1. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91325 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 28, 2007 at 3:48 am

Donald (#91221):

Will you be contributing, Dianelos?

No, for I think there are much better causes. To give Ali two million dollars per year so that she can live in the country she likes when in her own country of Somalia so many children die of hunger right now – is obscene. (See:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2007/11/22/fighting_fractures_families_in_somalia/ )

2. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91121 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 27, 2007 at 9:43 am

Peacebeuponme,

I don't wish to start a new debate here, and perhaps you are right that all this is irrelevant. What's really relevant is that as we speak there is a huge number of our fellow human beings living in abject poverty while rich atheists and theists alike do very little to remedy that situation, but arguably benefit from it. There is huge injustice and unfairness around the world today and this should shame atheists and theists alike. We should be doing something positive about this, and a relevant issue is that to create one more conflict in the world, this time between atheists and their declared "enemies" the religious people, is the last thing the world really needs.

As you know I am a committed theist, but that's not the main reason why it saddens me to see how atheism which used to be a serious intellectual position is now transforming itself into a "movement" and a "cause" that singles people out and brands them as "dangerous" and so on. I don't think that the tribalization of atheism, this conspicuous "us against them" sense one finds in this forum, is a good thing. I may be mistaken but I even sense the commencing of the idea that somehow Christians and atheists should make a common front against Islam, and I don't think this is a good idea either (I sensed that idea both In Harris's speech at AAI07 conference and in some of Lennox's arguments in his debate with Dawkins). Beyond all our debating about ontological truths perhaps we should not forget the truth about the basic humanity that binds us all, reflect a little more on the wisdom of tolerance, and at all costs avoid demonizing others. The evils that threaten all humanity (from poverty to injustice to the destruction of the environment) are the responsibility of all of us, because on average each one of us is not really doing enough for solving them - obviously. To single out a particular group of people as the really bad evil-doers who are responsible for everything that is bad – is not a step in the right direction I think. It's a step in the wrong direction, because it basically amounts to rejecting or discounting one's own responsibilities for the state of the world, it's just a comfortable and easy cop-out. Not to mention reminds one of how Nazis singled out the Jews as being at the root of all the evils of Germany, only now it's not only the Jews but all religious people who "poison everything" and it's not only about Germany but the whole world. Atheism may be true or may be false, but New Atheism is certainly looking ugly to me.

3. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91096 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 27, 2007 at 7:42 am

Harold Koenig's "The Link between Religion and Health" and Arthur Brooks's "Who Really Cares" quote dozens of scientific studies that document both the physical and ethical benefits of religious belief. Let me quote from page 34 of the latter book: " But the evidence leaves no room for doubt: Religious people are far more charitable than nonreligious people. In years of research, I have never found a measurable way in which secularists are more charitable than religious people.[snip] In 2000, religious people - who, per family, earned exactly the same amount as secular people, $49,000 - gave about 3.5 times more money per year (an average of $2,210 versus $642)." And, before you ask, it turns out that religious people even donate more money to secular charities than secular people.

I am afraid that New Atheism's mantra about religious belief being dangerous, poisoning everything, and whatnot - may turn out to be mistaken. Perhaps New Atheists should brace themselves for a situation where it is proven scientifically and beyond reasonable doubt that atheism is conducive to immoral and antisocial behavior, and think how such a state of affairs would affect the way you conduct the atheistic "cause". Please notice that Harris and Dawkins have already radically softened their position on this issue:

Harris in the very first pages of his "The End of Faith" sounds like a Biblical prophet pointing out the terrible calamities that will befall humanity if people do not turn away from religion. Here are some quotes: "It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like 'God' and 'paradise" and 'sin' in the presence that will determine our future."(page 12 – which is actually the second page of that book) "Our technological advance in the art of war have finally rendered our religious differences – and hence our religious beliefs - antithetical to our survival."(page 13) "Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal', or they will unmake our world."(page 14) "I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance – born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God – is one of the principles forces driving us toward the abyss."(page 15) - Pretty scary, huh? Religion, even moderate religion, as the terrible bogeyman who is the main threat for the survival of humankind. Now that book, which I think started the "New Atheism" phenomenon, was published in 2004. But in his 2007 response to an article by Haidt (an article that mentions studies that show that religious people are on average more ethical than non-religious people) he now writes: "The point [of New Atheism] is not that we atheists can prove religion to be the cause of more harm than good (though I think this can be argued, and the balance seems to me to be swinging further toward harm each day)." So he goes from fire-breathing warnings about the evils of even moderate religion to conceding that it's not so clear whether religion does more harm than good after all.

As for Dawkins, after arguing in this 2006 video that religion is the "root of all evil" (here's a typical quote "as we wake up to this huge challenge to our civilized values don't let's forget the elephant in the room, the elephant called religion"), in his 2007 debate with Lennox he sounds much more accommodating and now says "it must be admitted that science grew out of a religious tradition" (ca min. 24 of the first file), and "I would not for a moment say that all religion is bad, all religion is dangerous, that Christianity is dangerous, certainly only a minority of religious people are bad or do bad things" (ca min. 18 of the second file). So in one short year Dawkins went from calling religion the big bad elephant in the room to I would not for a moment say that all religion is bad and so on.

Maybe New Atheists should start wondering if they are not overdoing it a little with the "atheism is good, religion is bad" kind of claim. Incidentally the fact that Harris and Dawkins have softened their position on this issue speaks well of their intellectual freedom and honesty. And, frankly, Harris's quote that generated so much discussion in this thread does not really sound like a joke to me, but rather like an expression of frustration.

4. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89359 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 11:37 am

Dr Benway (post 520 or #89256):

Actually, experiencing being a parent helps one understand God's mind. I hope that my love for my daughter will be great and true enough for me not to make life too easy for her – even though it would be more pleasant for me personally and I could easily afford it to protect her throughout all her life.

5. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89355 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 11:28 am

Steve99 (post 514 or #89232):

After all the only reason to believe that an intelligent mind is complex is to assume that it must work on the mechanical principles that a naturalistic understanding of reality posits.

I really can't believe anyone could post anything this dumb. Intelligence is complicated because it involves storage and processing of information. This has to be the case no matter what the substrate (atoms or fairy wings or GodMind).

Not to mention God's infinite mind would result in infinite problems of heat dissipation, which pretty much proves that God does not exist ;-)

6. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89353 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 11:24 am

BMMcArdle (post 508 or #89214):

A natural explanation is by default far simpler than a supernatural one.

Is it really?

An explanation of idealistic theism uses concepts that are directly known to us, such as conscious experience, conscious subject (i.e. person), love, beauty, free will, creation, sacrifice, and so on. An explanation of scientific naturalism uses concepts related to the concept of matter – an alien concept which scientific naturalists are finding increasingly difficult to even vaguely define.

But more importantly idealistic theism's explanations for the whole of our experience of life work, while scientific naturalism's do not, even though some hope they will in the future via science's models of physical phenomena :-P You see, from the fact that part of our experience is that of physical phenomena in which we model a physical universe, scientific naturalists hypothesize that we ourselves are part of that model :-)

7. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89348 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 11:05 am

Smithyboy (post 496 or #89054):

The trouble with panentheism (well, one of a number of troubles) is that it literally does not make sense. It says nature is part of god, but not the whole of god, in that god is more than nature. But at the same time it requires nature to be distinct from god.

Right: a part is distinct from the whole. So where's the trouble?

In other words, I am (say) god's little toe and at the same time am no part of god.

Of course you are part of God, you are God's little toe as you put it.

As you have not read my past posts, here is what idealistic theism says: You are both a small part of the whole and a complete image of the whole. Imagine a tree with fruit that have seeds. A seed is a small part of the whole tree, but also carries in it an image of the whole tree, because it itself is meant to grow and become a tree. Only it's not like every seed becomes a different tree, but rather all seedlings grow together and grow into each other, and finally become one with the parent tree, a process through which the parent tree grows.

8. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89344 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 10:52 am

Steve99 (post 487 or #88975):

In fact, some branches of theism do a good job of encouraging ill-doing, through the doctrine of forgiveness. No harm in doing bad if this the slate can be wiped clean at confession.

Yes, good point, but this is a common misunderstanding, indeed a misunderstanding that many theists share thinking that there are some kind of magical rules: go there, say this, get that other guy give you absolution, eat or drink that, and you're done. But that's not even the official Christian dogma of "repentance". Repentance, as the original Greek word "metanoia" explicitly makes clear, means "change of mind": One transcends any errors one has committed if and only if one's mind transcends the state that brought it to commit such errors. That's the whole point of living in an environment where one is free to commit errors.

9. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89339 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 10:39 am

Steve99 (post 478 or #88946):

You have been pressing us to prove that the moon, the statue of Liberty etc. "really objectively" exist. If we have a problem proving that these things "really objectively" exist, then that is a problem for any model of reality.

( Is that royal-speak or tribal-speak Steve? ;-)

Anyway, it's true: one can't "prove" something objectively exists; one can't even give direct evidence that something objectively exists. For example there's no evidence that the Statue of Liberty objectively exists unless one begs the question by assuming that the physical universe objectively exists. And that's a problem for all models of reality, yes. That's why one should compare different models one to one and under a series of criteria, instead of trying to study one model independently.

10. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89336 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 10:21 am

Dr Benway (post 471 or #88934):

"Ethical empowerment," as you've used the term, appears to be a personal sense of confidence that one is doing the right thing.

No, that's not my meaning at all. By "ethical empowerment" I mean what, given we believe X is the right thing to do, ethical empowerment helps us go out and do X. As a practical matter in many cases in life we do know what the right thing to do is. For example, we do know that instead of buying a new car when we already have a perfectly functional one it would be better to use that money and help those who are abjectly poor. What we all experience in life is how difficult it feels to do the right thing. That's where ethical empowerment can be help.

So my meaning is nothing like "to have confidence one knows what the right thing is". If I had wanted to express that latter idea I would have used something like "ethical dogmatism", or "ethical overconfidence". I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

11. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89326 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 10:04 am

Dr Benway (post 445 or #88878):

Thou shalt not overstate thy data.

Very good. But there is another precept: Thou shalt not disregard thy data.

I understand scientific naturalists' infatuation with science and desire to emulate science as much as they can, and it's true that the scientific method is based only on corroborative data, i.e. objective observations. But science does not thus disregard any data as science is about modeling physical phenomena, and all data about physical phenomena are objective. So by using only objective data, science uses all data that are useful for its project. But the same physical phenomena represent only a part of the whole of a human being's experience of life. We have many more data to our disposal, indeed subjective data: how it is to love somebody, how it is to perceive beauty, how it is to understand or to realize the meaning of something, and, in general, how it is to be human. My thesis is that one cannot understand reality if one disregards this wealth of data, and it seems to me unwise to disregard them just in order to ape science which does not require that data in the first place.

12. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89325 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 10:03 am

Steve99 (post 380 or #88619):

I overlooked this bit:

There is an important exception though: direct experience while we are having it is knowledge that cannot be wrong

Wrong! As any psychologist can tell you, our brain is perfectly capable of deluding itself, and frequently does.

Illusions are wrong inferences we make based on our direct experience. But the experience itself cannot be wrong. For example if you put a pencil in a glass of water you experience it broken, and that's perfectly true: you do indeed experience it broken. The illusion would be to infer from that experience that the pencil does break when you put it in a glass of water. Or take one of the many optical illusions where you clearly see one line segment being longer than another, when in fact they are both equally long. The illusion is not that you experience the two line segments as being of different length, for it's perfectly true that you do experience them as being of different length. The illusion is to infer from that that if you take a ruler to measure the respective lengths you'd find one to be longer than the other. Incidentally, both that direct sensory experience is always true, but that anything we infer from it may be wrong, is one of the oldest insights of philosophy.

13. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89318 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 9:38 am

Steve99 (post 437 or #88859):

Actually idealistic theism's solution to the respective problem (i.e. How does consciousness produce physical things?) is trivial: Physical things only exist as patterns in our conscious experience, so it's not like they are produced as something intrinsically different from conscious experience.

No, sorry. That is not the solution of idealistic theism. That is the solution of idealism.

Well, any solution of idealism carries over to theistic idealism too.

It is a very big step from idealism to idealistic theism.

Not really that big a step, but I don't have time to elaborate on this. But observe that there aren't any idealistic non-theists.

14. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89313 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 9:31 am

Steve99 (post 429 or #88839):

You claim God is good. Please provide us with an objective measure of 'goodness' that we can use to determine this. If I claim God is evil, or neutral, how do you distinguish my theory from yours?

There is a lot that is real but that is not "objectively measurable" such as one's love for one's wife, or the beauty of the laws of the physical universe.

As for how to decide which is more reasonable, an ontology that posits an evil God from an ontology that posits a good God, we've been over this many times: compare the two ontologies one to one under the same set of criteria, including which best explains the whole of your experience of life.

You claim ethics are objective. Please provide evidence for this.

Not all reasonable beliefs admit of evidence; this is well known in philosophy and we've been over this many times (such beliefs are called "basic beliefs"). You are under the impression that strict evidentialism works, but as Sam Harris puts it in his "End of Faith", one must take the first step to get out of darkness. I have given you many examples of basic beliefs, but let me give you one more. Suppose I claim that I am a conscious being, and you ask me for evidence. You see? There is no evidence I can give you for something I know with absolute certainty is true.

Anyway, let me once again give you my reason why I believe that at least some ethical precepts are objective: It seems completely obvious to me that "to help somebody in need is better than instead torture them" is both true, and true independently of anybody's personal opinion or any social convention, i.e. is an objectively true precept. If you really doubt this, then I pity you.

I have provided clear evidence to the contrary, this being the confusion about this matter and the existence of psychopaths.

Yes, I remember your suggestion, but I never understood what kind of evidence that is. Perhaps a few people suffer from some kind of mental handicap that makes them incapable of counting and realizing that 2+2=4; but this would not evidence that mathematics is not objective.

15. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89305 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 9:07 am

Peacebeuponme (post 425 or #88819):

My original claim was that the moral Zeitgeist for the last thousands of years has been slowly catching up with theistic ethics. You now write:

So the Chinese and Greeks were ethical puppies compared to the Jews 2,000 years ago were they?

Well the great moral writers of the Western civilization, the Greeks Plato and Aristoteles, the Israelite Jesus of Nazareth, the various Sufi masters, the German Kant – were all theists. As for Chinese ethics, you have a point. I should have not used above about "theistic ethics" but rather about "religious ethics" (the same religion which according to Hitchens "poisons everything"). You see it's the religious response to the human condition that helps people realize the objective morality that is present in the world.

In any case I can't imagine how you can conclude that human rights were more respected then than now (which is the implication of your original comment)

No, I meant precisely that the moral Zeitgeist is always catching up with religious ethical teaching, so it is now better than it was 2000 years ago.

What war crime was whitewashed by Abraham almost murdering his son?

No crime whatsoever. That is a particularly misleading story in the Bible. Apparently it tries to teach the virtue of obedience – we can argue if that's a virtue at all, but it's clear that blind obedience that Abraham displayed is not a virtue.

16. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89303 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 8:53 am

Dr Benway (post 403 or #88709):

Look, here's a glass of cool, refreshing water. Wait! It may seem like water, but in reality it's a collection of H2O molecules.

The "in reality" in that sentence is only a figure of speech, or maybe evidences the author's naturalistic intuitions. What science only tells us is that we can make better predictions about our experiences with that glass of water if we model it as a collection of H2O molecules. That science is only about modeling phenomenal reality becomes painfully clear when you get down to the level of quantum mechanics.

17. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89302 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 8:46 am

Dr Benway (post 408 or #88723):

Dianelos, if you say "sometimes we need proofs; sometimes we don't" [snip]

:-) But I haven't said anything like this. That was a misrepresentation, a rather smelly red herring.

Bathwater No Mo! separates the proverbial baby from the dirty water.

You should apply it to religion then.

18. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89301 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 8:45 am

Steveroot (post 397 or #88693):

"Indeed science is completely compatible with various versions of theism as evidenced by the fact that recent Nobel laureates in physics are theists."

The assumption here is that winners of the Nobel Prize are unable to simultaneously entertain conflicting worldviews.

Yes, that's exactly the assumption.

I'll bet this assumption could be shown to be invalid.

Yes, I believe you'd bet that :-)

Maybe a touch of Argumentum ad Verecundiam as well.

Nothing of the sort.

19. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89298 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 8:38 am

Well, I think I will take the advice of pretty much all of you here and refrain from adding my [put any derisive adjective here] posts to this site. But I will try to answer a few more posts today. No hard feelings though, one way or other I really learned a lot here, and I am happy to see that Steve at least did so too.

20. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #89193 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 20, 2007 at 1:46 am

Thanks Steve99 (post #88619) and Phil Rimmer (post #88629) for your feedback to my argument against scientific naturalism in post #88603. It gave me something to think about.

Of course when one disagrees with an argument's result one must find something amiss with one of its premises (see the end of this post for some comments on this). Now the attackable premises are #2 and #4. #4 says that the cognitive capacity for deciding ontological propositions offers no competitive advantages; I have already discussed this rather obvious premise, so here I want to concentrate on Steve's and Phil's arguments against #2 which is: Through natural evolution we can only possess such cognitive capacities that offer some competitive advantage. I will concentrate my comments on the cognitive capacity at hand, which is the cognitive capacity for deciding ontological beliefs, or in short, "ontological reasoning".

Steve correctly observes that natural evolution sometimes imparts some characteristic that is latter used in an entirely different way. (Indeed this is how many cases of "irreducible complexity" are solved.) So his idea is that even though ontological reasoning may not have given us any evolutionary advantage in our evolutionary past other types of reasoning did, and we may now adjust that latter reasoning to ontology. He mentions the case of our ancestors counting tigers and how the resulting mathematical reasoning is now used for doing much more sophisticated math. This example is not a very good one, because given that we did evolve mathematical reasoning it's easy to accept that that reasoning is today used for more sophisticated mathematical tasks. But the issue at hand is how to account for a completely different kind of reasoning, not just for a more sophisticated use of the same. So perhaps Steve's idea is best expressed like this: There were in our evolutionary past evolutionary advantages for developing an entire series of cognitive capacities, such as mathematical reasoning, finding patterns in and modeling phenomena, 3D visualization, etc [1]. The amalgam of these faculties is such that we can today also reason about ontology. Now I see two problems with this argument: 1) It represents more a wish about how things should be in order for the argument against naturalism to be invalidated, than an actual argument. After all where's the evidence that such an amalgam of previous cognitive capacities would serve for the completely different task of ontological reasoning? 2) There are some counterexamples to his idea: Today it would be very useful if we could visualize more than 3-dimentional spaces (for example string theorists would love to be able to visualize 11-dimentional spaces) but the fact is that this is impossible, even though such capability only represents an extension of a cognitive capability we already have. An other counterexample is that we do not have the capability of solving differential equations in our head. Actually we do have that capability (we do that every time we catch a ball in the air) but there is no way to bring that capability under the control of conscious thought. My point using these examples is to show that our cognitive faculties appear to be much less flexible than what would be necessary for Steve's argument to work.

Phil suggests a different path to invalidate premise #2. His idea is that our current cognitive faculties are not only the result of biological natural evolution but also of cultural evolution. He claims that cultural evolution has had a profound impact on our individual and collective cognitive capacities. But I wonder if that's true; I think that cultural evolution (or sociobiology in general) strongly affects what we do with our cognitive capacities, but does not actually improve them. I mean try to use cultural evolution to give people the cognitive capacity of visualizing 11-dimentional spaces – it just doesn't work this way. Or take language; that mental capability has evolved (whether quickly or slowly it is not known) some time in the last 100,000 years and only once it is present cultural evolution can explain our sophisticated modern use of that capability.

Anyway, here is the happy state of affairs: Whereas many philosophical arguments use premises based on what intuitively appears to be obvious and hence are open to dispute, the premises #2 and #4 of my argument are scientific premises. So whether these premises are true or not can and will be decided on scientific grounds, which I am sure nobody here is willing to dispute. The force of Plantinga's argument resides precisely in the scientific validity of natural evolution, and studies what its implications are under the assumption of naturalism. (If you don't assume naturalism then there may be a supernatural cause for some of our cognitive capacities and the argument doesn't work.)

[1] I would like to make clear that this is not what Plantinga is saying. According to Plantinga's original argument if naturalism and natural evolution are true then the probability of us having any cognitive capacity is low or at best inscrutable. So, according to Plantinga, our mathematical reasoning for example would not necessarily have evolved towards truth but only towards causing (when combined with our desires) the appropriate behavior.

Finally I would like to make an observation beyond the issue of my argument against naturalism. We are here discussing which premise one must attack in order to avoid my argument's result. In a book on naturalism I am now reading there is a paper in which after some very serious problems of naturalism are discussed and all the suggested solutions are discarded the following strange kind of argument is made: that if one wants to avoid supernaturalism one must change naturalism in this direction. But I think that this kind of backwards reasoning ("I don't accept the argument's result so some of its premises must be wrong", "I don't accept supernaturalism so I must change naturalism in this direction") is kind of unreasonable. I used to think that those who claimed that atheism is a position of faith were overdoing it. But if a naturalist is always willing, no matter what, to make additional assumptions and/or change naturalism in any possible direction as long as doing so avoids supernaturalism, then that is a reaction motivated by a premise accepted on faith, isn't it? (Here I am using faith in its common meaning of "dogmatic".)

21. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88974 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 10:34 am

Steve99 (post 378 or #88616):

On the other hand, atheists do believe that life ends at death, which entails that people can get away with doing bad things.

That is just rabid nonsense, and you know it. It assumes that atheists only care about what happens to themselves personally, and don't care about what happens to friends, family, and the rest of the human race. Actions have consequences that go beyond ourselves. We don't need any silly 'God' idea to realise that.

If life ends at death as atheists believe then people can get away with doing bad things. That many atheists nevertheless care about others is fine of good, but does not affect the truth of my claim in any way whatsoever.

22. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88954 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 9:03 am

Epeeist (post 375 or #88608):

4. If naturalism is true then the cognitive faculty for deciding the truth of ontological propositions offers no competitive advantage. (premise)

And the evidence for this is?

I have already commented on this premise in the original post #88603 The general idea is that knowledge about whether the tiger is real or only seems to be real makes no difference whatsoever in the behavior that optimizes the chances of multiplying one's genes, which in both cases remains to run away. Can you see any evolutionary advantage for having the cognitive capacity for deciding ontological propositions?

This is posited on two things: The word "believe", but of course naturalism does not rely on belief.

Oh, come on Epeeist. Don't tell me you are conflating "belief" with "religious belief". That's one of the most trivial arguments of popular atheism there are. In all philosophy "to believe" simply means "to hold to be true". So of course scientific naturalism is a belief system.

2. Cognitive capacity. If we did not have the cognitive capacity then we would not be capable of distinguishing the difference between rationality and irrationality.

The only thing under discussion here is the cognitive capacity for deciding ontological propositions, not cognitive capacity in general.

23. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88947 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 8:39 am

Briancoughlanworldcitizen (post 369 or #88591):

No disrespect to the atheist posters here, great work really, but even you chaps must be wearying of saying the same thing over and over in different ways.

Actually I reject the observation that this thread keeps repeating the same. Just off the top in the head in the last week or so we have been discussing a lot of new stuff, including what "truth" means, whether Buddhism with its gods and hungry ghosts can be counted as atheism, whether there are scientific propositions that are not falsifiable, Dawkins's thesis that scientific laws are getting less complex and the feasibility of a TOE, whether evidentialism is a good idea and what evidence there is that he Statue of Liberty objectively exist without assuming the truth of scientific naturalism, a formal and much simpler version of Plantinga's argument against naturalism, Dr Benway's idea that some propositions may be justified based on the needs for interpersonal communication, the fact that some naturalist philosophers are already walking away from scientific naturalism (because of its failure to "naturalize" non-physical concepts in response to the transcendental argument) and are now postulating some kind of a more pluralistic naturalism, and more.

24. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88944 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 8:15 am

Steve99 (post 365 or #88585):

Well that objective reality out there, the whole of it, is not a huge physical mechanism as naturalists think, but rather a very very good person, a conscious being who, as we do, perceives, thinks, wills, loves, creates and enjoys beauty.

One minute you are claiming that we can't know objective reality. The next you are claiming that you know objective reality. Which is it, please?

Above I was only explaining that scientific naturalism and idealistic theism are two alternative theories about objective reality, and that it's not like theism = naturalism + God.

As for your question, it's true that from how reality seems to be we can't directly deduce how it is. So my suggestion is that one can decide fairly which theory about objective reality is more reasonable by comparing them one to one under the same set of criteria; criteria such as explanatory power, internal coherence and freedom from paradoxes, compatibility with science, experiential gains, ethical empowerment, simplicity, elegance, etc. I have been explaining this idea for months now and it is a little dispiriting for me that you should ask here this question as if you had not understood anything.

25. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88938 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 7:45 am

Epeeist (post 364 or #88576):

I am certainly guilty of not understanding what you mean.

ROFLMAO Now the question is, is this a one word response?

Obviously it isn't; I think you can count. And I thought you would understand that this is an invitation for you to explain what you mean instead of speaking in riddles. But no matter, suit yourself.

26. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88935 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 7:39 am

Epeeist (post 363 or #88575):

Comment #88503 by Dianelos Georgoudis

Well, then you are not really engaging with what I suggest, for I suggest we understand the meaning and truth of proposition based on its predictive content.

and

According to my scheme the meaning of a proposition encompasses also what all the propositions it implies predict.

Some 2300 years ago Aristotle codified the basics of logic. [snip etc]

So you see some logical problem here? Where exactly? In post #87981 where I explained to you what I mean by "truth", I clarified that the meaning of a proposition covers all predictions of that proposition, including the predictions of the propositions it implies. (See comment #1 in that post.)

Or maybe you're speaking in riddles again? :-)

27. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88930 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 7:26 am

Epeeist (post 362 or #88574):

GR is still classical physics

What do you mean by "classical"?

By "classical physics" I mean any physics that does not entail the measurement problem.

28. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88923 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 7:16 am

Phil Rimmer (post 357 or #88525):

theism is far more ethically empowering than atheism.

I'm sure Bin Laden thinks precisely this.

I am not sure what kind of argument that is, but would like to point out that the fact that Bin Laden also thinks that 2+2=4 is not considered a threat to arithmetic ;-)

29. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88921 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 7:10 am

Smithyboy (post 354 or #88513):

So you are propounding pantheism, not theism.

Not pantheism, but panentheism is quite close to what I am propounding. Both affirm that there is nothing outside of God and hence that we are all part of God, but pantheism identifies God with nature alone whereas panentheism is not thus restricted.

30. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88905 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 6:41 am

BMMcArdle (post 351 or #88509):

A very very good person who perceives/is insensitve to, thinks/ignores, wills/neglects, loves/hates, creates/destroys, enjoys beauty/ugliness. Which is just like it would be if this person didn't exist. Isn't it simpler to assume he/she/it isn't reality?

If you accept scientific naturalism as a given, then what you write above makes some sense. But even then it's misguided, because it turns out that scientific naturalism simply cannot account for our very condition as human beings. It cannot account for what we are: conscious beings experiencing life, thinking about truth, agonizing about ethical decisions, applying our free will. It can't account for the obvious objectivity of at least some ethical precepts. Many figure that it can't even account for the objectively of mathematical truths. It can't even account for something as basic as our qualitative experience of colors.

What I am saying in other words is this: If scientific naturalism were a viable worldview then one could reasonably argue thus: Scientific naturalism works just fine without assuming that God exists, so to assume that God exists is a superfluous hypothesis. But in fact scientific naturalism doesn't work at all. Why do then so many people believe it does? Because they delude themselves by conflating scientific naturalism with science and therefore believing that the great successes of science are successes of scientific naturalism. The same delusion drives them to hope that the many problems and paradoxes and holes of scientific naturalism will be somehow some day be solved by science. But fallacies will be exposed, the clock is clicking, and people will not be fooled for ever.

31. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88893 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 6:18 am

Duff (post 347 or #88485):

God is this, and God is that??
I thought that to give god attributes is to limit him/her. You are a limiter of the first magnitude. Shame on you, you god limiter you.

:-) To discover how objective reality is does not in any way limit it of course, but rather limits our ignorance of it – or, if you prefer, expands our understanding of it.

32. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88892 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 6:11 am

BMMcArdle (post 344 or #88469):

According to your worldview, where everything is an illusion, why do you think you are you?

That's not what my worldview says. On the contrary my worldview says that conscious experience is the most fundamental aspect of reality, and that therefore what we experience is as real as anything can be. It's rather scientific naturalism that says that what we experience is a "representation" of reality produced by our brain, and is indeed very different from how objective reality actually is. So, for example, colors do not exist in objective reality according to scientific naturalism; when we see the blue sky or green grass or red apples that's only an illusion made up in our brain. You experience having free will? That's an illusion too, says scientific naturalism. You experience wall being solid? That's only an illusion says scientific naturalism, because walls are in fact mainly empty space. You experience time and space being independent? An illusion. And so on.

Do you honestly believe these things?

I do honestly believe what I claim here.

or are you just playing a game of "I can come up with an argument that no one can refute"?

:-) That's kind of a tricky question. You see if what I say is true as I believe then, necessarily, nobody will be able to come up with a good refutation. On the other hand what I believe is not a done job, but rather I am learning new things and how they fit, learning about better arguments, and so on. In fact I have learned and continue to learn a lot in my discussions here with you; let me know if you'd like me to elaborate.

33. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88882 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 5:46 am

Lauregon (post 343 or #88439):

Such a rosy perspective doesn't sound at all like that of someone who has actual empathy for or understanding of the suffering of others.

On the contrary, to affirm the existence of ultimate justice gives comfort to those who are unfortunate. Atheism just tells them: You know, hard luck, but that's reality.

And theism gives theists one more reason to help those who are unfortunate beyond one's own benefit. Atheism's logic would be: Why should I care for the unfortunate, we shall all be dust one day. Let the bleeding heart theistic morons help these people, or at least keep them off my back. And if the downtrodden represent any danger for my way of life, why, they are my enemies and the reasonable thing is to destroy them. (To avoid misunderstanding: I am discussing the atheistic logic not the atheist practice which more often than not follows the image of God within. But if you think I am misrepresenting atheistic logic then please suggest how atheistic logic would motivate an atheist to help others beyond what personally benefits the atheist.)

[You are] writing as one who appears to imagine he knows the mind of "God,"

If my worldview is right then you can know the mind of God too. Just study how you yourself deep inside are.

34. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88866 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 5:06 am

Phil Rimmer (post 342 or #88412):

A related issue is why life's troubles are distributed so unjustly. The answer I think is that they are not distributed unjustly, for life continues far beyond death, and we shall all continue to experience both joy and pain and agonize over ethical decisions for a long time to come – and on average all people will get about the same deal. Moreover I think the distinction between individual persons is in a sense illusory: we are all in this together and in some fundamental sense the other person's suffering is my suffering also, and the other person's joy is my joy too.

Dianelos knows neither excuse is up to the job...

Actually I don't. On the contrary I think both complement each other, and both have explanatory power beyond the issue at hand. For example the latter gives one more reason why we should not hurt others: when we hurt others we are ultimately hurting ourselves.

But it seems you judge that neither idea above is up to the job, and I would like very much you to explain why not.

Did I just experience a little frisson of schadenfreude at his possible discomfort? You know, I think I did.

:-)

The problem of evil is probably the single most difficult problem for theism; one more reason to drill me on this issue.

35. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88858 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 4:48 am

Yaweh (post 338 or #88376):

I don't see why; solipsists communicate with others just fine.

Solipsists don't believe in communication. Others don't exist.

You don't have to believe that others objectively exist in order to communicate with them: Solipsists too go to the market and ask for half a kilo of feta cheese.

Actually [the inductive method] is necessary for making predictions, not for communicating them.

Can't communicate predictions if you can't make them.

True, but irrelevant to my arguing against Dr Benway's suggestion that we are justified in believing in a proposition for which we have no evidence if we find it necessary for communicating with others.

36. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88856 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 4:41 am

Peacebeuponme (post 333 or #88355):

For example even though both idealistic theism and scientific naturalism are monistic ontologies, only the latter confronts that hard problem of how a physical system could produce consciousness.

Has scientific naturalism even tried to explain it yet? Scientific research is being carried out, but until then we say "I don't know".

It's true there is a lot scientific research going on, but it only studies the so-called easy problem of consciousness, namely how our brain produces intelligent behavior (including how we speak in general, including how we speak about our conscious experiences). But there appears to be a fundamental difficulty for scientifically studying how the brain produces consciousness (assuming that the hypothesis that the brain does produce consciousness is true in the first place). A good and very readable book about this issue is John Searle's "The Mystery of Consciousness". In this book you get a naturalist philosopher of the first order criticizing the work of other well-known philosophers and scientists on the mind-body problem (namely Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and Israel Rosenfield). What's interesting is that after explaining the ideas (mainly speculations really) about how the brain may be producing consciousness according to some of these thinkers he asks: Suppose that the ideas and research you propose succeed as well as they can conceivably succeed; why can't it be the case that nevertheless the brain produces consciousness in a completely different manner? Or, as I would put it: Why can't it be the case that nevertheless it's not the brain that produces consciousness? The mind-body problem is one of these problems that the more you study it the more clear it gets that there can't be any solution. And of course this problem only exists within a physical paradigm of objective reality.

Idealistic theism confronts the problem, but is the explanation it gives a good one?

Actually idealistic theism's solution to the respective problem (i.e. How does consciousness produce physical things?) is trivial: Physical things only exist as patterns in our conscious experience, so it's not like they are produced as something intrinsically different from conscious experience. But classical (and hence dualistic) theism does have kind of a problem with the ex nihilo (from nothing) creation of the physical universe. Or if not a problem at least some inelegance.

37. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88842 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 4:08 am

Yaweh (post 333 or #88355):

Take away God's interventions in our world, and you're a deist, agnostic, or atheist. If you say, "there are no miracles but God does everything" you're still a deist.

I think that God has not only designed and is sustaining the whole of phenomenal reality (i.e. the experiential environment we live in), but also intervenes and interacts directly and abundantly in the subjective (i.e. non-physical or qualitative) aspects of our experience for life. I am basically agnostic about whether God also intervenes in the physical part of our experience of life (what one would call "miracles"); if God today intervenes in that part it happens in a way that is not regular enough to be detectable by objective methods. Having said that, I also believe with some confidence that the many miracle stories in the Bible are mythological. Why do I believe that? Because I find these miracle stories pointless and childish, not to say often demeaning to God. These stories are probably the result of people of little trust in God trying to impress others.

Incidentally, a deist is also a theist, as a deist believes in the existence of God – so I don't understand why some atheists make a big deal about the distinction between deism and the rest of theism.

38. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88834 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 3:40 am

Yaweh (post 329 or #88350):

Steve makes a slip of the tongue, calling pi "infinite" when he likely meant either "infinite number of digits after the decimal" or "irrational." Somehow this is Dawkins' fault.

I was not referring to that specific error by Steve, but to his general carelessness: his custom of not making an effort to understand the other person's thoughts and/or not to think a little more or do a little more research before just exclaiming "nonsense" or "you are just making things up", and so on. As for Dawkins he clearly believes that theism is not only wrong, but also trivially wrong, and I fear that those who find TGD impressive will feel duty bound to behave as if theism were a trivial matter. But theism is not a trivial ontological position, and it gets tiring to debate with people when they try to keep the pretence that it is and that any claims by a theist can easily be brushed away. Here is a recent case in point: It's a fact (indeed a well-known fact that anybody who did 10 minutes of research would not fail to find out) that the various interpretations of quantum mechanics are mutually contradictory. But I find myself mentioning this fact repeatedly, just because Steve does not invest a few minutes of his own time to find out the truth in this matter for himself.

So unless one assumes that the physical universe objectively exists there can't be any evidence whatsoever for the objective existence of the moon or of the Statue of Liberty. I hope you can see that.

Something can be objective without being physical. But there's no practical difference between a physical universe and a universe that only seems physical.

When discussing about objective reality, it makes a huge difference. After all reality may seem physical but may not be physical. The distinction between how reality seems (i.e. phenomenal reality) and how reality is (i.e. objective reality) is one of the most basic insights of ontology. What's more, the fact is that reality does not even seem physical; only a particular part of phenomenal reality, namely our experience of physical phenomena, seems physical. But a huge part of phenomenal reality, for example our experience of colors, does not seem physical at all.

39. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88794 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 2:15 am

Timnea (post 322 or #88339):

God directly causing our experiences of the physical universe, without the benefit of an actual objective universe being there

Assuming what you've said above, if god causes our experiences in the physical universe why does he kill thousands of men, women and children with earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes etc. It all seems a bit sadistic to summon them up if they're not actually objectively there in the first place. He must be causing us to experience these disasters followed by our own suffering and deaths. Looks like we have just proved a compassionate, merciful or loving god doesn't exist.

I have already discussed this issue in post #88393. Please let me know if you find that explanation inadequate, for the problem of evil is an important problem for theism.

40. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88787 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 2:04 am

Epeeist (post 318 or #88328):

According to Webster's dictionary a definition of Metal (noun) is: "A mixture containing two or more metallic elements or metallic and nonmetallic elements usually fused together or dissolving into each other when molten".

That would be an alloy, for metal see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal.

Somebody should inform the editors of Webster's dictionary that "metal" means only "elementary metal".

Do you want me to post links to mine and my wife's papers to show that we actually have worked in physics/chemistry to show we have a clue as to what we are talking about.

I am not disputing that you have a clue, Epeeist. It just seems to me you are drowning in a cup of water. "Metal", as many words, is ambiguous but from the context in the post #85459 where I brought this issue up it should be clear that the meaning is "metallic alloy".

And if it isn't falsifiable (at least in principle), then it doesn't count as science.

So which is it? Are you saying that the proposition "all metallic alloys melt at some temperature" can be falsified, or are you saying that this proposition is not scientific?

41. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88777 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 1:44 am

Clodhopper (post 315 or #88323):

No one can say people here have not allowed DG a fair crack at the whip. He has had both courtesy and the courtiers response in equal measure. People have had the opportunity to look at some "sophisticated" theist agurments in detail and seen them refuted in equal detail....repeatedly.

Well, I can't say I have seen good counterarguments, even though I was looking for them. What I saw is plenty of red herrings (Buddhists are atheists), misrepresentations (you are saying no proofs are needed so any claim goes, you are saying that all peoples' beliefs are valid and therefore you believe in the Norse gods), question begging (if no physical reality exists then no objective reality exists; that we may live in the Matrix is just science fiction; God's mind must be complex because physical brains are complex, naturalism is the rational understanding of reality), a whole range of fallacies (the success of science evidences scientific naturalism; the theory of natural evolution implies that no designer exists; you are wrong because you are not convincing anyone here; - not to mention the naturalistic fallacy in various guises), much ignorance on a wide range of issues (mathematical theorems are true because they are proven mathematically; physical laws are getting less and less complex; evidentialism is a good idea; atheists are more ethical people), word games (atheism is a lack of belief and hence does not have to justify its position, atheism is a lack of belief so it can't motivate people do something wrong), and unfortunately plenty of ad-hominem.

In any case the new atheism phenomenon has certainly helped bring what you call "sophisticated" theism to the surface. Which does not only belie Dawkins's and many an atheist's belief that all theism is moronic, but will help all non-dogmatic people re-evaluate the whole question. Incidentally up until now new atheists have only debated with rather conservative Christians such as McGrath, D'Souza, and Lennox. It would be interesting to see them debating liberal Christians who are free to discuss God without being encumbered by Christianity's many dogmas. In any case, all freethinkers must be content that such an important subject matter is now being openly debated in the public arena.

42. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88768 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 19, 2007 at 12:48 am

Epeeist (post 314 or #88321):

Just as a matter of interest I came across this - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=A1YourView&xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml

Yes, very interesting. On the other hand it sounds too good to be true. It would be nice though if it worked. And I wonder how it squares with Hawking's argument that there can't be any TOE.

It uses the E8 Lie group, works in 3 spacelike and one timelike dimension and predicts 20 undiscovered particles. Just waiting for DG to claim that it is yet another crisis in naturalism.

Why would I do that? That's just a very interesting scientific hypothesis about the mathematical order present in phenomenal reality. We already know that there is plenty of mathematical order present in phenomenal reality, and it would be amazing if it were confirmed that that mathematical order goes so deep. Ah, maybe you mean that it would be one more problem for scientific naturalism to explain how a mindless objective reality should produce a phenomenal reality that is so deeply mathematical, whereas a mathematician God can well account for it. If that's your meaning then you have a point.

43. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88702 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 3:37 pm

Epeeist (post 311 or #88312):

:-) Nice satire, Epeeist.

Just very quickly a serious point. You write:

Einstein shows there is a limit to how fast he can go.

Yes, but he was also almost certainly wrong. According to quantum mechanics massive bodies can travel faster than light, and there is little doubt in my mind which theory has it right. Indeed there is some evidence that light traveling faster than light has already been measured; and I quote: "In particular, Aichmann and Nimtz have recently [1995] transmitted Mozart's 40th Symphony as frequency modulated microwaves through an 11.4 cm length of barrier wave guide at an FTL [faster than light] group velocity of 4.7 c, receiving audibly recognizable music from the microwave photons that survived their barrier passage. The transit time through the barrier was about 81 picoseconds and was observed to be constant for barriers with widths varying from 4.0 cm to 11.4 cm." Amazing, huh? Here's the link: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw75.html And there is more evidence, here is an overview: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000610/fob7.asp

44. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88693 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 2:50 pm

Steve99 (post 309 or #88250):

Scientific naturalism implies that there are only simple laws.

That's news to me. I know that Dawkins assumes that's the case, but you don't have to believe anything Dawkins says. Have you ever seen him give any evidence for that claim of his? Lennox in his debate with Dawkins made the point that the laws of science tend to become ever less simple, and Dawkins responded that "simple" has two meanings, namely easy to understand and of low complexity, and that scientific laws are getting simpler in the latter sense. Actually, in the history of modern science physical laws get ever less simple in both senses. (For example, nobody who has studied both classical mechanics and quantum mechanics would ever claim that the latter are less complex than the former.) So the claim that the ultimate laws of physics (if they exist – that's another question) will be simple strikes me as an arbitrary not to mention wildly optimistic guess. (I am speaking about scientific laws because according to scientific naturalism they apply not only to phenomenal but also to objective reality.)

As anyone who has written simulation software (like me) can tell you, the simulator is far more complicated that that which is simulated.

I think you are mistaken (and I too have written simulation software by the way :-) After all you can simulate natural evolution, and surely the result of such a simulation can be much more complex than the software itself. That's the point that Dawkins often and correctly makes: Even though natural evolution is a simple process, the results of this process can be very complex. But there are many other examples too, such as cellular automata, or fractals such as the Mandelbrot set – where a simple simulation produces very complex results.

and have resulted in the development of an ever increasing number of desperately incompatible naturalistic description of reality,

If anything shows how you have no understanding of modern science and its implications and philosophy, this does. There are indeed different descriptions of reality like quantum mechanics. But these different descriptions co-exist for the precise opposite reason to that you give. The descriptions co-exist because they are all compatible.

They are compatible as far as phenomenal reality goes (for they are all mathematically equivalent to quantum mechanics), but they are grossly incompatible as far as objective reality goes. In other words they are grossly incompatible as far as what they claim to describe goes.

If they were 'desperately incompatible', then by definition they could not co-exist.

But it's a fact that the various interpretations of quantum mechanics are incompatible: some claim that physical reality consists of one universe and some that it consists of a huge and furiously growing number of physical universes; some claim that physical reality is deterministic and some that it's not, and so on. I find it remarkable that instead of looking at the plain facts of the matter, you try to steer around the facts using theoretical arguments, such as "if they were incompatible then they wouldn't co-exist". Well they are incompatible and they also co-exist simply because nobody has ever devised an experiment capable of objectively falsifying any one of them.

The majority of atheists are Buddhists. You are trying to use terms to fit what you want again.

Frankly it seems to me that it's you who is playing with words. I don't think that a worldview according to which a great number of gods exists, not to mention affirms the existence of "hungry ghosts" too, can reasonably be called atheistic. And I did not see any Buddhist monks at the AAI 07 conference :-)

But the scientific naturalism is more parsimonious. It does not require an infinite mind.

Neither does idealistic theism.

Physical reality as described scientific naturalism looks like it can be fit by just a few equations.

You mean the ultimate laws of physical reality rather than the description of it. Which laws you hope will in the end fit in a few equations. There is some evidence though that your hope will never be realized, see http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/strtst/dirac/hawking/

Here I am with scientific naturalism. It has worked wonders we have used it to explore the universe like no other approach. It has provided increasingly powerful and easy to understand and useful explanations for the world.

Nope, sorry. You are again conflating scientific naturalism with science. Science works at least equally well if one's model of reality is idealistic theism. Indeed science is completely compatible with various versions of theism as evidenced by the fact that recent Nobel laureates in physics are theists. As for scientific naturalism, far from "working wonders", it has in fact offered the world nothing but hard problems (related to consciousness) and paradoxes (related to quantum mechanics). I don't think that anybody would take scientific naturalism seriously anymore if it did not form the intellectual underpinning of popular atheism (including scientists' atheism I might add). But some atheist philosophers are already realizing that scientific naturalism is simply not viable and trying to device naturalistic ontologies beyond the restrictions of scientific naturalism. Which is certainly a step in the right direction.

45. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88635 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 5:24 am

Epeeist (post 308 or #88241):

DG - for the last time scientific theories are contingent, some of them are wrong.

I am attacking scientific naturalism, not science. You are once again conflating science with scientific naturalism Epeeist. I have come to realize that of all the fallacies that sustain the atheistic worldview, the most conspicuous and resilient one is to conflate science with scientific naturalism. No matter how often I point out the distinction between the phenomenal reality that science describes and the objective reality that ontological theories (such as scientific naturalism or idealistic theism) describe, no matter how often I point out the fact that the one scientific theory of quantum mechanics gave rise to many mutually contradictory ontological interpretations of quantum mechanics, no matter how often I even use the popular Matrix movie to illustrate that a scientist working within the Matrix may not be studying the physics or the facts of "real world", no matter how often I repeat that I don't have any problem with science whatsoever and name and quote from books where both naturalist scientists and naturalist philosophers discuss scientific naturalism's many problems and paradoxes while having nothing against science either, no matter how often I point out that quantum mechanics is paradoxical only if one assumes scientific naturalism, no matter my quoting naturalist philosophers such as Bertrand Russell who explicitly warn people not to confuse objective and phenomenal reality, no matter how many different arguments I put on the table - the simple insight that one cannot conflate science and scientific naturalism somehow fails to register. It's like hitting a blind spot.

I suppose without scientific naturalism's connection to science the atheistic worldview is left unsustained by anything, and therefore I imagine the atheistic mind simply refuses to go there. I understand it must be hard. Maybe it would help to consider that there is nothing "scientific" in scientific naturalism, except for the intent to take science's models of phenomena and rather arbitrarily insist that the same models apply to the objective reality that produces these phenomena. And as Quantum Mechanics has made absolutely clear scientific models simply cannot directly be applied to objective reality, and that's why naturalists had to actually invent such ontological models (see the various interpretations of quantum mechanics).

(Anyway, thanks of the link about the accuracy of GR, very interesting.)

46. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88628 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 5:04 am

Diacanu (post 306 or #88230):

as evidenced by the fact that the scientific discoveries (particularly in physics) in the last 100 years have forced naturalists to drop one after the other many of their most strongly believed intuitions about how objective reality is,

You said this crap before, and I asked you to back it up, and you ignored me. I say again. BACK IT UP.

I have done so many times already, so if you are really interested you'll have to read my past posts. I have also recommended various books. Perhaps the best one is Nick Herbert's "Quantum Reality". That book explains very well how quantum mechanics destroyed the illusion that science describes objective reality, it extensively quotes the thought of some of the greatest scientists of all time, and it also includes dozens of books for additional reading. The book that best explains how scientific research has rendered the idea of an objectively existing physical reality all but incoherent is the collection of papers in David Mermin's "Boojums All The Way Through". Or see David Mermin's "Spooky Actions at a Distance" in Encyclopaedia Britannica's 1989 "Great Ideas Today" which you can find in you local library.

47. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88624 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 4:48 am

BMMcArdle (post 305 or #88221):

In your calculations in post #55061, are you saying that God is only responsible for the conscious experience of the 6 billion people on Earth?

I am saying that God is responsible for designing and sustaining the order of the experiential environment of all persons God has created, and as we have no reason to believe that there are more persons than the inhabitants of the Earth I do use the 6 billion number. But please observe that differences in complexity are so enormous that it would make not difference whatsoever in my calculation if I also assumed that there are a billion (or a trillion) Earth like planets out there each populated with another 6 billion persons.

Wouldn't God's side include everything in the universe+humanity's conscious experience+God him/her/itself?
Oops, I forgot, there is nothing but our conscious? experience and God.

Correct. According to idealistic theism all that exists is conscious experience following personal will. The physical universe and all the things in it we observe around us are simply patterns present in our conscious experience; patterns caused by God's will.

Can you explain why you think you think?

Well, if I think I think, then I do in fact think, don't you agree? :-)

48. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88623 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 4:34 am

Epeeist (post 377 or #88612):

No proofs needed for logic or mathematics or ontology, as you said in post #88172.

I try to respond posts in sequence (and am almost 100 posts behind :-( but here you are grossly misrepresenting what I wrote. What I wrote in post #88172 is this: "Strictly speaking not even mathematical proofs are really proofs, because they all use as a premise unproven axioms and production rules." Which is obviously true: The validity of mathematical proofs is based on unproven premises. But you take something I wrote that is perfectly true and twist it beyond recognition to claim that I meant something as absurd as that "no proofs are needed for mathematics". Of course mathematical proofs are needed, and we have confidence in them even though they are based on unproved premises. That's the point I was making.

Still, what's the use misrepresenting the other person's ideas? What do you gain by doing that? My problem here is this: When some posters consistently misread or misrepresent what I write then it should be no wonder I have to repeat the same ideas correcting them. But it's also a waste of my time and I can't afford that. So in the future I think I will try to not comment to any posts that grossly misread or misrepresent what I argue, and will only respond to those posts that to my judgment make a good will effort to engage in discussion. So feel free to misread or misrepresent me to your heart's content.

49. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88618 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 3:55 am

Clodhopper (post 298 or #88184):

DG: #85728 On Flea Circus thread...(So ultimately there is not really any difference between religious and humanist ethics).

Clodhopper #86565: Exactly so. Both are man made. Thank you.

DG: You conceding this?

I already did, didn't I? Once again: I concede that all human knowledge is human made. Of course it is. Which implies that anything we know can be wrong because we are all fallible.[1] But it does not imply that human knowledge cannot refer to objective facts. Human knowledge can be fallible and also refer to objective facts. For example some scientific naturalists used to believe that objective reality is local. That belief was proven to be wrong, but that belief nevertheless referred to or made a claim about objective reality. Similarly then ethical beliefs may refer to objective reality, while also being wrong.

I think the confusion is this: Some people think that if there is no general agreement about a proposition (as is the case with ethical propositions), then that proposition cannot be making a claim about objective reality. But to think in this way is plainly wrong. For example scientific naturalists deeply disagree about whether there is one physical universe or many, or whether the physical universe is deterministic or not. But this does not evidence that they are not talking about objective reality. The study of the dynamics of disagreement can at best serve as weak evidence. I have been arguing that the fact that the disagreements among scientific naturalists are widening and deepening with no end in sight evidences that scientific naturalists are not studying something that objectively exists, but I concede that's only weak evidence. Similarly the fact that the moral Zeitgeist is converging (albeit slowly) is evidence that ethics is objective, but again that's only weak evidence.

[1] There is an important exception though: direct experience while we are having it is knowledge that cannot be wrong.

50. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88610 by Dianelos Georgoudis on November 18, 2007 at 3:18 am

Epeeist (post 295 or #88175):

It's naive to ask people for "proof" simply because there cannot be any proofs for ontological claims.

So I can make anything up I like?

:-P Where did I actually claimed or implied that? On the contrary I have been explaining for months now my reasons for considering the ontological worldview of idealistic theism far more reasonable than the ontological worldview of scientific naturalism.

That you can't prove X does not imply that anything goes. It only implies that it's not as simple as demanding proofs, and that those who do make such demands do not understand how things stand. That's why I insist people (both theists and atheists) should study more and think more critically with their own heads instead of assuming things (such as that science implies scientific naturalism).

What's an "atheist belief"? The only thing atheists agree on is that there are no gods (or in my particular version, the contingent hypothesis that there are no gods).

Once again: I am only comparing idealistic theism to scientific naturalism, which is Dawkins's atheistic belief system.