Error ... and Agency

Below is a (lengthy) response I emailed to an online friend. While I haven't included previous emails between us, I think there is enough here to reward your patience in reading it through --

======================

Me: ==… but my main point is that error -- to be more precise: the ability to *recognize* that one has made an error; the ability to correct the error (to the extent possible); and to know that the attempted correction is indeed a correction -- proves that we are agents, proves that "free will" is reality. ==

 

Kristor: ==That seems right intuitively, but I’m not clear on the argument, so let me try to flesh it out. A stone falling has a final cause, a telos ...== 

I almost never argue in those sorts of terms (nor, you may have noticed, by reference to Scripture, except when Scripture or Christian claims are the immediate point): partly because I'm a simple man; partly because the proponents of the false views I wish to argue against tend to ignore/dismiss those sorts of arguments; partly because the general populace has been noticeably dumbed-down within my own lifetime.  So, I try to argue 1) in terms to which I think most people won't react, "Well, that's over my head" and thus ignore the argument, and 2) in terms that the deniers of "free-will" *claim* to accept.

 Thus, I tend to argue by treating atheistic claims about reality *as though* they were true, and then drawing out the contradictions, either directly within the claim itself or against other statements about reality that we (in general) recognize to be true.

Kristor:  ==Error then is a character only of free acts. From the fact that we apprehend errors, then, it follows that we act.==

I think that's one way to put it, though not the way I would put it.  And, I suspect, most people would find such a formulation confusing. 

I am approaching the argument about the reality for “free-will” in terms of C S Lewis's distinction between "cause-and-effect" and "ground-and-consequent", rather than Aristotle's Four Causes.  To paraphrase Lewis's illustration of the distinction -- "cause-and-effect": the tea kettle is whistling because the fire under the kettle is heating the water, which is to say, it is "exciting" the water molecules, which ... and so on; "ground-and-consequent": the tea kettle is whistling because I wish to make a cup of tea.  Now, while these two explanations are *vastly* different, and don't even begin to touch on the same questions, they are not at all contradictory.

You could say that my general approach is to show that, when it is critically examined, we see that the atheistic view of the nature of reality denies (and must deny) "ground-and-consequent" causation, and agency, altogether, and that we all know these denials to be absurd, and thus we *see* that atheism is itself absurd.

Not that this sort of argument is any more successful than any other sort of argument in getting the typical God-denier to acknowledge the reality that God is. 

========

In your very first response to my initial note to you in response to your OP thread at The Orthoshpere, you said -- "Yes. What is not an act cannot be an error. The error generated by the Pentium CPU ["floating-point bug"] is such, not to the CPU, but to the user thereof."

I replied -- "Well, in the case of the Pentium CPU "floating point bug", the error was made by the Intel engineers."

I misread you, which is to say, ==>I made an error<== and then some days later, I ==>realized<== that I had made an error: I had initailly misread you (because I was skimming, rather that reading *attentively*) to be saying that the error generated by the buggy Pentium CPU was due to user error, when in fact, you were restating my point that the user, being an agent, might recognize the erroneous result as an error, but that the CPU, being no agent, does not and cannot.

So, my error in comprehending what you wrote, and my later recognition of the error, is just the sort of thing I was getting at in my first email on this topic to you.

============================

Background concepts (and mini-argument) –

We "theists" recognize two general categories of causation: mechanistic (i.e. "cause-and-effect") and agency (i.e. "ground-and-consequent").  Most people, including most God-deniers, will initially agree that these two categories are real, and distinct, and unbridgeable ... until they see where the argument is going. 

From recognition of the unbridgeable distinction between mechanism and agency, I argue that agency cannot "arise" from mechanism -- this is what the God-deniers who haven't denied agency from the start will then deny and this denial can then be shown absurd and thus false -- and thus that agency is, and must be, fundamental to nature of reality. 

==>But, as there is no such thing as 'agency' unless there is an actually existing agent, it follows that *an actually existing agent* is fundamental to the nature of reality.<== 

That is, *we* cannot be agents unless God (who is an agent) is/exists; or put another way: the fact that we *are* agents proves the reality of God and simultaneously proves the falseness of atheism, in all its forms.

On the other hand, *atheism* -- the -ism, in all its forms -- denies, and must deny, true agency.  For, as per the little argument above, to acknowledge the reality of agency is to acknowledge the reality of God.

Some *atheists* will try to posit random causation, or ‘randomness’ as a causation -- and these people will frequently try to subsume agency under 'randomness'.  But, this is absurd, and thus seen to be false.  For, to speak of ‘randomness’ is to speak of “a lack of correlation” between two or more things.  That is, to speak of a “random cause” is to literally speak of a “cause” which is not correlated with its alleged effect – literally, it is to speak of an effect which is not caused by a “cause”, and of a “cause” which does not cause an effect.

============================

So, back to my error and my recognition of the same; and treating the atheistic “explanation” of reality as being true; and pretending for the moment that to speak of a robot as understanding anything isn’t itself absurd; and ignoring the question of why a robot might reread something it had already read and “understood” –

According to Western-style (*) atheism, I am, in the words of Dilbert-creator, Scott Adams, a “meat robot”.  That is, I do what I do, not because I am an agent who freely chooses to do or to not do – for there are no such things as agents and no such thing as ‘agency’ – but because antecedent material/physical states mechanistically and deterministically cause me to do what I do.

So, assuming atheism’s mechanical determinism (whether of East or of West) to be the truth about myself (and ignoring the absurdity of saying that robot can understand anything), it follows that when I reread your email (which I had initially misread and misunderstood), either:

1) I would read it in exactly the same way as I had before; which is to say, I would misread it and misunderstand it exactly as I had before; or:

2) some (unknown) state or states (which states are, according to Western atheism, material/physical in nature) would cause me to read/understand it differently … which might result either in a correct understanding of it or in some *different* misunderstanding of it.  As a side note, the fact that there are more ways to be wrong than to be right implies that some different misunderstanding is more likely than a proper understanding.

But, assuming that some unknown state or states had caused me to read the email differently than I had at first, and assuming that on this rereading I correctly understood the content of the email, how do I *know* that I now correctly understand it?  After all, both my “understanding” of it, and my “knowledge” that I understand it, are due to some prior state or states, such that when I first read it I “understood” it as “this”, and believed myself to be correct, but when I reread it I understood it as “that”, and believed myself to be correct.  Perhaps if I read it a third time, I will understand it as “the other thing”, and will again believe myself to be correct.

Moreover, given atheism’s mechanically deterministic account of my nature, it isn’t even *meaningful* to speak either of me misunderstanding your email initially nor of correctly understanding it now.  Under atheism, effects are mechanically determined by prior states, not by choices, and not by meaning. 

CONCLUSION: Denial of one’s agency logically entails an infinite regress of denial that one *knows* anything.  And this is absurd, and ergo denial of the reality of one’s “free-will” is a false statement about the nature of reality.

On the other hand (as argued above), affirmation of one’s agency logically entails an affirmation of the reality and agency of God, and ergo denial of the reality of God is a false statement about the nature of reality.

It’s quite a conundrum for the God-denier … and explains why they *always* deny the reality of their own agency.

*I* say that I now correctly understand your email – and that I *know* that I correctly understand it – because you  *intended* the words you wrote mean “this” and not “that” and that when I *chose* to attentively read those words, I grasped/comprehended your intent.

But, under atheism, there really is no such thing as intent, there is no such thing as choosing, and there is no such thing as comprehending intent, nor of comprehending anything at all, for these things not only are not material/physical (as required by Western atheism), but also are not mechanically determined either (as required by both Western and Eastern atheism).

ULTIMATE CONCLUSION: Atheism, taken seriously, denies the reality of *everything*.  And this is absurd.  And thus we know that atheism is absurd, and false.  And thus we know that God is.

============================

(*) Western-style atheism denies the reality of the agent-self but acknowledges the reality of the physical/material world.  Thus, Western-style atheism’s denial of agency reduces to materialist/physicalist mechanical determinism.

In contrast, Eastern-style atheism denies not only the reality of the agent-self but also the reality of the physical/material world.  Thus, while Eastern-style atheism’s denial of agency also reduces to mechanical determinism, it does so without the materialist/physicalist element of Western atheism.

========================

EDIT (2020/11/17): 

The above post contains two arguments: 1) that our ability to see-and-correct error proves that we are agents; 2) that our agency proves that God is.  And they are linked because *everything* points to God, the creator-and-sustainer of all-that-is.

When I first started arguing online over 20 years ago that God is, and that we can know this to be true (i.e. we can know that we are not in error on this point), some people told me that I was approaching the question in a van Tillian presuppositional manner.  But, in fact, my approach is the exact opposite of presuppositionalism.

As Kristor frequently points out, the world *is* a world, it is a coherent whole.  That is, the world does not, because it can not, be either self-contradictory or absurd; for if it were, it would not be coherent ... and would not exist at all.   Thus, my argumentation builds on my belief that *all* atheistic arguments and/or assertions can be shown false by first assuming they are true and then drawing out the absurdities.

========================

EDIT (2020/11/20): 

=====

But, as there is no such thing as agency unless there is an actually existing agent, it follows that *an actually existing agent* is fundamental to the nature of reality.

=====

At the risk of appearing boastful, there is a very important concept expressed here.

Some God-deniers -- those who cannot bring themselves to accept atheism's logical entailment that they themselves don't even exist -- are trying to side-step the conundrum by abstracting out some aspect of personhood and positing that abstraction as being co-fundamental with matter to the nature of reality.  For example, the Hot New Thing for this set is 'panpsychism' ("the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world").  Now, no matter which word is used (and whether capitalized or not) -- 'Mind' (the word and capitalization formerly used), 'consciousness' (the word generally used currently), 'mentality' -- these words but refer to one abstraction or another, then reified.  But, there are no such things abstractions unless there is an actually existing mind who can abstract.

There is no such thing as 'Mind' unless there is an actually existing entity who is a mind.

There is no such thing as 'consciousness' unless there is an actually existing entity who is a conscious.

There is no such thing as 'mentality' unless there is an actually existing entity who possesses mentality.

Implications!

In a recent post on Victor Reppert's blog, Bob Prokop explodes the common atheistic talking point that critical thinking leads one to embrace atheism --

"I'm curious what you think would be an acceptable demonstration of the claim that critical thinking leads to atheism. (I do think this is true, but I am wondering what you think would demonstrate it to you, and others.)"

It's not gonna happen, because there is simply no conceivable way that honest, critical thinking will ever lead to atheism.

Atheism demands that one close one's mind to the illogic of something coming from nothing (or else one has to redefine "nothing" to the point where it is actually "something").

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheism demands that one ignore the fact that 99.9 percent of humanity since the Dawn of Time have believed in, worshiped, and prayed to God (or to gods). Atheists are required to think their tiny minority are "right" and the overwhelming majority of people are "wrong" about the most important of all imaginable questions.

Atheists must insist that all questions can be reduced to matters of empirical evidence and "science" - that art, literature, history, music, architecture, personal experience, all are somehow defective or fundamentally lacking, not quite worthy of trust, ultimately to be (negatively) evaluated against the one-and-only objective standard given the atheist seal of approval.

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Atheism is the very negtion of critical thinking. To the contrary, a case can be made for its being perilously close to insanity

Exactly!

Both the affirmation of the reality of God and the denial of the reality of God are statements about the very nature of reality, of truth, of reason, of morality, of meaning, of love, of beauty, of personhood, of agency, and of our individual selves (and of much else, besides; that list is not exhaustive). The question of the reality of God is the First Question, because everything else follows from the answer to that question.

At the very least, every one of the demands and entailments of God-denial that Mr Prokop lists ought to give one pause regarding one's God-denial if one really is engaging in critical thinking; and some of them are sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of God-denial. Thus, if one really is engaging in critical thinking, then one simply will not continue to deny the reality of God. So, far from critical thinkng leading a person to atheism, in truth it leads one away.

Consider just a few of the above entailments of atheism --

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

This is one of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality. That is, this entailment itself doesn't show that God-denial is false (though other entailments do), but it does show that very few human beings -- including one's own atheistic-professing self -- are actually capable of *really* believing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that *everything* -- including atheism itself -- is meaningless. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least what a person believes about the nature of reality. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least how a person conducts his life.

Now, of course, the fact that no one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes this particular logically inescapable entailment of God-denial does not in itself prove that God-denial is the false view of reality. But it does expose a very serious cognitive dissonance involved in attempting to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality -- if one doesn't believe the logically inescapable entailments of a proposition which one asserts, then one either doesn't really understand the proposition or one doesn't really believe the proposition in the first place. If one asserts that 1+1=2 and yet denies that 2+1=3, then one either does not understand what one is talking about, or one doesn't really believe what one has asserted.

It's a curiosity: atheism is odd, and possibly unique, in this regard -- atheism is a world-view the truth of which matters not in the least were it actually the truth about the nature of reality; the question of the truth of atheism matters only if atheism is not true.

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

This is another of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality -- even the people who explicitly and publically assert that there is no such thing as objective-and-transcendent morality continuously demonstrate by their own behavior that they don't really believe what they have asserted!

Consider just one common example of their behavior belying their assertions --

Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is on very public record of affirming the logical entailment of atheism that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality, and of affirming this as a logical entailment of atheism. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is *also* on very public record of asserting that this or that (e.g. rearing one's child as a Christian; being a "creationist"; punishing criminals because they have chosen to be criminals; being sexually jealous of one's spouse; and on and on) is 'wrong'. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') constantly asserts that there is no "way things ought to be" ... and also constanly asserts that this or that "ought not be" -- this is a blatant self-contradiction: either he (and they) does not really believe the former assertion, or does not really believe the latter assertion(s).


Now, consider this immediate topic in light of the prior one.

Suppose it really is the case that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

And, suppose it really is the case that that *everything* really is ultimately and utterly meaningless, and thus it doesn't matter in the least how one conducts one's life. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

Now, suppose those two propositions simultaneously -- for, after all, if atheism really is the truth about the nature of reality, then both propositions are true.

Does one now see how it is that so many 'atheists' constantly seek to shape public opinion by means of asserting self-contradictions?

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means [that all our thoughts/judgements/conclusions are nothing more than the output] of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

If atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, then you cannot reason -- you cannot *know* anything ... including that you cannot know anything ... and including knowing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

Everything that is coheres, and it cohers in God, and God alone: to deny the reality of God is to deny the coherence of reality. This doubtless explains why 'atheists' so readily retreat into irrationality as a means to protect their God-denial from rational critical evaluation -- contrary to their constant self-promotion, they are not committed to reason/rationality, but merely to refusing to acknowledge God.

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

This is one of the logically inescapable entailments of God-denial which shows it to be absurd, and thus shows it to be false, and thus shows its denial to be true.

When one encounters a God-denier saying such things as "Consciousness is an illusion" or "The 'self' is an illusion" or "There is no such thing as 'free-will'", that isn't just some blow-hard blowing hard (however much that 'atheists' tend to be blow-hards). These claims and other such claims are logically inescapable entailments of atheism.

And when one encounters a God-denier saying something like, "Well, I am an 'atheist', and *I* don't believe that consciousness is an illusion", then one simply is dealing with a blow-hard -- what this or that 'atheist' is willing to affirm does not alter the set of propositions which are logical entailments of atheism.

When one denies the reality of God, then logically and inescapably one has also denied the reality of one's own self: but this is absurd. Since one *knows* that it is absurd to deny the reality of one's own self, and since this absurd denial is logically entailed by the denial of the reality of God, then one *knows* that the initial or grounding absurdity is in the denial of the reality of God.

This is why I say that every 'atheist', as an 'atheist', is intellectually dishonest. This isn't just me being "mean"; this is me "following the logic where it leads" -- atheism is absurd (and thus is false); atheism entails obvious absurdities (and thus is seen obviously to be false); not a single one of the 'atheists' one will ever encounter has any rationally exculpating excuse for continuing to ignore the absurdity of God-denial; that is, every single 'atheist' one will ever encounter asserts the absurdity of God-denial knowing it to be absurd, and thus knowing it to be false.

As the Apostle Paul wrote 2000 years ago: men are without excuse in denying (and failing to love-and-worship) God. Pace Bertrand Russell, men do not deny the reality of God because they have "insufficient evidence". Rather, they deny the reality of God because they refuse to acknowledge the truth they already know.

It really is that simple

I've quoted this before, and no doubt I'll quote it again (to make, once again, the same point I'm going to here) -- From 'The Demon-Haunted World' by Carl Sagan --

Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow.

As the above quote demonstrates to those willing to think about it, the God-deniers don't scoff at the possibility of miracles for any principled reasons, but only because as they have chosen to deny God, they must perforce deny all things connected in any way with God (*).

What is the difference between the claim that "once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street" and the claim that an iron axe-head, rare and expensive in the time and place, which had flown off the handle into a body of water, was seen to float to the surface to be retrieved by the people who needed it?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *could* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it actually happening is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and that claim is recorded in a certain famous "bronze age religious text".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, should it ever be witnessed to occur, would be utterly meaningless, caused by nothing and for no reason and signifying nothing (**); whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate act, and signifies, among other things, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

What is the difference between the claim that at some point in the far distant past, mere undifferentiated and unorganized chemicals became living entities, and the claim to have witnessed the death of a person and then later to have seen that very person alive?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *did* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it happening again is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- and further, such an occurrence is contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature", whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and while such an occurrence is not commonly witnessed, it is not contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, while asserted to have happened, and asserted to be one of the ultimate causes of our existing, is intrinsically utterly meaningless, being something that "just happened", for no reason, and given what 'Science!' has become of late, no cause; whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate and reasoned act, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".


Now, my point is that God-deniers do not denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles out of any high-minded principles. And they certainly don't do it because miracles "break the Laws of Nature", as they like to accuse. For, as the Sagan quote makes clear to anyone willing to see, in the end the God-deniers deny that there even are any such things as "Laws of Nature".

No, the reason -- the *only* reason -- that the God-deniers denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles is because, by definition, a miracle is the result of a deliberate and reasoned act of God, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

God-deniers don't hate miracles because they "fuckin' love science", as so many of them are wont to claim when they imagine that 'science' may be a handy stick for beating God, but because they hate God; it really is that simple.



(*) which is why, in the end, they always end up denying that they themselves, and you also, of course, even exist.

(**) well, it does signify the denial that there even *are* any "Laws of Nature"

Karen Straughan

Karen Straughan (video): Why do MRAs bring up the draft?

I've watched of few of her videos (*) recently; she's mostly sensible ... for an 'atheist' and a pro-abortionist.


(*) And I *hate* videos; for in most cases, whatever information they may present could be presented in writing with far less expenditure of my time (to say nothing of bandwidth).

How ‘Science!’ works!

Im-a-fool-and-don’t-you-forget-it! wrote at Victor Reppert’s blog -- "Illion [sic] shows again that he has absolutely no idea what kind of physical laws are entailed by relativity and quantum mechanics. There actually IS a difference between "science" and feats of "magic" that have never, and will never occur. These things are not entailed by any physical law. They are nothing more than stories concocted by people like you who don't have a clue, but just want to justify an imaginary God."

From 'The Demon-Haunted World' by Carl Sagan

"Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow."

Ah!

So, if one were to assert that at any time my "car [might] spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of [the] garage and be found the next morning on the street", with the caveat that any actual occurrence of the assertedly possible event is so improbable as to be effectively a non-existent possibility ... well, that's 'Science!' On the other hand, if one were to assert (and record) that one had actually witnessed the Risen Christ to *intentionally* walk through a locked door, damaging neither door nor self, well, that's just superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

So, if one were to assert that at any time all the oxygen molecules in the auditorium might spontaneously gather themselves into the upper corners of the room (this was an example assertion by one of my professors as an illustration of what QM “tells us”), thus leaving all the humans in the room lacking for the oxygen necessary to sustain their lives, with the caveat that any actual occurrence of the assertedly possible event is so improbable as to be effectively a non-existent possibility ... well, that's 'Science!' On the other hand, if one were to assert (and record) that one had actually witnessed a certain usefully-shaped collection of (primarily) iron atoms rise to the surface of a body of water into which it had fallen, well, that's just superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

So, if one were to assert that, contrary to all experience, and contrary to all scientific and medical findings to date, non-living chemicals can spontaneously arrange themselves into living organisms ... well, that's 'Science!' On the other hand, if one were to assert (and record) that one had actually witnessed a collection of once-living molecules walking around, eating, breathing, and talking to other collections of ambulatory molecules well after one knew that collection of molecules to have been dead, and one attributed this socking-and-totally-unexpected development to the sovereign power of the Being who created molecules and living organisms in the first place, well, that's just superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

I think we all see how ‘Science!’ - and ‘I-pretend-to-be-rational’ -- operates.

I think this is already the case for many God-haters

'News' at UD: Jason Rosenhouse: Multiverse is a “done deal,” Occam’s razor doesn’t apply -- "Prediction: Increasingly, logic will be seen as a covert form of theism."

Related --
What WON’T we toss out to defend the multiverse? -- "Cosmologist Sean Carroll would retire falsifiability as a science idea. ..."

This is because "the multiverse" (like Darwinism) is the very epitome of non-scientific, and even anti-scientific, (ahem) thought. BUT, because both "the multiverse" and Darwinism seem to offer a means to ignore the necessity of the Necessary Being, the God-haters will jettison *anything* to continue bitterly clinging to those silly ideas.

DO’s Prediction succeeds (2 1/2 years ago): “Increasingly, logic will be seen as a covert form of theism”

Fun with statistical correlations

Spurious Correlations -- the correct response to *any* claim that relies primarily (and especially if solely) on statistical correlations is, "Yeah, right! Come back when you have some evidence."

Now that's commitment

... but is it credible? -- "A coroner's spokeswoman Thursday said Talley was found in his garage by a family member who called authorities. They said Talley died from seven or eight self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun fired into his torso and head."

Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks VI

The blogger ‘Shadow to Light’ has a recent post concerning just how weak-vaporous are Jerry Coyne’s “powerful arguments for atheism”. I have some comments --

Shadow to Light: "This [the sixth "argument"] is a nonsense question. We inquire about the origin of something if we have reason to think that thing came into existence. Treating God as if He is supposed to be one more thing that is part of contingent reality means you have not seriously considered the question of God’s existence, which is probably why this is a favorite argument among the pre-teens and young teens."

Also, as an "argument", it is blatant straw-manning and question-begging built upon an equivocation. Consider it again --

Jerry Coyne: "6. Who made God? Secularism provides the best explanation for the idea of God, for we have ample reason to think (and in fact have often witnessed) that gods are created by the human mind."

The equivocation: no "idea of God" is God himself. Conceptions of 'god' may or may not be accurate -- they may or may not actually refer to the actual God -- but even accurate conceptions of God are incomplete. And none of them is God himself: no more than is one's understanding of one's father one's father himself.

The strawman: as 'Shadow to Light' notes, "[t]reating [the Biblical Judeo-Christian conception of the Creator-]God as if He is supposed to be one more thing that is part of contingent reality means you have not seriously considered the question [and arguments] of God’s existence"

This strawman contains another equivocation -- Coyne is treating the Biblical Judeo-Christian conception of the Creator-God -- the uncreated/non-contingent Necessary Being who is the "ground of all being", who is "being itself" -- as being logically equivalent to any of the various the pagan conceptions of their gods, all of whom were conceived as being contingent, all of whom were conceived either as having been born of some pre-existing deity, or as having spontaneously "arisen" from some pre-existing state of affairs.

It is a favorite strawman of atheists to knock down Zeus and then triumphantly proclaim that they have knocked down The Ancient of Days.

The question-begging: by equivocating between conceptions of God and God himself, this atheist "argument" begs the question whether the term 'God' refers to anything other than this or that conception of 'god'. That is, this "argument" *begins* with the assumption that the terms 'God' and 'god' refer ever and only to ideas and never to what those ideas are believed to concern. So, of course, by *assuming* that the Judeo-Christian use of the term 'God' refers *only* to the Judeo-Christian concept of what God is like, and never to God Himself, he is able to "conclude" that God is merely an idea "created by the human mind."

Well, d'oh!

Keep in mind, Gentle Reader -- this is the *best* that the militant God-haters (and would-be murderers of his people) can do.

Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks V

I just happened to see this over at Uncommon Descent, and thought I'd share it with Gentle Reader --
Barry Arrington: If I Made This Stuff Up No One Would Believe Me

Mark Frank: “PVH is surely right that it is always possible you are wrong about an objective belief.”

Barry: “Mark, is it possible that that statement is wrong?”

Mark Frank: “Yes”

to which Mark Frank replied:

Can anyone explain to me what Barry finds ridiculous about this? I made an assertion. Like all assertions I might be wrong. Clearly I think I am right, but I am fallible.

The typical 'atheist' or 'skeptic' (or 'Science!' fetishist) simply doesn't *think* ... neither about what "the bad guys" say, nor about what they themselves say; even *after* it has been pointed out that there is a logical flaw in what they assert, they do not rationally/logically examine it to see the flaw for themselves.

What happened here is that in one easy step, Barry Arrington used the "Skeptical" game Mark Frank was playing against the game itself ... and against Mark Frank's 'Science!' fetishism.

Here's how the "Skeptical" game works --

You, not being a self-proclaimed 'skeptic' and paragon of 'Reason!' and 'Science!', that is, not being a God-hater, state (or even argue) 'X'.

Now, 'X' may or may not have anything directly to do with God or morality or other such "offensive" topics, but if it leads to God or morality or so forth, then the 'skeptic', being a paragon of 'Reason!' and 'Science!', simply *must* deny it, denegrate it, and "prove" that you're an idiot.

So, the 'skeptic', that a paragon of 'Reason!' and 'Science!', when he can't attack what you've said on rational and logical grounds -- as he generally can't -- resorts to various forms of irrationality and illogic. Currently, one of their favorite means to denegrate the ideas they hate is play the "Radical Skepticism" card, that is, to simply deny that any knowledge is possible.

Understand this: Mark Frank, and PVH before him, didn't show any error or flaw in whatever it was that someone else had said which they woshed to deny. Instead, simply by asserting "that might be wrong/incorrect", they magically transformed it into a wrong/incorrect statement or argument.

And, if you, trying to be "civil", let them play the "Radical Skepticism" card, or worse, agree with its premises, then, for their purposes, they "win". For, keep in mind, such God-haters don't care about getting at the truth of reality, but care about getting rid of God, somehow, anyhow, and about silencing anyone who is trying to discover or explicate more about God.

==== Edit: 2013/12/02
The explanation for the fact that Mr Frank (and PVH before him) was playing an intellectually dishonest game, rather than demonstrating actual skepticism, has to do with the nature of logic and logically valid reasoning --
1) when one starts with true premises, and reasons validly (i.e. logically) from them, then it is impossible for the conclusion to be other than true;
1a) when one starts with true premises, BUT reasons invalidly (i.e. illogically) from them, then it is possible for the conclusion to be either true or false ... for it it not logically connected to the premises;
2) when one starts with false premises, and reasons validly (i.e. logically) from them, then it is impossible for the conclusion to be other than false;
2b) when one starts with false premises, and reasons invalidly (i.e. illogically) from them, then it is possible for the conclusion to be either true or false ... for it it not logically connected to the premises;
3) when one starts with possibly true premises, and reasons validly (i.e. logically) from them, then it is possible for the conclusion to be either true or false ... this is because the premises may have been false, after all -- that is, such a conclusion *may* be a case of 1) or of 2);
3a) when one starts with possibly true premises, and reasons invalidly (i.e. illogically) from them, then it is possible for the conclusion to be either true or false ... for it it not logically connected to the premises AND the premises may or may not be true, after all -- that is, such a conclusion *may* be a case of 1a) or of 2a);

Had Mr Frank been demonstrating actual skepticism about whatever it was he wished to deny, he might have attempted to show that the premises were false; he might have attempted to show that the reasoning from the premises was logically invalid; lastly, he might have attempted to show that the truth-value of the premisses is unknown, and thus, though the resoning may have been logically valid, the conclusion cannot be trusted as being true.

He *pretended* to be taking the third tack, simply by asserting his "conclusion" that the thing he wished to deny was possibly false: either because the premisses were possibly false or because the reasoning was possibly invalid.

'Science!' and Miracles ... and Skepticism!

The purpose of this post is to mock (once again, for it is a never-empty font of mockability) the selective hyper-skepticism of those I call 'scientistes' (the word is meant to echo Miss Piggy's claim/plea to be recognized as "an Artiste"), that is, adherents and promoters of scientism, worshippers of 'Science!'

The specific target of this post is a selectively hyper-skeptical idea I've encountered before, both the Sagan quote (for instance, here), and the underlying idea, which I heard in a television "science" program; if I recall correctly, the Speaker For 'Science!' in the program was Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, and he even used the same specific claim that one's car could well "ooze" through the garage wall and park itself on the street.

Recently, on Crude's blog, Orandath posted this quotation:

"From The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

"Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow."

My response to this selectively hyper-skeptical assertion is:

And, sometimes, iron axeheads which have flown off their handles and fallen into a pond or river float to the surface. [This is a reference to a miracle of the prophet Elisha, as recorded in II Kings 6:1-7] And, sometimes, the dead bodies of persons who really and truly are dead, rise back to life. [This is a reference to a number of resurrections recorded in both Old and New Testaments, including that of Jesus the Christ.]

So, given what 'scientistes' believe and assert about the nature of reality, how can their denial of, and refusal to believe, any of the miracles recorded in the Bible be anything other than selective hyper-skepticism, which is to say, intellectual dishonesty?