Another Exampe of Athiests Re-Writting Rules of Logic: Special Pleading

I did a previous post on this topic. I showed two examples of atheists sites where they try to re-write rules of logic. Here's are two examples from CARM where they employ this tactic. It insoles a tacit definition. Up front they say that Special Pleading is exampting your own argument from rules of logic previously accepted. what it really turns out to be is a tacit definition such that: claim to the truth of Christianity is special pleading.

Back up argues that all arguments for Christianity are special pleading. I think he doesn't understand what special pleading is he has it confused with holding a preference or relivant difference.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...-pleading.html

I quoted he Nizkor article on the meaning of special pleading.

"Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumtance(s) C.
Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
Therefore A is exempt from S."



In that article it says if there is a valid difference bewteen two options then it's not special pleading. So in other words if Jesus really is the son of God then it's not special pleading to say he is. that is what is calls something like "relevant difference."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...-pleading.html

read it:[/B]
[B]"It should be noted that the Principle of Relevant Difference does allow people to be treated differently. For example, if one employee was a slacker and the other was a very prodictive worker the boss would be justified in giving only the productive worker a raise. This is because the productive of each is a relevant difference between them. Since it can be reasonable to treat people differently, there will be cases in which some people will be exempt from the usual standards. For example, if it is Bill's turn to cook dinner and Bill is very ill, it would not be a case of Special Pleading if Bill asked to be excused from making dinner (this, of course, assumes that Bill does not accept a standard that requires people to cook dinner regardless of the circumstances). In this case Bill is offering a good reason as to why he should be exempt and, most importantly, it would be a good reason for anyone who was ill and not just Bill. "


I think this principal unseats the very reasoning that Backup uses to make his claim. Thus it disproves his argument a prori.

If he has another reason why arguments for Christianity are special pleading (aside from the mistake that expressing a preference is a fallacy) then he needs to explain it.

in doing so he must also explain what he mans by special pleading. If he doesn't mean by that term something like what is in the paragraph at the top then he had the wrong idea about the fallacy means.

If he does except Idea then he must explain how his argument is still valid light of relevant difference.


Spacemonkey Jumps in and supplies a quote from Backup from another thread that parrots the definition I use: "When a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking himself (or those he has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption." The Irony is we had gone well over 50 posts with him refusing to give a definition but tacitly employing the notion that SP means supporting a view as right and others as wrong, particularly Christianity.for those 50+ posts he just said "I know what speical pleading means" and refused to define it.

Another issue was that he simply stated "all Christian arguments arguments for Christianity as true are special pleading." All of them are, blanket statement. Then he challenges Christians to prove it's not the case.So they spend hundreds of posts deamnding that we supply the examples to disrpove the allogation and they never seek to prove it with any exampels of their own. I had chagned that this is violating his obligation as the one advances the argument. He sloughs that off with the refrain that "it's a challenge."

I offer two examples that prove his tacit definition of special pleading.


proof of tacit definition

exhibit A: G2U's example:

Originally Posted by Grace2U View Post

"It is a fact that there is allot of evidence for the Christian God consisting of billions of witness testimony to His existence over 1000's of years, in addition to 1000's of books that testify to the same thing."

Backup

This is special pleading because there is witness testimony over books about any number of religions. Christianity is exclusive. You need to plead that your evidence is somehow special.

I can't believe you would be the only one so far to even try.

I really can't believe you would use this same argument that has been pointed out as special pleading to you so many times.

that is not special pleading. it doesn't do anything to introduce a special privilege that would let the argument out of ordinary rules. Yet it does makes sense if we go by the tacit view that SP = claiming that your thing is right.

claiming that there is evidence in experience of God is not special pleading unless you define special pleading thinking your view is right.

Exhibit B

a statement by Backup from the challenge thread implying that the same arguments would not be special pleading if used by other groups but would be if it's used to claim a specific one is right.

Backup

"It's not special pleading if you accept that it is an argument for a lot of different religions and belief systems systems. But it's not an argument for Christianity either. "

If SP is just about the logic and now about exclusivity (in Backup's mind) then how could it be that the argument is not SP if it's for a lot of groups but is if it's for one group? That implies that what makes it special pleading is exclusivity.

Spacemonkey who I had previous respected for his knowledge of modal logic, and thought to be one of the more intelligent atheists on CARM disappoints me by supporting this garbage.

Backup is perfectly correct. It is special pleading to claim that the existence of witness testimony and books is compelling evidence only for Christianity, while denying that the same evidence for other religions is not. The general rule would be that the mere existence of witnesses and books alone is not compelling evidence for the truth of a religion, and a special exemption to that rule is being made for Christianity.

He is also right that it would not be special pleading if one were to accept that the existence of witnesses and books is compelling evidence for all religions, but that the argument being made would then no longer be specific to Christianity. A specific argument would have to make reference to the actual content of said witness testimony and books to show that a case is being made that is not equally available for the other religions that one rejects.

Metacrock:


even if you were right, which you re not you are merely nixing out the strongest evidence against your world view, it wold not be special pleading. special pleading is not just making a weak argument. Assume the arguemnt is weak for the sake of argument, it's not special pleading just because it's a weak argument. I grant that you would have to show the specifics to make it a valid argument. That's not an issue.Not showing them doesn't make it special pleading.


I see you actually have that tacit definition too. Special pleading is saying Christianity is true. I see how it works. That's ludicrous nonsense and you know it!

(if I say) Jesus came down an appeared to me I saw him, he said "I am it." that is not special pleading. Are you actually trying to contend that a person can't have a special revelation without special pleading even if it is really true? that's' ridiculous and you know it is..

Is it special pleading if you say you have the answer to a Math problem and no one else found it?

spacemonkey

He is also right that it would not be special pleading if one were to accept that the existence of witnesses and books is compelling evidence for all religions, but that the argument being made would then no longer be specific to Christianity. A specific argument would have to make reference to the actual content of said witness testimony and books to show that a case is being made that is not equally available for the other religions that one rejects.

nothing about that is special pleading. it's clearly and obviously not. you are just doing a bait and switch you are going "O this is a bad argument that doesn't prove it's case so therefore that's special pleading."

so you are using that term as an arbitrary catch phrase.


Nothing about that evokes a different rule of logic or excuses the potion form having to maintain logical rules. Nothing about eye witness testimony that makes special allowance for the violation of logical rules. Moreover G2U's original example said nothing about denying evidence of books and witnesses to other traditions.

He claims he answered the tacit definition quotes but he did not. HE said nothing bout it. see post 28 on this thread.

spacemoneky tries to come back and answer A and B by linking them to G2u's example:


Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

The post you just quoted explains EXACTLY why it is special pleading. It directly addresses your A and B.


He doesn't have to. If he denies it to others then he is special pleading, and if he doesn't then his argument is no longer specific to Christianity. So either way, G2U fails.

here's the lynch Penn

In fact that little dilemma is easily disproved. It's not true. it is not the case that you have to deny truth of other traditions to affirm that of Christianity. you can still hold out the possibility that others have truth in their books and their experiences but you have to take it on a case by case basis. so then it's up to the other groups to show their turth.

the dilemma and the statement 'either way it falls" is really frank admission that it may not special pleading but it's still false. In other words Christianity just has to be false he doesn't care how it's demonstrated.

Merely claiming that there are books and testimony whose content specifically and compellingly supports Christianity is not to make an argument. It is only to hint at the possibility of one.

I said i acknowledged they have to be presented and demonstrated as good evidence. they are.



Spacemoneky

An actual argument from the specific contents of these books and testimonials could well avoid special pleading in principle, but no-one has made such an argument.

that is a lie! you know it's a lie! My 8 level verification thing is most certainly dose this. that is nothing else but a bold faced lie!

G2U's argument was merely that books and testimonials for Christianity exist, therefore Christianity is true. This is blatant textbook special pleading, because the mere existence of books and testimonials for other religions is not considered good grounds for those other religions. The books and testimony for Christianity is being treated differently without establishing any relevant difference for doing so.

Meta:

see the red? that's your warrant for saying it's wrong, it is not grounds for special pleading. I admitted it might be a bad argument, it would have to be made specific, but that doesn't make it special pleading. you are just calling any argument wrong "special pleading." you don't really care what the classification is as long as we reject Christianity.

Spacemoneky

the only definition either Backup or I have employed has been the correct one.

Meta:

you just demonstrated that you use the tacit one.

Outrage and Incredulity: The Atheist Charge of "no Evidence"

What is all this stuff really about? It never ceases to amaze me how passionate atheists can be about nothing. I mean by that, atheism is supposed to be nothing more than an absence of belief, right? Yet so many times I see them full of fire and arrogance, blowing their little minds just because someone holds a view they don't like. Why? Consider this tirade by Arizona Atheist on Atheist Watch:

Arizona Atheist

Faith is bullshit. Your claiming it's "complex" does nothing to solve your problem. Theists have no evidence for their beliefs and that's that. All "arguments" are simply "god of the gaps" arguments and nothing more. Due to the tremendous lack of proof/evidence for all theistic claims it's all based on "blind faith." So, yes Loftus is correct. Faith is nonsense.

Clearly outraged by belief, but why? The major thinkers in Western culture have been religious, only a tiny handful of great thinkers throughout history have been true atheists, yet to look at such comments (which are a dime a dozen) one would think that belief was the most idiotic thing anyone ever thought of. One of the things that really strikes me as absurd is their insistence that "there's no evidence at all..." This is bound to strike me the wrong way when I have 42 arguments for the existence of God (of course we all know the importance of the number 42). No evidence, except these 42 arguments! Why the histrionics? here I will argue two things: (1) The reason it seems that there is no evidence is because atheists value only the methods that give them the answers they want, they do not accept evdience for God because it has to come from the wrong methods, and they reject the methods becasue they are mining their data. (2) They are angered by the concept that other methods may be valid because would imply that they are only looking at the surface of the issues. Why that should I alarm them so I'm not sure. I think it's a cultural thing, the hate group derives some sense of superiority from deriding the target (according to the standard FBI model).

As I have pointed out numerous times, belief in God is not merely adding a fact to the universe. The question of God is not a question about just the existence of one more thing. It's a question of orientation to being as a whole, especially to one's own individual being. If God exists then all of reality is something other than we think it is. If God is real then I am more than myself I am a creature of God. Atheists and theists live in two different worlds. Thus no amount of empirical data is valid as an answer. So the kinds of answers that would count cannot be sought though scientific evidence alone. The atheist approach is to see this as a limitation or an indication that there is no God. That approach obviously fist what they want to see in the first place. Now many of them wills ay "I was a Christian for 20 years." None of them ever follow that up by saying "I scored real high on the M scale, i had mystical consciousness and union with Christ and Baptism of the Holy Spirit and then I realize it was all false and delusion and made up.The only people who come to this conclusion are those are didn't have it in the first place.

I'm not arguing that they weren't "saved" or they weren't "real Christians." Being a "real Christian" and having Baptism of the Holy Spirit, or "mystical experience" are three different things, they are not three different names for the same thing. Nor am I saying that strong Christians can't give up their faith. Bu strong Christians tend to give up their faith because they fall into sin, they outgrow their milieu and don't go on to higher understanding, or they suffer grave disappointment (such as death of a spouse) and never work through it. No one that I know of ever gave up belief in God just because some intellectual argument was hard to answer, or some body of work intimated that it wasn't true, and here I am speaking of those who had the advanced personal experiences. Those sorts of experiences indicate that it is real. These are such deep confirmations in the heart of hearts that they cannot be easily denied or given up. Of course atheists don't even value this form of knowledge. Deeply fearing the subjective, they just ascribe it to "psychology" and for them that term is as good as saying "lie."

The difference in these two ways of thinking is striking. But the atheists can offer no evidence or arguments to invalidate the phenomenological approach. Faith is an existential response to an phenomenological apprehension. This means that faith is personal individual response, not one formed by education or trained through opponent conditioning; it is a response of the individual although course cultural and learning and even genetics come into it. It is a response to the apprehension of sense data apart from the organizing principles imposed upon sense data by genetics, culture, trainnig, psychological pre disposition. It's a response to the suggestions made by the phenomena themselves as we apprehend them. By "existential" it is fundamental to our existence and within the moment of perception. What exactly is being perceived? That we can't know, but it varies from person to person. Or I should say the vehicle of it varies from person to person. One person may find that a full blown mystical experience is what brings them around, another may be exposed to just one phrase or one image and find that merely a pang of the heart is all that is needed.

Atheists draw such a hard and fast connection between science and the world. One could easily get the impression that the world comes with little labels on rocks and trees that say "naturalistic." If religion was true the labels would say "trees by God." But when I argue my Transcendental Signifier argument they will say that we are just imposing meaning. That's one tier standard response. Human brain sees pattern and imposes meaning upon pattern it's just ink blots. The world is a big ink blot. But they don't apply that to science. They seem to think scinece is just straight forward and literally true and unlimited in its ability to know all of reality that ever be. We derive the kind of certainty from scinece that we do because it's dealing mainly with things that can be observed. These are relatively easy questions. No one thinks a question like "where did the universe come form" is easy. Atheists seem to infer that it is easy and if challenges that sense of certainty they become irate. I often wonder why certainty is so important to them. But have totally obscured the truth of scinece, that it is culturally constructed and not absolute. Their ire is such that when I argued this on CARM once one of them said "you are scum!" Of course they pronounce the basis of knowledge (epistemology) to be 'bull shit" because it's philosophy, but they never try to undersatnd the philosophical basis to their empiricism. They take that as absolute proof beyond question.


Science is a relative cultural construct. It is not absolute knowledge, it is not progress based upon cumulative effects. It works by paradigm shifts, with each shift the whole ground changes. Every time it changes we start over. It is not linear or progressive.

Example: Top down causality in brain mind.

top down means something above the brain is directing causal states in brain function: the mind is not reduced to the brain because its directing the brain. Top down causlity is a scientific fact, it was proven log ago, but because it disproves the reductionist ideology it is ignored as though its not true:


Quote:
Rosenberg (from journal of conscientiousness studies)

"Take the matter of 'downward causation' to which Harman gives some attention. Why should this be an issue in brain dynamics? As Erich Harth points out in Chapter 44, connections between higher and lower centers of the brain are reciprocal. They go both ways, up and down. The evidence (the scientific evidence) for downward causation was established decades ago by the celebrated Spanish histologist Ramon y Cajal, yet the discussion goes on. Why? The answer seems clear: If brains work like machines, they are easier to understand. The facts be damned!"[Miller quoting Rosenberg, Journal of Consciousness Studies, op. cit.]

e.Consciousness as a basic property of nature.

JCS, 3 (1), 1996, pp.33-35

Naturalism loses its ground.


This is a probabilistic justification argument; It does not seek to directly prove that God exists, but that it is rational to believe in God and that there are good reasons to. In a nut shell the argument says that the concept of materialism has been changing over the years. It has now incorporated so many idea that were once lumped in with magic, supernatural, or generally "unscientific" categories that the old concept of materialism as an objection to God belief and a refutation of religion is now obsolete. Essentially there are 10 areas:


(1) Quantum Theory (no need for cause/effect)

(2) Big bang Cosmology (realm beyond the natural)

(3) Medicine (healing)

(4) Consciousness (invites concept of dualism)

(6) Maslow's Archetypes (universal ideas)

(7) Miracles (empirical evidence)

(8) Near Death Experiences (scientific evidence)

(9) Esp Research (the fact that they do it)

(10) Validity of religious experience (Shrinks no longer assume pathology)


The argument turns on the basic historical fact that atheists have lost the ground upon which they dismissed God from science in the first place. In their book Lindberg and Numbers demonstrate that the moment at which this happened was when La Place said "I have no need of that hypothesis," meaning the idea that God created the universe. What he meant was that God was not needed as an explanation because we now have naturalistic cause and effect, which explains everything. But the atheist has cashed in cause and effect to over come the Big Bang.

Naturalists are now willing to consider ideas like the self caused universe, Hawkings unbounded condition which removes cause completely as a consideration; or based upon quantum theory they are willing to accept the notion that causality is an illusion, that the universe could just pop up out of nothing. With that commitment they lose the ground upon which they first removed God from consideration. Now, perhaps they still do not need God as a causal explanation, but in the Religious a pirori argument, and in the innate religious instinct argument I say that belief was never predicated upon a need for explanation in the first place.

Nevertheless, the fact still remains, the reason for dismissing God was the sufficiency of natural causation as explainable, with that gone there is no longer any grounds for dismissing consideration of God from the universe.I will argue that more than that is going. There is a paradigm shift underway which demonstrates a total change in scientific thinking in many areas and over many disciplines. That change demonstrates that the materialist concept is wrong; there is more to reality than just the material world. There are other aspects to the material world wich are non-deterministic, non-mechanistic, and which call into question the whole presupposition of excluding the supernatural from consideration.

The groundwork for understanding this shift was laid by Thomas S. Kuhn in his theory of paradigm shifts. Kuhn's famous theory was that scientific thought works through paradigm acquisition, and that paradigms change when they can no longer absorb anomalies into the model and must account for them in some other way. This theory entails the idea that science is culturally constructed; our ideas about science are culturally rooted and our understanding of the world in a scientific fashion is rooted in culture. For this reason he thought that science is not linear cumulative progress. "scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes replaced in whole or in part by a new one..." (Thomas kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," (92)

"In section X we shall discover how closely the view of science as cumulative is entangled with a dominate epistemology that takes knowledge to be a construction placed directly upon raw sense data by the mind. And in section XI we shall examine the strong support provided to the same historiographical scheme by the techniques of effective science pedagogy. Nevertheless, despite the immense plausibility of that ideal image, there is increasing reason to wonder whether it can possibly be an image of science. After the pre-paradigm period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between competing schools of scientific thought. Cumulative anticipation of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development.The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested. Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise."(Ibid,94)

What all of this means is that science is not written in stone. We do not pile one fact upon another until we get to the truth. We formulate a concept of the world and we hold to it and defend it against changed until there are too many problems with it then we move to another totally different world view. This is what has been going on in science since the French enlightenment. Materialism replaced super-naturalism and Materialists have been defending it against change all this time. Now there are too many problems, they have brought in so many ideas contrary to materialism it is not meaningful anymore; paradigm shift is immanent and has begun in many areas. This is not to say that Kuhn had anything to say about the supernatural, he was a materialist. But his theory shows us that change in the concept of materlaism is on the way.


Kuhn is not alone in these observations, major scientific thinkers have questioned scientific 'pretense of objectivity' throughout the century:


This 'bigger' aspect can also be seen in Rosenberg's 'liberal naturalism' [CS:JCS:3.1.77]:

"The question of scientific objectivity becomes more compelling when one considers that doubts about the reductive paradigm are by no means new. William James (1890), Charles Sherrington (1951), Erwin Schrodinger (1944, 1958), Karl Popper and John Eccles (1977)--among others--have insisted that the reductive view is inadequate to describe reality. This is not a fringe group. They are among the most thoughtful and highly honored philosophers and scientists of the past century. How is it that their deeply held and vividly expressed views have been so widely ignored? Is it not that we need to see the world as better organized than the evidence suggests?

"Appropriately, the most ambitious chapter of this section is the final one by Willis Harman. Is the conceptual framework of science sufficiently broad to encompass the phenomenon of consciousness, he asks, or must it be somehow enlarged to fit the facts of mental reality? Attempting an answer, he considers the degree to which science can claim to be objective and to what extent it is influenced by the culture in which it is immersed. Those who disagree might pause to consider the religious perspective from which modern science has emerged.

"There is reason to suppose that the roots of our bias toward determinism lie deeper in our cultural history than many are accustomed to suppose. Indeed, it is possible that this bias may even predate modern scientific methods. In his analysis of thirteenth-century European philosophy, Henry Adams (1904) archly observed: "Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures." One wonders to what extent reductive science has merely replaced Thomas's God with the theory of everything."

Science lacks the absolute guarantee that many atheists think it has. The more complex and removed from immediate observation the question is the less certainty it has. This means that it is not a fit vehicle to tell us about god.God is not a scientific question. Science is not prior to philosophy but the other way around. Science evolved out of philosophy, it used to be called 'natural philosophy.' While science does offer a sense of "working" its what it works for that matters. It does not work to give us any understanding of ultimate reality. Thus is it not a fair question to ask why there is no proof of God scientifically? Of cousre not, because God is not a scientific question. The reason God is not science is because God is not empirical. God is not given in sense data. Now atheist may ask why that is, they sometimes ask "why doesn't God make himself better know," that's because God is not a big guy in the sky. The same reason why he's not empirical. Because he's not a "he" the "he is just a metaphor. God si beyond our understanding, the basis of reality. God is prior to even epistemology. That would be like expecting evidence of the eloctro-magnetic spectrum to tell us about the basis of existence itself. Atheist continually treat God as though he is a big man in the sky, although for some this may be because they want to take on the fundies most of all. Such an atheist is John Loftus.

John Loftus

We’ve argued against the concept of faith many times before, but let me try again. I have argued that the Christian faith originated as and is purely human religion completely accountable by humans acting in history without needing anWy divine agency at all. But setting that important discussion aside, faith is a cop out, especially when it comes to the number of things Christians must take on faith in order to believe. Let’s recount some of them.

Here is a typical example of an atheist ragging on faith. That is to say, he is not analyzing the basis of faith at a deep level, but merely dismissing it as some sort of non answer. It will become clear in a moment that the specific reasons he gives are those that view God as an empirical object of knowledge and thus a big man in the sky. I know that Loftus will say this is because he's concerned with the fundies more than with liberals. But true though that may be it still gives a mis-impression to only deal with faith at such a superficial level and never acknowledge that it is a much more complex process than this. Consider his argument about questioning why God created:

No reasonable answer can be given for why a triune God, who was perfect in love neither needing nor wanting anything, created in the first place. Grace and Love are non-answers, especially when we see the actual world that resulted. For Christians to say God wanted human creatures who freely love him is nonsense, for why did he want this at all? If love must be expressed then God needed to express his love and that implies a lack.

He speaks of "he" and "want" and so forth as though God is just a big man. This is part of his incredulity over the Trinity because how could a big man in the sky be three big men in the sky and yet just one big man in the sky? He's basically arguing here that god can't be a big man and thus can't want anything. But assumes that he must know what form God could take if he isn't a big man. That means he has to regard God as an object of empirical knowledge, of course it would never apply to anything beyond our understanding. If we regard God as the ground of being these questions are all moot, thus we have to frame them differently. We could begin by not asking "why would a God who has no needs craete in the first place?" That question is unanswerable for the ground of being, since we don't even know if we can speak of "creation" in the same sense. By what can't be answered can't be answered negatively either. We can't rule out the love answer on the premise that God can't love becasue he's the ground of being. Indeed most of the major theologians who speak of God this way (Tillich, McQuarry and Von Balthsar) find a link between being and love in the first place. Of course we can't speak of God "needing" but we could speak of God producing. Or we can speak of being producing the beings. McQuarry speaks of "being lets be." We have to ask a different set of questions to begin with if we conceive of God as the basis of reality rather than an object of knowledge.

Loftus goes on to play the same game in relation to the three in one aspect:

It’s hard enough to conceive of one person who is an eternally uncased God, much less a Godhead composed of three eternally uncased persons. There are some Christians who maintain the Father eternally created the Logos and the Spirit, while others claim that three persons in one Godhead is simply an eternally brute inexplicable fact. Why is that brute fact more reasonable to accept than accepting the brute fact of the laws of the universe, which is all that’s needed to produce the universe? There are social Trinitarians and anti-social Trinitarians. Both sides accuse the other side of abandoning the Chalcedonian creed, either in the direction of tri-theism, or in the direction of Unitarianism.

First of all his knowledge of Orthodoxy is slipping here. Either that or he doesn't care to define Christianity by the ruels of the Christian community. No Christian believes that the Logos and the Spirit are created, as that is a violation of the creeds. His appeal to the laws of the universe is not applicable here because it is not a competitor for God's position as transcendental signifier. In fact laws of nature are totally inexplicable and we do not know what they. They no longer carry the same wight they did in the enlightenment. Thus they are a dandy reason to believe in God, because the supposition of a mind an notion of a set of disembodied laws is pretty had to grasp (see the previous article). But the argument he makes is absurd in light of the Ground of Being. we don't have to ask how can a big man in the sky be three big men in the sky and yet one big man in the sky. As ground of being God can easily contain within his divine economy three persona which share the same essence as all three are merely reflections of the one ground of being. McQuarry makes this point himself where defines the Trinity as having to do with the one and many and the notion of being as the ground of diversification of existence (see Principles of Christian Theology).

Atheists storm about the suppossed lack of evidence, yet they put all their marbles on issues such as string theory and mutliverses, matters for which there is no empirical data of any kind. Then they rail against God because there's no empirical data! Belief in God is a realization that comes from understanding about the nature of being, especially one's own being. It is not the result of empirical data, nor can it be. The concept is misguided and that expectation is a waste of time. There two trajectories that inform us of the nature of being such that we might associate it with the sense of the numinous. These are deductive understanding fo transcendental signifiers on the one hand, (matters such as the ontological argument), and then personal experience on the other. Mystical experience, the sense of numinous these are matters of realizing God. They offer a deep seated conviction that can't be refuted by mere circular reasoning or question begging of atheist assertion. On the other hand, deductive arguments demonstrate the logical necessity of thinking about being in religious terms.

Ethical Discussion with Athesits on CARM

this discussion was way back in
20 Nov 2010
CARM

TOPIC:

the warrant, the thing that makes it so. what puts the force in "ought?"

Unknown atheist.

I am not sure what you mean by this. I am going to assume you mean that there are moral facts which exist in nature, and they are the basis of morality? Well if these moral facts exist, then maybe they are the basis for morality. But to my knowledge the only evidence we have for them is some peoples intuitions, which I do not trust.

Meta:

Look, any time you use the term "ought" (that is what ethics is, it's how to show why something OUGHT to be done or not done) you are saying "this is what SHOULD BE."

ought = should be!

the thing that spells out a should be is a warrant. as in the phrase. "do you have a warrant?" Warrant in law means you are authorized to do something like search a premises for something. Warrant in logic means you are authorized to draw a conclusion from your data to your conclusion. That field that allows you to draw that conclusion si alogical piont that gives permission to think something, in other words a good reason.

that's why I call the warrant the thing that makes it so(see above in blue). because it tells us why something should be. in so doing it sort of metaphorically gives us permission to believe that X should be.

UA:

Why is it a bad thing that our moral values reflect how we personally believe the world ought to be?

Meta:

It's not. That is not give us license to do whatever seems good at the moment. There's a broader context than just individual feeling.

UA:

How does God choose his moral values, if not by his own personal fancy?

Meta:Love, God's character as love forms the basis of all ethical judgement. The basic grounding that makes right and wrong is the relation of an action to the motivation in love.

"fancy" implies either arbitrary or some from of trivial personal reference. God is not trivial, god is not just another guy. God is not a human being, he's not a big man in the sky. He's not just another guy with another opinion. God is the basis of all good by virtue of the fact that he is the source of all love (love in the sense of will to the good of the other).

Who else would be the authority and the judge but the all knowing creator? you are all knowing? you have your personal feelings. so do I? what if your personal feelings trample on my right? how does that make you more right than me just becuase you want something and I have it? There has to be arbitrating voice there that is not and is not me that says "this is not fair for you to kill this guy and take his things just because you have a personal feeling that you want them."

God's base of motivation is his character as the ground of being nad the source of love. Love is the background of the moral universe. That phrase means (rooted in St. Augustine btw) that love is the basic motivation behind all ethical stands and universals.

UA:

Does what either of us want have any bearing on reality?

Meta:

On the way we perceive it.



Originally Posted by HRG

"Grounding axioms" is a sufficiently vague expression, which enables its user to claim that his moral axioms are grounded, while those of his opponents aren't. In fact, what could you ground an axiom on, except another axiom ?

Meta:
It would be if you were dealing with some sap who didn't study under Frederich Carney.

On the other hand you are not willing to even try to ground axioms meaning you are left with no moral philosophy and nothing but your alleged dry wit and no means of translating your value system into action.

I on the other hand have a cogent and well developed moral philosophy and I can certainly show where I ground my axioms.

HRG:

See what I mean about a vague term, made even more vague by adding "adequately" ?

Meta:

I see so adjectives make things more veg. there's a unique take on English.[HRG is From Austria you see.]

HRG:

Could we please hear some more details about this alleged grounding process ?

Meta:

How do you warrant an argument? grounding and moral axiom is nothing more than warranting a proposition. Warrant is the connecting link between the data and the conclusion.

You say math is objective. What makes it objective? what's the different between an actually objective proposition and a less subjective one? To say you have a less subjective proposition you have to compare it to something. Less subjective than what? speaking of "objective" is veg (ironically since objectivity is supposed to make things so transparent).

Mathematical assumptions are just as random and veg as any other. Why should we work in base 10 and not base 2? or base 8? It's all the same if you know how to work it right? The process is still one of logic and it's no different then words, it's just that the certainty in math comes at an earlier point, you choose which base and then you are stuck with a set of rules. The rules warrant the proposition, because they tell you which proposition to apply. But there is still an arbitrary point, it's just further up the line so to speak. no?

Warrant, connecting link, that's all basically epistemology. I think it was Simplelife who was speaking in this thread of separating ethics form epistemology? I agree with him, that is the beginner of the big mistake in western thought.

My epistemology is based upon epistemic judgment. I say we can't have absolute knowledge of reality so we must make a judgment at some point. The extent to which a proposition is warranted, or an axiom is grounded is the extent to which we choose a set of early on, and the more basic the level the more extensive the grounding.

Go back to the TS argument again. That argent connects everything to God becuase it shows the basis of all propositions, all ought, all should, all rules, all organizing becasue essence of the organizing principle. Base the axioms on the TS.

How to do that is the big problem. But go back to Fletcher there's a given at the most fundamental level, that's where I can connected being to love. I've talked about that link before. that unities the organizing principle (ordering principle) with the value system.

voila, axioms are grounded.

that doesn't mean there aren't problems to work out. there always are. That's what makes philosophy fun, otherwise logic would be bean counting.

Now the discussion turns to a guy called "Lance." I think his views really demonstrate what's wrong with humanity in this era. The blue text is what he's dealing with that I said in a previous post.

Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
the warrant, the thing that makes it so. what puts the force in "ought?"

Look, any time you use the term "ought" (that is what ethics is, it's how to show why something OUGHT to be done or not done) you are saying "this is what SHOULD BE."

ought = should be!

the thing that spells out a should be is a warrant. as in the phrase. "do you have a warrant?" Warrant in law means you are authorized to do something like search a premises for something. Warrant in logic means you are authorized to draw a conclusion from your data to your conclusion. That field that allows you to draw that conclusion is a logical point that gives permission to think something, in other words a good reason.

that's why I call the warrant the thing that makes it so(see above in blue). because it tells us why something should be. in so doing it sort of metaphorically gives us permission to believe that X should be.


Lance:

I believe you are describing what I call a moral fact, here let me define it for you.
Just like a fact is something in reality which makes a descriptive statement true, a moral fact is something in reality which makes a prescriptive statement true.

terminology--whatever

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
It's not. That is not give us license to do whatever seems good at the moment. There's a broader context than just individual feeling.

Lance:

I understand that the legalistic terminology you were using before was just a metaphor to describe things which make prescriptive statements true; I think that you are over extending the metaphor now with talk of license. Why don’t we break away from metaphors and speak in clear and precise terms?

Meta:

All language is metaphor. However I am speaking planing. Person desire does not trump moral axioms and it doesn't make them either. Ethical values are shared values not personal feelings. Personal ethical feelings are indicative of universals, they are not warrant in themselves.

Lance

There may or may not be such a thing as a moral fact. If there are moral facts, then the corresponding prescriptive statements are true. If there are not any moral facts, then no prescriptive statements are true. You have yet to provide evidence for such a thing as a moral fact, so we are for the moment at a stalemate, as I don’t have any evidence against the existence of a moral fact.

Meta (notice "moral fact" is his term and the burden he tries to stick me with but in sort of luring me into thinking it was my assumption).

Ultimately God is, for me, the basis of all moral grounding. That's theological ethics.IN that case essence proceeds being. That's the ultimate basis for all grounding.

In talking about ethical theory which is broader than moral philosophy or theological ethics, then you have to appeal to a broader base and have agreement based upon shared values, or else either consign yourself to being ignored, or force people people do your bidding regardless of their beliefs. Oddly though my own moral philosophy frowns upon the latter so I have to find points of agreement that even atheists and theists share. Either that or don't have agreement.

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
Love, God's character as love forms the basis of all ethical judgment. The basic grounding that makes right and wrong is the relation of an action to the motivation in love.

Lance

Absolute rubbish. I believe Fat Joe says it best when he sings, “Whats luv got to do – got to do – with it?”

Meta

cute. but I suspect you have nothing to put in its place. Atheists don't like the concept of love and it makes you feel wimpy who knows. I suspect you are on some kind of hard and bitter kick but that's not important.

Nothing else makes any sense. Let's get into it and I'll prove it.

Lance

But seriously now, what has the love of a god to do with what one ought to do? Maybe this makes more sense in your head where I assume you have redefined the word ‘love’ to have something to do with morality.

(Actually he's half right. He probably thinks of love as wanting to have sex. The Greek term translated "love" in terms of God's love in the NT--Agape--does have to do with mortality but I didn't define it that way the Greeks did.)

There's a reason why I called it "the background of the moral universe." It's not the "up front" reason for things, it's the back reason. It's underneath all the surface stuff. That goes back to what I told Hans about the transcendental signifier. The link from organizing principle to concepts and logical conclusions, is the way in which the organizing principles creates a hierarchy of meaning. God is at the top of the hierarchy and God's character is the basis, God's nature as being itself, is the basis for love and then for ethics. the link link form love to ethics would take longer. there are more steps that's the basic idea.

God is love
God created everything
therefore, the reason for everything is love.

something like that.


Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
"fancy" implies either arbitrary or some from of trivial personal reference. God is not trivial, god is not just another guy. God is not a human being, he's not a big man in the sky. He's not just another guy with another opinion. God is the basis of all good by virtue of the fact that he is the source of all love (love in the sense of will to the good of the other).


Lance

God is not trivial?

Meta:

right

Lance

That is most definitely up to debate.

Meta:

nope. Nothing could be more obvious do you not understand how logic works? why is something grounded? becasue it has a higher principle that makes it so. that's the hierarchy of reality. The thing at the top is God and that's because God is the creator of it all and the organizer. It's God's basic principles that make the hierarchy and everything that comes out of it.

Anyways there is no reason for you to assume that the personal reasoning behind why one holds a certain moral belief is trivial. Believing it is wrong to kill people because you have a deep respect for human life is in no way trivial. I think you are too quick to judge.

sure, but it's not a grounding either. It's just a personal predilection you equally have the opposite feeling. Being person is not what makes it true. look at how deeply illogical that is. What if God were a broody kid who says "I have these deep feelings too my deep feeling to send you to hell." Now well wouldn't make it right because it's a deep person feeling? If deep personal feelings are what make things right why is God's deep personal feeling not right? Then it comes down to a matter of power.

at this point most people would bring up fairness. That's not fair. o now we have somethign other than deep personal feelings. now we have a universal to deal with. right? I can follow this line of reasoning until i come to a point where I prove that he motive force behind fairness is love. the motive of justice is love and so on.

Lance:

And no God is not another man with another opinion; he is another person with another opinion.

Meta:

nope he's not. "HE" is the transcendental signifier, the thing that makes meaning. He is the authorized of all authorizing the thing that creates everything. Thus all tings exist for his purpose not yours not mine. one of the primary lies you have fed that God is not any better or more important than you. that is self idolatry it's the major sin of the age. of cousre God is more important than everything becuase god is the basis of all reality.

Lance:

God has his own personal moral law, as we all do, which is described in the bible.

Meta:

That's part of the great deception that his destructing humanity. you are fed a poison that destroys your reasonnig. Look at how totally idiomatic that idea is. It says you are just as much a god as god. but if god has person feelings then he can send you to hell you have no right to object because hey he has the feelings, that makes it right hu? why not? you want to bring something else into it like justice that means feelings aren't makes it all true.

feelings are not what makes things true. feelings tell us about reality beyond ourselves they don't' create reality in us.

Lance:

There is no more moral reason to follow God’s moral law than my own.

Meta:

That's a lie. It's the ultimate evil. don't you realize that's make Hitler Hitler?HU? that's he basic lie of all murderers and all dictators. put yourself above truth, deg rate and pull down form heaven the truth of reality the truth of all goodness. put up yourself on that level with no justification at all. You have no more reason why your feelings should be it than yud o why God's should not be it.

Lance:

Of course he is the biggest of us all, so there is reason to follow his moral law if you value certain things, like your own life.

Meta

that has nothing to do with it. might doesn't make right. God is right because he's God--the basis of reality and the transcendental signified. I said signifier but I meant signified.
(I just didn't have the energy to do the old wind up on Ground of Being, but in fact you know to say that is the "biggest of us" is not a statement one can make about the Christian God, because that's not the ground of being,it's another thing in creation. The basis of reality can't be called "the biggest thing" that would be comparing it to something and it's totally incomparable).

Lance:

I don’t know what you mean by God being the source of all love, but I have news for you; I love people and God is not involved.

Meta:
wrong! we are not capable of love on our own. the only reason we can love is because we are hooked up to God. God is the source of all love. Our ability and capacity to love is a result of being made in god's image.

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
Who else would be the authority and the judge but the all knowing creator?

you are all knowing? you have your personal feelings. so do I?

stop being ridiculous. that's just self worship it's a trip. it's a silly little trip young people try and when you are old like me you will know it was a stupid mistake. feelings are not knowledge and they are not warrants for truth. you turned off the feelings that were valid warnings you turned them off ages ago.

I have studies that show that atheists have low self esteem and leads them to hate God. that sounds to me like the self worship and self idolatry is just a reaction to poor self esteem.

what do you do when personal feelings compete? why should yours be any better than mine? Kind makes you think there has to be some universal thing that everyone can appeal to hu? Well wouldn't that mind that created it all and that knows all and can get inside your head and know your feelings better than you do be the the real all knowing one? I guarantee you you do not know my feelings.

what if your personal feelings trample on my right? how does that make you more right than me just becuase you want something and I have it? There has to be orbitrating voice there that is not and is not me that says "this is not fair for you to kill this guy and take his things just because you have a personal feeling that you want them."


Lance:

If God does exist, then I agree he has the authority to judge us. This is not because he is all knowing though, but because he is all powerful. The most powerful one is always able to bully everyone else into following his moral law.

Meta:

so you are not cable of conceiving of right apart from being a bully? Then that doesn't really recommend you as a moral philosopher. I hate to say it if you don't understand the concept of having an ethical theory that's more advanced that just "do this or I will pound your head to jelly" then perhaps your moral philosophy is not that great hu?

Lance:

If God doesn’t exist, then the next most powerful people are your government. Then it’s their law which you are judged by.

Meta:

why do you equate being powerful with being right?

Lance:

I understand though, that the argument you are using goes like this:
1) If people are the moral law makers, then they have the power to abuse it
2) people sometimes abuse their power
People can’t be the moral law makers

I think it is much easier to see the flaw in your reasoning when it’s put into a formal argument form.

Meta:

that's not really it. tha'ts maybe a part of it.

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
God's base of motivation is his character as the ground of being and the source of love. Love is the background of the moral universe. That phrase means (rooted in St. Augustine btw) that love is the basic motivation behind all etheical stands and universals.

Lance:

Bollocks. I have moral beliefs which have nothing to do with love, and I’m sure you do to.

Meta:

see your feelings are leading you astray. they are telling to reject the bias of the good. personal feelings are not always valid and they never the basis for moral axioms.

Appeal to Authority is not a Fallacy: Antoher example of Orwellian Atheism.

Atheists are monkeying with the meaning of logic in order to destroy God arguments.

I am so sick of this nonsense. Every time I quote an expert on soemthing atheist go "that's just appeal to authority." then they turn around and quote Dawkins. They really think exert testimony is appeal to authority but if they quote a scientist then that's fact! Of cousre when I quote the scientists who do the studies on religious experience those are just preachers who don't know anything! (they are actually psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and so on).

Appeal to authority is not a fallacy. That's right. It is never a fallacy to quote an expert. think about it. why do you quote a dictionary? Why turn to a dictionary for proof of a word definition? That's an authority. That's what dictionaries are they are authorities in terms of defining words. If appeal to authority is wrong, appeal to dictionary is wrong. If appeal to authority is wrong then appealing to scinece is wrong becuase scinece is an authority.

The real name for the fallacy is "Appeal to false authority," or "appeal to unnecessary authority." it really applies to situations like quoting your high school principal for matters that don't involve school administration. Or "my uncle John says we almost lost WWII in the battle of the bulge and he was in army so he should know." While the battle of the bulge was serious and perhaps it might have contributed to a German victory had we lost that battle, uncle John is not an authority on that just because he was in the army. Being one's uncle might have him authority over children in the family to some extent it does not make him an authority on military strategy.

It's would be idiocy to say "this quote from the world's greatest authroity on WWII is just an appeal to authority." In other words "appeal to the guy who knows is wrong." That is lunacy. Here are some authorities on logic who explain what they fallacy is about:

Nizkor Project

"Also Known as: Fallacious Appeal to Authority, Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority, Questionable Authority, Inappropriate Authority, Ad Verecundiam "

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.

This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are accepting a claim as true without there being adequate evidence to do so. More specifically, the person is accepting the claim because they erroneously believe that the person making the claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the claim is reasonable to accept. Since people have a tendency to believe authorities (and there are, in fact, good reasons to accept some claims made by authorities) this fallacy is a fairly common one.

Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide some acceptable standards of assessment. The following standards are widely accepted:

1. The person has sufficient expertise in the subject matter in question.

   Claims made by a person who lacks the needed degree of expertise to make a reliable claim will, obviously, not be well supported. In contrast, claims made by a person with the needed degree of expertise will be supported by the person's reliability in the area.

   Determining whether or not a person has the needed degree of expertise can often be very difficult. In academic fields (such as philosophy, engineering, history, etc.), the person's formal education, academic performance, publications, membership in professional societies, papers presented, awards won and so forth can all be reliable indicators of expertise. Outside of academic fields, other standards will apply. For example, having sufficient expertise to make a reliable claim about how to tie a shoe lace only requires the ability to tie the shoe lace and impart that information to others. It should be noted that being an expert does not always require having a university degree. Many people have high degrees of expertise in sophisticated subjects without having ever attended a university. Further, it should not be simply assumed that a person with a degree is an expert.

   Of course, what is required to be an expert is often a matter of great debate. For example, some people have (and do) claim expertise in certain (even all) areas because of a divine inspiration or a special gift. The followers of such people accept such credentials as establishing the person's expertise while others often see these self-proclaimed experts as deluded or even as charlatans. In other situations, people debate over what sort of education and experience is needed to be an expert. Thus, what one person may take to be a fallacious appeal another person might take to be a well supported line of reasoning. Fortunately, many cases do not involve such debate.

2. The claim being made by the person is within her area(s) of expertise.

   If a person makes a claim about some subject outside of his area(s) of expertise, then the person is not an expert in that context. Hence, the claim in question is not backed by the required degree of expertise and is not reliable.

   It is very important to remember that because of the vast scope of human knowledge and skill it is simply not possible for one person to be an expert on everything. Hence, experts will only be true experts in respect to certain subject areas. In most other areas they will have little or no expertise. Thus, it is important to determine what subject area a claim falls under.

   It is also very important to note that expertise in one area does not automatically confer expertise in another. For example, being an expert physicist does not automatically make a person an expert on morality or politics. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked or intentionally ignored. In fact, a great deal of advertising rests on a violation of this condition. As anyone who watches television knows, it is extremely common to get famous actors and sports heroes to endorse products that they are not qualified to assess. For example, a person may be a great actor, but that does not automatically make him an expert on cars or shaving or underwear or diets or politics.

About.com: Grammar and Compostion

Definition:

A fallacy in which a rhetor seeks to persuade an audience not by giving evidence but by appealing to the respect people have for the famous.

"Not every appeal to authority commits this fallacy, but every appeal to an authority with respect to matters outside his special province commits the fallacy. 'These pills must be safe and effective for reducing. They have been endorsed by Miss X, star of stage, screen, and television.'"
(W.L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion. Humanities Press, 1980)

Philosophy lander.edu

Abstract: The argument from irrelevant appeal to authority is characterized and shown to be sometimes persuasive but normally fallacious.

I. Argumentum ad Verecundiam: (authority) the fallacy of appealing to the testimony of an authority outside his special field. Anyone can give opinions or advice; the fallacy only occurs when the reason for assenting to the conclusion is based on following the improper authority.
	A. Occasionally, this argument is called the "argument from prestige" and is based on the belief that prestigious people cannot be wrong. In these cases, the fallacy is best termed the "snob appeal" variety of the ad populum.
	B. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the ad verecundiam and the ad populum (q.v., ad populum) when the authority cited is a group with status.
		Consider this example from an popular logic text: "Those who say that astrology is not reliable are mistaken. The wisest men of history have all been interested in astrology, and kings and queens of all ages have guided the affairs of nations by it."
	C. The informal structure generally has the basic pattern:
		Authority on subject x, L says accept statement p. p is outside the scope of subject x. p is true.
	D. Many advertising campaigns are built on this fallacy. Popular sports figures, musicians, or actors endorse products and, in proper context, this fact is offered as a reason we should use those products.

Athiests re re-writing the rules:

here's how blog Advocatus Atheist changes the rule:

The appeal to authority may be the most widely relied upon informal fallacy there is. Of course the reason for this is most likely biological and psychological. From infancy we have no choice but to rely on the protection and safety of higher powers. These powers are usually represented by our parents and guardians, elders, leaders, and governments. It is also why many people, once fully actualized adults, still seek authority figures in their lives. Without a King, or President, or a functioning government--most people wouldn't have the structure they need in their lives--a structure which reflects their entire upbringing since the day they were born.

Indeed, society as a whole is largely structured with authority in mind. It is why armies need dictators, militaries rely on governments, the pious rely on the priests, and so on and so forth. It is no wonder then that we innately appeal to authority when we are trying to justify our desires, needs, as well as actions.

What I am concerned with here, however, is a specific form of authority used in academia. It is the argument from authority. Now, the appeal to authority is one means in gaining support to justify an argument, idea, or belief. Basically any position we take must be validated before it can become formally accepted. If you write a book on the history of George Washington, it helps to cite historians, and better yet, historians whose expertise is centered on the time and place of your topic. Another important factor is whether there is a consensus on the relevant information. Do the experts agree?

He sites Plantinga talking about the modal argument as the fallacy. Plantinga is probably one of the top experts on the modal arguemnt in the world today. Of course it's not a fallacy to use his expert opinion. But atheist hate this because he believes in God and he supports the Modal argument. So they change the rules to wipe out God supporters, but do they continue using Dawkins as an authority?

another example About.com

Definition:

Also known as argumentum ad verecundiam, an appeal to authority is an informal fallacy which involves arguing that we should accept a claim simply because of some personal feature of the individual who makes the claim.

Sometimes, such an appeal can be legitimate - but usually it is illegitimate. The appeal to authority is a mirror image of the ad hominem argumen

He just leaves out the bit about the unnecessary stuff. This gives the impression that quotes experts is a fallacy, then contradicts itself by tossing in "this can be legitimate" but not saying how or when.

Why Atheists Fear 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.