Christianity and Western Civilization

storming the Ballast--European historians begin modernity
at the French Revolution

(originally) MARCH 10, 2007

Atheists have of late been harping on the slavery in the Bile issue. I just got through dealing with the post of an unusually ignorant one who claimed that Christianity contributed nothing to the progress of Western Civilization! I can't believe people are so ignorant they are still saying tripe. This person tried to make an argument, with no backing, that the direction of social progress is away form religion!

Religion is riding high at this juncture in human history. Not only has it produced a paradigm shift in medicine but it has also produced a paradigm shift in philosophy. One might have thought that philosophy would be the last area in which religion could score big, in reality, however, its really leading the way thanks to Plantiga and the back to God movement of he 90s.While it may be true that religion is not the only major force contributing to civilization and the direction of progress, it continues to be a major force. I will just sketch out two areas in this essay:

(1) The past, the contribution of religion (specifically Christianity) to Western civilization

(2) The present and future where religion (Christianity) holds its own as one major contributing force.


A good starting place for the modern western civ is the medieval synthesis. With the fall of the Roman empire civilizing influences retreated and left the population of Western Europe in the cold and dark.. They hudaled into castles for protection and sold themselves into surfdom to powerful landlords who evoked the Germanic inheritance laws to construct the feudal system. Eventually manufacturing began to produce cities and with cities came freedom from the feudal lord. Throughout these "dark ages" learning recede and was basically confined to a monastic setting. Monks kept alive the learning of the Greaco-Roman world. It was in this setting that modern science began. Discoveries plundered from Spain began to show up and scientific learning began among monks from Chartre in France to St. Victor in England to Helfta in Germany. These centers of learning produced vast bodies of literature, scientific observation, and a total synthesis bringing together the observations of science and religion into a coherent culture (see my essay on Christianity and science in the middle ages).


As the work form the monasteries spread Western civilization embarked upon a Renaissance. New learning became the order of the day. Now the old view which was spread by atheist propaganda in the enlightenment told a mythical tail of humanity emerging form the dark abyss in which religion held it captive with chains of ignorance into the glorious light of materialistic scientism. Jacob Burckhardt But historians do not take this view seriously anymore. The Renaissence is no longer seen as the great awaking of learning. It is now under stood that the Renaissance was more of a movement than a time period and it is limited to the social elites in a few major cities such as Florence (although one might expand it more by the time of the Northern Renaissance). At the same time historians are more aware of learning in the so called '"dark ages." (See Peter Burke's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy). The period from fall of Rome (about 490) to about 900 can be considered 'dark' in that it was dominated by illiteracy, Vikings and disease. But from 900 on a steady stream of learning, travel, new ideas begins and spread throughout Europe. The wars with the moors and the crusades were major forces contributing to this trend. The Renaissance,formerly understood as anti-religious saw 80% commissions on art as religious works. The Renaissance was not a rebellion against religion, it was the dawn of modern religious humaism.

Christian thought contributed in a major way to the thinking of he enlightenment. most skeptics on the net tend to short hand the conflict between religion and science int he enlightenment and tend to assume that all the philosohpes were atheist. But in reality the philosophes were religous. Voltaire did not mean to say religion is just made up. He was not a Chrsitian but he was profoundly religious. He really mean to say that religion is so important we would have to invent it if it didn't exist as a natural outgrown of the light of reason (see Peter Gay's books on the Enlightenment). One of the major influences was Father Francis Fenelin. He militated for individual rights and freedom and was a major influence upon the philosophers in their understanding of modern person hood and individuality (see Britannica, "Finelin"). Christian thinkers put an end to the Witch trials i Europe and helped pave the way for an understanding of basic human rights.


The high point of this modern Christian contribution to western Civilization is the rise of modern science in England during the seventeenth century. The majority of historians in fields such as English history and History of science and history of ideas have come together to produce a ground swell of works demonstrating the importance of the Latitudinarians in popularizing and spreading the works of Newton. These English churchmen who were very active in politics took their marching orders form Robert Boyle. Of course Boyle, a major scientist of the era who discovered air pressure, was a close friend of Newton. Boyle's social vision was to use science to establish the truth of Christianity and then use Christianity to establish social and political harmony. Boyle latched on to Newtonian physics as the new model of science and the latitudinarians promoted it as a new Gospel. The major historian in all of this is Margaret Jacob
and her major work on the subject is The Newtonian's. Jacob argues that without this band of preachers hawking Newton's wares he might have remained unknown for fifty years or longer than it took for him to be discovered. In it might not have ever had the currency it did have. Who knows this would have thrown off.

The next great high point was the abolition movement. I don't think we can underrate the exsnt to which abolition of slavery built the modern world. There is basically no way we could have modernity and live in a slave society. That would be anti-theoretical to every modern principle from individual autonomy to democracy. At every step fo the way Christians led the movement. The Quakers organized and let the attack on the slave trade.The Journal of John Woolman is a must read in this regard. The underground rail road was mostly connected to churches and the first organized anti-abolition group in America was a group of Methodist women. From this point the Evangelicals fanned out across the social spectrum bribing in the social gospel and militating on both sides of the political isle: Woman's sufferage, temporence, abolition of poverty, public education, and many others.(see McLaughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (Chicago, 1978). 

In part 2 I will analyze the modern contributions of christianity to Western Civ. Coming ealry next week. I promise.

seeking help with blogger

Does anyone out there know about the change in Google and blogger?I am expecting most of my blog to be eliminated

Do God's Omniscience and Omnipotence Contradict?

Atheists think it is. I've seen many a knock down drag-out fight, multiple threads, lasing for days, accomplishing nothing. I wrote that dilemma off years ago before I was an internet apologist, so long ago I don't remember when. I wrote it off because at an early date I read Boethius who, in his great work The Consolation of Philosophy (circa 524), puts to rest the issue by proving that foreknowledge is not determinism. In this essay I will demonstrate not only that this is true but the atheist error about omniscience and omnipotence contradicting [1] are actually hold overs from the pagan framework which Boethius disproved.[2]

For years my debates on the matter were marked by silly repetition. I would constantly argue that just knowing that someone does something is not controlling it. But atheists were always cock sure that it was. I used the follow analogy: I know how the Alamo turned out. Travis and the men stepped over the line and chose to stay and die. I know they did that, does my knowledge of it mean that I made them do it? Of course the atheist say "O of course not, but you are not in the past, you are knowing this by a look back in history to see what they already did." Of course, but God doesn't know about events before they have happened in time, he knows about them because he's beyond time and he sees everything in time as a accomplished fact. From our perspective in time God's knowledge is "foreknowledge" because it is for us. But it's not foreknowledge for God, he doesn't know before it happens, he knows about events because form an eternal perspective its a done deal. Just as my knowing what the men at the Alamo already did does not give me control over their choices, so God's knowledge of facts we have already accomplish does not give God control over our choices.

Of course, predictably, the atheists dismiss this idea as "nonsense" and go right on asserting that to know of an action is to control, but they can't tell me why. They can tell me a  theoretical reason but they can't tell me why if my knowing about the Alamo ex post facto does not control those actions why would God's knowledge of a past even already done control the past event? Why are these not analogous if God is outside time and sees all things in time as accomplished facts? They can't tell me but they are certain the idea is nonsense. The reason they give initially is this. Say that God knows today that I will go to the store tomorrow. That means that i can't tomorrow morning decide "I don't want to go tot he store, I hate the walk." I can't decide that and follow it because God already knows I went so I have to go. But the problem is they are not following a modern concept of God knowing because he's outside of time. They are still stuck in the pre Christian framework which has clung to modern Western Philosophy lo these many centuries. That frame work can be clearly seen in Boethius because that's what he was arguing against. The fame work is the Greek Gods were controlled by the fates, but they also had foreknowledge, so they were trumping the fates, to whom they were really subject. That creates an issue. Moreover, foreknowledge was about things that had not yet taken place, thus that is a contradiction; it hasn't taken place, how can it be known what one will do, to know it is to set in stone and thus not free will. But that only holds in the case of god in time not outside of time. It doesn't apply to the idea of God transcendent of time and thus that's why they can't answer me, but because they know the philosophers they read still assert the old Greek idea they must cling to it.

We can see the exact kind of thinking the atheists use in the Consolation and it is the framework against which Boethius toils. This quotation is form a summary in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The summary is by John Marenbon.

The first point which needs to be settled is what, precisely, is the problem which Boethius the character proposes? The reasoning behind (7) seems to be of the following form:

9. God knows every event, including all future ones.
10. When someone knows that an event will happen, then the event will happen.
11. (10) is true as a matter of necessity, because it is impossible to know that which is not the case.
12. If someone knows an event will happen, it will happen necessarily.(10, 11)
13. Every event, including future ones, happens necessarily. (9, 12)

The pattern behind (8) will be similar, but in reverse: from a negation of (13), the negation of (9) will be seen to follow. But, as it is easy to observe, (9–13) is a fallacious argument: (10) and (11) imply, not (12), but

14. Necessarily, if someone knows an event will happen, it will happen.

 (emphasis mine)[3]

 The summary of the problem he's working against indicates exactly the problem I frame it, that the atheist (following the Greeks) is not assuming transcendence of time but is working on the assumption that God's knowledge is prior to the completed nature of the action. This was framework in which Boethius found the problem in his own contemporary scene which came from the pre-christian Hellenistic world. Even when the philosopher writing the article sums it up he still speaks form the same perspective:

The fallacy, therefore, concerns the scope of the necessity operator. Boethius has mistakenly inferred the (narrow-scope) necessity of the consequent (‘the event will happen’), when he is entitled only to infer the (wide-scope) necessity of the whole conditional (‘if someone knows an event will happen, it will happen’). Boethius the character is clearly taken in by this fallacious argument, and there is no good reason to think that Boethius the author ever became aware of the fallacy (despite a passage later on which some modern commentators have interpreted in this sense). None the less, the discussion which follows does not, as the danger seems to be, address itself to a non-problem. Intuitively, Boethius sees that the threat which divine prescience poses to the contingency of future events arises not just from the claim that God's beliefs about the future constitute knowledge, but also from the fact that they are beliefs about the future.There is a real problem here, because if God knows now what I shall do tomorrow, then it seems that either what I shall do is already determined, or else that I shall have the power tomorrow to convert God's knowledge today into a false belief. Although his logical formulation does not capture this problem, the solution Boethius gives to Philosophy is clearly designed to tackle it.[4]

He's speaking form the perspective of future events which have not yet happened, being known before they happen. But that leaves out the assumption that's God's is not actuality foreknowledge so much as translucence eternal knowledge that sees the events as an accomplished fact because it sees the the end result from a perspective after the event is accomplished. That's the wider perspective. Transcendent eternal knowledge is the knowledge of all time as the "eternal now" not "foreknowledge" in the sense of known only prior to the doing of the event. Then there is also an issue about the nature of the knower. This is a point Boethius may be making but it's hard to say. God knows form the standpoint of eternity but he speaks within times arrow to us so it appears to be foreknowledge, knowledge of that which has not yet transpired. Thus the illusion of determinism is created. But the fact of it is the knowledge comes from viewing all events as accomplished facts. It's in the perspective of timeless transience which only God can have.

This latter issue of the nature of the knowledge is marked by the summary and by the text itself as "modes of cognition." The Constolation of Philosphy is the old fashioned Philosophical dialogue which no one writes anymore, the kind Berkelely write (out of date in his day--early 1700's).

Erronious: "hi fallacious how's it going?"

Fallacious: "great, I'm now considering a new idea"

Erronious: "prey tell good sir what idea might that be?"

And they go on to discuss and provide endless house of fun writing Monty Python style paradiges of themselves. Then burst into a course of "Rene Descartes was a Druken fart, 'I drink therefore I am.'

But before they do that they discuss issues and the philosopher places his arguments in the mouth of the character. In the Consolation the Character Boethius is agonizing over philosophy when Philosophy personified as a beautiful woman comes to him and gives him the answers. That's the context in which this reviewer states the following:

Her view, as she develops it (in V.5 and V.6), is based on what might be called the Principle of Modes of Cognition: the idea that knowledge is always relativized to different levels of knowers, who have different sorts of objects of knowledge. Although she initially develops this scheme in a complex way, in relation to the different levels of the soul (intelligence, reason, imagination and the senses) and their different objects (pure Form, abstract universals, images, particular bodily things), for most of her discussion Philosophy concentrates on a rather simpler aspect of it. God's way of being and knowing, she argues, is eternal, and divine eternity, she says, is not the same as just lacking a beginning and end, but it is rather (V.6) ‘the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unbounded life.’[5]

Boethius did not have the knowledge of modern cosmology, the big bang, quantum theory or any of the other scientific data that we have so he did not possess the concepts of being outside of time. He did however have an understanding of eternity that came form his own spirituality, and it seems to coincide remarkably with the modern notion. What's he's saying is that God an eternal perspective. He can see the events of what to us are the future but to him is an eternal now. So he's not knowing something that hasn't happened yet, he knows something that to him has happened, but to us has not yet happened. Without the big bang Boethius still has the concept of God being outside of time and he saw that as the basis of non-deterministic events in time which known to God as completed events due to God's unique perspective.

A being who is eternal in this way, Philosophy argues, knows all things—past, present and future—in the same way as we, who live in time and not eternity, know what is present. She then goes on to show why, so long as God knows future events by their being present to him, this knowledge is compatible with the events’ not being determined.[6]

Through the mouth of philosophy Boethius speculates that there two kinds of necessity. The first is:

Simple necessities are what would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sun rises, or that a man will sometime die. By contrast, it is conditionally necessary that, for instance, I am walking, when I am walking (or when someone sees that I am walking); but from this conditional necessity it does not follow that it is simply necessary  that I am walking.[7]

Although some philosophers disagree,  she is not noting the scope fallacy above but is actually using Aristotelian modality to argue about the eternal perspective. All things are known to God as though they were in the present. Future events for God are necessary in just the way that present events are necessary for us. What I'm doing writ now I am necessarily doing because I'm really doing it. But because it's my choice to do it and I'm doing it now (as opposed something I already did five years ago) my will to do it is not negated. I can stop doing it and so something else. But I can't go back five seconds ago and stop doing it in the past. All moments are known to God from this perspective.

Now so far so good. But there are two problems:

(1) Most philosophers today do not accept this reading of the issues.

It is important to add, however, that most contemporary interpreters do not read the argument of V.3–6 in quite this way. They hold that Philosophy is arguing that God is a-temporal, so eliminating the problems about determinism, which arise when God's knowing future contingents is seen an event in the past, and therefore, fixed.[8]

That's going to be a problem for me becasue it means that timeless state of "beyond time" would mean God is "frozen" unable to act and thus can only act in time and thus the temporal problem. Rather, God sees as past and while may not control past is also not free to act in the past becuase it is a done deal.

(2) Philosophy seems to swing to a predestination view at the end.

She makes God the determiner of events. There are also interpreters who see the Consolation as a satire that should be called "the insufficiency of philosophy." The only problem for me is that atheists will read this part of the article and say "O see Metacrock is stupid because he didn't read the whole article." Marenbon argues that Boethius purpose is complex it can't be summarized as either "philosophy is insufficient" or "the whole issue is decided." what he's really saying is that philosophy is an ongoing concern. The true consolation of philosophy is not that such issue can be put to rest and summed up easily in nice little easy to understand phrases that only take a few syllables but we can have partial solutions and we can continue to work on problems and continue to seek answers and the act of so doing is a consolation even if we never find clear and easy answers. The interpretation of the  Consolation is a literary problem, not a theological one. I will, therefore, bracket that until such as a time as I work on literary criticism.

The first problem is of much greater concern but I have an answer. I think I've analyzed Boethius' claims in the section where philosophy answers the issues of foreknowledge,I think I have that right and it works. It doesn't seem to work when we extract it form the framework of his day and place it in the world of modern cosmology, but it works again when we extract it from the framework of modern  cosmology and place it in the framework of my theology (the Berkeley-Gaswami argument). My theological frame work differs from the modern cosmological in this way: I do not see God as a big man in the sky existing beyond the big bang which is a timeless void. I see God as the mind that thinks the universe, and the universe is therefore, analogous to a thought in a mind. I say "analogous" because it's a metaphor. If it was literal it might be more deterministic than any other view because it would mean that all events are thoughts in the mind of God in a literal sense. I do not think that. The Gaswami part comes in where I take a page form the book of physicist Amit Gaswami (a Hindu vedantist who teaches physics at University of Oregon. Like Gaswami I see mind as the fundametnal stuff of the universe rather than energy or mater. I don't mean that in the sense of the universe being a mind, but that is related to mind in the way that a thought is related to a mind. I take that as a metaphor because like Bishop George Berkeley I accept the premise "to be is to be perceived." God is the observer that collapses the wave function and causes the universe to be be by beholding it. God is observing a thought that he has set up to run on it own. He's not making it happen or thinking every event at a microscopic level.

Two analogies that will clarify the difference. In the standard view God's relation to the world is like that of a man standing in a big room holding a world globe. The room is the timeless void beyond our space/time. The man is God, of course, and the globe is our space time. That puts God as a thing in "creation" or at least a timeless void, it makes God subject to the laws of physics and the problem of time. It makes God out to be a big man in the sky, although really far up in the sky. My view we have the room and the globe, no man. The room is the mind of God. the globe and the empty void of "timeless" are both thoughts in the mind of God. What this means is God is not subject to either time or the problem of non time. Both are pseudo problems for God because they are just ideas he thought up to create a framework for our world, which is a further thought of that preliminary thought in his mind. God is no more subject to the problems of time or even non time than we are to our day dreams and momentary fleeting fantasies that cross our minds.

This has many implications that have to be weighed. For one thing we just forget about the issues surrounding the omnis,, let them go completely. Not that God is not all knowing or all powerful, but the concepts "all knowing" and "all powerful" are hazy shadowy concepts that do more to confuse us than to help us. These are Aristotelian ideas and they hold overs from Greek philosophy. These things enter Western philosophy from Greek thought and they preserved by the prejudices of Western European philosophers. Modern philosophers still think the Greeks were the summit of human civilization, even the Church adopted ht language of Greek philosophy to discuss doctrine so we should look to the Greeks. The Hebrews were corn pones and the early Christians were Greeks themselves so Greek ideas hang on in philosophy. Thus the older meaning of "foreknowledge" and it's problems adhere to all modern discussions. The church began to use the language of Aristotle after the Apostolic age so we continue to speak of "omnipresent." "Omnipotent" even though the Bible doesn't so speak. We should scrap the language of "all knowing" " all powerful" because it communicates badly. Rather than these we should say, not that God is the "most powerful" that's a mistake too (from a Tillichian perspective) but that God can do whatever is logically doable. God knows whatever is logically knowable.

The problem is in speaking of God as "doing" and "knowing" we give the importation of God as a big man and God's knowledge as the kind of knowledge city zoning board use to plan things. All of this anthropomorphic language is bring God down to the level of a thing in creation. It's not preserving the transcendent nature of God's knowledge which so different form ours we can't even know what it's like. What we can be sure of is that God has left us free will and he's not violating it. God knows whatever is logically knowable. It may not be logically knowable for God to know how it feels to be not God. But at the same time, he does know empathy, he knows the heart he knows the mind, he can take a much better intuitive feel of what that might be like than even we can ourselves. He even knows first hand what it's like to be human.

God does not have to make rocks he can't lift. That is a childish trap set for eighty grade apologetic hobbyists in Sunday school classes. I know because I'm still smarting from falling for it in eighth grade.God can't smell next Tuesday because days don't have smells. The eager beaver atheist can say "there's something God can't do." I say "so?" God cannot do nonsense, ok so what? We need to redefine the omnis and come up with a new term  ( I don't like "maximal greatness" too easy to confuse with "most power being"). The import this has for this issue is that there is no contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence because those are not helpful words and they don't really mean that much so they don't really describe God's attributes well. Since God is beyond the problems of either time or non-time he is not in the big room of timeless void so he's not frozen. Thus God's knowledge can come form all perspectives, from the eternal now and from time's arrow.

Might there actually be aspects of time God chooses not to see? The problem with that question is it assumes God is a rubber-necking tourist roving the expanse of all  existing matter and observing it as one would observe the country side of France from a  train window. Because God is not a big man in the sky, not anthropomorphic we can come up with other metaphors to compare God to, and that indicate that God's relationship to time is one we can't understand. Compare God to the strong force, to the unified field, to the laws of physics, the Hegelian dialectic. The Zeitgeist. I don't believe that God is impersonal but I do think it's a good exercise to think of him that way at times just to break the habit of thinking of God as a big man in the sky.

Such a God cannot waste his time worrying about conflicts between one badly worded phrase that doesn't really describe him and another badly worded phrase that doesn't describe him. Thus the problem is now reduced to a pseudo problem. It' an antiquated problem because it's rooted in the pre-Christian Greek understanding of God and time and the world, and it's also rooted in thinking of God as a big man in the sky rather than the transcendent and immanent ground of all being that God is.

Sources and Notes

[1] List of sources where atheists make this argument:

Matt McCormick. "Atheism; Multiple Property Disproofs," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: peer reviewed Academic resource, 2002;

https://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/#SH3b

Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that God is thought to possess. A long list of properties have been the subject of multiple property disproofs...The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. To possess all knowledge, for instance, would include knowing all of the particular ways in which one will exercise one’s power, or all of the decisions that one will make, or all of the decisions that one has made in the past. But knowing any of those entails that the known proposition is true. So does God have the power to act in some fashion that he has not foreseen, or differently than he already has without compromising his omniscience? It has also been argued that God cannot be both unsurpassably good and free. (Rowe 2004).

"Arguments Against the Existence of God Overview," Lumen: Introdiction To Philosophy (Overview) chapter Six Philosophy of Religion.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sanjacinto-philosophy/chapter/arguments-against-the-existence-of-god-overview/

"The omniscience paradox contests further problems between omnipotence and omniscience, such as a lack of ability to create something unknown to God...."


Vexen Crabtree, "God is Logically impossible: The Argument from Incoherence," The Human Truth Foundation,  2018, 
http://www.humanreligions.info/god_is_impossible.html

Omnipotence and omniscience contradict free will and themselves are logically impossible; its omniscience is impossible for it to validate and there are questions about its own being that it itself cannot answer (therefore, nothing can be omniscient). If it is a perfect being, then, there is no need to do any creating. If it is eternal and immutable, then its very thoughts are eternal and immutable - in other words, it has no mental states. If its basic emotional, behavioural and instinctive drives are all fixed (i.e., not created by itself, therefore, not under its own control, and unchanging), then it is hard to imagine how the being, existing in a world without stimulation nor change, can be conscious at all. Without free will, morality, omniscience the remaining "god" is only an automaton: a being that follows necessity and logic.

Steve Waddington,"What are atheists arguments against "god" being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent?" Quora. 2018

https://www.quora.com/What-are-atheists-arguments-against-god-being-omnipresent-omniscient-and-omnipotent

... omniscient knows everything that will happen, but has no ability to change what will happen, because any change they make they already know they will make, and so that is what happens anyway. There is no possibility of free thought or changing anything that has ever happened or ever will happen.

"The Impossibility of an Omnipotent Omniscient God," J.R.'s Free Thought Pages, No God's, No Masters no date listed
https://www.skeptic.ca/Impossibility_Arguments_for_God.htm

All such arguments depend crucially on sets of divine specifications. A core traditional notion of God is one that specifies him as necessarily existent, omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect. God is also traditionally conceived of as being a free creator, and is often spoken of as immutable or transcendent. Some impossibility arguments attack a single attribute - attempting to show that the notion of omniscience is logically incoherent on its own, for example. Others attack combinations of attributes - arguing that it is not logically possible for a being to be omniscient and a free creator, for example. If either form of argument succeeds, we will be able to show that there can be no God as traditionally conceived.

Omnipotence Paradox, Rational Wiki (last modoified 2018) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox

The omnipotence paradox refers to the apparently paradoxical ability of an omnipotent entity to both limit its powers and remain omnipotent.
The paradox is used both as an argument against an omnipotent God and against the concept of true omnipotence.

"Argument from Free Will," Wikipedia  (19 November 2018)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_free_will

The argument from free will, also called the paradox of free will or theological fatalism, contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inherently contradictory.[note 1][1][2]These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination.

Matt Nelson, "How to Prove God Doesn't exist," Word on Fire Blog (Feb 4, 2019)
https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/how-to-prove-that-god-doesnt-exist/5216/

Let’s consider three of God’s best-known divine attributes: his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence....
This brings us to the claim of God's omnipotence. Is there any philosophical contradiction that can be drawn out of God's infinite power? As we have noted, God cannot sin because he is morally perfect, the perfect standard of what it means to be good. Thus God has the power to do all logically possible things—that is, he has the power to do all meaningful things. That is why he cannot create a four-sided triangle (which is really nothing at all).

all  (accessed feb 10,2019)

[2]Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy: New York: Penguin Classics, 1969, no page listed

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480?-524) the Consolation was Written early in the 6th century.

[3] John Marenbon. "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/boethius/>. (accessed feb 10,2019)

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

The Saga of AtheistWatch

On Monday's post, in the comments Ryan M criticizes my linking to a certain blog: "Linking to a blog called 'Atheistwatch' certainly doesn't help either. "[1] [2] Atheist Watch was my blog. This is not a counter attack nor am I reviving AW. It affords me an opportunity to explain a lot about where I am coming from. .Atheist watch [3]was my blog.I conceived, researched and wrote it all. Atheistwatch was hated by atheist. It was shunned by many Christian, always very controversial,very surly reputation,  seldom did it deserve the  enmity or the ire, It began as a way to blow off stream against mocking atheists on CARM but finished as a sociological experiment.

I began posting on message boards in 1998. I've been on thousands of boards and had several of my own, My boards were always well used. CARM ATH was my main board. I even posted on Secular Web and still believe they banned me because I converted someone.I was obsessed with posting A lot of it was ego, a lot of it was seeking the joy of real debate. 

Prior to lunching AW I had been through 10 years of constant abuse day in and day out every time I tried to discuss with atheists. I would have loved to find a sight like Secular outpost,I did look for sources of intelligent discussion but I assured, wrongly that SOP would be like secular Web because they were both ran by Lowder. If only I had known how Lowder felt about Sec Web! He was not at all pleased with it. Eventually, after years of abuse and abusing them back I realized trying to feed them back their medicine accomplished nothing. The internet ridicule artist thrives on that.

I devised  AW as a means of analyzing their rhetorical appeals.I had majored in communication theory and sociology which uniquely qualified me to understand the sociological nature of their rhetoric. It first I had a simple theory that in the atheist community a segment was evolving to a hate  group. I applied the FBI criteria for accession hate groups to their rhetoric, and argued that that segment was in stage four of a seven part stage. I reformulated my hypothesis and then altered my whole theory.

Now it became an attempt to show that there was an atheistic social movement that reacted to criticism the way Kuhn says scientists react to paradigm change, i.e. like a political regime under fire. lacking funds top do real research I tried to provide attacks then gauge their reactions. I think most of what I did with AW was to force atheist's awareness of that segment of hater in their ranks, typified by the John Loftus crowd. By the end I had refined my hate group hypothesis to the effect that there was a segment of the atheist community which was made up of five sub segments , none of them was an actual  hate group but there were real hate effects. in the end AW itself evolved into a source of general criticism of the entire atheist community but i carried on the hate group analysis. All of that was part of the attempt to give them things to react to. That was part of showing how they react like Kuhn says politicos react. There is an organised atheist movement.[4]

No one really picked up on the nuance here. The atheist community reacted in a visceral fashion  from the beginning. I get the impression that very few atheists actually read the blog. Criticism of it went viral.it was reacted to all over the place.  That original article on the FBI criteria was commented on far and wide that shaped  the major image of AW forever. There were big hateful reactions against it. It was denounced. It was labeled by organizations that are supposed fight hate speech. So pointing out other people's hateful semantics makes you hateful. The lesson is people do not want truth they want confirmation.

I had a lot of good research on  AW. some of the best deserve mention. articles identifying mocking as a brain washing as socialization . One of my major articles was a two part   on link between atheism and self esteem. Note that I point out the same material links low self esteem to  fundamentalism as well:rejection of Christianity and Low self esteem and Atheist Self . Esteem Part 2 The saga of the Jesus  project: These are the Voygaes of the Jesus Project (part 1) and Jesus project (part 2): Orwell hits the fan. Link between ridicule and socialization into the community:Atheist use ridicule to compel belief
a project of center for inquiry. and Brain washing and Atheist Socialization
Several indicating organizational stricture for the  the movement:

The Atheist Movement and It's Organization

So there's no Atheist Movement Hu? (part 4)  

Cracking the Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship code

Center for Inquiry: Atheist Propaganda Machine


Psychology Todoay Scam 

Nigel Barber: The Uncertainty Theory of Religious belief:
Bogus atheist social sciences.

The Atheist IQ bad science and Racist Assumptions: Kanazawa,Nyborg, Lynn, Hamilton.
Looking back I can see how I did lump atheists  into general categories and wasn't fair in many cases. The Christian apologist who gave AW it's break was Victor Reppert,

I put AW to bed in 15 for two reasons. (1) I realized it was being used to feed right wing hysteria. (2) I just did not have time to keep that going and do activism in the resistance. I wish I had checked ot secular outpost long before I actually did.






[1] Ryan M. Comment on "Atheist Claim of No Evidence".Metacrock's blog Comments (FEBRUARY 03, 2019) https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2019/02/atheists-claim-of-no-evidence.html  (accessed 2/6/19)

[2] This is a link to the article to which I linked in Ryan's comment. "Atheist Rejection of Bog Bsng Totally  undermines their Enterprise" Atheistwath, (June 8, 2010)
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2010/06/atheists-rejection-of-big-bang-totally.html
(ACCESSED 2/6/19)


[3]Atheistwatch
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/


[4] I was always careful to distinguish between atheism itself and the social movment,

Atheist's claim of no evidence

 The atheists have been fired up repeating their mantra "there's not a shred of evidence for God." There are times when I find that annoying and times when I find it amusing. The reason for either reaction is because all believers know they have reasons for believing and a lot of those reasons are based upon good evidence. Even those who don't have evidence sometimes have sophisticated reasons why they don't need it. The atheist world is simplistic it defies anything sophistocated. This is a true example of what Tillich meant when he said "if you know that being has depth you can't be an atheist." The atheist is assuming that the so called "default" amounts to the basis for a tennable world view, assuming (fallacious) that the alleged default is based upon a true appraisal of the world as it is, which is reflected accurately by a surface view of things proved to exist (or thought to be proved to exist) and no need to delve any more deeply into the matter of being.

The atheist assumption lends credence to the ideologically assumption that to accept only the most well proved scientific assumptions is to mount up a great fortress of facts that demonstaes a scientifically validated world view. There are three major problems with this approach:

(1) Selective and self serving: creates truth regime.

(2) Creates a template effect that is used to screen out any other possibilities

(3) Assumes fallaciously that the surface level equates to an adequate world view

(1) Selective and self serving: Of course in implying the big fortress of facts ("I only believe things that are totally proved by science" I have heard many of them say) they are actually selecting the facts they choose to believe and ignoring others they can't stand. The 200 empirical studies on religious experience are a good example. 200 studies is a vast body of scientific data, that is literally a fortress of facts. They don't accept a word of it. I've seen the most idiotic excuses to doubt the studies form bold faced assertion that they are all done by preachers (most of them done by real social scientists) to attacks on the bibliogrpahy compiled by a promoter of the research, which is guilt by association (the bib included both the good studies and some wacy source like Depok Chopra and to these atheists was sure proof the studies are not good). Another example is the big bang. Atheists used to cling to the big bang as the word from science because it seemed to represent the universe popping out of nothing. Then Christians began to observe that it fit creation better, so now atheists turned against the big bang. One good joke, I found atheists quoting a particular site quite a bit and it turned out i was a creationist site! They were quoting like it was a valid scientifically authoritative site because they didn't get that some creationsts are against the big bang.

(2) Template: The selective nature of the fortress of facts means that that atheist is not nobly or boldly sticking to "only that which is proved by science" but is actually creating his/her own truth regalement that seeks to control what is understood as reality and bend the facts to support an ideological view point. The term truth regime refers to an ideology or a world view that screens out all other possibilities and only allows one view to be true. This is just what atheists have done. This is what's reflected in their often heard mantra "there's no proof for your God." It's not becuase they are considering alternatives or weighing coutner evidence. It's pretty clear that they way they decide the question is to create a template that says "here is the only from of knowledge and anything else has to be wrong." Of couret template is based upon an atheist reductions world view. Hold up the God arguent to the template, doe it fit? This is about God adn the tempalte says no God so it doesn't fit, therefore, this can't be proof.

A good example of this is yesterday in sparing with the inimitable "big thinker" as this guy humbly calls himself (as opposed to "tiny thinker" who actually brilliant). I made temporal beginning argument (in a nut shell):

(1) Time begins with the big bang
(2) there can be no time beyond event horizon (this is "before the big bang" to the laymen but since there can't be a "before" before time, physicist such as Hawking transfered it to spacial coordinates and speak of "beyond" time and "within space/time." Or "even horizon" which is euphemism for the big bang).
(3) No times no causes thus nothing can come to be.
(4) there must be some thing that can change the rules for creation (I go on to argue that this rules change can only be a mind--God). For the actual argument see here.

Bigthinker says,"you argument doesn't do anything. it's meaningless." I say "why?" He says "becasue it doesnt' do anything." I said "it proves God." he says 'not can't becasue it's meaningless," "why is it meaningless" "because it doesn't do anything.

Just like the idiocracy in the movie "it's got what plants crave"
what's that?
"electro-lights"
why do plants need electro-lights?
"It's got what plants crave."

If the argument is right, I'm not saying an intelligent atheists in good shape at the top of his game can't find valid things to argue agaisnt it. This guy is clear just going in circles because as presented the argument does prove nothing should be here without an all seeing mind capable of re-writing the rules for creation. Yet this guy keeps saying "It doesn't do anything" but he never says what he means. One guy, so what? The whole board has been stumped by it so far. I've done this before. this very argument had sec webbers screaming and cursing becuase they could not find an answer. At times when I have insisted on pushing to the limit and forcing them to face that the did not answer one of my arguments, they would saying "I dont' think arguemnts prove anything anyway. We've seen this over and over again. The Lungs of Charles Anne. Second miracle to put St. Teresa of Lisieux (sp) over the top. I did everything but get the xrays. They demand that I get them. They wont even investigate they just demand that until I own the Xrays (which are in the archives the church in Eruope you can buy copies but expensive and I can't find anyone who can tell me how) until I own those Xrays it's not proven it's bull shit it's not valid they can't be bothered with it. Becasue part of the evidence comes from a saint adoration site then they just dismiss completely, even though I have spoken with a member of the Lourdes/saint making medical committee who swears the X-Rays are there and they are genuine. I am not even asking them to take my word for it, they wont even investigate by search for other sources.

(3) Surface Level = world view:The atheist rests in his comfort zone imagining that the surface level of appear is a valid world view. The surface level (that which is clearly proved by science) is a very basic level and a very misleading level. Of course they don't even understand the basic problems of epistemology. when you confront them with that they poo poo. They will tell me my sense of God's' presence is totally untrustworthy worthy because perceptions and experiences are subjective and subjective is always misleading. You ask them "how do you know you exist" they say "O don't be stupid, I see the world around me, I'm here. It appears to me so clearly as I experience the world." The surface is the world of superficial perceptions. Trusting that as "that which is proved by science "is totally illusory. Consider particle-wave duality. The more closly we seek the answer the more unreal reality seems.

Belief in God is a world view. It's at the world view stage of belief, just as the concept of the big fortress of facts or the validity of scinece, the distrust of the subjective all of these are world view level concepts. Its' a world veiw precisely because you can't prove it. That would like trying to prove that one should love others, or that one should be a democrat or republican. These are sweeping ideas that rest of on vast sets of assumptions. There's no way to prove a world view as the world view is the scale in which we weigh proof. When we accept that something is proved it's proved agaisnt the background of our world view. You can't prove the background of proof that would be redundant and requite a regression. You need another world view against which to weight the evidence for the first world view and so on.

World view are paradigms and they shift according to their abilities to handle anomalies. This is basic theory according to Thomas S. Kuhn. We absorb anomalies into the paradigm. Something doesn't fit we just say "o that's just an anomaly, just wait and further evidence will clear it up." When there are too many of these and another world view answers them better then the paradigm shifts. Kuhn says this is the engine that really drives science. It's not a cumulative piling up of facts, as the atheists would have it with their fortress of facts, but the shift when the former world view can't hold anymore. The fortress of facts topples when we come to realize there is too much depth in being to be dismissed and the fortress of facts is not enough for a world view.In the mean time they decide the truth of evidence comparing the template and saying 'this God argument doesn't fit the atheist template so it must be wrong, therefore, it's not proved."

At that level the concept of proof in God argument is superfluous. They are not really comparing facts in a fortress they are slectively keeping out facts that contradict their view. This all makes them content with the surface but then anything that disturbs the surface is a proof of depth and thus a reason to believe there can be more. The atheist fortress of facts is self defeating.