Classic Lesson in Atheist Reductionism: Losing the Phenomena

 



On CARM Fleetmouse does his thing with another post justifying reducing miracles to lost phenomena:

I've been trying to come up with a snappy name for the "I dunno, therefore God" kind of reasoning that goes on a lot in atheist / theist debates. Well, David Kyle Johnson has a good one: mysterium ergo magus:

[...] when one commits what I like to call the “Mysterium ergo magus” (“Mystery therefore Magic”) fallacy — it is to believe that an inability to think of a natural explanation is a good reason to appeal to a supernatural one.

from http://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2...cience-part-i/

This is a favorite argument of theists - we can't fully explain something complex at the cutting edge of our fields of knowledge - consciousness, cosmology, etc. - therefore, this entitles us to "reach for the wand" - to appeal to magical and supernatural explanations. And of course, the supernatural explanations one reaches for will slot neatly into one's own religious views - Christians will not explain anything in terms of Hindu religion and vice-versa - it all seems to depend on where one was born.

However as Johnson continues in a note:

Having no proof that there is a natural explanation is no good reason to think that it is false that there is a natural one. Why? For one, we have made this mistake in the past — declaring, “nothing else can explain this but the supernatural,” only to find an embarrassingly obvious natural explanation latter. But mainly such reasoning is fallacious because it is more likely that the reason you can’t find a natural explanation is because you can’t think of one — not because there isn’t one.

How often do theists engage in the mysterium, ergo magus fallacy? I bet we can find ten posts in the last week. I can think of two examples regarding cosmology in one of my recent threads.

Also note that some will not drop magic even when there ARE solid naturalistic explanations - see the evolution board for examples.

 



 This is just the circular reasoning that atheists always use to dismiss SN and miracle claims and anything to do with God. It's just moving the goal post when the evidence is met.

It's nothing more than "we have always dismissed this i the past so we are justified in doing so now."

 just the typical atheist quesiton begging gimmick. Find a label to stick on it and it's done away. one of the classic moves of philosophical reductionism, re-label it as a prelude to losing the phenomena.

the whole move is right out of the reductionist play book because it's just a means of losing phenomena. whatever happens we can label as false in some flashy way and that is justified by past labeling. then it's automatically gone because it's now this gimmick rather than a miracle or whatever.

All of this relates back to anti-phenomenaoloyg. Pehom would allow the sense data to suggest it's own categories. The opposite of that reaches for the preconceived categories to file the phenomena away under so it wont be bothersome.


 Originally Posted by fleetmouse

Supposing that mysteries have natural explanations just like previously mysterious things that turned out to have natural explanations isn't circular - it's a perfectly legitimate use of inductive reasoning.

 

Meta:

You are doing more than that. When you give it a little label you are saying we can move the goal post. If you meet the requriement I set up then I'll just claim this is a case X (whatever the label is) and move goal post again.

Answering Brap on Software analogy

Meta said:"I think in the computer world there is a useful distinction between soft ware and hard ware. The program is not the monitor."

Our friendly neighborhood space alien* visiting earth has commented on the software analogy I used in answering brain mind issue:

BRAP

I agree that the distinction between hardware and software is very useful. But it's useful because it would be impractical, not impossible, to have that distinction. It would obviously be very difficult andy cumbersome to describe the arrangement of those magnetic bits or those surface imperfections in terms of their physical properties ("hardware") instead of in terms of what they do ("software"). But it could be done, so it seems to me like software reduces to something physical. The word "software" is a shorthand way of describing something physical.

I can't believe you are harping on this. the original idea is some phenomena (ie consciousness) is thought to originate as a side effect of brain chemistry. This is like thinking the math problem we might see displayed on the screen of a monitor originate in the monitor and are just soemthing monitor does on its own until you hit it with a bat and break it. In reality the math is part of a word processing program lie a word doc that's written by someone who did not make the monitor and it can be saved on a disk and used on another computer if he do bash the monitor. It relay in fact has nothing to do with the monitor accept the monitor enable us to access it. That's the real point here is access and how we can be fooled about the role of the brain in accessing consciousness. The point of course is that the simplsitic athist answer "If you hit someone in the head it changes their consciousness" is not proof that consciousness is reduce able to brain function.

For you to go off on this tangent is not useful.


Brap:

The word "book" is a shorthand way of describing a physical object that consists of mostly paper and ink (before ebooks, anyway). I believe words like "mind" and "consciousness" are shorthand ways of describing what the brain does.

that's begging the question. to make hat assumption you have to accept a prior assumption not in evidence, ie the issue being debated, thus making it a question begging.

Brap:

Since I have four or five books about the mind, consciousness, and the brain sitting on my table right now, patiently waiting for my eyes to focus on the ink between their covers which will then lead to a series of events resulting in physical changes within my brain, there's no point in my getting too much deeper into this topic. I hope my current knowledge on this subject will seem infantile to me in the near future.

This is not your usual quality of reasoning. Are you trying to insinuate that becuase being expose to a text will change your consciousness then there's no distinction between brain and mind? That doesn't follow.

Brap

For now, I think the hardware/software analogy holds, although the brain/mind relationship is orders of magnitude more complicated. But there was a time in history when people thought it would never be possible to describe how the stars got in the sky, or how the earth was formed, or how humans could have evolved from other species. History seems to indicate there may not be anything that is impossible to know.

Argument from analogy. that doesn't back up reductionism. The answer about the stars doesn't lend credence to reductionism.


________________

*Brap is a sometime regular commenter on Metacrock's blog was his original story, the he was a space alien visiting earth and asking questions. it allowed him to use the anthropological technique called "playing the stranger" which means asking "stupid" questions that everyone "knows" the answer to to make us realize we don't know all the answers we think we do. He's kind of dropped that over the years but it was a great come on in the beginning.

Atheists Tend to have Poor Understanding of Ethics: Another Example of Science and Circular Reasoning

Atheists tend not to understand ethical theory. They are trying to make ethical judgments but by imposing their own ethical theories and then back reading those same theories into Christian ethics. Here is a discussion on a message board with an atheist:





 scottsaddiscionboard on Christiansrus

Of course, there seem to be many acts that appear to be selfless, but modern scientists have good explanations for why this is only appearance.  They replace the word individual with gene pool and what Darwin said is still relevant.  If there is no such thing as altruism, I would think this would strongly effect the moral realm.  In fact, I think it would completely nullify our ideas of morality.

Scott wrote:

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Metacrock wrote:

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Darwin has no impending presence in the moral realm. To conclude that moral thinking is somehow invalid because of evolution or that evolution is all it needs is fallacious either way.

Darwin wrote:

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If ever it could be shown that individuals repeatedly and reliably sacrifice their own fitness to increase the fitness of others, the theory of natural selection would be refuted.

Of course, there seem to be many acts that appear to be selfless, but modern scientists have good explanations for why this is only appearance.  They replace the word individual with gene pool and what Darwin said is still relevant.  If there is no such thing as altruism, I would think this would strongly effect the moral realm.  In fact, I think it would completely nullify our ideas of morality. 


  

the majority of science does not accept any of that as fact. Dawkins is not a major scientist he is not received by the scientific world as a major guy with major discoveries. The attempt to take over ethics with biology is laughed at by ethicist. The majority of science does not go along with Dawkins.

Forgive me for being skeptical; it's just that I prefer to take the word of Ivy League professors over some guy on the internet.  The fact that I have seen you make outrageous claims, like being able to prove God exists, doesn't really inspire trust either.  Claiming to know everything makes me wonder if you know anything. 

first you missed the point of my response. the guy could be right in what he says and that does not disprove my argument. Because I said there's a different between saying that selfishness is a behavior that is genetically based, and saying that selfishness is or is not moral.

Trying to deduce morality based upon nature is a fallacy. It's "Hume's fork," the fallacy of deriving an ought from an is. You can't establish morality, or take it away, just by showing a behavior is genetic.

    I did prove God exists. sorry you can't follow the lgoic of a good argument, but ti's there. I've proved it and you cant' disprove it. you can't destroy my augmenter. just beaus you think it says something you don't like doesn't make it false. Most atheists argue from a principle of "incredulity." you say "I don't believe that therefore it's false." then you hear that enough so you become convinced that as long as you disbelieve it's the same disproof. It is not! That's just your little opinion! not proof and you can't stand up to the logic of my arguments! Calling arguments names does not disprove them. Go get one of those arguments from futher down on the board and put it up and I'll show you can't stand before it.

You say you prefer to believe an Ivy League professor, well my ethics professor was Ivy league and he's a hell of a lot more respected and more famous than that guy, why doesn't that make him right? do you not realize that across the board in all disciplines the proportion of God believing processors is the sam as the general population. Means 90% of professors believe in God. What you are saying is truly an argument from unnecessary authority, that's a fallacy.



exchange with "Dr. Pepper" on carm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metacrock no we do not act like biological organisms. you have defined what you think that means and you impose it over the way we act, you ignore what you don't want to be part of endemic human activity and ignore it as unimportant. belief in God is something we do that a mere organism doesn't do. Having higher ideals, morality, art. you but decide those are unimportant because you don't' value them. those are just as much a part of who and what we are as the things that you think define us, but you decide they don't matter and ignore them. I ignore the other.

 Pepper

You are talking about what we think. I am talking about what we do. We eat, sleep, excrete, and reproduce. As far as what we believe that varies from person to person. If you think we are unique. All species are. You do not know what my dog thinks. You may think so but then that's what you as an individual thinks. You do not define humans either. My opinion is equal to yours. In my opinion. I bet you think yous is better. Is that an indication you are not a biological organism. I do not think so.

__________________

Unfortunately I lost the URL for that one. The point is in addressing the issue of moral thinking atheists don't understand the basics of what makes for ethical theory, thus they attribute morality to some form of behavior or to feelings. I said first of all that he is just looking selectively at aspect of humanity that fits his theory and then ignoring other things. He says "it's not about what we think but what we do." Well what is that but ignoring what we think to focus on what we do, that's an example of the selective nature of how they define human being.


What he seems to think is that morality is just a matter of behavior and we don't the basis in thought of various organisms but we can see what they do. But morality is not just a matter of behavior, it's a matter of logic and of values. just focusing on behavior cannot ever produce morality. Morality is not merely feelings and its not merely what you do. It's how society understands values and how those values interact when they compete.


The first guy doesn't seem to undersatnd that ethics is not science it's its' won theory. He wants to take scientists has authority figures and reduce ethics out of existence and just pretend it doesn't exist. Of course the obvious counter would be "but I believe in being ethical" he would say "your feelings are not important, all that matters is that we have no proof from biology that genetics give us ethics so it can't be real." So that's just the reductionist trick of losing phenomena.


They define the phenomena in some way other than moral philosophy does then demand that it be proved by their own standards, if not then the phenomena becomes unimportant and get's written out of the process then the argument is made that there's no proof for it becuase we dismissed it form reality becuase it doesn't fit our aims.



This all goes back to the atheist trick of circular reasoning that is the contradiction at the heart of atheism. This is just another version of it. This is the circular reasoning trick that enables them to deny proof of miracles. There are no miracles because there's no proof, and no proof because any alleged has to be dismissed out hand since there can't be proof. there can't be proof because there is none and there is becasue we wont let it be accepted.


This trick works like this, ethics is not a matter of nature but of values. It doesn't matter if behaviors are genetics, they are not vested with moral virtue until they are values in value system. The naturalistic reductions only values what he can reduce nature too that supports his ideology, so he just refuses to accept that values as important part of the equation even though the whole equation, so he reduces ethics to behavior and then says it's genetic.