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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

'The empirical counterpart to the Argument From Reason'

The Deuce:
Wow. WOW. I don't follow DI at all, but I have seen BDK around, and he did seem unusually civil for a materialist atheist.

The first thought that pops into my mind is that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a full-fledged materialist atheist to have a genuine good-faith rational conversation. Even on that rare occasion that one seems polite and civil, it turns out to be an elaborate bait-n-switch ploy.

And the second thought that pops into my mind is that this sort of thing is basically the empirical counterpart to the Argument From Reason. To have a good-faith debate requires that all parties accept the premise that there is such a thing as truth, that truth is objective and independent of us, that truth is something that we can and should try to know better, and that there are laws of logic that can lead us from true premises to true conclusions and weed out falsehoods by exposing the contradictions that they lead to. This is the "common ground" between a Christian and a pagan, and anyone else capable of good-faith dialogue.

It's also precisely that premise that materialist atheism is incompatible with, according to the Argument From Reason. If that's true, we should expect to make certain empirical observations. We should expect to see materialists acting as if truth *isn't* something objective and knowable through employing inviolable laws of logic via human reason. We should expect them to approach debate in a purely mercenary fashion, seeing it all as a power play to push their narrative rather than a quest for truth. We should see them resort to ridicule, sophistry, censorship, dishonesty, and even violence wherever they think it can work.

Of course, we should expect them to deny that they think all this until the cows come home, because admitting that you're an anti-truth mercenary who doesn't believe in truth and cares only about winning the narrative is not a winning tactic for an anti-truth mercenary who doesn't believe in truth and cares only about winning the narrative.

And, on those rare occasions where a materialist atheist does seem to be engaging in civil good faith discussion, we shouldn't be surprised to find that it's all just part of some elaborate misdirection for winning the narrative after all. Sheesh.

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