, you can't justify sense perception from your theory of reality either!

 

Answer— First, the assertion that I can’t justify sense perception from my theory of reality is unproven, before you can make that assertion you have to provide the argument for it.

 

Second, it wouldn’t matter if I was in the same boat as you. That does not further or change your position. Regardless of who is in the boat with you, you still remain in the boat. Your position has not changed.

 

This objection is known as “Tu Quoque,” or the “You too! fallacy.” It is a fallacious means of reasoning. It falls under the category of “fallacies of relevance “ for the reason I mention above.

And that's what I did in my earlier argument, I claim that he's in the same boat. But why is that irrelevant? What he say is that theism is true, because he see problems with atheism, but if the same problems are inflicted upon theism, then he can't just say theism is true because atheism has these problems. If I illustrate it with the used car salesman:

 

You go to a car shop to buy a car. The salesman give you only two options, either buy car A, or car B. He's telling you he will convince you that car B is the right choice. He then starts pointing out all the problems with car A. It's rusty, it's old, got scratches, a flat tire, broken windshield, and color falling off. Hence, he says, car B is the better choice. You buy the car, and you're about to drive off the parking lot, but the car won't start because car B got no engine, and when you start to look closer car B got several of the same problems car A had, but the sales guy had the scratches painted over, and the flat tire doesn't look flat, because the car is raised on some bricks. The "you too" fallacy is not a fallacy in this case, both cars have problems they share, and to only point to one of the cars and those shared problems, doesn't automatically remove those problems magically from the other car.

 

In other words, his refutation of the proposes objection, is not strong enough, he just wipe it away with, "oh, that objection is a fallacy, so it's not valid." And that is not good enough, he has to provide an argument why Theism provide answers for these problems he saw in Atheism. And nowhere in his essay does he even being to analyze Theism with the same looking-glass.

[Ouroboros]

I'm starting to dissect the parts of the argument, and I'm thinking about this paragraph:

Let’s begin our analysis with negationism. Since everything is this view is illusion, it would also be true that we are just illusions and so are our perceptions. There would be nothing really to perceive and no one existing to perceive it. So, I think it is quite clear that if this theory of reality is true, there can be no justification for our sense perception. In fact, not only are the elements of this theory insufficient to justify the our sense perceptions, this theory completely denies the possibility sense perception.

 

So, if negationism is true, then our sense perception, science and empiricism are all unjustified and indeed, just illusion.

It's his argument against what he call "negationism." And I wonder, what does he mean with that the position has to be justified or that it is unjustified? I think there are some disconnect between what the term is defined as, and the conclusion. Even if everything is an illusion, it doesn't mean the our sense, even if they're lying about how the world really looks like, that they can "lie" about reality in a consistent way. The justification is based on if the term can be used consistently and repeatedly, not if it is in some objective way just don't add up for someone who wants everything to be absolute. I'm not sure if I can explain my thought here well enough.

 

Lets do an illustration again:

 

A person is placed in a box and live his whole life in an illusion what life outside the box really is. He study the contents of the box from inside, and he live his whole life learning about the box--from inside. The "real" world is outside, and he will never know about it, and he will never be able to analyze or experience it. Does this mean that his experience does not exist? Does it mean that he can not analyze and learn how the box works and operates from inside? The illusion of reality kind of stops at the point of our experience. Our experience is true, but not necessarily the interpretation of it. The guy in the box (Jack) can't interpret the existence of the box or how it is operated from the outside, unless he could go there and be part of the objective view of the box. He can't, so he will never have that experience. So he can't interpret the facts about the inside to understand how the outside operates. In other words, the word we live in can be an illusion, but it doesn't negate the justification of experience or gathering knowledge of the same experiences. It does however share the same problems as a person who claims to "know" the outside. To make the assumption that the box is green on the outside doesn't remove the fact that neither person really know this for a fact. The other person who claims the box is green on the outside, Bob, doesn't automatically "win" the argument because he thinks he knows something about the objective "truth" of the box. He could be right, but he could also be wrong. The Complete-and-utter-destruction argument (CUD) is really attacking the problem of us knowing absolute, objective, truth, and claiming that anyone who believe this to be true, must be wrong, and those who believe otherwise is right. And I agree with that, however, that doesn't include God as the answer to the problem. You can be an atheist and hold the position that we can know things about our experience, and there are absolute truths, but most of the absolute truths are unreachable for us, since we are not the God standing on the outside.

 

Any thoughts so far?

[R. S. Martin]

Lots and lots of thoughts, Hans. You make so much sense. I'm inserting this after writing the rest. It turned into a kind of paper or whatever, including bits and pieces from a book I've been reading and experiences I've had with various people on Craig's forums. I think it all ties together to explain how I agree with your thoughts and why that essay is so poorly written yet so highly praised by the students' peers.

 

Ever heard of the Law of the Excluded Middle? I think that is what Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek call it in their book I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. After reading the explanation for what they mean by the Law of the Excluded Middle, I conclude that this is a fancy way to describe black and white thinking. God either exists or he doesn't. You can't have it both ways. They then go on and introduce a "Road Runner" argument. Example: Tortoise (or some slow animal) and fox (or some fast-running carnivor) take a race. Tortoise leads race to edge of cliff and stops. The fast animal races over edge of cliff and crashes to valley floor.

 

Take this to the level of the Christian apologist and atheist professor. He provides a story. They go out for dinner. Let's see. I think a student had invited the Christian to speak at his/her class, and after the class the student, Christian, and prof went out for dinner. Christian used "Road Runner" trick to get atheist to "confess" that he uses just as much faith as Christians do.

 

I forget the details but by combining the Law of the Excluded Middle and Road Runner trick, he can make short work of a lot of complicated theoretical abstract thinking. Then we end up with simplistic crap like that student posted. It keeps the world nice and simple, within the control of the fundy's world view so that he knows what atheists think and feel. He can then destroy them and control them. So he thinks.

 

Here's the conversation that supposedly happened at the dinner that the author and student had with the atheist professor I mentioned above:

 

"If everything is material," I asked him, "then what is a scientific theory? After all, the theory about everything being material isn't material. It's not made out of molecules."

 

Without a moment's hesitation he quipped, "A theory is magic."

 

"Magic?" I repeated, not really believing what I was hearing. "What's your basis for saying that?"

 

"Faith," he quickly replied.

 

"Faith in magic?" I thought to myself. "I can't believe what I'm hearing! If faith in magic is the best the materialists have to offer, then I don't have enough faith to be a materialist!" (p. 78)

 

I remember my father telling similar stories about the stupid atheist professor. Now that I'm on the "other side of the fence," I can see just how utterly stupid this is. The professor was making fun of the Christian but the Christian was too stupid to catch on. The prof was fed up with the religious god talk and just wanted to have his lunch in peace. The Christian thought he'd gotten a confession out of him by applying his "tricks." Confession on my part: That particular story may not have belonged to the road runner part of the book but I think it illustrates the principle as he meant it.

 

You also mention that he provides NO EXAMPLES. That is something I see throughout evangelical "scholarship." I've tried posting a couple time about problems with scholarship. My latest posting was Thinking Critically About Geisler and Turek's Concept of SURGE. Much earlier I had posted questions about Craig's scholarship in his book on Reasonable Faith. They absolutely disagree with the commonly accepted rules of scholarship that we are taught in mainstream academia, rules that have evolved over centuries of trial and error and that are still evolving. We use these rules because they work, and they make our work easier, more efficient whether we are serious students and scholars or casual lay persons looking something up. It is today such a highly developed system that people get specialized library degrees to work in libraries. Not even professors know all there is to know in libraries. They just know to ask the librarians for help. There are documents that only top library personnel have access to. Yet the evangelicals scoff, mock, and deride me when I raise the for such systematic documentation.

 

I have also seen how they cut and paste to get their so-called evidence to prove whatever point it is they want to prove. On Craig's forums there is a man whom I will call LF. His case regarded a blog entry written by a Christian Larry Taunton regarding an interview with Richard Dawkins. LF took various statements of Dawkins's out of context, and cut and pasted them together in such a way as to make the argument that Dawkins is indifferent to suffering. The statement of Dawkins with which he started was a parallel to what the Christian had said and neither had been serious.

 

Christian: What if the Muslim suicide bombers are right?

Dawkins: What is Hitler was right?

 

LF accepted that the Christian had not been serious but he insisted that Dawkins was serious; he "proved" this with Dawkins's own words. However, he cut and pasted words and twisted them out of context to make them say things they were never intended to say.

 

Final Conclusion: Atheists have no morals. Christians are good because they have god.

 

Another person and I were always clashing. He was so extremely hypocritical. Finally he said, "Let's try to get to the bottom of this and see if we can't get back to talking civily again." So I looked up some of the earliest thread where I had clashed. I knew the Christians had been the first to throw insults. I also knew that he was charging otherwise.

 

In the end, he provided a link to a post of his from July to which he claimed I had not responded. He said that in it he was trying to deal with issues of insults which I had inflicted on him. I looked it up. I also read the ten or twenty posts before it in the thread. I saw where our relationship had gone bad. He had insulted me and I had called him on it. He had then made what he apparently believed was a post to address the issues of my insults. Fact of the matter was that he was taking offense at being held responsible for his own actions. No apologies then or now.

 

My Point: It seems the label "Christian" gives them a free pass to do as they please to anyone carrying the label atheist. As LF treated Dawkins, so the son treated me. They cut and paste to make themselves and their religion and their god look good. They don't need to provide examples. All they need is the labels. Everything--literally EVERYTHING--rests in the authority of faith/labels. I can come to no other conclusion.

 

For this reason that student can delude himself into thinking he has destroyed atheism. In fact, older people such as Geisler and Turek use similar subheadings in their book. When you exclude all "middles" I suppose you can delude yourself to believe anything you want. One thing they have not yet been able to do is bring Christ back to rescue them from this "atheistic" world.

[Legion]

The Complete-and-utter-destruction argument (CUD) is really attacking the problem of us knowing absolute, objective, truth, and claiming that anyone who believe this to be true, must be wrong, and those who believe otherwise is right. And I agree with that, however, that doesn't include God as the answer to the problem. You can be an atheist and hold the position that we can know things about our experience, and there are absolute truths, but most of the absolute truths are unreachable for us, since we are not the God standing on the outside.

 

Any thoughts so far?

Hans I would probably entertain the idea that even the knowledge of our selves is subjective. But we know ourselves with an immediate and direct apprehension, unlike how we know our environment. And your last sentence here I would agree with but probably alter it to say, “You can be an atheist and hold the position that we can know things about our experience, and there are absolute truths, but most of the absolute truths are unreachable for us, since our experience is limited.”

 

And I might be able to argue that we never examine the external world directly but rather we examine our internal models of it. And our models are shaped by learning through experience.

[SWIM]

And if there is no justification for our sense perceptions, from an atheist view, then there can be no justification for empiricism or science from that view. That alone would destroy the image of the atheist we started with.

 

This is where I abandoned the article. To state that there is NO justification for science is pure stupidity. Science works, we have technology, computers etc etc. It needs no justification, since its result is proof of its existence.

[R. S. Martin]

And if there is no justification for our sense perceptions, from an atheist view, then there can be no justification for empiricism or science from that view. That alone would destroy the image of the atheist we started with.

 

This is where I abandoned the article. To state that there is NO justification for science is pure stupidity. Science works, we have technology, computers etc etc. It needs no justification, since its result is proof of its existence.

 

SWIM, good to see you again. It's been a while. I'm trying to figure out why they say this. They seem to believe the same as the rest of us when it comes to cause and effect. However, they believe that we don't believe in cause and effect. SOMEONE IS LYING. And I think it's people in high positions in Discovery Institute, etc. Matter of the fact is, I haven't got it all traced down and documented yet so I can't say for sure who says/believes what. What I have noticed is that in Geisler and Turek's book they talk about Law of Causality discovered by Francis Bacon in 1600s. I also noticed a discussion between a Craig person on his forums and a scientifically minded atheist on the Law of Causality. The atheist said there is no such law, if I remember correctly.

 

Well, all of us know about cause and effect but we don't talk about Law of Causality. Of course, I am so weak in philosophy and in science that I might be missing something here. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

[Ouroboros]

Ever heard of the Law of the Excluded Middle? I think that is what Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek call it in their book I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. After reading the explanation for what they mean by the Law of the Excluded Middle, I conclude that this is a fancy way to describe black and white thinking. God either exists or he doesn't. You can't have it both ways.

Yeah. And I find that argument lacking something, but it's hard to put my finger on it. One of the problems is: how do we define God? What do we mean with the word: "God"? If it means, the number one, well, then God exists in an abstract way. If we say God is an apple, and I'm eating an apple right now, then God exists as a real experience for me at this moment. The problem with a contrasting view like this and the excluded middle is that if we can't clearly define exactly the opposite positions, then we can't exclude any middle ground either. What is the middle point to exclude between east and west?

 

They then go on and introduce a "Road Runner" argument. Example: Tortoise (or some slow animal) and fox (or some fast-running carnivor) take a race. Tortoise leads race to edge of cliff and stops. The fast animal races over edge of cliff and crashes to valley floor.

 

Take this to the level of the Christian apologist and atheist professor. He provides a story. They go out for dinner. Let's see. I think a student had invited the Christian to speak at his/her class, and after the class the student, Christian, and prof went out for dinner. Christian used "Road Runner" trick to get atheist to "confess" that he uses just as much faith as Christians do.

 

I forget the details but by combining the Law of the Excluded Middle and Road Runner trick, he can make short work of a lot of complicated theoretical abstract thinking. Then we end up with simplistic crap like that student posted. It keeps the world nice and simple, within the control of the fundy's world view so that he knows what atheists think and feel. He can then destroy them and control them. So he thinks.

That's a pretty cool argument. When it comes to Presuppositional arguments, I'm actually a bit of a fan.

 

So the RR story is to declare, the real winner is the one who doesn't die?

 

What about the coyote? He was chasing the Road Runner, but when he saw the road runner fall to his death, he stopped quickly in his tracks, and he was safe... and not to say he came to the cliff two days before the turtle!

 

(I will continue reading your post and maybe add some comments. This is a far more interesting topic than Kalam! )

[Ouroboros]

Hans I would probably entertain the idea that even the knowledge of our selves is subjective. But we know ourselves with an immediate and direct apprehension, unlike how we know our environment. And your last sentence here I would agree with but probably alter it to say, “You can be an atheist and hold the position that we can know things about our experience, and there are absolute truths, but most of the absolute truths are unreachable for us, since our experience is limited.”

 

And I might be able to argue that we never examine the external world directly but rather we examine our internal models of it. And our models are shaped by learning through experience.

Yes, I agree. You got it bud.

 

Btw, the more I looked in the essay, the more I realize it's an older argument in new clothing. And for anyone who wants to know more about the original argument, search for Presuppositional apologetics, or Van Till. Actually, personally I respect this argument more than the ontological, moral, cosmological, or design arguments for God's existence. Because, when done right, it actually starts with declaring, "lets make an assumption..." It's honesty, and then they use logic as much as possible to argue the position. The other "proofs" make assumptions without making it clear, so they're dishonest. At least this one, you start of by knowing where you stand.

 

I think one essence of the argument--even if it doesn't clearly say it--is that human's can't know, experience, or claim any kind of truth, unless we also have to admit there must exist a supreme knowledge, objective narrator, and absolute truth. And it's a kind of, ... well, yes and no... answer to that one. At least for me.

[Ouroboros]

And if there is no justification for our sense perceptions, from an atheist view, then there can be no justification for empiricism or science from that view. That alone would destroy the image of the atheist we started with.

 

This is where I abandoned the article. To state that there is NO justification for science is pure stupidity. Science works, we have technology, computers etc etc. It needs no justification, since its result is proof of its existence.

Yeah, that's one of the problems I have with it too. I paints the atheist view as dark and impossible as much as he can, and from that (of course) he can make a contradiction which leads to an invalidation of that kind of atheist view. Could we say it's a straw-man? "Atheists must see the world, in the most extreme and vulgar view, and this vulgar view is wrong, hence atheism is wrong." And from that, the default "right" position is the only option they provided.

 

One problem the presupp apologists have is to establish 100,000 different comparisons. They have to compare Theism v Hinduism. Theism v Agnosticism. Theism v Paganism. Theism v. ...

 

And Van Till made it very clear that his presupp argument makes the assumption that the God he's talking about, is the God of the Bible. So that makes me wonder if not the Jewish God, or Allah, or any "false" version of Christianity can be the right one... it is leading to, the only true Theism that can be the "right" one is the Van Tillian God. And that really makes you wonder where it went wrong...

[Ouroboros]

For this reason that student can delude himself into thinking he has destroyed atheism. In fact, older people such as Geisler and Turek use similar subheadings in their book. When you exclude all "middles" I suppose you can delude yourself to believe anything you want. One thing they have not yet been able to do is bring Christ back to rescue them from this "atheistic" world.

The absolute minded people have to paint the world in black and white. When they see any color or shade of gray, they deny its existence, and pull out their paintbrush...

[R. S. Martin]

Ever heard of the Law of the Excluded Middle? I think that is what Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek call it in their book I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. After reading the explanation for what they mean by the Law of the Excluded Middle, I conclude that this is a fancy way to describe black and white thinking. God either exists or he doesn't. You can't have it both ways.

Yeah. And I find that argument lacking something, but it's hard to put my finger on it. One of the problems is: how do we define God? What do we mean with the word: "God"? If it means, the number one, well, then God exists in an abstract way. If we say God is an apple, and I'm eating an apple right now, then God exists as a real experience for me at this moment. The problem with a contrasting view like this and the excluded middle is that if we can't clearly define exactly the opposite positions, then we can't exclude any middle ground either. What is the middle point to exclude between east and west?

 

Let's see if I can get this straight. I think what he likes about the Excluded Middle is that you cut right to the chase. Instead of asking all these confusing questions that you, Hans, are asking you CUT THEM OUT! You just ask: Does God exist or does he not? It's on p. 62 of the book. It's simply too simple for real life.

 

Here's a syllogism of P. 63 set up specifically to prove that valid arguments are not necessarily true (I am not sure whether this counts as a valid argument in mainstream academia but apparently it does where these guys teach):

 

1. All men are four-legged reptiles.
   
2. Zachary is a man.
   
3. Therefore Zachary is a four-legged reptile.
   

He goes on to argue as though we all know that Zachary is a man and not a four-legged reptile. I'm thinking: There's something wrong there. Who's to tell that Zachary is not a frog? Frogs and lizards have all kinds of fancy names these days if they get to live in glass bowls. He has excluded the "middle" that allows for this to be the case. I think this is what David Hume put into philosophy and Common Sense Philosophy rebelled against. The fundies are still rebelling against it. Life, and therefore God, is more complicated than this.

 

In answer to your question: What's to exclude between west and east? The Americas I suppose. West=the British Isles. East=China. Always has. Always will. Right???

 

Norm Geisler and Frank Turek (and a couple others of us) better go look for another home, huh?

 

Maybe that's just me rebelling against religious authority.

 

They then go on and introduce a "Road Runner" argument. Example: Tortoise (or some slow animal) and fox (or some fast-running carnivor) take a race. Tortoise leads race to edge of cliff and stops. The fast animal races over edge of cliff and crashes to valley floor.

 

Take this to the level of the Christian apologist and atheist professor. He provides a story. They go out for dinner. Let's see. I think a student had invited the Christian to speak at his/her class, and after the class the student, Christian, and prof went out for dinner. Christian used "Road Runner" trick to get atheist to "confess" that he uses just as much faith as Christians do.

 

I forget the details but by combining the Law of the Excluded Middle and Road Runner trick, he can make short work of a lot of complicated theoretical abstract thinking. Then we end up with simplistic crap like that student posted. It keeps the world nice and simple, within the control of the fundy's world view so that he knows what atheists think and feel. He can then destroy them and control them. So he thinks.

 

That's a pretty cool argument. When it comes to Presuppositional arguments, I'm actually a bit of a fan.

 

So the RR story is to declare, the real winner is the one who doesn't die?

 

What about the coyote? He was chasing the Road Runner, but when he saw the road runner fall to his death, he stopped quickly in his tracks, and he was safe... and not to say he came to the cliff two days before the turtle!

 

(I will continue reading your post and maybe add some comments. This is a far more interesting topic than Kalam! )

 

Sorry, I got terms mixed up. Road Runner=coyote. He crashed to his death. Coyote=atheist professor who thinks he is so smart (according to implication of evangelical Christian apologist). Thus, the RR theory is a trick to show up the unwary atheist. Like the atheist prof he went out to dinner with. Except I think the prof was having a secret joke at the expense of the Christian. Sorry about the confusion.

 

I'm not sure what the term "presuppositional argument" means but I suppose we're talking about the same thing.

[Ouroboros]

Let's see if I can get this straight. I think what he likes about the Excluded Middle is that you cut right to the chase. Instead of asking all these confusing questions that you, Hans, are asking you CUT THEM OUT! You just ask: Does God exist or does he not? It's on p. 62 of the book. It's simply too simple for real life.

Right. Let's ask, does white or black exist? Forget about gray, and forget about any other colors, just look at white and black. White requires light to exist, while black exists without any additional influence. Hence black is the true color, and no other color, white, or gray, really exists. That's excluding the middle and making it too simple.

 

Here's a syllogism of P. 63 set up specifically to prove that valid arguments are not necessarily true (I am not sure whether this counts as a valid argument in mainstream academia but apparently it does where these guys teach):

Well, if he's right, then it's possible that his arguments aren't valid too, or?

 

1. All men are four-legged reptiles.
   
2. Zachary is a man.
   
3. Therefore Zachary is a four-legged reptile.
   

He goes on to argue as though we all know that Zachary is a man and not a four-legged reptile. I'm thinking: There's something wrong there. Who's to tell that Zachary is not a frog? Frogs and lizards have all kinds of fancy names these days if they get to live in glass bowls. He has excluded the "middle" that allows for this to be the case. I think this is what David Hume put into philosophy and Common Sense Philosophy rebelled against. The fundies are still rebelling against it. Life, and therefore God, is more complicated than this.

The syllogism is valid, however, for the conclusion to be true, the premise has to be true. He's right. There are arguments even if they're incoherent, not necessarily have true conclusions, but it's not because of the construction, but on the assumptions. If we assume the premise 1 and 2 are correct and true, then it follows that the conclusion must be true, but if we don't agree on premise 1 or 2, then the conclusion does not necessarily have to be true.

 

In answer to your question: What's to exclude between west and east? The Americas I suppose. West=the British Isles. East=China. Always has. Always will. Right???

Hehe.

 

So what should we exclude between North and South? The entire globe?

 

Sorry, I got terms mixed up. Road Runner=coyote. He crashed to his death. Coyote=atheist professor who thinks he is so smart (according to implication of evangelical Christian apologist). Thus, the RR theory is a trick to show up the unwary atheist. Like the atheist prof he went out to dinner with. Except I think the prof was having a secret joke at the expense of the Christian. Sorry about the confusion.

 

I'm not sure what the term "presuppositional argument" means but I suppose we're talking about the same thing.

Do a search, you can start by just taking a quick look at the wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics

 

The basic idea is like this:

 

1) every system of belief, facts, knowledge, etc are based on a axioms and arguments

2) if we compare two systems, the one that doesn't hold up it's own logic, or in other words aren't internally consistent, are false, while the ones that are logically consistent are true.

3) lets compare the system of Theism and the system of Atheism. Those are the only two options in the "game" and if one of them is inconsistent, the other one wins by default.

 

Then they show: atheism is internally inconsistent, hence theism must be true.

[Ouroboros]

Ruby, Dhampir, Jedah, and Hans what this guy calls metaphysics I know by the term epistemology. I suspect there may be a few accurate points he has made, but his conclusions seem odd to me.

 

I don’t subscribe to solipsism, but of course people are free to adopt it. However I do recognize that as dim as my awareness is of my own self, I am can be more certain of those things which comprise my self than I can be of anything else (e.g. my emotions, thoughts, will, imagination etc.). But I also subscribe to the notion that there is a world external to me. And if one wishes to call this an article of faith then that doesn’t bother me.

 

In an attempt to take skepticism to its most extreme Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum.” By “cogito” I think he meant all the activities and attributes of his own mind. It seems to me that a next thing to ask is… Why mind? Or what entails the mind? Or as the Buddhists might put it… What are the dependent originations of the mind?

I think you got valid questions there. Doesn't it seems like the author is making "belief" to be a question about "knowledge" and then compare which "knowledge" is the better one, and the winner is also the winner of the "belief" medal?

[florduh]

"To make the assumption that the box is green on the outside doesn't remove the fact that neither person really know this for a fact."

 

I think even the box illustration is too forgiving to the theistic argument. Besides assuming the color green, it must be assumed that a. There is in fact a box, b. That box has a color, and c. That color is green.

 

Too many unfounded assumptions for people who wouldn't even know they are in a box in the first place.

[wonderer1]

Or, I'm thinking this way. Atheism is based on that we know that we can't have an objective position to truth. We can admit that absolute truth can exist, but we know that we as subjective individuals can't really know what is an absolute or objective truth. And since we admit this, and know this, then we admits to know something for sure, i.e. absolutely, and we break our own statement of not knowing any absolute truths. So maybe the answer is, we can know some absolute truths, but they're very limited? We can know that our own knowledge is very limited and subjective, and hence any universal truth have to be looked at with very careful eyes before accepted as to a high degree reliable truth. But the thing is, this is valid also for the theist. They can't just believe everything, but have to scrutinize and analyze just as much as anyone else. Hence they're bound to be using natural laws and insights to understand their God. As an atheist, we can know this, but the theist deny this and live in a delusion that they can know a supernatural, spiritual being, who exists outside our space-time! How can they claim to know this, unless they have a direct experience of being in that dimension? (just thoughts... I don't know if it make sense or not.)

 

Makes perfect sense to me. Religious presuppositionalism attempts to rely on pure use of logic, and gives tacit recognition, that to even have a starting place for applying logic, assumptions (presuppositions) must be made. However religious presuppositionalists, (contrary to what one might expect from the label they use for their perspective) seems to conveniently forget that all of their logical derivations flow from what (with any intellectual integrity) they must acknowledge to be assumptions.

 

What religious presuppositionalists seem to overlook to a significant extent IME, is the fact that we aren't stuck with logic alone in developing a degree of understanding of what is true. We have available to us, on an ongoing basis, perception and the pattern recognizing neurological subsystems which are a part of perception, which can result in ever improving intuitive insight into things. Human pattern recognition isn't perfectly reliable either, as illustrated by the occurrence of paredolia. However, the fact that pattern recognition occurs, and tends to improve with time, and is a fundamental aspect of our minds, seems to me to provide good reason to consider it of at least equal value to logic. And recognition that pattern recognition tends to improve with time, suggest that a presuppositional stance, of accepting a set of assumptions, and then interpreting all things in accordance with that set of assumptions, is self limiting in that it disallows for improvement in one's pattern recognition, by accepting as fundamental assumptions of thought, things that were accepted as justified presuppositions on the basis of pattern recognition in the first place.

 

IMO adopting a presuppositional position is a form of self inflicted brain damage, where instead of one's understanding of what is true being informed by a steadily improving intuitive understanding of things, one instead subjugates one's intuition to the presuppositions, and rejects improvement in intuitions inconsistent with those presuppositions.

 

I'm not sure I'm necessarily saying anything different than you are, I'm just giving my perspective.

[BlueGiant]

I'd point out that a false premise implies nothing (or everything), at least in the Boolean sense.

 

To be honest, he just wants to crow without actually having done anything. It's the work of someone who doesn't listen to anyone (or more likely, listens selectively).

 

There was a good reason why your non-belief wasn't shaken.

 

I'd also point out that his rejection of non-theistic cosmologies is a false-dichotomy. He claims that that set only has two members. I, for one, have a third (well, ok, it's part-time atheistic). He has to come up with something that works for the set of all atheistic worldviews. So far he's only showing (maybe) that untenable nontheistic worldviews exist, and while he claims exhaustion, that is not nearly the case. Also, he's using an awful lot of straw men.

 

The world is an illusion, is not a uniquely atheistic position, but it is also a theistic one.

[Neon Genesis]

Take this to the level of the Christian apologist and atheist professor. He provides a story. They go out for dinner. Let's see. I think a student had invited the Christian to speak at his/her class, and after the class the student, Christian, and prof went out for dinner. Christian used "Road Runner" trick to get atheist to "confess" that he uses just as much faith as Christians do.

I never understood this argument. I thought faith was supposed to be a good thing for Christians? So, if atheists are using "faith", why are they bashing the atheists for using something they supposedly value? And if Christians say that atheists use just as much faith as they do, then they've just confessed that their whole argument is based on faith and assumptions, not logic or evidence, and so they've admitted they haven't proved anything. It's just their roundabout way of saying "You don't know and I don't know either, but let's just pretend that I know because I'm too much of a coward to admit it." Besides, if Christians don't have enough faith to be an atheist, then does that mean they're admitting atheists are more spiritual and holy than they are? Since god favors people who are the most faithful, if atheists have more faith than Christians, then doesn't that mean god will favor us over the Christians? So, by admitting that they're using faith through their claims of atheists using as much faith as they are or even more according to certain smarmy titles to Christian apologetic books, they've destroyed their own argument in the process. It reminds me of something Dawkins said in The God Delusion; that god isn't an answer, god is an I don't know and people who use god as an answer for everything usually don't know what they're talking about.

[Guest AtheistInAFoxhole]

The one thing I noticed here was that he never once said how HIS perceptions are justified, nor does he ever explain the theistic side.

 

Secondly, no matter what he says, he is always "in the same boat" as everyone else, because we all exist on Earth. So either a) what he says is true and the atheist viewpoint gives no basis for sense perceptions, yet the atheist viewpoint is correct and he has no basis for his perceptions, or what he says is true and the atheist viewpoint gives no basis for sense perceptions, yet his viewpoint is correct, which in turn means that everything an atheist perceives is also correct. I'm not even going to into the possibilities of whether or not his view is false, since I'm fairly confident it is, and the prior two points show the fallacies in his logic (or his lack of use of logic).

 

Thirdly, this is in no way academic in any way, shape, or form, as he has numerous grammatical errors, and his doesn't even have a true conclusion.

 

Fourthly, I believe it was Bertrand Russel who also said that all philosophical arguments are merely cases of bad grammar. It could very well be argued that his argument was purely philosophical, and his grammatical errors would only serve as evidence. The problem with philosophical arguments is that they often sound good and appear infallible, and yet when confronted with actual evidence, they fall apart (Christianity being an example of a philosophical argument as well).

 

If any atheist read this and turned to Theism because of it, I honestly feel sorry for their brain and their "soul". Jeebus have mercy on us all.

[Legion]

Please ignore this post. I'm trying to get my links right.

 

epistemology and solipsism

[Ouroboros]

"To make the assumption that the box is green on the outside doesn't remove the fact that neither person really know this for a fact."

 

I think even the box illustration is too forgiving to the theistic argument. Besides assuming the color green, it must be assumed that a. There is in fact a box, b. That box has a color, and c. That color is green.

 

Too many unfounded assumptions for people who wouldn't even know they are in a box in the first place.

True. But the box is just an illustration of the "whatever there is outside of our capacity to understand", so it's not necessarily a box around the universe, but more like, no one can claim to know the things we all can agree we can't really know. That's a tongue-twister...