Category Archives: Philosophy
Another Ignorant Meme
Memes are created by the dozens everyday. I have no idea what makes one meme go viral while others sit and rot. But I’m convinced the anti-religious ones that go viral must do one of two things:
- Commit serious exegetical errors that Average Joe Christian cannot counter because the church sucks at apologetics.
- Commit a serious category error that Average Joe American won’t notice because he’s too busy watching horrid shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and not busy enough learning how to think critically.
This meme goes in the second group. I would like to point out that it is exactly the same category error discussed with the Scumbag God meme: a failure to distinguish between “kill” and “murder.”
“Kill” is a broad term that refers to the taking of lives. Murder, on the other hand, is the unlawful taking of a life. All murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. For example, the following “kills” are lawful:
- Hunting
- Trapping
- Euthanizing sick/injured animals
- Butchering animals for food/by-products
- Killing enemy combatants
- Capital punishment
- Self-defense
- Defense of another who is immediate, life-threatening danger
- Killing a person who presents an immediate threat to the community but not directly to you (police officers only)
No comment on the fairness of those kills, but they are considered lawful in that if you clean a fish, kill an enemy soldier, shoot a horse with a broken leg, or kill to protect your child you won’t face prison time.
Murder represents a case where you killed unlawfully. For example, if you caught your wife in bed with another guy, then beat that guy’s head in with a sharpened stick, you’re going to jail. I’m sure that the jury would sympathize with you, mostly because there’s at least one hotheaded, possessive S.O.B. of a juror who would have done the same thing.
But that doesn’t change the legality of your action. You still killed without a justifiable reason. And that makes it murder. (In the above example, if you had no “cool-down” period, it would likely be charged as manslaughter, but my point still stands that the killing is unlawful.)
Capital punishment is the right of the state, agree or disagree with it, it is still a justifiable killing. As is killing an enemy soldier in combat; soldiers know what they’re getting in to and they know they are risking their lives when they enter the armed forces. Same as any police officer or government Special Agent.
So, you can be pro-life, pro-war, and pro-death penalty while not earning the brand of hypocrite. Some might say that this is special pleading, but it isn’t because I’ve shown the one exception to special pleading — the principle of relevant difference. Lawful killing of enemy combatants and convicted murderers/traitors is vastly different than murdering a baby in the womb.
Okay, I jumped the gun a bit. I haven’t actually proven that abortion is murder. And that’s not my aim. My aim is to show that not all killing is unlawful, and therefore this meme commits a serious category error.
And now, having squashed another ignorant meme, I shall enjoy a piece of Victory Gum…
Twittering Away at Philosophical Naivety
I’ve addressed philosophically naive statements before. They always seem to come from Twitter, which is why I had to absolutely laugh at the recent issue of Writer’s Digest when it suggests writing dialogue in Twitterspeak (140 characters or less) as an exercise in creativity.
Sure. That might work for a good writer, but not for Average Joe Twitterhead.
Enter BibleAlsoSays, a frequent contributor to mass ignorance. He has struck again with two statements. First:
https://twitter.com/#!/BibleAlsoSays/status/159474512163897344
Then:
https://twitter.com/#!/BibleAlsoSays/status/159474546288762881
Well, let’s break this down a little bit.
First, BAS is operating from a faulty definition of the word “faith.” Faith is not “belief without evidence,” but loyalty based on prior performance. That loyalty is manifested in the actions of the believer; which means both belief and practice are required for a truly biblical faith.
We see now that BAS’s statement misses the mark entirely. I take ownership of my faith by my actions, regardless of who passed the knowledge to me. My wife brought me to faith through seeds planted years earlier by my grandpa, and the church, the Bible, and influences too numerous to name have taught me what it means to own the faith I was given.
My actions — primarily through my writing, but also through a local youth ministry co-op and by assisting in the presentation of church services — have made my faith my own.
Second, even if we allow for BAS’s faulty definition of “faith,” he’s still off-base. Taking ownership of abstract ideals is the same as taking ownership of concrete objects.
The computer I’m typing this on is a perfect example, as it came from my church. I didn’t build this computer, I didn’t load the original software on it, and I didn’t use it for the first few years of its existence. The Dell factory built it, loaded the software, and shipped it to my church, where it sat on the secretary’s desk for a few years. They sold it to my father-in-law, who then gave it to my wife and I after he realized that he didn’t need it.
I didn’t build it. I didn’t use it at first. But it is my computer now. It served many before me, now it serves me.
Same with a belief. It becomes my belief when someone shares it with me, and I accept it as true. So it is now mine in a sense, yet it still resides with the original person — the advantage abstract ideals have over physical objects.
A belief is never really “owned” by anyone. Rather, it is shared by a group of like-minded people.
A belief will pass from one to another, from generation to generation. Each generation is free to question and discard it. Religion is not immune to this — in fact, the growing number of nonreligious is testament to the fact that many do question religious belief and eventually discard it.
But to say that no one can take ownership of a religious belief because it was passed from parent to child is philosophically naive. No belief is really one’s own, since all or most of our most fervently held beliefs were taught to us by someone at some point.
Yet, despite this, people take ownership of beliefs all the time. And we let them, never questioning the source of the belief. If I say, for example, that I believe Mercury is the first planet from the sun, no one scolds me by saying, “You discover that yourself, there, Copernicus?”
Whoever discovered it, it was taught to me by a science teacher and is my belief now.
Religious belief is not in a special category by itself. What applies to it applies to every belief under the sun — though I much doubt BAS wants that to be true. His hatred of religion blinds him to a lot of philosophical truth. In sum, if faith is solely equal to belief, we can still claim it as our own in the same semantic sense we claim any belief our own despite it being part of a collective body knowledge that we did not personally discover.
Clearest Example of the Unforgivable Sin
On this very blog, we have a clear example of the Unforgivable Sin. In fact, the clearest ever offered here. Alex said this:
It needs to be mentioned that the definition of nature is what science can measure and the reason we call your god’s being and doings supernatural is that when we measure, there is no god there, only natural explanations such as physics and chemistry. (source)
The Unforgivable Sin, from Mark 3:22-30 or Matthew 12:22-32, is the denial of the Spirit moving in our world. It is through the movement of the Spirit that we can see evidence of God acting in our world.
So, a little context. I deny the categories of natural and supernatural. Alex is saying that when we measure the doings of God, we find no God, just natural movements.
The first problem is that our instruments aren’t going to measure or detect God, who exists outside of the time and space we know how to measure. Instead, what we’re going to see are the effects that God creates, which are accomplished by the Holy Spirit. This is the evidence of God.
Denying that what we have seen is the movement of the Spirit is the Unforgivable Sin.
For example, Alex looks at biochemistry. The amazing complexity and well-oiled interactions of the various systems of our bodies, the ability of our bodies to obtain the raw ingredients our cells need to produce energy in the foods we eat and the drinks we consume all bear evident marks of design. The well-defined stages of growth humans go through, the inherent curiosity to learn and flourish, shared ability to define morality, to know what is is not what ought to be; these are the hallmarks of a being who can impart these things to us.
Alex, however, looks a this design and says, “Nah, random mutation acted on by natural selection — not a personal, intelligent force — created this.”
And that, my friends, is the Unforgivable Sin in a nutshell. The Pharisees saw the work of the Spirit in Christ as he drove out demons and cured disease, and they attributed it to Satan. Alex sees the work of God in chemistry and biology and attributes it to chance and natural laws. Both deny the Spirit’s efficacy, and both have severe eternal consequences.
Natural vs. Supernatural
I don’t believe in distinguishing “natural” and “supernatural.” Sounds weird, I know. But just think about it for a moment.
A “supernatural” explanation is a suspension of natural law and explanation. For an explanation to be truly “supernatural,” it must defy all attempts to explain it inside the natural system, and must come from totally outside the natural system. It must create a pure miracle, a suspension or violation of the natural order.
Here is why nothing is ever “supernatural:”
If I pick up a box and hold it over a table, that doesn’t violate the law of gravity by supernatural intervention. By the same token, if God suspends that box, that doesn’t violate the law of gravity, but people have the need to label that “supernatural.” A box floating in midair seems to be a violation of the law of gravity, right?
But is it any different than the human holding the box? The human creates a situation contrary to what we expect (the box falling to the ground) by normal and natural interactions of agents.
So I believe the same is the case for God holding the box.
Therefore, when God monkeys with nature, he isn’t “supernaturally intervening.” He is making a change or interrupting the natural flow, but he isn’t rewriting the laws of physics when he does it. It’s as natural as the human holding the box up in the air.
Natural and supernatural are actually points of view, simple as pie. What exists in the encapsulated system of space and time that we occupy is “natural” to us, what exists outside of that is “supernatural” to us. That makes us “supernatural” from God’s point of view.
I Gave My Life to Christ: Now What? (part 5)
As we continue with Brownlow North’s six steps for new Christians (and old Christians can benefit from these, too), we come to a tough one:
Never take your Christianity from Christians, or argue that because such and such people do so and so, therefore, you may (2 Cor 10:12). You are to ask yourself, “How would Christ act in my place?” and strive to follow him (Jn 10:27).
The church is, in fact, “the pillar and buttress of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). So it’s impossible not to take (at least some) Christianity from Christians. To not take your Christianity from Christians denies the whole concept of discipleship, which is the spirit in which I posted these rules in the first place.
The place of the church is education and discipline. It should be the responsibility of the church’s elders to identify sin in the congregation and do something about that.
So it’s fair to say that I disagree with the first clause.
The second clause is excellent. Because other people do it, that doesn’t make it okay. As a manager for over a decade and a half in the fast food industry, every single time I dealt with someone’s tardiness the first thing I always got to listen to was an angry litany of names of people who are also “always late.”
That’s what North is talking about. Using someone else’s behavior to justify your own is not acceptable. Take responsibility for yourself.
Amanda Brown, co-founder of We Are Atheism, posted a video that indicted Christianity using the other side of this coin. She said that the church she grew up in preached abstinence, but her peers had sex in the pews during the service. Therefore, abstinence-only education is total crap and doesn’t work
Well, let’s think about this:
- Everyone has sex before marriage.
- It’s really hard to abstain from sex until marriage.
- Currently, the church thinks it’s morally wrong to have sex before marriage.
Given these facts, society has decided that the best solution to the problem is to lower its expectations, accept sex before marriage, and make fun of the church for continuing to preach “antiquated” morals.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective.
What if I were the new manager of your local fast food restaurant? Let’s say that the people in the store think that it’s okay to serve french fries that have been baking under heat lamps for two hours. It’s really hard cook new ones and make customers wait, and it also costs a lot of money in wasted food. Everyone in the store thinks this is cool.
If I were to follow Amanda’s logic, then my best course of action as the new GM is to lower my expectations until I, too, believe that serving two-hour old french fries is acceptable.
Ridiculous, right?
Lowering expectations is never the best solution. Indeed, it shouldn’t even be an option. Yet, with sexual morals, this is exactly what society is doing. It’s too hard to resist having sex until marriage, so let’s just have sex now and risk unwanted pregnancies, incurable diseases, serious heartache, etc. Just wrap it up with a condom and you’re good to go. The solution to loose sexual morals is to encourage them, as long as the people involved are being “responsible.”
That’s about like using a Band-Aid to treat an ear-to-ear throat slash.
Bringing this back neatly to the point, we cannot expect to justify behavior by comparing our behavior to the behavior of others. The yardstick for comparison is what North says next: Ask what the Lord would do were he in our place. In other words, “What Would Jesus Do?”
We might not have an immediate answer, but if we follow the first rule and the second rule, we’re on our way to having a good sense of the answer.
On the Euthyphro Dilemma
Is it moral because God says so or does God say so because it’s moral? False dilemma. It’s moral because that’s the way God is. — William Lane Craig
I think that this an excellent and adequate response to the Euthyphro dilemma. I believe that the answer is rooted in the ontology of God as perfectly good.
However, I don’t think that the skeptic would ever be convinced by such an answer.
He’ll just ask how we know God is good, and when we way “the Bible,” he’ll mention that the Bible also says to sacrifice turtledoves to “clean” women during their menstrual cycles, confirms the existence of unicorns, and prohibits football.
Now, all of those things are hyper-literal readings of the text and have simple responses. My point here is that the skeptic doesn’t accept the Bible’s description of anything, let alone God.
To illustrate, archeologists give the benefit of the doubt to ancient documents when a site contradicts a document. The thought is that the ancient writer was closer to the events and probably knows better than we do thousands of years later. Not to mention that its possible that a site might have been altered, destroyed, rebuilt, or built upon between the composition of the document and our discovery of the site.
However, when that ancient document is the Bible, then the error is automatically assumed to be with the Bible, and not assumed to be one of a myriad of possibilities like the ones I just mentioned. To recap, random ancient document contradicts a site: “There’s probably an explanation. Let’s assume the document is right and find out the reason for the contradiction.” The Bible contradicts a site: “Bible’s wrong, it’s complete fiction, God doesn’t exist. Three cheers for freethought!”
While I think that the answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma lies in God’s ontology, I think that in order to get the skeptic to see that, he must be willing to step out in faith and trust the Bible. However, given all of the skeptical attacks on the Bible (despite it previously thought to have been very reliable), there’s a long way to go on that.
By the way, I’m not the only one that sees this. The Bible has yielded much good archeology in the past, and if we would continue to rely on it I have faith it will produce much more good in the future. However, there is a serious prejudice against the Bible not only in archeology, but in every academic discipline.
History and archeology aren’t my thing, but I hope that other apologists who feel called to that area work hard to counter some of this anti-Bible sentiment in those fields. If the Bible can be believed again as a reliable ancient source of history, then we will have taken a good step toward resolving some of the theological questions being raised as well.
Replying to Comments: “Twitter and Shallow Reasoning”
I really have to stop letting these accumulate. Answering them is never as bad as I seem to think it will be. And, often, I learn something.
First up, on my post on how Twitter breeds shallow reasoners, Boz thinks that the Twitter users I mention are misunderstanding proof, which he says is:
1) Provide strong evidence for; Demonstrate. I can prove that Morphine is addictive.
2) Show to be true with 100% accuracy. I cannot disprove solipsism.
I agree on both counts, and I also believe Boz is correct that the Twitter users I’m picking on don’t get what proof really is. Nor do they understand that one cannot disprove solipsism (which is why they resort to ridiculing me).
The point is that argument can suffice in place of empirical proof. Provided one can show a belief is rational by logic and argumentation, then empirical proof isn’t necessary. There’s no empirical proof that an external world or other minds exist, and we can’t say for certain (therefore) that we aren’t living in a computer simulation (a la The Matrix).
But we are rational for accepting the existence of the external world and the existence of other minds without evidence. So I also argue that, because we can argue rationally and cogently for the existence of God, that we are justified in accepting it as true in the absence of empirical evidence.
Really, it all boils down to treating God as we would any other belief. So, then, I’ve asked the atheist to provide good reasons to not accept the existence of God. No one has stepped up, and Boz reversed it on me: provide rational reasons for not believing in Amun, the Egyptian god of creation and the sun.
Challenge accepted. First:
- The conception of God is as the maximal being. God exists eternally, and thus was never created nor will he ever pass away. God also exists necessarily.
- The preservation of the Scriptures pertaining to God is excellent. No significant variations in the (forgive my use of this term) plot of the creation story exist. The rigid attention to the story is indicative of its perceived truth.
- God sent his Son, Jesus, to speak for him. Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy and equipped teachers to give God’s full and final revelation. He backed up his divinity with a Resurrection from the dead. All of this in fulfillment of Scriptures written hundreds of years before.
As for Amun:
- Amun is not the maximal being. He neither exists eternally nor necessarily. He created himself (however that might have worked, but it indicates at least one prior moment where he did not exist), and formed a hypostasis with Ra (the sun god) at the outset of creation.
- The variations of the creation myth of Egypt demonstrate they had no commitment to its finer points, and therefore believed it only in the sense that it imparts a lesson. Similar to how Aesop’s Fables or Shakespeare’s plays do–notice the range of variations in both over the extant MSS; the Bible’s variations are at least as numerous but not as significant.
- There is no fulfillment in the material realm for Amun-Ra such as we see with Jesus.
I think that these three points nicely demonstrate the superiority of God to that of Amun-Ra.
Betrayed by Presupposition
Presuppositions can work against our understanding in ways that aren’t usually apparent. Let’s look at one such case.
The presupposition: Uniformitarianism. This is the thought that everything as we observe it now is exactly how it worked in the past. The sedimentary layers in rock are read this way, assuming they were uniformly laid down at regular intervals. So upper layers are new, lower layers are old (sometimes much older). All due to processes that have never changed since eons past, operating in the same way in the same amounts of time.
This is a contention of naturalism, and is not strictly held by theists. There are a few exceptions. Anything existing by necessity, such as God himself or mathematical constructs, won’t change (even after the Fall). The quantity of “two” is always “two” no matter what numbering system you use to designate it on paper, and equations will always retain certain patterns and properties. Though a hexadecimal system will differ slightly from a decimal system, and a binary system from the other two, evident patterns will still emerge in all of them (following from the base number of the system). The Lord doesn’t change, either; he isn’t blown about by the wind.
The second exception would be universal laws. These are built into the fabric of reality and thus remain unchanged through time. This includes moral laws–if it’s wrong to sacrifice a child now, it’s always been wrong to sacrifice a child. Since some cultures practiced that, it means that moral epistemology sometimes must catch up to moral ontology.
According to the Bible, there are differences between things at the outset of creation verses and things as they stand now, due in a large part to the Fall of Man. After the Fall, some rules changed (as punishment) and creation took on new ways of functioning. Read the rest of this entry
Twitter and Shallow Reasoning
Recently, on Twitter, I got into a discussion with two users (@LifesPoser and @JoeUnseen) about the existence of God. As usual, they were crowing about how I need to prove that God exists before they’ll listen to me.
https://twitter.com/#!/LifesPoser/status/89019071726759937
So I responded with links to three YouTube videos from Dr. Roland Nash:
https://twitter.com/#!/tucholskic/status/89187665408299008
First of all, I doubt that these guys watched all of the videos. The discussion centered around the first video, where Dr. Nash explains that we as humans take for granted a number of propositions that we are unable to prove. Two such examples are the existence of an external world and the existence of other minds (known as solipsism; and one user even ridiculed my entire argument by saying that when the theist resorts to solipsism, that means he’s beat).
The shallow reasoning in question:
https://twitter.com/#!/JoeUnseen/status/89655045062266880
Not correct, not even a little bit. Just because I’m experiencing the external world, I can’t call that evidence of the existence of the external world. All such evidence–picking up a crayon off my basement floor, sitting in a chair, talking to my wife–is part of the very thing I’m trying to prove.
Consider trying to prove a murder in court. We’re trying to prove that the act itself occurred. We can’t see the act itself, only the evidence produced by the act. Security footage (not the actual act, mind you, but a recording of it–the actual act happened in the past and is not accessible to us). A knife with the defendant’s fingerprints on the handle and the victim’s blood on the blade. Footprints matching the defendant’s shoes in blood fleeing the crime scene. These things are incidental to the act itself, they exist as a record of the act.
With trying to prove the external world, everything that you can point to is part of the external world, not a record of its existence. This is akin to my fellow theists saying that the Bible is God’s word because it says so. You can’t do that; it’s begging the question.
There are equally plausible metaphysical explanations for an outside world. Look at The Matrix. You can’t prove that isn’t what’s happening right now.
So, what?
The take away point is that you are rational for believing in the existence of an external world. Moreover, you are rational for believing that the people you encounter have minds. And, you are rational for believing that there is a shared experience with that other person when we’re standing in the same room. We see the same lamp. We sit together at the same table.
You can’t prove it. But, you’d be irrational to consider The Matrix scenario. You’d be locked up if you came to believe that. That’s how good The Matrix is at detecting and punishing dissent from it. (Ooops! Is that Agent Smith knocking at my door?)
So Alvin Plantinga argues that we are rational for believing in the existence of God without having to provide empirical evidence for it. I’m not proving the existence of God any more than I’m proving the external world. I’m providing rational reasons for my belief in God. These I’ve detailed before:
- The existence of something rather than nothing
- Cosmology points to a universe with an absolute beginning, implying a transcendent cause (a cause cannot be part of the resulting effect)
- Harmony of nature (look at the imbalances caused by transplanting non-indigenous species into a new environment or by the unnatural extinction of a member of that biosphere)
- Complex structure of even inorganic matter
- Appearance of design in biology is best explained by actual design
- Existence of absolute morality (human sacrifice is always wrong, even if the Canaanites, Aztecs, and Mayans [among others] thought it was business as usual)
- DNA is a living language, and languages don’t just “come together” one day
- Conscious existence of humans with a free will
Multiple lines of reasoning (not really evidence or proof) coalesce to make the existence of God much more likely than not. Each of those items by itself makes God very likely, but the cumulative case becomes much, much stronger. Pretty tough to shake, in my own estimation.
Now, I know it’s fashionable among atheists to say that I bear 100% of the burden of proof since I’m the “prosecution” making the positive claim (“The defendant committed the crime, your honor!”). But that’s just American imperialism. Other justice systems make the defendant bear the burden of proof (“I did not commit the crime, your honor!”). Given all this, I’d say the atheist (at minimum) has at least one burden of proof, though he’s not going to like hearing me say it.
He owes me reasons why non-belief is rational. Note that I’m not asking him to prove a negative. I’m asking for what I just gave here–multiple lines of evidence and argument that make the nonexistence of God more likely than not. Given the usual squawking about theistic burden of proof, I’m not holding my breath for these reasons.
Back Rome Again 