Shall We Begin Lynching Athesits?

Upon What do we Base Moral Judgment, How do We Know Right And Wrong?


why do I say tank man made
a moral commitment?

On my message boards, Doxa Forums Fleetmouse and I were discussing Richard Rorty. Back in graduate school I studied Rorty pertty carefully, at least in terms of his work Contingency,Irony, Solidarity. I was jabbering about my memories, that was time when I was on top of my game and I knew that work, I knew every word in the book and the margins of my copy were a huge palemcest. My views about Rorty and that book were pretty negative, shaped by the professor of the class I'm sure. I stated that CIS seems to leave one with the idea that the immedicate comminity is the only basis for morality standards and that being moral or ethical is a matter of "go along get along." As an example I used the idea that if one lived in Soutern U.S. in 1900 lynching black people on trumped up reasons would be considered moral by the community. Fleetmouse likes Rorty so he was prompted to stick up for him. He issues this challenge:

could you please explain to me why lynching is absolutely wrong without making any reference whatsoever to your own beliefs, belief system, personal preference or culture?

It struck me that since he's not willing to just agree that lynching is a universal disapprobation and thus that would be a litmus test for Rorty, instead he wanted me to prove it's wrong. He wants a neutral account of why it's wrong that is divorced from any arguable sense that is. That's not possible. We all share a constitutive sense that it is wrong, that should guide us in the litmus test of Rorty. Nevertheless, we can't demonstrate the truth of that value without appeal to belief or systems becuase it is the product of such, or least if not casual than indicatively related to it.

The question implies that there's no basis for saying that's wrong. The implication is that if you have to defend the view that it's wrong by means of appeal to a belief or something that must be argued then there's no basis for saying it's wrong. That is a total contradiction to the way atheists have been answering the question since I've been on message boards (questions like it, the meta-ethical question of "what is the basis of right and wrong). Atheists in general always reflect one of three basic foundations for moral judgment:

(1) personal feeling
(2) social contract
(3) genetics

I argue against these in various ways, I don't consider them as valid basis by themselves for an ethical system. Yet I fully expected a defence of one of these, and instead got an implication that there is no basis. I don't imagine that Fleetmouse doesn't accept the intrinsic wrongness of lynching, so I gave him credit for that realization. He would be repulsed by it and he wouldn't do it. He wants to play this little game where I go though the spelling out of why it's wrong ect ect the fact that he wants to do implies that there really is no answer.

If he's seeking to let Rorty off the Hook he's doing it at the expense of some of he most cherished truths of human morality. The fact is we should all be able to agree that it is wrong to lynch even if we can't spell out why or provide indubitable scientific data to prove it. Where does the absurd notion come from that this must be disconnected from belief or it's wrong? First of all the question itself is impossible. To ask one to explain why something is wrong apart from beliefs, systems, and culture is like saying "explain why it's wrong without any reference to why it's wrong! Beliefs and systems are not negations of some empirical ethics we can glean from scinece. There's no such thing as empirical ethics or ethics gleaned form scinece. moral motions and ethical judgments are about beliefs. There's no shame in that. The assumption that belief is intrinsically wrong, the implication being that there's some empirical truth to be found scientifically apart form bleief, is just crazy. I think the desire to ground all knowledge in scinece is the culprit lurking behind the problem here.

In his wonderful ground breaking work Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor discusses the relation of ethics to our concepts of person-hood and self. All ethical views, like views of the self are based up construct built form constituent parts. Regardless of the ultimate source of moral truth, or lack thereof, this s how it's done when you are human. The more basic the constituent parts held in common are the more confidently we can assume some kind of truth lurking behind that approbation or disapprobation. People build those constructs in different ways, that's what makes ethics and morality so diverse. One part we are all playing with no matter how we arrange it is a basic sense of the need to live. It's our empathy as humans that turns the need to live, the drive, the frantic demand that we must live, into the desire to see others live and flourish.

That doesn't prove why lynching is wrong, but it does mean we know it is. Regardless of our systems or our constructs or how we put it together, regardless of the meta-ethics (how we know what is right or wrong), this is deeper even then meta-ethics, which is one of the things closest to bedrock, we all have this basic constituent part if we have basic human empathy.That doesn't prove why it's wrong, but it tell us at a gut level that it is.

To then want an explanation of why divorced from that basic understanding of the reverence for live (which is the drive to live turned outward) is doing violence to the whole concept of having a moral code. Anyone, theist, atheist, or pantheist or whatever has to have this basic fact in place in order to act ethically. Without that there is no morel decision because there's no moral commitment.

Whatever one's ethical view point one of the basic things we should be able to agree on just as a human feeling regardless of the ability to prove it's wrong is the evil of injustice and unjustly destroying a life for some trivial prejudice. To try and divorce that from the feelings that go with ethical commitment is to dismantle the process of being moral. That should be the regulator of virtue and action. To say that Rorty is willing to do away with that becuase he has no committement should tell us right there he is not to be trusted in his ethical evaluations. His basis in pragmatism is so pragmatic he gives away the store.

The question also calls for explication without reference to culture. That is a contradiction in terms. That's like saying explain without words. Culture is language, language is culture. What Rorty is doing is accepting culture in place of person insight, feeling, commitment, belief or any sort connection to a universal or transcendent truth. He makes an idol out of the community. Then the questions asks to explain without reference to even the community (culture) which is daft because even Rorty is NOT willing to do that. OF course Fleet put that in because he thought I was saying the culture has nothing to do with it. I am not saying that and I agree you can't talk about right and wrong without reference to culture or community, yet that doesn't mean those things are the origin of right and wrong.

Again, culture is the medium of our thought. It's not the only from of turth, but it is the language of our thinking. Culture is language in it's fuller and more developed sense. Trying to separate them is like trying to separate the wave from the curl. Whatever transcendent truth there is that makes murder wrong above and beyond culture, is going to be communicated in culture and understood culturally. So again the question is nonsense.

Making the immediate community the orbiter of right and wrong makes an idol of the provincial. There are larger cultures, where each community overlaps with others and connections to other people far wider in their bonds until we are talking about districts, nations and finally an international community. To make the provincial the orbiter just becuase there's no imagination and an abhorrence of bleief in God, is just creating an idol out of ignorance. The provincial is the limit on liminal space. It's the liminal that marks the trek as "transcendent." So to limit knowledge to the subliminal is to cut off the transcendent and to make ignorance the limit on learning. We can't traverse anything we don't know. That's means we are enshrining bigotry. That has to be something we oppose at any level or as advocates of any ethical system. That's another constituent part.

I understand why Fleetmouse set up the question in this way. I seemed to be saying the community has noting to do with it, since I castigated Rorty for basing ethics on the community. That's not quite what I'm saying. I am saying there are times when moral judgment transcends the immediate community and there are time when we must stand up against the community and opposes it. Even in that case one must be understanding the moral and ethical decision through the understanding afford by the background culture upon which the community is based or it has no meaning in relation to the community, even to opposes it. Imagine if one says "lynching black people for any reason is murder, it should never be done," the other person says "what's lynching?" For the judgment "do not lynch" to make sense one must know what the words means, that's going to be understood through the culture and nothing else.

Obviously then there's a relationship bewteen the community and the moral. The relationship is not such that the moral depends entirely upon the decision of the community. Culture is primarily a medium, a point of reference, the means by which ideas are understood, a repository of icons and a universe of symbols. That does not preclude a transcendent realm or a transcendent truth. (for an arrangement establishing the basis of a transcendent truth see Olson's article on Tillich's implied ontological argument. See also this blog on my article on same).

As to answering the question, everyone is going to assume that I will say "It's wrong becasue God says so." Not exactly. I have reject that account of Christian morality. Rather than sheer volunteerism I propose that God makes ethical decisions based upon wisdom and his wisdom is indexed by the basis of his charter, which is love. So that love forms the basis of everything, and the back of the moral universe is part of "everything." Morality is the upshot of love, God's love, this is why it's a constituent part universal to humanity. We see ethical thinking showing up in the form of empathy where we are able to focus the drive to live outward upon the desire of others to live. Empathizing is an act of love becuase it's other directed. Love is the will to the good of the other. Thus other directed consciousness is an act of love. This serves as both universal transcendent truth and cultural construct. This means that belief and commitment are not out of bounds for ethical discussion. Morality is decision making. A moral act is one that is decided upon based upon a value system, it is also an act to which one is willing to commit oneself becasue the a value being defended is more important than a taste or a whim but is a value requiring a true commitment. Commitment of this kind must be motivated by love. Even if Tank man didn't know he was acting love, his committment to be crushed while confronting the tanks was still an act of love at some level.


The traditional moral argument (for the existence of God) plays off this sense of the constituent approbation. At least true of my version of it. We know this act is right, or wrong, but we can't say way except in so far as we tie the reason to God. Kant saw that as a reason to believe in God. The atheist see it as a disproof of God and morality because it's not empirical science. That's self defeating it's like the question Fleetmouse asks above. It divorces the concept of the moral from it's reason for being. You can't expect a coherent answer at that rate.

The Atheist Argument of Divde and Conquor: Universality of Religous Expernice

Antithesis try to trade off of the great number of faiths all the time. Often they will respond to any mention of God with "Which God." They treat different religious traditions as their God's are compete with each other for existence.

We can us Occam to trim the fat int he God market down to one. This is all we need is one. We have good reason to think there can only be one, since God is being itself and there can't be two of those.

the question of religious traditions is the question of cultures.The religious a prori, the special sense of the divine that we encounter beyond words and images, is loaded into cultural constructs so we can talk about it. That means the things that make religions different are just cultural.

the major counter to this atheists always bring up is the difference in ceremony and mythology. Both are merely cultural all we get is the differences in human culture that is the lens through which the experience of the divine is filtered.

It doesn't' beat the argument to talk about all the little fiddly bits in religions because those are the cultural aspects. The M scale proves the universal nature of the divine because it shows that people in all cultures have a core experience and it's the same all over the world. Religious experience and belief are innate. That means that while it must be filtered through the lens of culture it exists in all cultures and it's a good bet that it will have a common core of experience that is the same.

The M Scale

The “M Scale” (Mysticism scale) was developed by Ralph Hood Jr. at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. It has become the standard study instrument by which validation of mystical experience is accomplished empirically. Hood’s instrument has been cross culturally validated and is probably represents the cutting eduge of research in this field of Religious experience. The scale is a series of questions and a scoring technique, which has been worked out according to standard social scientific assumptions. The scale has been so successful it has become the standard operating procedure[i] and replaces the former practice of the researcher trying to develop her own scale, a practice that led to as many scales as there were studies. The M scale is by far the most successful and has been cross culturally validated with great successes. It is based on the phenomenological categories of mystical study by W.T. Stace and makes certain assumptions of William James. Hood’s original measuring instrument, the REEM, was based upon the categories of James. The M scale follows the phenomenological development of Stace. The scale uses 32 items (these are questions that are asked of the subject). The items are organized with 16 Positive and 16 negatively worded. Independent studies supported Hood’s original design, (Caird, 1988, Reinert and Stifler, 1993).[ii]

Originally M scale measured two factors: (1) Assesses items of an experienced unity (introvertive or extrovertive). (2) Assesses items of a experience of religious or non religious and knowledge claims. This is consistent with Stace’s concept that Mystical experience can be interpreted in many ways. Reinert and Stifler suggested religious items and knowledge items might emerge as separate factors. This would split the interpretative factors between religious and non-religious factors. That would not contradict Stace. There is a distinction between “spiritual” and “religious.” Mystical experience can be interpreted (as we have seen already) as “spiritual” without being thought religious, or as “mystical” without involving God. The two-item approach allows greater interpretation. But the interpretive factor was religious in nature. The assumptions made in the study and taken to answering the questions tended to be religious.[iii]

Hood changed his strategy from two analytic factors to three (“the three factor solution”). The Three factor solution sets up three categories, which more closely follow the predictions of Stace based upon his reading of mystics and person experience. (“phenomenological”). The three categories for Stace were: Staces’ categories of Introvertive and extrovertive mysticism emerging as two separate factors. The third factor is an interpretive dimension where the respondent relates the experiences to knowledge claims (“God is love” or some such). Interovertive means the mystical experience is beyond word though or image, it is iner directed and not related to any outside phenomenon and I supposed to be beyond description. This will also be discussed more in chapter five (“Religious Apiori”). Extrovertive means the subject’s experience is related to nature or to some external image in the immediate environment, a sense of the numinous, the harmony underlying all of nature or something on that order. The tables below demonstrate the basic structure Stace’s theory and the three factor test. They demonstrate the closeness with which the latter validates the former.

The M scale follows Stace’s phenomenological accounts of mystical experience. It also reflects, therefore, Stace’s theoretical concerns. The major such concern is known as “the common core” hypothesis. The common core assumption is a universalistic approach, whereby it is assumed that a verity of different interpretations and descriptions match the same experiences. A corollary might be that one reality stands beyond the many different mystical traditions. One of the major critics of this view, who we will meet again in defense of Proudfoot (chapter six) is Steven Katz (1977) who wrote an edited an anthology against Stace’s work. He assumes that the common core thesis is asserting that mystical experience is unmediated. Thus he argues that extreme language is used not just to describe mystical experience but that langue itself is experience. Language used in description constitutes the experience itself rather than merely describing it. This position will be critically examined in chapters five and six (a priori, and Proudfoot). [i] But Stace doesn’t argue that the experience is unmediated. Hood points out that Stace only says there are degrees of interpretation and descriptions can makes similar but not identical experiences. Hood also points out that Foreman marshals opponents against Katz. He argues that since introvertive is devoid of description language can’t really play a role in constituting it.(for more on this issue see chapters five and six).

Hood and Spilka point three major assumptions of the common core theory that flow out of Stace’s work:

(1) Mystical experience is universal and identical in phenomenological terms.

(2) Core Categories are not always essential in every experince, there are borderline cases.

(3) Interovertive and extrovertive are distinct forms, the former is an experience of unity devoid of content, the latter is unity in diversity with content.

The M scale reflects these observations and in so doing validate Stace’s findings. Hood and Spilka (et al) then go on to argue that empirical research supports a common core/perinnialist conceptualization of mysticism and it’s interpretation.

The argument that the similarities of the human mind produce the same experiences is self defeating becuase if that were true then the fiddly bits of religion should be the same too. So the atheist argument that religions are all different defeat their assertion that this universal experience is just coming from the human mind.

could you write this down this time so you can stop making the same mistake all the time?

---

[i] Bernard Spilka, Ralph Hood Jr., Bruce Hunsberger, Richard Gorwuch. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. New York, London: the Guildford Press, 2003, 323.

[ii]Ibid.

[iii] Ibid,

[i] Ibid.

The Invisable Friend

Atheists use this as derision, likening God to an imaginary friend; relating to God is like a child with an imaginary friend. Well is it? In some ways it is. Imaginary friends are said to be positive things by child psychologists. Through the assumption of God's active presence in our lives we can model holy living just as through imaginary friends children are modeling real friendships later for life. It really depends upon the extent to which people take it. I've never been comfortable with "Jesus is here invisibly" idea. I am not comfortable with the way of relating to God that assumes God is saving me a parking place. Some Christians sort of assume they are experiencing God and then letting God step into such occasions. That's actually not all bad really. The sense of God's presence, or what we call "God's presence" is documented over and over again in empirical studies as a valid life transforming experience and something that really changes people's lives for the better in dramatic ways. Some studies show that the mystical type experience is the most mature form of Christianity. The study by Robert Voyl shows this, and it links Christian experience to mystical experience.


That being the case we have no choice but to assume that the experience is the sensation of a reality that is actually present to us at the time. That's very different than the "Jesus is here invisibly" thing I refer to. That idea is about something the people who talk about it are not really experiencing. It's an assumption based upon the concept of God's omnipresence, and extrapolation from imagination. The actual presence of God felt by mystics and peak experiencers is a real palpable sense, it's not imagination.

The atheist can't evaluate this by just hearing about or reading about. I thought people who had such experiences were insane until I had one myself. It's as simple as this, you have to experience it. It's a way of life, it is not just one more hypothesis in a life of hypothesis testing. It's a relationship and develops over time. Not all Christians think they hear God, or even believe in that sort of interactive interpersonal relationship with God. There are many kinds of spirituality and many ways of relating to God. I went through my Charismatic phase in the 80s. I still believe some of what I picked up in that era, the "gifts" for example, miracles and healing. But I have ot tried to interact in that way, that God is my invisible friend, in some time. That is, in my opinion, a phase. It's the lower level of stages along the road to mystical union. Mystical union is the highest level of relationship with God and most Christians don't even know about it and will never get there. I will never get there in this life. But it is something, I believe, we will all experience in after life.

Mystical union is not in the Bible as such. There are verses that pertain to it, but it's not stated explicitly as such. It's part of the voluminous literature of Christian mysticism.

Diverse Expressions of Spirituality


There are as many different views of spirituality and styles of relating to God as there are people to do the relating. Christians are very different. G.K. Chesterton was as different from Billy Graham as was Adli Stevenson from Barry Goldwater. Which is to say as different as Clinton from Bush. Even within the closed ranks of Christian mystics it is very diverse. You don't have to relate to God like a big guy in the sky. You can relate to God like a principle or an idea. We can internalize the values and just learn to discern the will of God without having to "hear" or sense works or ideas. Atheists can't understand this because they have to assume it's all made up and so they can only go by words on paper. But they don't even bother to read anything except the bible and that they read for loopholes rather than understanding.

Atheists often confuse popular piety with Christian doctrine and spiritual experience. Popular piety is neither, it is not doctrine nor is it spirituality, at least not in a deep sense. The real depth in spirituality is the mystics; St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and mystical writers not saints, such as blessed John Riseborke, Madame Guyon, Baron Von Huggle. There are hundreds, or thousands. They are all different. They are as different from each other as Plato from Thomas Kuhn. Reading them will only give us a clue. You can't know God until you open your heart to him and begin a relationship with him. Until then it's only stuff you hear about and assumptions not in evidence. The first step is open your heart to God's love. Let God love you. If you think love is control and manipulation then you are just missing the boat on what life is all about.

Being a Christian is about knowing God in a personal way. This means experiencing God's presence, but it means a lot more than that too. It's a personalized relationship which fits the individual's own style; it's a love relationship:

1Jo 4:7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1Jo 4:8

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is something that has to be experienced to be understood. Once it is experienced it is known. The atheistic claims to "just know" there's no God don't stack up to that, because they are by their very definition the absence of a relationship. One cannot experience the fact of a thing not existing. We can experience the lack of food, clothes, shelter, taxes, peace, whatever, but that doesn't prove these things don't exist, merely experiencing a want and a lack is not proof of anything. Experiencing the presence is proof of something. Atheists may assume or speculate as "what that really is experience of" but that is not the same as experiencing it. To have this kind of relationship with God is to know God. To know God is to love God because God is love. It is also knowing that God loves us. No one can understand this from outside the relationship and no one can judge God. People who think they are rejecting God are really just rejecting love.

To Know God is to Love God--Reprise

I came across an atheist response yesterday on a message board that reminded me of an old post I originally back in 2007 or so. Actually there were two recent posts that remind me of this guy:

(1) athiest accuses me of "throwing fear of hell at him."

I was angry and tried to say in a cleaver way "go to hell." This guy went on a big tirade that is still going on insisting that I'm trying to manipulate him by "throwing fear of hell at me." No actually I was just being a jerk. No big psychological manipulation involved I just said "go to hell." Wrong, shouldn't have done it but he attaches so much more to it. That also got us off on a thing about fear of hell, which he clearly still has. He denies he has fear hell because he doesn't believe in God but he so angry that its obvious he still fears hell. It's probalby more the reminder of fear. It's like a kid saying "I'm not afraid of the dark," so then when it's time to turn out the light he keeps finding excuses to keep it on but all the while angrily protesting "I am not afraid of the dark! I just have to do some ironing before I go to bed!"

(2) Atheist says fear of God is psychological manipulation

This guy just made the claim that when the bible speaks of "fear of the Lord" that's a sick and evil attempt to scare people into being controlled. From my own studies of the passages involving that phrase I know for a fact that's not it. I told him this and he goes "O you know it is, you are not being honest." It's a conplex concept and you hve to take it verse by verse it's never as simple as just "here's the word fear, so do what I say." Nothing in the Bible is ever that simple. Essentially fear of the Lord is not voluntary. It was transformed into an ethic by the prophests but essentually it refers to the sublime, the non voluntary reaction people have the sublimity of God. "Sublime" doesn't mean pretty it means that which outstrips our understanding and which transcends anything we can conceive of or expect.. Consequently there is the "terrible sublime" where horrible things can be sublime. So it's not the grand Canyon that is sublime it's also 9/11 or Pearl Harbor that is so.

Fear of the Lord, or Holy fear, is the involuntary response people sometimes have when confronted with the presence of God, its also described in realization to angles. The sense of being overwhealmed by some all powerful thing that transcends all our understanding and can't be confronted. Not being used to manipulate because people who would be doing the manipulating are totally freaked out too. Its' unepxected, you can't control you can't know when it will happen because it's totally relation to God's decision to reveal himself.

More importantly fear of the Lord is not connected to bad things. It's fear, it's being feraked out, it's being overwhelmed but it's nto punishment, it's not about hell and it culminates in God's love.

These fears of being controlled are being expressed by people who hate God, if God is just a metaphor for the people who hurt them in the chruch, that's who they hate, it's focused upon the concept of God. They don't know God so they don't know what the fear of the Lord is. They are confusing fears. They are ally imposing their own fear of hell over the healthy fear of the Lord. If they knew God they would know better.

here's the post this reminds me of.

The old post I am reminded of, the reprise:

I just finished this page yesterday.Why I don't believe in hell. It's too long for the blog (4 pages). So I put it up on Doxa. I really should have done it years ago, it's such a basic issue. I write this in response to a commenter on the comments section who was posting in response to the piece "no Will Greater than My Own."

9:14 PM
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Goliath said...

Ah, at last, you've begun to realize that even if your god exists, not everyone would want to follow him.

Not that I believe that either exists, but I would MUCH rather follow Satan than the xian god. In fact, I would rather die and spend eternity in hell than follow the xian god.





9:36 PM


My response that's your prerogative and your problem. I will just say that you don't know God. you don't know what God is like. Maybe I dont' either but a i have a general idea. you can't go by the OT. you have to go by Jesus. So far all the atheist attempts to show that Jesus was no good have been less than impressive, for me.

I'll look you up in a million an and see what you think then. I jsut warn you of one thing:

I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of "Down Town" Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it.

8:03 AM
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Goliath said...

I know everything I need to know about the xian god, and I know everything that I need to know about your vile faith.

I hate Jesus, I hate the xian god, and I would destroy both of them if I could.

"I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of 'Down Town' Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it."

ROFL! Is that the best you can do to scare me into groveling before your god? You're pathetic.

12:50 PM
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J.L. Hinman said...



I am not interested into scaring you into anything. You are only hurting yourself.

6:38 PM
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Goliath said...

Then why try to intimidate me by telling me what hell might be like?

Again: I would rather burn in hell than follow your god. Deal with it.

6:57 PM
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J.L. Hinman said...

that is nuts. to really think that is a serious attempt to scare anyone? I can think of a lot more scary fates than having to listen to "Downtown."

this is something called "humor." Are you so demented you don't even know what "funny" means?

If you bothered to learn more about my ideas you would know that I do not believe in hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. So you are just hurting yourself because you are missing the very essence of what love is by rejecting God because God is love.

scary hu?

If you are just looking for fight you wont get one. I have better thins to do. Go troll someone else. If you really care bout ideas I am wiling to talk but you have to shed the bad boy image thing and grow up and really think.

I am not trying to humiliate this guy or to ridicule him for thinking my joke was a serious threat, although I think it should be obvious it was not. Three things occurred to me as a result of this exchange:

(1) again we see the real issue underneath it all is power. Notice his idea of accepting the existence of God is "groveling." For one reason or another its a power issue. I don't know anything about this guy by my imagination is working overtime playing on images of overly zealous religious people trying to manipulate people into doing their will. Ultimately I don't believe that all the hurt feelings and bitter hatred of hate group atheism is all the fault of religious people. But I certainly don't think we've handled things right.

(2) atheist assumptions about religious people are stereotypes that cause them to cast the issues in certain preset terms.

(3) Perhaps we condition people to think they know what God would be like, or what the Christian idea of God would be like by dealing with Christians. How else could it be? That they think they know what God "is" or would be like is purely a function of two things:

(a) how Christians have treated them

(b) the why they have been conditioned by Christians to read the Bible.

This is why I think it is important up front to get out the message about hell. I urge you all to read those pages because I feel I make a pretty good case for the idea that the Bible does not even teach that hell is eternal conscious torment. It's important for people to understand this because the atheist agenda is wrapped up in propagandizing about Christianity as a punitive and operant notion of religious experience.

two paradigms: operant vs existentialist

The choice of paradigms on the nature of religion lies between two poles, a punitive-operant religion vs an existential religion. Punitive I think we all get drift, hell is thought to be punishment for disbelief, sin and generally doing bad. It is also seen as a means so scaring people into compliance as our friend above thinks.Operant (like B.F. Skinner's positive and negative reinforcement) because through the promise of heaven and the threat of hell one is manipulated into changing behavior on a punishment/reward basis. Existentialist means it is not about punishments or manipulation but a response to one's existential experince of life in the world--based upon personal experiences and aimed at understanding individualistic goals and ends of a person's life rather than fitting into a preset mold of behavior.

While we can't do that much about the way other Christians react to people, we can try to check our own reactions (I do know I still have a long way to go in that area) and we can try to clarify problems with the atheist reading of our belief system. Toward that end I would explain that since I don't believe that hell is eternal conscious torment, I can't really try to scare compliance out of people. There have been instances on message boards where I have told atheists about my view son hell and always some group of them will say "then how can you scare people into being good?" I can only think that they approach the problem from this angle because they feel people have tried to scare them into being good and that's the only way they can see to do it.

The existential paradigm of religion is so much more effective because scaring compliance. Scaring people into obedience defeats the purpose of knowing God and it's really ineffective in the long run. It's much more effective if people internalize the values of the good. This is why God sets up the world in the way it is, why we have to seek truth instead of being issued briefings in press conferences when we are born. Because the search leads to internalizing values and values give us committment for a life time. Belief in hell is a waste. It's childish and it is wasted because no one learns in hell. You cant' come back and try it again, by the time you know you were wrong its' too late to change. Punishment may be just and there should be consequences for evil, but I think ceasing to exist is consequence enough, and humane. Please read the link at the top about Why I don't believe in hell. So I don't believe God's aim is to scare but to enthrall and to bring us to a point of internalizing God's values. We do that by knowing God.

Atheists will no doubt see it as a game and a pretense, but, it is a relationship. One cannot "know enough about the Christian God." you can't get the idea from words on paper or sermons on Sunday. It's not a fair test to go by how Christians treat you because Christians are at all different stages in their walk with God, some don't even have any idea they can know God in a personal way. That being said that is no excuse to treat people badly. We as Christians have to understand how we come across and respond in love, not manipulation. I know I am the worst at responding in love. I have some real idiotic mistakes in lashing out in anger to abuse of atheists. But this doesn't give any clear picture of God, even though they will draw conclusions about God based upon the way we act.

That is no better than trying to know a person by what others tell you. You ever had a friend who had another friend he was always talking about. This guy is the greatest ever, and when you meet that person, nothing like the description. You have to know someone before you can really see how great that person is. You have to actually know God. This brings up the invisible friend effect.

End of the old post.
Epilogue:

The atheist "thing" (the experience, the point of message board interacting) is to be accepted by the flock, to have a social cement. To do that one expresses one's derision of the enemy, one mocks and ridicules. So these guys are spending their time mocking and ridiculing people who are in a relationship they can't understand and don't want to understand. That relationship is with someone they don't know and don't even believe exists. They are hardly in a position to clearly evaluate the nature of that relationship. Many of the will claim they know so much about the Christian God very few that say that, when pressed reveal the ear marks of a strong Christianity. Most of them never experienced God's presence. That's not something you get automatically just becasue you go to church for years. I've met atheists who quite Christianity becasue they didn't feel God's presence. Such people usually don't know theology, they know only the pablum taught form the pulpit. So saying "I have a Christian for many yeas' is not as impressive as it sounds.

you can't know someone just by hearing stories about them. It's a real relationship with God it's very diverse. It has to be experienced to be understood. Anyone claiming to disprove or to understand it who doesn't know that God is love doesn't know God. If one's only idea of love is manipulation that's just a warning that person probably needs help, not a credential to show how deeply insightful they are. People who think they have debucncked love are not insightful they are sick.


This original post had a section on "invisible friend" but it's so good (and so much longer) I have decided to cut it off and use it as a separate post latter.

Film Fest Friday: Tokyo Story by Yasujirô Ozu

Kurosawa is the Western Japanese film Genius, Ozu is Japan's Japanese director. Kurosawa was criticized by critics in Japan as being too Western (in which he took pride--even though he was trained as a samurai). Ozu was one who was hailed by critics of his own country as epitomizing their own style and flavor of film. What that means for the western film buff is long and boring! Not to say the film is no good. It's an excellent film, it deserves to be thought of as up there with Bergman's Wild Strawberries, and Di Sica's the Bicycle Thief, some have said it's one of the greatest films ever made. But Western viewer beware! To get the point where you enjoy and appreciate this film you are going to have to learn to love films where nothing happens. The true Japanese spirit of film is a long ambling slice of life that takes forever to unwind. Once you stick through it all the way it's rewarding, but it's getting there that's the trouble. Another great Ozu film that might be easier to start on, which I also love, is Floating Weeds.

Tokyo Story (1953) is longer and harder to get through. Since I'm not a professional critic I will relay my personal connection. This film is about an old couple and their children who don't have time for them. Since I cared for my parents for three years at the end of their lives this film meant a lot to me. The old couple goes to Tokyo to see their children the only one who is actually glad to see them and has time for them is their Daughter-in-law whose husband is dead. Despite the fact that she is not blood kin, she's the one who is genially glad to see them and sacrifices for them.



The Old couple sit at the sea wall and talk about how
their kids don't want them.

Now that the reader has been warned about the daunting aspect, the reward from watching the film is immense. The cinematography is amazing. Ozu loves to give reflective shots that dwell on some city scape or a view over the tile roofs of the village where the old people are from. These are beautiful and artistic shots that, even though black and white, play up the beauty of Japan and provoke a reflective mood. The shots across those tile roves are wonderful. That's one of my favorite things about the move. The oldest son's wife is so mercenary and selfish but it's not heavy handed. One is easily lulled into a tranquil state thinking nothing is going on these guys are talking about clothes and what they ate for dinner and memories of childhood, yet lurking behind this innocent scene is a host of indications that the people just don't have time for anyone but themselves. One the major sings of the younger couple's neglect and their general state of malaise is the tantrums their children through. Their children don't recognize the grandparents, have no interest in being with them, and act super spoiled because they don't get their way on some small thing. If one notices one can see the attitudes in the mother. The parents (the children of the old people) are just faded worn out versions of the small tantrum throwing children.

The Daughter-in-law is genuinely glad to see them, reaches out to them as the only family she has. Of course one might imagine her sister and brother in-laws are of no help to her. This is early 50,s Japan is still getting over the war, they are resigned to being U.S. allies, they are going whole hog for American things, yet the country is still very poor. The houses they live in have paper walls and they sit on the fool, although the affluent oldest son's house has western chairs. The level of Asian sociology observed is very educational. We all the face saving tactics of a day in Japan in that era. In the end there's a family crisis. The Family gathers. The youngest sister, who is a teacher is appealed at the selfishness of the older ones. Ironically its' the daughter-in-law the only one who had time for the grandparents, who defends her brother and sister's in law. It's not because they are evil, it's not becasue they are mean, it's not even becasue they don't love their parents. Its' because they are caught up in life. They have children of their own. Here a wonderful universality to human nature shines through, one can see one's own family, one's own situation and values and love, failures, reflected in these Japanese people, regardless of being Texan or wherever one is from. Like all great art Ozu manages to bring out the universal aspects of the human condition.

The Universlity of Jesus

I have my universalism perspective that comes in form mystical theology. It's still a Jesus-centric universalism. Here's how it works. A recent post on CARM gave a good opportunity to summarize my position.


On CARM
Originally Posted by troxel

Care to defend this?

Many concepts of God are just plainly false and even destructive. Many concepts of God are exclusive and thereby intrinsically destroy the above claim. Finally many concepts of God posit mutually contradicting theories and doctrines that again violate the above claim.

Meta:

you are not thinking about reality. The way atheists usually judge the truth of religion is a strange thing. They sort of divorce it from the way we understand reality and the way we look at the world in all other words and kind of pretend that if a tradition accepts a certain view point then it exist in a real world where that doctrine is true. I know they actually bleieve this but the appraoch in that way.

The only thing that is more odd is that atheists feel the need to enter those little worlds and mess them up, they continue to see them as real. Church of Christ don't live in their own world (except the conceptual world) where their exclusivity God sends anyone to hell who doesn't have baptism by dunking. That is part of their conceptual world but it's not real. That they think that does not count against the Catholic view of God or the Tillich view of God. It's just that there are some people who think this wrong thing about God.

All concepts of God point to God, but that doesn't mean that God is made up out of all of them. That's what the Point-to clause is about. Their view is not God it just points to god. That is to say, the reality that inspires all religious traditions is understood vegly, badly, partially or not at all. Its' still there. It's not a composite of all the others and it doesn't make a bit of difference if the others are stupid or wrong or bad, they don't spoil the truth of what they point they just point to it.

We all experience God at some level, but that level is usually beyond words, usually subconscious. For those who have dramatic experiences of it those experiences are usually on a level that can't be communicated in words. To talk about it we have to compare it to things we know that means we have to filter it through constructs. All constructs are cultural; so religoius traditions are different because they are rooted in different cultural realities.

It doesn't matter that they contradict. the reality is not made up of those differences. The reality is beyond our understanding, it has to be experienced. The contradictions are in the constructs not the thing itself.


Originally Posted by troxel

Yes one can attempt to distill out perennial philosophies that run through many religious thoughts. I don't have much problem with that notion. However it is an egregious mistake to claim that all gods point to God as many religious concepts are inherently flawed and even destructive.

For example, would you attempt to say that God in the mind of Jihadist who wishes to kill innocent people in large numbers with the goal achieving paradise for himself points to God? Would you say the God in the mind of Aryan Nations Christian points to the ultimate reality? Or the God in mind of the Westboro Baptist Church member? Or the God in the mind of the Hindu who believes in deplorable caste system points to God? Or how about the David Davidian? There is much insanity, racism, egocentricity and self-absorbance in various god concepts and to claim all of these point to God is absurd and wrong.

Meta:

again you have them all in their own worlds as though there are thousands of God's the different tradition are literally in different demonstrations compete with their own Gods.

the fact that some group of hate fulled morons get's it wrong does not discredit the idea of One reality behind all traditions. most of those moron groups are not valid traditions. They are cults, spliter groups, fanatics and extremists they don't represent the traditions they broke away from.

Christianity is the tradition. The fundies in Christianity are not the tradition they are subject groups and most of them invalid and not representative of the faith as a whole. Against its' the constructs that are wrong. All of those fanatics groups named above are defined by the constructs and the culturally bound association that separate them from their tradition. We can see this clearly because they involve political differences.

Most people are going to say that to be a Christian one must believe in the exclusive nature of Jesus. How can I be a Christian and believe that God is working in all cultures? Paul did.

Other Religions

Paul said "To those who through persistence seek glory, honor and immortality he will give eternal life.But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the good and follow evil there will be wrath and anger...first for the Jew and then for the gentile; but glory honor and peace for everyone who does good. For God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart form the law and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

Indeed when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirement of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness and their hearts now accusing, now even defending them..." (Romans 2:7-15). New American Standard and other translations say "their hearts accusing, now excusing them..." Most Christians are afraid of this conclusion and they down play this verse. Often Evangelicals will come back and say "he makes it clear in the next passage that no one can really follow the law on their hearts." Well, if they can't, than they can't. But if they can, and do, than God will excuse them. God knows the heart, we do not. The verse clearly opens the door to the possibility of salvation (although by Jesus) thorugh a de facto arrangement in which one is seeking the good without knowing the object one is seeking (Jesus). In other words, it is possible that people in other cultures who follow the moral law written on the heart know Jesus de facto even if they don't know him overtly. Paul backs up this conclusion in Acts 17:22 Paul goes to Athens as is asked by the Athenian philosophers to explain his ideas to them.

These were pagan followers of another religion. Paul stood up and said to them, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and observed your objects of worship I even found an alter with this inscription 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD' Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."He basically says that they are worshiping God, they just don't know who he is. That's why he says "I will make it known to you." He doesn't say "you have the wrong idea completely." Most Evangelicals dismiss this as a neat rhetorical trick. But if we assume that Paul would not lie or distort his beliefs for the sake of cheap tricks, we must consider that he did not say "you are all a bunch of pagans and you are going to hell!" He essentially told them, "God is working in your culture, you do know God, but you don't know who God is. You seek him, without knowing the one you seek. He goes on,(v27)"God did this [created humanity and scattered them into different cultures] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him though he is not far form each one of us." This implies that God not only wants to work in other cultures, but that it is actually his paln to do things in this way. Perhaps through a diversity of insights we might come to know God better. Perhaps it means that through spreading the Gospel people would come to contemplate better the meaning of God's love.

In any case, it does mean that God is working in other cultures, and that God is in the hearts of all people drawing them to himself. Of their worship of idols, Paul said "in past times God overlooked such ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (v30). Now what can this mean? God never overlooks idolatry or paganism, in the OT he's always commanding the Israelite to wipe them out and expressly forbidding idolatry. It means that on an individual basis when God judges the hearts of people, he looks at their desire to seek him, to seek the good. That their status as individuals in a pagan culture does not negate the good they have done, and their ignorance of idolotry does not discount their desire to seek the good or the truth. IT means that they are following Jesus if they live in the moral life, even though they follow him as something unknown to them. IT also means that all of us should come into the truth, we should seek to know God fully, and when we do that we find that it is Jesus all along.

Jesus is the revelation not the institution called "chruch." Jesus is working among all people to bring them to seek God's love. If people are seeking the love of the true creator its that by which they will be judged not an institution, flag, or political tendency. How closely did they seek the love of this universal mind that is the ground of Being? That will determine the extent to which they treated people rightly.

Challenge to "honest Christians" Reveals Irrationality of Atheism

File footage of college debaters


Robin Yergenson is an atheist on CARM who always puts up a thread asking for "an honest Christian to discuss with him." He doesn't get involved in other threads much but jsut sticks to that one thread driving home his argument. He doesn't do the mocking thing like so many of them, and hating long threads as I do, I decided to answer him here. He says:

I have been trying to get intellectually honest Christians to engage in a meaningful way (no heckling please). Here is the argument that I would appreciate intellectually honest engagement on:

Implies that most Christians are not intellectual or honest. I'll let that pass as it's half right (most are not intellectual--most of any group is not intellectual).

He states:

"Christianity can be shown to be false by demonstrating the contradiction that exists in two of its most fundamental tenets, namely:"

a) The claim that escaping God’s judgment to all mankind prior to and independent of any actions of our own requires belief in Jesus' resurrection.

b) The claim that God is just (that He renders that which is due).

Statement a is a rough approximation dependent upon how literalistic one cares to get. There are those who try to say that accepting on faith is a "work" and requires us to "do something." I always think that is semantics and kit picking. If that's the source of his contradiction he's just imposing a Calvinist spin on all the faith. He goes on:


The following logical progression demonstrates the contradiction:

1. As rational beings, our success at arriving at an accurate knowledge base for guiding our choices and actions correlates to a great degree with our ability to be rational, in particular, to correctly associate and integrate effects with their causes. This is what rational beings ought to do.

2. Since a supernatural/miraculous cause is a cause that is not constrained by natural preconditions (natural laws, causal chains, etc.), miracles are in principle always a possible cause for every event or existent yet, erroneously appealing to the miraculous as a cause can have devastatingly adverse consequences which we ought not do.

3. To avoid adverse consequences, we ought to believe in miracles only when it is justified and rational (for example, when the miraculous event can be demonstrated on demand and when it can be shown that a natural explanation is not at least a possibility).

4. Concluding miracles as a cause prior to it being justified is in effect allowing a belief in miracles to erode and undermine rationality, and is therefore unjustified, irrational, and immoral (acts that one ought not do).

5. Therefore, a God that requires rational beings to do what is unjustified, irrational and immoral in order to escape His judgment is an unjust God, and a God who also eternally torments all those who fail to do so is an extremely unjust God.

6. Further, this injustice does not depend upon whether or not arbitrary belief in miracles is in fact irrational, unjustified, and immoral or not. A God that requires rational beings to do what they genuinely consider to be irrational, unjustified, and immoral and who eternally torments all those who fail to do so, is an extremely unjust God.

On the surface this sounds like a logically well thought out objectionable but it's actually based upon circular reasoning. It's not valid logically to assert that it's a contradiction because it doesn't contradict internal principles of the faith but mere clashes with principles he is imposing from outside the faith, ie his own opinion. The charge that it's contradictory merely falls apart ton the grounds that it's not a true contradiction with itself but merely with what he believes already. I suspect this is what most atheists really mean by "contradiction." Let's exampine each step to see that this is true:


(1) If read carefully this is actually a tautology becuase what it really says is "rational people should be rational." We are going to find that what he really means by rational is observing his concepts and rules of interpretation. This is what makes his argument circular in nature, his premise rests upon his conclusion because he defines his criterion of "reason" by the conclusion that his views are right. He's in effect saying "a rational person will agree with me, Christianity doesn't agree with me, therefore Christianity is not rational." I'll show this as we go through ech step.

(2) erroneously appealing to the miraculous as a cause can have devastatingly adverse consequences which we ought not do. Of course this is also circular since if God is real and Jesus' death is true doctrine then God would be the determiner of both rationality and the truth of miracles, not us and not Yergensen. He says that miracles are not constrained by physical conditions but they are. This is allowed by the will of God, but they are so constrained. This is so becuase miracles are not just wild events that can happen any old time, they must be in line with God's and God's timing, they don't contradict the nature but merely impose a higher order which the natural is predisposed to obey. This is what is meant by "ground and end of the natural." See Eugene R. Fairweather, "Christianity and the Sueprpntrual" New Theology no One, ed Martin E. Marty, 1964. God is the source of all reason. God's timing for supernatural effects (miracles) are not based upon irrationality.


He states: "miracles are in principle always a possible cause for every event or existent..." I deny that assertion and it seems unsupported. That's like saying our being wrong about the nature of the universe is always a possibly, therefore, all theories about the universe should be considered untrue. All he's really arguing is that we should have a prmia facie reason for arguing form sign in favor of miracles.That's fine. There is no problem with that, but once having accepted the Principe that God is real and can alter the course of the natural at any time we don't have to keep proving it again and again every time we wish to assert it. We assume that not every occasion will be chalked up to miracles and to make that assertion for any given occasion requires a warranted analysis.

(3) This basically says what I just said, only believe in miracles when conditions of explainable warrant. I agree with that in a given case but on the proviso that any given case could be such a case based upon the warrant.

(4) he says that if we believe in miracles without warrant it erodes rationality. I suggest first that this an attempt to impose his ideologically driven definition of rationally upon belief. He's essentially saying "rational means agreeing with my world view, my wolrd view rejects miracles, therefore it's not rational to believe in miracles." I think this is what he's really driving at because unless he's willing accept the possibility of miracles as a principle then he's never going to accept any warrant for belief in miracle in any given situation. All appeal to miracles will always undermine rationality. This is what I mean by circular reasoning:

(a) miracles don't' happen becuase they undermine rationality

(b) we know they undermine rationality undermine rationality
because they don't happen.

(c) all previous evidence for miracles must be set aside becuase it can't prove miracles because there is no evidence to prove miracles, since that would be irrational.

to say it another way: we know miracles are false becuase they are irrational, and we know they are irrational because they are false.

(5.) Therefore, a God that requires rational beings to do what is unjustified, irrational and immoral in order to escape His judgment is an unjust God, and a God who also eternally torments all those who fail to do so is an extremely unjust God.

This one takes circular reasoning to the level of an art form. He's saying miracles are irrational so a God that would require belief in irrational things is bad. Belief in miracles is only irrational if miracles are untrue, miracles are only untrue if there is no God. If God is real then God is not requiring something irrational by teaching us that miracles are real too. Agin he's only imposing his own opinions in a truth by stipulation then using that (what should be a conclusion)as the basis of his premise. That is circular reasoning. Conclusions are to be rested on premises, not vice versa.

(6) Just says if God requires me to believe in things I don't believe then he's bad, he's unethical and thus if God is unethical he can't be real. If God is real then miracles are real so he's not requiring us to believe in falsehood but in truth. The rejection miracles is not a moral move but a self indulgent one. Now raising circular reasoning to an art form here is the grand circle of this argument:

God can't be real because if he is then he must be unethical. God is unethical becasue he wants me to bleieve in something that is unethical to believe in because it's upon belief in untrue things. Therefore God can't be real because if he was he would be unreal since he's unethical,.

the problem is if God is real he's not unethical because the ethical thing would be to accept truth. The premise (God is unreal) is based upon the conclusion (that God is unreal). In reality belief in Jesus as the source of one's salvation is not based upon the assertion that any and all natural causes could be miracles but only one miracle, the resurrection of Christ, maybe two if we include the incarnation. If we accept a heretical adoption theology then we only need one miracle (res) and if we make the resurrection symbolic then Christianity doesn't require any miracles. Therefore, he's not dealing with real contradiction that set Christian belief in opposition to his own premises. He's merely asserting privilege for his own that he hasn't' earned through logic.

Since such faith systems claim that God requires just such irrational, unjustified, and immoral belief and since they also claim that God is just, an internal contradiction exists within their fundamental tenets demonstrating them to be false systems which none of you should be holding to.

It's only that if it's not real. Since faith in God is a matter of understanding reality, then belief = assumption of God's reality, which invalided the ethical clauses in the statement: Belief in God is not irrational, unjustified or immoral if it's true. But he's basing the truth of it upon the assertion that belief in it is those things, irratioinal, unjustified, that's assuming his premises not proving them it's assuming them! His only proof that this is the nature of the cause is his assertion that if they were true it would be unethical to believe. He then asserts that it is and use that as the crux of the unethical belief. That is so circular he's chasing his tail.

It cannot in principle be unethical or unjustified to believe the truth! If God is real then God is truth. If God is truth it can't be unjustified to believe in truth. It can't be unethical to believe in truth. When one places trust in God and accepts belief one is accepting the realist of God. No one believes in God thinking God is false.

I know that truth matters to you all. It matters to me too, deeply. I hope we can take advantage of the opportunity that exists between us to expose the error.

If truth really mattered to him deeply as he claims wouldn't he be considering the reality of God yes or no, up front rather than seeking na excuse to rule God out of the equation based upon privileging his position of doubt? All this circular reasoning can't really be understood as very rational. He's the one advocating irrationality. 5 and 6 are basically basically just begging the question. The only proof he ever advances for his assertions is the potential of the unethical nature of requiring belief in falsehood, yet that's the reason for thinking it's false it's just begging the question rather than proving it false.

This circuital trick is rampant all over atheism. All atheists are basically making these same assertions.

Are Atehsits in a crisis about God Arguments?

Last week several atheists atheists said thing on carm that seemed to indicate they not only feel that some critical has been reached in their inability to disprove God arguments, but they seem willing to give up reason to get away from them. Francis Schaeffer would be vindicated (because he wrote a book called Escape from Reason). Don't tag me as a Schaeffer fan but it is ironic. Of course the atheits are not forthcoming about their inability to disprove God argument, no they couch iti n terms of Christian "inability" accept that there are supposedly "good responses to the God arguments."

It was all kicked off with Fleetmouse's post to me.

on my boards, Doxa Forums
Fleet Mouse gives new Meaning to the term
"incredulity" 9/6/11

Theist resistance to principles of reason

In several recent threads, theists have refused to answer simple questions dealing with principles of reason.

Here, Mathison attempts to demonstrate that in principle, cosmological arguments do not favor one conception of God over another.

Here, HRG attempts to formulate a heuristic that it is reasonable to assume the absence of something for which there is no evidence.

Why is there such resistance to confronting an analysis of the validity of these ideas? Why does this always go in the direction of "here are a bunch of other scarcely related ideas"? It is as if the theist, having leaned many assertions together into a bonfire of faith, mistakes the assertions as supporting each other in principle rather than merely supporting the particular and contingent bonfire of faith that he has constructed. One is simply not allowed to address or critique the individual "logs".

(edit: the restatement of the CA in Mathison's thread is on-topic but does not address the point of the OP - that even if the CA holds together, it doesn't support a specific God)

This first of all a totally unfair to charge that apologists never see things because I have not only refused to argue the tradition design argument because I think the argument has fatal flaws, but I also don't don't argue Kalam because I think the appeal to "beginning to exist" can't be demonstrated. I guess I'm an army of one but at least I am one disproof his statement. Of cousre he's just refusing to accept the converse of his argument, they never recognize that I have answers to their sloganeering. I've answered certain mantra-like dogmas of theirs used as excuses to block my God augments, answered them hundreds of times, with no recognition or response, each time we argue again they act as though I never said it.

Case in point is ironically the very argument fleet makes here. He says there were two I didn't answer that disprove some of my view point, but I did answer them, they never acknowledged my answers. Here is my account of those issues:

Here, Mathison attempts to demonstrate that in principle, cosmological arguments do not favor one conception of God over another.
that is not a problem. It's a none issue and I told you why. There is only one possibly that it could be. whatever is firs cause has to be God, it's a priori.

I keep telling you that you are reckoning the issues on religious traditions wrongly. that's not how you choose a tradition. why don't you listen?

Here, HRG attempts to formulate a heuristic that it is reasonable to assume the absence of something for which there is no evidence.
I beat the ever living fu out of it. you are whining because I argue back and disprove your assertions you think arguing back is some trick that proves we are rong. taht's a bizarre understanding.

Why is there such resistance to confronting an analysis of the validity of these ideas?

because they are wrong and I showed you they are wrong! why would anything think counter arguments are a sign of not being able to face truth. That's ludicrous!

Why does this always go in the direction of "here are a bunch of other scarcely related ideas"? It is as if the theist, having leaned many assertions together into a bonfire of faith, mistakes the assertions as supporting each other in principle rather than merely supporting the particular and contingent bonfire of faith that he has constructed.
man this is like argument from incredulity to the 10th power. you are saying "If you argue back against my assertion that proves you're wrong!" If that's the case then youk have to accept the existence of God when you post here because I was here before you. All my God arguments are the truth and your counter arguments prove that you can't face the truth!
you really expect to get away with pulling this kind of crap?

Then Donals gets into the game with a denial of reason:

The Problem With Reason

a post by Donals on CARM

A few weeks ago, I heard Michael Shermer being interviewed on the radio. He has recently written a book called (if I remember right) The Believing Brain. One of the findings in this book, he claims, is that people generally don't arrive at their beliefs through reason, as much as we'd like to believe otherwise. Rather, we form beliefs and retroactively justify them with reason. We seek out and almost always find some line of reasoning which will provide our beliefs with rational warrant, in our own minds at least.

Of cousre he wont believe me but I have seen empirical reflation to this research. I will have to look for it but I think I can find it. Be that as it may I don't its all that damaging as a fact anyway. First becuase it's also true of atheism or any other belief. When they say "I can't believe anything that's not proved" that's that tendency firing it's not a reasoned well argued heavily weighed decision based on intellectual deliberation, it's an ideological slogan that's part of their socialization process (aka "brain washing" in the popular parlance). This kind of limitation is true for all people. Why do they imagine they are exempt? The gimmicks of atheist thought, ECREP, and the default assumption of atheism, the fortress of facts, the whole ideological gambit is based upon the same tendency and is not thought out but thought up, an excuse for a decision already made subconsciously.

Secondly, atheists are scared to death of subjective thins. The slightest hint of "intuition" is anathematize to them. For us 90%, the norm who believe in God, intuitive notions are not a dirty work, nor is "subjectivity." The psychological theory of intuition that I've heard is that the subconscious mind does the reasoning in a split second. They want to admit that is possible but I think a thinking person would have to admit it's a possibility. Thirdly, there's a good likelihood, and one must check this against the actual research, that such decisions are based upon prior reasoning that's not inattentive but "normal reasoning" yet has been done before. No one just thinks about a complex issue like God for a couple of minutes one time then relys upon the power of intellect for that moment forever. No one solves the great questions in one moment of intense thought. We think a lot. The more important the issue the more we dwell on it. So probably people have thought before and it just jells at some moment.

Fourthly, one study flaw with that research might be the failure to consider complex long term issues vs. momentary problem solving. I don't know how the study was done, but if they don't mind this distinction they might conclude that a momentary problem solving exercise applies to ideas like belief in God when in reality it might not apply at all.

Now, I am very inclined to accept these findings. And I really think that anyone here who is capable of honest introspection would see that it does seem to be the case. And by "anyone," I don't just mean the theists. This presents a particular problem- if this is the case, then abstract reasoning would seem to be a very unreliable means of gaining knowledge about external reality. This is why things like the CA are so convincing to theists, while things like the Problem of Evil are so convincing to atheists; we formed our beliefs first, then set about to justify them rationally. And, seemingly, ANY belief can be justified in such a manner.

first of all, it's clear atheists do not respect theists at all. They assume from the outset that we don't think and that our arguments have to be stupid. Their self esteem is based upon those assumption as a body of empirical work has proved. Naturally they have a psychological motive to view God arguments as dumb and to ignore the answers given, and to weight their answer to a much greater extend. The amazing thing is that Don can't see the true important of his own argument. What he's arguing means that ratioanl decision making about issues like God doesn't work and we should and must and do base what we think upon subjective methods like experience. They are already using them when they become atheists and then again to deny god arguments, yet refuse to respect them in dealing with belief.

Thankfully, mankind has developed a method by which we can overcome this problem; science. By adhering to the scientific method, we can effectively eliminate this selective reasoning. I am unaware of any other method by which we can do so. As such, when it comes to truth claims about objective reality (please note that qualification, Metacrock), science really does seem to be our only reliable means of forming true beliefs.

This is such Pablum. The ideology wont let him give up propaganda, so the realities of the lack of reason must apply to theists but not to atheist! O we have science, we have the great fortress of facts. Every single time I have suggested that scinece is human that it is done like this other stuff which indicts reason (Thomas Kuhn since is a social construct, paradigm shifts and the like) they have become outraged. I point out that the selections of facts they acknowledge is totally based upon their biases. they react the 200 studies that prove religious experiencing is good, and they reject them on the weakest and most unscientific ground, but then turn right around and claim the fortress of facts gives them the solid support. It's totally obvious that if the things Donald argues above are true, then the fortress of facts is a house of cards. Another big point of contradiction is their answer to my TS argument, along the same lines. They argue that we just impose meaning on the universe. Now wait a minute! Don says reason fails and we don't really use it, then he turns around and says scinece will save us as though scinece doesn't' reason to interpret data, but he also says our language, organizing principles, our thought, the nature of logic, all rational coherent methods of human thought are merely the imposing of order upon a meaningless world, yet he still clings to the myth of scinece and the fortress of facts.

How is it that we have all this Derrida imposing of meaning upon the universe and Thomas Kuhn paradigm shift stuff when it's a God argument but somehow it's all snaps into shape magically and interprets the truth of reality properly for atheists when it's scinece and the fortress of facts!?? Can't have it both ways guys, time to choose one or the other.

I've never really been one of those "philosophy is useless" atheists- but I'm starting to come around. Not all philosophy, mind you- but I'm starting to see that HRG is likely correct when he points out that philosophy's purpose is clarification. I simply don't see how any philosopher has overcome this issue of confirmation bias. Any belief can be rationally supported through abstract reasoning; which tells me that no belief can be rationally warranted in this manner. It is through science- and science ONLY- that beliefs about objective reality are warranted.

This is so most ironic. they will give up anything to forestall the final realization of God's reality. the cognitive dissonance is so powerful from the realization (although false I think) that they are going to hell for rejecting God, that they will give up reason itself to avoid realizing it. Yet, there is on avenue to truth that I've been talking about for years and it fits like a hand in glove right about here. There is a method for allowing the sense data to suggest it's own categories of truth. So even if we do impose meaning upon the universe there are way to reduce our tendency to do that and to allow the sense data to spell out the universes own meaning apart from our imposing it. It is called "phenomenology." I suggest reading the link and go back and Google Metacrock's blog Phenomenology and read what I've said about it.

just to get you started:

God, bigfoot, Trotsky, signs along the way

Theology and Phenomenological Method part 1

part 2

the trick atheists do with the subject Object Dichotomy

phenomenology and method

Reality of "Value Free" Idoelogy

Japanese Celibate the (religious) "bon" festival

In my undergraduate days, when I was an atheist, as a sociology major I used to hear about a conflict within social scineces called "value free research." This meant that they had a value of not having values. It means they wanted research that didn't stand a chance of the taint of any bias, and values would taint it. One of the early famous epitomes of this conflict (there was a social consciousness counterpoint led by certain thinkers such as C. Wright Mills--my hero) as a string of journal debates by George Lunberg (value free) and Robert Lynd (social conscoiusness) who clashed with each other in the 1930s. One of my reasons for getting out of sociology was the odious nature of the value free set and their success in taking over modern sociology. It's not surprising that I find that same mentality in all of scinece and especially in atheism. I think that attitude is the result of a ideological approach to metaphysics which reduces reality to the bits we can perceive and thus control easily such as tangible physical matter. With that reduction comes the loss of values, which is no surprise as it is a standard move of reductionism to lose things in the reductive process, thus such as the loss of phenomena. This is really not that unknown to the popular audience, it's the real academic playing out of the Spock Macoy debate on Star Trek the original series.

On my boards I'm having an exchange with a very intelligent atheist who is a professional biologist. He's apparently from Holland. He's a real nice guy and extremely intelligent. He also embodies this value free notion and the reductionist move that loses all values and all phenomena that would support them. The discussion began with an off hand comment about animals and moral decision making. I made the statement that the assumption of their ability for same is due to reduction of moral dimension to behavior. My dialogue partner comments:

1) Who says decision making is anything more than instinct?
2) Who says animals can't make decisions?

Both of these questions need to be answered before you can make the above claim. Not so much the "who", more whether or not you are making assumptions based on your desires, rather than facts.

After discussing the concept of animal rights it turns out he's not coming from that persecution, but merely form the perspective that animals can make deicisons and since there is no basis for moral dimension any deicsion an anmial makes is as moral as any decision a human makes. He reduces all decision making to: "...a perfectly valid question I asked. What indicates to you that a decision made is anything more than a biochemical reaction? I ask that question in all sincerity." He first laid a false train which indicated that he was on about animals rights, or about the valuing of animals on a par with humans:

It isn't much of an argument to say that you possess some unique feature (decision making) over animals because you don't see your own internal experience reflected in cats or dogs. Especially not if you present this medieval attitude towards animals by calling them stupid. To me (a biologist) such a response indicates you have never really observed animals with any real attention.
How can I accept your argument, when you appear to have done very little work on the subject?

It turns out this is a false trail because he's not into animals rights.

It has nothing to do with animal rights. It is simply about observing animal behavior , ethology. Careful observation has increasingly shown us that animals are more aware than we initially thought (talk about vox populi!). The more we look, the more we see that animals are much more capable of forming logical solutions to problems presented. This goes well beyond learned behavior, it showed a process of deduction by animals. Behavior typically seen as exclusively present in humans.

Already at this point he's made two hypocritical statements. At this juncture he basis his argument upon observation of animal behavior, but earlier when I based my understanding of my own deicsion making as moral upon the observations of my own feelings, vs. the lack of evidence that dogs can thinker morally, he says: "So your experiences with dogs are a model for the entire animal kingdom?" Perhaps he's refering to the broader nature of his research, but still suffers from the same epistemological flaw as my own, the inability to read a dog's mind. Yet I was comparing to my own decision-making while he is assuming he can read the animals mind by observing the animal without comparing to experience he knows. The overall debate shaping up so far is that he seems to be assuming a value free approach that places humans on the same level as animals or even pond scum and divorces itself from values is just a priori more correct because "Again you make this distinction between the human and animal realm. Based on what? What indicates to you that we can’t extrapolate from more primative species?" Everything is leveled out by value free.

In response to my argument that values are among the basic building blocks of understanding, along with language, give us by culture he reduces this to:

So you appeal to Vox Populi? [voice of the people--appeal to popularity] That might be the difference between us, I always question the voice of the people because I know it can’t be trusted. What society as a whole accepts about mind and consciousness has never been critically examined, it just sounds nice. Like a flat earth, or the sun revolving around the earth. That which we know scientifically indicates that, contrary to popular belief, consciousness is a product of the brain.

We see already that every move he's made invovles the standard reductionist tricks. He re describes and re-labels all my arguments and experiences to make them other than I claim for them, then loses the phenomena (such as ethical valuation) in the reduction process so the phenomena of values just goes away, there's nothing to defend. Of course it's his observations that condition everything while mine are just illusory and misconceived and are there to be reduced. What is the real pay off to his position?

The argument began when I asked him to explain the statement that Christians support things they think are moral bu they don't think them through so they wind up being "destructive." In seeking to know what he's talking about it turns out his big example is feeding starving children. So how can anyone think that feeding starving children is destructive?

What I was talking about was ‘feeding a starving child’. Think about the consequences of that act. Would you call that humane? Would you call it humane to feed a child, knowing that this child will bring forth a multiple of children that will suffer even more because there is still no food?

What I was aiming at is that typical solutions are about healing wounds, rather than addressing the cause. We like healing wounds because it feels right, not because it is right. There are few who dare venture where Holmes Rolston III ventured when he wrote Feeding People versus Saving Nature?. I fully agree that it is a necessity that humanity starts to learn to address these issues rationally, until that time humanity can’t rightfully claim to be capable of discerning right and wrong.

So he's really talking Malthusian nightmare and triage. There is a rational basis to that position but there are rational solutions too. Those rational solutions do not have to involve chucking human values. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to be interested in them. I pointed out that populations in third world countries go way down when technological food production is obtained. This is because the need for a huge family assumed the need for a lot of labor on primitive farms. Make the far less primitive no need for a huge family. There are probably a lot of other solutions too. He wasn't really interested in solutions. I pointed out that there always humane solutions but that wasn't the real issue. The real point was to flog the dead horse of a value free world view.

"Again, I pick the part I’m most interested in. I could comment on everything you said, but this is something I truly do not understand. Why do you insist on emphasizing this divide you see?" What's interesting here is that he did not follow up on the humane solutions idea so that's not what he's interested in. What he is interested in is his own notion of value free research:

This is what I mean with Vox Populi. It is clearly an historically/culturally formed concept that humanity is special, separate from nature, because we have things like art and theology. Obviously there is something there, it didn’t come out of the blue, but is it really that special? Or is it just an arbitrary line? What I see, including in myself and my own behaviour, is a particular violent case of narcissism that is quite typical of Western culture. This constant desire to elevate ourselves above nature. Why? Because we were brought up to think this way. Western culture is parasitic in its attitude towards nature, not symbiotic. We value our capacity to appreciate Ingmar Bergman movies, but why is that special, when at the same type we lack the capacity to extend our ethical community beyond our selfish self?

It turns out value free is not quite value free. It's really replacing one set of values with another. All he's really doing is presenting his own predilections and dressing them up as scientific objectivity. First, look at what was said above, we see that each thing he dose say leaves unsaid a corresponding value that would make what the does say consistent. If art and culture are not really that special, which he says, what he's not saying is that what is special is his observations of a value free nature and the control he can impose upon it through the pretense of objective reduction. "The constant desire to elivate ourselves above nature" opens the door to the unspoken but implied value of elevating nature, and thus reducing humanity to the level of inhuman aspects of nature. Then he makes this flooring statment about we value art films (You know I would bring up Bergman) but why is that special when we can't extend ethics beyond selfishness. That's flooring because by "selfilsh" he doesn't mean the kind of selfishness he exhibits in pushing value free ideologies but the selfishness of feeing starving children and seeking trught through art. So in other words if we aren't reducing the value of our own species to that of pond scum then we are selfish. Of course he's altruistic in seeking to allow starving children to die. He didn't seem interested in the unselfish solutions to world hunger. He would rather let people die than reduce population growth.


the yellow dog, the only dog who can make moral decisions
because he's a Democrat


I'm sure he's not a bad guy and given the chance I'm sure he would help people. Yet he does seem to be denuding art of it's value and reducing humanity to the level of mere organisms and at war with any valuation of humanity that would connect us to any sort of transcendent truth. As an example of the values he pushes, he argues connection to nature:

There are cultures that show a symbiosis between man and nature, like Japanese Satoyama, but interestingly, that is based on a fundamentally different form of religion (culture), which emphasizes our place as a part of nature.

Really this is just another reductionism, he can't be thinking the high value the Japanese place on art, or the integral place religion has played and continues to play in their culture, and they are still extremely religious despite the misconceptions of some atheists such as Zuckerman who try to include them as "an atheist nation" they are far from that. His value free is just the imposition of a different set of values and his call for unselfish decisions is really just a call the selfish decisions he would make.

There's much more that is profoundly disturbing about his ideas. In the guise of elevating nature he actually pulls humanity down in the muck, to the extent of dis-valuing art. In his protestation about appeal to popularity what we really see there is a prime example of losing the phenomena. My argument was not merely an appeal to popularity (everyone thinks X) but to the basis culture as the constitute building blocks of understanding that give us the first principles in understanding the world; not popularity but culture! Every step of the way he's displacing the constitute blocks with his own value system through the same rational he pretends to opposes. All of this denuding of humanity in favor of nature is just so much window dressing for an ideology for an ideology that ultimately places the ideologue on a pedestal and makes his anti-human view point supreme while reducing all human values to nothing.

I'm sure this guy is not a bad person, am not saying that my approbations are automatically better than his. Yet all we have to think with is cultural constructs. Culture is language and the basis of what we understand the world to be is mediated by culture. Without adopting the cultural valuations of humanity and art we have nothing. In the pretense of objectively and rationally trading that for a "nature oriented" set of values we are merely reproducing another set f values that privileges another person's position. That approach is no less selfish and no more rational than any other. Where cultures have sought to infuse human life with nature we can and should learn from this, but there has always been a sharp dichotomy between nature and civilization. Even in a thinker like Roseau who advocated the natural approach we find this contradiction that civilization nurtures. We can hardly proceed with notions about scientific progress, born of culture, civilization and the great divide in cutting us off from nature, and [pretend that there's no divide if we just disvalue humanity and value nature. Clearly we must strive to same nature, but we are irrevocably cast adrift separated forever form life in the trees and to purse scinece at all is to reinforce the divide.

Just as nature doesn't make moral decisions, even though some animals may make decisions, they don't make moral ones, so nature does not study itself. Nature just is, it has no self awareness. We are still human, we have to live in a world we shape. The pretense of objectivity, scinece and reductionism as building a shining value free brave new world is only going to create a world in which a tiny social elite imposes decisions of ideology that profoundly effect or even end people's lives on a massive scale. We need to have the guts to recognize there is no value free research; we impose one set of values over another and the reductionists are no less value oriented than anyone else's. I would rather impose a set of moral values that lionize the human good as well as respect for nature, than to reduce humanity to "organisms" and make quality of life unbearable in the name of a pretense of getting back to nature, a nature that doesn't' give a damn weather I understand it or not. The pretense of being scientific, nustral, value free, then respecting nature, moving forward into a shinny future that doesn't fall for all out dated Christianity stuff is just the performance of another elitist ideology that seeks to feather the nest of a powerful few.


I include the link to the whole thing starting on page 3 of the thread, I don't want to create the wrong impression. I said many stupid things in that exchange and he said many smart things. I don't want my friend to feel singled out or put on the spot, but look for the comments by "Dutch."