Disqus - Latest Comments for Luke

Re: On Resistance (responses requested)

Luke — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:05:27 -0000

How exciting!

If you haven't decided on the powers your book will address, why have you decided on their number?

I'm confused by the breadth of your question. Are the "powers" with which your book is concerned ANYTHING in the American church or American culture that may counter discipleship to Jesus? If so, a million things come to mind; everything from the PATRIOT Act to MTV to Bob Barker to internet pornography to Sunday morning inauthenticity to consumerism to the salvation-centric gospel to Bible idolhood to fear.

Will you clarify?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:05:27 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:05:27 -0000

Re: Resistance: An Update

Luke — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:41:16 -0000

How exciting! Now, get thee to a cave and bleed out those pages!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:41:16 -0000

How exciting! Now, get thee to a cave and bleed out those pages!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:41:16 -0000

How exciting! Now, get thee to a cave and bleed out those pages!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:43:23 -0000

I didn't fit any category since my answer to half the questions was "Don't know, don't care." :)

But I'm glad SOME people are keeping track of all that heady stuff.

Re: Yay! I’m not a heretic

Luke — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:43:23 -0000

I didn't fit any category since my answer to half the questions was "Don't know, don't care." :)

But I'm glad SOME people are keeping track of all that heady stuff.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:43:23 -0000

I didn't fit any category since my answer to half the questions was "Don't know, don't care." :)

But I'm glad SOME people are keeping track of all that heady stuff.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:41:40 -0000

It sounds like you are only interested in current communities, but if you want historical examples as well, the Doukhobors might be a good example of #1.

As for current resistance, any of these books may cite current examples of #1:

http://conference.jesusradicals.com/reading.php

Anyway, I've begun the hunt, but in the meantime there's just gotta be something useful buried in all these links:

http://zoecarnate.com/

Re: Communities of Resistance

Luke — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:41:40 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:41:40 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:49:49 -0000

This always bugs me when I read it. It sounds like you're saying you don't care about organizational affiliation, but if you "could care less", that means you do care a significant amount.

Re: Missio House

Luke — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:49:49 -0000

This always bugs me when I read it. It sounds like you're saying you don't care about organizational affiliation, but if you "could care less", that means you do care a significant amount.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:49:49 -0000

This always bugs me when I read it. It sounds like you're saying you don't care about organizational affiliation, but if you "could care less", that means you do care a significant amount.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 18:31:53 -0000

Yikes, methinks chapter #4 is going to be awfully difficult.

Re: Communities of Resistance

Luke — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:31:53 -0000

Yikes, methinks chapter #4 is going to be awfully difficult.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:31:53 -0000

Yikes, methinks chapter #4 is going to be awfully difficult.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:05:49 -0000

From the little I know of it, Salvage Yard/Steiger House seems a fit for ch. 2.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:49:39 -0000

BTW, I've found some real treasures in your Blogroll, Mark. Thanks!

Re: Communities of Resistance

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:05:49 -0000

From the little I know of it, Salvage Yard/Steiger House seems a fit for ch. 2.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:05:49 -0000

From the little I know of it, Salvage Yard/Steiger House seems a fit for ch. 2.

Re: lesson 3: be willing to lead

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:49:39 -0000

BTW, I've found some real treasures in your Blogroll, Mark. Thanks!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:49:39 -0000

BTW, I've found some real treasures in your Blogroll, Mark. Thanks!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:20:50 -0000

Yeah, definitely.

Re: lesson 5: get a job, fundraise, or do church for free or cheap

Luke — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:20:50 -0000

Yeah, definitely.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:20:50 -0000

Yeah, definitely.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 15:19:31 -0000

I'd like to hear/read more about your approach to pacifism.

Jesus seems quite the pacifist. He never once used violence to combat the incredible injustices of his day. To twist a common argument, I don't think Jesus would have shot a man who barged into his house and planned to kill Jesus' whole family.

But God the Father repeatedly led his people to slaughter evildoers. And if a madman runs down the street killing people, isn't the best way to love him and other to stop him?

Etc.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 15:25:40 -0000

BTW, what nifty Wordpress plugin are you using to get that equation-answering spam filter?

Re: The Folly of Pacifism in a Broken World

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:19:31 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:19:31 -0000

Re: thanksgiving or angst-giving?

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:25:40 -0000

BTW, what nifty Wordpress plugin are you using to get that equation-answering spam filter?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:25:40 -0000

BTW, what nifty Wordpress plugin are you using to get that equation-answering spam filter?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:04:17 -0000

I suppose "head hunger" implies that you have someone hunting for heads called a "head hunter"?

:)

Re: InterVarsity Metro Area

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:04:17 -0000

I suppose "head hunger" implies that you have someone hunting for heads called a "head hunter"?

:)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:04:17 -0000

I suppose "head hunger" implies that you have someone hunting for heads called a "head hunter"?

:)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:22:06 -0000

It's also something I should start doing, I suppose...

Re: InterVarsity Metro Area

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:22:06 -0000

It's also something I should start doing, I suppose...

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:22:06 -0000

It's also something I should start doing, I suppose...

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:15:04 -0000

That is an interesting argument, and one I don't recall hearing before. I'll definitely have to test it with prayer and Scripture. Thanks for responding.

Re: God is a Warmonger? Jesus is a hippie?

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:15:04 -0000

That is an interesting argument, and one I don't recall hearing before. I'll definitely have to test it with prayer and Scripture. Thanks for responding.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:15:04 -0000

That is an interesting argument, and one I don't recall hearing before. I'll definitely have to test it with prayer and Scripture. Thanks for responding.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:21:51 -0000

After some more thought, I realize that your argument that "If Jesus took the evil of humanity upon himself on the Cross, then there is no longer a need for God to punish the wicked with the Israeli Army" does not ring true for me in my current understanding of Scripture or of God. It does not agree with more standard atonement theology (which indicates why I don't understand your argument, not why it might be wrong).

It appears you are saying that post-Calvary, God does not need to punish wickedness with violence (killing people through the Israeli army or direct means), because he relates instead through the redemption of Jesus. I don't want to take too much of your time, and of course will manage your own time in responding, but will you elaborate your argument for me, provide supporting Scriptures, or especially point me to Christian literature that makes the same argument you are making, please?

In your lesser point about the madman, it sounds like you are leaving room for "restraint killing", as long as the purpose was to restrain and not to destroy. This I can understand. And we could all trade in our personal defense firearms for rubber-bullet guns. But there are some cases where there are probably no non-lethal ways to stop a destructive person (for example, a madman in a bunker with his fingers on nuclear missile launch buttons).

Re: God is a Warmonger? Jesus is a hippie?

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 23:21:51 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 23:21:51 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 03:02:16 -0000

And, Mark: is there a comments feed for this blog?

Re: God is a Warmonger? Jesus is a hippie?

Luke — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 04:02:16 -0000

And, Mark: is there a comments feed for this blog?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 04:02:16 -0000

And, Mark: is there a comments feed for this blog?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:50:36 -0000

Thanks, Mark. I'll be studying. You should know I'm pestering you because I want you to win me over to pacifism because it agrees with the Biblical Jesus, whom I prefer to the cranky OT God. And then one day I hope to reconcile Jesus and the cranky OT God in my heart and mind. :)

Re: In Response: Thoughts about Jesus, Peace, the Atonement and the Way of the Cross

Luke — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:50:36 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:50:36 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:30:33 -0000

I think "Jesus manifesto" is far more likely a term to be misunderstood, hijacked, and desecrated than "missionthink." You strike me as such of a purist that any phrase you could ever come up with wouldn't satisfy you very long because it would be (or already is) misunderstood and misused. But you're more aware of Christian culture and language than I am.

Re: “MissionThink”

Luke — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:30:33 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:30:33 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:32:08 -0000

dlw:

As for wealth, if it is easier for a camel to pass through they eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, wealth sounds pretty dangerous to me!

Re: Pentecostals: United by Prosperity?

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:32:08 -0000

dlw:

As for wealth, if it is easier for a camel to pass through they eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, wealth sounds pretty dangerous to me!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:32:08 -0000

dlw:

As for wealth, if it is easier for a camel to pass through they eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, wealth sounds pretty dangerous to me!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:23:48 -0000

dlw,

God is clearly concerned with matters of the heart, and our actions are the clearest evidence of the condition of our heart. That is why we are saved by faith, but faith without works is dead (or perhaps, "fake faith").

Wealth may be a barrier to discipleship to Jesus because of its great capacity to corrupt. Few of us are enough like Jesus to be totally uncorrupted by it, and that is why I say it is dangerous. I would like to think that I love Jesus so much more than money that my obedience to God would not waiver due to a sudden influx of wealth. Many others would like to think the same of themselves. But we are probably all naive. So, I trust Jesus when he warns us of wealth's consequences to our involvement in Kingdom work.

Re: Pentecostals: United by Prosperity?

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:23:48 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:23:48 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:59:20 -0000

Yeah, I was hoping to hide in a corner and listen in on (especially) this one, but my schedule won't allow it. I wish I had one of those nifty digital voice recorders to lend you.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:01:17 -0000

BTW, Mark, I like the way you've split your blogroll into more manageable/meaningful chunks.

Re: Cohort Meeting on Thursday

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:59:20 -0000

Yeah, I was hoping to hide in a corner and listen in on (especially) this one, but my schedule won't allow it. I wish I had one of those nifty digital voice recorders to lend you.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:59:20 -0000

Yeah, I was hoping to hide in a corner and listen in on (especially) this one, but my schedule won't allow it. I wish I had one of those nifty digital voice recorders to lend you.

Re: Pentecostals: United by Prosperity?

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:01:17 -0000

BTW, Mark, I like the way you've split your blogroll into more manageable/meaningful chunks.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:01:17 -0000

BTW, Mark, I like the way you've split your blogroll into more manageable/meaningful chunks.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:10:37 -0000

You should totally complement this with recommended reading(s) from each theologian, and perhaps with your opinion of their greatest contribution(s) to a contemporary understanding of God.

Re: Top Theologians?

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 17:10:37 -0000

You should totally complement this with recommended reading(s) from each theologian, and perhaps with your opinion of their greatest contribution(s) to a contemporary understanding of God.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 17:10:37 -0000

You should totally complement this with recommended reading(s) from each theologian, and perhaps with your opinion of their greatest contribution(s) to a contemporary understanding of God.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:35:40 -0000

Your RSS is now summaries only? NOOOOOO!!!!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:38:38 -0000

Yes, that's a great post! Thanks for sharing it.

Re: some self-indulgent pop psychology

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:35:40 -0000

Your RSS is now summaries only? NOOOOOO!!!!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:35:40 -0000

Your RSS is now summaries only? NOOOOOO!!!!

Re: Excellent McKnight Post: Inclusion Reaction

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:38:38 -0000

Yes, that's a great post! Thanks for sharing it.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:38:38 -0000

Yes, that's a great post! Thanks for sharing it.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:39:48 -0000

I put off reading your reflections on evangelism because (a) I wanted to wait for the series to finish so I could read the whole thing as a continuous thought, and (b) I realized by the third paragraph of your first post I'd have to look up the word "enculturation."

But now I've read the series and like it very much. It's a very succinct presentation of the (hi)story of Christian evangelism and how current views have formed and dominated, and how we might look at evangelism in a more holistic, Po-Mo way.

This series is another example of how you've been able to excite my inner desire for Christ by reframing questions and ideas. Evangelism as embodiment of the Gospel and not a list of truths. Christ's presence reaching others when WE embody it among them.

BTW, I've been having some major problems with your text captcha. When I take more than a minute to type a comment (like this one), it always gives me a "Sorry, it seems you didn't pass math!", even though I'm sure my simple addition is correct. :) But when I only take about 30 seconds to leave a comment, it accepts my mathematical solution.

I've lost many a comment this way, and so I've begun copying my comments to the clipboard before I "Submit Comment" on your blog so I don't have to re-type it all.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:40:36 -0000

Yeah, the Washington Avenue Bridge signs are disappointing.

Re: Reflections on Evangelism 4: Bringing evangelism back to the Church

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:39:48 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:39:48 -0000

Re: A stroll accross the Washington Avenue Bridge

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:40:36 -0000

Yeah, the Washington Avenue Bridge signs are disappointing.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:40:36 -0000

Yeah, the Washington Avenue Bridge signs are disappointing.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 09:03:07 -0000

That's cool that you've linked up your personal favorite posts, rather than the usual most-read/commented posts.

Re: Top 5 for 2006: missionthink posts

Luke — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:03:07 -0000

That's cool that you've linked up your personal favorite posts, rather than the usual most-read/commented posts.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:03:07 -0000

That's cool that you've linked up your personal favorite posts, rather than the usual most-read/commented posts.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:43:45 -0000

I'm just now reading Rick Richardson's short book "Reimagining Evangelism" and it is very exciting. But here are some immediate thoughts:

I'm not sure there needs to be a line between embodying the gospel and simply living like Christ. There is something incredibly beautiful and attractive about the real Jesus, and people will be more than curious about such a person. I recall, for example, Barthrop telling me about how the Muslims at Hard Times really respect him though they know he works for Jesus. You can't argue with true, sacrificial love.

About narrating the gospel. It's hard to say which truths are necessary to explicate, especially if one ISN'T engaged in "sales pitch" evangelism for "fire insurance" salvation.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:46:53 -0000

Brick and The New World were my favorites of 2005 (though they didn't see many theaters in the U.S. until 2006). so far my favorite of 2006 is Borat, though I've seen very few movies this year since I usually wait for the DVD.

Re: Reflections on Evangelism: Call for Comments

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:43:45 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:43:45 -0000

Re: Top 5 for 2006: movies

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:46:53 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:46:53 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 17:35:16 -0000

Does this community of resistance interest you?

http://www.sundancechannel.com/onepunk/

Re: Talking to Saison

Luke — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:35:16 -0000

Does this community of resistance interest you?

http://www.sundancechannel.com/onepunk/

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:35:16 -0000

Does this community of resistance interest you?

http://www.sundancechannel.com/onepunk/

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 19:03:21 -0000

Very cool! I'm glad you were presently surprised.

Yes, it's Christmas. My own blog's comments this week dropped to 2 from my previous high point of about 6. :)

Re: a quick post from Urbana 06

Luke — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:03:21 -0000

Very cool! I'm glad you were presently surprised.

Yes, it's Christmas. My own blog's comments this week dropped to 2 from my previous high point of about 6. :)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:03:21 -0000

Very cool! I'm glad you were presently surprised.

Yes, it's Christmas. My own blog's comments this week dropped to 2 from my previous high point of about 6. :)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:58:11 -0000

Spiffy new site! But did I miss something? Does this mean the publisher also accepted your proposal for The Jesus Manifesto?

Also, FYI: in Firefox but not in IE the borders to the textboxes for name, mail, website, and comment text are nearly invisible, which probably makes things slightly confusing to those unfamiliar with blog commenting (who happen to use Firefox). Dunno if you're getting the same effect.

Re: I couldn’t help myself: Responding to a Critic of the Emerging Church

Luke — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:58:11 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:58:11 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:24:26 -0000

Very stressful! Very dependent on God! I can't say anything you don't already know, but God bless you!

Re: Be Forewarned: Ministry Rant Ahead

Luke — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:24:26 -0000

Very stressful! Very dependent on God! I can't say anything you don't already know, but God bless you!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:24:26 -0000

Very stressful! Very dependent on God! I can't say anything you don't already know, but God bless you!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:28:26 -0000

My response to posts like this is always:

1. Could this ever really work?

2. Is it worth the tremendous cumulative co$t to me? (Wal-Mart always has lower prices. Always.)

The way of Jesus is so impractical.

Re: Incarnational versus Incorporational

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:28:26 -0000

My response to posts like this is always:

1. Could this ever really work?
2. Is it worth the tremendous cumulative co$t to me? (Wal-Mart always has lower prices. Always.)

The way of Jesus is so impractical.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:28:26 -0000

My response to posts like this is always:

1. Could this ever really work?
2. Is it worth the tremendous cumulative co$t to me? (Wal-Mart always has lower prices. Always.)

The way of Jesus is so impractical.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:43:13 -0000

So, did you get it all in already or something?

Re: Mendicant Beggary for the New Era

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:43:13 -0000

So, did you get it all in already or something?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:43:13 -0000

So, did you get it all in already or something?

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:47:03 -0000

Very interesting! I do love these series that take us inside your brain.

Re: Church and State pt 2: Subject to the Governing Authorities (a Christian Anarchist’s look at Romans 13)

Luke — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:47:03 -0000

Very interesting! I do love these series that take us inside your brain.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:47:03 -0000

Very interesting! I do love these series that take us inside your brain.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:11:51 -0000

Honestly, not a fan of the new Missio Dei header graphic, both for the sepia and the cutout-filtered cliche Jesus. Nice West Bank Images page.

Re: Links for Your Perusal

Luke — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:11:51 -0000

Honestly, not a fan of the new Missio Dei header graphic, both for the sepia and the cutout-filtered cliche Jesus. Nice West Bank Images page.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:11:51 -0000

Honestly, not a fan of the new Missio Dei header graphic, both for the sepia and the cutout-filtered cliche Jesus. Nice West Bank Images page.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:15:03 -0000

AMEN!

Re: Resisting Abstraction

Luke — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:15:03 -0000

AMEN!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:15:03 -0000

AMEN!

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:57:33 -0000

Yay! I look forward to your cogent thoughts.

Re: Church and State pt 5: Transitioning to Practical Implications

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:57:33 -0000

Yay! I look forward to your cogent thoughts.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:57:33 -0000

Yay! I look forward to your cogent thoughts.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:16:20 -0000

I can't find much more on your blog about substitutionary atonement. Is there?

Besides this one: http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/?p=510

Re: Rethinking the Atonement

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:16:20 -0000

I can't find much more on your blog about substitutionary atonement. Is there?

Besides this one: http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/?p=510

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:16:20 -0000

I can't find much more on your blog about substitutionary atonement. Is there?

Besides this one: http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/?p=510

Re: on being a neighborhood church

Luke — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:18:53 -0000

Great post! Thanks for explaining.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:18:53 -0000

Great post! Thanks for explaining.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:18:53 -0000

Great post! Thanks for explaining.

Re: Palm Sunday

Luke — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:44:31 -0000

I can't say I'm "grappling" with that, because the word implies a struggle among at least two competing ideas. I am solidly opposed to the church calender because I share your critiques of it but not your defenses.

I do not think church events give us more opportunity to "live in" our faith than we could choose without church events. And I think the centrality of images and story in the church is an abuse of potentially illustrative resources; they mislead more than they lead. And I do not think participation in the church calender is a good way to stand in unity with the body of Christ, or in fact that unity with such a broad and often evil body of persons is good. (Mutual love and respect and service, sure. ) I can't imagine wanting to unify myself with the conservative George Bush cheering squad, and I can't imagine you (Mark) or Barthrop or a thousand others wanting to unify themselves with my hypocritical, uncompassionate, unserving, ungenerous, selfish ass.

The Catholic mass a few blocks from my apartment in Merida, VZ was a "palm branch" service, too. We twisted palm leaves into crosses and then prayed to the Virgin Coromoto, an abstraction of Mary that serves as the patron saint of Venezuela.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:44:31 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:44:31 -0000

Re: Thoughts on Psychological Tests, Being Smug, and Failing to be a Writer

Luke — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:48:20 -0000

I rather like it when people do therapy through their blog. That's what my own blog is all about... :)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:48:20 -0000

I rather like it when people do therapy through their blog. That's what my own blog is all about... :)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:48:20 -0000

I rather like it when people do therapy through their blog. That's what my own blog is all about... :)

Re: May 17 :: Twin Cities Emergent Cohort :: Tradition in the Emerging Church

Luke — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:22:49 -0000

Have you seen this?

http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/...

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:22:49 -0000

Have you seen this?

http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/...

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:22:49 -0000

Have you seen this?

http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/...

Re: Quick Question from the Road

Luke — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:58:47 -0000

I tend to think a lot more people would be seduced by the beauty of the way of Jesus if they didn't feel they needed to swallow all the irrational doctrine of the church first. Kind of like how Buddhism has found followers in the west (but not so much Mahayana Buddhism). Even the vitriolic Richard Dawkins wrote a piece called "Atheists for Jesus."

I even wonder if neomonasticism could take hold in the non-theist mainstream if the movement's focus was on love and service and simplicity and it could be decoupled from talking snakes and mind-reading, tri-person, invisible spirits. People want a better, fuller, more loving way of life than their busy and pointless consumerist rat-race, but children of the Enlightenment don't, by definition, swallow dogma.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:58:47 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:58:47 -0000

Re: Quick Question from the Road

Luke — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:35:40 -0000

Keith,

Though it is tangential to Mark's question, let me address your quibble. You are right that Enlightenment thinkers have their own "tradition" (I'm using Alasdair MacIntyre's term; he writes on this issue quite eloquently). If we can call it dogma, then it is a different sort of dogma altogether.

Religious dogma is about what one believes, which is separate from how one believes. Whether one comes to Christian belief through personal experience, induction, deduction, or are simply grandfathered in (as is usually the case), what unites religious people is their dogma of what to believe: an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God created the universe; Christology; atonement; etc.

The Enlightenment dogma is, on the other hand, about how one believes, separate from what one believes. The Enlightenment dogma is too think rationally about what we observe in the real world, not to believe any set of truths for all time. Thus, even if nearly all Enlightenment thinkers assume the universe is eternal, they all change their minds if presented with well-considered, compelling evidence (as happened during the 20th century, with Big Bang theory). And of course, Enlightenment thinkers are not going to accept truths just because they were asserted by ancient persons, whether Paul of Tarsus or Aristotle.

Thus, we might see the central virtue of religion as faith; asserting truths in the face of whatever evidence comes our way. But the central virtue of the Enlightenment (or rather, Descartes' skepticism, which preceded the Enlightenment) is doubt; not asserting truths unless reason and evidence compels one to do so.

Perhaps that is why religion has no problem asserting gods despite so much evidence to the contrary, and why Enlightenment thinkers refuse to assert indemonstrable gods.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:35:40 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:35:40 -0000

Re: Goodbye, Ingmar Bergman

Luke — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:38:53 -0000

Sad, indeed. I think his "Persona" (1966) is the greatest film of all time.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:38:53 -0000

Sad, indeed. I think his "Persona" (1966) is the greatest film of all time.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:38:53 -0000

Sad, indeed. I think his "Persona" (1966) is the greatest film of all time.

Re: Towards the Open Sourcing of Christianity

Luke — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:26:10 -0000

One of my favorite techniques is to summarize all the best bits of an expensive book in a blog post, which is of course available for free.

The problem of course is that the Christian book publishing industry, and especially the CCM industry, are INDUSTRIES. They exist to make money, not to help people. (That is also why 99% of what they produce, like 99% of the self-help market, is bullshit made to entice - not help - you.)

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:26:10 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:26:10 -0000

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:06:44 -0000

Nagler's UC Berkeley courses on Nonviolence are available for free download:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?...

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?...

I've been listening to them on my iPod and these lectures are awesome.

Re: The 25 Lessons of Nonviolence

Luke — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:06:44 -0000

Nagler's UC Berkeley courses on Nonviolence are available for free download:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?...
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?...

I've been listening to them on my iPod and these lectures are awesome.

Re: the Jesus Manifesto » Maintenance Mode

Luke — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:07:54 -0000

If the USA features state-sponsored agnosticism/atheism, why is our national motto now "In God We Trust?" Why is God is printed on our money? Why do we swear presidents and court witnesses in on the Christian scriptures? Why are nearly all members of congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch Christian?

A pluralistic government does not preach atheism. It merely requires that (in theory) if you want to enforce your ideals on everybody else, you must show evidence and reason why they are good ideals, rather than point to an ancient book or your own mystical experiences.

Re: The Common Root 2009

Luke — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:16:35 -0000

Hey, nice redesign.

I liked this story:
Ministry tends to feet of homeless
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28796749/

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:46:52 -0000

Mark,

Thanks for your thoughtful clarifications.

You say that Christians do not possess a "proof" (or even evidence, perhaps?) of God, but rather that Christians "are" a reflection of Christianity in their lives. The non-believer sees the glory of God in the life of a good Christian.

I hope Yahweh does not expect unbelievers to accept Jesus - not just as a (failed) Jewish apocalyptic prophet but as a magical, invisible, undead cosmic Savior - on this basis alone!

The unbeliever can hardly be blamed for noticing that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have been no better than other people, and certainly no less ignorant or bigoted (and in many modern cases, perhaps more ignorant and bigoted). Of course there are a tiny minority of Christians who exhibit the best of Jesus' teachings (and thankfully ignore the worst of them), but this no more persuades me to accept Christianity than the lives of a few noble new-agers compels me to accept theories of quantum consciousness as true.

If beauty is a guide to truth, I suppose I would be drawn to the Quakers - who barely even believe God exists any more. More likely, I'd be drawn first to many non-Christian religions, for example Jainism. Most likely of all, I'd be drawn to follow in the footsteps of those who have used science to better more human lives than is possible through other means - people like Norman Borlaug.

If the glory of God shines through (good) Christians, the glory of something greater shines through, say, many Jains. Or Norman Borlaug. Or Gandhi. Or many others.

Now, let me consider your view that "a person must first participate in Christian experience before one can have knowledge of God."

First, this epistemology seems to hungrily pursue human cognitive biases rather than to protect against them. One will certainly feel compelled to think Christianity is true if one does the rituals, repeats the words, sings the songs, surrounds oneself with the people, etc. But this is true of any cult.

As for "eyes are needed that are able to perceive the spiritual form." Again, this is a dangerous view - even pernicious. One could easily assert the same about any worldview. I might as well preach that "eyes are needed that are able to perceive the form of Hindu gods." (Yes, this is another spiritual form, but no doubt von Balthasar would say my sensus divinitatus is faulty if I perceived Shiva instead of Yahweh! Yet another case of special pleading for Christianity.)

But this biggest problem is we have no good reason to think this special "sixth sense" exists.

Mark, you also said that "Jesus has no need of apologetics." You seem utterly unconcerned with the truth of Christian claims, only with their beauty - as if we do not need reasons to think Christian doctrines are true, but rather we need a church that is willing to embody the good parts of Jesus' teaching.

I would be happy to see the world embody the good parts of Jesus' teaching - non-violence and compassion for the poor, especially. But it also matters whether Christianity is true, and that - I argue - is not a matter of what is beautiful or what is nice or even what is moral. It's a matter of what is true about the constituents of reality.

This is important because our beliefs about reality affect our actions. It matters whether prayer or scientific medicine are more effective healing agents. It matters whether worship improves our relationship to Jesus and thus our chances at getting into heaven, or whether it's all wasted time and energy singing to our invisible friend. Truth matters.

Finally, about your mystical experiences. Atheist philosopher and historian Richard Carrier recounts his early encounters with Taoism in Sense and Goodness Without God. He had amazing, powerful, personal, life-changing mystical experiences through his Taoism. So have many other people through their own religions. Many of these mystical experiences were incredibly beautiful, transcendent, and led to life transformation and blossoming goodness. But none of this was a reflection of truth in the doctrines of Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, etc. To argue otherwise for Christian mystical experiences is special pleading, plain and simple.

Mark: anyone who reads our posts will recognize we are two ships passing in the night! You are writing from a fuzzy postmodernist perspective, and I'm writing from a clear, sharp modernist perspective. I have considered and rejected what I consider to be postmodern obfuscation, and that is another argument.

In fact, we may not even be talking about the same things! You use the words "truth" and "true", but you seem more interested in goodness and beauty. Perhaps truth for you does not mean "that which corresponds to actual states of affairs," but something different - closer to common notions of aesthetic authenticity and moral coherence? I'm not sure.

In any case, I think we can have them all. We can have rigorous truth, aesthetic beauty, and moral goodness. I think some elements of Jesus' "manifesto" are worth preserving (though Gandhi's and MLK Jr.'s innovations and elaborations are perhaps more useful), but we should not confuse and dampen our quest for a better world with false hope, false claims, and fuzzy obfuscation. Truth matters. Truth will help us create a better world. If we have good intentions but a wrong idea of how the world works, we might just make the world worse instead. That's what most "good" people in the history of the world ended up doing, because they were dead wrong about damn near everything, partly due to utter ignorance and partly due to not being very careful about justifying their beliefs.

I'd like to see us all avoid ignorance, justify our beliefs, and embrace our common goal of making the world a better place.

Mark, thanks for the opportunity to share my story with your readers. I hope it sparks some useful discussion that will make clear our differences and similarities. If anything, it will hopefully clear up misconceptions. Atheists do not spend enough time with missional Christians to know them very well, and I suspect missional Christians do not spend much time with intellectual atheists. (For example, perhaps they think that intellectual atheists are represented by Richard Dawkins!)

I welcome the discussion.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:18:16 -0000

I LOLed so loudly at your last line that I think I woke one of my roommates.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:04:43 -0000

Joel,

This kind of interaction is fun, isn't it? :)

I'd be curious to hear if and how the truth of even a minimal set of Christian doctrines follows from what you believe about the universe. I see nothing particularly Christian in what you've wrote.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:07:38 -0000

I do not agree that basing one's life on what is not true is to betray one's self. I don't know what that means. I'm interested in truth for its pragmatic use, and to a much lesser degree out of personal curiosity.

But I do agree that THE issue is "how one arrives at truth."

And yes, I think it is foolish to begin with beauty, or even goodness.

From beauty and goodness, no truth follows. A great many religions and worldviews are "beautiful" and "good", but certainly you do not think the truth of their claims follows from their beauty and goodness, right?

I can imagine a possible universe in which beauty and goodness were reliable paths to truth. We would find that there was only one perspective on any given proposition that was beautiful, and the one that was beautiful would reliably turn out to "work" when we put it into use in the real world. It just so happens this is not our universe.

It turns out our universe is very different from the universe in which Mark's epistemology would be valid. Truth does not follow from beauty. Many things are beautiful but not true. Many things are true but not at all beautiful. Beauty seems to have no reliable connection to truth.

Instead, we find ourselves in a universe where other methods are most useful in discovering truth. Namely, logic and the scientific method. Not because I have declared them to be so, by fiat. But because when we use those methods, we more reliably come upon truth than through other methods. In fact there is nothing special about the scientific method, for example. Whenever we find that a particular tactic (say, double-blind controls or multivariate analysis properly applied) leads more reliable to truth that works than other tactics do (say, trusting testimony or beauty). That is why scientific induction - and logical deductions that follow from it - have been so successful in revealing true facts about the universe, whereas other methods continue to wander aimlessly and only occasionally stumble on true facts.

If our universe was amenable to Mark's epistemology, I would embrace it! Or if our universe was one in which people did not lie, had perfect perception, and no cognitive biases, then perhaps in that universe testimony would be the best method to truth. It just so happens that neither of these universes are OUR universe. It just so happens that our universe is one in which logic and evidence produce the most reliable and usable knowledge.

I can imagine a world in which we all pursue truth through beauty over logic and evidence. It looks like the dark ages. Or maybe it looks more like a land of "noble savages." Either way, it is not a world in which people know very many true facts.

You might say it would be better if our world was one of noble savages. It would be better to be ignorant but loving than to have the knowledge to make atomic bombs. I think I would agree. But we cannot make that world.

Instead, I propose we make a world in which we have the knowledge to produce medicines, build stable societies, prevent suffering, treat psychological problems, feed the hungry, etc. - AND one in which we live moral lives.

But, because I am a moral realist, I also think morality depends heavily on reliable knowledge. Moral facts must be known using the same rigorous methods that happen to work in this universe - the same methods we use in science. If we do not gather reliable moral knowledge, but instead gather moral knowledge through what "feels" right or looks "beautiful," we will be gathering moral knowledge in the exact same way as our racist, sexist, homophobic, nationalistic ancestors did, and we will probably be just as wrong. We will make the world worse instead of better because we were factually incorrect about what is "better."

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:50:10 -0000

Judy,

I told the early part in terms of how I experienced things. I really believed what I was experiencing was the presence of God. Looking back, I now think it's extremely unlikely those feelings were a perception of Yahweh, but that was how I interpreted them at the time.

I am indeed a "traditional" atheist. I do not believe gods exist. Or rather, I think they are just as improbable as fairies and unicorns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:20:04 -0000

Mark,

I agree that perception - what I call "experience" - is all we have. All beliefs arise through experience - experiences of the external world and also experiences of what is happening in our own minds and bodies.

You say something that is very unclear to me:

"And when one talks about perception – how we understand the world, the way in which we imagine that it actually IS, we are talking about aesthetics."

Perception is one thing. But any usual definitions of the word, "aesthetics" is a very different thing. If you want to stipulate a different definition for aesthetics that is okay, but I would protest that redefining words only causes confusion and obfuscation. Why bother redefining the word aesthetics? It confuses the whole discussion, and is wholly unnecessary.

Perception usually means something like "the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding."

Aesthetics usually means something like "the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments."

So, I propose we use to standard definitions of terms so we don't confuse each other.

If you don't really mean "beauty" but usual definitions of the word, can you then explain your epistemology without using the words "beauty" or "aesthetics"?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:25:40 -0000

Correction: If you don’t really mean “beauty” by usual definitions of the word, can you then explain your epistemology without using the words “beauty” or “aesthetics”?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:48:04 -0000

Jeffrey,

Your post was incoherent to me. You might as well have said, "In our discussion, it may often be easy to forget that Truth, that which we all long for, is found in the person of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Our understanding of ultimate reality is found no other place. As Sartre so deftly explained, an eternal referent is absolutely necessary for any finite point to have any meaning. Schaeffer carries this argument to explore the richness of a self-existent, self-revelatory Being. We are not talking about vague concepts, we are talking about the very essence of existence."

Second, let me respond to your assertion that "If we look at the teachings of Christ, one would be hard-pressed to find places where his teachings weren’t of prime import. I say this as one who once took the “Jesus is a great teacher, just like Mohammed, the Buddha, etc.” track."

What is this? Jesus must be divine because his teachings were special? Frankly, I think the teachings of the Tao are clearer and more relevant. Jesus had some good teachings, some bad ones, and some downright bizarre ones.

Also, let me respond to this: "Luke, I appreciate your candor, but as much as you try to make this an intellectual exercise, there is simply no way to divorce the cognitive from the emotive. As Ravi Zacharias said, “A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.”"

This simply is not true at all. I've examined myself quite deeply and my atheism has nothing to do with not wanting to admit my need for God. It really is about the evidence and the logic, for me. Secondly, you could have said just as persuasively, "A man rejects the Invisible Pink Unicorn due to moral resistance, not logic or evidence."

You haven't put forward any reasons I should take your magical invisible friend any more seriously than the Invisible Pink Unicorn, or any more seriously than the 5,000 other gods ignorant people have invented to feel comforted, explain the as-yet-unexplained, and justify their control over others.

No, we cannot entirely divorce the emotive and the cognitive. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Science and logic are rigorously designed to do just that - combat human bias and eliminate it. Feelings and emotion and perceptions of beauty are NOT designed to do that - in fact, they embrace human biases and misperceptions.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:53:12 -0000

Emily,

Think about what you just said.

I’m always confused when theists say atheism is just another religion. If they think religion is a good thing, then are they praising atheism for being a religion? Do they want to give it the same privileges as other religions: tax exemption, free cash from “faith-based initiatives,” toleration, and unexamined respect?

But usually I hear it in a tone that suggests they think atheism is dogmatic and intolerant: you know, like “other” religions. Are they then condemning their own religion? They seem to be saying, “Atheism is dogmatic and intolerant, just like us. Boo on atheism.”

So, I don’t get it.

In either case, of course, atheism is not a religion. It is not a worldview or system at all. It does not combine a set of beliefs, traditions, rituals, and community structures like religions do. It is, rather, a single belief about one thing: that there aren’t any gods.

Calling atheism a religion is like saying that “not-stamp-collecting” is a hobby, or that “not-aristocracy” is a system of government.

Second, does atheism require as much faith as theism? No. Think about it. Does disbelieving in unicorns take as much faith as believing in unicorns? Does disbelieving in Vahiguru take just as much faith as believing in Vahiguru? Of course not.

That atheist does not think that he can disprove the existence of Vahiguru or unicorns or Yahweh. He merely thinks the evidence on the God question is about equal to the evidence on the werewolf question.

Finally, let me respond to this: "I would say that Atheism merely places REASON as a God in place of God himself."

But this presumes that God exists in the first place. And remember, our thoughts/experiences are all that ANY of us have. You use your reason and come to the conclusion that God exists. I use my reason and come to the conclusion that he doesn't. We both can only get to God or atheism by way of reason, first. Reason is not my God. I have no God, because it just so happens that my universe does not contain a God. That wasn't my choice. It just so happens we aren't in a universe that contains fairies or unicorns or Vahiguru or Allah, either.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:11:00 -0000

Mark,

Ah, now we're on the same page. I'm quite familiar with Plantinga, who is (lucky for me) a thoroughly analytic ("modern") philosopher and not postmodern at all.

Plantinga, of course, launched the "reformed epistemology" movement which argues that Christian belief in God can be justified without appeal to any actual evidence at all.

Skipping his 1983 argument and moving on to his 2000 argument for warranted Christian belief, here's how I read Plantinga: He says that a belief is warranted only if it is produced by the proper functioning of a cognitive faculty in the circumstances in which that faculty was designed (by God or evolution) to operate effectively.

Plantinga then asserts that the properly functioning cognitive faculty that provides warrant for Christian belief is the sensus divinitatis God has placed in each human mind. This sensus divinitatis gives direct knowledge of God, without the need for evidence.

Plantinga also says that if somebody can't perceive God directly, then his sensus divinitatis must be broken - by sin.

First, millions of Christians seem to be much more "sinful" than many atheists - and yet these Christians can still see God, while the most blameless atheists cannot?

Second, we must ask: "How do we know if this sensus divinitatis exists?" Plantinga says that if God exists, it's likely he would create a sensus divinitatis. But this is far from obvious to me! Indeed, most gods that have been imagined have not been proposed to impart a sensus divinitatis, so it's not obvious to most people, either. Also, Plantinga's argument depends entirely on whether or not God exists in the first place!

So, Plantinga's entire argument is that if God exists, Christians are probably rational to believe in him even without evidence.

But this does nothing at all to show that God exists! I might as well argue that "If the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists, she would probably give us a sensus unicornius to directly perceive her. Thus, believers in her are justified in their belief without evidence. Those who can't perceive the Invisible Pink Unicorn have a broken sensus unicornius, broken by sin."

Can you not see how silly these arguments are? They are merely attempts to avoid taking any responsibility for the justification of one's beliefs, in my opinion.

Mark, perhaps you read Plantinga differently? Or do you actually think this is a persuasive argument, and a reliable epistemology?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:44:22 -0000

Maria,

Atheism is not a belief system, any more than a-unicornism is a belief system. If you hear that somebody doesn't believe unicorns exist, does that tell you anything else about them? Their morality? Their politics? Their rationality? Their... anything? No. In the same way, mere atheism tells you nothing else about a person - it only describes his or her unbelief in gods.

"Many times we can understand truth emotionally long before we can quantify it rationally."

You do not apprehend truth with your feelings. That's like using your liver to think. The kind of "truth" you experience with your feelings is not propositional truth - in the ordinary sense - but subjective truth.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:52:11 -0000

Andrew,

You have offered an actual argument in favor of your position, which is kind.

Of course there are many other people who believed in their personal encounters with a god or prophet that they were willing to die on their behalf. This is how several religions have begun, including Islam. But there are many reasons I am not any more persuaded by the birth of Christianity than I am by the birth of other religions. A few of them I discuss here and here.

In the end, you must ask yourself this:

Which is more likely? Is it more likely that (1) people lied, (2) people hallucinated, (3) people spread legends that grew and grew, (4) people misinterpreted natural phenomena in a superstitious age - all of which happen all the time, and are common and well-documented human phenomena - or is it more likely that an invisible magical being physically reanimated the dead tissues and organs of a murdered man and magically transformed his body into a magical body that could walk through walls and fly off into the sky - something that has never happened and contradicts everything we know and doesn't even sound remotely plausible?

Basically, is the more likely explanation something that fits perfectly with everything we already know, or is the best explanation something that contradicts everything we know? If my house burns down, are you going to explain it by a gas stove left on and a electrical spark, or an arsonist - or are you going to suggest a magical dragon burned it down and then disappeared into thin air?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:00:30 -0000

Emily,

I did come face-to-face, many times, with what I truly believed to be the spirit of God. I did not reject God for lack of mystical experience. I rejected God because there was no better evidence for him than for unicorns or fairies or any other God, and because there are in fact very powerful philosophical arguments against his existence, depending on how precisely you define "God."

Would I pray if a plane went down? No; I would look to see if there were any final acts of goodness I could do. I wouldn't consider praying to Yahweh any more likely to be of use than praying to Allah, or Vahiguru, or Shiva, or...

"I didn’t get shot. Instead someone happened to be coming home from either work or something else, I don’t remember, and they helped me. You would probably call that luck; I call it God stepping in."

This reminds of Oprah's account of how she got a role in The Color Purple. Oprah remembers that she really thought positive thoughts after the audition, and then Spielberg called her and she got the part! So she thought her positive thinking affected the universe and brought her the part. But this is special thinking. It ignores the fact that dozens of other people also thought positive and wished and hoped but did not get the part. Likewise, a great many people prayed and hoped in God during a scary time, and they did get shot/killed/wounded/whatever.

Another analogy is the plane that goes down, with only one survivor. That survivor thinks his survival is a miracle. But what of the dozens of other people that died?

Yes, I think luck (or in some cases, as in the recent Hudson River crash, good human planning) is a better explanation for these events than the intervention of an all-loving God.

"Either way I think its a bit unfair to ask of God that you see him personally in order to believe in him."

There are lots of things I believe in that I haven't experienced personally. What I ask to believe in everything is good evidence, in proportion to its antecedent probability. (I think in Bayesian terms.)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:57:42 -0000

Jeffrey,

Let me respond to this: "I feel you have completely side-stepped the most significant aspect of this entire discussion, the person of Christ. I am not talking about pink unicorns (though that would make for an interesting discussion). The person of Christ actually exists."

Or, so you assert. What I'm saying is that there is no better evidence for the magical Jesus than there is for pink unicorns. If you can give me good evidence for Yahweh or the magical Jesus, I'd love to hear it. Everything I've been presented with so far - and sought out for myself when I was emotionally desperate to salvage my faith - has been terrible evidence. The kind of evidence found in Carpenters 100 Reasons the Earth is not a Globe. The kind of evidence that relies heavily on special pleading.

Now, for the teachings of Jesus. Of course, each gospel presents very different pictures of who Jesus was and what he said, even when just considering the canonical gospels.

The most entertaining summary of Jesus' good, bad, and bizarre teachings - and Christian attempts to change their meaning so they are all "good" teachings - is in NonStampCollectors YouTube video Jesus and the Interpreter.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:15:51 -0000

Andrew,

Let me respond to: "even if Jesus’ physical body had not been reanimated, that does not mean God did not vindicate Jesus and save him from oblivion."

Sure. And even if there is not an invisible pink unicorn, it may still be the case that an invisible unicorn exists, which is more plausible.

Unfortunately, I have yet to offer any positive evidence for the invisible unicorn, and you have yet to offer any positive evidence for a Jesus who was "vindicated" and "saved from oblivion" by an ancient Canaanite sky-god among many who was transformed by Plato-influenced Jewish thinkers into a single, all-powerful, cosmic Creator-god.

"Essentially, we shouldn’t assume that the only “real” things are observable to human faculties or that we have arrived at explanatory finality. Just because something, like God, is claimed to be spirit and thus “invisible” does not necessitate our rejection of its potentiality."

I certainly agree! In fact, what we've labeled "dark energy" and "dark matter" are, as non-baryonic matter-energy, almost by definition non-natural ("super" natural?) entities. A great many things exist that we do not have the tools to observe directly. There may indeed be strings, a multiverse - things beyond our wildest imagination.

So no, the invisibility and magical nature of God does not make God logically impossible. Nor are Allah, Vahiguru, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, invisible unicorns, or magical teapots impossible. It's just that we don't have any good reasons to think any of these things exist. Likewise, I haven't been shown any good reasons to think that Yahweh exists. And I've looked pretty hard - as a believer and as an unbeliever. It's still possible I'll come across a sound reason to think Yahweh exists or that Jesus was resurrected, but after reason #375,871 has failed, it's hard to think that reason #375,872 will be any more promising. Especially since if it was, I would have heard of it sooner.

But we'll see. Luckily, I enjoy examining these questions, so I'll spend way more time investigating them each year than most people ever do in a lifetime.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:30:19 -0000

Andrew,

Certainly, my one little book review was not meant to be a comprehensive rebuttal of all the arguments for resurrection of Jesus, or even all the arguments given in that book.

The resurrection of Jesus is a much more complex topic than any of the philosophical arguments for God's existence, since the resurrection story depends on hundreds of tiny pieces of evidence that must be interpreted very carefully with exact knowledge of the context and many other factors, and all these bits of evidence must considered in conjunction with one another, along with everything else that is known about psychology, sociology, the writing and transmission of history, etc.

When I get the time I will write many blog posts about the topic - including specific ones about the conversion of James, etc. But for now, I'd like to ask something more like this:

Again, which is more likely? Is it more likely that the stories were made up, that they arose through legendary accretion, that they were exaggerated, or that they were told as symbolic stories (the stories told to the "common people," while their secret meanings were kept for the inner few and never published - as was the case with dozens of other mystery religions founded in the same era) - or is it more likely that a magical invisible eternal spirit reanimated a dead body and gave it superpowers? Is it more likely that the explanation is something that fits with everything we know, however unlikely, or is it more likely that the explanation contradicts everything we know?

Of course, neither of us can consider any piece of evidence - like the apparent conversion of James - in isolation. There are hundreds of reasons I disbelieve the resurrection account, and perhaps hundreds of reasons you find it plausible.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:49:35 -0000

toddh,

Sorry, no. Atheism really does just mean "no God belief." That's it. Look it up in the dictionary. Atheism does not involve any positive affirmations, and certainly nothing about what lead a person to his or her unbelief.

Then look up "Christianity" or "Buddhism" or "Marxism" in the dictionary. These are complex worldviews that are usually understood to entail a long list of affirmed propositions.

It's not about trying to get a privileged epistemic position. It's simply what the word means. I, too, argue against comparing atheism to Christianity directly, since they are not in the same category. Compare atheism to theism - those are statements about a single belief. Compare Christianity to, I dunno, secular humanism or deep ecology (neither of which I subscribe to, BTW) - those are worldviews.

This is important to consider when you hear someone say that "Atheism offers no purpose" or "Atheism offers no morality." Well of course not. It's not about that. It's like saying, "Gravitation offers no purpose or morality." Gravitation has nothing to do with morality or purpose! That's a different subject. It's not a fault of atheism that it offers no morality, any more than it's a fault of gravitation that it offers no morality.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:02:06 -0000

Yes, and perhaps rocks has something that one might describe as "an invisible gremlin friend," and perhaps twigs have something one might describe as "an infinity of supermassive, supernatural eternal string-beings," and...

Anyone can do this as long as they like. And indeed humanity has. What I'm waiting for is not some reason why your view is logically possible along with that of all other religions and the ideas I've proposed above. What I'm waiting to hear is some reason why your beliefs about God or souls or the resurrection of Jesus are probable.

About Yeshua. Sure, the question is whether he died like everybody else who ever lived, or if he lived on in a magical body with superpowers. We might also ask: Did Elvis die, or did he live on in a magical body that was capable of creating black holes in distant galaxies?

Again, I'm waiting for good reasons to think the magical Yeshua story is probable, not just logically possible.

As for Jewish monotheism, I agree. Sorry, I meant to say that Jewish monotheistic theology was greatly influenced by Plato. My best guess is that monotheism probably arose during and after the Babylonian exile, and that the idea of a "perfect-in-all-dimensions" god probably arose under the influence of Platonic thought.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:37:34 -0000

Andrew,

I'd like to argue that, in assessing truth, probability is all we have. There is only the probability that a given proposition is true. We may not know the probability, or all the factors that weigh on that probability, but all knowledge is a probability game. How well a proposition explains past and future events is just one of many things that contributes to that probability.

And now you have given an argument: the fine-tuning argument, which I'm happy to rebut. And I don't need "magical multiverses" to do it. First, because I'm not even aware of a theory of magical multiverses. All multiverse theories I know of are natural multiverse theories - that is, they postulate natural phenomena we already know to exist, and these theories make very specific and testable predictions, which in many cases have been turned out to be true. Have you read the theories of Guth, Smolin, Susskind, etc.? If so, you'd know they are anything but "magical." On the contrary, Jesus and Yahweh really, truly, literally are magical.

Second, because even if all multiverse theories turn out to be true, the conclusion "Yahweh fine-tuned the universe" does not follow.

There's lots I could say about the fine-tuning argument, but let's start with this:

I think the fine-tuning argument commits the Arrogant Puddle Fallacy, after a Douglas Adams quote:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

If the puddle’s world was a bit different, the puddle couldn’t have existed as it did. There could have been no water, or Jello instead of water, or no hole, or lots of tiny holes, or no gravity to hold the water in the hole. But that is no reason for the puddle to think the world was fine-tuned for him. No, the puddle was fine-tuned for the hole.

Or consider poker. ANY hand you can draw is extremely improbable. But it is not impressive that we draw any particular hand. It is only impressive if we call out a particular hand as meaningful we draw the hand. But we're not doing that. We're calling the hand we got "meaningful" AFTER we drew the hand.

Another way to look at it is this: given that we are here, it is IMPOSSIBLE for the universe to not be life-permitting. It COULDN'T be any other way.

Likewise, let's say the universe was some other way. Let's say the geometry of spacetime produced a dense, swirling symphony of brightly colored gasses. As outsiders in another dimension, would we look at that universe, realize its enormous improbability, and conclude it must have been designed?

Then, I imagine, we would look at another nearby universe and see it is filled with almost nothing but black holes, continuously swallowing each other and exploding into mini-big-bangs when they got too dense. That particular universe would also be extremely improbable. Would we conclude that one, too, must have been fine-tuned to create those big-banging black holes?

The universe could have been a trillions different ways. All of them are inherently improbable. That doesn't mean any of them were fine-tuned.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:57:43 -0000

Maria Kirby,

I appreciate your care in trying to understand me!

My experiences of God were supported by my reading of Scripture and my love of God. All that was before I started to doubt the miracles in the Bible.

"This is an example of how we experience truth with our emotions."

No, it's an example of how we experience emotions with our emotions. I experienced something that wasn't real. The same is true of the Hindu or the Taoist or the Jain who has mystical experiences but does not apprehend true reality.

"Instinctually, we know there is a god, even if we cannot prove him. Faith would not be faith if there was proof."

A small minority know Yahweh instinctually. And indeed faith would not be faith if there was proof, and that is the problem with faith. If faith is valid, anything goes. I can have faith in astrology just as much as I have faith in Yahweh. But I cannot have evidence for astrology just as I have evidence for DNA.

"Again it makes me believe that there was something God was asking of you that you did not want to do. Rejecting him allowed you the freedom to forgive yourself."

This is a benefit of freedom from Bronze age superstitions, yes, but it was not the reason for my deconversion. That had to do with logic and evidence.

"I find the above statement incongruent with your observation that faith in God produced “So much needless guilt.” If emotions weren’t part of the issue then either the guilt wouldn’t have been there in the first place, or it would still be there now."

Certainly I felt guilt as a Christian. I feel guilt now, but about different things. But it was not my experience that guilt is what led me to reject Christianity. I wasn't thinking about it at the time. I was too consumed with logic and evidence and all the stuff I learned when I decided to study the foundations for my own religion with the same eyes I had used to study the foundations of every other religion.

"It seems to me that you are angry. I suspect that the anger is covering over fears or wounds."

Nothing could be further from the truth! There are many emotions in my life, but anger is not really one of them. Unlike some people, I don't think anger is a useful choice, and didn't think so when I was a Christian, either (despite Jesus' use of it).

"Your desire to separate the rational and the emotional is not good mental health. We need to be whole beings."

Certainly, we need to be whole beings! I am an emotional and rational person, and embrace both. The mistake I avoid is to confuse one for the other. For example I do not mistake my feelings for truth, and I do not mistake good rational argument for emotion.

"I find this [my statement that “Now I can approach believers with true understanding.”] to be the least true. I don’t feel like you understand me as a believer or most other believers. I, like most other believers, struggle all the time with doubts, fears, self pity, pride, control, and hate. But I don’t stop believing in God. I don’t deny my past experiences of the presence of God. I find your statement rather condescending."

I'm sure there are many believers I do not understand. But there are many I do. I do know what it's like to struggle with doubts, fears, self pity, and pride, but not stop believing in God. I did that for years. (Control and hate weren't my particular issues, but I had others. We all have our own issues.) I know what it's like to have serious doubts, to wonder why prayer doesn't work more often, to wonder how God could torture millions of innocent people who never heard of him, to wonder if heaven will be boring, to wonder if it's really bad to lust after a woman or masturbate, to wonder if Bible contradictions are real or imagined - and so much more, but at the same time to be unable to deny my past experiences of God. I know exactly what that's like. That's how I lived, for years. I shared the modern American Christian evangelical experience with my fellow Christians. I do know what that's like.

In contrast, people who have always been atheists have no idea what it's like to believe in magic, to have an invisible friend and feel he is rationally justified, to experience the Holy Spirit, to receive peace and comfort in prayer, etc.

And that's what I was comparing myself to. I'm grateful for my Christian life because it means I understand the lives and interior thinking of many Christians. Because I lived it.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:43:28 -0000

Mark,

I do enjoy pursuing truth. I enjoy knowing truth. I suppose I enjoy being right, but I enjoy being shown to be wrong, too. I gave the example of libertarianism in my story.

Certainly, our desires bias the way we pursue truth. But certain methods - logic and science - are specifically designed to skip past these biases as much as possible and get at the truth. Other methods - like faith and testimony and feelings - actually embrace human biases as if they were some help in determining propositional truth.

"equivocating pink unicorns with Jesus is silly."

I wasn't comparing pink unicorns to Jesus the historical person. I was comparing invisible pink unicorns to Yahweh or the magical Jesus with superpowers. I keep doing so not because they have particular traits in common, but to keep making the point that demonstrating mere possibility does nothing to demonstrate something's probability.

"And if there were a mystical pink unicorn that people claimed to have a real experience of because the unicorn touched their forehead with its horn and bestowed upon them special unicorn sensing powers, it would be nigh impossible to refute them. It couldn’t be externally validated. But I honestly don’t believe or need to externally validate my faith in the way that you seem to want to externally validate your own way of seeing the world."

Good. We agree. I haven't been arguing that your faith is logically impossible, but that it has equal epistemic justification to an infinite number of ridiculous beliefs - including Invisible Pink Unicornism.

Any faith that is not externally validated has insulated itself against falsification by any facts out there in the world. To me, internally validated worldviews are equivalent to plugging your ears, closing your eyes, and shouting, "Na na na na na!" It doesn't matter what's out there in the world. It doesn't matter how the world works. I doesn't matter what we discover. I will not change my mind, because I don't need my worldview to fit the facts of the world. All I need is to feel it's right in my own head.

The reason I rejected this kind of thinking should be obvious, but let me continue. I rejected this way of thinking because it left me incredibly vulnerable to willful delusion. As I said, any faith could validate itself to me if I had no standards to decide whether it was true or not (besides my own inner experience). There were an infinite number of crazy beliefs that could be internally validated. If I had picked the wrong one, how would I know? I wouldn't, unless I appealed to external validation.

So, that's one reason to seek external validation. Another reason is this: we know the human mind is powerful simulation software. We dream, we hallucinate, we "feel" things that aren't there: all the time. To trust that all these inner experiences reflect some greater reality outside our minds, without external validation, seems like a poor bet.

Let's consider Christian responses:

1) Every faith and religious leader is unique in many ways.

2) Right, some try to argue that Christianity, if accepted whole cloth, make consistent sense of everything, while other worldviews, if accepted whole cloth, do not. I think this is false, and even uneducated Christians know it. We all know there are numerous contradictions and bewilderments in all forms of Christianity theology that are wished away as "the mystery of God."

But anyway, a thorough discussion of path #2 is probably beyond the scope of this discussion. I would certainly be prepared to attack the consistency of any Christian theological system I've heard of, and be prepared to defend the logical consistency of my own worldview (but not other atheistic worldviews).

Mark, I'm impressed that you admit that you religious faith is only validated in the same way a Pink Unicornist could validate his own faith. That's pretty bold. Incredibly foolish, I think, but brave. I've given you some reasons to consider the value of external validation.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, and for giving me the opportunity to share mine.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:49:53 -0000

Jwinton,

I'm not sure what you're saying. There are hundreds of modernist arguments for and against the existence of God, for example, and perhaps they all look similar because they establish premises and argue that the conclusion follows from those premises, etc.

I write lots about Christian apologist William Lane Craig on my blog because we both use the same tools: logic and evidence. He has come to wildly different conclusions than I have. But at least when talking to him, I can show why he is wrong by appealing to those commonly accepted principles. Not so with a postmodernist or, say, Ray Comfort. I can't appeal to logic or evidence in those cases because Ray Comfort and the postmodernist don't care. I suspect I would enjoy dialoguing with your friend because we probably share similar ground in this way!

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:56:16 -0000

Andrew,

"I hope you realize the subjectivity inherent in this claim. And actually, no, there are many ways in which the universe would not be “improbable”. What is improbable is the emergence of such intelligent life (and consciousness) as we see on planet earth."

The subjectivity is the point. There is not something inherently special about our particular complex arrangement of matter that calls out for an explanation. It is only special because it happened to produce us, and of course we think we are special and cry out for an explanation. That's the Arrogant Puddle talking. What would call out for an explanation is if we had said such-and-such particular arrangement was special before the Big Bang, and then exactly that arrangement resulted. That's how poker works. But it's not how the fine-tuning argument works. The fine-tuning argument looks at what we have and says after the fact that this arrangement - and not the millions of other complex arrangements that could have results - is what calls out for explanation.

Or think of it this way. Human evolution could have proceeded in many ways. If we rewound the clock 10 million years and replayed it all, humans could end up looking very different. The fine-tuning argument is basically arguing that because humans as we are today are so improbable, that calls out for explanation. But what if humans had evolved very differently - say, with more hair and a horn on our heads and better eyesight? That would be equally improbable, and certainly that human would think his particular improbable arrangement of parts is what cries out for explanation. ad infinitum

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:56:18 -0000

Nate McKay,

I'm glad to hear of Bob's sudden recovery!

As for the suggestion that it was the work of the heavenly zombie-lord Jesus, well...

There are lots of things I could say, but I think the most important is this: rare, incredible events are not evidence of magic. They are statistically inevitable. If a million people have a degenerative disease, and most of them are religious believers of one sort or another, and every now and then they do some ritual or attend some event in order to get healed, it is inevitable that some of them will just happen to recover after one of those events. People get better from things all the time - even from stuff like MS and cancer, and we certainly don't have the medical knowledge yet to know why in all cases.

So, it could be luck. Or it could be magic. Why do I think it's luck?

Because that theory fits so much better with the facts.

If it was luck, we'd expect these kinds of things to happen on occasion to people of all faiths, including those of no faith. If it was magic, we'd expect it to happen only to those of a particular faith. Which do we see?

If it was luck, we'd expect it to happen with relative rarity. If it was the work of an all-loving God, I'd expect it to happen much more often than it does.

If it was luck, we'd expect sudden recovery to not ever happen with certain things, like amputated limbs growing back.

And then of course there are all the theological problems with thinking Jesus is responsible for Bob's recovery.

Also troubling is the complete lack of evidence that would provide a causal link between the prayers offered and the recovery.

I'm sure I sound a bit harsh, but I'm only being harsh with your (suggested) argument. I'm really quite a nice guy. Ask Mark. :)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:11:21 -0000

Jeff B,

Thanks for your comment. I feel at home with your style.

As for prophecies, I haven't spent much time with them because the whole idea is so utterly unconvincing to me. Here's why. Also, people who argue from Biblical prophecies very quickly start to sound like Nostradamus nutjobs.

As for people dying for their faith that Jesus rose: I don't understand the probability theory of someone who asserts that the magical reanimation of a dead body into a new form with superpowers is more probable than things we experience all the time: religious fanatics convinced by dreams and hallucinations, deliberate lies spread in the interests of an ancient mystery religion, legendary accretion, etc.

I suspect such perverse probabilistic reasoning is only convincing to someone who already believes for other reasons, or someone who desperately wants to believe.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:16:54 -0000

Mark,

"Does the nearly universal human thirst for meaning have any significance for human belief?"

Maybe. I dunno. But if you think this thirst implies the existence of Yahweh, that is one hell of a non-sequiter, as well as an argument from ignorance.

"What about our creative and aesthetic capacity?"

Same problems as before. Besides, dolphins and elephants create art.

"From an evolutionary perspective, religion must be advantageous…why would it no longer be advantageous?"

Not sure what you're asking.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:33:06 -0000

Andrew,

You say that complex life of any kind calls out for an explanation because it is so improbable. Then you say that we don't know that it could be any other way.

Be careful not to undermine your own argument so quickly!

If it could not be any other way, then no explanation is needed; in that case, the outcome of complex life is physically necessary. The outcome of complex life is only impressive to Christian apologists if there were a massive number of other ways it could be.

So, back to the main problem. The Arrogant Puddle fallacy.

You say that "complex life" is what calls out for explanation. Why? What if the universe were such that it resulted in a cosmic, rushing symphony of sound and color? What if it was so starkly simple and elegant that nothing at all existed except the occasional explosion of white light? What if black holes endlessly collapsed and exploded in rapid succession?

Again, you have chosen after the fact what it is meaningful, which does not cry out for explanation. If you draw 4 cards from a deck - say, ace of clubs, 5 of hearts, 2 of hearts, and jack of spades - and then say that the ace of clubs, 5 of hearts, 2 of hearts, and jack of spades is meaningful and calls out for explanation, I am not impressed. Only if you say before the fact that ace of clubs, 5 of hearts, 2 of hearts, and jack of spades is significant, and then draw that hand on the first try from a shuffled deck of cards - only then am I impressed. Only then need we cry out for explanation. It is not at all impressive if you decide what it is that calls out for explanation after the fact.

There are other problems with design arguments, but that is the biggest one for me.

You can quote well-respected deist scholars (and even atheist physicists like Leonard Susskind) about the fine-tuning of DNA or universal constants all you like, but I am not persuaded by "authorities." Only by reason and evidence. You'll have to give me some, and some that works.

Maybe I'm wrong. If so, I'd love to be shown wrong. I did rather enjoy the many other times I've been shown to be wrong - it just hasn't happened with regard to my atheism yet.

The universe is not fine-tuned for us. We are fine-tuned for the universe.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:10:23 -0000

Mark

You asked why I consider myself an atheist, not an agnostic.

That's a great question.

Atheism is about belief (theos). Atheism means "no God belief."

Agnosticism is about knowledge (gnosis). Agnosticism means "no knowledge of God."

So, I could be an agnostic atheist - one who doesn't claim to know whether gods exist or not, but doesn't believe in any. I could also be a gnostic atheist - one who claims I know there are no gods, and therefore obviously doesn't believe in any.

I could also be a gnostic theist or an agnostic theist.

I'm an atheist because I don't believe in any gods.

If you want, you could call me a gnostic atheist about the gods I've studied, because I'm pretty damn sure they don't exist. I "know" they don't exist in the same way I "know" unicorns don't exist. I'm not 100% sure of either, but pretty sure. I wouldn't call myself an "agnostic" about unicorns.

If "bioplutonianism" refers to the proposition that multicellular life exists on Pluto, I'm an agnostic a-bioplutonian because I currently lack belief that there is multicellular life on Pluto, but I wouldn't claim to have knowledge of that.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:31:53 -0000

"complex life in an unguided or godless universe, given what we know of the many factors necessary for its emergence, is highly unlikely."

Yes, it is. So is the particular hand of cards I just drew from a shuffled deck. But neither of these incredibly unlikely events calls out for an explanation of intelligent design, as I've been arguing.

BTW, you should read Planting'a Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. I think you'd like it.

"I find it odd that an atheist would argue against determinism considering all there is for him is the material."

I'm a determinist in that I don't think libertarian free will or non-natural forces can break the causal chain. But as far as we can tell the most basic events - quantum events - are truly random. Thus, the universe would play itself out somewhat differently if we could "wind it back" any amount of time. But then, this is understood quite differently under a tenseless theory of time, which I think is more plausible (especially after Einstein!) than a traditional tensed theory of time. (I was rather amused to see the recent Watchmen movie explicitly endorse a tenseless theory of time. Most non-philosophers don't even know there is such a thing!)

"don’t you think the very existence of matter and a first cause (whatever preceeded and/or enacted the big bang) cries out for an explanation?"

Yes it does! Physicists are working very hard on these problems right now. But these gaps in our knowledge don't imply a magical Creator, any more than lightning implied Zeus before we discovered electronic charges.

It is a well-tested human cognitive bias to attribute intelligent agency to damn near everything. We even have a pretty good evolutionary explanation for why this story-telling agent-making mechanism evolved. So I don't fault people for falling for it at first. I fell for it at first, too. But once the logic of it is analyzed and found to be faulty, I wish people would be honest and drop it.

"let’s say I drew the same exact hand all day long for an entire week straight. The statistical probability of the confluence of life-permitting characteristics in our universe is less probable than that,"

But that's not what we're doing. It's not like we have a thousand universes that are known to have each come from a randomly shuffled set of possible constants, and all these universes happened to be exactly the same. That would be weird. No, we have one universe (that we know of) that came from a (hypothetically) randomly shuffled set of possible constants, and our universe is just as improbable as any other universe that could result from the shuffle - just like any poker hand is just as unlikely as any other.

"Authorities and brilliant minds employ reason and evidence in their arguments and to reach their conclusions."

Indeed. And authorities and brilliant minds have also been wrong about damn near everything it is possible to be wrong about, despite their reasons and evidence. That's because their reasons and evidence were flawed. We could quote authorities that disagree with each other until our typing fingers fall off. So I'm not interested in quotes from authorities and brilliant minds. I'm interested in whether their arguments are sound or not.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:24:29 -0000

Nate,

If Bob's legs suddenly grew in size, I would be curious to get evidence of that! People will give testimony to all kinds of crazy things, but evidence now that is hard to come by. It usually requires that your claim is true, for example.

If you don't think luck or lies or placebo effect or all these things that we already know happen all the time are not a good explanation, what makes you think that something which contradicts everything we know on the basis of good evidence is a good explanation? It is not at all ridiculous to suggest that maybe the cause fits with things we already know to occur all the time all over the world in all religions and cultures. It is somewhat ridiculous to suggest that an invisible, magical, all-loving God would randomly heal one guy after lots of prayer, but ignore millions of other earnestly praying people, and then turn around and randomly heal a Hindu who made sacrifices to Shiva for healing - just to confuse us. That, my friend, is ridiculous. Luck, lies, placebo effect, religious hysteria, hallucination - these things are not ridiculous. They happen all the time.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:16:57 -0000

Mark,

Let me respond: "You assume that lies, placebo, and hallucinations are more plausible explanations because of why? Evidence? Random “healings” happening because of an unknown un-God reason is more likely than a divine cause because why?"

For the exact same reason that I think lies, placebo, religious mania, and hallucinations are more plausible explanations for a given miracle of any religion than the hypothesis that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it, or the hypothesis that aliens from another dimension did it, or the hypothesis that tiny invisible gremlins inside each subatomic particle conspired telepathically to do it. The reason is evidence. We have TONS of evidence that people lie, hallucinate, get wrapped up in religious mania, and can affect their own healing by positive beliefs that they will be healed. That stuff happens all the time.

In contrast, we do NOT have good, well-tested evidence of any of the following:

- the Flying Spaghetti Monster
- souls
- tiny invisible gremlins
- magical beings
- magical realms
- beings that transcend space and time
- etc.

Thus, when we can easily explain something in terms of the known, it is rather bizarre to posit a solution from the totally unknown. Positing a magical, spaceless (!!??), timeless (!!??), infinitely knowing (!!??), infinitely powerful (!!??), infinitely moral (!!??) being for which we have no good evidence in order to explain something that is easily explained in terms of well-proven and common phenomena is like explaining a bruise on the back of your neck by saying superintelligent aliens from another galaxy traveled billions of light years (!!??) to take you in your sleep, probe you, and wipe your memory (!!??) of the event. I cannot think of an explanation that could be more ad-hoc.

So now you may think I have a presupposition of requiring evidence for what I believe. Not really. It's simply an observation that rigorous logic and evidence are fairly reliable paths to knowledge, and other paths (such as self-validated internalist epistemologies) lead to an almost infinite number of falsehoods (like, say, the thousands of religions and pseudoscience and urban myths out there). So, I'm placing my bets with logic and evidence, not feelings or internalist epistemologies or pseudo-evidence.

Again, this is simply an observation of what actually works in our universe. It could very well be that our universe was one in which feelings reliably led to truth - it just so happens that we observe that feelings are incredibly WILD and UNreliable in our universe. It could very well be that our universe was one in which testimony reliably led to truth - but it just so happens that people are confused and dishonest all the time, so testimony is not a particularly reliable guide to truth in our universe.

There are no presuppositions here. No dogmas. Just careful observations of what actually works in our universe, and what doesn't.

"I don’t believe that John Piper believes in an all-loving God, but rather an all-knowing, all-powerful, God who makes choices based upon some unseen script. I don’t like that picture very much, but it is at least consistent."

Christian theology can be made consistent. So can the theology of any religion. So can an infinite number of absurd theories I could posit. I could say that dogs are really intelligent spies from Venus, and come up with an answer to all your objections, which would make the theory logically consistent. That doesn't mean I've done anything to demonstrate that theory is true.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:21:54 -0000

Evan,

What a great story! I didn't realize it was going to end in unbelief, and it's a great story either way. Thanks for sharing.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:32:27 -0000

Joel,

I like your post.

I'm not sure how I feel about infant baptism. I feel bad for the poor girl that she will almost certainly be "brainwashed" from birth to believe that her invisible friend is real, and has communicated to her little community (and not other Christian or non-Christian communities) what the correct version of the truth. Statistically speaking, it's not likely she'll be encouraged to question her own beliefs and explore other views. Perhaps she'll be terrified with stories of hell and guilt-tripped about all sorts of arbitrary things.

Atheists respond to folk-Christianity because it is the Christianity of the vast majority of Christians, and the one most influential in politics. But our historical arguments against the Resurrection and our philosophical/scientific arguments against the existence of Yahweh do engage the beliefs of just about every Christian who ever existed, including the most radical liberals.

"Faith" is simply the choice to believe something, whether you have evidence and reason to believe it or not. It is not a "way of knowing." There is belief-justifying mechanism at play in faith. Faith is simply a choice to assent to some set of propositions, with or without any belief-justifying mechanisms.

I'd like to have some justification for what I believe, so I don't see the use in "faith" - not for religions, not for political ideologies, not for anything. Of course, it takes a lot of work to bother to collect evidence for each of your beliefs, and most people don't even know how logic and evidence work. That's just not how they were brought up, and they don't have time to figure it out now.

I've spent hundreds of hours studying global warming science and only just recently became convinced of the position of mainstream science. That took a lot of work on my part and most people won't have the time to do that. But rather than simply not having a strong belief or opinion on something, it feels better to simply "take faith" in a whole bunch of propositions without bothering to examine them. They you don't have to say, "I don't know." You can say, "I know because I have faith," as if that makes any sense. This is, I suspect, why faith is such a popular choice. It's easy and comforting. Logic and evidence are hard, and leave so much in uncomfortable doubt.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:24:10 -0000

Nikolay Sisoev-Truden,

I can agree with your stipulative definitions of belief. In that case, everything is belief. Nobody can be certain about the nonexistence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, therefore it is belief that the FSM does not exist.

But we typically use the word knowledge to mean something like "justified true belief" (despite Gettier), and I am happy to give arguments for why I think atheism is a justified true belief, and counts as knowledge. Obviously, Plantinga and others are prepared to argue for why they have knowledge of God, too. We will continue to argue. Perhaps eventually we will settle on the truth. That's how philosophy and science work.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:43:39 -0000

Mark,

About condescension and flippancy. This is an important topic.

I do realize that when people can't see or hear me and can only read my words, I come across as rather condescending. I should spend more time couching my arguments with respect and friendship. I forget that other people infer things about respect and friendship from my criticisms of arguments. My mind doesn't work that way, so I do need the occasional reminder! I appreciate it.

What I've written is not meant to be condescending at all, which I will explain in a moment. For now let me remind everyone that though I do not know the rest of you, I certainly have great respect for Mark as a person and as a thinker. We have different areas of expertise, but in general Mark is far more knowledgeable than I am about religion.

Moreover, I think it's likely that in general Mark is a more "moral" person than I am, too. He "loses some moral points" due to (what I claim to be) his irrationality and lack of care with truth (to understand why I think this is a moral issue, I'd have to explain my entire theory of moral realism), but this is more than made up for by Mark's consistent dedication to servanthood, charity, kindness, and love. I spend a lot of time advocating rationality and truth, which I think is a very moral cause, but in comparison to Mark I have not sacrificed nearly as much of my wealth and comfort and time to serve the needs of others. Nor have I taken so many risks to do so. Possibly, I never will.

With that established, let me explain why my words are not as condescending as you might think... in a later post. I'm out of time today but I'll try to post back by Monday.

Andrew, I do appreciate your thoughts, and I'll reply to them by Monday, too.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:55:51 -0000

Shane,

Goodness, no, I would never reject an openness to transcendence or the supernatural. At this point I usually point out that science recently revealed that over 90% of everything in our universe is non-baryonic (non-traditional) matter-energy. That's almost by definition supernatural, and it's most of our universe!

I wouldn't close off the possibility of anything. Certainty has no place in finite human minds.

About reactivity. I jumped to the other end of the spectrum of theism-atheism because there are only two options on that spectrum. But I did not swing from Pat Robertson to Joseph Stalin. I spend a great deal of time on my blog criticizing bad atheist arguments, atheist myths, ungrounded atheistic theories of morality, etc. In fact, my most recent post is one of those. I am extremely aware of my psychological biases, cultural influences, etc. and always try to question everything I believe. I try never to be comfortable with my beliefs. I'm really, really passionate about truth, whatever it happens to be. I put an awful lot of energy into resisting the swing and all other psychological biases.

You name William Rowe as one of your favorite atheistic philosophers. I'll name Wes Morriston as one of my favorite theistic philosophers.

>> "to reject “God” is to reject certain pictures of God."

I couldn't agree more. The greater number of absurd, unfounded attributes a believer attaches to his God, the more firmly I reject that God.

In that sense, a deistic God is light-years more plausible than the Christian God, but still implausible. This is a plain talk summary of why.

Overall, if any deity is posited, I think the most plausible is a limited one who is morally indifferent, and may interact with our universe at random (such that he is undetectable) or not at all. But we have no evidence to suggest such a god exists. And I don't think he would be a plausible explanation for the origins of the universe or DNA or anything, either.

>> "nothing you personally accomplished through wise or intelligent engagement of the data and arguments. It’s nothing to take any credit for, much less be proud of, and we have no reason to admire you for it."

Wisdom, intelligence, morality, and some kind of "credit" are still meaningful words under determinism. It could be argued they are even more meaningful under determinism, since under determinism these properties can be ascribed to what I actually am (as a coherent system of quantum events), whereas under a theory of libertarian free will they must be ascribed to some kind of non-natural entity that is separate from all the physical quantum events that make up each person.

But yes, in another sense "I" had no control over my decisions, any more than a rabbit or a rock has control over their decisions. In fact, I am not only determinist, but currently think a tenseless theory of time is most likely correct, which goes beyond determinism. But Laplace's demon would still not be able to predict all "future" events, because of quantum indeterminacy. But there is no way to sneak free will into quantum indeterminacy.

But a major finding in physics tomorrow could overturn all this. All I can do is make guesses based on the best available evidence and my ability to comprehend it.

Boyd and Eddy's book is one of the few Christian (or skeptical) books on the resurrection worth reading. I also recommend the latest McGrew & McGrew argument, BTW.

If I have time, I would love to interact with both. But alas, I have so much else to do, and I'd really like to study more historical method before I write too much about history. I'm learning as quickly as I can, but I'm more comfortable with philosophical method than with historical method at the moment. I only started studying all this about 1.5 years ago, you know!

Anyway, great comment; lots of stuff I enjoyed responding to. What does "somewhat engaged in the philosophy of religion literature for the better part of a decade" mean?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:10:15 -0000

Mark,

Let me respond to your remarks about my condescension and flippancy:

"You keep equivocating religious beliefs as absurd on the level of flying spaghetti monsters. This is condescending. It is needlessly mocking belief. Even if you were right, it isn’t a very helpful way of dialoging... You’re also being rather flippant about beliefs that many people hold dear."

There are many things to say, here.

First, you must understand that I literally think belief in a highly specific and magical Yahweh is just as rationally unfounded as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is not an insult or mockery. If I believed in fairies and someone said, "Puh! You might as well believe in God!" I would be just as offended as if someone said "Puh! You might as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster!" (Except, I don't get offended. Not useful.)

The reason I make comparison to the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn or a magical teapot orbiting Pluto is not because these are analogous in all respects to the Christian Trinity. No, they are analogous in specific ways.

I said, in order of mention:

1. That gods are, given the evidence, just as improbable as the FSM.

2. That the FSM & company are not logically impossible, just as (certain definitions of) God is not logically impossible. This is important for me to point out because Christians keep explaining why God is logically possible despite all the contradictions and evidence against him, but that does not matter. What matters is whether we should think it probable that God exists or not.

3. That to explain something in terms of the totally unknown (God, invisible gremlins, the FSM) instead of the already known (religious mania, placebo effect, lies, etc.) is a poor choice.

These are important points to make. I didn't have to choose the FSM or invisible gremlins or unicorns. It doesn't matter. There are an infinity of logically possible but un-evidenced and improbable things to stand up next to Yahweh.

It is not condescending to say that I am not impressed by things that are logically possible but extremely unlikely and un-evidenced. I just need a few examples to make the point clear. I could mention astrology, Zeus, the theory that the Sun is an electrical phenomena instead of a nuclear one, the theory that the universe is a science experiment of a math student in a higher dimension, deism, the theory that the universe was created by a committee of morally indifferent gods, telepathic invisible gremlins... whatever. All I'm trying to point out is that logical possibility, without evidence and argument to demonstrate probability, is not impressive at all.

This isn't condescending or flippant. It is a careful analogy made to illustrate a very specific point.

Likewise, perhaps some are offended when I refer to your "wish-granting invisible friend" and "magic" and "magical incantations."

But these are not insults. They are literally true about what most Christians believe. Most Christians really do have an invisible friend. They consider God their friend, and God is invisible, and they think that he occasionally grants them wishes (prayers). Christians certainly believe in magic, and Christianity is a system of magical thinking. And many of them (including myself, when I was a Christian) think that certain phrases have special magical power - "in the name of Jesus!" or "Amen." Most Christians also believe in magical substances (anointing oil, transubstantiated crackers, a printed Bible, etc.).

When I listened to the atheist radio show that was so influential in converting me, I was slammed with this stuff, and I had to admit it. I finally said to myself, "Holy crap. I am an adult, with a wish-granting invisible friend. I believe in magic, magical powers, and magical incantations. Now, maybe I'm right about all that, but - holy shit maybe I should actually look into the foundation for my beliefs understanding the possibility that I could be wrong."

That didn't deconvert me at all. The only thing it did was change the way I looked at things. I looked at them with the understanding that I could be wrong.

And when I looked at the evidence with a fair mind, I found there was no better reason for me to think Christianity was true than there is for a Hindu to think Hinduism is true or for a Muslim to think Allah is true. In fact, when I applied the same type of reasoning to religious questions as I did to everything else, I discovered that religious claims didn't have anything going for them at all.

I'd really like all Christians to at least admit to the things I did, above. Aloud. It might change the way Christians consider the evidence. To understand that you might be wrong, and that in fact - on the bare face of it - your own beliefs look very suspicious - is a powerful thing. Now I always look at my beliefs with the acute awareness that I could be wrong.

So, there are particular reasons why I use this kind of language, and I think they're good ones. And they're not insults. They are either literally true, or literally accurate and useful analogies. I don't mean them in an insulting way, but in a clarifying way.

If someone said that atheism requires as much faith as believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I would not be insulted - I would understand the meaning of the analogy they are trying to make. And then I would give my response.

In the same way, I hope the readers of this post will understand the meaning of the analogies I make, and respond. For example, perhaps you think that even though both God and the FSM are logically possible, so possibility doesn't show anything, you might think there is significantly more evidence for Yahweh than for the FSM. If so, I'd like to hear why.

Now, about being flippant with people's dearly held beliefs. As I've explained above, I don't think I'm being flippant. I'm being very careful with the specific analogies and arguments I make. I'm not dismissing your views; I'm giving reasons for why they are irrational, and even some reasons for why rationality is needed in the first place.

But perhaps we should just let people have their dearly held beliefs in Hindu gods, in Allah, in astrology, in karma, in the healing power of reflexology and tapping, in the power of psychics to help the police find dead bodies, in the miracles of Joseph Smith, in the desire of God to make faithful people rich, ad infinitum. Perhaps we should tip-toe around those beliefs and never give more than a gentle nudge because these people might feel bad if you point out the problems with their beliefs.

Perhaps, but I think not. Why?

Because truth matters, as I've argued earlier. Because really bad things happen when people make decisions based on false beliefs. Because a culture that accepts unfounded beliefs is less vigilant about the quality of the decisions being made that affect millions of people. Because a culture of recklessness with the truth prolongs the unnecessary suffering of humanity that comes from ignorance and irrationality.

Now, some people do respond to gentle nudging. Some people - probably most people, given the resilience of deeply held beliefs - do not. I certainly did not re-examine my beliefs due to years of gentle nudging. No, I need to be shown the stark reality of my beliefs before I was willing to reconsider them.

Some people, when their beliefs are directly confronted, will simply clam up and become all the more resilient. Perhaps there is no helping such people. Some people, on the other hand, will accept and rise to the challenge and contribute to the dialogue that seeks truth, or else they will realize the falsity of their beliefs and convert.

Anyway, I could write hundreds of thousands of words on this topic, but there's a crude, unedited beginning.

Thoughts?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:36:18 -0000

Sarah Lynne,

Thanks for your comments.

"Andrew wrote that modern science will never provide human beings with meaning beyond an explanation of the natural processes and history of our universe. Isn’t this true? But, might that not be enough for some people?"

Science is the wrong tool to answer questions of meaning. That's not what science does. That's like looking in a music theory textbook for ultimate meaning. Meaning is a question of philosophy - a set of tools that is available to atheists and theists alike.

But let's say that even philosophy fails to find any objective meaning for people. You ask, "might that not be enough for some people?" I suppose. People might want there to be objective meaning in the universe, but that can't make it so if it isn't so.

So, let's say we find that there is no objective meaning in the universe, but that some people can't handle this truth. Should we lie to all these people and tell them that, oh, there's a nice guy in the sky who loves them and gives them cosmic purpose and meaning?

You might be surprised to know that's not just a religious solution. One philosopher, Saul Smilansky, notes that most philosophers and neuroscientists no longer think we have libertarian free will (what most common people think of as free will, including myself), but that this idea is so dangerous to society (because personal responsibility will go out the window, etc.), that philosophers and neuroscientists shouldn't tell anyone. They should cover it up. They should tell the public a fairy tale about how free will exists, so that society can survive.

I disagree with Smilansky (not about the existence of free will but about that discovery's potential effects on society), but I'll just note for a moment that perhaps you're in the same camp on some ideas as a leading philosopher of free will. :)

"Also, it seems that Luke has more than responded to the “improbability” of life and consciousness question. I can only throw my support behind his comments"

Wow, thanks! Few theists agree with me on this. You remind me of Wes Morriston, a theist who has continuously argued against the validity of another extremely popular theistic argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

As you've seen, I'm certainly prepared to argue against bad arguments advanced for atheism.

"there seems to be a difference to me between the idea of a creator and a unicorn. One is, practically by definition, outside of direct evidence, the other is presumably a material thing that there could be evidence for but isn’t."

There are many differences between unicorns and gods. The specific point I was making with the analogy is that the mere possibility - the lack of a disproof - of something does nothing to establish its probability or credibility or rationality.

But I disagree with you on one point. The "God" hypothesis does make testable predictions about the natural world, and that is the domain of science.

For example, most conceptions of God entail the prediction that prayers to that specific God will be more effective than chance+placebo, and also more effective than prayers to other deities. It just so happens that whenever we test this prediction with proper controls, it turns out to be false, which discredits that conception of God. An excellent and readable book on this topic is Victor Stenger's The God Hypothesis.

"I don’t have any desire to deny my experience and abandon my beliefs simply because there isn’t evidence deemed “objective” enough support them."

No? Do you think the astrologer should abandon her beliefs for lack of evidence? The Hindu? The Zeus-believer? The reflexologist?

"It seems to me that the “objective” perspective is often just the name of the western modernist male perspective (and is valued so much, more because western modernist males happened to have a lot of power recently than because it is necessarily an inherently better way of approaching truth)."

Almost everything in Western society is a Western male idea, simply because that's the only people there were to come up with the ideas. Women weren't going to university or participating in public debate nearly as much. As this changes, the ideas that are out there will have more female influence.

This is kind of like pointing out that so many ideas of Western culture are Christian ideas. Well yes, because that's all there was for hundreds of years. Everybody who was doing anything was Christian.

"I find an “objective” eye useful when searching for the answers to particular questions, but not more valuable than a subjective perspective (which often addresses different inquiries and is valuable in different situations)."

I think the key thing here is that subjective perspectives "address different inquiries." I agree.

So, I point an objective eye towards objective questions: for example, "Is there or is there not a God?" I point a subjective eye towards subjective questions: "Am I in love?" or "Do I like Bach more than Mozart?"

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:54:33 -0000

Shane,

Let me respond: "I’d be curious to hear your perspective on persuasion and whether/how you differentiate it from coercion (and how the two relate under your naturalistic metaphysic)."

I haven't given much thought to this topic, but: "coercion" and "persuasion" are, of course, mere words. What I think of their referents depends entirely on how we define them. I suspect they are part of the same spectrum, where "persuasion" is closer to rational argument as an attempt to change someone's mind, and "coercion" is closer to holding a gun to somebody's head to change their mind. But where the line is that indicates we've crossed from "persuasion" to "coercion" is entirely a matter of definition.

There is also the question of at what point our persuasion or coercion is moral, which depends on your theory of ethics.

"I’m not even sure what has properly been accomplished under such circumstances when you do succeed [in persuading people]."

I'm chiefly concerned with accomplishing a society with desires that tend to fulfill other desires, because desires are the only reasons for action that exist. This is explained in my (very, very short) ebook on desire utilitarianism: What is Morality? It's also (I think) a great little introduction to meta-ethics if you've not studied that topic much. As for how I derive oughts from the natural world, see that link.

"You mention wisdom, intelligence, morality, and a “credit” of sorts being meaningful (and potentially moreso) given determinism. Can you help me understand this a bit better? If they’re meaningful, are they still significant? Or are they just there?"

How do you distinguish "meaningful" and "significant"?

Wisdom, intelligence, and even "credit" have a role to play morality, as explained in my book on desire utilitarianism, and the desire utilitarianism F.A.Q. that is linked from that post. So they are significant to morality, at least.

They are also significant in that they have causal roles in our universe.

Are you looking for some other kind of significance?

"And you stated of the “properties” of wisdom, intelligence, morality, and credit that “under a theory of libertarian free will they must be ascribed to some kind of non-natural entity that is separate from all the physical quantum events that make up each person.” Does this still hold for those who reject Cartesian dualism and believe humans to be integratively/holistically natural/supernatural (not to mention both free in some respects/instances and unfree in others), in which case both matter and spirit contribute to decisions, some of which may be libertarianly free?"

I don't know. You'd have to explain such a theory to me. Most theories of libertarian free will are dualistic theories.

"But if you’re firmly committed to naturalistic metaphysics or a physicalism of some sort, I don’t suppose anything like this could get off the ground."

Not while I'm still a physicalist. But I'm not committed to physicalism. That's something at the very "top" of my beliefs, not the bottom. It's a conclusion based on all the reasons and evidence I've been shown so far. It could easily be overturned by more persuasive evidence in the other direction.

"Despite being in the church for 20 years, I have more questions than answers when it comes to God"

When I have spent 20 years studying philosophy, I also suspect I will have more questions than answers when it comes to philosophy.

"How about yourself? What’s your background in terms of college and philosophical study?"

Only 1.5 years of ravenous personal study. (But as you can see, I hold my own pretty well already.) I've discovered I love it so much I may go back to school and get a Ph.D. in philosophy - probably a focus on meta-ethics and philosophy of religion.

(I wouldn't want to do only philosophy of religion, because sometimes I feel like I'm doing the philosophy of werewolves. I'm sure you understand, given that I'm currently an atheist! I suspect this is why philosophy of religion is dominated by theists.)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:16:05 -0000

Nikolay Sisoev-Truden,

>>> "the world knows God from the first written scripture." <<<

Sorry, no. The earliest surviving scripture is the Rigveda, which reveals not what you call "God" but many Rigvedic deities.

Also, the world did not "know God" from scriptures. Rather, they believed in thousands of different gods first, some of which were later written about in documents, which were still later compiled as sacred to a particular community and called "scripture."

>>> "Dawkins can make up the monster from his perceptive knowledge, but how on earth you make up an entity which does not have anything in common with any possible perceptive knowledge?

...Tell me how humans logic created “soul” as concept?

...Certain concepts must be imprinted (a priory existing) in order to develop knowledge on their base. Tell me, how the brain “creates” knowledge without base?" <<<

I don't think Dawkins has ever perceived a flying spaghetti monster, but our minds can imagine what such a thing might be like by combining existing concepts. The brain has powerful simulation software, for example in dreams. For example:

- noodliness, perceived in spaghetti and other things
- flying, as in airplanes
- monster, like an elephant, or like we can imagine a human to be if he was made to be as large as a mountain
- eternal, a concept we can imagine because we know the past and the future, and can imagine them going one step beyond the known past and expected future, and one step beyond that, and one step beyond that
- all powerful, a concept we can simulate because we can think of powerful things, and then imagine what they would be like if they were a little bit more powerful, and a little bit more powerful, etc.
- etc.

This is how things can be imagined without aprioricity. Certainly you do not think that all concepts man have evented are the result either of direct perception or aprioricity. If so, I could just as easily argue for the existence of any of the weird things mankind has invented as I could for Yahweh. Superman is real!

"I know that science does not have all the answers but EVENTUALLY will have them (It is a good belief)."

I think this is extremely unlikely.

"What if I say that we still don’t know God, but EVENTUALLY we will find it (It is also good belief)."

Because there is no trend or evidence to suggest this is the case. In the exact same way, it is unfounded to say that eventually we will find evidence of unicorns, so it is a good belief.

"You only have INTERPRETED knowledge. Why should I trust your perceptions but not mine?"

Certainly, we only have interpreted experience. That is all we have. So, how infer correct beliefs from all this interpreted knowledge? How do we know that astrology is wrong, despite the interpreted experience of millions? How do we know that aliens have not travelled millions of light-years to probe Midwestern farmers despite hundreds of interpreted experiences? How do we know that Allah did not inspire Mohammed, despite billions of interpreted experiences? Nikolay, do you not realize that your way of thinking provides equal justification for any belief, no matter how crazy?

How to tell truth from fiction is a tricky subject, and one that mankind has been studying for thousands of years. It just so happens that some methods are more reliable than others. Logic and evidence, it turns out, are more reliable than testimony, personal experience, feelings, etc. As I've said before, it could very well be that we lived in a universe in which testimony was more reliable than evidence. It just so happens we do not live in that universe. We live in a universe where universe gives us better reliable and useable knowledge than testimony does. In fact, logic and the scientific method are designed to give us reliable results. That's the whole point. Every time we find a technique that gives us more reliable results - like double-blind control studies - we start using it. Every time we discover something that gives us unreliable results - like various logical fallacies - we name it and describe it so we can avoid that technique in the future.

You also asked how atheism is justified true belief. This is what I write about all the time. It is a conjunction of the utter failure of arguments given for the existence of any gods, and also a set of powerful arguments against the existence of certain gods. In this way, the justification for atheism is exactly the same as the justification for a-unicornism or a-FSMism or a-fairy-ism. A complete lack of evidence for these things, and also some arguments against these things.

Explaining the failures of theistic arguments and the success of some atheistic arguments is the topic of my entire blog. I haven't been writing that long, though, so if you want a more comprehensive look at this I suggest Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Or, for the layman, Harrison's 50 reasons people believe in a god is a nice starting point.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:20:02 -0000

Joel Watson,

You certainly have an unusual theology! It fits some of the facts better than orthodox Christianity, but it doesn't fit the facts as well as metaphysical naturalism, I think.

Catchy title, too bad you haven't written more there. :)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:03:31 -0000

Andrew,

Hmmm... what I typed above is not how it appeared. Mark, is there some way to delete the above comment? Let me try again:

Andrew,

Let me catch up with our discussion. You bring up so many points, the only way I know how to respond is point by point.

> "assuming the big bang will be understood and explained scientifically does not mean the very existence of matter and this universe will go away as a huge philosophical issue." "Most people also want a sense of purpose and meaning, not just scientific explanations." "There have been scientific theories readily accepted as fact in the past that have since fallen by the wayside." <

Indeed. That is often because the logic and science were not applied correctly, or because we did not have the instruments to properly measure certain things. I don't think even you would deny that science and logic continue to bring us more true knowledge. Consider physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, etc. We know our knowledge on these things is better because our knowledge works better than it ever has before. Vaccination works better than leeches, etc.

In contrast, there is no tested evidence that theology is converging on the truth.

Although - and this is kind of a joke - perhaps it is. We started with animism, then moved to robust polytheism, then to monotheism. What's the next step? 0 gods. Already, many theologians are atheists (Don Cupitt, etc.). Perhaps the last step for theology is atheism.

> "Appealing to an intelligent first cause is not one and the same as postulating a “magical creator.”" <

If that intelligent first cause created the universe through non-natural means, then yes it is the same as postulating a "magical creator."

> "Given the constants and set of conditions during the big bang, I am arguing the emergence of intelligence and consciousness in this particular universe is improbable." <

Oh, really? Lol, I could have sworn you were giving the fine-tuning argument! You did say, "The confluence of the many conditions that allow for life as we know it is not probable," which is the fine-tuning argument.

Okay, so let's move from the universal constants to the improbability of the arrival of DNA or consciousness. First, notice this is yet another "argument from ignorance," a "god of the gaps" argument, which has a very bad track record and is avoided by most Christian philosophers because they know it's such a weak argument. You argument is basically, "Given what we know, it's extremely unlikely that bright white light would jump from the clouds to the ground, therefore Zeus does it." For now, I'll stick with just two problems with this kind of argument. One is that no reason has been given for the inference to a divine source of the phenomena. None at all. It's as though it was picked out of a hat. "And the answer is... invisible telepathic gremlins inside every subatomic particle! Congratulations, gremlins, you are the cause of X." No predictive hypothesis, no prediction testing, no causal reasoning, just "Magic!"

Second, we keep finding out these magical explanations are wrong. Lightning is not Zeus. It turns out it's caused by things we didn't understand before: electric charges, etc. Well-adapted animals are not the work of Yahweh; it turns out their the product of natural selection and genetic drift working on randomly mutating populations (exactly like artificial selection works, except the environment selects instead of humans). Schizophrenia is not caused by demons; it's genetics and brain chemicals. This has happened literally thousands and thousands of times, and it makes the person who says, "But this time the gap in our knowledge really is best explained by magic" look... well, not very credible.

This sometimes happens very rapidly. For example, Michael Behe proposed that because we didn't yet know of a natural explanation for the bacterial flageller motor, it must be magic. Less than a decade later it was discovered how the bacterial flageller motor evolved: it was originally was used for a different purpose - an injection needle - which we discovered in another species of bacteria.

> Luke, you concluded: “But there is no way to sneak free will into quantum indeterminacy.” <

I don’t think that is accurate, and I won’t appeal to a theist in making my case. Daniel Dennett, an atheist, << Luke has much confidence in empirical evidence yet is extremely skeptical of circumstantial evidence (such as the conversion of James), mystical experiences, and anything else that doesn’t fit into or might challenge a materialist worldview. <

Yes, because evidence, correctly applied, has a pretty good track record for producting reliable knowledge. Circumstantial evidence, mystical experiences, etc. have a terrible track record, and you know it. At the very least, you recognize it has justified false beliefs about the other 5,000 gods out there. Just in this example, even if Yahweh exists, 1/5000 is a very poor track record for a method of truth-seeking!

> Species’ adaptations aren’t purely random. They reflect the conditions in which they have lived and reproduced. I find a confident atheism so peculiar. One acts as if there is ample evidence to rule out the possibility or even reasonable probability of a god, gods, or greater intelligence. Agnosticism makes more logical sense to me. even though [Dawkins] argues against “speciesism”, he isn’t a vegan (I am) and thus inconsistent. <

I certainly won't defend Dawkins' moral theory, since I don't know what it is. But it is quite possible to attack speciesism and not be a vegan. For example, I do not think that the desires or lives of one species has any more moral value than the desires or lives of any other species. Rather, I think that moral values comes from reasons for action. As it happens, the only reasons for action that exist come from desires. Since plants do not have desires but apes do, I am anti-specism but not a vegan.

Obviously, I do not merely assert this moral theory. I argue for it, here.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:07:12 -0000

I see someone (Mark, probably) deleted the original messed-up comment to Andrew and left my revision. Thanks.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:47:58 -0000

Andrew,

> I do believe in... the progress (in a certain sense) of scientific knowledge. However, that “progress” is not morally neutral or devoid of hazards. Science, for all its wonders, has brought us an era in which humans have manufactured atomic bombs, are causing global warming, etc. <

Yup. I just meant that science progresses toward truth, not necessarily toward moral action. Though, don't forget that billions of lives have already been saved and improved by way of scientific medicine and genetically modified crops. That some serious moral progress, there. Alot more lives have been saved and improved that way than have been destroyed by atom bombs or, possibly, even guns.

> what transpired was highly unlikely and improbable. <

Agreed. I have always agreed with this. I even pointed this out to you earlier, when you seemed to disagree with it. What I've been arguing all along is that improbability and our ignorance of how something works is no argument for Yahweh.

> I find it rather ignorant to presume science is going to ultimately fill in all these “gaps”. <

I don't think science will fill all the gaps. Even if it could, perhaps we'll never know the true explanations for consciousness or abiogensis or whatever because we'll be blown back to the Stone Age by a certain crazy North Korean. But what I'm saying is that given history, it's not likely at all that we'll find a magical cause to any given unexplained phenomena. Every time we've been able to look closely enough at something to see how it works, it has turned out to be natural, not magical.

I'll quote Richard Carrier: "The cause of lightning was once thought to be God's wrath, but turned out to be the unintelligent outcome of mindless natural forces. We once thought an intelligent being must have arranged and maintained the amazingly ordered motions of the solar system, but now we know it's all the inevitable outcome of mindless natural forces. Disease was once thought to be the mischief of supernatural demons, but now we know that tiny, unintelligent organisms are the cause, which reproduce and infect us according to mindless natural forces. In case after case, without exception, the trend has been to find that purely natural causes underlie any phenomena. Not once has the cause of anything turned out to really be God's wrath or intelligent meddling, or demonic mischief, or anything supernatural at all. The collective weight of these observations is enormous: supernaturalism has been tested at least a million times and has always lost; naturalism has been tested at least a million times and has always won. A horse that runs a million races and never loses is about to run yet another race with a horse that has lost every single one of the million races it has run. Which horse should we bet on? The answer is obvious."

> Atheism used to postulate (and the “new atheists” still do)
once we remove religion and embrace scientific rationalism we’ll have plenty of meaning, significance, truth, and morality. that doesn’t rule out an intelligence or some kind of god playing a role in their emergence Behe was wrong, and it would be nice to see him publically admit it. As for other types of evidence, I am not claiming they are as reliable as empirical evidence from scientific studies per se, but I do believe they can be genuine and real. In other words, I don’t discount all of them despite the difficulty in verifying them in a way acceptable to the modernist. <

Agreed. I don't discount other types of evidence. Testimony, for example, has its uses. But we must weigh all the evidence, and it seems you and I agree that careful application of logic and scientific method are far more reliable ways of knowing that testimony or personal experience, and thus weigh more heavily in our probabilistic judgments of what exists in the universe and how it all works. When I perform this probability calculus (Bayesian reasoning) on the God question, I get a resounding "God is extreeeeeeeeeeeeemely improbable, like fairies or Shiva or astrology."

> How do we know which species have desires and which do not? How can you be certain a cow, for example, does not desire to avoid slaughter and to be permitted to roam free rather than kept within factory farm conditions or prevented from standing during its early (and short) life? For me, the issue isn’t simply desire; it’s the issue of unnecessary pain and suffering. <

This is an obvious and very good question, one I don't have the answer to. It's a problem of measurement. We don't have the tools to measure this accurately. This doesn't mean my theory is false, it just means we may not always know how to apply it. For my positive arguments on why desire utilitarianism is probably correct, please see here.

My question for you is: Why is unnecessary pain and suffering morally relevant? Is it because God hates unnecessary pain and suffering? Is it because unnecessary pain and suffering possess intrinsic negative value? This is kind of off-topic now but I provide a comprehensive set of arguments for my assertion that all moral value is derived from desires. I'd love to know what your moral theory is, especially since you are a Christian who doesn't "believe theology is the only way we go about discerning ethics."

I do enjoy this back-and-forth, Andrew! It's been a pleasure, and I look forward to the rest of it.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:41:09 -0000

Andrew,

> If we are discussing the merits of atheism vs. belief in a deity or deities, the latter certainly does not have to imply YHWH at all. I think it makes more sense to debate the existence of God (or gods) in a broad sense rather than using a word that is specific to one culture and that was used to describe a deity who committed certain acts and had/has particular characteristics. given your position on free will, what do you think of Dennett’s position on freedom <

His theory of how freer action evolved is controversial and must await further evidence, along with all theories of evolutionary psychology. This theory on the existence of free will is that libertarian free will does not exist, but that we are "free" to do what we desire (actually, we must do what we desire, given our beliefs), so we might as well call that free will. I think that's correct - we do what we desire given our beliefs, but I wouldn't call it free will because free will traditionally has meant that we have some kind of decision-making faculty that is not controlled by the causal chain. Neither Dennett or I believe in any such faculty, we just use different definitions of the term "free will." My definition is the "original" definition, so to speak. Dennett and other compatibility redefine "free will" to mean something else, so that they can say free will does exist. I think that's basically cheating. :)

For example, you could say that by "God" you mean "everything that exists," and therefore "God exists." But that's counter-productive.

Re: On the Moral Nature of the Universe, here's how an Amazon reviewer summarized it:

"The overall argument for the book is the following: the fine-tuning of the cosmological constants that has produced a life-bearing universe calls for an explanation. The authors believe that a theistic explanation offers a more coherent account of reality than a non-theistic one. The pattern of divine action in the world, however, seems to indicate that God works with nature, "never over-riding or violating the very processes that God has created" (xv). The fact the God does not violate or override the processes leads the authors to believe that divine action entails refusal to do violence to creation. They link this with kenosis, a Christian New Testament word typically translated, "self-emptying." God renounces self-interest for the sake of the other, no matter what the cost is to God, and that this divine activity ought to be emulated by humans. The authors call for a new research program to explore the possibilities of this kenosis thesis in light of science.

The ethical core of the proposal is that self-renunciation for the sake of the other is humankind's highest goal. One of the more illuminating chapters in the book addresses the power of persuasion, non-violent coercion, and violent coercion. The authors argue that persuasion is to be preferred and they speculate that "a consistent policy of using the least coercive means possible in each social situation will affect the character of the individuals involved such that less coercion will be needed in future resolution of conflict" (151). In sum, contemporary cosmology points ultimately to an ethic that centers on self-sacrifice and non-violence."

Is that correct? If so, well... that doesn't make any sense to me, but I haven't read their arguments.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:07:48 -0000

Nikolay,

You have pronounced me ignorant without responding to my criticisms. In contrast, I'm going to make no assumptions about who you are. Instead, I'm going to respond directly to your propositions, and to the arguments you give in support of them.

> God cannot be made up by combining such knowledge, because none of God’s properties have anything to do with our perceptive knowledge. “Soul” as concept is impossible for human’s knowledge. When you talk about God you must not separate divine deities from God as you can not separate saints from God. <

Please don't pretend that your god is the only one who counts. People worshiped a great many gods before they started worshiping Yahweh, and before a few of them came to think Yahweh was the king of gods, and before they thought he was the only god, and before they thought he was ultimate in all dimensions rather than a super-duper human-like deity.

> I’m sorry to meet another offshoot of the Spaghetti Monster army who keeps repeating the words of his master without even understanding the words of his opponent. <

I do understand the arguments of a great variety of Christian sects, and respond to them very specifically. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a very particular analogy that demonstrates that defending the logical possibility of God does nothing to establish his probability of existence. Perhaps I do not understand your theology, but then if so then you do not represent mainstream theology. The theology of millions is what concerns me, not so much the theology of a few. But if you present your theology I will be happy to give my comments on it.

Nikolay, you keep moving to new arguments as I rebut your older arguments. Do you think your arguments are worth defending against my criticisms, or are they defeated and not worth repeating? For example:

One

You said "the world knows God from the first written scripture"

I said this is false, because people worshiped gods long before they wrote scriptures about them. And they wrote scriptures about many other gods - in India and Egypt and Mesopotamia - long before they wrote scriptures about your chosen god, Yahweh.

You didn't respond, except to agree that Egyptian scriptures predate Yahwehist scriptures. So, have you abandoned your earlier statement, or do you still want to defend it?

Two

You said "What if I say that we still don’t know God, but EVENTUALLY we will find it (It is also good belief)."

I replied that this (once again) demonstrates only the possibility of Yahweh, but not a remote probability. In the same way, I could say "We still don't know Luke Skywalker but eventually we will find him, so this is a good belief." This is a terrible argument, and so is yours. Do you wish to abandon it, or defend it?

Three

You said, "You only have INTERPRETED knowledge. Why should I trust your perceptions but not mine?"

I gave a very specific answer of why we should not trust either of our perceptions, but careful inference from all perceptions via the filters of logic and evidence. That is, we distrust your direct perceptions for the same reason we distrust the perceptions of those who have perceived UFOs and Vahiguru and Allah and elves - no good evidence. Do you wish to relinquish this point, or do you wish to defend it?

I'd also ask the same question of your reaction to my criticisms at the beginning of this post.

Nikolay, I have no idea who you are or what your background is. I kind of suspect that you are intelligent and probably even educated. You probably do a great many moral things. But because I don't know who you are, none of my criticism is directed at you. It is directed at the points and arguments you raise. I treat them as though they were raised by a robot (one that was capable of making rational and irrational arguments, anyway). I contend that many of the arguments and assertions you've given are flawed and false, and I've explained why. I'd like to hear your responses to my criticisms. A blanket statement like "you don’t have basic knowledge about humans logic and psychology" is both false and irrelevant to the specific points I have made.

I've studied both logic and psychology more than 99% of the people on the planet have. But this is irrelevant. Whatever my background, please respond to the quality of my arguments, not to my background.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:09:55 -0000

Paul,

Yeah, I love that. Here's another one: It is Jesus, LOL. :)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:12:13 -0000

Nikolay,

> I never take personal offence and I expect the same from the opponent. You BELIEF that if you prove my understanding about God as wrong, you’ll prove that God does not exist.
That’s very wrong, my friend.
You’ll only prove wrong understanding. First known scriptures were about God, doesn’t matter the specifics and the explanation...
Do you think that these most intelligent people were so stupid to write about Spaghetti monster? I asked you to create imaginary entity without using your perceptive knowledge.
I know that you can’t.
Nobody can.
Yet, God exists without matching any perceptive knowledge.
Humans simply don’t have way to make up such imaginary entity. <

Of course I disagree that God exists. But maybe I don't understand what you mean by your request that I create an imaginary entity without using my perceptive knowledge.

How about this? I shall call it Mrignoc. Mrignoc is a being that exists in 8 dimensions and throughout all branches of the tenseless timescape. Part of Mrignoc is physically present in the rhythmic vibrations that manifest themselves at a higher level as subatomic particles, but all these vibrations are connected via a mysterious bridge to Mrignoc's non-natural substance of being, which is eternal and non-contingent. Mrignoc communicates forcefully and constantly in a mode that can only be detected by a sensus mrignocitis that is not possessed by any beings, including Mrignoc himself. Mrignoc is all-powerful in 5 of the 8 dimensions, and can create a 9th dimension in which the laws of logic do not hold.

There, I just imagined an entity that is highly specific and yet has almost no contact with anything I have ever perceived. It's not that hard.

But what are you even trying to say with all this? That because the concept of God cannot be build with perceptual knowledge (a point with which I disagree anyway), therefore God must implanted knowledge of himself in our minds from birth? I've already explained the invalidity of this argument, unless you'd like to rephrase it. Or perhaps you weren't making an argument at all.

> We cannot create the “soul” concept.
We don’t have the base for logical erection of such concept. Now we know from the scriptures that God is Spirit and the concept about it, but how one makes up Spirit as a concept if he sees only matter around himself. Even you cannot imagine mind without head (brain).
How do you think the ancients imagined such thing? Faith is needed as mind conditioning for finding God. <

Or anything, really. You can find anything with faith. If you have faith in astrology, you will find astrological truths. If you have faith in elves, as roughly half of Iceland does, you'll find elves. Etc.

> When I talk to people, I use the perceptions as explanation for the mind created image because this is the only irrefutable way to show that our Universe has no absolute value. To spread atheism is not any better than to spread the ignorant belief that 77 virgins are waiting for you in the heavens. <

Unless atheism happens to be true, which I think it is. Sorry, Nikolay, but I just can't make sense out of your arguments. They are a string of non-sequiters and vague language. I can't even understand what you're saying, so I'll stop trying to rebut you now because I'm probably rebutting something you didn't even mean to say...

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:17:54 -0000

Sarah,

Yes, isn't that just adorable, especially for one of the most advanced societies on the planet? (well, until the banking crisis, anyway)

:)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:03:33 -0000

Thanks for your thoughts, Sarah. I think the only one that demands a reply from me is your assertion that a belief becomes less ridiculous the greater number of people that believe it. Does this mean that Acat, the god of tattoos is somewhat more plausible than the FSM because over a million people made sacrifices to him?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:31:23 -0000

Sarah,

I say "adorable" because it reminds me of the beliefs of children. That may be condescending, but hey - I'm not the one who believes in elves. ;)

I also disagree that the popularity of a belief does anything to increase its plausibility, but oh well.

Goodness, this article seems to have already generated about 15x more discussion than the average Jesus Manifesto article! Very cool. I do enjoy a vigorous dialogue!

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:30:19 -0000

Mark,

> Hey Luke, I think you need to think a bit more about condescension, the way language is perceived, and the role of rhetoric in discussion. You may literally think that belief in God is akin to belief in a mystical pink unicorn, but it seems somewhat obvious that to make such a comparison has the intended goal of making the former feel foolish when compared to the latter. <

I'm certain I do need to think more about condescension, etc.

But the point I'm making is that, in very specific ways, belief in God is akin to belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and, in those very specific ways, it is as foolish to believe in God as to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I've never said that God-belief is generally as silly as FSM-belief. I've said that, for example, defending the logical possibility of God is just as unhelpful as defending the logical possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Showing that something is logically possible does nothing to demonstrate its plausibility.

I could simply state the principle that logical possibility does not imply plausibility. But I need examples to drive that home. What examples can I give that you would not interpret as "condescending"? Could I point out that the logical possibility that the earth is flat does not demonstrate its plausibility? That it's logically possible astrology is true, but that doesn't show it is plausible? I don't know how else to make these points other than by analogy to something else that is logically possible but incredibly implausible, just like God.

In addition, I'd like to hear your response to a thought experiment. Let's say you woke up one day to discover that billions of people believed in fairies. They thought fairies were magical invisible beings that nevertheless interacted with the world all the time. They thought you could be healed if you made wishes to the fairies and gathered your friends together to sing fairy songs as loud as you could.

Fairy-believers thought fairies had told them what was right and wrong in their dreams and "in their hearts," but they all disagreed with each other about what was right and wrong. But certain groups of them were numerous enough to enact public policies that gave tons of tax-dollars to fairy organizations that built huge buildings made for gathering and singing fairy songs. They enacted laws against interracial dating and marriage because many of them thought the fairies had told them it was wrong. The fairy-believers sent missionaries to all the poor, uneducated people of the world and showed them the first love anyone had shown them while telling them it was very important to believe in fairies. Millions were converted every year.

Fairy-believers were so populous that they dominated politics, taught fairy-belief to all their children, and were able to oppose anything that threatened their fairy-beliefs and fairy-morals with votes and money. The progress of scientific medicine was slowed because so many fairy-believers thought it was taking away too much of the healing role traditionally given to fairies. AIDS spread rapidly because a large group of fairy-believers thought the fairies told them condoms were immoral.

The fairy-believers were so populous they also had a big influence in academic universities. Fairy-believing scientists and philosophers tried to prove the existence of fairies with arguments like:

"Consciousness is too bizarre and complex to have evolved. Therefore, it is the work of intelligent fairies."

"All of spacetime was created in the Big Bang. But what created the Big Bang? Obviously it must be something outside spacetime. What do we know is beyond spacetime? The fairies! The fairies must have created the Big Bang."

"We all know that objective moral values exist, but how can they exist in a natural world? The only moral values that could exist in the natural world would be those of human opinion. To have objective moral values, we must appeal to something beyond the natural world. Fairies are beyond the natural world. So, if objective moral values exist, they must come from the consensus of fairies."

After a few months of continuing to live in this world dominated by fairy-believers, Mark, you decide to do something about it. There is too much damage being done by this false and irrational belief in fairies. You want to persuade people of the truth.

You try to show people that you can have purpose and meaning and morality without a belief in fairies. You try to keep the fairy-believers from having too much political influence by saying that politics must serve the needs of everyone, not just fairy-believers. But you also know it will also help to show people that the reasons they think they have for believing in these fairies in the first place are actually not good reasons. You appeal to them to consider that maybe they are wrong about the fairies.

In these discussions, you come across an argument like this, even from Ph.D. philosophers:

"Consciousness is too bizarre and complex to have evolved. Therefore, it is the work of intelligent fairies."

Now, you can point out the logical fallacies in this argument. But you find that non-philosophers, especially, really need some vivid analogies to grok the power of your counter-arguments. You need to show that other arguments of the same logical structure lead to absurd conclusions, and therefore that logical structure is suspicious and should be reconsidered.

How would you do this, without taking the risk of hurting the feelings of the fairy-believers. After all, the fairy-believers believe these things deeply. Their entire lives are wrapped around fairy-belief. They get their comfort and purpose and meaning and morality from fairy-belief. And they've been told by fairy-believing philosophers that their fairy-belief is reasonable for the above reason (about consciousness).

Argument by analogy isn't the only way I combat fairy-belief and God-belief, but it is one way, and it's one way that believers often feel hurt by. But I don't know how else to do it.

Anyway, do you kind of see the situation I'm in? Perhaps you have some suggestions for me, and I'd love to hear them.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:52:17 -0000

James,

Let me respond:

> I really haven’t followed the discussion, and don’t care to, but I must say your faith in the non-existence of God is much more incredible than any person of faith in God. In the end both positions come down to faith. as an atheist what is your view of morality? Since morality is derived from religious belief, a true atheist would reject the whole concept of morality. <

Morality is not derived from religious belief. Do you think people had no sense of right and wrong before Yahweh handed down the Ten Commandments? There were moral and legal systems that existed before Israelite religion or Hindu religion or Egyptian religion developed. There have been atheistic systems of morality from the ancient Greeks through the medieval skeptics through the modern Enlightenment thinkers.

Atheists, like theists, have many different ideas about what is moral and what makes something moral. I happen to think one particular theory is more plausible than the others, and it is called desire utilitarianism. I wrote a very short book about it, here.

> pure atheism (as espoused in real atheistic philosophy) logically leads to the mass murder and pogroms of Stalin. <

How on earth does atheism logically lead to the mass murders of Stalin? Does the theory of gravity logically lead to the mass murder of all those who subscribe to an opposing theory? Does a-fairy-ism logically lead to the mass murder of all those who believe in fairies?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:10:02 -0000

Andrew,

My responses:

> I think part of the objection to comparing belief in God to belief in a pink, unicorn or fairy is that those latter things obviously have physical characteristics. <

I never said that belief in God is like belief in fairies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster in all respects. I used these analogies for very specific purposes, which I outlined in an earlier post. For example, whenever you give an argument that God is logically possible, I point out that this doesn't get us anywhere towards plausibility, since unicorns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are logically possible but not at all plausible.

> I have observed famous atheists like Richard Dawkins often choose the ugliest, most idiotic forms of religion– and depictions of God– to critique. This is not helpful, especially if we are actually debating the possibility and/or probability of a god or gods, not just the worst conceptualizations thereof. <

What Dawkins and others do is to attack very popular forms of religion. Somebody like Graham Oppy might attack a philosopher's conception of God, but hundreds of millions of people do not believe in the philosopher's God. They believe in the God of the Bible. The God of Genesis and the God revealed in the Jesus of the canonical gospels. It is quite legitimate to attack the rationality of the God that hundreds of millions of people believe in. For example, Dawkins says:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

But Dawkins is not just being obnoxious. No, all these descriptors are literally true of the God of the Bible, aka the God that most Christians believe in. You can see the breakdown here.

It is quite legitimate and necessary to attack popular conceptions of God as irrational (and immoral). Liberal Christians do this, too, because they see the harm that is done by a literal interpretation of the Bible.

> Based on many things you have said, Luke, I too do not believe in God. What I mean by that is I too reject the God you often cite. He seems so improbable as to demand my disbelief. <

Andrew, my posts to you have contained criticisms of the arguments you put forward and the God you defend. I have not just given arguments against the God of the Bible, but arguments specifically directed at the God you believe in, and your reasons for believing in him. Even if you put forward a minimalistic deistic God, I will be happy to present my arguments against God.

You might like to think that my arguments say nothing about your God, but they do. I have specifically attacked the reasons for God-belief that you gave.

> This, of course, doesn’t prove or necessitate a god, but for those who already believe or who have other reasons to believe, this appears to be another observation one could incorporate. <

You might be interested in the work of people like Robert Russell, who I interviewed here. Russell is a Ph.D. physicist and Christian theologian who proposes the idea that God can have non-interventionist action in the world by way of affecting the way quantum probability functions (but without breaking their overall probability distributions). But he also believes in thoroughly interventionist miracles, anyway.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:41:11 -0000

Nope, same result. Let me copy/paste into the comments form a third time:

Mark,

This time - in my fairy story - I was not trying to give an argument by analogy against religion. My story was not sociologically or otherwise nuanced because that wasn't the point. I was trying to put you in my shoes to see what you would say and do. I could just as easily construct myself an analogy to put myself in your shoes, to understand you better. Perhaps I'd imagine that an undetectable alien from a faraway planet had personally visited my several dozen times and I just knew that the alien was real (like Jodie Foster in Contact), but I couldn't prove it to anybody. Moreover, I knew (literally, I'm not being sarcastic) that this alien had warned me that an impending disaster would wipe out earth if I could not convince the human race of this and get them to work together to save the planet from this unpredicted impending calamity. What would I do?

I don't take that story as an argument by analogy for or against atheism, I'm just trying to put myself in your shoes. Likewise, my fairy story wasn't an argument by analogy, I was just trying to get you to sense what it's like to be me (like Daily Kos did a while back), so I could ask what you would do in my shoes.

And I appreciate the insights that followed. Let me comment on them:

I suspect we could both be seen as pragmatists. I'm just as concerned with socio-political things as you are, and you just happen to think there is another area of pragmatic concerns (spirituality) that I don't think exists.

But let me address your four (wonderful) questions.

{{{ 1) If your atheistic perspective leads you to believe a certain set of future goals are preferable for human society than other goals. }}}

"Preferable" refers to preferences, which are things that exist in sentient beings. There are objective truths about the valences of preferences (brain states) in sentient beings, and their correspondence or non-correspondence to states of affairs in the world. So yes, some future goals are objectively more preferable than other goals.

But perhaps you meant preferable in the sense of morality. What ought we to do? What kind of society ought we to form? My answers to these questions come from the ethical theory that I think is more plausibly true than other ethical theories (including Kantianism, divine command theory, error theory, subjectivism, non-cognitivism, etc.). That ethical theory to which I currently subscribe is desire utiltiarianism, which I took great care to explain in plain talk, over here.

But desire utilitarianism has nothing in particular to do with atheism. In fact, I'm preparing a post arguing why Christians should be desire utilitarians. (It's for the same reason Christians should be heliocentrists: heliocentrism happens to be true, whether or not God exists.) Nothing about atheism leads me to desire utilitarianism, any more than my disbelief in unicorns leads me to a particular ethical theory.

{{{ 2) and [if] there was a way to foster these future goals through both promoting atheistic thought }}}

Yes. The goals prescribed by desire utilitarianism include goals of knowledge, which entails goals of promoting methods that tend to lead to knowledge, and entails discouragement of methods that lead to false knowledge. So mostly, I encourage critical thinking, logic, how to consider evidence, etc. I discourage magical thinking, feelings-thinking, and non-thinking, which inhibit true knowledge in a society. The goal of knowledge also entails the promotion of things that happen to be true, like atheism, and the discouragement of things that happen to be false about our universe, like Christian theism.

{{{ 3) but certain forms of religious belief were also, perhaps, more beneficial than not in achieving these goals }}}

Knowledge is not the only goal prescribed by desire utilitarianism. A resistance to violence as a response to words is another. Towards this end, Jainism would be far more useful than Christianity or Islam. But so would a new religion we could invent where it is strongly believed that anyone who commits the slightest act of violence will be eternally raped and tortured by a thousand flaming demons in hell after they die. We could teach that to our children and burn all books that refute this religion and perhaps our world would be more peaceful than it is now. But the problem is that such a religion might also block other goals prescribed by desire utilitarianism (the theory of ethics that I think happens to be true about our universe). Ideally, we could promote a worldview that tends to bring about true and useful knowledge, and also an aversion to violence, and also all the other things that desire utilitarianism prescribes.

{{{ Wouldn’t the sociological tendency towards belief lend you to conclude that it is more pragmatic to foster those future goals regardless of religious belief rather than to seek to convince everyone that “fairies” don’t exist? }}}

Well, I'd do both, because one of the goals prescribed by desire utilitarianism is knowledge, and irrational thinking and religion tend to thwart the pursuit of knowledge. So, it would be even better if we could promote a worldview that both tends toward knowledge and fulfills the other goals prescribed by desire utilitarianism (for example, an aversion to violence, food for the hungry, etc.).

There are many contexts in which I fight for a particular goal regardless of religious belief. A great many, in fact. But this post on Jesus Manifesto - and of course my Common Sense Atheism blog - are specifically devoted to one goal that I am particularly adept at advancing - critical thinking and, as a result, atheism.

You may disagree that I am adept at this. I'm sure I could become more adept. I might even become more adept if I took a gentler approach. But I already have lots of theistic fans at my blog, probably because I criticize irrational theists and atheists with equal vigor and fairness. In the process, I think I am planting seeds that change minds. And my readers and commenters are planting seeds that change my mind, too.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:28:51 -0000

Andrew,

{{ Are they logically possible? I mean, those would be physical beings (since an invisible unicorn cannot be “pink”), and since we have no record or reason to believe evolution ever created such things, we can rule them out in terms of having existed on our planet and therefore causing anything. }}

The Invisible Pink Unicorn is indeed logically impossible. He was invented as a parody of popular conceptions of God, which contain several logical impossibilities.

If I ever put forth the Invisible Pink Unicorn in an argument by analogy re: possibility, I apologize. I tend to use examples like the FSM or unicorns or invisible telepathic gremlins because these things are logically possible, however extremely implausible.

We can not rule out things that we have no record of. That is why we cannot rule out God, unicorns, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. These things (using certain definitions of God, anyway) are not logically impossible, and therefore they might exist. They're just extremely unlikely to exist.

{{ I agree it is warranted, but it doesn’t help prove the plausability of atheism (i.e., no God or gods whatsoever). }}

Indeed. At best, these attacks against on theistic arguments demonstrate that there are no good reasons to believe in popular conceptions of the Christian God. Positive arguments for atheism must also be given, for example these.

{{ I haven’t even said much about the God in whom I believe. }}

No, you haven't. But for example you put forth some arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, which I rebutted. You also put forth the fine-tuning argument for an intelligent creator, which I rebutted. I'm sure you don't agree with my rebuttals, and our debate could probably go on for ages, but let's not pretend that what I've said doesn't touch on your idea of God.

Cheers!

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:25:04 -0000

Mark,

{{ I eagerly await your thoughts on desire utilitarianism. }}

Oh, shall I post them here? I keep linking to my book. I suppose I could copy/paste from my book if you want - but it's a very short book anyway.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:31:20 -0000

Andrew,

{ How is it logically possible for something invisible to be pink? }

It's not. That why the IPU was invented to parody certain impossible conceptions of God, and why I apologized if I ever used the IPU in "logical possibility" analogies.

{ You don’t think biologists can rule out unicorns? I would think they certainly can. }

We might dismiss unicorns as extremely improbable given the total lack of evidence, but we cannot rule them out as logically impossible. Even physical impossibility is not the same as logical impossibility.

{ I simply do not think your rebuttals touch on my idea of God. You have not provided ample evidence to disprove the resurrection (you only attacked one interpretation of the resurrection anyhow), and you did not demonstrate how the highly unlikely scenario for complex life to have evolved in this universe rules out a greater intelligence. }

No, of course not. I only meant to show that your arguments for God's existence fail. As I've said again and again, the failure of your arguments does not make God logically impossible. It merely shows that you haven't given a good reason to believe in God. Likewise, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not logically impossible, but nobody has shown me a good reason to believe in him, either.

So, if you have a good argument for the existence of God, please present it. Or if you want me to argue for atheism, just ask: I'm happy to do so.

I'm not sure that God can be proved or disproved, just as the Flying Spaghetti Monster can be proved or disproved. But I think the burden of proof is mostly on the one making a positive claim. As an atheist, I don't really mean that I can prove that no gods exist. I merely claim that I've not been given any good reasons to think they exist. In the same way, I'm an a-unicornist not because I think I can prove that gods don't exist, but because I've never been given any good reason to think that they do exist.

As for the article you linked to, I think - along with the expert, Austin Cline, who runs About.com's atheism site - there is almost nothing true in the entire essay. For example:

"The atheist will counter that it is either eternal, or accidental."

False, and these options are not even on the same scale. Atheists may assert that the universe is eternal or spontaneously arose in the finite past, that it is accidental or necessary, etc.

"The atheist continually resorts to the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to modesty) when dealing with Deists or even theists. The appeal here is to science as an authority which cannot be challenged."

False. Atheists do not consider science an authority which cannot be challenged. Rather, science itself is the act of challenging everything we know, and the very methods of science are constantly challenged by philosophy.

"First of all, science makes no claims about God one way or another..."

False. If God is supposed to act in the natural world, that is a testable prediction. See Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis.

"Second, science for all its great accomplishments is still in the infant stage, there is much about nature it simply does not know"

True, but this does not imply that theology does have these answers.

I could on, but I've already bored myself reading that essay. :)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:54:58 -0000

Andrew,

I explained this to Sarah Lynne earlier:

The “God” hypothesis does make testable predictions about the natural world, and that is the domain of science.

For example, most conceptions of God entail the prediction that prayers to that specific God will be more effective than chance+placebo, and also more effective than prayers to other deities. It just so happens that whenever we test this prediction with proper controls, it turns out to be false, which discredits that conception of God.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:35:28 -0000

Andrew,

{ As for prayer, it would be interesting simply to debate what constitues “proper” controls. }

Indeed. For example, Byrd's study claiming positive therapeutic effects for intercessory prayer embarrassingly did not control for the very variable being measured, along with a host of other problems.

{ Maybe, like atomic indeterminacy, it is not testable like gravity or some other natural law. Maybe it would be perceived as random. We often just don’t know why certain people beat cancer and others do not. }

What is atomic indeterminacy? Anyway, if prayer is tested and the results appear random, that is a statistically insignificant result. That means the God hypothesis fails to live up to its predictions. If there is a statistically insignificant result for, say, a study on psychic powers, you can always say "Ah, but my psychic powers manifest themselves randomly!" But scientists move on, knowing you've got nothing to back up your claim. In fact, you claim failed.

{ How do we test the notion of free will? }

Like this.

{ This touches on determinism and features a prominent British atheist. It probably won’t bore. ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Seg8kjc6Z84 }

I do enjoy foraTV!

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:23:05 -0000

Nikolay,

Let me respond:

{ With the above you think that you answer my question about the soul concept. }

Yeah, WordPress keeps deleting whole sections of my comments. I don't know what it's doing.

{ I appreciate it as entertaining, sarcastic way to disagree with idea, which you don’t understand, but you fail to accomplish the task. You used “dimensions”, “subatomic particles” and “eternal” as properties for your imaginary entity. Those are well known from our perceptive knowledge. }

I agree that I don't understand your point, but I'm trying to play along...

Since when do we have perceptive knowledge of higher dimensions or eternality? Just take out the "subatomic particles" reference and there you go - you've got a deity that is not based in any perceptual knowledge at all.

{ It seems that you are not as clever as the ancients who “made up” God. }

What ancient God is composed of non-perceived elements? They all have the body parts of humans or animals, exaggerated in certain ways, etc.

The way that certain versions of the Christian, Muslim, and other gods became so abstract is to simply add "not" to perceived attributes. For example, one popular God could be defined in this way:

not extended in space
not bound by time
not having a beginning
not having an end
not limited in power
not limited in knowledge
not limited in goodness
etc.

It is not hard to imagine such beings that do not fit within our perceptual knowledge. But even if it was, what's the point of all this? What are you trying to argue for? Please present your conclusion, and then show how your conclusion follows from your premises.

Do you have any argument for the existence of a particular conception of God, or is your purpose something else?

{ Do you know how did the “implantation” happen? }

I don't know what you mean by implantation. Is there a standard English word used in the sciences for whatever phenomena you seek to name with "implantation"? If I know what you're talking about, then I can give you my thoughts, if I have any.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:30:19 -0000

Andrew,

{ What I am saying is how can we be certain the controls that seem “proper” truly are and will stand the test of time? }

We can't. We can never be sure. All we know is that we keep getting rid of methods that give us less reliable results, and keep adding methods that give us more reliable results, and that is exactly why we trust science more than other methods of knowing. (Other than pure mathematical logic, of course.) Again, mere uncertainty is no positive justification for the efficacy of prayer any more than the uncertainty of science is any positive justification for the efficacy of astrology.

Google has only 23 results for "atomic indeterminacy". I wonder if it is an obscure and unpopular alternative to the phrase "quantum indeterminacy"?

{ So all this would make a scientific study complicated as far as I am concerned. }

Yup. It could be that prayer works but is very difficult to measure. It could also be that astrology works but is very difficult to measure, or that sacrifices to Ahura Mazda work but are very difficult to measure. Until we have positive evidence for the efficacy of prayer, it must sit on the same shelf as astrology and sacrifices to Ahura Mazda.

{ I will continue to... act as if I have something creative to enact in this world. }

Yes, I recommend this even though I don't think libertarian free will exists. :)

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:25:34 -0000

Andrew,

{ Again, you only accept “postive evidence” in one way. If someone has a mystical experience that only he/she can know and is so convinced of its reality, like Mark for example, how does science simply deny that claim or even rule it out as “positive” evidence when we discuss belief? }

Mark's experience does count as evidence. So do the mystical experiences of millions of people from dozens of non-Christian religions. So do the mystical experiences of atheists. So do the mystical experiences of schizophrenics. The question is not whether Mark's experiences are evidence. The question is, "What are they evidence for?" To claim that Mark's experiences are evidence for and undead magical Jesus but that the mystical experiences of other religious people are not evidence for their deities is inconsistent. Frankly, I think a much better explanation is found in things we have already tested and are pretty certain to be true: that the brain is powerful simulation software and produces all kinds of mystical experiences of things that do not exist in people of all religious faiths. That is more consistent with all the evidence we have.

{ There must be more going on regarding claims about ultimate reality and belief in God/gods than straight forward “positive evidence” criterion. }

Do you realize that you use the exact same language to defend the possibility of your chosen god as do those who defend astrology, pseudoscientific self-help like The Secret, psychic powers, etc. It is always this retreat to the possible, this "science doesn't know everything," this "my personal experiences are valid evidence but contradicting personal experiences are not," - and never any positive evidence that weighs in favor of the given conclusion. Using your methods, damn near anything can be "defended" with equal success.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:30:52 -0000

Andrew,

{ I would, furthermore, differentiate mystical experiences with the experiences of schizophrenics. If you want me to assume they are one and the same, I’m afraid I need some more positive evidence. }

How 'bout the fact that we have lots of evidence that these are both brain phenomena, and no evidence that they ascertain a reality outside the brain? How 'bout the fact that we can trigger mystical experiences in the schizophrenic and anyone by triggering the same part of the brain?

{ We are all under various constraints, including our respective environments, genes, and cultures, so we don’t all perceive God as Jesus, for instance. God has to work within our frame of reference. }

So your theory is that all mystical experiences are of the same god, but people perceive that god to be incredibly different? Sometimes god reveals himself and says, "Fly some planes into some buildings." Other times he just freaks people out with the feeling of flying around the universe. Other times he appears to them in the form of Krishna. Other times he appears to them as a Muslim or Christian angel. Other times he appears to them as Jesus. Other times he manifests himself as a demon just to freak people out. Seriously? That's your theology? That god is deliberately confusing everybody so they can fight religious wars and follow totally different moral systems based on their contradictory mystical experiences?

I admit that's - again - logically possible, but I think explaining these mystical experiences in terms of things we already have a great amount of neuroscientific and psychological evidence for works a lot better.

{ I disagree with your application of this evidence. }

How, specifically? Because you think it's a better explanation of the evidence to say that god manifests himself in radically different ways to people all around the world, starting thousands of different religions who think they are all worshiping different gods, so they can start wars with other tribes over whose god is better? You think that's a better application of the evidence than simply saying the brain is powerful simulation software and can be induced into mystical experiences simply by putting an electric stimulus onto a certain part of the brain?

( your own retreat of sorts and that damn near everything can be regarded as insufficient evidence for the probability of a non-atheistic universe. }

No. The difference between you and I is that I apply the same standards of evidence for everything. I require the same evidence of astrology as I do of Hinduism, Christianity, theism, deism, gravitation, atomism, psychics, and fairies. It just so happens that gravitation and atomism present good evidence when I ask them to, and the rest of those things (and a bajillion others) don't present any good evidence or reasons. They all give the same retreats to the "possible", the same justification by personal mystical experience, the same "I don't need evidence to justify this belief like I do for every other belief."

{ Since everything we observe scientifically has a cause, we are ultimately forced to consider the “first cause” given the current cosmological model }

Good. So now you've hinted at the cosmological argument. Let me explain why this doesn't work, either.

Everything we know of came from something else. So if we trace everything all the way back, where did the first thing come from?

It seems we have two options. Either some things have always existed, or else the very first thing popped into existence out of absolutely nothing.
But neither of those options make any sense to us. We’ve never seen something exist forever, and we’ve never seen something pop into existence out of nothing.

These thoughts make our poor little heads hurt. Apparently the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago, but what was before that? Does the question even make sense, or is it like asking “What’s north of the North Pole?”

So we don’t understand the ultimate beginning. What can we do with this gap in our knowledge? Why, plug it up with “God,” of course!

One of the oldest Christian arguments is to say that the universe needs a cause, and God is that cause.

But if everything needs a cause, doesn’t God need a cause? Christians try to escape this problem by saying that God has always existed. But do we have any evidence of that? No. Christians simply define God as having always existed. But that’s no good. I might as well define King Zog as a being that has always existed, and therefore he must have caused the universe. Or I could define a new subatomic particle, an eternaton, as a particle that always existed. Therefore I know that the eternaton kicked off the Big Bang. Christians don’t allow anything to simply be defined as eternal without evidence, except for Yahweh. That’s special thinking.

Also, even if we knew there was an Uncaused Cause, how would we know it was Yahweh? Why not Allah or a divine committee or the everlasting eternaton?

Thirdly, given history it is much more likely we will find a natural explanation for the ultimate beginning than a supernatural one. Everything in the past that we didn't know how to explain (childbirth, crop failure, disease, lightning) has turned out to have a natural explanation once we had the tools to look at it closely enough. To say that this time the mystery is likely to be explained by magic is to bet against all past human experience. Not a good bet.

Scientists recently discovered another problem for the First Cause argument. To everyone’s complete surprise, certain tiny particles actually do pop into existence out of absolutely nothing. Constantly. (But don’t worry about overcrowding; they pop completely out of existence all the time, too.)

So, we actually have seen something pop into existence out of nothing.

Perhaps the Big Bang occurred in much the same way. We have tested, repeatable evidence of particles popping into existence out of nothing, but we have no evidence of an eternally existing God.

Trust me, this boggles my mind, too – but the evidence is there. Relativity and quantum mechanics also perplex us, but we come to accept them when they are verified by mountains of experimental evidence.

Summary:

The First Cause argument falls apart under common sense. It is another (1) argument from ignorance. Our ignorance about the origins of the universe says nothing about whether God exists. Aboriginal Australians didn’t have our biological understanding of human sex organs, so they thought the Bagadjimbiri brother gods made sex organs from some mushrooms before turning into snakes and leaving to live in the sky. (2) The First Cause argument is mired in special thinking: Christians will claim without evidence that God is eternal, but no other thing or god can be eternal without evidence. (3) It is more likely we will find a natural explanation for the ultimate beginning than a natural one. And finally, (4) we have good evidence that something can come from nothing, but we have no evidence of eternally existing gods.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:56:36 -0000

Shane,

Great post. Let me do the point-by-point thing again.

{ I’d still like to know your educational and vocational background. You’ve definitely been involved in other intellectual pursuits of some sort. I assume you didn’t become a deep thinker only in the last 1.5 years. }

I always liked thinking but I wasn't any good at it until I discovered critical thinking about 1.5 years ago. Before that I basically knew how to fix a broken computer and a few undergrad courses in psychology and that's it.

{ wisdom, intelligence, morality, and “credit” ... }

These are certainly meaningful terms, but they do not have intrinsic value, no. (Many naturalists believe in intrinsic value - for example Peter Railton - but I'm not one of them!) But I don't see how theism helps impart intrinsic value, though. Adding a god can only add that some things are meaningful to God, not that they are intrinsically meaningful - i.e. that they would be just as meaningful without God.

{ I’m wondering why naturalists don’t just drop the moral nomenclature and use different terminology, as most people typically think of (and perhaps desire to think of?) morality as involving more than mere group pragmatics (namely, intrinsic value/worth).}

I'm very sympathetic to your reasoning. Labels don't matter. All facts about Pluto remain true when we stop calling it a "planet." Likewise, all the facts about reasons for action and the other things described by desire utilitarianism remain true if we stop calling it "morality."

But I don't think I've hijacked the term "morality" for something else. Instead, I think that subjectivists and non-cognitivists have done so. For example, when someone says "Murder is wrong," the non-cognitivist says, "What you really mean is, 'Murder... yuck!'" and the person has to respond, "Um, no, I mean murder is wrong."

Of course, the person may be incorrect about "murder is wrong", or even that there is any such fact about murder and wrongness, but let us not put words in people's mouths. :)

Why do I think I have not hijacked the term "morality"? Because moral terms, I think, have typically referred to objective moral facts, whether or not they are "intrinsic." Many cultures recognize that if the universe was very different then moral values would change - so, they are not intrinsic but they are objectively true or false about the universe we happen to live in. And desire utilitarianism does refer to objective moral facts, so there is no reason to not call it a theory about "morality".

But now, what if it is really is the case that the term morality has generally referred to objective reasons for action that have intrinsic value? In this case, I still think it's useful to keep using the term "morality", since we're still talking about objective reasons for action even though there is no such thing as intrinsic value. For example we kept using the term "atom" after we discovered it was not indivisible, and we kept using the term "malaria" after we discovered it had nothing to do with bad air.

This is similar to the debate over whether atheists should use the term "spiritual", since (most of us) don't believe in any spirits. I haven't decided which way to lean on this one. It seems that non-atheists have been using the term "spiritual" to mean something more than just contact with spirits for a couple centuries now, but I'm still not sure "spiritual" is the right word for atheists.

{ The “right act is not the one that fulfills the most desires,” and yet “the right act is the one that a person with [desires that tend to fulfill more and greater desires than they thwart] would perform”? }

Do you recall the example of the sadists found in my book? That was written specifically to illustrate the difference between these two statements.

{ (a) why (or perhaps in what sense) “everybody should have” these desires, (b) whether you tie any notion of intrinsic obligation to this, and, if so, (c) how you avoid tying the latter to any intrinsic value [not to mention (d) what you would make of such obligation given a deterministic metaphysic]. Do you merely appeal to species survival and its pragmatic facilitators at this point? And yet, not even these can be said to have intrinsic value (enter Camus on suicide), even if they do have the closest thing afforded us by naturalism. }

(a) In desire utilitarianism, "should" means "there are reasons for action that exist such that..." In fact, that's what all normative theories claim, it's just that they disagree on what types of reasons for action exist. Everybody "should" have certain desires because there are reasons for action that exist such that they should have those desires.

It just so happens that all reasons for action spring from desires, as explained in my book.

(b) No, no "intrinsic" obligation.

(c) I do not tie moral obligation to intrinsic value.

(d) Not sure what you're asking. Are you asking about the coherence of moral responsibility in a world without free will?

And no, species survival does not have intrinsic value.

{ Is the majority (and more intense) desire intrinsically better than that of the individual? Why should one consider the majority desire (and/or its intensity)? }

No. Intrinsic value doesn't exist. All I mean by "good" is that there is more reason for action to do that good thing than there is reason for action to not do it. Since all reasons for action come from desires, we measure the desires that exist. To do this, we measure both the number and the strength of those desires, just as to measure water we would measure the volume and density of it.

I do not appeal to enlightened self-interest.

{ "A right action is one that a person with good desires would perform. A wrong action is one
that a person with good desires would not perform. "

Are these statements meant to be more than definitional/analytic? }

I think these are the most sensible definitions of "right" and "wrong" given that (1) morality is about reasons for action, and (2) all reasons for action that exist are derived from desires. If morality is not about reasons for action, or if desires are not the only reasons for action that exist, then "right" and "wrong" would obviously carry a different meaning.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:44:28 -0000

Nikolay,

Our minds imagine things that don't fit our experience. We do it all the time. We invent imaginary worlds, imaginary realms, imaginary rules and conditions. I have twice given you specific examples of how such ideas can arise without perceptual knowledge of them, you just don't like my answers. I think we're at a dead end.

You are convinced that mankind cannot invent gods that are beyond our everyday experience. Yet the evidence is right before you: we have done so, thousands of times! And we continue to do so today. The human brain can imagine.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:50:46 -0000

Daniel,

Thanks for your thoughts. What parts of my theory, specifically, are problematic - and why? Mine is not a Kantian view.

Any problems with a naturalistic theory of cosmic origins are made doubly problematic by positing a theory of origins that relies on a dozen totally unsupportable newly posited entities and properties.

I wasn't saying that the Big Bang happened when the first virtual particle popped into existence out of nothing. I'm just saying that we already know certain things can pop into existence uncaused, whereas we have as yet no knowledge of eternally existing intelligent beings.

As for Nikolay's points I still have trouble understanding what he is saying, but in any case he is wrong to assert that the human brain cannot conceive of things beyond our experience, as I have repeatedly shown. And yes, the evolution of several concepts of god throughout multiple cultures has been well-documented around the world.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:55:55 -0000

Andrew,

Epic post! I'll try not to write a book-length response, but I probably will anyway.

{ But the observation of whatever the brain seems to be doing is not evidence about the experience itself. }

Again, we have lots of well-tested evidence about how these mystical experiences result directly from brain activity, but no evidence that they result from direct encounters with spiritual beings outside spacetime. To say that these things are caused by encounters with spiritual beings even after these discoveries of how the brain works is like saying, right after we discover how lightning works, that nevertheless it's still possible that Zeus produces the electron charges that result in lightning. Yes that's logically possible, but just as unjustified and unlikely as Zeus causing lightning.

{ God is not deliberately confusing people. God allows a certain semblance of freedom and creativity within this world that is out of his hands, so to speak. If everyone’s brain is different, how could people have the same exact mystical experience? }

But again, why the heck would God reveal himself to people in such different ways such that people found hundreds of contradictory religions based on their mystical experiences? If you've studied comparative religion you know that different religions have very different ethical systems, very different beliefs, very different ways of understanding the nature of religion and the transcendent. There are even atheistic religions. If God is the source of mystical experiences - not brain phenomena - then he is certainly the author of confusion and resultant calamity, as the Bible says.

Everyone's brain and experiences are different, which is why our mystical experiences are so different. Because they come from the brain. If God wanted to reveal himself in a consistent manner to people, he could easily do so. I could, and I don't even have superpowers.

{ I do not perceive God as all-powerful and the ultimate cause of all that occurs. }

Ah! Good to know. That certainly solves the problem of evil. But I still don't know why you would believe in God. Atheism solves the problem of evil just as well, as do many religions and a thousand possible worldviews.

{ You would like to think you are so uniform in how you apply standards to “everything”, but that is BS. None of us do. That is the myth of modernity. }

I can't be perfect. There's probably some belief in there somewhere that is inconsistent. But when I find it, I immediately seek to make it consistent - either by acknowledging that prior belief to be false, or letting some other beliefs that are conflicting with it go, or something else.

But I do, as best I can, apply uniform standards to everything. When someone shows me how I am not being uniform, I immediately seek to eliminate this bias. My experience is that when I show believers the massive double standards they apply to their religious beliefs, they shrug it off.

I have explained the double standards you are using to justify your God-belief. I have explained them very specifically and repeatedly. And you have just acknowledged this double standard and accepted it, saying it's okay to have a double standard because you have chosen to do as part of your "willful belief" - your faith. And you are correct. That's exactly what faith is. It is a choice to maintain the double standard. To allow your religious beliefs through epistemic loopholes but not anything else.

{ You may think you have plenty of reasons to discredit the early Jesus movement but I did not find your “rebuttal” persuasive, yet I am open to being persuaded. }

Oh, that's fine. I wouldn't be persuaded by my rebuttal either. We didn't talk much about the historicity of the resurrection and it's an extremely complex topic.

{ You claim an objectivity none of us can rightly ascertain. }

No, I claim to pursue objectivity and intellectual fairness and honesty at all times. When somebody points out my failing I immediately correct it. In contrast, when I point our your double standards you say, "Yes, I have a double standard, because that is what I have chosen as part of my willful belief in God."

{ Yes, even if we accept there is an eternal uncaused cause, that doesn’t mean it is a singular God with any human-like attributes. }

Or even any kind of god. It could be the eternaton. Or a math student in a higher dimension. Or a hitherto undiscovered universal law.

{ The one cosmic God was less a human discovery than a revelation, which, like prayer, is a two-way street. It requires our engagement, effort, and openness. }

Or so you assert. I could just as well claim that psychic powers are not a discovery but a revelation that requires engagement, effort, and openness. Do not be closed off to psychic powers!

{ I guess one day we’ll find out if this myth of progress will hold up }

Do you really think it's a myth that we know 1000x more stuff today than we did even 100 years ago, and it's because of science not religion?

{ And yet, like past scientific theories, they may not fully account for reality. They may be reductionistic. }

You say "reductionistic" like it's a bad thing. And yet, everything we discovered so far turns out to literally be reductionistic. To bet against reductionism is now going against the trend of evidence.

Of course our scientific theories do not fully account for reality. But they do an infinitely better job of it that unjustified religious theories.

{ The concept of natural laws governing everything has been proven false. }

That would be huge news. When was this proven false? I missed it.

{ There were mountains of experimental evidence for older theories that have since been discarded. But now we are supposed to be certain our controls are perfect and all variables have been accounted for? }

No, never. Scientists more than anyone else will scream against claims of certainty. What I've been saying all along is not that science is perfect, but that it is way better at gaining knowledge than personal mystical experiences or feelings or testimony. Pointing out flaws in science does nothing to increase the credibility of unsupported religious doctrines, any more than pointing out the flaws in science would increase the plausibility of astrology.

{ that it may or may not have had an intelligent casual agent, but that postulating an intelligence as a matter of interpretation and inference is quite reasonable. }

I don't think so, and I just gave 4 reasons why this inference is unfounded.

{ I thought Christians often perceive things such as the Word and wisdom as eternal. And if Jesus is undead, then that is convincing evidence for the Christian. That alone would do it. }

Yes, and other people perceive Vishnu, or psychic powers, or astrological effects. Assertions won't cut it. Give me arguments and evidence.

{ > And finally, (4) we have good evidence that something can come from nothing, but we have no evidence of eternally existing gods.

Here it is again: presenting a claim and statement as evidence in and of itself. }

No. I gave the example earlier that virtual particles pop into existence uncaused. That is my evidence.

{ It takes a leap of faith to believe science will explain everything, but I readily admit I make a leap of faith every single day and will continue to do so. :) }

No. I do not think science will one day explain everything. I merely assert that given it's unbroken track record of replacing unfounded magical explanations for things with thoroughly tested natural explanations, we have every reason to expect that trend to continue and no particular reason to think it will suddenly reverse itself.

So, I do not make a leap of faith. I merely go where the existing evidence is pointing.

You do make a leap of faith. That's dangerous. Faith as a method for knowing will lead you anywhere. If faith is your epistemic strategy, you can just as easily justify belief in God as you can justify belief in fairies, astrology, psychic powers, etc. Faith is not a reliable method of knowing, and somehow I think you must realize this, but just choose to apply your double standard anyway - for reasons I shall not speculate about.

Am I totally off-base? Have I misunderstood you?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:09:18 -0000

{ >> Our minds imagine things that don’t fit our experience. >>

That never happens.
It is scientifically and practically impossible. }

Oof. Seriously? I think it obviously does, all the time. Is there a name for your theory so I can look up how others have argued in favor of it? I can't imagine how you could assert this.

{ That’s why I asked you to make up imaginary entity without using perceptive knowledge.
You couldn’t. }

I did. Twice. I'll do it again:

Fen'jqui is a being of 138 sexes. Fen'jqui is not extended in space, does not experience events, and does not experience thoughts. Nevertheless, Fen'jqui is an agent. He timelessly emits a non-wave, non-particle radiation that cannot be perceived by any beings.

{ I see terms from our KNOWLEDGE, which I personally obtained in grade five and the “eternity” from the Bible.
Terms derived from our observational knowledge }

I have never observed or experienced eternity or any of the other things I used to describe my imaginary beings. What traits does your God have that are beyond our knowledge and experience in a way that "eternity" is not?

{ >> You are convinced that mankind cannot invent gods that are beyond our everyday experience. Yet the evidence is right before you >>

I see no evidence. }

I specifically referred to the evidence that mankind has created thousands of gods that do not conform to their earthly experience.

Does Nikolay's argument make sense to anyone here? Can anyone perhaps explain Nikolay's argument in different words so that I can understand why I should think it is at all persuasive?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:51:34 -0000

{ And Tallis, as aforementioned, is one atheist who doesn’t want to jump to the conclusion we are determined and have no freedom. }

I don't "jump" to that conclusion, and determinism certainly has nothing to do with atheism. I'm a determinist because that's where the evidence points. But that's a whole 'nother debate!

{ So, for me, even a Buddhist atheist may very well know the way, the truth, and the life }

Hmmm. What about a non-Buddhist atheist? :)

And, do you call yourself a Christian?

{ I believe God must work through the material He is presented with by the evolutionary process. We won’t magically change the structure of our minds, but perhaps He can trigger them or fill a void, in a sense, that we permit to exist. You yourself couldn’t walk up to any person on this earth regardless of their culture and dialect and expect to be understood equally well by all of them. And if we were to draw a more accurate analogy for mystical experience, you would then represent a culture and dialect light years ahead of anyone you encountered. }

Interesting. So God either doesn't care that he is perceived accurately by people, or else he isn't powerful enough to make sure people see him in a consistent light? He created the universe but he can't make himself clear to humanity?

{ I love and seek to please God because I find Christ, who for me revealed God better than any text or mystical experience, amazing and inspiring and, perhaps foolishly, think he was vindicated historically. }

There are a million things I could say here, but I won't open yet another can of worms. We've both put quite a bit of time into this already.

I look forward to your final replies, whenever you have the time to draft them.

Thanks for this interesting discussion, Andrew. I hope we have both learned some things, and had our ideas challenged.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:08:41 -0000

Nikolay,

Suffice it to say I think you are wrong about psychology and about belief formation, and most psychologists and neuroscientists agree with me. The way you present your arguments is full of gaping non-sequiters, so I cannot follow your line of thought. I don't think further conversation between us will be fruitful.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:16:41 -0000

Nikolay,

There are many theories of concept formation (it's a rather recent field), but I don't know of any which claim that we cannot imagine new entities outside our direct experience by way of abstraction, concept conjunction, etc. Does your theory that denies this ability have a name, so I can research it?

And/or, just because I'm having such a hard time even understanding you, would you put your argument in traditional form with clear language, please? For example:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Now that, I can follow. I cannot yet follow what you are trying to say.

Or, is there anyone else who has argued the same thing you have, so I can see what it looks like in their words?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:17:40 -0000

{ The only reason we have God as a concept is because people had the capability to observe or experience such entity or state. }

No. We imagine things that do not exist all the time. We imagine things that are apart from our experience. Mankind's imagination has invented all kinds of things it has never experienced, from magical realms to reincarnated souls to gods of all different kinds to many other things. I have already explained exactly HOW a concept like "God" could be conceived of without actually perceiving God.

For example, I have never experienced something that is outside spacetime. However, I can imagine what that would be just by thinking of "not in spacetime." Likewise, I have never experienced something immortal but I can imagine immortality just by thinking of "not dying."

Everybody knows this. I don't know why you keep saying that this kind of imagination is impossible.

{ Different people from different parts of the world who had no connection between gave the same or similar explanation of God and it comes to our days as the concept we are discussing now. }

Conceptions of gods are extremely different. The mayans have a god of tattoos. Some religions have literally millions of gods. Others have just a few gods that are like wild teenagers with superpowers. Others have austere, supreme, abstract gods like Vahiguru. Others have deities so limited and subservient it barely make sense to call them "gods" to the Western mind raised on the Greatest Conceivable Being.

I think this is much better explained by the theory that humans have evolved a disposition toward assuming agency rather than by saying a single being revealed himself in thousands of different ways to different humans across many millenia just so they could be confused and fight wars over each other over whose god was better.

{ Do you know that in ancient time the scriptures about God were available only to the most rich and intelligent people.
Why would they invent the letters and preserve the knowledge about God?
They had everything in their life. }

Many different reasons. Why did Hubbard invent Scientology, or Joseph Smith invent Mormonism, or Mohammed invent Islam? Why did the cargo cults of the south pacific arise? Why did the hundreds of folk religions throughout siberian arise? Sometimes it is deliberate, for power and money. Most of the time, I imagine, it's just that scared people who have no idea how the world works suppose that there are invisible people controlling everything, and they can be appeased and controlled through sacrifices or prayers or weird rituals. The evolution of various religions is a well-studied topic and there are many answers as to why they are born and grow and spread and die.

{ Why would the most powerful people announce that there is even more powerful than them? }

Because it's quite possible they honestly assumed there WAS such a being. They didn't understand how hurricanes worked - surely it must be the work of a very powerful invisible person that must be appeased. Or else they invent the god and claim to be is medium, so they can exercise even greater control.

What is your awareness-wave theory? What does it propose? What testable predictions follow from it? How could it be falsified? What data bears on its truth or falsity?

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:57:18 -0000

{ It is illogical to think that the ancient “atheists” who didn’t have clue about immortality and Spirit will invent them and attribute them to supreme entity.

The idea for “invented” God is absolutely shallow from logical and psychological perspective. }

Nikolay, in all fairness, I don't know anyone who agrees with you. Historians know that unexperienced things can be imagined. Psychologists know it. Neuroscientists know it. Philosophers of mind know it. Writers of fiction know it. Everyday people know it. What you're claiming is "impossible" is not just possible but commonplace. The human mind is fully capable of inventing new concepts.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:35:26 -0000

Sorry, Truden, your theory is incoherent to me. There are so many non-sequiters and vague terms in what you've written above and on Facebook that I have no idea what you are saying. If you can define your terms and then help me out by putting your argument in standard form (P1, P2, P3, with no huge gaps in reasoning like above), then perhaps I will able to know what you are saying. Short of that, I have nothing to say.

But I know that might take a while to present your argument that way, so I will understand if you decline.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:52:49 -0000

{ Science has discovered uniform standards do not apply to all reality. Newton’s laws must exist side-by-side with quantum mechanics. }

Newton was superceded by Einstein. Einstein's equations are in conflict with quantum mechanics. Scientists do not think this is because there is literally a logical contradiction in nature, but because something is wrong with one of the two sets of theories. Everybody and their mother is currently scrambling to find out where. Whoever solves this problem is greater than Einstein and wins 10 Nobel prizes.

{ How can you get upset or frustrated with anyone when they are simply “determined” anyhow? }

Frustration is an emotional reaction, not a logical one. But even if I had no emotions I would still use social forces to affect people's behavior to try to make the world better.

{ If you consider the origins of modern science, you will see it is indebted to western religion and arose in Europe for a reason. Thus, the two, western religion and science, actually share some of the same basic assumptions and limitations. It would be great to open ourselves up to the wisdom of the east. Our science is already showing all of that stuff ain’t just superstition or antiquated philosophy. But I imagine we would disagree about that as well. }

Yeah, um, I'm not even going to go there. :) We've said enough.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:55:28 -0000

Truden,

You last post reads like the infamous Sokal paper. The way you structure arguments and meanings is gibberish to me. I don't speak that language - whether it's continental philosophy or postmodernism or whatever it is, I can't for the life of me fill in your massive non-sequiters with the assumed connective tissue.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:31:03 -0000

Yes, and logic and math arose in a pagan culture. Whoopty ding.

> You wouldn’t be using anything. You would simply be a robotic agent at the expense of your genes, environment, and natural selection. <

Yes. That is me. Because of my genes, environment, and experiences, I would "use social forces to affect people's behavior to try to make the world better."

{ upon what grounds would you define “better”? }

Morally better. This the topic of my book, how to literally and actually make the world a "better" place.

Re: Newton. We're in agreement. All I meant to clarify is that Newton's laws of motion are known to "work" on certain scales, but they are known to be literally incorrect. Einstein's equations are the ones that work both on human scales and intergalactic scales.

But you're right; not at quantum scales. This is a huge problem, and the driving force behind the search for a "theory of everything," that makes sense of or eliminates this discrepancy.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:52:32 -0000

I don't start with the assumption that we should. I was wanted to make the world a better place, so I started looking around to see if there was such a thing as "better", and if so, what was better and what was worse?

I looked for a while and couldn't find any good arguments for moral realism, so I kinda gave up. I wrote a very short essay on this problem called The Moral Crisis. I started looking into other issues. Then, quite by surprise, I came across a theory of moral realism that actually made sense and made only true claims about what really exists.

That theory was desire utilitarianism, which I briefly introduce (but do not explain) in this two-minute video.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:08:15 -0000

{ There are to reasons for such answer:
1) You don’t want to answer my question.
2) You are really not that intelligent.

I think that you are intelligent. }

Truden, I'm asserting:

(3) There are massive non-sequiters in your argument and I cannot imagine what you assume to fill them with in order to make your argument coherent.

For example, here is one attempt to interpret your argument:

1. The wave-particle lacks observable stable state.
2. The wave-particle can be observed only as behavior. [but isn't everything observed this way?]
3. [Non-sequiter] Therefore, the wave-particle is not an entity. (from 1, 2)
4. Behavior without a source is an illusion/dream. [i see know reason to grant this premise at all. Also, you must distinguish between "without a source" and "without a known source"]
5. [Non-sequiter] Therefore, the wave-particle is an illusion/dream, as we discovered recently. (from 2, 4)
6. According to the ancient Jewish religion, God created the universe with words.
7. [Non-sequiter] Therefore, ancient Jewish religion claimed that some parts of the universe were an illusion/dream. (from 6)
8. Science discovered the wave-particle was an illusion/dream several millennia after religion predicted we would find an illusion/dream in the universe (from 5, 7, and the knowledge that the wave-particle function was discovered recently)
9. If a religion makes a vague claim that turns out to be somewhat true under a very different interpretation, no matter how many claims it has made that are totally false, this demonstrates some truth of the religion.
10. Therefore, there is some truth to Judaism (from 7, 8, 9)

I haven't tried to fix your argument to be logically valid, but I think there are obviously a lot of non-sequiters and false premises if this is a fair attempt to analyze your argument.

Re: From Faith to Common Sense Atheism

Luke — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:49:34 -0000

Truden,

I think I understand what you were trying to say, more or less, I just don't think you ever put it into a cogent argument. What you were saying was similar to what Deepak Chopra says about quantum consciousness, for example. I don't think it meets the standards of logic, let alone any standards of evidence.

Re: I whispered to myself: "There is no god" - Testimonies of Ex-Christians

Luke — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:27:59 -0000

Thanks for all your kind and encouraging comments!

Pressurehead, I have since moved to L.A. - if I were in Minneapolis I'd be happy to huddle around a warm cup of hot cocoa with you.

Re: Mobile Melodies: Top 10 Musical Performances on Cellphones

Luke — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:51:38 -0000

Love the MGMT cover, and I do look forward to an Android Orchestra, preferably playing the Super Mario Bros. theme.

Re: Daniel Dennett vs. Dinesh D’souza Debate (Review)

Luke — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:23:20 -0000

I don't recall Dawkins or Dennett saying that evolution disproved God. I think they've said that evolution makes God all the more improbable, in the same way that he got more improbable when we discovered how solar systems form (debunking one of Newton's famous reasons for believing in God despite the success of gravity in explaining so much), etc.

I don't see Plantinga's argument as positive at all. It once again takes the form of a negative argument: "We can't yet explain how this unlikely thing would have happened under Naturalism, so therefore Yahweh did it."

I don't think Smolin agrees with you about Smolin. :) I shall link to some very recent papers about the plausibility of Smolin's theory when I write a post about it.

I think there are some weak arguments in Smolin's work, of course, but also some fairly impressive ones. Again, I'll post about that later. But I do look forward to reading Susskind; I could easily be wrong.

Thanks for linking to that debate!

A question for you:

Let's say all these fine-tuning arguments are actually sound. Let's throw in the cosmological arguments, too. Let's say all those are sound. I think ALL of them have flaws that are immediately obvious to me, but let's say they are sound.

What follows from that? The cause could be an intelligent alien race from a higher dimension. It could be the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It could be a committee of good and evil gods (which explains the real world much better than a single, all-good God, I think). Our universe could be a giant science experiment from some math student of an advanced race. It could be the work of Vahiguru, or thousands of other gods. Why on earth would you conclude that it must be the work of the ancient Israelite tribal god they borrowed from the Canaanites, the one named Yahweh?

For you to think all that it seems you must resort not to evidence, but to the claim that the revelation impressed upon YOU is correct, and the revelation impressed upon billions of others throughout history (including other Christians) by their invisible friends is mistaken.

And then, if you're like most other religious people, you claim not only to know very specific things about the god that is responsible for all this "intelligent design," but you also claim to know his mind. What he thinks, what he wants from us. And you disagree with most of the other people who claim to know the mind of the exact same person.

I'm curious: how do you justify all this? Or, have I put too many words in your mouth? I'm making big assumptions based on the majority of Christians.

Re: Top 10 Kanye West Interruption Parodies

Luke — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:33:05 -0000

YES!

I love the one about Anne Frank.

"Yo Anne, I'm happy for you and I'm gonna let you finish, but Joseph Fritzl had one of the best hiding places of all time!"

Re: Vista Service Pack Beta 1 Coming Next Week?

Luke — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:49:04 -0000

You posted about Cory Holt's Wordpress K2 Scheme "Miniature", but the link is dead and I can't find anywhere to download it on the net. Do you have the file?