My Answer to Lowder on Bayes, part 1

Jeff Lowder wrote an article attacking my criticisms of the use of Bayes theorem to plot the probability of God. "Is It a Crock to Use Bayes’ Theorem to Measure Evidence about God? Part 1
March 3, 2013." The point of my original article is that you can't apply scientific probably to something as basic and metahpysal as God, the ground of being, the basis of all reality. The nature of Bayes theorum is such that it only works where new information is obtainable. The sort of new information one can have about God is not available to scientific scrutiny and thus there is no new information. That means the "prior" (the prior probability that must be obtained tom make the theorem work) wont be accurate and thus the whole project is dubious. Lowder never actually comes to terms with this argument. Most of the arguments he makes are red herrings or white rabbits.
.... Lowder summarizes what he thinks I'm saying:

I think the point that Metacrock is trying to make is that, if we define “miracle” as an event which requires a supernatural explanation, then by definition a miracle is logically incompatible with metaphysical naturalism, which denies the existence of all supernatural beings, including God. So naturalists can’t remain naturalists and believe a miracle has occurred. The options seem to be: (1) give up naturalism, (2) deny the event took place at all, or (3) agree the event did take place, but deny it has a supernatural explanation.

That's part of what I'm saying but it's not the really crucial points that I made about Bayes.  It's not so much about supernatural as it is about metaphysics and scientific domain. I am not drawing upon the conventional misunderstanding of supernatural that pits a realm of magic against a realm of what atheist want to believe is "fact." Rather, the whole issue of epistemology and metaphysics is prior to scientific learning. Science requires epistemology and metaphysics to ground its assumptions. God is related to those aspects of reality, and thus not part of the scientific domain. In trying to make God an object of probability they have to reduce the concept of God to just another fact in the universe; something God clearly transcends. Lowder merely denied the circular reasoning but of cousre he would.It's not just a matter of bad reasoning, it's an ideological thing. Those are ho in throngs of ideological zeal can't step back from their ideology and critically evaluate their own thinking. They can critique all that is not the ideology but they can't criticize that. That was my point in talking about the circular reasoning naturalists employ in sweeping aside miracle claims: it is that they can't accept anomalies that would threaten the paradigm. Lowder quotes me in cautioning the skeptical attitude.

    So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because its easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the the same token it is equally a danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid.

he adds: "I agree with everything Metacrock writes here, with two important exceptions. First, that metaphysical naturalists do, in fact, reason in the way he describes." That's becuase he reasons that way himself. He can see it's a mistake when called out but he can't see that his rejection of evidence for miracles is that kind of mistake.

 Second, that metaphysical naturalists rely upon “circular reasoning” to avoid the conclusion that a miracle has occurred. It is true, of course, that some individual metaphysical naturalists have made fallacious inferences about miracles. The same could be said about some individual theists. But so what? Metacrock presents absolutely no evidence to justify the assumption that such individuals are representative of the position they represent. Metacrock is attacking a straw man of his own creation.

....Presenting evidence would just be an obligatory task becuase we've all seen what they say about miracles and it's clearly ciruclar it's just that they don't step back from their ideolgoical assumptions to see themselves doing it. Look at Hume. "This does not happen enough." Well, we have lots of claims, when they are advanced the usual rejoinder is "this hasn't happened before, it just does not happen, we don't see it, so we have to assume this is not it (a miracle)." If you want to see this principle actions go to CARM and start arguing for the Resurrection. I've been doing this for 15 years and I've seen thousnds of such arguments iti's aburd to say they say that they say it all the time. Next he's going to tell me that they don't say "He must not understand this idea" when you disagree with them. That's another of their obsessions, if you really understood you would agree with me. He makes that very charge in this article. But then he tries to sweep it away by saying theists do the same thing. That's neither here nor there, the point is atheist arguments about miracles are circular reasoning. That's improtant to realize becuase the whole issue of trying to show the probability of God is based upon trying to treat God like another fact in the universe rather than the basis of reality. That's the root issue of the whole matter. When one understands God as the basis of reality one is apt to see the issues pertaining to God as much larger than just charting the probability of some particular item, just as the realities of miracles is more than just finding an anomaly.
....Now here's where he stops following my train of thought and starts interjecting a bunch of red herrings and a bait and switch or two. I brought up ECREE because given what I said above about about the fruits of skepticism I thought "this would be a good place where they might argue ECREE as a counter to the shortcoming of skepticism." Instead of dealing with that issue he goes off on a tangent defending ECREE when in fact I didn't say it was wrong. Here's a crucial point he misses. My position on ECREE is that it is dependent upon Bayes. As Bayes goes so goes ECREE. That means if Bayes is not suited to probability for God then ECREE is not a valid standard for God arguments. Rather than understanding this he tries to tie ECREE to Bayes even more tightly which would mean it's taken out if I can take out Bayes. It also tells me he's not really following my issues. let's look at what he says:

With all due respect to Metacrock, this statement suggests he does not understand ECREE. As I have explained elsewhere, the best interpretation of ECREE is the Bayesian interpretation. According to BT, the final probability of a hypothesis is determined by two other values: the prior probability of a hypothesis and the hypothesis’s explanatory power. Now explanatory power is, by definition, a measure of how well a hypothesis “predicts” (i.e., make probable) the data.

 ....There it is, he disagrees with me, therefore, he doesn't understand. The problem is it's Jeff who doesn't undersatnd. He thinks I'm saying that ECREE is no good. He focuses here on two things that make Bayes work: (1) the "prior," and (2) and explanatory power. The problem there is my argument hinges on how both of those rule Bayes out as valid way to understand God. I think that's what he doesn't get. I show that you can't set the prior for God, no setting will work; all settings for prior probability of God have the same flaw as the overall project, no new info coming in. All the things we can know of god we know through either deductive reasoning or experience of the divine on the level of the numinous. That means scinece can't handle it. It's outside the domain of scinece. Any setting of  a prior for God will be fraught with ideological needs. Ne never deals with that issue. Rather he brings in red herrings. Moreover the same limitation would also go for explanatory power. God can't give the kind of explanation we expect from scientifically verifiable data. Now the explanatory power of apophatic theology is fine with me. The explanatory power of the Jesus prayer works for me it's not gonna work for an atheist. That means no Bayes on God, no ECREE in relation to God.
....I had said that using ECREE in the way they do would cause one to remain skeptical even when the evidence is good. In fact that's what happens when they think in the ideologically circular way that says "we never accepted this stuff before so we shouldn't accept it now." They create a false record, "there have never been any miracles," based upon circular assumptions. He says it would be ambiguous to talk about "good" miracle evidence. Then he explains two reasons why. But  this is one of many red herrings. regardless of the quality of miracle evidence, that must be discussed in another venue about evidence. My only point was that the assumptions they make about naturalism that enable them to explain away God with Bayes also drive them to assume that their basic ideological assumptions are explanatory. An ideological truth regime is not explanation  it's only a reduction of all phenomena to that which can be controlled and pressed into service for the ideology. Of course he winds up diverting our attention with guilt by association trying to link miracle belief to Mormonism. I'm not going to bother to refute the statements about good miracle evidence because that can only serve to take us off the path.
...At this point he returns to ECREE and he assumes my answer about the meaning of extraordinary (as in "extraordinary claims") are irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are totally relevant. The point I was making was that atheists try to present "extraordinary" as though Belief in God is some wired thing, or as though the kind of extraordinary evidence we need is on a level of Moses and the red sea. The fact of it is the kind of claim that is extraordinary in the sense of a Bayes theorem would be extremely ordinary. A finding that one has cancer when one has never had it before is statistically extraordinary. At that rate any probabilistic God argument we can pull, or the 200 empirical studies on mystical experience, are extraordinary evidence. He gives us a white rabbit to chase in another direction.

Again, with all due respect to Metacrock, this statement shows that Metacrock doesn’t understand ECREE. We don’t determine whether a belief is extraordinary by measuring the percentage of people who hold that belief. Rather, ECREE is epistemic in nature; it has to do with what we would expect to be the case based upon our background knowledge.

He's actually made the argument for me. I never said anything about extraordinary being defined by a percentage of people that believe it. My point is you can't subject the reality of God to empirical proof in a scientific sense. To the extent that we can establish a co-determinate that can be so subjected, such as religious experience being measured by the M scale, we can measure aspects of belief without claiming to measure God. ECREE is not epistemic it's a betrayal of the epistemic. We can't put over "what we expect to be the case God wise" and translate that into standard mathematical terms for probability. how could we do that when God is beyond our understanding? No new info on God is going to come in becuase it can only come from sources that science cannot trust, such as 'the heart.' How can we attach number and data to that? Epistemic issues can't be resolved by scientific reductionism or inductive empiricism. They are more basic than that. They can only be resolved through either logic, experience, or remain open ended. What all of this comes to is we can do two things: (1) we can keep it on a philosophical level and not try to pretend we've solved it. Or, (2) we can find a co-determinate and make phenomenological observations about aspects of the issues around faith and use that to extrapolate assumptions on the more subjective issues, we should not try to pretend that we have some scinece magic that will resolve all belief and make God vanish in a puff of science.
....AT this point he brings up several observations I made about the history of ECREE and Bayes. I'm not going to bother to correct his disagreement except to point out that I documented by sources and I used some of the most recent historians to write on the issue. I am sure he knows more ins and outs of the history than I do, but none of the information he presents are really relivant to my basic argument about probability and God. He tries to claim that Bayes is not in doubt, rather than disproving the history I brought he ignores it completely. It has been in doubt time and time again, it is professors of mathematics who doubted it. I documented that with McGrayne and he has nothing to say about that.[1] that's probably the most authoritative history about the BT. None of the issues he brings up historically disprove the history I listed. He merely shows additional examples of people who have accepted the BT. That's ust begging the question, they made the same mistake he is. He took the history to mean that I think Bayes isn't useful for anything but to argue for atheism. I did actually read the McGrayne book. Obliviously her point is that BT keeps coming back because it's useful. My argument is not that it's not useful. I never said Bayes is no good we can't use for anything. That is a red herring. It's good but it can't be used to tell us about God becasue God is not amenable by such methods. God is the unified field its so basic you can't get a microscope and find it. It's too basic as the same time too big. Too fundamental to reality to be just another thing we can subject to empirical measures. Now uses those red herrings to take us down to the path to a point where can try to use Chrsitain apologists to argue against me.

To cite the most obvious counter-example, has Metacrock never heard of Richard Swinburne or read any of his numerous books which use BT to defend Christian theism? (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Or seen Tim and Lydia McGrew’s impressive use of BT to argue for the Resurrection in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology? (See here.)

Obviously I have hard of them, I have to confess I don't read much of the apologists running around now days. I respect Swinburne. I probalby have missed lot by not following him. Most of the thinkers I use are those I read in Doctoral work when I studied history of science as Ph.D. candidate in history of ideas. Now Jeff sites apologists who argue for the resurrection using the BT. Arguing for the Resurrection is a different matter. That's not arguing for the probably of God. There might be tangible things to latch onto there. The resurrection is a physical event in space/time and it's not on par with God as the basis of reality. So it is anther fact in the universe. Thus it could be subject to empirical means. Natual theology also one can make the same point about that. then he says:

Metacrock is simply “barking up the wrong tree” on this one. I cannot think of any way to salvage his point.

I can think of a way. One might try to undersatnd what I'm real saying and deal with the one cogent point upon which the original article based: that God is not given in sense data, thus he cannot be subjected to numbers. The Bayes theorem can be used for other things, some of those serve belief in God. That doesn't mean that God himself can be subjected to it.




[1] Sharon Berstch McGrayne, The Theory that would not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, 3.

Announcement: my debate with Jeff Lowder over Bayes Theorem

My answer to his part 2 is up on the CADRE blog. If you missed part 1 it's there too but the post before part 2.

An instructive observation about Athiest Indorctirnation.

How do they indoctrinate? Many atheists have said to me "when did they shine a light in my face and and beat me with a rubber hose?" That's not how you brain wash people. "Brain washing" is nothing more than socialization. So to indoctrinate they just expose their people to a plethora of very ordinary seeming posts on message boards. You would look at this and say it's just a regular post. That's the point. It's socializing them into the guild. take a lesson:

Magritte: 

Some Christians hate skepticism for the same reason that Scientologists, tea leaf readers, ghost whisperers and common-or-garden con men hate it - these people need marks, rubes, bumpkins, to survive and prosper.

Some Christians like to say of skepticism, "oh, but if you doubt what I have to say, then you have to be skeptical of everything! You have to be skeptical of other minds, the external world, the consistency of nature, and so many other things! So I guess you don't like skepticism anymore, right? Right?" [nodding at you, looking a little too eager]

This is not learned philosophical concern with high minded questions of epistemology. This is the low tactic of defending indefensible ideas by attempting to undermine critical thinking.

 The rest of the posts are lauding skepticism as noble and Superior attitude.

 JRT:

 I regard skepticism as a very healthy attitude. It tends to innoculate one against irrational and/or extreme beliefs. My own skepticism has shaped and continues to shape my own Christian beliefs.

 Logical bob

 In terms of etymology, skeptical means seeking or inquiring. It's the opposite of dogmatic. A term to be proud of.

 Also tehy disparage Christian attitudes.

 Originally Posted by Decypher

Everyone is a religious skeptic in a sense. Including Christians. No one believes all the religion out there!

And as it happens, quite a few Christians will get actively involved in religious skepticism and try to argue against other religions.

Magritte:

But be skeptical of Christianity... well that's not allowed and makes you a "god hater"!!

Yes, there's certainly an element of hypocrisy there... I've compared Scientology to Christianity before, and to me their claims are equally bizarre though of course Scientology was birthed recently so we still have a good idea how the sausage was made, so to speak. In any case, in my experience Christians are ready to dismiss Scientology on the prima facie basis that it's obviously ridiculous, and I agree. But if they held the absurd bend-over-backwards good will towards Scientology that the typical Christian apologist holds towards Christianity, and examined Christianity with the skepticism they reserve for Scientology (and Islam, and Mormonism), you'd see them dropping their Bibles and picking up copies of Dianetics.

 This is simple in-gathering. They are telling the troops "here's the attitude to have." We are on the right side, who ray for our side. we are noble, our enemies are bad. It's all very ordinary but they get everyone expressing their view that I' am part of he group, I want to be accepted. I know the right things to say too. Let's talk about why atheist hate reason, and critical thinking? O know they think they love it utnil you use it to disprove atheism.

yesterday on this board an atheist actually said to me that people can't answer my arguments becuase they are bad arguments. that's obviously backwards to reason. It's the one's can't answer that are god nd prove their points.

this is just more self congratulatory in-gathering of the troops.

we are good, we are worthy, dont' give up the ship. take heart heart comrades we are on the noble side.


 Christian poster Highrigger had a good counter:

 This is false to the core. Christians should be the most skeptical of all. In fact their religion demands it. We should be skeptical about if we believe properly, or behave properly, or think properly and we are expected to change accordingly every day of our lives.

To Repent means to be skeptical about oneself and make a change in ones life. Here is Martin Luthers #1 Thesis in his 95.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed
that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

When you can repent like Luther recommends you can criticize christians. Otherwise learn what repentance means and why it is the constant duty of christians. We worship a God of truth and can never accept any less for ourselves.

These comments are not too outrageous and it's not wrong for them to encourage each other. Yet there is a process of indoctrination going on here we need to learn to see it.

stupid athist tricks:Aussie Dave

Aussie Dave on CARM asks two of the stupidest questions I've heard in a while:

is it possible that the bible is a hoax, considering the fact that there are over 35,000 copies and portions of NT scripture and not a single original in sight? 

No. Hoax implies a ruse or a trick. your implications is that the bible was never written becuase there's no original? Or are you trying to say it was made up a hoax or a plot, conspiracy by people who never knew Jesus? Why would that be indicated just becuase they don't the originals?

the originals are gone and can't be found becuase they rotted away. they were copied. people kept copying it up to the point where they got printing becasue they liked it but that means the copies get old and rot and have ot be copied again so you have latter and latter copies.

that's seriously silly to think that makes it a hoax. that's saying telephones are a trick because there's no original phone you can call and talk to Bell.

And a bonus:-

Do they think it is rational and logical to believe in an invisible, incorporeal entity that has no sensory evidence of it's actual existence?
ad.

do you believe in subatomic particles? You can't see them. we don't even know what they are made of.


in the same therad Hooks comes to his defense:

 Originally Posted by Hooks

Jesus, who Christians (what you call yourself) believe was God.

So if Jesus was a real person, then people could see him, touch him, hear him, and ask him questions.

Yet, the apologists of our time like you prefer to talk about metaphysical, unfalsifiable propositions about a generic god.

If you think there is evidence of God, why don't you start with the God who was allegedly incarnate?

 that's almost as stupid as the original OP. do we have to explain this to you?

you can't prove Jesus is God because he didn't have a birth mark sayign "this is god." if we could go back in time and see him (we can't) he would be just like a regular guy, he scratched he snorted and he went to the bathroom. He might have even had a disgusting trait like making little snorting noises when he laughed. so way to tell he's God unless he works a miracle. what sense does it make to argue about Jesus being God before you talk about God?



Originally Posted by skylurker

Every mind we know is like that. Every mind we know of is tethered to a brain. To suggest otherwise is highly speculative.

obviously that's because we are biological organisms. I just said that's what our data base is limited ot. how can we say that God, who is not an organism is not biological would have to be the same? there's no basis for thinking that. you can't compare a universal mind on a such a grand scale with the little petty minds we have.

do you know that amoebas don't have brains at all? yet they hunt, the stalk, the eat, they avoid pain. there is concrete proof that all intelligence is not in brains.

Further there are no grounds to specially plead the case that a highly ordered mind was the first mover. As you pointed out order requires an orderer and a highly ordered mind goes against that principle.

that makes no sens at all. highlighter ordered mind goes against the principle of order, how do you figure? It's more likely that order implies an ordered since of organizing.

Even if one were accept the first cause argument a very simple non-conscious physical phenomena - say a quantum foam sea - is way more parsimonous the suggesting a God with many different attributes as identified by theism.

that's a groundless claim. It's true that god would not have to create much to get an evolutionary universe. So he wouldn't have to be complex it's also true that the concept of complexity is meaningless at the level of god.

the concept of simple vs. complex is totally meaningless when there's' nothing to compare too. god is the only eternal necessary aspect of all being so nothing else to compare to.

There is no known mechanisms where a bio organism hooks into a mind. I mean Decartes thought the pineal gland but we know now that was erroneous.

we dont' need a known mechanism. because we are not dealing with the known. it would be super stupid to think that the basis of all reality must follow the patters of it's creation on the level of our plane of existence.

we are like two fleas arguing if the ground on which they live is a living dog. you say "O we have no example of any mechanism for a living being having fur." that's right there are little dogs the size of fleas for them to compare it to. therefore fleas can't live on dogs.







The Cram de la cram of the stupid athiest tricks.


Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
they can't answer my arguments.

CRM:

And why not? Is it because they are mentally inferior or because your arguments only make sense to you? 

he's actually saying that if you can't answer an argument that means it's not good. so that must mean if you can answer it, it's good. By that logic all the arguments that are beaten are proved! the best thing to do to be right in an arguemnt is lose? that's brilliant, Einstein.

He must not believe in the concept of reasoning. If you dont' answer an argument in a debate you lose that argument.

Exercise in atheist sophistry 110

Yesterday on the CARM board I argued something I had been working on. Getting very tired of the repetitive nature of atheists, their constant mantra "there's no proof for your God," I decided to drive home the point that they have not answered my arguments in a way that would really force them to deal with their dishonesty. This is a big mistake because you can't make people deal with that. I wrote a thing that emphasized the turning point in each argument,the thing they have to do to beat that arguemnt. Remember my arguments are not to prove that God has to exist, but that belief that God exits is rationally warranted. At first they went all the way down the page without even trying to answer the specifics. Some did actually try but for most of them there was nothing but an indigent personally insulting cutesie answer mostly about how stupid I am how I must be wrong because I'm insulting.

Here's the orignal post I made:

Remember I argue that I don't have to prove that God exists, but demonstrating that there's good reason to believe in God is the warrant for belief; the proof that belief is rational. That proof comes by the making of a prmia facie case. one that is valid on face value.


the result of my God arguments are that I have made many PF cases. I have affirmed that they are not beaten and when I say this the atheists say "O they suck, we beat them all the time" when I give them concrete goals to meet to prove this they back off. here are goals: you must overturn these to beat each argument:

You haven't won a single one of those arguments. Not one.

Religious experience studies (200) that establish RE as transformative and show across the board better for you than unbelief, the M scale makes the study of such objective so we can have controls and compare things.

*O really, so what's your methodological attack on Hood's studies?

CA:I argue that eternal necessary being is the basis of reality and that universe is contingent upon being itself.

*show me the proof that the universe popping form nothing with no prior conditions

Religious experience version of the ground of being argument.

I argue that that which evokes the sense of the numinous is the proper object of religious devotion and that eternal necessary being does evoke same.

* prove that eternal necessary being doesn't evoke the sense of the numinous

Thomas Reid Argument or Argument form epistemic judgement:

this is major becuase it's an absolute justification for bleief in God. The criteria we use to decide the reality of experiences is met by religious experience; we can trsut it as a guide to reality.

* prove threat RE doesn't conform to the criteria we use to determine to determine epistemic judgement.

The Transcendental Signifier argument

I say that the fact that we can't speak or organize ideas or give meaning to anything without a TS is a good indication that there is a TS in reality that does this for reality; that is God's job description.

* answer the TS argument. show me an idea about meaning or nature that doesn't require a TS.


until you beat all of these you have no right to mouth the bromide about no evidence.

 The early answers:

Madmax:

He falls back upon a general argument against religion without even considering the existence of God. In fact he basically implies that my arguments are true but he hates religion anway:


Originally Posted by madmax2976

*shrug* Hec, I've made a pretty good PF case for God myself - it's not hard to do but doesn't really seem to accomplish much. Plus, it's a far cry from there to genital mutilation, suicide bombing, reincarnation, and redeeming human sacrifices.

 Meta: I answer with an analogy designed to show what's wrong with his thinking. The idea is that he opposes religions because some religoius people have done some bad things, I show the same kind of thinking could lead one to oppose scinece.

those are ridiculous ideas. you think you are disproving region becasue of that that's just stupid. that's ridiculous. that's like saying "scinece might work a little bit, I even made telegraph for science fair in fourth grade but it's a far cry from there to the atomic bomb." scinece is wrong and bad because it led nuclear weapons.

This had an unexpected result because it just led to several atheists attacking me for hating scinece, as though they thought I was seriously arguing that scinece is wrong. no matter many ways I tried to explain it they got more intense about how stupid it is to oppose scinece. They are idiots. How can one reason with a bunch of idiots?


 CRM says: "You seem to be ok with the bit of science that allows you to bring your message to the masses on the www..." As though that's the real issue.

 Originally Posted by Metacrock

i have no use for someone who pretends to debate and doesn't understand the basics of argument.

NotAnAthist: Now you understand precisely why I put you on ignore months ago
 He calls himself "not an atheist" but he might as well be one; he blocks with them every single time and he spits back their ideology and their slogans every time. All he's doing here is just making personal insults.


 Another poster makes a veg statement about a pool anallogy and I aruged:

Originally Posted by Metacrock

I don't want to put it beyond reasonable doubt. If I did that would mean God's reality is subject to my calculation. There's always reasonable doubt. I think my arguemnts demonstrate that belief is totally justified and good solid evidence exists that warrants belief. that's not beyond reasonable doubt.

both sides have their rational warrants. I think belief has the stronger warrant. that doesn't eliminate doubt. That's where the leap comes in.

Just like when I was a kid, all the contemplation on the end of high dive wont put you in the water, you have to jump!

Super Genyus: But a smart person checks to make sure the pool is filled with water before he jumps.
by this time we have about 50 posts in the thread not one of them is about the op. they are this kind of persona quip BS that has nothing to do with the issues. Then CRM goes into some antics trying to pyschologize me:

Skylurker makes a general statment that is veg and not specific:
Originally Posted by skylurker

The evidence is of insufficient quality for me and does not rise above the countering evidence and incoherencies... for you maybe not... I am ok with that.

Meta: "you haven't answered one of them! not one of you has even tired you lose."

that's where CRM goes into his antics.


CRM:

 This burning desire to "win" and prove to yourself that you are right is quite interesting...I can't seem to find any evidence that you do all of this to convince other people of the existence of God.

 He says this after about 40posts, not one of them has even tried to address a single issue form any argument, yet he says this my burning desire to win which somehow must invalidate all the ideas I have in my head. I want to win, therefore, they must not be a God! As atheists don't want to win!

 Whatshisface (that's his name):"Your arguments don't win because they don't show God exists, the best they can say is God might exist. "

that's his big answer. they don't show God exists, which is odd becuase the conclusion of all of them are that they do show God exits. the arguments are arguments for belief in God. He's trying to say they don't prove God exists. they certainly give reasons to believe he does, he can't show that's not enough. No specifics. no answers to the specific arguments, no attempt to even answer them. this is literally all he argued. Everything else is about what's wrong with me.

Again as with 90% of atheist argument he's not arguing about the ideas, he's arguing about the persona making the ideas.

 Skylurker says "I have zero problems with you believing that this list of yours constitutes a prima facie case for you. In fact I am happy for you. ." I say "great then don't go around saying I have no evidence for God. he says:

The evidence is of insufficient quality for me and does not rise above the countering evidence and incoherencies... for you maybe not... I am ok with that.

 noting specific no proof no logic, just a pronouncement that makes it true. He doesn't even say way it's a reason to disbelieve the argument.


 Diest: 

"That's BS. You can't cherry pick the bible and say talking snakes and donkeys are stories. along with whatever else you choose to ignore and call it theology as if that's some big word to make others feel inferior to you. I submit you know nothing. You make it up on the fly, as I'll prove in a following post. "

 what does this have to do with arguments about the existence of God?




 it does on like this 76 posts and nothing. not a single answer to an idea with any substance.

my analysis: they are morons.

On Atheist Default Assumption

 

Default: the assumption that, lacking sound belief for religious claims, one must assume a "default" and resort to a natural lack of belief. Atheists sure insist upon the notion that atheism is just a natural lack of bleief in something, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Almost every dictionary definition before the 1990s said that Atheism was the rejection of belief in God.

Now most include two things (1) rejection (2) mere lack. Why? Because with the advent of the internet age atheism got a new lease on life and was givien this organizing tool, it began crowding out agnosticism. Agnosticism began to appear in the guise of "weak atheism." Then atheism became a mere lack of belief that sees itself as a natural default position. Atheists love to think that all people are born natural atheists, which is obviously disproved by the recent studies about brain structure and innate ideas of God.

Atheism has never been merely a lack of bleief. If you were honest about what you really think, your behavior and tendencies, it always accompanies certain assumptions about the nature of the world, about naturalism and about physical laws.Atheism is clearly more than just the lack of a belief, which really should be called "agnosticism."

I've always thought the atheist default position was pretentious and presumptive,and designed by someone who just lionized atheism. But there should be a religious default position to the extent that there's no particular reason to assume naturalism over any other position. The world doesn't come to us wrapped in philosophical labels. We have to go to school and learn them, and most of the time they play on our prejudices. There's no reason to validate one over another form the outset. There is no base line for comparison from which one can say unaccountably, "there is nothing beyond the material realm," and thus no basis for comparison such that we can say materialism is the natural state. But my religious a prori argument would argue that religion is not derivative from other disciplines but is a valid thing in itself own right. As such we can assume the properly basic nature of religious belief as a 'default" position

1) The notion of something from nothing violates basic assumptions of materialism

a. materialism is based upon cause and effect

Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is either matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence." Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999) http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offense to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."

b) Something from nothing contradicts materialism

Science and The Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.

NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... science which is employed in their development [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoints the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]

c) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science

It was La Plase's famous line "I have no need of that Hypothesis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form believing (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we dont' need God to explain the universe because we have independent naturalistic cause and effet. [Numbers, God and Nature]


2) Materialism Undermines Itself

a) Big Bang contradicts causality (see quotation above)

b) QM theory seems to contradict cause/effect relationship.

c) Rejection of final cause

3) Probabilistic Justification for assumption of Cause

We still have a huge justification for assuming causes inductively, since nothing in our experience is ever uncased. The mere fact that we can't see or find a cause isn't a proof that there isn't one.

4) Therefore, we have probabilistic justification for assuming Final cause

Thus, the basis upon which God was dismissed from scientific thought has been abandoned;the door to consideration of God is open again. The reliance upon naturalistic cause and effect in consideration of ultimate origins is shattered, but this does not make it rational to just assume that the universe popped into existence with no cause. Since we have vast precedent for assuming cause and effect, we should continue to do so. But since naturalistic cause and effect seems unnecessary at the cosmic level, we should consider the probability of an ultimate necessary final cause.

The Atheist fear of Gardening

 


Recently I was posting on a message board and I made the remark that the search for God is in the heart. An atheist responded by saying "I don't make decisions based upon emotionalism." That response made me angry becasue it's so pretensions. The very same guy, Mr. Rational thought will turn right around and wail in the most emotional tirade about how deeply he hates the Bible and hates God for telling him what to do. The Audacity of this God person! Atheism has a strong tendency to reduce everything deep, complex, and richly textured to the most banal they can get. They constantly reduce "life transformation," the upshot my religious experience arguments to "gett'n happy." Once when going on about the empirical scientific studies from academic peer reviewed journals an atheist said this was ministers emailing their people and asking them to report on how they are "gett'n happy." This reminds me of how everything the atheists have going, their entire project is nothing more than an attempt to hide the phenomena and reduce everything to such a truncated view of reality that all one has left to turn to is their shallow and simplistic view.

They do this by mocking and ridiculing the concepts of depth, being, and faith that are required to believe. They do it by arguing that the only form of knowledge is science, the only valid scinece is empirical evidence, the only valid form of empirical evidence that which agree with their views (the religious experience studies are empiric and scientific but they mock and ridicule them as "ministers emailing their flock." It makes sense that they would think of "the heart" as "emotionalism." That's becuase their greatest fear is "the subjective." That is, feelings. they are terribly afraid of feelings. That's becuase if they allow themselves to feel they will be convicted of their sin. I've seen atheists actually deny the concept of "the heart." They have ridiculed it as "the heart pumps blood." So the whole idea of an inner life is abhorant to them. That's probably because if they dealt with the inner life they would have no choice but to be convicted and believe. It is entirely essential that the believer cultivate the inner life. Inner is what faith in God is all about. There is no real point in belief in God without the inner life. Before discussing the nature of inner life let me remove the charge of emotionalism.

First the concept of the heart is not ridiculous, not based upon magic, not difficult to prove. The idea of the "heart" is merely based upon the Greek term "cardia." The Greeks did not see the brain as the seat of the intellect they saw the chest as the place of the intellect. This is because when one feels emotions deeply one can feel a palpable constriction in the chest, the pulse races, the blood pumps faster and that gives the link between the blood pump in the chest, the Greek term "cardia" which we adopted to refer to the pump but the Greeks used to refer to the "inner being" as the seat of feelings and emotions. The Biblical term heart, which atheists confuse with spirit or soul and thus react to indignantly (as they react to everything) is just the will, the desire, the sense of conviction in deep seated ideas we care about. Secondly, this is not "emotionalism." There's a lot ore to "the inner life" than just being emotional. What most people mean when they say "emotionalism" is not an organized philosphy that says based decisions upon feelings. The term is a pejorative destined to mock and ridicule anyone whose decision making process is other than the atheist ideology. There is much more to the "inner life" than just emotion. Existentialism and the concepts of self authentication are included in "inner life." The intellect is part of the inner life. Going about the business of the intellectual life style, reading, thinking, mediating, this is all part of inner life.

No one actually bases decisions upon raw feelings, as an example of inner life. Immature people make rash decisions based upon raw feelings, but that's not the aim of Christian life. When we speak of "the heart" in connection with decision making, such as faith based decisions, we are talking about conviction. Conviction can be borne of deep intellectual analysis, logic, and deliberation as much as it can "feelings." Feelings per se are not necessarily 'emotionalism' either. One doesn't make decisions based upon "I hate X therefore I will not do X." Actually feelings can play different roles in decision making and belief but they must always be grounded in reason. The most important feeling in relation to faith is a sense of conviction that is beyond a mere physical sensation or emotion. Conviction is reducible to just emotion. Conviction stems from the deep seated assurance that a course is correct, that comes from reasoning it out as well as determining actual "feelings."

Atheists will try to mock and ridicule the notion of the inner life. This is because they mock and ridicule anything that doesn't stack up to their ideology about truncated reality. They must collapse reality to eliminate possibles, so one doesn't seek God.the way they do this is to prescribe only one aspect aspect of reality as real, that which is empirically derived from scientific observation. Now a good deal of empirical scientific data disproves atheism but of they can't allow that. Evidence which does not support their conclusions they reduce to their canon of prescribed reality by indicting it's scientific nature in all manner of bogus ways. They have to create the idea that only that which supports the ideology is valid. To do this they cling to the surface of reality. Things are only what can be gleaned form surface level facts of existence of physical objects and nothing else. There is no depth of being, they must create confusion about the very concept of being. They will call it abstraction and say it's pretend and so forth. Just as they label faith as "pretending" and what have you. Everything feeds back into the central thesis; reality is surface level only. That is the level of reality for them because that's what their knowledge controls. Anything deep requires thought, and thought is liberating. If one begins to think about reality and what depth means one begins to unravel the mythology that says only transcribe scientifically derived things can be in existence. To unravel that is to step onto the road to belief and they must avoid that at all costs.

For the believer the situation is just the opposite. Not that the believer needs to pretend, quite the contrary. Pretense in belief is deception. Faith is not about pretending it's about seeking truth. If we are not seeking the TRUTH with a capitals we are not living in faith. We are not cultivating the inner life if we ware not seeking truth. Even if that means digging up some deeply rooted and cherished misconceptions we still have to do it. That statement is not some radical prescription I got form Paul Tillich, it's a statement I got from very conservative A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God. The situation is the opposite of that described as "atheist tactics" above because it means expecting that there is more to reality than meets the eye and that finding it will entails a search based upon global knowledge, not just one method. My "global" in don't mean the occult I mean both science and philosophy as well as a phenomenological approach and mystical experience. The mystical is not someone one can control so that should come under the heading "phenomenology." A phenomenological approach would work best with mystical experience; allow the phenomena to suggest it's own categories.

The inner life requires cultivation. We can't just expect to stop with belief, nor can we imagine that constant argument and constant apologetic is spiritual nourishment. The ability to do a sustained apologetically debate requires a strong inner life, it not a source of inner life. That's not say that doing apologetic on a regular basis doesn't' help build the inner life. Yet it can't all be oriented around arguing about God's existence. The primary aspect of innerl ife that is the water for the roots of the plant of faith is prayer. I'm going to start mixing metaphors here but prayer is the nourishment of relationship with God and relationship with God is the foundation upon winch one is able to conduct a successful apologetically approach. We have to draw a line in the sand and ignore the atheists, forget the arguments, move away from that and go into your own space and deal with God. We have to do this every day. You don't have to get down on your knees and shut our eyes real tight. You don't have to speak in a stilted King James fashion, you don't have to even do discursive inner monologue, just focus on God.

I find that the thing that works best is the old fashioned prayer and praise. That may sound incongruous with all my high and mighty liberal theology, but the hold over from my old charismatic days is that prayer and praise works best to bring in the sense of God's presence and open one up to the possibilities of God. There's no formula, once might experiment and find what really excites one on an individual level. For me it's praise thing. It's very repetitious but singing works. The older hymns are more meaningful, they have more concepts in them. Repetition is good too though because it's like a mantra, enables focus. Meditating upon the presence of God is important. When you feel a sense of presence however slight, dwell on it, think about it, cultivate the contact with it. Study the Bible ever day and pray every day. Prayer is not a list of wants. There's a time in prayer for presenting petitions. First get into the spirit, praise God and mediate on God until you feel close to the divine and then present wants when you feel led to. We should all pray at lest two hours a day as a minimal effort. Do I do that? NO! Sometimes I do. It goes in phases. I went through a phase a couple of times when I prayed four hours in row every day. That's not even accomplishment there are people who pray much more than that.

It's a discipline, the firsrt time you try it will be hard to make five minutes. Do it at a regular time every day and increase by a few minutes every day. There are endless schemes for Bible study. Don't just look up answers to atheist attacks that's as bad as doing the atheist thing and only reading it to find problems. Read what speaks to you and dweel on it. Meditate on the ideas the thoughts. There are endless books on all manner of meditation. Meditation doesn't always mean eastern style with mantra. Discursive reasoning can be meditation. Cartesian style meditation is through development of ideas. Mark out a passage, look up every word, read a long way around before and after to get the context. Ask basic questions about context, what's the point of this? Why was it written? Who is it speaking to? There are tons of study guide things on the bible one can find. For internet message board people who are arguing with atheists one of the major hang up is going to be overcoming the doubt tape atheists have constantly tried to imprint on your brain. You are going to have to learn to respect the word of God all over again. I recommend that book Models of Revelation by Avery Dulles. That's not a sprituiaized study guide has nothing to do with bible study. It's on the nature of academic work about the nature of Biblical revelation. It's important because it will sharpen one's sense understanding about the nature of the Bible and enable one to endure the problems encounter in the Bible. One of the major helps it bestows is in understanding that it doesn't matter if there are problems in the Bible. Problems is not a reason to trash the Bible the way the atheist have attempted. The intellectual and philosophical approach si part of the inner life.

For the average person the spiritual aspects are going to be more accessible than the intellectual. One can educate oneself academically but there is no substitute for learning in a university environment. People guy reference books for bible study, works like Strong's Concorde. That stuff has gotten so popular it's much more available online than in hard copy. There's no substitute for taking Greek. Those references books are biased by doctrine and they are all written by conservatives and biased by their doctrines. Take some Greek classes and use the secular Greek Lexicon of Classical Greek (Lidell and Scott) along with Strong's. It's hard to give yourself a college education. It's a good idea to take of seminary classes if you are lucky enough to be in a town with a seminary. I really don't understand why atheists refuse to study. They would be more effective as atheists. That makes me think their real purpose is just emotional (ironically sense they are afraid of being emotional) they are just looking for a place to vent.

The perennial danger is always deception. The potential of making a mistake probably scares a lot of people off from spiritual life. One must stay grounded. Get grounded then stay grounded. We do that in three ways: fellowship, Bible study, prayer, in reverse order. "Fellowship" has huge drawbacks. Churches are rough. We are social creatures and social support is necessary. Just a small group can be a big help. Look for a place where they are not condmening or legalistic and where they treat people right and seeking God is their top priority. Don't fear mistakes so terribly because Grace covers a multitude of sins.

Don't let atheist destroy your faith. Don't allow mocking and ridiucle to discourse you from seeking God. There are intellectual answers to every intellectual issue. The real issues that kill faith are daily living issues for that we need to be strong in a daily living sort of way. That's what prayer strengthens us in. The intellectual life takes care of itself if you cultivate it, and the inner life includes the intellectual life. The spirit and the intellectual are not contradictions. The two can be integrated and working on the integration is a great project for the inner life. It's something we work on every day and it's a major focus of our lives. It gives us meaning and fulfillment. I am reminded of the phrase at the end Voltaire's Candide. He says several times, "we must tend our garden." The context is speaking of a literal garden where several aging and starving castaways have wound up living together and pulling for mutual survival after a life of carnage and hardship. The phrase is usually taken as a metaphor, mainly it's the last thing said in the book and repeated. The metaphor implies the cultivation of an inner life, or a life of the mind just as one tends and cultivates a garden. It must be tended and cultivated every day, this is what keeps up alive, as the physical garden kept Candide and his friends alive at the end. Don't let atheists stop you from tending your garden.