Doubting Marcus

God Won’t Help Establish Objective Morality

Suppose I’m feeling generous and I ignore the implications of the Euthyphro dilemma. If we put aside the fact we have no reason to believe goodness can come from a subject, not even god, would theists then be able to establish a system of objective morality? No.

When it is asked why humans ought to obey god one of the most common responses is that god is goodness itself but this response is nearly a nonsequitur, as it only tangentially has anything to do with the actual question we asked. Saying god is goodness itself, even if this is objective goodness, doesn’t answer why we ought to value this goodness and hence obey the duties imposed on us by god. At best it sidesteps the question perhaps in the hopes that it should be obvious that we ought to value goodness but it surely doesn’t explain why this is so.

It also should be noted this claim is often made in a manner which is unfalsifiable because no state of affairs exists which would count as evidence against the claim that god is goodness itself. Under such circumstances, where there is no possible empirical state which would contradict the claim, one would be no less justified in saying god is evil itself. So the statement god is goodness itself would lack meaning and I would have literally no reason to believe it. Of course, with no reason to believe god is goodness you can’t establish that we have any reason to follow duties that follow from the god being goodness.

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Presuppositionalists: No Doubt Allowed!

I’m currently in a dialogue with a presuppositionalist and despite some progress at this moment I think I feel my mind melting away.

Presuppositionalists, for those who don’t know, say that the laws of logic and the consistency of nature are dependent on god. In fact in order to maintain absolute certainty they appeal to this being who can, in ways proponents can’t explain, ensure them with absolute certainty of the consistency of morality, nature and logic.

However how is this being to make itself known outside of these laws? Through the violation of the laws of nature. In other words they are claiming the best way to prove the absolute consistency of the laws of nature is through the violation of the laws of nature.

Imagine someone refusing to play a sport unless they could be guaranteed with absolute certainty that the referees never made mistakes and weren’t corrupt. Of course no person could ever give them that assurance so they simply appeal to an unknowable, and invisible, head referee who can assure them there will be no mistakes. They can’t explain how this head referee can assure them there will be no cheating, he just does and you have to believe them. After all, they say, it’s only through the existence of the head referee that there can be a game at all.

In truth, of course, some finite limit of certainty is the only game in town. Presuppositionalists just refuse to acknowledge they are playing the same game as everyone else.

In Defense of Biblical Literalism

I’ve known a wide variety of Christians in my life and I’ve seen probably as many interpretations of the Bible as there are Christians. Many of them, being liberal or moderate believers, often chastise atheists like myself for taking certain passages literally. They argue, in effect, that we are taking a naive view of scripture as totally literal but it seems to me this is the only consistent way to interpret the Bible. This may seem odd coming from someone who just a week ago said I was giving up trying to complete reading the Bible. However a recent minor flare-up in the Youtube community sparked my interest in this topic again.

Taking the Bible literally of course doesn’t mean taking verses out of their textual or historical context but it does mean if the Bible says “God commanded the town be burnt to the ground” it means what it says just as it means what is says when it proclaims Jesus is divine. In fact unless Christians accept at least some parts of the Bible as literally true, at the very minimum some of the stories about Jesus, then there’s no good reason to call oneself a Christian nor to prefer the Bible to any other work. If it is all metaphor, allegory and philosophical insight then the Bible is no different from a novel by Charles Dickens or the Tao Te Ching. If it is agreed that some parts must be taken as true then the question becomes how do we determine which parts should be taken as true? Therein lies the problem, I’ve never seen a consistent, systemic way of interpreting the Bible that rejects the barbarism of the Hebrew Bible and the doctrine of hell but embraces the passages of love and forgiveness and there’s good reason to think such an approach doesn’t exist. However, if the approach taken to interpreting the Bible is not consistent, essentially allowing believers to make it up as they go along, then why take it seriously at all?

This is the fundamental problem of liberal and moderate Christianity but naturally this criticism doesn’t just apply to the Bible but to all alleged holy books. Yet as a practical matter of how best should we go about weaning people off immoral behavior with textual religious support this approach may be wanting. This despite the fact that even those that consider themselves literalists also reject portions of their scripture (when was the last time you recall anyone endorsing stoning?). Of course taking the approach of the literalists we also end up with absurd ideas like people walking on water, snakes talking and a diverse population coming from inbreeding. Kind of makes the whole venture look pointless… primarily because it is.

The Geller Telekinesis Argument

Imagine someone presents you the following argument:

1. All cars used for transportation have some force enabling them to drive.
2. Uri Geller’s car is used for transportation.
3. Therefore Uri Geller’s car has some force enabling it to drive.

On a straightforward reading that conclusion seems harmless. You probably understand car propulsion has something to do with engines and fuel so concluding Geller’s car has some force is no stretch. Now what if I told you the person making this argument was arguing that Geller’s car was not enabled by the typical internal combustion engines you vaguely grasp and indeed not by any understood process at all. Instead they claim Geller’s car is moved by telekinesis and that this argument demonstrates that fact. You see telekinesis is “some force” that could in theory enable a car to drive.

Now ignoring for the sake of argument that we could actually test this claim, what’s wrong with this argument? The contention is clearly over the term “some force” as what leads you to accept the first premise is that there is abundant evidence of cars running because of physical causes. In fact all of the evidence for working cars is tied to fuel, engines, gas pedals, etc. and there is no evidence at all that cars can function due to telekinesis or that telekinesis of any kind is possible. This clearly is a case of using a term that has multiple possible meanings and switching between those two meanings, a classic fallacy of equivocation.

This scenario is strongly analogous to the Kalam cosmological argument which argues that the universe was created out of nothing and goes:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Where the Geller telekinesis argument equivocates between known physical forces and telekinesis for usable cars, Kalam equivocates between creation out of something (meaning a rearrangement of physical materials), and creation out of nothing (literally meaning something coming from nothing), in the use of “begin to exist.” In both cases all of the evidence for the acceptance of the first premise is in one meaning of a term which is then abandoned the rest of the argument. We have plenty of reason to believe things “begin to exist” if you mean the rearrangement of preexisting materials. However just as we have no evidence for telekinesis we have no evidence that things begin to exist out of nothing and yet this is what the proponents are arguing for. Ultimately simply because you can bundle two different meanings under the same label doesn’t mean we must accept one meaning which has no evidence supporting it.

I’ve previously addressed Kalam at length but I think this is a handy way to see one major issue with the argument that most people can understand.

“We Reason, Therefore Naturalism is False (and God Exists)”

The argument from reason, as my joking title suggests, insists that reason can not be reduced to physical states and that fundamentally matter must reduce to mental things and, not surprisingly, some say the origin of reason is necessarily god. Some versions don’t actually attempt to prove a god but only eliminate naturalism (which would leave an atheistic idealism) but as this argument universally asserts that naturalism can’t account for reason, and considering philosophical naturalism is a common position of atheists including myself, I felt I should explain why this too is a bad reason to believe in god or rule out naturalism.

The central idea in the argument from reason is that if our mental faculties are the result of natural processes like evolution, themselves the product of undirected deterministic physics, then what we think are reasons aren’t really reasons so rationality could not have emerged from these physical processes. In the same sense that you wouldn’t attribute “reasons” to the actions of glass breaking when dropped to the floor because it was just responding to determined physical processes, if our cognitive faculties are the result of determined physical processes we can’t truly say we are reasoning. Therefore, proponents say, if naturalism is true then we don’t have rationality and hence no reason to believe in naturalism as the position refutes itself. The alternative provided is that mental states are the fundamental substance (entity?) of reality and only if this is true can we account for rationality. As Victor Reppert states in his defense of the argument:

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We All Make Assumptions Part 2

*Part 1 - an explanation of my epistemology

Is there a real difference between the assumptions made by atheists like myself and Christians who accept Van Tillian presuppositionalism? One might argue that ultimately all epistemologies have to start with some assumptions so one is just as circular as another. This, I believe, could hardly be more incorrect. Suppose I begin my search for knowledge with the assumption that an evil daemon exists which is manipulating me and as such that some things are exactly opposite of what they initially seem. This would obviously make reasoning rather difficult if not impossible, and hence limit the ability to build a set of beliefs, but more importantly this isn’t in any way similar to far more basic the assumptions which underlie my particular brand of evidentialism.

Just to recap my particular assumptions are:

• I exist
• My senses aren’t always wrong
• Physical evidence is a way to justify beliefs

These aren’t conclusions about how the world operates but rather a basic framework for discovering how it does. Let’s compare these to the assumptions of Van Tillian presuppositionalism:

• A god exists (and that we have any idea what ‘god’ refers to)
• This god has interacted with humans
• The product of that interaction is Christian scripture

I’d hope it is easy to see that these kinds of assumptions are not equivalent. Even if granted that these Van Tillian assumptions merely serve as an apparatus to gather knowledge, as the assumption that physical evidence is a way to justify beliefs serves in my view, far more broad conclusions are drawn and they aren’t generic items to build a belief system, they are a belief system. Additionally I believe that without realizing it this view has already assumed the two assumptions of my form of evidentialism. Without assuming that you exist there is no way to extrapolate to any idea and without assuming that your senses are sometimes accurate you could never accept that there is a world to be interacted in or that the Christian scripture actually exists or even if it exists that it doesn’t say the opposite of what you believe it does. Moreover none of the assumptions that underlie evidentialism are facts about historical events or the existence of other minds. If, as it’s sometimes claimed, I were just assuming whatever I so pleased as a baseline I could assume, for instance, that the natural world is all that exists and that there are no gods but I don’t do so.

In fact almost no epistemologies not based in religion begin with such bold assumptions because these aren’t just be assumptions, they are far-reaching conclusions about reality. The goal of epistemology and theories of justification is to acquire accurate knowledge about reality not to impose conclusions. This is part of the fundamental difference between assuming an entire worldview and assuming the tools to construct a worldview. To borrow a bit of coherentist jargon presuppositionalism begins with an unalterable thoroughly fleshed out web of beliefs while most epistemologies try to construct one of many possible web of beliefs given a few far more basic starting points.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I object to the idea that the first assumption in presuppositionalism is even logically coherent given the lack of an ontology for god. Until there is some coherent description of what this god is to say rely on god for anything is unreasonable. Still even if ‘god exists’ is coherent I believe that the Christian god is logically impossible because it is self-refuting in numerous ways, as is Christian scripture (by the way which Christian scripture?), and despite the claims of presuppositionalists no being can be the foundation of logic. All epistemologies seem to have their problems but hardly any approach this level of encompassing foundationalism and self-contradiction. We all make assumptions but some of them are more bold, less justified and far more self-contradictory than others. Van Tillian presuppositionalism is quite possibly at the apex of this unholy trinity.

We All Make Assumptions Part 1

How do we know what’s real? What counts as evidence? Philosophers have been asking these questions for thousands of years and since none were available I’ve been asked to explain how I answer these questions. There are certain assumptions that underlie my epistemology, as they are with all epistemologies, but I was particularly asked how mine differ or are less circular than the assumptions that underlie Van Tillian presuppositionalism so I endeavor to do that here. Much of what I have to say about Van Tillian presuppositionalism I’ve already stated in my rebuttal to it as an argument for the existence of god and much of my epistemology will sound familiar to those who are fans of Evid3nc3 of Youtube, I can’t help that I largely agree with him.

However my particular choices as an empirical evidentialist (though strictly speaking its more a coherentist form of evidentialism) is not the main brunt of my distinction because it is not only the details my particular evidentialism that distinguish it from presuppositionalist arguments for gods but a difference in kind. As an evidentialist, though not in the strict W.K. Clifford universal sense, before I begin any pursuit of truth I must assume that:

• I exist
• My senses aren’t always wrong
• Physical evidence is a way to justify beliefs

These are assumptions which I don’t take to be self-evident but the third assumption is the basis for actually attaining knowledge. This third claim is also open to revision or possible refutation and is not, I can’t emphasize this enough, an entire worldview but rather the means for constructing a worldview. It is also the basis for an argument that all justified beliefs are ultimately based physical evidence but that too is open to revision or refutation.

Presuppositionalists often like to point to the laws of thought and say that only a theist good could account for these “self-evident truths” but I reject the idea that there are even self-evident truths. Imagine for a moment we found ourselves as minds in a universe which either contained no distinct objects, everything was one amorphous entity, or in a universe of nothingness. In either scenario I can’t comprehend a way in which the law of identity could be abstracted because it is dependent upon there being at least two distinguishable items. Devoid of these distinctive objects it seems to me a mind could not abstract them and hence I believe logic has its basis in sense experience. The fact that the law of identity would still be true, even if not applicable in such universes, is not relevant because if it couldn’t be abstracted in any scenario it is obviously not a self-evident truth.

Similarly if we found ourselves in a universe devoid of all objects how could one abstract the idea of the law of non-contradiction? Without items to draw upon I see no conceivable way could a mind just abstract the idea of true or false statements (assuming for the sake of argument these aren’t necessarily human minds which are not in fact “blank slates” at birth). Again the fact that it would still be true that a statement can not both be true and false at the same time is not relevant. All that is relevant is that even this foundational aspect of logic is also dependent upon some sense experience.

There may be things which are objectively true in all realities but there are no “self-evident truths” which can be discovered purely by rational thought. Mathematics, the laws of logic, etc are abstractions and as such I believe they, like all claims of knowledge, ultimately stem from physical evidence. However I’m more than willing to admit that I could definitely be wrong about all of this but even if I am I think we’ll see that this type of epistemology and theory of justification is quite far removed from presuppositionalism.

Part 2