Not Skeptical of Alexander the Great

Some time ago, I pointed out the Christian Blind Spot, which is an inability of many Christians to see glaring flaws in their own logical arguments for God, despite the fact that they would have no trouble at all identifying the very same flaws in another argument that applies to something other than God.  This is not an issue of Christians lacking intelligence or acumen in logical argumentation.  It's simply a lack of objectivity when it comes to matters that concern their religious beliefs.  They tend to have a huge blind spot when it comes to seeing the problems with their own arguments.  And this blind spot exists for more than just logical argumentation.  It is equally debilitating in their examination of evidence (or lack thereof) for their religious beliefs.  I have yet to encounter any Christian who is willing to admit that evidence to support his beliefs about the life of Jesus is anything less than rock solid.  Yet they can be oh so skeptical of other things in the historical record that enjoy far more substantial evidential support.

Chesterton On Miracles

Victor Reppert has posted a quotation from British apologist and philosopher GK Chesterton.  It is about the supposed incoherency of those who would argue against miracles.  Here is the quotation:

The historic case against miracles is also rather simple. It consists of calling miracles impossible, then saying that no one but a fool believes impossibilities: then declaring that there is no wise evidence on behalf of the miraculous. The whole trick is done by means of leaning alternately on the philosophical and historical objection. If we say miracles are theoretically possible, they say, “Yes, but there is no evidence for them.” When we take all the records of the human race and say, “Here is your evidence,” they say, “But these people were superstitious, they believed in impossible things." -G.K. Chesterton (quoted by Reppert)

This seems to be a typical example of of the style of argumentation that earned Chesterton the nickname "Prince of Paradox".  He famously asserted that paradox is “truth standing on its head to gain attention”.  And these snippets of paradox are much loved by his admirers, because of their snappy witticisms that point out the supposed illogic of those who don't buy Chesterton's "truth".

How a Scientist Can Believe in God, Part 3

We now come to the end of my response to Albrecht Moritz' defense of theistic belief in a scientist.  Moritz presents 15 objections that an atheist might proffer in his article How can a scientist believe in God?, and attempts to debunk them.  Part 1 of my response is here, and part 2 is here. After addressing the last of his items, I will give a short summary.  I hope this hasn't been too drawn out for my readers.  Moritz makes some arguments, mainly for the benefit of his fellow believers, that don't hold water with scientifically-minded atheists, and that I feel should be answered.

Reppert Responds to My Challenge

A while back, I wrote an article titled Heads I Lose, Tails You Win, in which I complained that theists try to paint naturalists as being unreasonable because they would never accept any evidence of a supernatural being or event as a genuine indication that something supernatural actually exists.  Naturalists have offered many examples of things that, if they were actually able to witness such a thing, would be convincing to them.    But no matter what they say, the theists' response is always to deny that the naturalist would really be convinced by it.  For the naturalist who is attempting to be reasonable and provide an honest answer to the question "What would it take to convince you?", the situation amounts to "Heads I Lose, Tails You Win".  There is absolutely nothing he can say that would be taken as a reasonable answer by theists like Reppert.

Science, Miracles, and Skepticism

There is an ill-tempered commenter at Dangerous Idea who thinks everyone except himself is intellectually dishonest.  He spares nobody from criticism, theist and atheist alike, unless they are in full agreement with his own brand of Protestant (or at least, anti-Catholic) theism and far-right-wing politics.  But he is particularly scornful of atheists and skeptics.  And in  his estimation, his command of logic and science vastly exceeds that of any ordinary mortal (after all, he's a programmer).  His name is Ilíon, and he has a blog called Iliocentrism, which is very much an echo chamber where dissenting voices are not allowed.  He was the subject of one of my earlier posts.

A few years ago, Ilíon made a post that mocks the skepticism of those who doubt claims of miraculous events reported in the bible.  This seems to be one of his favorite posts, because he drags it out from time to time at Dangerous idea, in response to anyone who attempts to look at claims of miracles from a scientific perspective, as was the case here, in answer to John Moore, who had given the only reasonable response among the comments to Reppert's post asking whether science unfairly assumes philosophical naturalism.  Moore rightly points out that science necessarily concerns itself with the regularity and predictability of nature (and this is what methodological naturalism, not philosophical naturalism is all about).  And Ilíon, in his usual manner, takes issue with that by linking to his old canard.

Don McIntosh on Evidence - Wrong

Christians invent many ways to make themselves seem rational and reasonable while making atheists seem irrational and unreasonable.  While it is undoubtedly true that some Christians are quite reasonable, and some atheists are unreasonable, when you try to paint them with a broad brush, your depiction is likely to be distorted.  And this is especially true when you try to turn the tables on reality.  But that's what Don McIntosh attempts in his latest posting at the Christian Cadre, called The Celestial Teapot and Christian Theism.  Don has presented a straw man for the atheist's view of evidence and the opposite of that - an iron man - for the Christians' view.

Playing by the Rules

It must be difficult for a Christian trying to make sense of a world where literally any outcome is possible.  If God can decide to overrule the laws of nature at his whim, then how can we ever know that things will behave in a predictable manner?  How can we even say that there are laws of nature?  And what is the value of science?

In the Christian world, God's intervention is more than just a rarity.  It happens all the time.  What Christian denies the existence of miracles?  It's not just the astounding feats performed by Jesus.  It's little things that happen every day.  It's changing the natural course of events in response to prayers.  It's God's guiding the entire course of natural history, from the creation of the universe, to the deliberate and careful steering of events over a span of billions of years that would eventually result in the evolution of mankind.  In the Christian world, every biological creature is designed, and every beautiful sunset was made specifically for our benefit.  In other words, the course of natural events is governed by the dictates of God - not by some set of impersonal and meaningless laws.  The laws of nature are, at best, merely rules of thumb.

The Prokop Challenge

There is an interesting conversation going on at Dangerous Idea regarding scientism.  The topic of the Reppert's post was Larmer's treatment methodological naturalism, which I discussed in my previous post.  Not surprisingly, the commentary has turned from naturalism to scientism in general.  And true to form, the theists can't help but drag out all their stale old tropes, stereotypes, and falsehoods about people who value science as a method of gaining objective knowledge.

Boxed In By an Ideology

Steve Hays has posted an article that describes "skywriting" as an example of a class of miracles he calls "coincidence miracles", which are events that are supposedly consistent with natural laws, but that nevertheless are so improbable that they could only be the result of divine intervention.  If the stars in the sky aligned in such a way as to form clearly defined letters and words that spell out a message, that would be skywriting.  This has been posited by some atheists as an example of a miracle that would cause them to believe that God exists, or at least that supernatural events occur, if they ever witnessed such a thing.  But Steve says that those atheists are being dishonest about what would convince them - that they are in fact stuck on their atheistic ideology, and no evidence would convince them.  Steve believes that atheists use this example simply because it could be explained away as a natural event.  I contend that Steve is the one who is boxed in by ideology, and lacks the intellectual honesty to admit it.

It's a Miracle

The Christian belief system is founded upon miraculous events.  Without miracles, there would be no Christianity.  In particular, the events surrounding the life and death of Jesus are thought to be miraculous, from the pregnancy of his virgin mother, to his rising from the tomb after death.  Indeed, it is impossible to be a Christian without believing that these miracles are real.

At the same time, it is interesting to note that there is little agreement among Christians on what constitutes a miraculous event, or when and where such events have occurred, even among the various tales found in the bible.  Was the parting of the Red Sea really a miracle, or could it be explained by natural forces?  Could the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah be due to meteor strikes?  There are many Christians who think that God directly caused these events by suspending the normal laws of nature, and others who think that God brought about these events without actually violating natural laws by creating the necessary conditions and allowing natural laws to take their course.

Hail Saint Teresa

It's time for the Catholic Church to pay Mother Teresa back for her lifetime of devotion to the interests of the church.  She is on the fast track for canonization, having been approved for the process years before the it would have been allowed by the official policy of the church, had that policy not been waived by Pope John Paul II.

Natural vs. Supernatural

The question seems to arise over and over again.  What is the difference between natural phenomena and supernatural phenomena?  At first blush, it doesn't seem that there should be any controversy about this.  But theists are fond of blurring the line.  Their reasoning seems to go something like this: if there is no clear distinction between natural and supernatural, then there is no clear basis for declaring that belief in the supernatural is unjustified, or that it is somehow less sound than naturalism.  In this way, they seek to make their own belief in supernatural things seem more reasonable.  Here's an example of this line of thinking:

What I meant was this. Suppose the Apostles' Creed is true, but the nature-supernature distinction turns out to be an artificial one, so that there is no sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Suppose all we mean by physical is that it interacts with the physical world. So it turns out what we used to call God, angels, and souls turn out to be physical things, by some definition of physical. We can call them the theon, angelons, and psychons. My reaction to that, is, "So what. No problem." Only when you put limits on what can be natural am I going to be concerned about defending the belief that there is something super-that. - Reppert

Victor is admitting here that he'd rather not have to defend belief in supernatural things, but he thinks it's advantageous to take the battle to the ground of the naturalists and make them seem unreasonable for refusing to admit the existence of things that are part of the natural world.  But his reasoning is flawed, as I shall discuss.

How to Respond to Theists' Three Easy Questions

Shadow To Light believes there is a simple way to defeat atheism by posing three simple questions that will send them packing with their tails between their legs.  His confidence is based on the idea that the atheist unreasonably demands evidence for what he believes, but has poor understanding of what constitutes evidence.

First of all, Greene is working with a shallow, superficial understanding of evidence. He seems to think that if certain data were indeed evidence for X, then these data would be universally perceived and acknowledged as evidence for X. But that is not how evidence works. Evidence is not objective reality that is detected by the senses; evidence is perceived by the mind. The mind converts data from objective reality into the subjective perception of evidence. Because the perception of evidence depends on interpretation from the mind, evidence itself is something that has a distinct subjective element to it. In fact, it would not be too far from the truth to note that evidence is in the eye of the beholder.

He has a point.  Skeptics should admit that there is plenty of evidence that theists use to support their belief.  But he's absolutely wrong that subjective evidence merits the same epistemological status as objective evidence.  Theists can point to plenty of poor evidence that only serves to reinforce their own belief, but when it comes to the kind of evidence that actually provides epistemological justification for belief, they have nothing.

Stupid Theist Tricks:  Science Denialism

A discussion at Victor's blog goes to show how much Christian ideologues are willing downplay the validity of science in order to make their theism seem more reasonable by comparison.  Two cases in point appeared in a single thread recently.  In one of these, Ilíon makes the claim that scientific methods of measurement are not trustworthy.  In the other case, crude makes an argument that even well-established scientific theories are cast into doubt because they are subject to be refuted by science at some time in the future.  Both of these claims have some truth to them, to be sure.  But both of them are grossly overstated.  Let's see why.

Historical Arguments for God

I read this article by Peter Kreeft with eight historical arguments for God, in the hopes that it would be based on evidence, and not just another piece of simple-minded apologetic clap-trap.  I should have known better.