Theology « Conversational Atheist

On math, chess and God

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I wrote a previous entry which was based off a comment I sent to a theologian that I’ve been chatting with. He responded to me here.

Theologian RD says: Mathematics maps onto the world but our intuition of which mathematics maps on is not infallible. The problem is with Conversational Atheist’s apparent view that mathematics does not map onto the world at all. That’s the view that needs defending.

Whether mathematics maps onto the world is a very interesting question. Of the infinite number of mathematical models that are able to be constructed, a few map onto the world in very useful ways. If you come up with a mathematical model, the question immediately becomes: DOES your abstract mathematical model map onto the world?

Re-read a section from the comment that prompted this entry:

Conversational Atheist says: However, Einstein, placed in a box before the first experiments in quantum mechanics were done, would never end up CONCLUDING Quantum Mechanics. He might, given infinite time, detail hundreds of thousands of possible physics on small scales [mathematical models] that includes our modern conception of QM, but he would be in no position to choose one from the others with any confidence at all. He might even pick what he thinks is the most beautiful physics at small scales, but what counts is not beauty or arguments, per se, but whether his physics [mathematical model] matches reality. — Emphasis and [mathematical note] added

What counts is whether your mathematical model matches reality. That’s the $64,000,000 question for a physicist. Long ago a person could have come up with the mathematical framework of modern day quantum mechanics by doing math. Lots of math. Now, that person hasn’t done PHYSICS unless he is either consulting data others have taken, or going out and doing experiments himself.

To answer some of your questions raised in the entry itself:

RD: How do we gain knowledge of this realm? That appears very mysterious, indeed somewhat revelatory.

Are you equally perplexed by how we gain knowledge of chess? It doesn’t seem very mysterious to me. We consider the relationships and interactions between entities in chess-space. Are these relationships, rules, interactions all contained in a self-consistent chess-realm similar to the relationships, rules, and interactions in the self-consistent mathematical-realm? Yes. Does this mean that there is a supernatural chess-realm, mathematical-realm, tic-tac-toe-realm, and scrabble-realm? Um… only in the most abused sense of the word “supernatural”. The chess-realm does not exist in any physical way.

Is the pawn, real? Well, you can hold a wooden piece in your hand that people call “pawn”, but then you should realize that you are just holding a representation of a pawn. Does this upset anyone? It shouldn’t.

Is 7 real? Well, you can hold 7 apples in a bag and call it “seven”, but then you should realize that you are just holding a representation of a number. Does this upset anyone? Apparently, yes.

RD: Second, what is the ontological status of this realm?

I’d say that mathematics has the same ontological status as the game of chess.

RD: And if you accept the existence of abstract numbers and their relations which are irreducible to and independent of the physical world, what about other entities like souls, spirit beings, and God? What rational reason does Conversational Atheist have to believe the supernatural realm, like the natural realm, does not far transcend his limited experiences?

If a pawn is irreducible to and independent of the physical world, what about other abstract entities like souls, spirit beings, and God? — Sure. I’d say they have the same status as “real pawns”. Could there be a supernatural pawn out in the “vast supernature of things that I don’t fully comprehend”?

Sure. He might be playing Chinese Checkers with God and the Easter bunny.

But seriously, considerations in the fully abstract might have something to do with external reality — but you have to actually check to have any confidence that your favorite abstract reasoning maps onto external reality in a useful way.

Tags: Philosophy, Philosophy of science, Physics
Posted in Philosophy, Religious Interaction, Theology | 1244No Comments »On+math%2C+chess+and+God2010-02-14+08%3A08%3A23Conversational+Atheist

Atheism and our inhuman nature

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I wrote up a response to a rather lame article that I read on BeliefNet: Atheism and our inhuman nature, and I wanted to post the ideas here.

The article criticizes the “New Atheists” because they present a Utopian view of humanity and its future.

My response:

I have read all of the popular “New Atheist” books. I’m not sure where you get this idea that they have a Utopian view of humanity’s future. Perhaps you could provide a quote to give me some idea what you’re referencing.

Each of the New Atheists points out that believing claims without evidence, believing you have the One True Magic Book from the Creator, eschewing rational thought in general, and welcoming the end of the world as a glorious future to look forward to — these are definitely bad ideas. And, as nasty as human nature is already, aren’t helping pull us from any potential dangerous brink.

Think of it this way. A doctor might say, “Hey, don’t get hundreds of chest xrays for fun — it’s a dumb idea and you’ll probably end up getting cancer…” A critic who writes for beliefnet might ask whether this doctor thinks he has cured cancer! No, he doesn’t. But he has helped identify a rather dangerous way to live.

People are nasty creatures? Ok, I’ll bite. How does promoting superstition help address that? Starting with the Old Testament, First Samuel 15 has God ordering His followers to kill every man, woman, child and infant of a neighboring tribe with swords.

Moving on to the New Testament. Jesus says love your enemies — an easy thing to say. What actions back up those words? Well, consider that I’m an atheist, and an enemy of superstition in general. How will Jesus treat me as his enemy? By throwing me in a lake of fire to burn in torment for eternity… Sure, humans might be nasty creatures — but wow, can you come up with a nastier human than that?

——————————

Comments?

Technorati tag: P66R3FMZBWGR

Posted in Religious Interaction, Theology | 12412 Comments »Atheism+and+our+inhuman+nature2010-02-10+12%3A00%3A38Conversational+Atheist

Gaining knowledge about external reality

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

A somewhat more philosophical post than I usually do… I wrote this up during an exchange w/ a theologian differentiating two ways we can gain knowledge.

To a theologian:

Let’s start with mathematical truths — I think that they are true and in a very real sense constitute knowledge. Knowledge about something that is abstract, however. One of the features of abstract subjects, in my view, is that it is quite possible to make real progress in them without new inputs. Euler, an amazing mathematician, placed in a shielded box and given enough time could make real progress in mathematics.

I mean this to contrast methods of inquiry about external reality. When it comes to external reality — how stars work, the rules that govern the motions of the planets, etc., a physicist in a box could make lots and lots of models and guesses and arguments… but, unless he re-analyzes data from before he came into the box, he won’t make progress in physics.

For example, Einstein, with the data of Mercury’s weird orbit and the results from Michelson, could be put in a box, and with enough thinking could come up with General Relativity.

However, Einstein, placed in a box before the first experiments in quantum mechanics were done, would never end up concluding quantum mechanics. He might, given infinite time, detail hundreds of thousands of possible physics on small scales that includes our modern conception of QM, but he would be in no position to choose one from the others with any confidence at all. He might even pick what he thinks is the most beautiful physics at small scales, but what counts is not beauty or arguments, per se, but whether his physics matches reality.

That brings me to what I think is our main point of conflict between our approaches.

I fully acknowledge that progress can be made in all areas of mathematics and much of philosophy from internal reflection and argument without any new data coming into a person’s head. When a person thinks that this abstract knowledge can tell us something specific about external reality, the existence of God for example, they are simply making a category error.

Can theology reason out the attributes of what would be a perfect being? Sure. Can abstract reasoning alone tell us something about external reality? Possibly… although I’m having a hard time thinking of an example where it’s happened before.

Keep thinking about the difference between math and physics. If you wander too far away from direct measurement and experience, you can do a lot of work, and convince yourself of quite a lot… although you won’t learn much about external reality.

I’m not expecting this to be unanimously agreed upon — comments?

Tags: Add new tag, Albert Einstein, Einstein, General relativity, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy of science, Physics, Quantum mechanics
Posted in Epistemology, Theology | 12332 Comments »2010-02-03+07%3A32%3A29Conversational+Atheist

Vox Day vs Common Sense Atheism — A few thoughts

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Two bloggers have been going back and forth with some religious debate. Luke from Common Sense Atheism and Vox Day from Vox Day have been going back and forth via letters between their two blogs. I’ve witnessed 5 from Luke, 4 from Vox and hundreds of comments. [The 1st letter from Luke; the 1st response from Vox] I was going to link to each and every letter, but if you are compelled enough to read through all of them, the first salvos are enough to get you started.

I’m interested in examining an argument from Vox that I have not encountered before (at least not directly).

When asked why he is a Christian –

Vox Day: Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later.

Which does not seem to immediately follow. A person could easily have the same reason for being a Satanist (in the real sense of worshipping Lucifer, the supernatural creature — not LaVey). “Why am I a Satanist? Because I believe in evil… ”

VD continues –

VD: The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

Still isn’t clear what having an accurate description about the pain, suffering, injustice and cruelty of the world; therefore worship whatever wrote the description? Seriously, imagine some guy on the street tells you, “So this supernatural being spoke to me last night, and he had the best grasp of the true meaning of evil. He could give a perfect account of the suffering, cruelty, injustice — just everything rotten about this world. His name is Lucifer, and boy, I cannot tell you how AWESOME this guy was at describing evil. It’s like… he’s lived it! So, I decided to worship this being.”

One might be tempted to say, “Sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this…”

I think VD’s argument from evil is the worst argument for being a Christian that I’ve seen written in full sentences, but I may be forgetting a couple.

———————–

Semi-relatedly, VD goes into his idea of God’s morality and chastises Luke for having a non-objective standard of evil. Fair enough, but a little inconsistent from what I can tell.

VD: I believe logic dictates that the Creator alone has the right to set the standards for His Creation. His game, His rules. In keeping with that principle, God always has the absolute right to do as He sees fit, which just so happens to be precisely the answer He gave to Job and company. The answer to Euthyphro’s so-called dilemma is that the good is good because it is commanded by God, since there is no objective, supra-divine standard of Good by which His commands may be judged.

VD: I stated there that the arbitrary nature of God’s goodness, which has long been a known solution to the first horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma, “can only be considered a genuine problem for those who insist that a fixed principle cannot be arbitrary.”

This is a fairly standard response to Euthyphro. There are some semi-weird consequences, but I’ll save those for another time.

Vox then took Luke to task for having a subjective concept of evil:

VD: Applying the relevant definition of objective to your answer – “not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion” – regarding the nature of evil clearly indicates that you believe evil is a fundamentally subjective concept. In fact, based on your explication of desirism, it is apparent that in your view, evil is not only subjective, but dynamic and transitory as well. Unfortunately, this rejection of the concept of objective evil renders it impossible for us to compare the Christian view of evil with other accounts of it because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum.

I’ll just make the observation that this criticism seems inconsistent with the earlier statements on evil by VD.

VD: “because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum.”

But God, allegedly, has no restrictions on what He calls evil. All right. There is no restrictions or supra-divine standard which His commands may be judged. All right. So God has the right to set the standards for His creation and the absolute right to do as He sees fit. All right.

Does this mean that God could say that murder is good and it would be good?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could say that stomping puppies to death for fun is good on Tuesdays alone, and every other day of the week it is evil?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could exactly flip what was evil and what was good at whim, any time He wanted, as many times as He wanted, throughout the course of all time?
Yes.
Could God flip what was good and what was evil without telling us humans?
Yes.
Could God flip on a daily basis the moral standing of stomping puppies and keep constant our visceral reactions to the same event the same?
Yes.
Is this not a completely arbitrary conception of evil?
Yes.
So what was that again about VD claiming we could not possibly know what is evil for any single act at any given point on the space-time continuum — non-objective?

These are some of my observations so far; depending on where the Luke/Vox discussion goes from here I may comment on it more in the future.

Tags: Common Sense Atheism
Posted in Religious Interaction, Theology, debate | 120913 Comments »2009-10-30+08%3A02%3A39Conversational+Atheist

The atheist vs the Christian theologian

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

There is frequent noise made about the “New Atheists” and others who refuse to argue against the sophisticated faith of the Theological-Einsteins whose faith is subtle and nuanced. There are many responses that are possible — among them that the majority of believers do not believe in gods in some sophisticated way.

I have had many conversations, arguments, and debates with ministers, pastors, clergy of different types, and even philosophy professors who happened to be religious. But, I have not had a chance to have an extended interaction with a professional Christian Theologian, and I have been itching for the chance.

I itch no longer.

I have been interacting with a professional Christian theologian who is a professor of historical theology at a Canadian seminary. His name is Randal Rauser — and goes by RD. He has a blog on christianpost.com: The Tentative Apologist.

On that blog I comment under the handle: ConverseAtheist (because, like so many other sites, ConversationalAtheist is too long to be a valid username — sigh).

My interaction with him started when he insisted that an atheist is making a positive knowledge claim about the universe, and that as such, requires evidence and justification.

I asked him if he believed in Zeus; or if by being an azeusist he was making a positive knowledge claim about the universe — and since this requires evidence and justification; what evidence does he have?

After more back and forth than it was worth the response was:

“I am an agnostic about whether Zeus exists as a lesser-spirit being; but an atheist as to whether Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe.”

– Let me fill in some background –

RD has posted some essays that argue for the existence of a being greater than which cannot be conceived. He further posted about how when he prays to Yahweh, coincidences happen; when he stops praying to Yahweh, coincidences stop happening. When asked if these coincidences could hold up to scientific scrutiny, or some kind of rigorous statistical testing — he wisely concedes that they would not.
I’ll let you into my mind as I planned out my interaction with RD.

When dealing with a trained ~~obsfucator~~ theologian, he may employ a vast array of tactics and techniques to evade answering difficult questions.

First, I set up a situation that mirrored, in every relevant way that I could imagine, a parallel religious belief to what RD believes. I also wanted to make that hypothetical belief be intentionally ridiculous. (I wanted motivation for RD to defend his cherished beliefs from being equated with nonsense.)

I proposed a hypothetical person, Bob, who followed a sort of reasoning to get to his religious beliefs.
Bob starts with something like the ontological argument, and believes that the most perfect being exists necessarily.
Bob, while sitting in his car at a stoplight, prays to Zeus to change the light to green. It eventually turns green.
Based on this evidence, Bob believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe that necessarily exists.

I then asked RD whether his Christian beliefs were indistinguishably well-justified as Bob’s belief in Zeus.

Why did I try this approach? Well, for one, I was hoping to actually get an account from a supposedly sophisticated believer about why he believes in specific supernatural claims. I actually thought that I might learn quite a bit from the guy. However, the other alternative is, failing that, I would have the admission from a professional theologian that his religious beliefs are as well justified as believing in Zeus because streetlights turn green.

Win-win for me as far as I could tell: I would either learn some impressive justification for Christian beliefs, or get an admission that Christianity is indistinguishably well-justified as pure nonsense.

The first hurdle, though, seemed to be that RD could not view this challenge as anything but a famous previous argument that has an answer written down somewhere. I honestly could not believe the answers that RD gave.

RD started with essentially: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from evil! — Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from arbitrary belief! — Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous ontological argument applies to Zeus! — Here is my response to that! (his actual quote from that one: “A being that owes its existence to other beings cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived. Zeus owes his existence to other beings. Therefore, Zeus cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived.”)

Here is a representative note from me on August 17, 2009 — Me: “… you have missed the question entirely. I was not asking if YOU would be equally well justified for believing in either Yahweh or Zeus; but whether bob-Zeus; you-Yahweh is as justifiable for each of you.”

And again on August 20, 2009 — Me: “In fact, you apparently cannot even distinguish the justification for your belief in Yahweh with Bob’s belief in Zeus…And I beg you, if you believe that you have a slightly better justification than this, to state it.”

And again on August 23, 2009 — Me: “I am not asking you to believe in Zeus. I am not asking whether it makes sense for you to believe in Zeus. You have never prayed to Zeus for the light to turn green and witnessed the miracle. Thus, you do not have the same reasons as Bob to believe in Zeus — I agree. I am talking about a guy, who believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe because Zeus answers his prayers about street lights, and because Zeus punishes Christian churches. And I am asking whether you can come up with a defeater for his beliefs. And if not, to at least distinguish the justifications for each of your beliefs. Or, to admit that your Christian belief is indistinguishably well-justified as Bob’s.”

And yet still, on August 24, 2009 RD says: “ConverseAtheist has been hammering on this point for awhile now, focusing in particular on Zeus. That is, if I believe in the Christian God, why not believe in the Greek God as well? Or why not the Greek God instead of the Christian God? It would seem that from ConverseAtheist’s perspective, the basic problem, I suppose, is arbitrariness.”And then, after much arm-twisting, RD claims to have more justification that hypothetical Bob.

Ready?

Christian theologian’s belief in Yahweh and his life and professional livelihood is more justifed than nonsense because of the following fact: the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus is larger than the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh.

Take a second to let that sink in.

I asked whether I could use his reasoning as illustrative of the kind of thinking that gives intellectual vindication to Christian faith.

September 4th, Me: “I’m pleading with you to make the case to the ideal disinterested rational listener that your religious beliefs are more justified for you to believe than a person who thinks Zeus is the creator of the universe because the streetlights turn green when he prays to Zeus. Whatever you think an ideal disinterested rational listener should take into account as evidence, present that evidence as though he will take it into account.”

I think this is a generally useful idea: write to what you expect would convince the ideal disinterested rational listener. It’s win-win — either you convince your primary target, or other rational people should be able to read the account for themselves and see that the primary is being irrational.

I continued: “When you mentioned that the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh is not as large as the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus, I gained valuable insight into precisely what a professional theologian counts as a distinguishing justification for his personal religious beliefs over nonsense.

But — and this is important — you have free reign. List defeaters to this guy’s Zeus beliefs. List evidence for your beliefs. Or not — I personally do not have an opinion on this apriori. I want to see what you, a professional Christian theologian, think would count to a disinterested listener that is considering the justification that you have for your beliefs versus the justification a Zeus-believer has for his beliefs.”

I was explicit in highlighting the fact that RD has free reign to call in whatever justification/evidence/whatever that he wants.

I finished: “I’m not asking you to convince this listener that one or the other has the correct beliefs. What evidence do you have that supports your personal belief? What do you think counts? What do you think counts in favor of your belief and against this hypothetical nonsense?”

Conclusion: A theologian apparently has an absolutely terrible time claiming justification for his religious beliefs from nonsense. The single justification that he claimed gave his Christian beliefs more validity than nonsense was to argue from popularity.

So far, RD has written 4 entries since that last comment and no response to me. I’ll update this post if anything happens.

UPDATE:

You won’t believe how RD responded to my entry…

Ok, so in this entry, I criticize RD for not responding to my challenge and insisting that I must be making some previously discredited ‘famous argument’.

In fact, I list 3 times, where I say RD says, essentially, Ah, you must mean the famous argument … blah blah blah!

Here is part of his response that he leaves in a comment on his blog: “To put it another way, it sounds like you are aiming for the Great Pumpkin reductio ad absurdum that Plantinga raised in “Reason and Belief in God” and which atheists like Michael Martin have since taken up.”

Ha ha ha! I am meaning the famous reductio-ad-absurdum-argument-mentioned-by-Plantinga-and-which-Martin-has-defended! He guessed it, finally, after all these wrong guesses, he finally got the CORRECT famous atheist argument with a canned theist response! </mirth>

RD alludes to the great time and effort that I’ve put forward as though this interaction is work or something … I’m having a blast. The only thing I’m regretting is having taken so long to find a theologian to debate!

Tags: Christian theology, God, Zeus
Posted in Anti-Thinking, Religious Interaction, Theology, debate | 118516 Comments »The+atheist+vs+the+Christian+theologian2009-09-11+06%3A52%3A54Conversational+Atheist

An atheist gives advice to Billy Graham

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

::EDIT:: I switched hosting servers a few nights ago, and I thought I made it through to the other side unscathed, but I got notified that this entry had disappeared. I’ve replaced it, and I’m in the process of finding and repopulating it with the old comments. Special thanks to I Am over at twitter for pointing this out. ::EDIT::

To Billy: if you are going to play the fool verse in an article, be sure that your article is passably cogent.

Billy Graham wrote an article in response to a question about atheists. His article:

Atheism is a Fad only Fools Follow by Billy Graham

I have developed a useful habit where I track the conclusions and the corresponding evidences that people use as they craft an argument. Try it yourself with the closing paragraph:

Don’t be misled by those who claim God doesn’t exist, because he does. And the ultimate reason we know it is because he came down from heaven and walked on this earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ was God in human flesh, and he proved it by rising from the dead.

Let’s follow the two arguments and attempt to order them so that they flow from evidence to conclusion.

Billy’s Argument 1:

Evidence: God came down from heaven and walked on the earth in the person Jesus Christ.

Therefore, (conclusion) God exists.

Billy’s Argument 2:

Evidence: Jesus rose from the dead.

Therefore, (conclusion) Jesus was God in human flesh.

The first argument is the most ridiculously circular argument that I have encountered in print.

The second argument is invalid and false — and I don’t think that even Billy believes what he wrote. If he honestly thinks that the statement “Jesus is God in human flesh” is a proven statement, there is no room for faith that “Jesus is God.” There are critical problems with his argument even granting the evidence to be true.

Consider the fact that we do not have direct evidence of Jesus rising from the dead. The absolute best evidence that could even be hoped to be marshaled is: written accounts of his death and resurrection by eyewitnesses who swore under penalty of death that their account was true. (Which, by the way, we don’t have — and if you want to get technical, there is far greater evidence that could exist). But, for fun, let’s grant the absolute best case evidence — the testimony and willingness to die for the testimony is so overwhelming that it convinces anyone and everyone that this evidence CANNOT be explained except by a supernatural intervention.

How many possible supernatural explanations are available to explain something so precise and amazing as written accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection by eyewitnesses who swear under the penalty of death that what they wrote was true?

An infinite number of supernatural explanations. There are an infinite number of ways that such amazing evidence could be attained through supernatural means BESIDES the one conclusion that Billy thinks is inevitable: that Jesus is God in human flesh.

Just to get the list started:

1. spirits possessed all alleged eyewitnesses and wrote the accounts and allowed the host body to die for these accounts.

2. Two gods got together and created the universe and the world 50 years ago — and made it look like everything has been around for a long time planting evidence of a continuous (false) history; even gave people older than 50 years false memories of the past.

3. etc.

For all of my criticism, Billy’s article is not a complete waste: I have a new example for when I teach circular reasoning.