Why Americans don't like atheists

(a reply to "Why do Americans still dislike atheists?")

The column by Gregory Pauland and Phil Zuckerman ironically helps explain the tendency in America to distrust (a preferable term to "dislike," I think) atheists while decrying the same.

An example paragraph:

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

First, let's not assume that people simply assume that atheists are unsavory beings.  Many of us have personal acquaintances who provide evidence of unsavory atheism.  News reports, in addition, often introduce people to some of the least savory atheists, such as those who appear to actively dislike believers.

Second, it's hard to take an atheist seriously about being "more ethical" than other groups prior to the atheist's having established some sort of standard by which to measure one position as more ethical than another.

It'd be a fun diversion to pick apart this story piece by piece, but instead here's the quick summary:  Atheists, if you want believers to like and respect you then avoid falling into the things you dislike in the religious groups you criticize, such as the dubiously justified superior moral attitude and clumsily directed attacks at the other guy's belief system.

And while you're at it, come up with an epistemologically accessible and coherent atheistic version of moral realism.



(There are plenty of atheists I like, by the way)

Sam Harris on morality (Updated)

I sometimes offer atheists and agnostics the advice that atheism's great shortcoming is its inability to offer a plausible grounding for moral realism. Apparently "new atheist" Sam Harris also perceived a glaring need in that area. Harris has written a book ("The Moral Landscape") intended to fill the void.

And here's a video of Harris giving a talk on the subject:



I'm afraid that Harris' approach to the issue is all too familiar.
He tries to make the point that science can address morality because science is about facts and morality, if it exists, is a fact. That's all well and good, but even if you assume that there is an existent morality how do you detect it using science? And that's where Harris falls flat on his face:

Now, to speak about the conditions of well being in this life, for human beings, we know there is a continuum of such facts. We know that it's possible to live in a failed state. Where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Where mothers cannot feed their children. Where strangers cannot find the basis for peaceful collaboration. Where people are murdered indiscriminately.

How do we know? We just know! What could be more convenient?

And we know that it's possible to move along this continuum, toward something quite a bit more idyllic, to a place where a conference like this is even conceivable.  And we know, we know, that there are right and wrong answers to how to move in this space.  Would adding cholera to the water be a good idea.  Well probably not.

Apparently we don't know quite enough about the cholera question to answer definitively!

Seriously, a guy with a degree in philosophy from Stanford can't do any better than this?  It's not even difficult to illustrate the problem.

Suppose for the sake of argument that morality is an illusion.  We have ideas of morality but moral precepts are not real.  Now suppose in that scenario we know--we know--there is a continuum of moral facts.  If that subjective impression of knowledge is sufficient to make morals real then this scenario results in a contradiction.

In the end, Harris adopts a strategy akin to that used by Ayn Rand and George Smith:  assume that something basic ("well being") is an objective moral good and then propose that science can help figure out certain things that result in well being.  Then claim that science can answer moral questions while ignoring the fact that the finding of science is utterly reliant on the axiomatic moral precept ("well being is good").

Update:

Though not on precisely the same subject, a just-published story by Michael Gerson about the brothers Hitchens seems like a good companion to the above.

The Bad Argument in the Great Debate about Free Will (Updated)

YouTube is great. Some weeks ago I found an excellent video (produced by an atheist) that nicely brought low the argument that foreknowledge is incompatible with free will.

That video spawned the usual sprawling debate thread, though YouTube's character limits on commentary kept that debate at minimal depth. A recent set of comments from "dbes02" confidently makes claims like the following:

But that's the whole point - if someone's behaviour is PREDICTABLE then they don't have free will.

If dbes02 was just talking about predictability in principle--a concept entailed by determinism--then that would be fine.  But this character's arguments look like they'll boil down to a consistent assumption of determinism.

Hoping to obtain a view of his argument unconstrained by character limits, I went hunting for uploaded videos and found the following:




Somebody posts an entire YouTube video to refute free will and this is the entire argument? Unbelievable.

• If I had free will it would be just as easy to choose to strangle my 8 year old daughter as to choose to hug her.
• But it isn't, so I don't have free will.

I posted a response showing how an indeterministic model (thought experiment) provides a fatal counterexample to his argument. He soon replied, hilariously asserting that I was begging the question by assuming that indeterminate outcomes are possible. Apparently dbes02 does not realize that if his criticism of me was legitimate then it is just as fatal to his own argument:  "If I had free will ..."  If he can't have free will then the argument is superfluous.  If he can (at least for the sake of argument) then we can have indeterminate outcomes unless we beg the question.

Update:

I tried to lure "dbes02" into engaging in a formal debate where he would defend his assertion that "Epistemic determinism is incompatible with free will."

Having every confidence in my ability to quash whatever argument he might present, I suggested a formal debate, perhaps hosted by infidels.org.  Dbes02 responded with some hilarious evasions, and the debate challenge remains hanging.  I made the initial challenge via (YouTube) private messaging, but before this posting reiterated it in the public commentary.  And dbes02 has already sniffed around the bait (those interested can find the details here).

As it turns out, the Internet Infidels no longer host a discussion board.  But the discussion from there migrated to the Freethought & Rationalism Discussion Board.

Shermer versus Koukl on the Hugh Hewitt Show (Updated)

This week on Hugh Hewitt's radio program, Hewitt continued his "Great God Debate" series by matching skeptic Michael Shermer against Greg Koukl.

Though I heard only portions of the program, I came away greatly impressed with Koukl.  He displayed an excellent command of the moral argument and great rhetorical skill in pressing the argument against Shermer's defense.

As for Shermer, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who happens to bring a poor set of arguments to the table.  His arguments are as bad as Christopher Hitchens' in terms of logic, and Shermer lacks the rhetorical skill that frequently allows Hitchens to produce an effective debate performance despite his bankrupt basis for argument.

Hewitt has a transcript posted, but unfortunately it is mostly worthless until the formatting is changed.  I'll pull out some interesting bits to illustrate the portion of the argument I found riveting.

Koukl frames the key issue as he sees it:

Actually, the big question here, Hugh, is whether it’s possible to be good without God. Now I’m not talking about whether it’s possible to be good without a belief in God. I certainly think that’s possible, but be good without God. And the answer to that question hinges entirely on precisely what you mean by good. And so I was going to give an illustration. So a man drags a young girl into the alley, he sexually abuses her, strangles here, and tosses her into the dustbin. Is that act wrong? Now I think everybody listening is going to admit it is wrong. But here is the real question. What do we mean when we say that that act of rape and abuse and murder is wrong? Are we describing the action itself, the object? Are we saying that the object, the rape, the murder, has a quality of being wrong, and therefore, wherever that rape goes, the wrongness follows it, just like your height, 6’ 2”, or whatever it is, is an objective quality of you. Wherever you go, your height follows you in the same way. Does the wrongness follow the rape? Well, if it’s a quality of the rape, if it’s an objective quality of the rape, then it does. And it doesn’t matter what people think about it, or what cultures decides, or what your evolutionary conditioning is. The rape is still wrong. The other alternative is that you’re not talking about the rape. You’re talking about yourself.

What I heard of Shermer's attempts to deal with this issue were practically amazing in the degree to which they failed to supply a real answer.

Shermer, addressing whether morality is objective or relative:

"Well, I don’t think it’s quite so black and white. That is to say I think there are provisional moral truths that exist whether there’s a God or not. In other words, it’s wrong, morally, absolutely morally wrong to rape and murder. And that would be true whether there was a God or not."

Shermer went on to sketch something akin to the Euthyphro dilemma, making it appear that he advocates a moral realism that requires no divine foundation.  Shermer continued:

I think it really exists, a real, moral standard like that. Why? Well, because first, you could ask the person who is being affected, we should always ask the moral recipient of the act, how do you feel about being raped or murdered or stolen from or lied to. And the moral actor will tell you, it doesn’t matter whether, if I could use a current example, I haven’t any idea if Tiger Woods and his wife are religious or not. But you can just ask his wife whether it was morally right or wrong, and she’ll tell you.

Koukl responded perfectly, including the following:

"What I’m trying to do is to be able to answer the question that came up initially, is God necessary for morality, which Michael denies. It’s to say well, what is it that morality, that we’re trying to describe? It is either objective, and therefore an immaterial obligation that applies to certain behaviors, or it is subjective. The things that Michael described were variously subjective, evolutionary elements, subjective cultural elements, but then he affirmed that we all have good and evil in our nature, or an awareness of that. I agree with that entirely. We all are aware of those things. That’s why even if we don’t believe in God, we can still know morality and follow it. The question is what accounts for real, genuine objective morality?"

Thus Koukl put it back in Shermer's lap to coherently describe what type of objective morality would exist minus a god (such as God), noting that through this point in the debate Shermer had described it in terms indistinguishable from subjective/relativistic morality.

Shermer seemed incapable of addressing the point with his response:

I’m not arguing for cultural evolution. I’m actually arguing as part of our, what you described as materialistic, natural selection, Darwinian evolution, that it’s not enough to just pretend or fake being a good group member. You actually have to believe it, feel it, and live it. So what I’m arguing is that natural selected certain moral sentiments, as Adam Smith called them, moral feelings, an actual empathy, Adam Smith talked about, we actually empathize with somebody else, we can put ourselves into their shoes and feel their pain, I’m arguing that’s very real.

I earlier encountered a response similar to Shermer's over at the Center For Inquiry discussion board.  Apparently some skeptics think that if subjective impressions are real then it therefore follows that morality based on those subjective impressions somehow adds up to moral realism (objective existence of moral precepts themselves).   That seems ridiculous on its face, and a simple reductio ad absurdum follows:

If Fred thinks that it is wrong for Tom to do X at time t while at the same time Tom thinks that it is right for Tom to do X at time t, then we have a case in which Fred and Tom have apparently established "real" moral precepts that directly contradict one another.

Koukl adopts a slower process to bring out the same point:

"Regardless of what our sentiments happen to be regarding moral actions, we can feel good or feel bad or whatever, the problem is that morality is prescriptive, not merely descriptive. That is it tells us not just what we did, but what we ought to have done in the past, and what we ought to do in the future. That is not something that any Darwinian mechanism can describe, because nothing about my biology can inveigh upon me to act a certain way for moral reasons in the future. It doesn’t tell me why I should be good tomorrow."

In other words, the "is" of "Fred thinks that it is wrong for Tom to do X at time t" does not make it that case that Tom ought not do X at time t any more than Tom's opposite belief entails the converse moral precept.  Put simply, Shermer has come upon the is/ought divide (the problem of deriving an "ought" from an "is") without providing reasonable evidence that he has solved the problem.

Shermer surely founders with all of his subsequent attempts to solve the problem.  Indeed, it remained difficult to tell whether he even perceived it as a problem.

HH: Michael Shermer, when we went to break, Greg had made the argument that the Darwinian model simply cannot explain immaterial concepts like morality, that there’s just no way you can rearrange the molecules to get there. You’re saying well, yes you can.

MS: Yeah, I think so, because if we think of morality as another suite of emotions that are involved with other people’s behaviors, the consequences of our actions, how we feel about them, how people feel about us when we do these things, that’s as every bit as important a biological part of our nature as anything else we talk about.

See what I mean?

I would encourage all interested parties to read the whole conversation, assuming that Generalissimo Duane gets around to properly formatting the text.

Props to Koukl for an excellent debate performance.  If Koukl is as good when treating other major issues in the God argument then I could easily place him up there with Dinesh D'Souza for effectively engaging nonbelievers in debate.


Update:

Until Generalissimo gets around to properly formatting the debate transcript, Wintery Knight has created a legible version at the blog of the same name.

Michael Martin and atheist ethics

The other day I spend considerable time in a bookstore. Atheist philosopher Michael Martin's "Atheism, Morality, and Meaning" was among the books I browsed, since as an amateur philosopher I'm quite interested in atheistic justifications for morality.

Martin's attempt to establish an objective system of morality made me laugh out loud. I was enthusiastic about writing my reaction to it, but it comes as little surprise that my thunder was stolen well in advance. Skeptic (I'm not sure if he currently counts himself strong/weak atheist or agnostic) Jeffrey Jay Lowder had a review posted at Internet Infidels that closely matched my impression.

A representative excerpt:

One doesn't have to be a philosopher in order to recognize that when Martin describes the "Ideal Observer," many people will think "God." Indeed, this is precisely what we find in the secondary literature. Many commentators on the IOT in general--and Martin's acceptance of it in particular--have remarked that the Ideal Observer (IO) sounds like another name for God.[16] In reply to such worries, Martin states, "the Ideal Observer is hypothetical--it does not exist" (p. 86). While this may be the case,[17] there does seem to be a certain oddity about an atheist affirming a moral theory based upon the reactions of a nonexistent person who is omniscient with respect to nonethical facts. Moreover, it seems to me Martin's reply simply trades one problem for a group of other problems. If the IOT is properly understood as being founded on the feelings of a nonexistent being, then such a view seems dubious.

Lowder goes on to mention three objections to Martin's IOT. The first completely matches a criticism I have made of some would-be atheistic objective moral systems. For while it is perfectly possible for an objective morality to exist in a godless universe, the proponent of such a view is saddled with a huge epistemic problem. That is, how does one know what is moral and what isn't even if the objective morality exists? Why should the mindless universe bother sharing that information with anyone, and why should we expect sentient beings to have any accurate perception of it?

Jeffrey Jay Lowder impressed me by acknowledging these problems while offering a strong critique of Martin's book.

An inspiring nihilism?

Could the impending end of the Bush years have begun to cure Robyn Blumner of her crippling case of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS)?

In this week's column, the pinata of The St. Petersburg Times gives readers an inside look at the atheistic mindset in the form of a fawning obituary for author Nuala O'Faolain.

O'Faolain's tales of male-dominated Irish society as an unloved child among eight other siblings apparently serve to somehow inspire our Robyn. The initial inspiration probably comes from the implicit slavery of the womb (a turn of phrase I'm borrowing from Blumner herself) featured in O'Faolain's work, along with the author's honesty.

Interestingly, that honesty ends up in contradiction. Blumner relates how her heroine now dismisses passion, which she once saw as essential (was the dismissal passionate, I wonder?). Whereas O'Faolain calls the notion of an afterlife meaningless, Blumner directly contradicts her:

O'Faolain was wrong about an afterlife. Her perspective on being an independent woman at this time in history will live on in many memories, mine especially.

As a self-avowed atheist, we can be pretty certain that Blumner does not literally believe in any afterlife. What we have, instead, is an equivocal feel-good kicker line at the end of what should be a column that leans toward nihilism. I mean, we have O'Faolain repudiating part of her earlier position (the importance of passion) and admitting that the joy left her life when she realized that time was almost up. The forward-thinking nihilist should be able to grasp that concept not long after developing consciousness, I should think.

Is this a form of pyschological denial for O'Faolain, Blumner and other atheists? Ignore one's impending death until its chronological proximity cracks through the barrier?

While I'll join Blumner in grieving O'Faolain's passing owing to the tragic nature of death according to the Christian-theistic world view, I'll note one pearl of wisdom that I might wish Blumner had lingered over longer: "What she really wished is that she had been 'a better thinker.'"

Atheists have sex in confession booth

No, that's not a generalization.

A man and a woman have been charged by police in Italy after they were found having sex in a confession box, it was reported Wednesday.
(CNN)

The story goes on to say that the couple said that having sex in church was like having sex anywhere else for them.

However, Bishop Antonio Lanfranchi of Cesena-Sarsina took said the couple's behavior was "an outrage of notable proportions which bespeaks unutterable squalor."

He added that a special ceremony would be held to purify the confession box.

A ceremony utilizing a dilute bleach solution, I hope.

An alternative to bloghopping

I haven't done as much bloghopping over the past year as during the previous year. Part of that trend stems from the difficulty I've had finding good arguments at liberal blogs (you can fault me for not visiting the correct liberal blogs and for poor taste in good arguments if you wish).

I've engaged in a number of political, philosophical and theological arguments at a message board run by the Center for Inquiry. I have the impression that CFI is more-or-less a church organization for atheists and secular humanists. Recently they were in the news for having written a critique of the textbook criticized by high school student Matthew LaClair--already a minor celebrity because of his involvement in the brouhaha over a teacher who supposedly was preaching in the classroom (the newspapers went whole hog with that take--I found the evidence lacking).

As I enjoy arguing against capable opposition, I've had a good bit of fun at the CFI forum between my various brush-ups with the site leaders who sometimes express concern about my tone and general attitude. Which leads me to my reason for blogging about the discussion forum.

Another Christian (a Roman Catholic) posting at CFI started a thread called "Ask a Christian" but he ceased his participation in his own thread over time. Some days ago I started fielding some of the leftover questions, which resulted in a new raft of questions. Eventually the conversation drew out "dougsmith," who presented a relatively elegant argument from outrage as a problem for Christianity. After a few back and forth exchanges, this CFI member complained that I was using his name. Seriously. He said I'd made a habit of using his name and that of others (which I gather makes the practice even worse).

I’m going to skip all the diversionary attacks in the prior part of the message, and the constant repetition of my name, which seems to be a focus of your messages no matter who you’re talking to. If you’re concerned about these discussions becoming overly personalized, repeating someone’s name while taking issue with them is an odd way of depersonalizing things.
(CFI forum)

This is the kind of thing that evidently sets Doug on edge:

For that instance I would also bring to bear the other factor that I’ve already mentioned: the covenant. The people gathered before God and made a deal to follow the laws God gave them in return for God’s blessings. When Doug mentions the account of the folks stoned for collecting firewood he curiously omits that aspect of the problem; the text (Numbers 15) appears to indicate that the man who collected firewood would likely have been present to agree to the covenant.

By way of analogy, we might suppose that Doug agrees to put a dollar into a workplace fund every time he says “dammit!” And then we get the moral dilemma: Is it morally right to charge somebody a dollar just because he says “dammit!”? Context matters.

(bold emphasis added)

Here's another one where I make the debate personal with name-dropping:

More interesting, I think, is the way Doug leaves out both the context of my specific complaints about things he was leaving out as well as the present context (the fact that he is implicitly presenting the passage with the comment that it represents clear immorality). That on top of avoiding my questions, in particular my attempt to resolve an issue via Socratic dialog. Perhaps Doug sees himself as the prosecutor addressing a witness at trial.

And a particularly nasty one (I imagine):

It isn’t clear that you can describe such a compass in the first place, Doug, even given completely free reign. The poison you’ve prepared for the well is dilute.
You skipped the opportunity to demonstrate the “plainly immoral” nature of the commandments in favor of trying to get me to settle on one that I would contradict. Remember?

It's a mystery to me why one would object to having his name used in this manner, though I can sympathize in a small way with some ... disorientation owing to my sometimes-habit of alternating between addressing the one to whom I am replying and the other participants.

The debate, for those curious, concerned Doug's (I'm going to risk using the name since it's my blog) assertion that certain acts or statutes of God were clearly immoral. I challenged his basis for that declaration, and he responded by fashioning his argument to get me to declare one of God's actions immoral instead of establishing the supposedly clear immorality as an objective fact. It was a good strategy on his part, albeit making up for a problematic opening.

One area where he has been particularly impressive lately is his avoidance of my questions to him, to my amusement. And, by the way, I've immediately stopped using his name in my replies to him now that I've discovered that it apparently bothers him.

I expect to blog some of my general impressions over time. One not-unexpected impression is that there are some genuinely likable folks posting there along with some who are somewhat less likable. Average people in that respect. That has been my general experience in debating atheist and skeptical types over the years.

*****

Chris Hedges on the new atheism

Over the years I've been known to make an argument or two to the effect that certain groups of atheists tend to present themselves in ways markedly akin to the religious fundamentalists they profess to despise (in terms of their thinking if not their person).

Earlier this week I heard author Chris Hedges on the Michael Medved radio program discussing his book "I Don't Believe in Atheists." Hedges made sure to get in a few shots at the "neocon" antiterrorism strategy in the Mideast--so his critique apparently comes from a region of the political left that might enable him to gain a hearing among those he criticizes. I say that because, with the exception of Randian Objectivists and their sympathizers (not to draw the resistance too narrowly, I hope), atheists demonstrate an affinity for progressive politics.

Hedges mentioned a debate with Sam Harris, and I have purposed to review that debate. Truthdig hosts the opening statement from Hedges, and I'll post a portion of that below.

Sam Harris has conflated faith with tribalism. His book is an attack not on faith but on a system of being and believing that is dangerous and incompatible with the open society. He attacks superstition, a belief in magic and the childish notion of an anthropomorphic God that is characteristic of the tribe, of the closed society. He calls this religion. I do not.

What he fails to grasp is not simply the meaning of faith—something I will address later—but the supreme importance of the monotheistic traditions in creating the concept of the individual. This individualism—the belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that at times defy the clamor of the tribe or the nation—is a gift of the Abrahamic faiths. This sense of individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for a deep altruism. And this laid the foundations for the open society.
(Truthdig)

I look forward to reviewing the debate.

*****

"You can't figure people ..."

"... not with pencil and paper
na-na-na-na na-na-na."
-Bourgeois Tagg

I like having conversations with people who disagree with me. You could even say that I like to argue. But I'd qualify that by insisting that I prefer a reasonable opponent with a good argument.

That's where atheists/agnostics/skeptics come in. I have quite a few disagreements with that segment of the population. And some of them do a wonderful job of arguing their side even if I happen to think. Others fall astoundingly short of the type of clarity of thought for which those groups tend to pride themselves.

I ran across "The Ocelli Journal" today because the author is another who misuses a quotation attributed to but probably not stated by former Secretary of the Interior James Watt (under the Reagan administration).

And I ran across this appalling viewpoint under the title heading "Muslims, be careful what you wish for":

Americans want out of the middle east so bad they can taste it. We are tired of dealing with you (yes, the whole region) and your quirky ways. Just as soon as we can wean ourselves from your oil, your problems will be over because we will be out of your land so fast your head will spin. Just think, no more Americans (and no more American money). If China is not on board with alternative energies, they will be needing your oil. I am sure you will love dealing with the Chinese. Get pissed at the Chinese and fly a plane into one of their government buildings and you will see how reasonable they are.
(The Ocelli Journal)

As of today, the profile indicates the author as 45 year-old male.

Where to start?

First, we're not going to be weaning ourselves from an oil-based economy anytime soon, even if the Democrats do an about-face on nuclear energy.

Second, buying their oil is one of the things the Arab nations like the most about the West. What the hard-liners really don't like is the export of our culture (cable television and Hollywood) and the way we stand between them and the destruction of Israel.

Third, if China buys oil from the Arabs they'll be using it to produce products that we buy in the United States. So unless Mr. Ocelli also has a boycott on Chinese goods in the works the Arabs will still end up with their pockets stuffed full of American dollars courtesy of Chinese go-betweens. Though the Chinese could always pay for their oil with munitions that the United States refuses to provide to hard-liners (the U.S. forbids sale of arms minus a pledge of use only for self-defense--China maintains no such policy). And maybe the hard-liners will use those weapons to re-take traditionally Muslim lands in Europe.

And Ocelli will speed along on his ethanol-powered motor-scooter without a care, secure in the knowledge that all that trouble is an ocean away. And who could possibly believe that hard-line Muslims hate the image of Hollywood, anyway?

*****

Has Daniel Dennett got a screw loose?

Many atheists appear to put great stock in the ideas of philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Though I've yet to read one of his books, I've read quite a few opinions regarding his ideas and I've sought out his own comments. And his comments make him look like a crackpot.

So, what am I talking about? Check out some comments Dennett made to Reason Magazine, for example.

Reason: A response might be that you're just positing a more complicated form of determinism. A bird may be more "determined" than we are, but we nevertheless are determined.

Dennett: So what? Determinism is not a problem. What you want is freedom, and freedom and determinism are entirely compatible. In fact, we have more freedom if determinism is true than if it isn't.

(Reason Magazine)

The interviewer seems to use "determined" to mean 100% causally determined. If Dennett takes the term the same way then his last statement requires a good amount of justification.

The next exchange:

Reason: Why?

Dennett: Because if determinism is true, then there's less randomness. There's less unpredictability. To have freedom, you need the capacity to make reliable judgments about what's going to happen next, so you can base your action on it.

If determinism is true in the way the interviewer meant it then there is effectively zero randomness. Dennett appears to have equivocated. When he goes on to talk about the "capacity" for reliable judgments he trades in a term loaded with indeterministic connotations. A causally determined thinker has only one accessible future (in a causally determined universe).

Dennett had gone on from that point to use an illustration about running across a field with the possibility of being struck by lightning. Without causal determinism, Dennett offers, the lightning is completely random so there's no planning for it. And that's true. In an indeterministic world you wouldn't be able to count on the field being there to run across, either. But that seems to be Dennett distracting from the issue, whether intentionally or otherwise. The issue, from what I could tell, was deterministic vs. indeterministic thought. So let's put a deterministic thinker before the lightning field. He is causally determined to choose either a good strategy to cross the field or a bad strategy. If preceding states of matter dictated that he would choose a bad strategy for crossing the field, did that field-crosser have the type of freedom Dennett talks about? Did he have the capacity to make a reliable judgment about what happens next?

If he had that capacity, then why the bad strategy?

What "capacity" did the field-crosser with the good strategy possess other than the same ability the poor-strategy field-crosser had (to do as preceding states of matter dictated)?

Dennett's own words make him look like he judges freedom based on outcomes.

It wouldn't surprise me if Dennett drew some withering criticism in the professional literature ...

In section 3 we discuss Dennett's resolution of this dilemma. The key to his current view, we suggest, is the illata-abstracta distinction. Dennett holds that both illata and abstracta are real and have causal powers, even though only illata are genuine scientific posits. He suggests that beliefs etc. are abstracta, and are the subject matter of what he calls intentional system theory. The subject matter of another theory, what Dennett calls subpersonal cognitive psychology, are illata, which are subpersonal intentional states. The important point is that this distinction lets Dennett have it both ways: (i) Since beliefs are mere abstracta, we need not commit ourselves to the thesis that beliefs will turn out to be posits of an adequate scientific psychology. (ii) Since beliefs have causal power, we are assured of moral and rational agency. We shall argue that Dennett's current view is untenable.
(Synthese)

Note: I went with a slightly less inflammatory title after a moment of reflection. Even in question form connecting Dennett with "crackpot" was a bit rude.

*****

"You'll probably tell me that I, as a moral relativist, can't condemn Hitler."

The fun continues as a pair of philosophical naturalists (not to preclude narrower identification as physicalists or something) have stopped by to address that problem of morality from their world view perspective.

The line I put in the title was the money line from visitor "stillnotking," who also goes as SN King when I want to use fewer characters. Plus I can thereafter refer to him (?) as "King" without sowing confusion.

But enough chit-chat. Let's review King's most recent comment. The first portion of his comment had him cheerfully admitting moral relativism (it's conceivable he is unaware I had been making the point that the atheist's moral position makes arguments against a god based on moral indignation seem ill-founded when given the presupposition of causal determinism).

Now, moral standards are relative but not arbitrary. Over the course of millennia we (and by "we" I mean both our genes and our accumulated culture) have figured out that some moral standards work better than others at ensuring stability and prosperity for as many people as possible. The ethics of peace, tolerance, respect for individual rights, etc. are no less effective for lacking metaphysical backing.

The above position statement apparently takes for granted that "stability and prosperity for as many people as possible" serves as a moral axiom. But if King is correct that morality is relative, then that moral directive is no less relative than any other.

Then he brings up the odd notion of the effectiveness of ethics. Given the presupposition of moral relativism, what does that even mean, other than using ethics as a means to whatever ends you find attractive, be it death to the infidel or rain gauges for everyone? Someone explain to King that incoherence is not a positive aspect of a worldview description.

On to the punch line:

Next you'll probably tell me that I, as a moral relativist, can't condemn Hitler. Of course I can condemn him. I can do my individual best to ensure that I continue living in a society that condemns him. But imagining that I have some metaphysical mandate to condemn him does not help my case, and is ultimately foolish, like imagining that I should eat carrots because I need more "carrot spirits" rather than because vitamin A is good for me.

It's not that King can't condemn Hitler, it's that he can't do it consistent with his own moral relativism. Knowing that his morality is no better than Hitler's he condemns Hitler anyway.

What principle guides the morality of a King? Personal taste.

Oh, and what about that claim that his ethics are not arbitrary?
I believe that this is the definition in play (King can correct me if I'm wrong):

4. capricious; unreasonable; unsupported: an arbitrary demand for payment.

The claim is akin to stating that a throw of the dice is not arbitrary. After all, given the starting position of the dice, the rotation, the velocity, etcetera ...

I'll go collect the rent tomorrow. But only if I roll double sixes. Nothing arbitrary about that, is there? And if it doesn't rain then the rent is double.

*****

Josh Strawn weighs in on morality and determinism

Josh Strawn, whom I engaged in conversation following his commentary on the debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens, has continued the dialog in the commentary thread to a subsequent post by me on the subject of free will and determinism.

I'll engage the conversation with a fresh post, since I see no need to relegate the issue to a commentary thread.

Bryan, free will can only have meaning in a deterministic framework. What good is the choice to jump or to set a bucket on the ground if one cannot be assured of the deterministic laws of the universe?

Quite true, Josh, but that point offers no help for the argument since libertarian free will is fully compatible with any amount of determinism short of total causal determinism (the decision of the will is the only thing that needs to be free of absolute causal determination).

Put simply, the argument doesn't follow if "deterministic framework" means an assumption of absolute causal determinism. Though I'd certainly welcome arguments to that effect.

Those laws will assure him or her that they will return to the ground after jumping or that the bucket they've put down will stay put, do they not? In order for choice to function, we must be able to depend to some degree on certain outcomes even if there are also a great many elements we can't predict or depend upon.

Right, but that situation should not be confused with absolute causal determinism. If causal determinism were absolute then the assurance you talk about is a non-issue. You'll either come down after jumping or you won't. Either way (if determinism were true) the expectation itself is absolutely a product of preceding states of matter. With luck it matches reality; that is all.

"(C)ausal determinism" is customarily taken as the proposition that all events are the result of casual chains, perhaps allowing one exception at creation. A fallacy of equivocation may easily result if that customary meaning were to drift.

stillnotking is correct, the evidence is uncontroversial and these debates well-trodden; blog comments are not the space to familiarize the unfamiliar with the findings of scientists like Libet or Walter. If you take issue with what is being said, I'd invite you to read the original scientific literature (Libet's papers are not beyond comprehension of the layman).

I argued that experiments such as Libet's are not relevant to prescriptive morality. Mr. Strawn appears to be avoiding that issue in favor of getting embroiled in the details of the experimentation. Science cannot prove or disprove causation. Strawn and King will have to live with that, if either is even willing to address the issue.

In short, the argument that causal determinism is true is no substitute for the argument that a coherent account of prescriptive morality stems therefrom. It is a distraction. A red herring.

Suffice to say, morality does not dissipate once one takes a naturalistic view of the universe, nor does accountability. To suggest this is to suggest by corollary that morality is dependent on an unsupportable fantastical hypothesis anyway, so what have you of the soul's free will then? Hardly more...

Mr. Strawn has some of King's gift for the unsupported assertion.

If morality does not dissipate once on takes on a naturalistic view of the universe, then I have reason to expect a coherent account of it within the parameters of that world view. No number of appeals to Libet will achieve that until Libet crosses over into philosophy and makes an argument to that effect--even then the argument is subject to debate.

One you realize that God and the soul do not have the meanings you once took for granted, you then are faced with the more difficult (and more fascinating) task of understanding the whats and whys of morality on the basis of rational and/or scientific investigation.

What meanings for God and the soul do I take for granted, I wonder?

I expected better from Mr. Strawn. He offers no naturalistic account of moral responsibility--but he appears perfectly willing to refer me to other authorities. If I likewise refer my arguments to Kane then where does that leave us?

Just because those who engage you in conversation don't feel the need to rehash arguments from Leibniz to Dostoyevsky, Locke to Strawson, or Spinoza to Searle hardly means they've failed the argument.

Indeed. It does, however, mean that those who engage me in conversation have offered no argument of their own. I think that's significant. I suspect it is the case that naturalists do not understand the arguments they invoke (nor frequently those they attack), though I'm prepared to abandon the suspicion if a professed naturalist/physicalist demonstrates an understanding of the arguments without passing the buck.

Apparently Josh Strawn has removed himself from the pool of persons willing to demonstrate such an understanding.

Given the appearance that Mr. Strawn was prepared to confuse the truth of causal determinism as a metaphysical framework with the partial truth of causal determinism, I have reason to suspect that Strawn was among those who do not understand the arguments.


Apologies to Mr. Strawn for my commission of a typo in the headline. I omitted the "r" but that has since been remedied.

*****

Adam Lee's absolute and objective morality for atheists

Following the spirited debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens not all that long ago, I found the time to seek out some reactions to the debate. One of those was the reaction of atheist Adam Lee, who also goes by the pseudonym "Ebonmuse."

I offered a critique of Lee's critique, to which he responded here. Lee offered to refer me to an essay that would answer my observation that he had not offered any explanation for the atheistic moral system he recommends.

Days later, Lee has yet to point me to the essay (though I'm over 90 percent sure he has visited the site in the interim). Rather than continue to wait on him, I searched out the essay to which he probably referred.

The Ineffable Carrot and the Infinite Stick
An atheist's view of morality

(Ebon Musings)

Based on the quality of the argument, I can see why Lee might show a reluctance to link to the essay. On the other hand, I can probably rule out any strong streak of humility on his part based on the essay. Lee serially trashes past attempts by notable thinkers to establish morality on a metaphysical basis other than a god or gods before offering his own attempt to synthesize their work into a shiny and coherent whole.

On Rand: " ... to find a workable universal moral code, we must look elsewhere."

On Aristotle: "Aristotelian ethics, though they are not inherently flawed, lack foundation; they are "floating free" without sufficient justification."

On Rousseau: "... we must delve deeper to find the true foundation of ethical behavior."

On Kant: "A system so manifestly in error cannot serve as the basis for a universal moral system ..."

On Spencer: "... no moral system can escape the fact that observation of facts alone can never produce an ethical 'ought'."

On Bentham: "A satisfactory ethical code should be able to derive that idea from first principles rather than tacking it on in an ad hoc fashion."

On Rawls: "... its main flaw is not a theoretical but a practical one: his proposal is and forever will be a thought experiment only."

Lee has his work cut out for him. His essay asserts the existence of "one true absolute, objective, universal moral code" (emphasis in the original), and promises that he will establish its foundation. He then reviews game theory with the Prisoner's Dilemma before indulging in the fault-finding I summarized above. The latter portions of part IV introduce "Moral Popperianism" and "Universal Utilitarianism," which appear intended to deliver on the promise of the essay.

Under "Grasping for the Good," Lee commits an error at least as fatal as any of those he found in the arguments of others. He asserts that pragmatism serves as an important criterion for a coherent moral system, then bungles the concept. After properly noting that the system should not lead to contradiction (the real key to coherence and thus the pragmatic ideal he should have in mind), Lee somehow gets the notion confused with the resulting outcome of the system.

Likewise, this principle removes from consideration systems such as communism, which pays all people the same amount and then expects them all to labor their hardest to benefit society. It is unrealistic to expect such a system to work as long as human nature remains unchanged. Finally, the pragmatic principle leads us to reject any moral code that proposes, for example, the legalization of murder or theft. Any society that tried this would soon collapse into chaos.

Lee has done nothing less than allow a moral precept to insinuate itself into his system as a premise. Societies ought not fall into chaos, therefore Lee tries to design his system to avoid falling short of that ideal. If Lee never gets around to providing the foundation for that particular ought, then he will assuredly fail to live up to the claim he made at the beginning of his essay.

With "Moral Popperianism": An Ethical Stepping Stone," Lee makes his attempt to cross the is/ought divide. Lee sticks to his slow-starting ways in locating the inauspicious introduction to his big step near the middle of the section: "(W)hile it is true that moral directives cannot be derived from the bare facts of the external world, they are still based on those facts, and therein lies the key."

Do tell.

"(T)he principle which I call moral Popperianism is this: any ethical directive based on a false factual statement is wrong." (emphasis in the original)

I could not make head nor tail of this without the subsequent example. We had already established, I thought, the problem of the is/ought dichotomy. Now we have the isn't/ought dichotomy to worry about as well. I'm honestly not sure why we trouble ourselves with the latter. I suspect it has something to do with anti-theism.

With our sure foundation of a question-begging premise combined with the isn't/ought dichotomy, we move on to "Universal Utilitarianism."

"Universal Utilitarianism" ends up as another excuse to make a moral precept foundational to the moral system.

What is the ultimate aim of morality? What state does it seek to bring about?

The answer to this should, I hope, be obvious: the goal of morality is to ensure happiness. All people want to be happy, and everything else which they desire is ultimately just a means to that end. The means by which people seek happiness are so varied that any other attempt at generalization would be futile, but the desire for happiness is the one true universal which unites all these disparate paths.

Some ethical systems attempt to camouflage the point where they switch from "is" language to "ought" language. I will not do this, but rather state it plainly: in general, people ought to be happy. I hold this proposition to be axiomatic and foundational, and I further hold that any ethical system that has as its highest aim something other than producing happiness is completely missing the point. In short, this developing ethical system will be a form of utilitarianism.

I don't understand how somebody can criticize Bentham, Kant and the others and then promptly beg the whole question as Lee does above. Is the critic permitted to ask on what basis this ought is made axiomatic when we were promised so much more ("This essay will present answers to these questions and others")? Lee's answer smacks of Mr. Garrison's rationale for not doing drugs ("Drugs are bad, mkay?").

I believe I have come up with a new variant of utilitarian moral theory that avoids the flaws of both act and rule utilitarianism, which I call universal utilitarianism. It can be summed up in a single sentence, and without further ado, here it is:

Always minimize both actual and potential suffering; always maximize both actual and potential happiness.

I offer this foundational principle as the base of a new objective ethical system.

Lee's "foundation" for his ethical system is an ethical precept. He has built a floating system, as did Aristotle, but he apparently gives himself a pass on the same criticism.

In the following paragraphs, I will "unpack" universal utilitarianism and hopefully show how it surmounts the problems that have stymied so many other ethical codes.

Great! I can't wait!

It is first and foremost a form of utilitarianism, and like other forms of utilitarianism, as well as Aristotelian virtue ethics, it identifies happiness as the highest good, worth acquiring for its own sake and by the very nature of what it is.

And that's it. As far as I can tell, Lee simply acknowledges the similarity to Aristotle's system without lifting a finger to explain how his system avoids the problem he admitted with Aristotle's system. It's almost like putting his own name on the ideas of others makes them immune to what might have been legitimate criticisms.

How about Lee's own perversion of the principle of pragmatism? Is it true that humans ought to be happy? We can't base our morality on something that is not known to be true, can we?



The essay contained a great deal more material than what I've addressed here, though of comparable quality to the parts I've critiqued. Lee's essay contains (what should be) obvious flaws and can't be taken seriously.

*****

Solving an atheist's dilemma?

Given my interest in the moral dimension of the debates between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza (and Alister McGrath), I was delighted to stumble across an attempted solution to the atheist's ethical problem at "Daylight Atheism" in a post apparently by Adam/ebonmuse.

I'm not going to reproduce the entire thing, as the argument itself should be fairly compact.

You worried that atheists have no compelling answer to a person who says, "I'm going to do whatever I please." But religion does not solve that problem. If anything, the problem is far worse ...
(Daylight Atheism)

Adam's argument is presented as a response to an editorial by Michael Gerson, the "You" in the first line. This isn't likely to be the argument, but if it were then it is nothing more than a tu quoque fallacy, the technique of excusing one failing by taking note of the same or a similar failing on the part of the opponent. No need to linger on this, I trust.

Unfortunately the gist of Adam's argument apparently occurs in the following slippery (in the mercurial sense) paragraph.

You asked what reason an atheist can give to be moral, so allow me to offer an answer. You correctly pointed out that neither our instincts nor our self-interest can completely suffice, but there is another possibility you've overlooked. Call it what you will - empathy, compassion, conscience, lovingkindness - but the deepest and truest expression of that state is the one that wishes everyone else to share in it. A happiness that is predicated on the unhappiness of others - a mentality of "I win, you lose" - is a mean and petty form of happiness, one hardly worthy of the name at all. On the contrary, the highest, purest and most lasting form of happiness is the one which we can only bring about in ourselves by cultivating it in others. The recognition of this truth gives us a fulcrum upon which we can build a consistent, objective theory of human morality. Acts that contribute to the sum total of human happiness in this way are right, while those that have the opposite effect are wrong. A wealth of moral guidelines can be derived from this basic, rational principle.

This answer fell well short of my extremely well tempered expectations.

On what basis does Adam distinguish between "instinct" and "empathy, compassion, conscience, lovingkindness - but the deepest and truest expression of that state is the one that wishes everyone else to share in it"? By all appearances, Adam quietly concedes the argument just before loudly declaring victory in contradiction to his earlier statement.

*****

D'Souza, Hitchens and Strawn update

As related in an earlier post, I attempted to start a conversation relating to a review of the D'Souza/Hitchens debate written by Josh Strawn, who was a pupil of Hitchens at New School in New York.

The "update" in the title is perhaps a grandiose addition, for this update consists of little more than the news that Strawn has not yet elected to respond in substance to the issues I raised with his arguments.

The chief reason for updating at this time is the fact that I revisited a site that led me just days prior to the exchange with Strawn to a review and commentary of Daniel Dennett's book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon."

Strawn had referred me to Dennett along with Richard Dawkins and someone named "Harris"--I hesitate to conclude that Sam Harris is the corresponding personage.

The review, by David Hart, was quite memorable for the comparisons drawn between Dennett and characters from the stories of Lewis Carroll. I daresay Strawn, who expressed an admiration for Hitchens' gift of rhetoric, might find something to enjoy in Hart's treatment of Dennett on that basis at least. I'll borrow an exemplary selection:

I confess that I have never been an admirer of Dennett’s work. I have thought all his large books-especially one entitled Consciousness Explained-poorly reasoned and infuriatingly inadequate in their approaches to the questions they address. Too often he shows a preference for the cumulative argument over the cogent and for repetition over demonstration. The Bellman’s maxim, "What I tell you three times is true," is not alien to Dennett’s method.
(First Things)

I wish I had remembered to reference this review earlier!

It would be uncharitable, of course, to drawn any conclusions about Strawn's ability to answer the problems based on his recent failure to add to the dialog. On the other hand, his choice of authorities (pending the emergence of a Harris with gravitas) promotes the notion that Strawn is properly classed with atheists like Hitchens who appear to have a poor understanding the traditional theist/atheist debate topics.

*****

D'Souza vs. Hitchens reaction 1 (Updated)

The lively debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens has led, predictably, to spirited (no pun intended) commentary.

Over at "Jewcy" ("a magazine and community for new Jews and other riff-raff") the lead singer for Blacklist, Josh Strawn, decided to weigh in on the debate.

A caution: For all we know, Strawn has philosophy degrees spilling out of his ears and even if he doesn't his arguments ought to stand or fall on their own merits, not on the basis of his qualifications.

Strawn apparently considers himself somewhat above both Hitchens and D'Souza, though I can scarcely see any justification for that high opinion of himself in his commentary. Strawn is dismissive of D'Souza ("who essentially regurgitates theistic errors and rhetorical sidesteps") and disparaging of Hitchens ("could have done more to educate the folks who were getting off on his opponent's bullshit").

Strawn's main criticism of the debate rests on his conviction that science has explained the mind. His criticism of Hitchens primarily stems from his disappointment that Hitchens did not adopt what Strawn apparently regards as atheism's rhetorical ace-in-the-hole.

But to Hitchens: why not school people in precisely how the human mind does work at this point in the argument? It certainly does obey laws--laws so material that the notions of subjectivity and consciousness on which the theist's argument rest get blown to smithereens. If a human subject with a "mind" who makes ethical decisions that transfer to his or her immortal soul suffers a brain injury impairing his or her interpretive systems, ability to read human emotions (key to the brain response we know as 'compassion') then what's happened to the soul? If I can remove the part of a person's brain that enables ethical judgment, have I not surgically removed their moral soul? This connection between what the religious call the soul and what is known about material brain functionality severely undermines the theist's notion of the "I" that makes choices that bear on "my" eternal soul. If I'm a neuroscientist, I can plug your immortal soul into a machine and map it's electricity.
(Jewcy)

D'Souza would probably love to see Hitchens advance that argument.

Strawn's description of the atheist view of the mind appears absolutely deterministic. I would not envy Strawn the subsequent argument asserting moral accountability on the part of entities who cannot do other than what previous states of matter have compelled them to do.

I'll drop Strawn a line (if the Jewcy site permits non-Jewish interloping) and try to scope out whether or not he has any conception of the vulnerability he exposes regarding morality. How is Hitchens supposed to locate a principled objection to morality based on a deterministic framework?

Update:
Strawn has engaged the conversation here, and dropped by to offer commentary on this post (see Haloscan link below).

Though Strawn has engaged the conversation, he hasn't yet engaged my challenge to him, which was to resolve for Hitchens the difficulties with his moral argument that would result if Hitchens were saddled with the scientific understanding of the mind that Strawn advocated.

These quandaries have been addressed, even if they have not been resolved (as if they ever were prior to discoveries in neuroscience). In fact, Hitchens' allies, Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris all comprise different portions of the answer to how morality and responsibility exist in a materialist framework. Lewis nor Dostoyevsky has a trump card just because brains are matter and the body isn't acted upon by a ghostly entity. Read Dawkins on altruism, Dennett on free will as evolving phenomenon, Harris on the importance of beliefs (which are neurophysiological facts of the brain) corresponding as correctly as possible with the outside world.
(Jewcy)

Without the specifics, Strawn is offering a "My dad can beat up your dad" kind of argument. He kicks the matter down the street to a trio of dubious authorities (Dennett and Dawkins at least have some relevant credentials, even Dawkins tends to wander from his area of scientific study for purposes of commentary).

I pointed out that Dennett advocated compatibilist free will (you can evolve compatibilist free will until the cows come home and it will still have the weaknesses of compatibilist free will, as far as I can see).
I'm supposing that Strawn invoked Dawkins to show a plausible evolutionary rationale for altruism. That doesn't address any of the problems Hitchens would experience with his moral argument.
I'd need a reason to take Sam Harris seriously; I offered Strawn some derisive commentary from an atheist ethicist blogger that referred somewhat derisively to both Harris and Dawkins.

My suspicion that Strawn cannot rescue Hitchens' moral argument from the debate strategy that Strawn offered has only grown, but I'd still like more information.

*****

Antony Flew the atheist coop

I can't remember how I first ended up there, but I've enjoyed my few visits Rational Perspectives, a philosophy blog with an emphasis on theism.

A visit a few moments ago paid off with news about a new book by Antony Flew, a prominent atheist philosopher from years past who later became a believer. Flew wrote portions of a book called "Does God Exist," which was primarily a debate between (atheist) Kai Nielsen and (Christian theist) J. P. Moreland.

clipped from rationalperspective.wordpress.com

Antony Flew, famous English philosopher, has released a book entitled “There is a God” that charts his journey from atheism to theism. It reads quite a bit like a biography rather than a work of philosophy, but I was pleasantly surprised at the exposition of his former atheism (and, for that matter, the innovative atheistic arguments he created). He appears to be his best critic, and the reader is given a whirlwind tour of the history of his arguments and why he does not think they cut it. For the C.S. Lewis aficionado, he has some interesting anecdotes of his time in the Socratic Club- he appears to have taken the Socratic maxim of following the evidence where it leads to heart, and may have gleaned that from his time with Lewis.

I'd be interested in Flew's book, given that his part in "Does God Exist" counted as an interesting read.

Nielsen's approach in the book was interesting, by the way. He stuck with denying the coherence of god-language, if my memory serves. An atheist who can't understand god-language can't coherently call himself an atheist if he doesn't know what belief he lacks. How would he know he lacked that belief?

Nielsen's odd argument seemed to disappoint Flew and fellow atheist (at the time, anyway) Keith Parsons.

*****

Hitchens and D'Souza, Hitchens and McGrath

Watched the debate between Hitchens and D'Souza today (at the King's College, NY). D'Souza does debate more effectively than does Alister McGrath in that he debates more aggressively.

Overall, I'd say D'Souza cleaned Hitchens' clock, though he was on his weakest ground in lumping the Third Reich in with explicitly secular communist regimes (not that his point was indefensible--it's just not easy to defend effectively in a format like that one).
D'Souza scored heavily in noting Hitchens' double standard on credit for wrongs committed. Hitchens wants any wrong of religion marked to that account of religion yet tries to blame communism's atrocities on religion. Though the inconsistency is obvious, Hitchens himself drew attention to it even after D'Souza called him on it.

Nor did Hitchens do any better than anyone in the earlier discussion thread (here at CQ) in providing a metaphysical basis for judging morality. Hitchens flatly failed to answer a question from the audience on that topic, instead using it to jump off to his foundationless outrage over the acts of Christianity.

I attempted to post the above over at Captain's Quarters in an existing discussion thread, but the attempt failed due to technical difficulties.

Since it ends up here at my blog, I'll add to the comparison to the debate between Hitchens and Alister McGrath. McGrath also argued capably and got the best of Hitchens for the most part, but signing on with Hitchens' moral outrage makes for a weak debate strategy, especially when Hitchens may be counted on to dwell on the subject.

I've got a review and critique of the McGrath vs. Hitchens debate in the works.

*****

Philosopher's game,"Battleground God"

While investigating what seems to be an anti-religion site hosted at a .edu Web site, I followed one of the links to TPM Online and played the "Battleground God" game.

I expected the game to be ruled by certain presuppositions, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I made it to the final question without raising any flags. Here was the question:

It is justifiable to believe in God if one has a firm, inner conviction that God exists, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of the conviction that God exists.

I reasoned that a revelation of God serves as a justifiable basis for belief in spite of a lack of external evidence ("or the lack of it"), thus I answered in the affirmative.

Apparently the test designers didn't like my way of thinking.

You've just taken a direct hit!

Earlier you said that it is not justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, paying no regard to the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction, but now you say it's justifiable to believe in God on just these grounds. That's a flagrant contradiction!

I wrote up my own response to the claim.

Despite the claim of a “flagrant contradiction,” the problem here is arguably with the question. In one case we’re talking about “the external world”—but is God part of the “external world”? Is it proper to call an omnipresent God part of the “external world”?

The question, like many others on the test, was ambiguously worded. “External world” has the connotation of referring to the material world, and one would reasonably expect sense-data as a guide to an external material world but not as a guide to a “external” spiritual world that is not “external” in the same sense.

There were a number of other spots where the test forced an answer based on a false dilemma.

It just goes to show that in philosophy and logic, it's all in the presuppositions.


*****