It’s well worth mentioning that Plantinga’s argument is 18 years old or so, and it has failed to convince any naturalist in the mainstream groups of naturalists (Dennett et al). Unusual, considering that it is supposedly such a powerful argument in it’s explanatory content. Nonetheless, having watched this series of videos, it has become clear to me that Plantinga’s EAAN (Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism) as just as flawed as other theological musings such as the slippery old Cosmological Argument.

Critique of Alvin Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism” – Link:http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p … C36901BCEE

Before we can even begin to account the myriad flaws and fallacies of the EAAN’s reasoning and supporting arguments, it is already plain to see that the argument is unworkable. Plantinga is a strong advocate of Theistic Evolution and argues that if God created Man “In his own Image”, by means of biological evolution, then our cognitive faculties would be reliably tuned to truth. However if naturalistic (i.e., non-theistic) evolution is true our faculties would be unreliably tuned to “mere survival”. I find EAAN to be incoherent.

Plantinga argues that evolutionary naturalism is unjustifiable because our accumulated mountains of evidence for it (as well as our cognitive processes for testing/assessing this evidence) would not be trustworthy in the absence of God, the source of absolute truth. He then argues that traditional theism is more defensible on the grounds that our minds were designed by God. His argument falls apart because it intrinsically begs the question. If Plantinga conceded that this rather small point of his was indefensible, then the entire argument would fall flat on it’s face. Now, I will try to squeeze in some of my more detailed thoughts on the actual videos.

Part 1

03:15 (3 minutes and 15 seconds)

:

“And then when I use the word ‘naturalism’, what I really mean is … the belief that there’s no such person as God, or anything like God”

Here it would be well worth noting that Plantinga is making an implicit reference to Positive or “Strong” Atheism rather than naturalism. Positive Atheism being, as everyone knows, taking an epistemically positive stance in the form of atheism, with the positive assertion that a God or gods do not exist. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Plantinga misunderstands both atheism as it is most commonly understood, as well as misrepresenting naturalism. Naturalism could be better defined as empirical-ism, meaning that it only accepts things on the basis of material, tangible evidence, and all evidence is still subject to be changed, or to be shown false. God, the supernatural “realm” in general, and so forth, all fall into the class of ideas and entities that are wholly unknown given naturalism. Vague, untestable, and unfalsifiable, and thus not subject to naturalistic modes of inquiry.

03:24 (3 minutes and 24 seconds)

:

“Naturalism is stronger than atheism. Naturalism entails atheism … but atheism doesn’t entail naturalism; you can be an atheist without rising to the heights of – or sinking to the depths of (whatever you think is appropriate) – naturalism…”

Here he goes again with his broad and unqualified statements about what “naturalism” means. One is tempted to think that this is a deliberate falsification, and not a mistake. It would have been more technically accurate and indeed, honest – if Plantinga had mentioned that “naturalism” in the context of theistic/antitheistic arguments, exists as two differing stances. One is an epistemological position, while the other is an ontological position. Namely: Metaphysical Naturalism, and Methodological Naturalism.

Methodological Naturalism:

“Methodological naturalism (‘MN’) is the commitment of scientific investigation in practice to studying only naturalistic causes and explanations. Boudry et al. observe, though, that there are really two types of MN:

Intrinsic methodological naturalism (IMN) is the a priori philosophical commitment to not even consider supernatural explanations (see the authors’ definition of “supernatural” below). As Boudry et al. state in a forthcoming paper, under IMN ‘science is simply not equipped to deal with the supernatural and therefore has no authority on the issue.’ This is the view expressed by people like Eugenie Scott, Kenneth Miller, and Rob Pennock. It also appears to be the official position of the National Center for Science Education and the semi-official position of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

Provisional (or pragmatic) methodological naturalism (PMN),’a provisory and empirically grounded commitment to naturalistic causes and explanations, which in principle is revocable by extraordinary empirical evidence.’ As the authors note:

According to this conception, MN did not drop from thin air, but is just the best methodological guideline that emerged from the history of science (Shanks 2004; Coyne 2009; Edis 2006), in particular the pattern of consistent success of naturalistic explanations. Appeals to the supernatural have consistently proven to be premature, and science has never made headway by pursuing them. The rationale for PMN thus excludes IMN: if supernatural explanations are rejected because they have failed in the past, this entails that, at least in some sense, they might have succeeded. The fact that they didn’t is of high interest and shows that science does have a bearing on the question of the supernatural.”

Source: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com … ernatural/

Metaphysical Naturalism as detailed by Wikipedia:
“Metaphysical naturalism. also called ontological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, is a philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those required to understand our physical environment by mathematical modeling. It is occasionally referred to as philosophical naturalism, or just naturalism. Methodological naturalism however, refers exclusively to the methodology of science, for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation.
Metaphysical naturalism holds that all properties related to consciousness and the mind are reducible to, or supervene upon, nature. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, it rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.”

The latter, (Metaphysical Naturalism), is an ontological position, and deals with reality rather than with descriptions of reality, as does the former. Metaphysical, or Philosophical, or more appropriately Ontological Naturalism, deals with the nature of reality, and can be thought of as an extension to Methodological Naturalism. Essentially, it takes Methodological Naturalism, an essential bedrock axiom of scientific inquiry, and extrapolates it positively, to evoke belief in the non-existence of the supernatural. Or rather, that we live in a mechanistically physical reality governed by natural laws. It can be thought of in the same way that Strong Atheism is an epistemologically burdened claim, pertaining to the non-existence of God. But that’s another topic (again).

And contrary to Plantinga’s oversimplification; the naturalistic stance on the existence of God is far more of a vague one. MethodologicalNaturalism (explicitly) – does not directly deny the existence of one or more gods, like Metaphysical adaptations of naturalism do (implicitly). Methodological Naturalism, a key to scientific discovery; merely withholds judgment on the existence or non-existence of a class of “things” of which god(s) are only a part of. Namely, the group that includes the supernatural, and transcendental entities… Supernaturalism in Science should be out-ruled in principle, anyways. As such then, the Atheist vs. Theist debate in this context, and the relevance of the position of the atheist, is not so much the simple statement that there are no gods (which I believe to be an accurate statement), but rather, it is more of a pragmatic sentiment on the knowability or unkowability of the existence of God, in which case, we may as well reject the notion of gods in principle, until physical proof of it’s (or “their”, if we were to include polytheistic religions); existence.

I needn’t mention Plantinga’s later statement about the beliefs of Hegel, as I do not dispute them. The next sentence is a brief statement about the natural evolution of conscious living beings, and it’s place as part of Metaphysical Naturalism, simplistically defined, that is, as well as it’s technical relevance to the ins and outs of the rest of his argument. He also presents a brief summary of the structure of his argument(s).

04:22 (4 minutes and 22 seconds)

… “Evolution is often thought of as kind of a pillar in the temple of naturalism, if indeed naturalism has a temple. But… I want to argue that they don’t fit together. I want to argue that … one can’t sensibly be both a naturalist, and… accept… evolution (as evolution is ordinarily thought of), and that they conflict with each other. They go against each other. The conjunction of the two – naturalism and evolution – I want to argue … shoots itself in the foot! Or as a more complex, learned sounding way of putting it: is self-referentially incoherent. “

I wondered whilst listening to this when he would get to the point, instead of tautologically repeating the same line four or five times! 

Of course, Plantinga himself has in fact shot himself in the foot as well. As I said, the argument has certainly not convinced me, and it has yet to convince any serious naturalist in the thinking world, or anyone on this forum for that matter. Additionally, it’s good to see Plantinga showing his Platonic Colours again, to some degree.  Plantinga has previously made apparent his Platonic Idealism, meaning that he believes that ideas represent some kind of absolute reality, and we can see examples of this cropping up all over his argument if you look hard enough, as in his Reformed Epistemology.

06:20 (6 minutes and 20 seconds)

“So according to theism; belief in God, we human beings have been created by a wholly good, all powerful, and all knowing being, namely God, who has … created us in his own Image, made us like him… who has aims and intentions – he intends certain things – and can act in such a way to accomplish those aims. That’s part of what it is to be a person …”

I trust you will all see the conflict of definitions here, as Plantinga struggles to keep his terms straight. He starts off by using the generic and unqualified term “theism”, a label which does NOT only apply to the Abrahamic Versions of god(s), but applies moreover, to any ’God’, or gods! And then he proceeds to ”qualify” that statement with what is clearly a description of the far more specific – namely – the Judeo-Christian Monotheistic God, and even goes on to allude to the Judeo-Christian myths and mythologies about the creation of the world and universe, such as God creating man in his own image. He also assumes that this God is personal. And so, it ultimately becomes clear that although he uses the very broad term “theism”, what he is really talking about is the Christian God. It seems very strange to me that a sophisticated philosopher such as Alvin Plantinga could confuse his terms in such a bizarre way. It is not the first time he has done this, and we’re not even through with the 1st vide ( represented by*Part 1* – in huge bold green).

09:09 (9 minutes and 9 seconds)

“In brief here’s how my argument will go …

I’ll argue that … if naturalism and evolution were both true, if that conjunction – that pair of propositions – were both correct … then it would be improbable that our cognitive faculties – memory etc. – are in fact reliable …”

This is a truism! The overwhelming majority of naturalists accept this, and so do I! It is not merely “improbable”. It’s a fact. It is empirically verifiable, and well documented, that all of those cognitive functions are highly unreliable! How reliable were the inductive assumptions of old worldy (lol) religions about their gods and deities? How accurate were the Romans and Greeks’ perceptions on such things, with their dozens of gods?? The god of war, the god of fire, the god of… sewage.  Or the Aztecs who had little objections to cutting peoples’ hearts whilst still alive, and sacrificing their parts to their gods? Not to mention the fact that the people were generally acquiescent to this rather obscure fact.

Here is one, rather random example of how our cognitive faculties can fail us: the McGurk Effect. A mysterious perceptual illusion that takes place because your senses, namely vision and hearing, conflict. This is an example of one of the flaws of our cognitions and precognitions.
It seems almost as though Plantinga is trying to assert that our everyday thinking and cognition about the world and universe is reliable and truthful. “Sadly” depending on your perspective, all of the available evidence seems to favour the opposite conclusion: that it’s unreliable, and based on limited perceptual knowledge. Heck, human beings can only ever understand their surroundings to the extent that they can ask “what am I doing now?” — by which time “now” is long, long gone. 

If Plantinga is attempting to argue that human cognition is somehow perfectly reliable from his viewpoint, and there is no good reason to believe that it is, and good reasons to believe that it isn’t…. then his entire argument will collapse. Rather, the question here is whether or not certain cognitive faculties would be favoured by evolution via natural selection, and which of those faculties can be counted on to produce truthful perceptions of the world.

Next will be the final point I deal with in this video.. but there’s still 5 more….

09:36 (9 minutes and 36 seconds)

“Well once you see that … then once you accept [both] naturalism and evolution, then you now have a defeater for that proposition. For this proposition that your cognitive faculties are reliable…a reason to give that proposition up… a reason not to believe it. And once you have a defeater for that proposition – that your cognitive faculties are reliable, then you also have a defeater for any proposition that you take to be produced by your cognitive faculties…. [ ... ] so then you also have a defeater for naturalism and evolution itself. “

1. If we had to reject all of our belief simply because they might be wrong, then Plantinga’s religious beliefs stand to the same principle as the evolutionary naturalist. Assuming that Plantinga’s reasoning is correct. Unfortunately, it’s not …

2. It is not simply evolution that allows for the possibility of error.

Plantinga seems to be highlighting the fact that has been growing in my mind for quite a while. That all of our faculties, and all knowledge is but axiomatic in it’s nature, no matter how certain we are. Science operates on the possibility of error, as does much else.

Plus, Plantinga also seems to be committing to an implicit fallacy of equivocation, by assuming that all of our cognitive faculties as he puts it, are equal and equally worth mentioning. They are not. It’s pretty evident that some of these functions have been honed to a sharper degree by natural selective pressures, such as vision. In humans, we have full colour vision, and forward-facing eyes, probably one of the most advanced visual systems in the living world. Our olfactory cognition however, is seriously weak compared to other animals such as dogs and cats, as is our hearing, the senses that are usually most acutely tuned in most placental mammals other than primates.

And as for religious beliefs. . .

For an explanation of the cognitions that may lead to religion, I present for your approval, a video made by Dr. Andy. Thomson. According to Thomson, a robust and comprehensive account of religious thinking and beliefs can be arrived at in terms of our species’ biological evolution. God does not exist in our experience; we ascribe an interpretation to our intuitions, but these intuitions are byproducts of brain functioning that can be understood in evolutionary terms. Dr. Thomson: “Religious beliefs are just the extraordinary use of everyday cognitions, everyday adaptations: social cognitions, agency detection, precautionary reasoning. Religious beliefs are a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms designed [by evolution] for other purposes.”

Dr. Andy Thomson: Why We Believe in Gods

I post this as an example of how religion, may in fact have been “designed”, or created as an artifact of evolution, as an adaptation. Thomson provides robust evidence that religious belief is the result of cognitive mechanisms used in unusual ways, and even presents evidence that religious beliefs and/or misassumptions are present even in newborns.  Fascinating indeed …

Part 2

Plantinga now proceeds to quote Thomas Aquinas on the nature of God and it’s “relationships” with human cognitions.

00:14 (0 minutes and 14 seconds)

“Since human beings are said to be in the image of god in virtue of their having a nature that includes an intellect … they’re in the image of God because they’ve got an intellect – they can understand and know – such a nature, one with an intellect, is one most in the image of God in being able most to imitate God. So he thinks of this err … ability to “know” on our part is perhaps the most important aspect of the image of God, in human beings…”

Now I will dissect the flaws in Plantinga’s “Reformed Epistemology”, and discuss the axiomatic nature of knowledge. Plantinga almost appears to argue that our experience of the world is somehow supernatural, and citation is needed there, methinks.

01:21 (1 minute and 21 seconds)

“Most of us would think [ ... ] that at least a function of our cognitive faculties would be to provide us with true beliefs. That’s what they’re for. And we would normally think that when they’re functioning properly, when there’s no dys/mal – function, that for the most part, that’s what they do … Of course it’s true that err… let’s say err… if there are five different witnesses to an auto[mobile] accident, you might get five different stories. But there will be an underlying level of agreement … “

Is it not dangerous to simply assume that your beliefs are reliable from the outset, when you have no reliable means of demonstrating this? Also note how Plantinga simply assumes that his beliefs about the world/universe are true, and then qualifies his statement with the spurious phrase “for the most part”…. It turns out that he cannot claim to know absolute certainty, anymore than methodological naturalists. It seems that Plantinga is no longer talking about his naive notions of objective truths and realities, but is instead simply stating that apparently: Evolutionary Naturalism has a lesser probability of truth than Evolutionary Supernaturalism (in his view).

02:40 (2 minutes and 40 seconds)

“There would be agreement that there are indeed such things as automobiles… that [beings] use them to accomplish their purposes, which in the case of automobiles – normally – involves going somewhere… That automobiles won’t work well on the surface of the moon or the bottom of the ocean, that if you drop one out of a helicopter it will ordinarily fall down, rather than ascend… and so on…”

According to gravity, a car, not like objects such as sheets of paper, or parachutes, will fall through the air, like humans, at around 30-35 ft, per second per second. Once dropped, the car’s speed terminally accelerates to the point of terminal velocity wherein the medium (air) with which the car is traveling through, prevents further acceleration under gravity. Thus, all of Plantinga’s examples of these “truths” of the world and universe are pragmatic facts about reality, rather than philosophical musings.

Whether or not cars can drive on the moon or underwater is a semantical conundrum about how to define “car”. For example, do Lunar-rovers count as “cars”??

The same is true of cars driving underwater, since some of them can. It is also worthy of note, the kind of truth we are discussing here. It is truth about physical objects and entities such as cars, and alike. This kind of truth, as I briefly mentioned in the introduction can be labeled as empirical, and rational.

This is empirical knowledge because it is knowledge that comes to us through the senses, and as I have said in the past, I subscribe to the view that all is mere conjecture if it is not applicable via empiricism. There is still no one single ”truth”, though, (in spite of the method by which we acquire “truths”).

I like how William S. Burroughs puts it in his essay “On Coincidence” in ‘The Adding Machine’: “Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact.”

Aside from the inductive nature of experience (which some Popperians ignore); we have a curious tendency of by-passing perspectivisms, which bundle their own truths in them. Surely, this deferring of perspective has a pragmatic function, but no more than the practical concrete representations of abstract or ideal mathematical shapes.

Every thing experiential is valuative and evaluative and generates differences, such that they may be comparable but not identical. In other words, the most that can be enjoyed is equivalence alone about pertinent facts. Even more, as a consequent, truths are paradigmatic and their constituent elements cannot be separated from the system in which it is contextualized, not unlike a field. Hence, a positivist’s referent is qualitatively not the same as an idealist’s, nor naturalists’ from supernaturalists’, nor a blind person’s from a schizophrenic’s, nor mine from yours, and so forth.

All that can be arrived at is the set of interacting truths, manifested as claims about perception communicatively, to produce yet another amalgam of truths, ad infinitum. This is not a classical dialectic being spoken of here, since there is not teleological point to it (only teleological paths within it.)
Empirical and Rational observation is our most finely tuned faculty, and is at the root of both science, and scientific naturalism. 

03:05 (3 minutes and 5 seconds)

“So our assumption is that when our faculties are functioning properly, though not always, such as when they’re are wokring at the very limit of their ability such as in contemporary physics and cosmology for example, that – for the most part – they will produce truth when they’re functioning properly … “

If it is really the case that our cognitive faculties as Plantinga says, were designed by the creator of the universe, ‘God’, to produce truth, then why do our cognitive faculties all have such a well established founding for error, at least so it would seem? I mentioned the McGurk effect earlier, but there is also the Monkey Business Illusion, visual trickery and many others. Plus: the Homo S Sapiens’ history of scientific error??

03:24 (3 minutes and 24 seconds)

“But isn’t there a problem here for the naturalist? Or at any rate, for the naturalist who thinks that we’ve arrived on the scene after some billions of years of evolution, by way of natural selection, genetic drift, and other blind processes [ ... ] working on sources of variation like random genetic mutation, [ ... ] if that’s the way you think of it then shouldn’t it come as somewhat of a surprise that the cognitive faculties are in fact reliable?”

Isn’t there a problem here for the supernaturalist who falsely asserts that our cognitions are reliable and truthful? Plus, we have still yet to establish what Plantinga means here by “truth”. .. ???
If it is Plantinga’s contention that our cognitive faculties are god-given functions, and were designed by him, to, as I said earlier, produce truth, then why is it so evident, to repeat myself, that our ancestors made such a volume of mistakes, and so on? Our cognitive faculties are rarely if ever fully reliable. And also, Plantinga seems to argue that if both evolution(ism) and natural(ism) were both true, then the probability of reliable cognitive functions coming about are low. Apparently though, it IS low, since humans are only one species in the history of life. And also, the only example of a finely tuned cognition that he has given us so far, is our perceptual observations of cars.

06:15 (6 minutes and 15 seconds)

“If Darwinism is correct, if Evolution is correct, or if the conjunction of evolution and naturalism were correct, then the ultimate purpose of our cognitive faculties would surely be survival … or perhaps survival by way of reproductive age, or to maximize reproductive fitness. So if they have a purpose then that’s what it is. Their purpose ISN’T to provide us with true beliefs, it’s to maximize fitness. …”

Yes. Our cognitive faculties only exist at all because of their predictive power. For example, eyes and the visual system is something that is said to have evolved independently among animals some 40 times throughout Earth’s history, as have many of the other senses, even though the eyes are probably the most pronounced one. And what is more, there are oceangoing invertebrates such as octopus and squid that have eyes on a par with the sharpness of our own. Or nautilus, with it’s sophisticated pinhole camera eye, as Dawkins phrased it so succinctly.

Evolution did NOT give us cognitive faculties to arrive at the most probable truths, nor is evolution a process with purpose or intent. It just plows on. “It” gave us cognitive faculties for survival purposes, as Plantinga has already said. And given the fact that not only can we only expect a certain number of our beliefs to be accurate and subject to revisions at any time, and there are far more ways to be incorrect in one’s beliefs than to be correct, how does Plantinga recognize the false points of his beliefs, if he believes that his cognitive faculties were designed by the all knowing creator of the universe to generate truth(s)? How could such cognitions ever be proven false, if Plantinga’s reasoning is sound?

Nevertheless, I am not alluding to post-modern theories of truths with my claims, but rather, I am simply stating that there are truths to be found using the vagaries of our perceptions, but it will not be the kind of truth that Plantinga would accept with his puerile clinging to certainty and security. All he is doing here is assuming the truth of his beliefs with no form of evidence, and his actual beliefs in question are meanwhile vague and immeasurable by any empirical means. While we can be very sure that cars and tables and chairs and such, exist, and that all of these objects have the properties that we commonly associate with them despite that we can only ever arrive at them through our limited perceptions. But; since are perceptions are highly unreliable, this is a very tentative form of ‘truth’, no matter how much you guys might protest! 

We do not know that our current model of the world and universe and its formation, is really accurate in an absolutist or 100% certainty form. But the reason for that is because knowledge is axiomatic, and this is the way science now works, as a discipline and practice, through the principle of falsifiability, brought about by Karl Popper et al. Methodological Naturalism is simply pragmatic in it’s assumptions. It does not have to be certain in the same way that religious beliefs always have to. It only has to assume that it’s current picture, such as in scientific discovery, is more accurate, and more factual than any previous model.

I will skip the entire 3rd video, since he seems to spend the whole vid making baseless probability calculations, and quote-mining. So here’s the 4th video debunked.

Part 4 (skipped 3rd vid)

05:47 (5 minutes and 47 seconds)

“By virtue of their content as well as their neurophysiological properties; and are also adaptive [to survive]. What then is the probability here of this possibility that their cognitive faculties are reliable? Well here I have to say, not as high as you might think. Beliefs don’t causally effect behaviours just by themselves, it’s beliefs and desires, and other factors that do so together. [ ... ] So, Imagine that Paul is a prehistoric hominid, and the emergencies of survival cause him to display tiger-avoidance behaviour. [ ... ] There would be many behaviours that [may be] appropriate, fleeing for example. Or climbing a steep face – assuming that tigers aren’t that great at rock-climbing … or crawling into a hole too small to admit the tiger [if] it is a large tiger. Or leaping into a handy lake. Now … when I wrote this I was under the impression that tigers, like house cats, don’t like water. [ ... ] But in fact that turns out to be false. “

In this particular example, Alvin Plantinga admits that by not realizing on his part, that tigers can swim, and in fact, thrive in lakes and rivers, because of bizarre reasoning, assuming that tigers behave in a similar fashion to that of cats that are domesticated, and then changed his belief to the correct stance, after having learned more about it, Plantinga has now highlighted the flaws in this argument against naturalism. Naturalistic Evolution did not simply give us false or failing beliefs and desires. It gave us beliefs that most appropriately matched with the observed empirical data as you might call it, for our survival. And this IS important! And this is exactly why our cognitions may have been at least in some sense geared towards “truth” to a revisable degree, is exactly because of these survival advantages that come attached to discovering these “truths”, by virtue of our highly complex cerebral cortexes also “designed” by evolution. Plantinga’s beliefs about tigers not liking water may very well have got him brutally killed, if the situation occurred when he was faced with a tiger.

Plantinga’s tiger-illustration actually hits the nail quite well. He admits that his logically fallacious reasoning lead him to the erroneous conclusion as he later found out, that tigers are like other cats that he was familiar with. And at some time later, someone or other may have demonstrated to him that tiger in fact DO live in waters, such as rivers, and as such, Plantinga’s belief-forming mechanisms were shown to be false, and he had to change them in accordance with the empirically observed facts.

This illustrates the fact that beliefs are malleable and can change as new evidence comes along. And it’s that new evidence that matters, too. That is to elucidate the fact that beliefs are based on evidence, and few things are simply “self-evident”, as proposed by Evidentialist Foundationalism, in philosophy. Beliefs are not things that we merely accept because of the “fact” (LOL) that they were designed by god or gods to produce truths about the world, but we accept our beliefs based on empirically or rationally based justification for those beliefs, relating to the universe that we can observe. This also goes to demonstrate the rather glaringly obvious fact that the naturalistic world and universe is the first axiom of logic in regards to uncovering truths in reality, rather than God-given precepts, as Plantinga believes.

In his tiger illustration, Plantinga lists 3 possibilities of how a pre homo s. sapiens like hominid that he called “Paul”, could end up trying to run away from a tiger. His 1st possibility is that he would for some reason like to be eaten, but when faced with a tiger, giving in to his instincts, presumably runs away hoping for a better prospect, if he isn’t killed. The 2nd example, is that Paul may be led to believe that the tiger is in fact a large and friendly cat, which he wants to stroke … but apparently also believes that the “best” way in which to pet it is to run from it. The 3rd point is one we would all obviously concur with, from both our instincts and our educated standpoint as humans. That Paul believes that the tiger could damage or kill him, and he runs to prevent that from happening.

• 1.) So there is thus a conundrum in expaining how Paul’s false belief could naturally arise by evolution, if both evolution and theism are true. Given the fact that God could have designed the beliefs to ensure that they matched with reality. If Paul wants to be eaten by a Tiger, but then runs hoping for a better prospect, how is it possible for Paul to determine the prospects, in Plantinga’s mind?Whatever the causal reasons are for this avoidance-of-tigers behaviour, Plantinga cannot adequately explain how it could be inferred from observation, OR how it could be acquired as a new belief from experience or cognition, by virtue of our “unreliable”, according to Plantinga, Cognitive Faculties.  This, if true, can only be, under Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology, a ”properly basic” belief about reality, and thus his argument is ultimately self-refuting to Plantinga’s broader epistemological positions, if this argument is truly taken to its inevitable conclusions.
• 2.) In the second example of Paul with his bizarre desire to cuddle and to pet the tiger, there is the same logical problem as before, but with added connotations. There are plenty of people who do in fact rather like the idea of cuddling up to a tiger, and some have in the past with relatively no injury. So what would stop a prehuman hominid like Paul from realizing this point?
• 3.) Finally is the false assumption that running away from a tiger is somehow a good or productive means of avoiding a tiger, when it is not., given the fact that tigers can run in excess of 35 mph, while the fastest humans humans can only run a 25 mph or so. And the fastest of tigers may average at 50 mph. As such, it would be more productive to use tools and weapons to fight the tiger, and shift your chances of survival a little.Thus, it seems that Plantinga can only use examples that never actually evolved, in order to prove his case. Plantinga in the 5th video then presents a hideous number of bizarre examples that are not really worth addressing. He spends his time endlessly repeating himself. BUT:Part 6 (skipped 5th vid)02:33 (2 minutes and 33 seconds)
  “The traditional theist on the other hand has no reason to doubt that his faculties are reliable, or that it is the purpose of our cognitive system to produce true beliefs. “

This is nothing short of a spectacular article of faith! Again, he is using the generic and unqualified term “theism”, and is not clear on what he means when uses the word “God”. It seems that he means the Judeo-Christian philosophy. But …. his term ‘theist’ applies to anyone who believes in God or gods. How does he know that a Demonic God could not exist and deliberately make our cognitive faculties Unreliable? Who is to make that judgement, and what is it’s significance if it is true? His whole argument would collapse, and so it seems that his entire argument is based on fundamentally flawed use of terms, and falls flat on it’s face on it’s first premise, that our faculties are reliable and truthful. Thus this argument is invalid, and is not a compelling argument against Evolutionary Naturalism. Thanks for reading.

Out-sources:

“Evolutionary argument against naturalism: An argument proposed by Alvin Plantinga (henceforth EAAN), which purports to show that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating and hence cannot be rationally accepted. In addition, Plantinga argues that theism does not face self-defeat in the same way that naturalism does. In what follows, I shall descrive EAAN and outline some of the main objections to it.
To begin with, let ‘N’ stand for metaphysical naturalism, the claim that there is no God and nothing like God; let ‘E’ stand for the view that human cognitive faculties have evolved by way of the mechanisms that are studied by contemporary evolutionary theory; and let ‘R’ stand for the claim that the beliefs produced by those cognitive faculties are for the most part true.
EAAN has three stages, each of which involves defending a certain premise:

(1) P(R/N&E) is either low or inscrutable (meaning that we cannot determine whether it is low or high). Call this the Probability Thesis.

(2) Anyone who accepts N and E and the Probability Thesis has a defeater for R. This is the Defeater Thesis.

(3) Anyone who has a defeater for R has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs.

From these premises, it follows that anyone who accepts N and E and the Probability Thesis has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs, including his belief in metaphysical naturalism. But one who is a naturalist must accept E (it is, says Plantinga, the only option for the naturalist when it comes to explaining the diversity of life). Hence, naturalism is self-defeating. Let us see how these three premises are defended.
Plantinga defends the Probability Thesis by inviting us to consider the case of a hypothetical population of creatures on a planet a lot like earth, formed by blind, undirected evolution, and to assume that naturalism is true. What is P(R/N&E) specified, not to us, but to them? Plantinga notes that, when we consider this hypothetical population, there are four possibilities:

P1: There is no causal connection between belief and behavior.

P2: Beliefs are the effects of behavior but are not among the causes of behavior.

P3: Beliefs do causally affect behavior, but not by virtue of their content.

P4: Beliefs do causally affect behavior in virtue of their content.

Plantinga then says that, since these four possibilities are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive, the probability we want to assess, namely P(R/N&E), is given by the following weighted average:

P(R/N&E)
=
P(R/N&E&P1)P(P1/N&E)
+P(R/N&E&P2)P(P2/N&E)
+P(R/N&E&P3)P(P3/N&E)
+P(R/N&E&P4)P(P4/N&E).

The Probability Thesis is then justified by estimating this weighted average. P(R/N&E&Pi) is estimated as low for i = 1, 2, 3, because in these cases beliefs will be invisible to natural selection and so there will be no selection pressure towards their being mostly true. It seems, initially, as though P(R/N&E&P4) is going to be very high, but Plantinga contests this estimate by presenting examples of beliefs which are false but which, when combined with strange desires, lead to felicitous action. In the latter case, Plantinga concludes that the probability will be at best moderately high, not very much more than a half.
It now remains to estimate the probabilities of the form P(Pi/N&E), for i = 1, 2, 3, 4. Here, Plantinga thinks that, because of the enormous difficulties that naturalists (almost all of whom are at present materialists) face in avoiding P3, P(P3/N&E) is very high. Now, P1, P2, P3, and P4 are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, and their respective probabilities sum to 1. Thus, each of P1, P2, and P4 must be estimated as having low probability on N&E. Plantinga claims that a reasonable estimate of the probabilities leads to an estimate of P(R/N&E) as being somewhat less than a half.
Plantinga grants, however, that estimating probabilities in this sort of context is a dubious business. So he concedes that it would be proper to take the relevant probabilities to be inscrutable to us, leading to the conclusion that P(R/N&E) is inscrutable to us. In this way, Plantinga arrives at his conclusion that P(R/N&E) is either low or inscrutable.
In his self-profile in this volume, Plantinga has given a new argument for the Probability Thesis, which does not consider different possibilities for the relation between belief and action, and which supports the stronger conclusion that P(R/N&E) is low (rather than the conclusion that it is low or inscrutable).
The Defeater Thesis is defended by appealing to hypothetical cases that, it is claimed, are clearly analogous to the case of the naturalist in EAAN. Since, in these cases, the subject has a defeater for R, the same is true of the naturalist who accepts the Probability Thesis. Two hypothetical cases that have tended to predominate in discussions of EAAN are The Case of the Cartesian Demon and The Case of the Drug XX. The former is described below, and a version of the latter is described in Plantinga’s self-profile in this volume.

The Case of the Cartesian Demon
Suppose a man comes to believe that he is the creation of a demon that, as imagined by Descartes, is immensely knowledgeable. Suppose that he also comes to believe that this demon is not particularly concerned with making his creations cognitively reliable, and on at least some occasions has been quite pleased to make them unreliable, and moreover has made them unreliable in such a way that they continue to think of themselves as paragons of reliability, being unable to detect the cognitive disaster that has befallen them. Thinking about this, the man comes to the conclusion that P(R/D) is low or inscrutable, where R is specified to himself, and D is the proposition that the man has been created by the demon. Then the man has a defeater for R.
Plantinga defends the third premise by arguing that, if the naturalist has a defeater for R, this generates a defeater for the rest of his beliefs as well. The reason is that all of the naturalist’s beliefs are products of his cognitive faculties, which constitute their source. Once the reliability of that source comes into question, so do the beliefs generated by the source. Moreover, the defeater for R that the naturalist acquires cannot itself be defeated, since everything that could be a defeater-defeater is itself subject to defeat. To support this, Plantinga says that to rely on one’s cognitive faculties to form a defeater-defeater of the defeater one has for R would be like trusting a man to tell you he is not a liar when you have already been given excellent reasons to doubt his honesty.
Let us now consider some objections to EAAN. Most of the controversy regarding the argument has focused on the Defeater Thesis. There has been one main worry that critics have had about this claim. The objections to it that we shall describe are manifestations of this worry, which can be expressed as follows: what exactly is the connection between the naturalist’s acceptance of the Probability Thesis on the one hand, and her acquisition of a defeater for R on the other? One of the most natural expressions of this worry is the Perspiration Objection

The Perspiration Objection
The probability that the function of perspiration is to cool the body given (just) N&E is also low. But surely it would be absurd to claim that this gives the naturalist a defeater for this belief. Thus, it is also absurd to claim that the naturalist has a defeater for R in virtue of accepting the Probability Thesis.
There is no defeater in the perspiration case because the naturalist has other evidence for his beliefs about the function of perspiration, beyond just N&E. So could not the naturalist appeal to other evidence for his beliefs about R? This thought leads naturally to the Total Evidence Objection for EAAN.

The Total Evidence Objection
The naturalist has many other beliefs besides N&E. The probability of R relative to N&E conjoined with these other beliefs is quite high. Thus, the naturalist need not have a defeater for R in virtue of accepting the Probability Thesis.
Many philosophers (including Plantinga) hold that, in addition to propositional evidence, beliefs can also be warranted in virtue of non-propositional evidence. This leads to yet another objection, due to Michael Bergmann, which we can call the Non-propositional Evidence Objection.

The Non-propositional Evidence Objection
Even if R has low probability on all the available propositional evidence, the naturalist could still have non-propositional evidence for R which makes it rational to continue to hold on to R. Hence, the naturalist need not have a defeater for R merely in virtue of accepting the Probability Thesis.
These objections comprise just a small sample of the arguments against EAAN that have appeared in the published literature on the argument. Many of these, along with Plantinga’s responses to them, are articulated and discussed in Beilby (2002 [Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument]).”

(“Evolutionary argument against naturalism,” by Omar Mirza. In A Companion to Epistemology, 2nd ed., edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, and Matthias Steup, 351-354. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.)

As for the technical term “defeater” –

“Following Pollock (1986), we can distinguish between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. Intuitively, where E is evidence for H, an undercutting defeater is evidence which undermines the evidential connection between E and H. Thus, evidence which suggests that you are a pathological liar constitutes an undercutting defeater for your testimony: although your testimony would ordinarily afford excellent reason for me to believe that your name is Fritz, evidence that you are a pathological liar tends to sever the evidential connection between your testimony and that to which you testify. In contrast, a rebutting defeater is evidence which prevents E from justifying belief in H by supporting not-H in a more direct way. Thus, credible testimony from another source that your name is not Fritz but rather Leopold constitutes a rebutting defeater for your original testimony. It is something of an open question how deeply the distinction between ‘undermining’ and ‘rebutting’ defeaters cuts.

Significantly, defeating evidence can itself be defeated by yet further evidence: at a still later point in time, I might acquire evidence E″ which suggests that you are not a pathological liar after all, the evidence to that effect having been an artifice of your sworn enemy. In these circumstances, my initial justification for believing that your name is Fritz afforded by the original evidence E is restored. In principle, there is no limit to the complexity of the relations of defeat that might obtain between the members of a given body of evidence. Such complexity is one source of our fallibility in responding to evidence in the appropriate way. ”

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evidence)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-defeasible

Of course, Plantinga did not need to reveal his bizarre ignorance of philosophy, metaphysics, biology, and Palaeoanthropology, by using his equally bizarre tiger examples. There are excellent examples of definitively false beliefs that have lead to better outcomes than ones that are “true”, to whatever standard. Take the placebo effect. Its not just a change of perception, it has measurable effects. Of course, Plantinga is not going to use real-world examples in his lecture, because his own beliefs are not based on anything real, and needs his Christian beliefs to appear at least somewhat more likely to be true at the end of his lecture. As I said, what kind of evil and disingenuous being would create us to have false beliefs? Then again, how could we disprove such a notion…? But if we don’t look at the examples of genuinely beneficial false beliefs that actually exist, and judge their value, we will fail to understand how false beliefs themselves can evolve. Plantinga sets himself up to fail in understanding false beliefs, and does so via a very selective attempt at looking at all the available evidence. Beliefs are part of an evolutionarily unique way of avoiding becoming trapped with mere instinctual mechanisms. Thus we need to examine not only whether or not the conclusions themselves are sound, but whether the method by which we arrive at them is also sound, be they mathematics, logic, deduction, induction, empiricism, abstraction, metaphysics, etc. What we’ve done with our scientific models is to produce a predictive instrument designed to weed out false theories and apprehensions, and it is through this method that it can be seen that Plantinga’s arguments can be seen to be invalid. That is why he want’s to destroy naturalism, even at the methodical level …

1) Hitler is Anti-christian.

2) Abortion in America is really akin to the Holocaust.

The second argument is really little more than the application of godwins law into a debate, furthermore the connection between abortion doctors in America today and the Nazis in the 1930′s and 1940′s is more silly and superficial than what Ray and his fellow religious propagandists make it out to be. Yes it is true that the Nazis used forced abortions upon women deemed “unAryan” (women who were Jewish or Slavic, etc.) in order to decrease their number as part of their eugenic policies, however for healthy Women of the Volksgemeinschaft it was a different story, because for them abortions were banned. Indeed in 1936, Heinrich Himmler created a Reich Central Office just for the purpose “for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion”! You know those two things Ray and his fellow religious fundamentalists don’t like. Being sarcastic here like i sometimes am, Does this mean that by ray’s logic he may be *shock horror* akin to a Nazi? In the real world, of course he isn’t!

But for the purposes of this, im going to attempt to rebut his other argument, that Hitler was no Christian.

Let’s begin with an observation about this video, and that simply is, is that ray does what he typically does i guess, which is to reveal his calibre of intelect by interviewing some “greasy Highschool students” as Thunderf00t put it in the Ray Comfort edition of his “WDPLAC” series and being amused when they fail to give a good answer. “Do you know who hitler was?” .”Do you know who hitler was?”, “No?”, “No?”

To paraphrase Tf00t again: “Bravo Ray we can debunk Mathematics by this method too can’t we?”

in addition to the “greasy Highschool students” we are also introduced to a a Neo-nazi that goes by the name of “steve”, who as you can see in the film has some very nasty things to say about Christianity. If you are going to pretend that all Neo-nazis are just like steve, you will be mistaken, Meet “Father” Angelo Idi.

 He works in the parish of St. Francis, in Vigevano, Italy. Apparantly He once saw off a charity box thief with a truncheon And really wishes for you to care about, in his words “how good a priest I am.” If i were to take away the image and present to you only the information already given (without sources). Idi would probably Sound like someone not too far removed from the Priests who works in your local area wouldn’t he? The Thing is of course, i suspect he is very far removed from the priests in your area. As you can see from the image, Idi is a Neo-Nazi and a Christian. He says he is ”proud” of his “right wing beliefs” And even in his part of the world as the Austrian Times expose reveals, He is not alone. Let’s continue with Ray comfort himself!

“Adolf Hilter hated Christianity, he called it a disease and one point said ‘the heaviest blow which ever stuck humanity was Christianity’ and adding ‘it was the invention of the Jew.’

Are we sure that’s a genuine remark there? Ray’s source although he doesn’t cite it is the Trevor-roper translation of the Table-talks, the one that, as i have explained elsewhere, it just so happens to be full of Mistranslations, see the “German Studies Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Oct., 2003), pp. 561-576” for more details. 

“Hitler keineswegs areligiös war,” or  ”Hitler was by no means unreligious” was the conclusion Werner Jochmann gave after surveying Hitler’s remarks on religion in their actual German. Why? well could it be because we can find quotations like this:

“Ich bin auf Grund höherer Gewalt da, wenn ich zu etwas nötig bin. Abgesehen davon, dass sie mir zu grausam ist, die seligmachende Kirche! Ich habe noch nie Gefallen gefunden daran, andere zu schinden, wenn ich auch weiβ, dass es ohne Gewalt nicht möglich ist, sich in der Welt zu behaupten. Es wird nur dem das Leben gegeben, der am stärksten darum ficht. Das Gesetz des Lebens heißt: Verteidige dich!

Die Zeit, inder wir leben, ist die Erscheinung des Zusammenbruchs dieser Sache. Es kann 100 oder 200 Jahre noch dauern. Es tut mir leid, dass ich wie Moses das gelobte Land nur aus der Ferne sehen kann. Wir wachsen in eine sonnige, wirklich tolerante Weltanschauung hinein: Der Mensch soll in der Lage sein, die ihm von Gott gegebenen Fähigkeiten zu entwickeln. Wir müssen nur verhindern, dass eine neue, noch gröβere Lüge entsteht: die Jüdisch-Bolschewistische Welt. Sie muss ich zerbrechen.”

or this:

“Christus war ein Arier. Aber Paulus hat seine Lehre benutzt, die Unterwelt zu mobilisieren und einen Vorbolschewismus zu organisieren. Mit dessen Einbruch geht Die schöne Klarheit der antiken Welt verloren. Was ist das für ein Gott, der nur Wohlgefallen hat, wenn die Menschen sich vor ihm kasteien?”

or even Hitler’s remark with regards to the position of Man in nature:

“Das, was der Mensch vor dem Tier voraushat, der vielleicht wunderbarste Beweis fur die Überlegenheit des Menschen, ist, dass er begriffen hat, dass es eine Schöpferkraft geben muss!”

None of these quotes reveal a “disease of Christianity” that Hitler wishes to get rid of but rather the expediency of his own warped, and im sorry ray, “Christian” ideology. As far as the German is concerned, hitler makes it clear all the way through that he believes in God, Christ, the immortality of the soul, and divine providence. His so-called attacks on Christianity are really falsely translated Hitler attacks on what he sees as false dogmas and the sort of critiques of the Roman Catholic Church you might otherwise expect from a bigoted protestant. Continuing to pwn Comfort some more with his source, despite the faulty translations we see in the Trevor-Roper talks, we can if we look hard enough still see amazingly some glimmers of the Christian Hitler actually was.

“What a queer sort of Christianity they practise down there [in Spain]! We must recognise, of course, that, amongst us, Christianity is coloured by Germanism. All the same, its doctrine signifies: “Pray and work!”"

Hitler on the Ten Commandments, have this quote in mind for a later Comfort claim:

“The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they’re inspired by the best religious spirit, and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.”

It would appear that this is Hitler’s reaction to an FDR suggestion that Hitler might be Anti-christian:

“What repulsive hypocrisy that arrant Freemason, Roosevelt, displays when he speaks of Christianity ! All the Churches should rise up against him—for he acts on principles diametrically opposed to those of the religion of which he boasts.”

And my favourite; Hitler comparing Nazi religious policy to Soviet religious policy:

“It’s senseless to encourage man in the idea that he’s a king of creation, as the scientist of the past century tried to make him believe. … The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It’s a fact that we’re feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it’s better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all. Who’s that little Bolshevik professor who claims to triumph over creation? People like that, we’ll break them. Whether we rely on the catechism or on philosophy, we have possibilities in reserve, whilst they, with their purely materialistic conceptions, can only devour one another.”

Let’s continue down with what else Comfort claims:

He killed and imprisoned genuine pastors and replaced them with his own Nazi pastors.

Yes true. but there is a difference between being Anti-clerical, and being Anti-christian.

he also replaced the Cross with swastika. Printed over a thousand copies of his own twisted Bible.

I could find nowhere directly that said that the Nazis removed crosses or bibles from churches, but conversely I could find nothing that said they didn’t. But this later case is obvious to me, as why would anyone need to say they left the crosses and bibles in the churches? The positive claim of change has to be proven not the negative. But still I was wondering where this claim came about. So i did a little bit of research and from what i can gather the claim appears to have come partly from William Shirer in his book “The rise and fall of the third reich”, although Shirer not being immortal was wrong in this case, or at least inarticulate about it. In his work he talks about the Reich Church and that there was a set of 30 points put up by Rosenberg that made such demands (p213). As a source he uses: Stewart W. Herman Jr’s 1943 book “It’s your Soul We Want”. Now this is where it gets interesting, Herman was a Lutheran pastor who left Germany and fought in the allied armies so right there it seemed a little tainted. And but again Herman uses Rosenberg’s points. What none of this tells you is that Rosenberg’s paganism was rejected by Hitler and many Nazis.

“[which is why] Significantly …. [Rosenberg's book "Der Mythus"] was published as a private work, never becoming an official guide to Nazi thinking, as Mein Kampf was. It never received the official stamp of the NSDAP, nor did the party’s official publisher publish it … The party in fact largely ignored it, as Rosenberg himself would later discover. Over 700 pages long, it was easily the most abstruse book ever written by a Nazi. In keeping with their own religious views, party leaders like Hitler and Goebbels heaped enormous scorn upon it. According to one biographer [Reinhard Bollmus], “Hitler completely rejected… the mysticism with which Rosenberg, in his main work…attempted to give a religious intensity to a racist interpretation of history”" – Richard Steigman-Gall, “The Holy Reich”, p92-93

And Rosenberg had nothing to do with the actual formation of the Reich Church. Herman, from what I can get of his book, is using a pamphlet Rosenberg wrote called the “Protestantische Rompilger” which is an addendum to his “Der Mythus” book that Hitler rejected. Anyway, this was not a publication of policy, it was only Rosenberg’s personal work and wishes, and not published by the party publisher, and Hitler had already rejected Rosenberg’s ideas anyway. And if this were truly Nazi policy than why such a source as this? There would have been a policy statement or order put out by a formal agency, but we only have Rosenbergs pamphlets and works. I at the moment have no claims from others that Crosses were non present, amusingly i would like to point out on a side that the very symbol of the “Deutsche Christen” movement is a Christian Cross with a swastika on it.

Also from Stiegman-gall and others are the statements that the Church downplayed the Jewish parts of the bible (old testament) not that the Bible was banned, just that certain parts were downplayed. And even as early as the turn of the century there were plenty Christian sects that wished to extricate the Old Testament from the ‘Christian’ bible, it was not a particularly uniquely Nazi idea. Indeed as far as i am aware it was even shared by the Kaiser in exile! (perhaps one could note how similar the Kaiser’s ideas were as presented here to Hitler’s own ideology?)

“In the mid-1920S, Wilhelm called for the formation of a ‘Christian International’ to launch the ‘Kampf’ against the Verjudung’ of Germany; after the ‘purification’ of the Fatherland, the struggle would have to be continued against ‘das Judentum’ in the whole world.” He demanded that the Bible be re-written to eliminate most of the Old Testament, so leaving only genuinely Christian elements, which he claimed were Zoroastrian and therefore ‘Aryan’ in origin and ‘not Semitic-Jewish’ at all. ‘Let us free ourselves from the Judentum with its Jawe!’, he cried in one of his last letters to Chamberlain.” And just as the Jews were not our religious forebears’, so of course Jesus was ‘not a Jew’, but a Gallilean, a man, he liked to believe, ‘of exceptional beauty, tall and slim, with a noble face inspiring respect and love; his hair blond shading into chestnut brown, his arms and hands noble and exquisitely formed’.” – source (pdf).

But even this wouldn’t be banning the bible, and evidently the Reich Church didn’t even go that far and only tended to ignore the parts in the Old Testament it didn’t like, (Also not unusual in Christianity, when has any Christian or indeed Ray followed or preached all in Leviticus?) So I have to call bullshit to his claim.  The Rosenberg list was only Rosenberg’s own personal wish list, and not policy, no matter what Shirer wrote (and his sourcing here does not stand up to scrutiny, he never went to any primary source and took the word of someone with an axe to grind). also i could say that what has just been said about the Kaiser (especially if you read that document) renders this line by Comfort:

“He rewrote the Ten Commandments and then created his own Aryan anti-Sematic non-Jewish Jesus”

as meaningless! i guess it’s just part of his no true scotsman fallacy. He continues about how Hitler violated the 10 commandments, but the question i would then ask is How many times has ray violated the idea of “thou shall not lie” which he regards as a sin? He and his buddy Kirk Cameron certainly lied about Darwin in that special intro to the “Origin of species” didn’t he?

Ray then proceds to Quoting or quotemining Hitler; This is what he uses.

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human. They cannot be human in the sense of being made in the image of God…” – citing a “May 1923 speech in Munich”

We can see here what Ray omits out.

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human. They cannot be human in the sense of being made in the image of God, the Eternal. The Jews are the image of the devil. Jewry means the racial tuberculosis of the nations” – Hitler, quoted in Joachim C. Fest, “Hitler”, p212.

The jews are the image of the devil? Where do you think we might have heard that line before? Oh yes, it was a product of Christian Anti semitism indeed!

“A line of anti-Semitic descent from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler is easy to draw. Both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by a demonologized universe inhabited by Jews. ‘Know, Christian,’ wrote Luther, ‘that next to the devil thou hast no enemy more cruel, more venomous and violent than a true Jew .’ Hitler himself, in that early dialogue with Dietrich Eckhart, asserted that the later Luther – that is, the violently anti-Semitic Luther – was the genuine Luther. Luther’s protective authority was invoked by the Nazis when they came to power, and his anti-Semitic writings enjoyed a revival of popularity. To be sure, the similarities of Luther’s anti-Jewish exhortations with modern racial anti-Semitism and even with Hitler’s racial policies are not merely coincidental. They all derive from a common historic tradition of Jew-hatred, whose provenance can be traced back to Haman’s advice to Ahasuerus. But modern German anti-Semitism had more recent roots than Luther and grew out of a different soil – not that German anti-Semitism was new; it drew part of its sustenance from Christian anti-Semitism, whose foundation had been laid by the Catholic Church and upon which Luther built. It was equally a product of German nationalism. Modern German anti-Semitism was the bastard child of the union of Christian anti-Semitism with German nationalism.” – Lucy Dawidowicz, “The war against the jews”, p23.

And i can guess you can tell Ray is being deliberately dishonest with his portraryl of Hitler by quoting  a Hitler quote gleaned from a piece of fiction and passing it off as non-fictional fact, Perhaps someone ought to tell him to look up the very term “novel”. This is what he quotes:

“history will recognize our movement as a great battle for humanity’s liberation, a liberation from the curse of Mt. Sinai…[God is] a tyrant who orders one to do the very things one doesn’t like.” Source taken from The Ten Commandments: Ten Short Novels of Hitler’s War Against the Moral Code by Armin L.. Robinson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), xiii.

and it’s fictional nature is exactly why i personally have not seen it anywhere in any of the major histories of Nazi Germany that i have read. 

Im going to conclude, Here in this post i did not even bother with answering his trick Moral questions (which in my head i wonder to what extent they could satisfy J.S Mill’s utilitarian ethics. J.S Mill being an atheist which i find amusing in this context.) designed to convince the credulous, instead i’ve gone after his portraryl of Hitler. Ray to me seems to have violated “thou shall not lie” yet again.

Basically, I would argue that while the foetus is absolutely dependent on the mother for nutrients, oxygen, and a safe environment she should be allowed to withdraw that support. The resulting death of the foetus, while predictable, is not murder because it results from the withdrawal of sustenance. I also add an extra requirement of exploring reasonable options that could avoid the need for an abortion but since current technology does not allow aborted embryos to survive and develop independently from the mother, abortion should remain legal.

However, over on M and M (New Zealand’s most popular Christian blog) I found a few counter-examples to my favoured arguments which gave me pause. While some are easy to answer others are a little trickier.

Example 1: “A hiker who breaks her leg a week’s walk from a road will die if her companions do not bring help.”

In New Zealand and other common law jurisdictions there is no duty to rescue. While we might look down on people who leave people to die rather than rescue them, it is not prosecuted as a criminal homicide or any other felony. See this example of mountain climbers being left to die on Everest. I would prefer the general principle that people attempt to rescue others if they are able to do so safely but I also don’t want to force someone into a potentially dangerous action if they are unwilling. This is consistent with my position on abortion. I would prefer if the potential mother to explore all options but if she is unwilling to go through the pregnancy, I would not force it upon her.

Example 2: “An elderly woman may be totally dependant on her children looking after her.”

This is similar to the problem above, there is no legal duty placed upon children to take of their parents in old age. It may be the respectful thing to do, but I do not want the law changed to force children to be responsible for their elderly parents.

Example 3: “A newborn is totally dependent on its mother if it happens to be born in an isolated area where there are no other lactating women and there are no means of bottle-feeding.”

This example I find harder to answer. One point to make is while the above two scenarios are realistic this one is fantastical and unlikely to occur in everyday life. There are always plenty of people around who could look after a new baby if required. Never-the-less, I think this scenario requires an answer: would it be acceptable for a mother to refuse life-sustaining support for her own child? There is a duty to rescue in a parent-child relationship and to refuse aid would be negligence at the least. The expectant mother and the foetus do share an approximation of the parent-child relationship so perhaps the pregnant women does have some duty to provide a life-sustaining environment for her offspring.

I throw it open to you. Is there a relevant difference between the two cases that doesn’t rely on a personhood argument?

Subjectivity
Averick’s main beef with atheistic morality is that is subjective:

“For the atheist, morality is simply a word that is used to describe the type of system that an individual or society subjectively prefers. Each society establishes, maintains, and modifies its values to suit its own needs.”

While some atheists do see morality as subjective there are also moral philosophies based on facts and a shared understanding of reality (i.e., objective). Rabbi Averick also thinks it is a problem that moral philosophy can update itself as new arguments are made and accepted. As someone who works in the sciences I am comfortable with knowledge improving as new facts are discovered and new ideas developed. There will be setbacks, aberrant paths that are found to be wrong, but on the long view a gradual improvement is continuously made. In modern social democracies can we really doubt that we are better off today than in the past? We have more freedoms and more rights than ever before. This is not the result of mere subjective whims that happened to go the right way, but a recognition that some actions of the past (e.g., slavery) were wrong and should no longer be permitted in our society. Dogmas, on the other hand, do not update and are stuck in our less enlightened past.

Peter Singer
Averick spends a significant chunk of the article attacking Peter Singer for his views on consequentialist utilitarianism. Which is an objective moral system. The Rabbi doesn’t seem to recognise that his criticism of moral subjectivism doesn’t apply to Singer but he continues regardless:

“Singer went on to explain that he is a “consequentialist.” For the benefit of the philosophically challenged let me explain “consequentialism” in a nutshell: If you like the consequences it’s ethical, if you don’t like the consequences it’s unethical. Thus, if you enjoy child pornography and having sex with children it’s ethical, if you dislike child pornography and having sex with children it’s unethical.”

What Singer’s philosophy actually entails is the evaluation of harm that results from an action. Utilitarianism considers happiness to be desirable and harm to be deleterious. This means that when assessing an action for its morality you should look at the consequences in terms of the people harmed and the people helped. So if enjoying child pornography and having sex with children harms someone then it is unethical. Since paedophilia often has traumatic effects on the child involved, their parents, and the wider community Singer would most likely find most cases of paedophilia morally wrong. So much for the slippery slope argument.

S.P.A.G.
Averick claims that since we resulted from slime (or from dust if you are Jewish, I guess that’s better?) that means we are morally bereft. The fact that we evolved from primates does not degrade humanity. It is thrilling to think that all species on this planet are interrelated though the process of evolution. What makes humans different, more significant than our jungle dwelling relatives, is our ability to reason. When we exercise our unique intelligence we get to make our own decisions about meaning, value, and morality. Atheists aren’t handed their morality from on high, we have to think about it, and thanks to evolution we have that ability. After spending most of the article decrying the ability of secular philosophers to reason about ethics, Averick engages in the most dishonest part of the article. He simply throws out a bunch of ethical rules without giving any justification for his claims.

• All men are created in the image of God and are therefore inherently and intrinsically precious.
• All men have been endowed by God with unalienable rights and among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• Thou shalt not murder.
• Thou shalt not steal.
• Thou shalt not bear false witness.
• Thou shalt not commit adultery, incest, or bestiality.
• Thou shalt not have sex with children, and if you do you will be looked upon as a disgusting and contemptible criminal and will be treated as such.
• Thou shall teach these laws to your children.

Fortunately, we can recognise the source for some of these claims, and they don’t come from a god. The ones about unalienable rights are from the American Declaration of Independence and the rules about murder, stealing, perjury, and adultery are from the Torah. These moral rules aren’t from God but from the men who wrote the documents. But where do the other bits and pieces come from? Since Averick hasn’t demonstrated God is the moral author, we have to conclude they come from Averick himself. The Rabbi simply prefers it to be the case that paedophilia is immoral and so claims that it is a divine command. This is merely Self-Projection As God. After spending an entire article railing against subjective morality we find that the only justification Averick has is that he just feels paedophilia is wrong (and God agrees with me!) Unfortunately for Averick the main point of his article is that atheism leads to paedophilia. It is rather easily countered by the mention to two religions: Catholicism and Islam. Both of these theistic beliefs have managed to rationalise and accept (respectively) the sexual molestation of children. If theistic societies are also capable of accepting paedophilia then Averick’s point is moot and it seems that God does not totally agree with our hapless Rabbi on the immorality of pedophilia.

Irony, it’s everywhere.

But what a false picture this is!

Firstly, a proper definition of what a “Dark age” is has nothing to do with morality, One may condem what a certain society did at a paticular time period but that does not alter the fact of how “In Dark” or “In Light” the society in question to acedemia is. The Ancient Greeks, and paticularly the Spartans for example, practiced what could be described as a primitive form of eugenics.

And you can Condem them for that if you please, however as already stated it does not alter how “Dark” the society supposedly was. This is made all the more so because ancient Greek eugenics occured in a period of “Light”. The period of Aristotle and Plato. This is important because there was an actual “Ancient greek dark age” which lasted approximately 1200BC –800 BC. However it is my belief that, as we discover more about that time perion, such a “Dark” description for it will dwindle away into acedemic obscurity, regardless of the perceptions of the popular mind.

This is because the correct definition of a Dark age is simply put a time period that contemporary acedemics know relatively little about. Perhaps out of a lack of investigation, but mostly because of a lack of primary sources from said time and place. Hence the idea that the events of a certain period would seem “dark” to us compared to how much “Light” acedemia has shed with both what came before, and what came after the relevant time period.

Now correctly definied can we apply the Dark ages definition to say, Europe in the 1100′s or the 1200′s or the 1300′s or later? I don’t think so! Do acedemics know relatively little about any time period after say the 1100′s? I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say that, that is indeed the case. Even Wikipedia will tell you many modern scholars who study the Middle Ages tend to avoid the term “Dark ages” altogether for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages.

A case study, Let’s take my home country for example. “Merrye olde England” as the nostalgics call it, because for a good while and even up until the middle part of the 20th century, there was an actual brief interlude in our chronology that actually was called “Dark”. This was Circa 450AD to about 550-600AD.  Here’s a quote.

“For a better part of a century this darkness covers British history, lighted only at intervals by a momentary gleam from archaeology, … we are thus almost ignorant of every vital detail upon the very turning-point of our destiny, when Britain was conquered by the races which, if not making the majority of it’s population, have assuredly determined [our] language, structure of society, and national character. This darkness is felt the more, when we consider the evidence at our disposial [which the author goes on to describe as essentialy being "distant" from the time and place in question]” – Keith Feiling, “A History of England (1950)”, p21.

For Esmé Cecil Wingfield Stratford, this time period was “A Century and a half of almost complete darkness”, although he gives us an undated end to this so-called dark age. “The conversion to Christianity, that was the end of the dark age in Britain”. See his book, “The Foundations of British Patriotism (1939)” p27 and p31 for more details

But this time period was not “Dark” because there was a lack of investigation going on. On the contrary, scholars in the mid 20th century were studying what was going on back then, but they just couldn’t put certain dates onto certain events. As F.M Stenton in 1943 puts it…

“The Chronology of the period, has been studied intensively, but there remains an embarrasing number of incidents of which the the date has not yet been fixed” – preface from the Oxford History of England Vol II, “Anglo-Saxon England”, vi.

If that was the way things appeared back then in the middle of the 20th century, what about today? Well if Dan Snow’s 2009 BBC 4 documentary series “How the Celts Saved Britain (Unfortunately not available for you all on Youtube)” is anything to go by. Esmé Cecil Wingfield Stratford’s point would appear to still generaly hold true, perhaps minus some of the darkness. For you see our understanding of the relevant time period [like our understanding of other time periods in general], has grown much deeper over the last 60 odd years. And as to his point about Christianity, Snow claims something (can we say similar?) which is indeed quite interesting. That “bound up with the spread of Christianity from Ireland [to Britain] is the spread of modernity” [Quoted from the Daily Telegraph]

Ok so, that’s one side of my understanding, that the notion of a 1000yr long European Dark age is i consider essentialy to be a myth. Even the very [and proper] definition of what a Dark age is makes it so and it would appear that it was Christianity that saved the British isles from it’s 100 to 150 yr long “Dark age” if we can call it Dark in the 21st century. But what about Christianity in General, The religious element to Middle age society? 

Well i am not really a fan of the Conflict thesis on it’s own, Sure one can cherrypick examples of “opposition”, as John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White did in the late 1800′s and make sweeping conclusions out of it, but to do so ignores a larger picture and one could say alot can come down to as much to political circumstance and location as much to anything else. I am aware that in the ottoman Empire there is a different story than to what happened in Europe, in that the Clergy there did contribute heavily there to snuff out Scientific development. If there is one thing that explains the decline of the islamic world relative to it’s European counterpart, it is that the scientific revolution did not really happen there at all, despite Istanbul being not too far away from Christian Europe, and despite the great traditions of Muslim Science from the days of the 10th century Abbasid Caliphate [So far as the Conflict thesis is concerned, Context is key]. There’s an interesting figure by the name of “Ibrahim müteferrika”, it was he that persuaded the Sultan to allow the printing press in 1729, think of how much later that was than in Europe. One of his first publications was titled “Rational basis for the politics of nations” wherby he argued that..

“The ottoman Empire’s failure to adopt European methods of Governence and Scientific exploration was the root of it’s inability to compete geo-politically” – Tim Jacoby and Michael Mann, “Social Power and the Turkish State”, p67.

In other words, at his time of Writing, the European states were governed by the principles of Reason and the Ottoman Empire was not. How did this come to be? Arguably the first Turkish politican to really get the idea that Science is key to progress was perhaps “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk”, a secularist in Turkish politics and the founder of modern Turkey.

As far as i understand, Reason’d politics in Europe first really came to be in a time period known as the renaissance, that great flowering of the Arts, Science and Political philosophy. But you cannot have a flowering without a bud, and that bud came out the scientific work after the time of Charlemagne, which was not so much concerned with original investigation as it was with the active study and investigation of ancient Roman scientific texts, and it was this investigation which paved the way for the later effort of Western scholars to recover and translate ancient Greek texts in philosophy and the sciences, and it was out of this that reason began to emerge. So in essence one could say Medieval Christianity created the conditions ripe for that “Explosion in Art and Science, and reason and political philosophies”. [There was also the case that "The spread of Christianity in the Carolingian era had a beneficial effect on medical knowledge and treatment. Several of the church fathers expressed interest in medicine. Some of them even knew something about it" - John P. Mckay, Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckler, "A History of Western Society" p246.] But here’s an interesting question, perhaps one of you can help answer it. regarding the “revival of ancient learning” in the 12th and 13th centuries [again created by the conditions of the scientific work after Charlemagne], at the height of Medieval Christendom, what happenes to the idea that medieval Christianity was not “interested” in reviving all the Greco-Roman wonderfulness in the first place?

Nonetheless, To call the 12th and 13th Centuries a  time of “superstiton, ignorance and Barbarism”, with the commonly used misnomer of “Dark ages [with all the negativity that alone entails] being applied to it is not a correct one.

“But this [image just described] is a caricature, the acceptance of which has proved an obstacle to an understanding of the Middle Ages as they really were. It is true that the early centuries of the Medieval period, LIKE [my emphasis] those of late antiquity, saw a great deal of political and social turmoil. It is true that literacy and learning, in this early period, were in a state of decline. But an account that fails to acknowledge differences among geographical regions and change over time cannot do justice to the complex medieval reality. An accurate account will reveal that learning grew from small beginnings in the early Middle Ages to become a thriving industry in the later Middle Ages; that important scientific achievements emerged during this period; and that the church and it’s theology maintained a relationship to the natural sciences far too complicated to be captured by simple black and white categories such as adversaries or allies. Unquestionably some portions of the classical tradition gave rise to suspicion, hostility, and even ecclesiastical condemnation. However such cases were exceptional; Far more commonly, critical reflection about the nature of the world was tolerated and even encouraged. In their quest to understand the world in which they lived, medieval scholars employed all of the resources at their disposial, including inherited scientific ideas, personal observation, rational influence and religious tradition. And they did so with as much integrity as one finds today in the average university professor and with far less interference from the church than the caricature [that many hold to] of the middle ages would suggest” – “David C. Lindberg, “The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon, and the Handmaiden Metaphor”, in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, ed. “When Science & Christianity Meet”, p8.

Overall, i would say that the relationship between Science and religion was a fruitful one, certainly not a “Cozy” or “perfect” one, but they had a better relationship than the one that the conflict thesis suggests.

“While some historians had always regarded the Draper-White thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late 20th century it went under a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule. In the words of David Lindberg … “There was no warfare between Science and the Church. The story of Science and Christianity in the middle ages is not a story of suppression nor one of it’s polar opposite, [complete] support and encouragement. What we find is an interaction exhibiting all the variety and complexity, with which we are familliar in other realms of Human endeavour; Conflict, compromise, understanding, misunderstanding, accomadation, dialouge, alienation, the making of common cause, and the going of seperate ways” (pp70-71). What Lindberg writes of Europe can be said to describe much of Western History. Evidence that the relationship between Science and religion has exhibited a multiciplity of attitudes, reflecting local conditions and particular historical circumstance, has led John Brooke to speak of a ‘complexity thesis’ as a more accurate model than the ‘Conflict thesis’. But while Brooke’s view has gained widespread acceptance among professional Historians of Science, the traditional view remains strong elsewhere, not least in the popular mind.” – Gary Ferngren, “Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction”, p. ix – x.

And that sums it up for me. As to that graph in the beginning, well i think it’s rhetorical nonsense, and not an accurate picture of what really went on back then.

Let’s start with an easy one: excise taxes. These are taxes on specific goods usually with the aim of discouraging use. They help overcome the problem of market failure caused by negative externalities. One example is petrol. When a buyer and seller agree to a price for this good they are taking into account the personal cost and benefit of exchanging a certain volume of fuel for a certain price. What they are not taking into account is their negative impacts of the rest of society. Using more petrol means the buyer and seller are contributing to pollution, global warming, traffic congestion, and negative health effects like higher asthma rates. By leveling an excise tax, the government makes sure more transaction costs are paid for and not passed on to unwilling third parties, including future generations. Even better, the government can take this revenue stream and use it to help mitigate the effect of excise taxes of poor citizens and to start developing alternatives so the negative consequences of the market are eliminated entirely.

So what about property taxes? This will depend on your view of property rights. I find it rather difficult to believe in absolute property rights because I do not see how a legitimate ownership assertion can be made over a non-owned resource in the first place. If the original ownership claim is illegitimate then any sale or inheritance of that resource is insufficient to continue asserting absolute ownership. On the other hand, it would very be difficult to run a functional economy without the convenient fiction of property rights. These rights allow stability and development, taking them away completely would allow resources to change hands so many times that nothing could get done. But the cost of allowing these property rights has to be paid by the people who gain the advantages. Property taxes are the compensation owed to the wider community who are giving up their claim to your resources in order to allow you to benefit. These taxes can then be used to support others who missed out on the appropriation of resources or to develop public property such as roads and parks that benefit everyone who wishes to use them.

Finally, income taxes. Wealth is not earned in a vacuum; it is instead the result of a well developed and functioning society. Taxes pay for education, health services, transport networks, safety inspections, police, fire-fighters, and the justice system – all the things that keep a modern nation a vibrant place to do business. An income tax is a fundamental part of this system allowing the provision of all these services – it is the cost of earning a living in this type of society. If you are not paying for the services you use, then you are not doing your fair share. Income taxes are not imposed, but are agreed as part of taking on employment. They are part of your employment agreement and, as everyone knows a priori income will be taxed, there’s no excuse for calling it coercion. Further, income taxes can be made highly progressive helping to increase equality within a society. Benefits can even be given to those with low pay packets boosting their incomes. With higher wage equality comes higher levels of employment and a sustained demand for goods and services in what is called ‘wage-led growth’. This is the Scandinavian model of development and has proven itself to be one of the fairest ways to organise a growing economy while maintaining a healthy, happy population.

The results of a sensible tax investment can be seen in more efficient markets that take account of externalities, as compensation for allowing some unequal access to resources, and producing a vibrant and egalitarian economy with a happy population. I for one am happy to invest in this kind of future.

Atheism, at its most inclusive, describes anyone who has no belief in gods. From even this basic understanding, it is remarkably difficult to see how atheism could be expected to produce any action from an individual atheist. There is no causal line from the absence of a single belief to any other belief or action, be it good or bad. Even explicit atheism (the denial of gods) does not imply any further belief or action. If we say this for atheism, in order to be consistent, we must also say this for theism. Theism (the belief in gods), as a single belief, does not entail any other beliefs or actions by the individual theist. A theist may believe in the philosopher’s god, a non-interventionist god, Allah, the trinity, or a whole pantheon of pagan gods. But even these basic beliefs about the nature of gods are additional to the initial claim of theism, not derived from it. Taking the example of the Thirty Years war, the Pope would have us blame theism for the conflict. However, given both sides of the conflict were theists this conclusion makes little sense. The true dividing factor was the different religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, which each side maintained.  My contention is that while atheism and theism are blameless in the great atrocities of history, ideology and religion should be held to account.

Ideologies and religions are not single beliefs but whole belief systems and as such can serve as powerful motivators for individuals. While each belief in the system may not be cause for action, the combination of various beliefs produces stimulus for the individual. A single belief in the existence of Hell does little to motivate a person unless further beliefs such as the nature of sin, the possibility of salvation, and a divine overseer are part of the overall belief system. Nazi Ideology, to take the Pope’s example, is a powerfully motivating belief system. What gave the Nazi party its appeal in post WWI Germany was its staunch conservatism and a resistance to the liberal direction of the Wiemar republic. The Nazi’s were anti-communistic, anti-atheist, anti-homosexual, anti-immigrant, and anti-semetic. While not necessary a Christian movement, the Nazi party endorsed Christianity and, in turn, received support from the more conservative Catholic and Luthern churches. The Catholic church even assisted in tracking down those of Jewish descent by opening its records on marriages and births to the Nazi party. While there were Christians who opposed Nazism the record of Christianity in Germany is one of acquiescence and support rather opposition or resistance.

Taking the historical record of Christianity in Hitler’s Germany and applying the Pope’s recent “reasoning” we should conclude that theism is to blame for Nazism. Note that this would not only include the denominations of Christianity that supported Hitler but also those who objected to Nazism. It would also include Muslim and Hindu theists who had nothing to do with the atrocities. The Pope’s “logic” would also have us blaming the Jewish theists who were aggressively persecuted by the Nazi regime! This conclusion is rightly considered ludicrous as it lacks all subtlety by failing to distinguish between those guilty of the crime and those victimised by it. This is the gaping flaw I wanted to identify. It is not theism or atheism that is to blame for Nazi Germany but primarily the ideology of Nazism and secondarily the religions of Catholicism and Lutheranism.

What we all should realise is it religions and ideologies that are to blame in these historical atrocities not individual beliefs. In the case of the Soviet Union it was a type of Marxism, not atheism, which was the problem. During the Thirty Years war it was types of Christianity which were the problem, not theism. In Hitler’s Germany it was a type of political movement and on 9/11 it was a type of Islam. In no way is either atheism or theism to blame for these devastating events. One final point, I think we atheists contribute to this misperception by setting up atheism in opposition to religion – this is a mistake. Theism is the opposite of atheism and we should make this point clear in all our communication on the subject. We should also reserve our criticism of the historical record for the ideologies and religions that are at fault, and not try to extend this critique to cover all types of theism.

After a few exchanges on message boards, I’ve been directed to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy more than once in the last few days. And, today, glancing through it, I’m left with a rather odd feeling. It’s not entirely one of having found a child with his hand in the cookie jar, but more the feeling that there some of the cookies are missing.

Atheism. Does anyone else find the second sentence odd? It is: “Worldwide there may be as many as a billion atheists, although social stigma, political pressure, and intolerance make accurate polling difficult.”

The New  Atheism. This sentence strikes me as inappropriate for an encyclopedia article: “A standard observation is that New Atheist authors exhibit an unusually high level of confidence in their views.” Also, this article includes David Berlinski on its list of references and further reading. Odd. Very odd. And lastly, here, the author is James E. Taylor. Probably not a name we all know but he is Christian apologist. A philosopher, too, but nevertheless.

Deduction and Induction. A rather breezy article. I would have wanted more. I am truly baffled by this comment: “Some dictionaries define “deduction” as reasoning from the general to specific and “induction” as reasoning from the specific to the general. While this usage is still sometimes found even in philosophical and mathematical contexts, for the most part, it is outdated.” Really? Outdated? That’s weird. The books on logic that I use don’t call it outdated (although, they may be outdated. 1996 was a long time ago.) The majority of the content on this page bears a striking resemblance to William Lane Craig and J.P.Moreland’s chapter on logic in the Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, I note.

Finally, number five, the immediate experience of God. This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence rather it’s the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from argument, simply by immediately experiencing Him.

But this is, I think, frustrating for many observers and, nevertheless, for Craig, there is a significant distinction to be made between showing and knowing; he writes: “It’s important to distinguish between knowing Christianity is true and showing Christianity is true.” Returning to the PM from my subscriber: “I think the problem should be apparent at this point. There is an “epistemic standoff” between the two theists. I don’t see how it is possible for people to communicate meaningfully when the opposing parties both hold that (1) they alone have the absolute truth on their side and (2) that this truth allows them to circumvent any and all opposing evidence.” Thus, despite Craig’s desire to draw a distinction between “knowing” and “showing,” testimony, when it is offered, is not about knowing, but about showing. And more to the point, evidence and argument was about a knowing that comes from showing and yet, Craig also simultaneously asserts a knowing that does not come from showing, a knowing that cannot be shown to not know. This, then, for me, is one of the few places where I can align myself with Craig because what Craig is describing here is essentially or effectively what I would describe as faith: knowledge, and “knowledge” may be the wrong word, that is outside the ordinary rules of truth-finding, the rules of understanding experience, and even the rules of argumentation and evidence.

Craig makes this clear:

First of all I think that I would tell them that they need to understand the proper relationship between faith and reason and my view here is that the way I know that Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit on my heart and that this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, whole apart from the evidence. And, therefore, if in some historically contingent circumstance, the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don’t think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit. In such a situation, I should regard that as simple a result of the contingent circumstances that I’m in and that if I were to pursue this with due diligence and time, I would discover that in fact the evidence, if I could get the correct picture, would support exactly what the witness of the Holy Spirit tells me.

“A self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, wholly apart from the evidence;” it is Craig at his highest but also at his lowest because it precisely disables the value of reason to the apologist who preaches a reason-justified Christianity, which is precisely the guiding assumption of apologetics. C.S.Lewis, the usurped grandfather of fundamentalist apologetics, famously said: “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it” (Mere Christianity 123) — and here, in stark opposition, is Craig saying that even if his best reasoning told him that the weight of the evidence was against Christianity, he would still be a Christian.

Christopher Hitchens observed something of this as well:

Maybe we better have some evidence to go along with our faith. But look at what Dr. Craig says in his book. He says and I’ll quote directly: ‘Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it’s the form that must take place precedence over the latter.’ [...] I’ll say it again: ‘Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it’s the form that must take place precedence over the latter.’ That’s not evidentialism. It’s just faith.

To be clear, I can’t blame the Christian, even the Christian Fundamentalist, and even the Christian Fundamentalist apologist, who tells me that he has faith, for that smuggles nothing; but I do blame that same person who then tells me that to be otherwise is unscientific and unreasonable, for that smuggles everything.

Star trek provides many clear examples of morality portrayed through the lens of science fiction. The most prominent ethical instruction which permeates many episodes is the ‘Prime Directive’ which constrains the actions of Starfleet personnel. Simply put, the Prime Directive prevents intervention into pre-warp alien societies so as not to interfere with the natural course of their cultural development.  In principle the Prime Directive is an absolute rule to be obeyed even when the inhabitants of a primitive planet are about to be wiped out. In practice, the crew sometimes engage in exceptions to prevent genocides (e.g., Patterns of Force) or stop devastating asteroid impacts (e.g., For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky). Although these violations are not without consequences for both crew and captain, the interventions are usually portrayed as the right action given the circumstances. The real-world political doctrine of non-intervention can be seen as the contemporary equivalent of the Prime Directive. Based on the principles of state sovereignty and self-determination it says that states cannot and should not interfere in the domestic affairs of others. This doctrine is also supposed to be absolute, frowning upon alliances and wars on foreign soil; it instead opts for the containment of problems within local regions. However, just like the Prime Directive, non-interventionism has been violated in recent history by several prominent countries. One clear example is the UN intervention in Kosovo which was carried out under dubious legal authority. The justification given was the prevention of a humanitarian crisis, similar to the reason in Patterns of Force. States will also rush to provide humanitarian aid in countries, like Haiti, which have been hit with natural disasters. Star Trek managed to give us a discussion of non-interventionism, covering both the reasons for it and the horrid situations that result from pursing it to the limit. All this was done in a neutral setting where the idea could be freely discussed away from any real-world political divides which hamper proper dialogue. Star Trek also gave us the moral reasons for breaking the Prime Directive long before humanitarian concerns motivated us on Earth to get involved in the domestic crises of others.

Although science-fiction regularly deals with broad, societal-scale ethics there is also a deep theme of personal morality promoted through the hero or heroine of each series. They are the ones faced with tough decisions and regularly have to balance competing interests when confronted with moral dilemmas. Because they are our heroes they usually make the decision that result in the best outcome in every situation, but sci-fi asks whether merely doing the right thing is enough. If the hero does the right thing but acts for the wrong reasons they will lose our respect and we will begin to question their ethical status.  Delenn, our heroine of Babylon 5, has to face this additional layer of complexity for her moral decisions.  In Comes the Inquisitor she enters a crucible designed to force out the motivations for her actions. Over and over the inquisitor asks who she is. Is she someone filled with pride, puffed up with her own self-importance, and desperate for the glory that will come should she save the universe from destruction? Or is she someone motivated solely by the desire to preserve life and even willing to pay the ultimate price “For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know, or see”²? According to consequentialist moral theories, what determines the rightness of an act is the outcome alone. No consideration is given to the intentions that the actor was trying to put into practice. Babylon 5 asks whether the outcomes are enough to determine the morally of a given situation and the answers given is a resounding “No!” As is said in the episode, “If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, the work becomes corrupt, impure, and ultimately self-destructive.”² Consider the war in Iraq, there’s no question that Saddam Hussein was a cruel and corrupt dictator and that removing him was a good thing for the Iraqi people. However, it would be hard to maintain that the political leaders at the time were acting with the intension of helping Iraq rather than for the wrong reasons which included political and strategic gain. These intensions corrupted the entire exercise and, quite rightly, leave a foul taste in many a mouth. This example shows that a person who performs a kind deed for another solely because of a selfish benefit is not truly acting in an altruistic manner. Without the right intentions, the moral actor is not really moral at all. Furthermore, good intentions are more likely to lead to good outcomes, while the cases of bad intentions leading to good outcomes are rare.  Promoting good intentions as morally necessary is one way to improve the consequences of our ethical decision making in the real world.

Speaking of wartime conflict, science-fiction offers a way to discuss the morality of war without getting bogged down in the politics of more local events. We Earthers have a saying: in war, all things are permitted. This statement is explored and taken to its logical conclusion in Battlestar Galactica. In this alternate reality, humanity has built an army of advanced robots and employed them as slaves to perform the menial work necessary to keep a civilisation running. But the Cylons became something greater than their original design and have reached the point where they think and feel so much like their human counterparts it is difficult to tell them apart. The Cylons then turn on their former masters, determined to conquer all humankind. As the show progresses and most of the human military is destroyed, the remaining resistance turns to increasingly brutal acts in order to prevent the Cylons from achieving a complete victory. If the Cylons were merely mindless robots, the actions of the humans would not be morally questionable but because the Cylons share many of the same properties as humans the tactics used by the resistance are open to scrutiny. Even in the context of war, some lines should not be crossed. In the episode Flesh and Bone, a Cylon operative convinces the crew that he has planted a nuclear bomb aboard one of their ships. In this clear case of a ‘ticking bomb’ the interrogation turns to torture in order to learn its location. The bomb scenario is brought up ad nausem in the debates on torture and is usually seen as a trump card. However, Battlestar Galactica highlights a big problem with its use because, as it turns out, there is no bomb and the torture was ultimately pointless. The problem with all ticking bomb scenarios is that, in a real-life situation, the interrogator cannot know that there is a bomb, that the bomber will give up its whereabouts, or that the bomb can actually be stopped. It might be said that the Cylon should not have lied about the existence of the bomb in the first place and so the torture was justified, but this literally makes torture the punishment for lying, a completely unacceptable situation. The second wartime issue conveyed to us by Battlestar Galactica is that of suicide bombing civilian targets in the name of resisting occupation. In the episode rightly called Occupation, members of the human resistance start suicide bombing Cylon and, more controversially, Cylon-friendly human targets. Most people would consider any such act to be morally abominable but set in an alternate universe with humanity on the brink of extinction, Battlestar Galatica manages to make us sympathise with the beleaguered resistance and perhaps even elicits some approval for their actions. Although, by itself, the episode is not enough to change our minds on the tactic of suicide bombing, it is enough to give us pause when we hear of similar instances on this planet and ask ourselves whether we would do the same if under occupation by foreign forces.

We have now seen how science fiction can enlighten us on issues as broad ranging as non-interventionism, intention/consequence approaches to ethics, and the morality of war. By removing the cultural and political barriers that exist in everyday life, science fiction allows for an unprejudiced discussion of moral dilemmas. The fantastic tales provide a narrative that lets us approach ethics in an indirect manner but, as I’ve shown, the results are very much applicable in the terrestrial world. Science fiction is a moral thought experiment performed at the cosmic scale. Ultimately, science fiction gives us an external standard and a common frame of reference to draw upon when faced with our own ethical decisions. If you’ve never considered the problematic aspects of the Prime Directive, never understood why the Vorlons require pure intentions, or never felt pity for a robot in agony then you haven’t grasped the full range of ethical lessons that science fiction has to offer. Without an appreciation of scifi, how can you be moral?

1. Gene Roddenberry (paraphrase).
2. Comes the inquisitor,  J. Michael Straczynski

These facts show there is, at least, a kind of ‘brute compatibility’ between science and religion; a single person can hold both ideas simultaneously. However, the obvious counter to ‘brute compatibility’ is to point out that in certain cases the findings of science conflict with specific religious claims about the nature of the world. For example, if you claim that the world is 6,000 years old, science says you are wrong. According to empirical data, the world is more like 4.5 billion years old and anyone who says the scientific evidence shows otherwise is simply mistaken. Because science can only conflict with specifically defined religious claims, I call this ‘specific incompatibility’. Although this type of incompatibility is important, and probably accounts for a large proportion of science’s moderating impact on religion, it does not completely contradict all types of religious claims. Again, this answer is too superficial; the original question is asking something more fundamental – are religion and science incompatible at the deeper, philosophical level?

Here we must start with a rigorous understanding of the exact nature of science, its epistemological limits, and the assumptions it makes. First science assumes that the universe exists and is, broadly speaking, observer independent. This assumption avoids the problem of solipsism, where I could construct an argument based on the idea that the universe is simply a figment of my (hyperactive) imagination. The second assumption brings in causality, scientists must assume that causes and effects are empirical (observable and measurable) and, more importantly, natural. That these causes must be empirical is fairly self-explanatory. If we cannot observe and measure we cannot draw any inferences, offer any explanations, or say anything at all about them! Basically, we would not be able to do science. Less clear might be why science can only approach natural causes rather than supernatural ones.

Let’s use an example to help highlight the problem of supernatural causes. A nice set of evidence for evolution is that of the fossil record. Without going into too much detail, the arrangement and transitions of different fossil types is empirical evidence for evolution occurring in the real world (the universe out there). However, along comes a supernaturalist, and he to us “yes, I agree with your observations and measurements of the fossil evidence, however God (or other supernatural cause) made it so the fossil record appeared to support evolution but in reality the theory is wrong.” This is a serious and unsolvable problem for science and it can be applied to any other explanation or conclusion derived from methods based on the two assumptions above. If supernatural causes occur, the best of verifiable, empirical science will frequently give the wrong answer. If God (et al) always makes the observed and measured evidence look like it is supporting the wrong conclusion no appeal to empiricism can save a scientific theory – by definition. This is why science must reject supernatural causation and become methodologically naturalist at the outset. Without this assumption we would not be able to do science.

Methodological naturalism, therefore, means that science cannot ever make a judgment on supernatural claims. Science assumes that supernatural causes don’t exist and gets on with its job of figuring out the observable universe. As religion, for the large part, is based on such supernatural claims (God caused the universe, Karma causes ill luck, Boobs cause earthquakes) science has very little to do with the majority of religious assertions. I call this ‘philosophical compatibility’, as an understanding of the philosophy of science shows that science and religion are not in conflict. I accept that in specific cases religious claims may contradict with the findings of science and in those cases religion is wrong, but we can always take the step back to the philosophical level and show that such ‘contradictions’ may not be problematic if we allow for supernatural causes.

There’s one last level I want to discuss and that is ‘metaphysical incompatibility’. Working from science and its assumption of methodological naturalism one might take the eminently reasonable position of philosophical naturalism – supernatural forces positively do not exist in the real world. Note that this is not a scientific position but a metaphysical one, albeit one informed by scientific understanding. Science is insufficient to get us to philosophical naturalism, the move also requires reason and logical arguments (examples would include the argument from suffering of which I am fond). Philosophical naturalism is in clear contradiction with a metaphysic infused with religious supernaturalism. There is also a secondary incompatibility at this level but Feynman said it best so I’m going to turn the last word over to him:

“As a matter of fact, the conflict is doubly difficult in this metaphysical region. Firstly, the facts may be in conflict, but even if the facts were not in conflict, the attitude is different. The spirit of uncertainty in science is an attitude toward the metaphysical questions that is quite different from the certainty and faith that is demanded in religion. There is definitely a conflict, I believe – both in fact and in spirit – over the metaphysical aspects of religion.”

And that is the heart of the science/religion incompatibility in a nutshell.

Fortunately, anything relating to WLC – the lord of untruth – is worth a gander. I, along with Theo Warner and AndromedasWake and others, have recently been the bemused victims of our very own Craig fantroll; I would link but the nugatory traffic that such an action would result in seems too generous.”Victim” is, of course, subjective. Being a victim implies some sort of damage or loss, and I can detect neither, though in reality I say this only to numb the hurts. The trolling typically takes the form of either a) a short out of context clip of a video titled to inspire ridicule or b) a marginally longer but still often out of context clip of a video conjoined with a longer clip of William Craig apparently schooling us. I’m informed that Theo is reduced to a shambling mass of jelly by this stern treatment; AndromedasWake has resorted to watching videos of cats falling into boxes in order to counteract the vicious pwn, and as for myself . . . well, I’m eating a lot of chocolate and weeping into net curtains. We are pain.

WLC has his own website on which he answers questions from people – a mix of skeptics, fence-sitters and fans. This would seem a noble endeavour but for the fact that he selects the messages he replies to, and doesn’t record a public backlog of all questions he receives. Clearly I find this suspicious, since we’re left with the false conclusion that WLC can handle all comers as opposed to simply cherry picking the questions he’s capable of answering (and capable of winning.)

I sent him a message a while back. Was it answered? Was it beans. At least, not as far as I can see.

It’s worth revisiting, now that the League’s finest are being accused of lying about William Craig, some of his less worthwhile strategies. Encapsulated herein, I give you my letter. Enjoy, or not, I’m honestly unconcerned. It was written concerning his debate with Antony Flew, which became the subject for my 5-part video series “Refuting William Lane Craig’s Proofs For God.”

In response to your debate with Flew:

I’m not particularly offering refutation to your proofs, as that would take some time – in addition to being something I’ve detailed in a video series. You’ve stated that even evidence against Christianity would not personally controvert your witness of the holy spirit, which suggests a mentality both unwilling and unable to relinquish faith on ANY rational basis. So probably on a hiding to nothing there.

No, my questions are more concerned with your debating etiquette itself. So!

a) You open proceedings with this statement: “In order to determine rationally whether or not God exists, we must conduct our enquiry according to the basic rules of logic.” How do you reconcile this statement with your assertions relating to, for example, morality – in which the basis for your “proof” derives from what you personally feel in your heart? The foundation of your evidence for objective morality is nothing more than an emotional assertion – divorced completely from the basic rules of logic, and the reality of the nuanced moral climates that can be found all over the world.

In addition, your final statement that we can know God exists “wholly apart from arguments simply by immediately experiencing him” . . . how can you open a statement with a call to logic and end it by bypassing logic altogether in favour of an experiential witnessing?

b) follows on from a). If you are willing to promote arguments based on experience, based on personal witnessing of the holy spirit and emotional reactions, how willing are you to accept identical arguments from followers of other religions? And, if you are as unwilling to accept the notion of other deities or supernatural entities as would be logically acceptable to surmise, on what basis do you reject Islamic arguments (for example) that mirror your own experiential proofs?

When you are happy to ignore any evidence that goes against your position, base your personal faith on experience, you need to have excellent reasons for not considering every other experiential argument for, well, anything. I suppose the most important and oft-asked question is “How can you KNOW God is true, aside from evidence, through witnessing the holy spirit when there are plenty of people who, upon experiencing similar things, would be either dismissed by you or labelled as delusional/insane?” And can you see the problem with attempting to combine experiential faith with logic?

Yours etc, Blue Dexter (Youtube user Th1sWasATriumph)

Read this and then tell me how you feel.

Summation: you know how the Catholic church is always getting itself into scrapes? Especially recently? Well, according to their Chief Exorcist Gabriele Amorth (I was dry-mouthed with shock at discovering they actually have official Exorcists, let alone an Exorcism hierarchy sufficient to allow for a Chief Exorcist), any and all inappropriate shiz that Catholics do is directly the work of Satan. This includes not only child abuse but apostasy, which isn’t something I would necessarily regard as Satan’s grinning face. Can I hear anyone say “No true Scotsman”? It’s perfect! If you step out of line – deny Jesus here, rape a boy there – you’re not a Catholic, you’re a shambling ragdoll maliciously puppeted by the Dark King himself. By definition, a Catholic becomes someone who would never do something that a Catholic would not do. 

How . . . crawling do you have to be to avoid accountability in this way? To say that any human activity threatening to stain the reputation of the Church is in fact the work of Satan? It’s horribly akin to bedding a whole army of cheerleaders and then, when Society raises a cautionary eyebrow, claiming that you have an addiction to sex and you will seek white man medicine. Of course, I should acknowledge that Amorth’s view is not accepted wholesale – Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull believes that Amorth has “gone well beyond the evidence”. But I think it’s bad enough that Catholicism’s Chief Exorcist (a title, might I add, with as much application to reality as “Chief Dream Catcher” or “Chief Negative Energy Dispeller” or, of course, “Astrologer”), a high-ranking official of the church, believes something so chilling. Presumably he believes in homophobia as well, so maybe believing in Satan isn’t such a big deal over there.

Human accountability to actions? Not in Catholicism, baby. As I said, it’s admirable.

But, if life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. As the Russian writer Feodor Dostoevsky rightly said: “If if there is immortality, then all things are permitted.” Given the finality of death, it really does not matter how you live.

William Lane Craig, of course, repeats an oft misquoted passage from The Brother Karamazov and for a professional philosopher, as he routinely claims to be, one would think he’d know better; likewise, there’s something about Mr. Craig’s suggestion that ‘professional’ legitimatizes ‘philosopher’ that leads me to believe that he shouldn’t be the former and isn’t the latter. It’s difficult to attribute an author the philosophical views of the characters he creates, but Mr. Craig probably depends less on the person of Dostoevsky than the content of the sentence, the philosophy itself. Ivan Karamazov was certainly concerned with the implications of immortality of the soul, both as a matter of metaphysics and as a matter of belief, as Constance Garnett’s translation suggests: “If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover,” Karamazov continues, “Nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. [...] For every individual [...] who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognised as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his position.” For the sake of drawing the distinction, if Karamozov, in this passage, is concerned with belief in existence of God or the non-existence of God as the cause of moral actions, then we can allay his concerns with empirical certainty: atheism does not cause immorality. But, this concern about the belief in God suggests to me that Karamazov might imagine that there would be no difference between believing in God in a universe in which God happens to exist or believing in that same God as matter of actual fiction; in either universe, whether there is actually a God, belief in God is what actually fosters moral behavior, which I don’t think is Mr. Craig’s contention, nor would it stand to evidence. Rather, I think Mr. Craig and those others who misuse this quote from Dostoevsky are suggesting that, considering those two universes, the universe without a God may contain moral actions, but those moral actions are arbitrary and meaningless and the people in that universe without a God might just as well go around killing each other – it doesn’t really matter. I’ve never entirely understood this argument beyond reading it as a brute assertion; it seems like the meaningless of moral actions in a universe without a God in part stems from the fact that moral laws would then simply be contrived through the power of the few or the many, but also from the fact that any sort of consequence we might experience can be escaped through death into annihilation. I’m not sure why agreed upon rules are meaningless and, more importantly, I’m not sure why Karamazov, and Craig, I would imagine, would suppose that people, left to our own devices without God to give us rules and reward us eternally for following them or breaking the slightest among them, would descend into cannibalism and then what… dogs and cats living together.

I mean: why wouldn’t we descend into socialized medicine? Or greater funding for the arts?

Fundamentally, I think this contest doesn’t comes down God; it comes down to people. To my mind, we can gain some insight from two of the greatest and most important thinkers of the late twentieth century and their frequent discussions on God, mortality, and consequence.

I enjoy this particular moment between Calvin and Hobbes – it captures Hobbes’ cynicism and Calvin nicely illustrates that whether our lives have consequence in the afterlife or whether live is ultimately inconsequential, with the right attitude, both could be a bad thing. Calvin raises an important point and that is the question of attitude because many of the claims which will fundamentally justify the argument behind Mr. Craig’s quoting of Dostoevsky – the theistic depiction of atheism as inept when it comes to moral questions – are ultimately rooted in broad, emotional matters that are not easily answered.

To a certain extent, I think literature engages the question of life with or with eternal consequences by testing narration in worlds without any consequences. The question of whether society could survive if there were no real authorities to punish is very much at the heart of Lord of the Flies by William Golding. We all remember the story from high school, but for the sake of orienting us all: a plane full of children crash on an island and before long, they divide into groups and start waring, and in the chaos, some of the children are killed. For our purposes, Lord of the Flies seems to be suggesting that without consequences, society descends into chaos and savagery; Mr. Craig might be tempted to reference Lord of the Flies but that would rather careless for such a professional philosopher, especially because Lord of the Flies also contains a rather strong indictment of religion. Early in the book, the children begin to imagine that the island is inhabited by a beast and they take to hunting the beast, initially, in addition to gathering meat from the wild pigs that live on the island and then instead. Their hunts become ritualized and the ritual soon takes over and becomes more important than the hunt itself; one tempestuous night, while chanting and stomping around a bonfire, the children, in the heat and lust of the hunt, kill one their own. The idea of ritual then approaches religion when the children begin to present offerings to the beast in an attempt to appease it, the most famous being the head of a pig on a stick which adorns the cover of the book. So, to return to the question, William Golding suggests that without eternal consequences, we would descend into chaos, violence, savagery, and religion.

To some extent, I must admit that both Messers Golding and Craig proceed from places of emotion and attitude, so neither convince me; so, to conclude and simply illustrate the point again, I would like turn to yet another example of literature tackling the question of life in a world without consequence.

In Groundhog Day (1993), Phil Connors is geographically trapped in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and temporally trapped in February 2, Groundhog Day, reliving the exact same day over and over again. When Phil realizes that he is not subject to the ordinary rules of moral consequence, he takes advantage of the situation, stealing money, seducing women, driving drunk, and even committing suicide. But, without any reference to eternal consequences and seemingly without purpose, Phil turns instead to self-improvement, reading classical literature and French poetry, learning to play piano, helping others, and finding a place for himself in Punxsutawney. So, to return to the question, Groundhog Day suggests that without eternal consequences, we would descend into art, culture, and kindness.

Sometimes when I discuss morality and God with people, I encounter the idea that without theism to civilize us, whether through the actual metaphysical reality of moral absolutes which we can apprehend through proper use of reason or through the force of deeply believed fictions, man would descend into his baser instincts. Sometimes the evidence of this is children who are not yet civilized and utterly evil – this piece of evidence has always struck me as disturbing since most of the children I’ve met in my life have been rather sweet and gentle. And, to be frank, I see no evidence that our baser instincts are all that bad; if we are a social species, our base instincts must involve supporting one another and thinking about the tribe.

My experience thus far is that a woman invested in astrology – for example – is perfectly capable of using it to inform decisions concerning whether or not she wants to continue speaking to me based on my birthdate. So a tactful modicum of outright lies and grit-toothed hypocricy is required for me to continue in any sort of relationship. Admittedly my last girlfriend went from being Catholic to atheist within a year, although that was probably because I knew I didn’t have to lie in order for her to go out with me.

If a man mentions astrology or another irrational belief, I’m again likely to refrain if this seems to be the course of action most likely to benefit myself. So, the menial lackey I worked with at Vodafone who mentioned God got a whole faceful of rebuttal; the music producer who mentioned astrology got merely a quietly tactful smile. I am not especially altruistic, and my failure to offer intellectual refutation is entirely selfish in nature. Of course, there are or have been people with whom I was happy to argue without fear of losing their respect/ladygap, but generally I play safe.

So my motivation is what best serves me, almost entirely. If I decide not to tangle with someone’s beliefs you can be assured that it’s not out of any kind of respect or desire to leave them in peace.

However, very recently one of my work colleagues mentioned how his tattoo reminded him of his Grandfather and how he’ll “see him again.” I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. The cynical among you might read a selfish urge into this, of course, because trying to convince someone that they’ll never see a dead relative again is a thankless and often messy task. However, what was foremost in my mind was the knowledge that I had to leave this one alone, however much I might want to hack the belief to pieces. Because I knew he cared and he needed his horribly misguided delusion. Could it be that I tasted altruism? A desire to leave someone alone with their comfort? Unthinkable!

Still, I was tempted.

We knew that the project before our President would be uphill and waged with unsensationalized reason against an ideologically entrenched and resentful establishment; our hopes were high and we recognize that it is a bad system that makes bad politics of good policy.

But my patriotism is, for the first time in my adult life, undemure and I continue to see in his gestures and method a character of sincerity and strength to which I aspire.

An early gesture which struck my attention at the time was President Obama’s decision to include on his first international trip as President, a stop in the Islamic nation of Turkey, speaking before the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, April 6, 2009.

We had suspected since the attacks of September 11, 2001 that a quiet racism had intruded into our national discourse, bolstered by fear and theological ideology, and we knew that the mere act of presenting himself to an Islamic nation would carry a symbolism that indeed represented those of us with Muslim friends.

And because we really do desire ‘friendship with all nations,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it, we were pleased to hear our President equivocally honor the Islamic culture and civilization.

“We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country. The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.”

For Barack Obama, presenting American friendship and well-wishes to the Turkish people meant exposing himself to certain criticisms, some based on what might become Obama’s shifting of military and diplomatic strategy in the Middle East, but most based on brute racism: a preposterous fear that Barak Obama is secretly a Muslim.

That racism found acute expression on YouTube; recall the speech to the Turkish Grand National Assembly:

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.”

One YouTuber edited this very sentence as follows:

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans [...] I know, because I am one of them.”

Most noted for his plagiarism, Brock Lawley is a suave and vain fundamentalist and his plagiarism, which, while being well documented, persists on his channel, is but one of his behaviors which illustrate what I would call uncomplicated immorality.

We see now his willingness to distort quotations, which is to say, to lie and because the apparent intent of this lie is to portray Obama as a Muslim – as if that were a bad thing – we see now his apparent racism.

The larger problem is always this: according to Christianity, to have faith in God and to love God is to love truth and reason for faith and love impart truth and there can be no genuine conflict between revealed truths and the knowledge of Man; according to Christianity, to fear truth is the very absence of faith and that is the fear which begins in self-loathing and ends chaos and crime.

St. Paul creates for us a hierarchy, placing Love famously above hope and faith – not to their exclusion, I should add; it is almost to the near-nihilistic extremes of Ecclesiastes that St. Paul brushes away everything except Love, saying: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). The nothingness that St. Paul’s lovelessness becomes is the same ultimate nothingness that Christian apologists see in a universe without God to author the laws of logic and morality – it is a nothingless that contains prophecy, unraveled mysteries, all knowledge, and faith and likewise, a nothingness that might contain all sorts of temporal, finite, agreed upon moral agreements, but it is ultimately nothingness. It is interesting to me that Christian apologists see that nothingness as a fiction, sometimes believed in, but certainly never an actuality since, after all, in their arguments – or, as they would say with prepositional idiosyncrasy – on their arguments, God really did author the rules of logic and morality – there is always somethingness. But, St. Paul seems to think differently of nothingness – it is not an erroneous description of reality, competing with Christianity, but an actual possibility – sometimes, there is really is nothingness and no somethingness – that could consume us if we do not have Love, a nothingness that is not competing with Christianity, but participating within Christianity’s description and escaped by its prescription.

Love, knowledge, and nothingness cannot, I think, be properly considered without some sense of the story told in time; St. Paul depicts Love as a thing he arrived at in the course of his life, approximating the arrival at Love with maturity and adulthood and while he seems to have escaped nothingness, it is interesting that his knowledge has not increased. He comments that he looks through a “glass, darkly,” a phrase which suggests that he does not have the sort of self-knowledge that we would think comes with wisdom or experience or maturity, but that because he has Love, the somethingness that he has become is more than the nothingness that he was, the child that he was, even if he had had all knowledge. In time, St. Paul’s story is one that points from birth towards the future and towards Love and from Love to the eternal – and, although the text does not support it explicitly, I can’t help but image that St. Paul would feel something like shame were he to glance backward into the past and perhaps that is part of the darkness he sees in his own image.

I have mentioned that the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians echoes throughout time and culture, which is to say that countless philosophers and their greater cousins the artists have returned endlessly to the letter, participating in its tradition and continuing that same mediation that St. Paul began; the content of this video began humbly enough with such an artist.

When I was a young boy,
Said put away those young boy ways.
Now that I’m gettin’ older, so much older,
I love all those young boy days.

John Mellencamp. “Hurt So Good.” American Fool.

Humbly, I think, because I freely admit that John Mellencamp is hardly St. John of Mellencamp and while I agree that it is hardly the heart of a serious student of the science of God that extracts its theology from the Midwest, it is a hard heart that cannot; somewhere in me are the theologies of Britney Spears and the Monkees. Certainly, “Hurt So Good” claims its legitimacy not for its introspection, the beauty of its phrasing, or for being an ancient letter to a troubled Christian community, but its legitimacy rather seems to come from its expressionism, in this case, the entire song, I think, expressing moments of midlife and the lust one feels for younger persons. As listeners, we don’t know if these expressions are ever vocalized – maybe their felt but only expressed in art – or whether the effect is its proposition to the young girl; we don’t know whether her sexuality, being “not as green” as she is young, is evident or imagined in the narrator’s mind, and perhaps the narrator enjoys imagining while not really proposing anything. This is not an untypical expression and we find it repeated in countless other songs, but I return in my mind to Mellencamp’s first four lines, which, aside from echoing and contrasting with 1 Corinthians, also begin the expression of the song from a peculiar place of introspection; it is as if this little expression, a moment in bar somewhere, is only part of a large meditation on a story told in time.

Mellencamp’s story begins in boyhood or with sexual awakening – childhood being a sort of pre-life, I would imagine – and points forward in time towards a parting of sexual lust, which remains constant, and sexual opportunity, which seems to diminish. In one sense, therefore, Mellencamp’s story is dismal and one sees an inevitable torture, a life which by its nature grants us a desire for the very thing that it slowly denies us, this being a pointing forward in time, but, I think, in another sense, shifts the focus from this forward-pointing to a backward-pointing, reversing time, in a certain sense. Backward-pointing, backward-looking, Mellencamp seems entirely aware that the truth of the lust, the fact and knowledge of the lust that he feels is in the past, but in loving those “young boy days,” he seems to disturb the pessimism of aging, the mathematics of diminishing sexual opportunity – the Love for that which isn’t but was but could be is greater than the thing itself.

In a sense, Mellencamp doesn’t see more than St. Paul does in the glass, but certainly, what he sees, he doesn’t see darkly – at the same time, Mellencamp doesn’t, I think, challenge the underlying relationship between Love and nothingness. Mellencamp, like St. Paul, certainly seems aware of the fate of Lovelessness, St. Paul calling it “nothing,” Mellencamp, while not mentioning it, suggesting loneliness, and Mellencamp, like St. Paul, certainly seems aware that the antidote to nothingness is Love; they only disagree in that St. Paul’s Love is predicated upon a poor view of the past, where as Mellencamp’s Love is predicated upon the past itself. Interestingly, both are also convinced that the future is potentially good.

For my part, that my past remains with me, like the promise of the future, is a blessing, and my many missteps and the newness that I wish I could inhabit again encircle and enlightens my heart.

Is it better to have flexible, socially contextual morals that may dip below what many people view as laudable behaviour as a result of free will and personal choice . . . or is it better to have a uniformly high moral standard followed, in part or even in whole, as a result of fearing the perceived consequences of not following it?

Of course, you might say that I’ve used Wordification to bias the issue somewhat – and because I have no higher power to feel accountable to I’m perfectly happy to lie, and say that I didn’t bias the point in the slightest.

The question, I suppose, is how worthy or altruistic can a high moral standard be truly taken to be when it’s prescribed rather than acquired? It becomes little more than Utilitarianism if your moral compass is constantly aware that behaving immorally will result in hell, or a few lost brownie-heaven points from God. You’re not acting morally, you’re just protecting your own skin – which is exactly what I would do, of course.

Clearly the issue is fiercely complex after even a cursory glance. Because so many moral codes adopted by secularists could, likewise, be viewed as contextual to the consequences of breaking these same codes. If there was no judicial system with which to label certain acts as wrong, and mete out appropriate punishment, I highly doubt the society in question would remain in moral stasis. I’m happy to say that I’d likely have done, or tried to do, entirely unwholesome things without the restraining hand of Authority hovering over my balls. Theists may have their fear of God to instil a sense of morality; atheists may have their fear of getting touched up in jail. It’s just as self-serving.

Of course, the spectrum of morality and immorality operates in realms oft untouched by law; the way you think, they way you treat other people, the little things. A moral stance affects all subtle aspects of your life, not just your unwillingness to kill a guy and then stave in his hips with a pensioner. Let’s take the time I stole £20 from someone in a fast food joint. I walked in and saw the note on the ground by the man’s feet. He’d clearly dropped it and was now waiting, an ignorant score lighter, for his burger. I very briefly wondered if I should tell him, but then I decided not to. I stood next to him, my boot on the note so he couldn’t see it, until he left. And then I picked it up. Why?

Because I like money, because I’m selfish, because I don’t have a conscience that feels bad about such things. There was no legal consequence to my action that I had to fear; the only possible consequence was being discovered, and I felt I could talk my out of it if needs be. I acted in a way that many people might consider immoral, because my morality – under the umbrella of legality – is flexible. Clearly, I don’t think I would just start knifing babies in the chin if murder was legalised. I think I would feel bad. I may not grant the notion of objective morality any time at all, but I can grant that there are trends and broadly universal immoral acts, and judicial consequencialism (what an amazing phrase – I hope I didn’t just make it up) is not the single dam holding back a tidal wave of human sludge. There would be shifts, of course, and a rise in violence and theft, but not everyone would realise that they wanted to break laws just because the laws no longer existed.

What if someone religious was in my place, someone with a highly defined and apparently objective sense of morality? Let’s assume they do what we all know the right thing is – pick up the money and give it to the guy. Bravo! Except, why have you done this? Is it because your morality has been painstakingly constructed, over many years, by exposure to myriad different situations and modes of thought? Or is it because you think that not doing it will get you a disapproving stare from whatever deity you call home? And this is only assuming that we’ve found one of the theists who actually follows their own arbitrary objective morals, to the letter, without questions. As we all know from our sojourns through Youtube, religiously inspired morals and codes tend to be as flexible as their secular counterparts. Lying is fine, it seems, if you’re lying for Jesus.

Allow me a brief bit of poetry. Would you rather be in a hotel which locked from the outside or a barn that locked from the inside? Give me the freedom to plumb whatever depraved and lustful depths I see fit, and I’ll do it as a free man. 

I’ll leave you with this. It’s pretty infuriating, of course. Highlights include:

‘Cherie Booth wasn’t saying that religious people are morally superior to others. She was saying that, as a religious man, he should know better.’ Well, that pretty much IS saying that religious people are morally superior, if she is granting them the power to know right from wrong when a non-religious man apparently would – the reasonable inference suggests – NOT be capable of knowing better. No, only the mystical and nebulous power of !Religion! can instil the ability to Know Better.

*Not actually a riddle.

I say this because David John Wellman, valorious foil to the unapologetic plagiarist Brock Lawley, recently challenged Christian apologists, philosophers, and evagelists to begin a video, as I just have, by saying, “The 2010 Haitian Earthquake does not constitute compelling evidence against the existence of God because…”

I certainly reject the label of Christian apologist – indeed, I’ve long argued that the Christian apologist tends to run contrary to the Biblical and Christian ideal and he tends to be an unpleasant, immoral, indecorous, and cowardly person – and the labels of Christian philosopher, Christian Evangelist, and Christian, so, perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, but I think that the problem of evil or the argument from evil are substantially less serious to theistic belief than those who advance the argument seem to be believe.

When I frame the theological implications of the Haitian Earthquake, I must conclude that, ultimately, we are engaged in the problem of “why?” and here, we are asking, “Why did this earthquake occur?” and we anticipate competing theories with God as a more or less an important character.

And, just for the sake of pointing it out, the question really does matter because “Why did so much suffering occur?” for example, is a distinctly different question and more complicated question and might easily require us to discuss political science, history, technology, biology and so on.

We can further complicate the question by asking: “What do we mean by ‘Why?’”

It may seem silly but I think that certain answers, like “because Haiti isn’t located in the Pacific,” are clearly not intended in the “whyness” of the question.

I will therefore suggest that in terms of earthquakes, “why?” usually suggests a description of the events prior to the earthquake, certain true comments about the nature of things, and an argument that since these events occurred, the earthquake ipso facto occurred.

I am not a seismologist so I can’t provide a detailed or technical description or hope to defend my account under any serious scrutiny, but my understanding is that tectonic plates move at relatively constant speeds, the Caribbean plate in this story moving north at about less than an inch a year.

Along the edges of the plates, little fault lines appear and they build up tension as the plates move; this tension is released in the form of earthquakes from time to time.

Despite my only superficial understanding of plate tectonics, this strikes me as such an ordinarily acceptable explanation of earthquakes that I’m left perplexed as to why it serves as a critique of theism; the answer must be, partly, that there must be theists out there who abandon all clarity of thinking in their understanding of the natural laws and natural events.

Certainly, when Pat Robertson attempted to connect the 2010 Haitian Earthquake to some folkloric pact with the devil, I can’t imagine that he was speaking from a place of knowledge or that he was aware that he was suggesting that this particular earthquake was not only best explained by a supernatural explanation but that it could not be explained by a natural explanation.

Pat Robertson’s flimsy and repugnant comments therefore are philosophically damaged by the natural sciences if not human decency.

For theists who offer answers to the question “why?” which mention God, supernatural answers, such answers are invariably vulnerable to fairly simple questions.

If God really did cause this earthquake because of a pact with the devil, why now? why not right after the pact? Or before the pact? what are we to suppose about all earthquakes? or places where an earthquakes didn’t occur on January 12, 2010?

I think, however, that part of the critique of theism that follows from the 2010 Haitian Earthquake must be the hidden premise that part of the cause of the Earthquake is: “Because God didn’t prevent it.”

The cause of the Haitian Earthquake is God’s failure to prevent it; since God is supposed to be good and powerful, surely he is either not good, not powerful, or non-existent.

This is the problem of evil and the argument from evil, but I’m afraid that I can’t quite appreciate its intended impact or the integrity of its delivery.

We suppose, first of all, that God really could prevent an earthquake, which I’m not entirely willing to accept; when we recognize that omnipotence and omnibenevolence can be, perhaps, better expressed as ‘maximally powerful’ and ‘maximally good,’ and when we recognize that no attribute of God can trump another attribute of God, it’s fairly easy to accept that that God did not stop the Haitian Earthquake could easily be an expression of divine justice.

And, by ‘divine justice,’ I don’t mean a crude, juridical judgment over the Haitian people like Mr. Robertson imagined; I mean a larger story of design and nature in which God constitutes living things and the world in which they live in such a way that both suffering and relief are possible and, like a teacher who cheats for his or her student, God’s intervention to cause comfort or prevent suffering would be an act of injustice.

We might be left to wonder if we ought to blame God for failing to prevent all earthquakes and then, all natural catastrophes, all catastrophes, all smaller, more domestic catastrophes, all moments of pain, all moments of discomfort, all moments that aren’t sheer, perfect, orgasmic joy; and then we might be left to wonder if such blame is rightfully leveled at God for failing to prevent the Haitan earthquake, how much worship ought we level at God for all the earthquakes his design didn’t cause?

I think my biggest criticism of the problem of evil or the argument from evil is that it ultimately compells its advocates to take total stock of the world and say: “How can there be God?”

Imagine the real crudeness of the problem of evil when it draws its inspiration not from the catastrophes of nations but the catastrophes of an individual life – diseases of great suffering somehow renders the philosopher heartless when he exclaims: “Look at my cousin Mitch… how can there be God?”

Such simplistic evaluations of the totality of the universe, derived from examples of any size, are both impossible and occur with disturbing frequency; I don’t think I could do it with a straight face and because the sheer act would tickle me, I don’t think I could also do it with a condemnatory tone… but that’s just me.

I have mentioned that the balance of the larger story of God’s power and God’s goodness, specifically in the office of creator and designer of the universe, may very well be a thing of minimal suffering and maximum human virtue; the world may poteniate the best in and for the most number of people, but I don’t know.

But, I also know that no one else knows that the world potentiates anything less, which is in part the substance of the critique of God that the Haitian earthquake supposedly constitutes.

I will conclude these thoughts by simply saying that if there is a real comment to be made about God that can be gleaned from the Haitian earthquake, please share it – when it does, if it does, talented theistic thinkers, I’m sure, will offer a defense but, I am as equally sure, a competent defense won’t come from Brock Lawley.

Monotheism vs Polytheism

One of the central themes of the show so far seems to be monotheism vs polytheism. The world(s) of Caprica are generally polytheistic, based loosely around the Greek Olympic gods, with the various planets having patron gods as well as specific gods governing specific aspects of life. There is however a growing sect, apparently popular amongst the young, of monotheistic believes who are portrayed as an interesting mix of wide-eyed youths seeking a more meaningful life, fundamentalist purity police and religious terrorists. So far this group is definitely being portrayed as the bad guys, an idea that was summed up nicely when one character stated his fear of anyone who followed the commands of one all powerful god who was always right and could never be questioned. This got me thinking.

Does monotheism, with its idea of a single, all-powerful, all-knowing god who can not be questioned, lead more naturally to violent and negative outcomes, as portrayed in the series, than does polytheism, with it’s multiple much more human like gods each with their own foibles and eccentricities?

Leaving atheism completely out of the equation does monotheism or polytheism, and the various things these belief systems entail, more accurately reflect the reality of the world around us? And, given the answer to this question, does this help to explain the rise of monotheism over the last few centuries?

Life After Death

Maybe the more interesting idea raised by the show was that of life after death by way of technology. The question was raised that if it were possible to somehow create a synthetic copy of yourself, completely with all of your memories, emotions, points of view etc, would that be you? What if this copy was somehow kept completely up to date so that, should you die suddenly, there would be a continuation of what makes you “you”, would you have survived your own death? My feeling on this is that, no, it would not be you but rather a copy of you, as I can’t help but think that what makes you “you” is more than just your memories etc. However if does raise an interesting thought experiment, an answer to which I am still not sure of.

Imagine you have a car that you love.

Over the years variously things go wrong with this car. It gets a flat tire, so you change it. A head light blows, so you change it. The engine conks out, so you change it. But you still think of it as your car, and more importantly as the same car. Over the many years you have it you end up changing every single part of the car so that the car you have now has not a single original part found on the car when you first bought it. And yet again you no doubt still think of it as the same car.

Now apply this to yourself.

We all know the story that every cell in your body is replaced over a 7 year period. Now while this isn’t exactly true let’s run with it and take it a bit further. Imagine a point in the future where you can do to yourself what you did to that car. When your kidneys start to go you just replace them with synthetic ones. Same for your liver, then your lungs and heart. Eventually you replace all of your internal organs, save your brain, with synthetic ones. Then you start on your bones, your muscles, your nerves etc. Bit by bit you replace every part of your body but in such a way that there is always a continuation of “you”. Finally just your brain is left of your original body, but now you start upgrading this as well. You replace your motor cortex with a synthetic one that works better with your synthetic body. You change out your visual cortex to get better use out of your new eyes. Bit by bit you change every part of your brain until one day you swap out the last natural part of you and become a fully synthetic human.

Ultimately is this any different from creating a fully synthetic copy of yourself and just transferring your memories across? The end result is the same. All the biological aspects that made up your body no longer exist and yet there has been a continuity of your memories, thoughts etc. Does it make a difference that the change takes place gradually rather than all at once? Once your body is fully synthetic can it actually be said that “you” are still alive? Assuming this process of replacing broken parts could go on indefinitely would this mean you have cheated death, or did you die years ago and something else now exists in your place?

Some things for you to chew over. I look forward to reading your thoughts on these issues.