Please Vote

If you recall I had a debate recently on debate.org
Please go and vote for whomever you think had the most persuasive arguments:
http://www.debate.org/debate/10352/

Luke Misses the Mark Again

Isn't it weird that the title of this post uses the names of two gospel writers? ; )

Anyway, if you can recall my post from Wednesday you should remember that Luke from common sense atheism criticized Richard Dawkins' ultimate 747 argument and I responded to it.

Anyway, Luke has made a follow-up post, and he is just as wrong as he was before. No offense Luke, I love your blog, but on this point I think you stand in need of correction.

Let's get down to it. Erik Wielenburg stated Dawkins' argument like so:

(1) If God exists, then God has these two properties: (i) He provides an intelligent-design explanation for all natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) He has no explanation external to Himself.

(2) Anything that provides an intelligent-design explanation for the natural, complex phenomena in the universe is at least as complex as such phenomena.

(3) So, if God exists, then God has these two properties: (i) He is at least as complex as the natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) He has no explanation external to Himself. (from 1 and 2)

(4) It is very improbable that there exists something that (i) is at least as complex as the natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) has no explanation external to itself.

(5) Therefore, it is very improbable that God exists. (from 3 and 4)


Luke criticizes the argument:

"[P]erhaps Dawkins has in mind the definition of complexity he arrived at after an extended discussion in The Blind Watchmaker:

…complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone.

"But this gets us nowhere. If we plug this definition into Dawkins’ argument, then Dawkins misses his mark. It makes no difference whether God is complex in this sense, for theists do not assert that God acquired 'some quality… by random chance alone.' Rather, God is usually thought of as a necessary being, not one that contingently evolved by change from previous being."

How do theists know that a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being is necessary? Well, they just do. Seriously, theists have tried to argue that a personal being with said attributes is necessary, but those arguments are all deeply flawed and I doubt Luke would disagree.

Still, couldn't theists dissolve Dawkins' argument by simply defining God as necessary without argument? No. They may not arbitrarily suppose that there is one and only one being who possesses the characteristics of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, etc. and also possesses the characteristic of necessary existence. What if no possible being possesses the characteristics of omnipotence & etc. and the characteristic of necessary existence? Then we're left with atheism. What if ten beings possess the characteristics of omnipotence & etc. and the characteristic of necessary existence? Then we're left with polytheism. A mere assertion that there is one and only one being with omnipotence & etc. who exists necessarily is worthless because there is an infinite number of other possibilities with exactly the same justification.

I'd like to return to Dawkins' definition of complexity and Luke's comment on it:

…complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone.

"[T]his gets us nowhere. If we plug this definition into Dawkins’ argument, then Dawkins misses his mark. It makes no difference whether God is complex in this sense, for theists do not assert that God acquired 'some quality… by random chance alone.' Rather, God is usually thought of as a necessary being, not one that contingently evolved by change from previous being."

Dawkins isn't supposing that God evolved from a previous being. If it is true that we cannot prove God is necessary or simply assume God is necessary (as I've previously argued) then it follows that, if there is a God, he is a contingent, "brute" fact. There is no real reason that God exists rather than some other spiritual being(s). It follows that God's existence is or was highly improbable, since the brute existence of any other spiritual being(s) or a state of no spiritual beings at all was just as likely to be the case as God's existence. The odds of God's existence would be one out of infinity. That doesn't mean we could never conclude that God exists, it just means that we need some damn good evidence before we do, since 1 out of infinity is the smallest possible probability.

For anyone who's forgotten how sublime this is

Dawkins' 747: A Response to Luke

Luke over at 'Common Sense Atheism' has written a post about 'naive reasons for being an atheist':

I think there is a great deal of naive atheism that is worth debunking. We can begin, for example, with Dawkins’ central argument against theism, found in chapter four of The God Delusion.

Dawkins says:
To explain [something] by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.

Luke seems to think that William Lane Craig's reply to this point was adequate:

Dawkins says that you cannot infer a Designer of the universe [from] the complexity of the universe because this raises a further question: namely, “Who designed the Designer?” [But] this argument is quite inept, because philosophers of science recognize that in order to recognize an explanation as the best explanation, you don’t have to have an explanation of the explanation…

Let me give you an example. Suppose archaeologists digging in the earth were to come across artifacts looking like arrowheads and pottery shards… it would obviously be justifiable to infer that these artifacts were the products of some lost tribe of people, even if the archaeologists had no idea whatsoever who these people were or how they came to be there.
Similarly, if astronauts were to discover a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that these were the products of intelligent design, even if they had no idea whatsoever where this machinery came from or who put it there…

Craig's response is inadequate. I don't think Dawkins did the best job articulating what he was trying to say, but I think his objection to God as a designer is that, if we are trying to find an ultimate explanation for the existence of complexity, then the exlplanation cannot itself be complex or it does not (by definition) truly explain complexity. If we are allowed to posit complex things as unexplainable brute facts then why not posit the universe as a brute fact rather than God as a brute fact? And if we aren't allowed to posit complex things as brute facts, then that completely does away with positing God (who, by definition, cannot have an explanation besides metaphysical necessity).

I've actually read a lot of criticisms of Dawkins' work and I do not believe any of Dawkins' critics have made an adequate response to him. 'God is simple' is false (as I tried to show in my recent debate), and simply asserting that God is necessary, without argument, overlooks the fact that atheists could simply assert that the universe is necessary, or that some nontheistic entity brought the universe into existence (Stephen Hawking's 'Wave-Function'?) and was/is necessary.

However, Dawkins' argument, as he formulated it, is flawed. I believe that Dawkins was wrong in asserting that a designer must be 'at least as complex' as whatever he designs. I'm going to quote from an unpublished essay I wrote on the subject:

"Given an infinite amount of time (or at least several billion years), a human being would be capable of tinkering with every possible arrangement of matter, and therefore it might create something more complex than itself (if such things are possible). Of course this is not how theists typically think of God creating, but nevertheless it is a conceptual possibility which defeats Dawkins’ sweeping assertion.

"There is another way that a creative being could bring about a creation more complex and more improbable than its creator. Suppose that we accept Dawkins’ assertion that a being must be at least as complex (and therefore, as improbable) as whatever it seeks to explain. At the risk of sounding anthropocentric, let us also suppose that human beings are the most complicated animals in the universe. If a being was complex enough to create a human being, could it not create all of the less-complex animals, plants, and bacteria? It would seem so. This is relevant for the following reason: If we did not have any explanation for the origin of the complexity of life other than sheer chance, it could still very well be the case that an intelligent designer might act in reducing the improbability we faced, therefore acting as a good explanation. By Dawkins’ own criteria the designer only needs to be as complex as the most complex things that he designs. Therefore he is no more improbable than the most improbable thing he designs. It follows from that that in the example above the designer would only have to be as improbable as human beings originating by sheer chance. This would be more probable than all plants, animals, and bacteria originating independently by sheer chance."

Even though one of Dawkins' assertions (a designer must be at least as complicated as his designs) is false, my own meditations on the subject have led me to believe that Dawkins has stumbled on a sound proof that the existence of God is incredibly, devastatingly improbable a priori. I've tried to formulate this argument as best I could in my recent debate, although I feel it is quite difficult to articulate and very easy to misunderstand.

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts on the subject. What do you guys think?

My Final Response to Bobby Turk... I mean JP Holding.

In some cases I'm going to simply list Holding's responses, as they speak for themselves and do not warrant rebuttal.

Here's what I wrote in my last response to Holding:

Holding also said that he "never said" that the majority of Biblical scholars were out to discredit the Bible. Well, he damn well should've said it. If it is true that

1) Bias is solely (or at least primarily) driving the late-date thesis.

2) The late-date thesis is accepted by most scholars (Which is true, see here).

Then it follows that most scholars are accepting the late-date thesis because of bias.

He responded:

Nick, how hard do you work to become this much of a dumbass? Is Daniel the whole Bible? Maybe in your version. But anyway, go look up “non sequitur”. “Bias” isn’t always conscious. In fact I’d guess it usually isn’t. That’s why I never connect the dots, boy, and why you shouldn’t either, not even with those crayons of yours.

I also wrote:
But why the hell would most Biblical Scholars be interested in debunking the Bible? Doesn't make sense.

And Holding responded:

Of course it does. They can still have jobs. What’s wrong? Can’t get out of that Burger King mentality?

Holding originally wrote that Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker relied primarily on a circular argument to support evolution (obviously it happened, because we are here). I responded that this was a load of horse shit and that Dawkins provides plenty of evidence for evolution and even argues that evolution is the only known (ultimate) explanation for complexity. Holding is now trying to backpedal. He's implicitly admitting that Dawkins does argue for evolution but "does a poor job in the process". Well, that is nothing but a bitch move to get around the fact that you, Mr. Holding, were wrong as could be about Dawkins' book. It doesn't matter if you don't like how Dawkins argued for evolution, what matters is that his writings do NOT rely on blatant circular reasoning. Anyone who doubts this ought to just pick up a copy of The Blind Watchmaker. Now, if you read it carefully you ought to see how Holding fucked up its message big time. And the fact that Holding isn't able to comprehend such an easy read ought to stop you from trusting him as a self-proclaimed "professional researcher" and moreover it ought to stop every one of his fans from thinking that he has the expertise to sift through complex and scholarly writings on the Bible and on Ancient History. He's no more trustworthy on these topics than is "Dr." Kent Hovind is about Biology.

If you'll recall from my first post on Holding, I wrote the following:

In the congo some of the locals have reported an animal, Mokele-mbembe, which is described as looking like an apatosaurus. Apparently a researcher traveled to the congo and asked a local villager:

'There's something I'd really like to know. Have you seen Mokele-mbembe?' 'What a stupid question,' said Doubla [the villager], looking genuinely surprised, stopping with the water-bottle halfway to his lips. 'Mokele-mbembe is not an animal like a gorilla or a python. . . . It doesn't appear to people. It is an animal of mystery. It exists because we imagine it. But to see it--never. You don't see it.' SOURCE

It seems to me like this is a good illustration of how consensus reality can differ from culture to culture: Apparently in this culture, imaginings and daydreams are considered valid ways to learn about reality just as much as more "scientific" types of observation are considered to be valid ways of learning about reality are considered to be in the West.

Holding tried to say that this wasn't at all analgous to the risen Jesus because no one said Jesus was invisible. But Holding, in his stupidity, missed the entire point that was laid out right there in front of him: that different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes reality. Holding responded:

That’s nice. It’s still totally inapplicable to anything I have written. Pilch is still only talking about the core apostolic group, not conversions by Roman Joe in Corinth, same as I am.

Whoosh! The point went right over Holding's head. You see, Holding somehow thinks that prospective converts to early Christianity would have somehow switched to an enlightenment view of the world when it came to Christianity and demanded hardcore scientific evidence for Jesus' resurrection. He has no proof that they would have done this, and so it is completely reasonable for me to assume that the prospective converts would have accepted the other types of "evidence" for xtianity, which we already know that they accepted: visions, dreams, sincere testimony from others who had visions or dreams of Jesus, finding alleged prophecies of Jesus in Jewish scripture, and so on. And as a matter of fact, I'm dead certain that whatever it was that caused the Corinthians to convert, it wasn't any empirical evidence of the miraculous:

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1:22-24).

Right there is the implicit denial of Christianity having any powerful evidence of the miraculous on its side.

In my last response to Holding I wrote:

Now, I understand that you argue that things like the empty tomb would be checked. If Jesus' rotten body was still in the tomb (or if there were people who actually knew the full details of the events surrounding Jesus' death), and it was actually somehow available for viewing (or the witnesses were available for questioning), then it still might not have made a difference to ALL prospective converts. Christians would have dismissed this: 'Oh yes, that's a trick of Satan' or 'That isn't really Jesus, just someone who looks like him that the Romans placed there in the tomb to trick you'.

He responded:

Are you a former fundy or something? That “Satan did it” gig is a modern shebang. And the “oh its someone else” gig would have been reflected in the historical record as an argument in need of refuting, like the stolen body bit in Matthew and later church writers. Didn’t your mommy ever tell you that you can just pull speculations out of your bum and expect anything but ridicule and laughter?

Irrelevant. One need not buy the idea that the Christians said 'Satan did it' in order to understand that they would have vehemently denied whatever disconfirming evidence came their way. It's called Cognitive Dissonance. Here's just one example of the phenomenon: The cults of John Frum are composed of South Pacific villagers whose ancestors (somehow) got the idea that an American soldier John Frum would one day return from America and bring all the great riches to their people that the Americans enjoyed. Decades after the cult began, John Frum still has not returned to the natives with any cargo, but his followers are not deterred, because nothing could deter them. In 1943 Maj. Samuel Patten set out to convince the islanders that the American forces had absolutely nothing to do with John Frum; that the American forces were never intending to bring the natives endless supplies of cargo as Frum had allegedly promised. The natives, shockingly enough (from a rational perspective), did not believe the Major, and have continued their religion to this day. (Source).

Now, would some account of their denial be preserved? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, did the John Frum cults ever keep a record of Major Patten and how they responded to him?

Anyway, I think it's about time to end the conversation with Holding. He was exposed for the shitty quack researcher he is. On to bigger and better things.

Discovery Institute Caught Red Handed

Oh Dear

JP Holding replied to my last post on him, and I thought it might be worth clearing up a few of his misconceptions. First of all, since Holding assures me that he has shaved his "douchebag goatee" I'll have to retract that statement. If you happen to read my blog on him again, just mentally replace "douchebag goatee" with something like "butt-ugly douchebag face" or whatever suits your fancy. ; )

Anyway, I’m going to address Holding in order of the issues that I think are most important.

In regards to the late date of Daniel, Holding said:

[I]t remains true that it is bias, not evidence, that drives a late date thesis.

Holding also said that he "never said" that the majority of Biblical scholars were out to discredit the Bible. Well, he damn well should've said it. If it is true that
1) Bias is solely (or at least primarily) driving the late-date thesis.
2) The late-date thesis is accepted by most scholars (Which is true, see here).
Then it follows that most scholars are accepting the late-date thesis because of bias. But why the hell would most Biblical Scholars be interested in debunking the Bible? Doesn't make sense. It reminds me of how you see Jesus mythicists: As seeing conspiracy and bias behind every scholar.

Here's what Holding said in attempt to defend himself from his false accusation that Richard Dawkins employed circular reasoning to support evolution:

No, Nick. It's still all a begged question, and Dawkins interprets evidence so that materialistic evolution comes out of the other end.

Horse shit. Dawkins argues at length in The Blind Watchmaker that only evolution predicts the evidence we have (see chapter 10). Furthermore, he says this in chapter 11:

My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.

If you eliminate all the alternatives to evolution (such as creationism, which Dawkins does if you read further into the chapter) then evolution can be inferred as the best explanation. Of course, it is possible that Dawkins' attempt to discredit creationism was wrong, but even if his refutation of creationism is wrong it doesn't mean he was begging the question. By the by, I disagree with some of what Dawkins wrote on discrediting creationism, however, I do think he has shown that creationism is a priori highly improbable while evolution is not, and therefore even if the evidence (the a posteriori) wasn't clearly in favor of either, evolution would still be probable. I could go on about this, but I'm really going off on a tangent. I'd be happy to discuss it elsewhere.

Something else Holding said:

And as for Dawkins being so bad at elementary logic, allow me to quote Michael Ruse, an atheist, concerning Dawkins' attempts at logic and philosophy:"The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why."

Thanks for giving me a good example of a bad argument from authority. The quote you give makes no argument show Dawkins is wrong, and so merely quoting Ruse's opinion is pretty meaningless. Furthermore, Ruse's opinion does not necessarily represent the opinion of the majority of philosophers, or atheists, or atheistic philosophers, and so it can't constitute a legitimate argument from authority as I’ll discuss later on. Finally, from what I understand Dawkins and Ruse have been really just been feuding over whether religion and science can co-exist. Are they separate spheres of human inquiry that never support nor contradict one another? Ruse might say yes, but his opinion doesn't really represent a consensus, so again, he can't be used to form an argument from authority. On the other hand, philospher Greg Dawes, physicist Victor Stenger, philosopher Bradley Monton, among others, emphatically do not believe this to be the case. I agree with them, and again, if you'd like to bring this up at a later point I can fully explain how science and religion are not in principle incapable of supporting/contradicting one another, given my definition of science. But I won't go there right now because that's kind of going off on a tangent. But I will discuss it if you disagree.
In regards to the work of John J. Pilch, Holding said:

Uh yeah, so what, Nick? This has no application whatsoever to anything related to Christianity. No one ever said of the resurrected Jesus that you never see him, and doesn't appear to people, and there were aspects of evidence involved too: empty tomb, nature miracles, etc.. Is this how stupid you are? Do you think that if you just throw some other story about delusions into the air, this proves that Jesus was a delusion too? Good night, what level retardation do you have anyway?

Apparently a level of retardation not quite as severe as yours, dumbfuck. I didn't say that people claimed to have never seen the risen Jesus, I simply used the Congo creature as an example of how beliefs about reality (and how we can learn about reality) differ radically from culture to culture. And if you had actually bothered to read the chapter I linked to before running off at the mouth, you'd know that. What Pilch's article shows is that people often have experiences in altered states of consciousness in which they, in some sense, 'experience' the presence of holy man. If you actually read Pilch's work, he shows how it is completely plausible that the altered states of consciousness experiences he describes are actually what inspired Christians to say that Jesus was raised. In modern day society such altered states of consciousness aren't usually regarded as being indicators of truth (we are a good bit more empirically minded than cultures past) but in other cultures they ARE. So the types of evidence that it would take to convince me that Abe Lincoln rose from the dead today is quite different from types of evidence it would have taken to convince certain first century palestinians that Jesus was raised. Probably the same types of evidence ancient people accepted as proof of other claims would have been accepted as proof of Christianity. If you think otherwise, you have the burden of proof, not me.
As for the empty tomb and the ‘nature miracles’: We do not have sufficient evidence to believe them, and we do not have any evidence that anyone in the first century came to believe Christianity on the basis of carefully investigating the empirical evidence for such things. The earliest Christians may have simply converted because they felt Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament, or because of visions, or experiences had in altered states of consciousness, as John Pilch argued. Now, I understand that you argue that things like the empty tomb would be checked. If Jesus' rotten body was still in the tomb (or if there were people who actually knew the full details of the events surrounding Jesus' death), and it was actually somehow available for viewing (or the witnesses were available for questioning), then it still might not have made a difference to ALL prospective converts. Christians would have dismissed this: 'Oh yes, that's a trick of Satan' or 'That isn't really Jesus, just someone who looks like him that the Romans placed there in the tomb to trick you'. Would most people have bought this? No. But they didn't have to. Only a very small percentage of the population had to buy it, and they might have bought it because of the sincerity they saw in the other Christians, because they felt like they had access to a loving community in the church, because they thought the Old Testament prophesied about Jesus, etc. There could have been, and probably were, people who were more willing to believe the early Christians than the Romans and the Jewish sanhedrin. And that need not be more than a small fraction of one percent of the population.

Finally, there's not really any way we could put odds on the success of Christianity. How would we know that its probability of success was 1 in 1,000,000 rather than 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 1,000? Why would such odds compel us to turn to a miracle explanation rather than a chance explanation?

BTW, even the individuals with direct knowledge of what the evidence was surrounding Jesus' death would have only lived in a pretty tiny area. Christianity could have been pretty free to grow without worry of the facts being checked on outside that little district.

Some Minor Points I wanted to make:

What Holding said about my quotations of him acting like a jackass:

Don't like shocking images, Nick? Your poor virgin ears too sensitive? Please. You've been edited for profanity here at TWeb, and you're one of those jackasses who would whine about similar language in the Bible, particularly Ezekiel's implication that Israel was guilty of a sort of bestiality, metaphorically, when they went after pagan gods. So please -- spare us your self-righteous Victorian pretend-moralism.

Actually, the main reason I put those quotes up was to let folks know that I wasn't calling some quiet, sweet little Lamb of Christ a dumbass or a dumbfuck. I was attacking someone who's pretty comfortable insulting and talking down to others. Got it?

In my post on Holding, I wrote,

"Although Holding has only a degree in library science, he feels very confident writing (EXTENSIVELY) about historical, biblical, philosophical and theological issues while constantly making arguments from authority and questioning the expertise of real scholars who happen to hold views that he doesn't agree with (see here)."

He responded:

"Argument from authority" here of course means serious scholars who know their business; as usual, these guys have no idea what "argument bu authority" actually is, as though it were meant to prevent a twit like Nicky Poo from quoting Stephen Jay Gould on some point of paleontology. This is Nicky-speak for "Waaah, I'm in over my head when you use people who know what they're talking about, waaaah." And of course, Nicky thinks it is OK for him to quote what he calls "real scholars" anyway. Can we say, "projection"?

I don't have a problem with outsiders like you (and me, for that matter) relying on the majority opinion of scholars. In fact, it is quite reasonable, and appeal to the consensus of scholars is in fact a reasonable form of the argument from authority. To be crystal clear: I've got no problem with you doing this. However, you're guilty of overt special pleading if you won't rely on the majority opinion of scholars for issues such as the age of the earth, whether or not Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, when the book of Daniel was written, etc.

Holding said something else that is relevant to this in his post:

I have also said that the one who disagrees with consensus needs good arguments for doing so.

I suppose I don't disagree with that. However, I think that anytime an amateur decides to disagree with the consensus, they had better interact with the scholarly community (which means publishing in peer-reviewed journals or at least having lengthy correspondances with numerous experts who hold the view that you don't agree with). The reason I say that is because there are often very good, valid reasons that the majority of scholars hold the opinion they do, and so doing some correspondance with those who hold the majority view gives them a chance to show you why they believe what they believe. And, in my experience, it usually turns out that scholars have excellent reasons for believing what they do. Amateurs like us often don't understand which questions we should be asking, and we're often not aware of details that completely change the way we once viewed something. Do you actually bother to write or email the folks who say that the book of Daniel was written in the second century and ask them your questions? If not, why not? If you have, then great. But don't act like others are forced to agree with you. It's completely reasonable for those who have not checked this stuff out (in the way I described) to simply accept the consensus position.