And A Reaction From "Bitchspot"...

One of the ways bloggers are punished for being bloggers is that newbies show up (that is good) and they don’t understand the nature of the current conversation because it is based on premises long since established and now hard to find in the blog history. So the entire argument has to be recreated for the newbie (newbies are good, I repeat).

In this case, I will have to recreate argument premises for Bitchspot, who claims to be the exposer of stupidity, which we’ll have to take charitably as actually meaning irrationality, which in turn means non-Atheism. Actually we don’t know what it means.

Bitchspot says,

” However, whether you’re being open about it or not, you are comparing atheism to something else, that other thing is clearly theism. “

So we start with a presumption and not actual examples. In fact, what is being compared is Atheism to disciplined logic. If there is a consistent variance here from arguing that Atheism doesn’t pass its own standards of logic and evidence, using just logic and evidence, then show me and I’ll stop doing that (probably). All it takes is actual disciplined logic to refute Atheism. That is different from the “everything I say is logic” viewpoint that most Atheists project.

I’ll be happy to engage using just disciplined logic.

” As such, I’m going to treat it as it actually is and be open in my criticism of theism and demonstrate that your attacks on atheism are unfounded.”

If that's what you insist upon, rather than looking at the actual charges of logic failure and irrationality... Let’s have it. Too bad you don't engage the actual argument though.

” “Do you believe in any gods?” If you answer yes, you are a theist, if you answer no, you are an atheist. Full stop. That is all the word means.”

Nice try. The actual denial of the common deity around these parts known as God is the basis for Atheism, and the actual denial should be accepted and admitted if honesty is part of the deal here. If you choose to claim that you have not rejected the claim of Theism, then you cannot legitimately argue against it, since you have no opinion of it. The claim of having no opinion is a sure sign of intellectual non-integrity, and whether you deny that or not, it is still the case. The Atheist gag is to avoid having any burden of proof for support of their own position by denying their own belief system. And they expect to be trusted?

Further, there are definite, real consequences attached to declaring a void as the foundational basis for a worldview. Those consequences attach to Atheism whether Atheists like it or not. Foremost amongst those consequences is the necessary relativist moral position, which eliminates trustworthiness for Atheists right up front. Atheists might claim a moral system, but it is usually one that is made up by themselves or someone else from whom they stole it. As for culture determining morality, there is quite a variability in that position, what culture should we choose? The direct consequence of Atheism is that without a fixed moral system there is no way to measure behaviors against a defined standard. With no way to measure, there is no way to generate trust. So when any and all behaviors are accepted so long as a moral theory is provided to accompany them, this directly relates to trustworthiness and why Atheists cannot generate it.

” Atheism, he says, claims logic and evidence for itself. How so?”

This is incredibly basic. Anyone who has heard any of the New Atheists and their legions know that this is what they claim. They are rational, logic and evidence based; religion is blind belief in sky fairies. This author uses similar pejoratives. "how so" indeed!

” The reality is, we have no evidence of anything else beyond the material world. Theists want to believe there is more, but they simply have not provided a shred of objective evidence that it’s actually so.”

The modifying adjective, “objective” is the key here. This is code for material evidence of a non-material existence. That is a blatant Category Error Fallacy.

Here is an important fact: Atheists have not provided a shred of objective evidence that it is not actually so. Atheists believe that there is no non-material agent. Denying that they have that belief is fatal to trust, because it is self-evident. But Atheists have no evidence to support their belief, nor do they have any logical case to support their belief. The importance of this is that the Atheist requirement for material evidence is a fallacy: a Category Error. They will readily admit that such evidence cannot logically be provided to support their own case, but never has one relinquished that demand of others. So that Error leads to the next error: Special Pleading for Atheism.

” Until they are able to provide evidence or use logic to show that something exists beyond the material, no one is obligated to take their empty claims seriously. Science isn’t required to prove that only the material universe exists, it rests solely on those claiming that something else is real to demonstrate that it is so. I don’t have to prove unicorns aren’t real either, I just don’t have to take them seriously without corroboratory evidence.”

There are no claims more empty than the Atheist’s claims. He claims that his beliefs are actually a void, and upon this void he builds his very own morality and his very own rules of evidence: there are no facts which are not materialist facts. I will borrow some text here from my response to the other blogger today:

” Sir, your definition of the scientific method is only partial, having omitted the very first sort. The first sort is done by determining the falsifiability of the proposition. This is the Popper Demarcation Principle (note 1). This merely says that if a claim cannot be proven false using empirical, material techniques, then it is not a proposition which science can address. Now you claim to use premise/conclusion, so let’s put this principle into a syllogistic deductive format:

P1: IF[a proposition Q is not falsifiable under empirical material testing procedures], THEN [it is not available for adjudication under the procedures of empirical science];

P2: Proposition Q is not falsifiable under material testing procedures;

C: Therefore empirical science cannot adjudicate Proposition Q.

Now then, the proposition, Q, might be that ”there is no non-material existence”

Empirical science is voluntarily and functionally material-limited (not philosophically, only functionally). So there is no material procedure which can test for non-material existence. This is a given, an understood limitation of science. Being unable to test the proposition, the proposition cannot be either proven nor can it be falsified (refuted). So science is impotent in the case of Proposition Q.

In fact, the assertion/belief that science can, in fact, adjudicate questions of non-material existence is false, and is known as Scientism, an erroneous belief system. It is also a Category Error of the most basic kind, expecting to find Set [!A] within Set [A].”

The perception that demanding material evidence is a rational procedure for dealing with processes outside science is merely a door-stop.

” Furthermore, you have not attempted in the slightest degree, so far, to provide any actual empirical scientific data that shows the complete non-existence of non-physical existence. What you have chosen to present is presumptions (based on ignoring certain issues which I will get to in a moment) which are that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”, a demonstrably false proposition. Here is your basis for your Truth statement.

IF [there is no evidence for P], THEN [P cannot exist].

Since science is your only source of knowledge, then I challenge you to devise an experiment which shows this to be the case for all possible P.

What you are actually asserting is the standard Inductive Fallacy of philosophical misapplication, which says that if there is no evidence for black swans, then black swans do not exist. This is false. It is an improper inductive extrapolation. Further, true logical induction does not assert that its findings are adequate to be a universal philosophical Truth, as you do. Inductive logic merely says that no swans that are not white have been observed so far. This is a statement of fact, not of philosophical Truth.”

Now let’s assume that you are really asserting that you feel that you should remain skeptical until material evidence is found. The Category Error assures us that no material evidence is possible for a non-material entity, therefore that none will ever be found, so of course your skepticism is guaranteed to be absolute. But it is meaningless due to the Fallacy involved.

” As I was saying before, we use logic and evidence as tools for determining the most likely solution to questions. The goal of science is to reach a true understanding of the universe around us, not to embrace something that makes us feel good. One of the most important tools that we have is the concept of falsifiability. That says, among other things, that if taking a position among two in conflict, choosing the one which is most easily falsified is best.”

That is not what falsifiability means, that is parsimony. Falsifiability was defined by Karl Popper, as the demarcation between propositions which are available for material, testable science, vs. propositions which are not available for material, testable science. A non-falsifiable proposition will always test true, because it cannot be falsified. Metaphysical propositions are non-falsifiable, and cannot be adjudicated by scientific methodology. Failure to make this connection/distinction leads to the ever present Category Error of Atheism.

Next, it is the inevitable unicorn analogy:

” If you substitute “gods” for “unicorns”, the problem remains. Gods are often very ill-defined or defined in such a way to make finding them through scientific means impossible. Thus, the only rational position one can take is that gods, provisionally, do not exist until someone can demonstrate a single objective example that they do.”

This is still Parsimony, only using falsification as the metric. Take the simplest answer as valid, because the other position is too hard. But that cannot be a truth statement; it is only a statement of what is the easiest. This is not a principle of rational thinking and it was falsified by Einstein.(note 1). And it maintains the Category Error as its criterion for judgment.

” This has been a long way to explain why materialism is also the only rational argument one can make. We have trillions of examples of material things, no one has ever produced any evidence of a non-material thing. Until someone does, there’s no reason to take claims of the supernatural seriously. It’s nothing personal, it’s just being logical.”

Actually it’s not being logical, it is invoking a Category Error in the futile pursuit of Positivism.

” Atheism is not a worldview, it has no requirement to have a moral theory. Yet again, we see an empty claim by a theist about atheism which they clearly do not understand.”

Atheism is the foundation for a Positivist worldview; without Atheism and its void(s), the Materialist worldviews would not develop. Denying the role of Atheism and its consequences in worldviews is on a par with denying that Atheists reject God hypotheses; it is completely non-credible because the contrary is self-evident.

” Certainly you can find a non-religious moral system, secular humanism certainly is one such system to which many atheists subscribe. However, let’s keep assuming that morality is somehow attached to atheism and evaluate it that way.”

Go ahead, but that is not my position. My position is that Atheism has no morality attached: none whatsoever. So Atheism results in moral positions being determined primarily if not solely by the individual Atheist, who has presumed for himself the moral authority to invent morality. And because there are as many moral systems as there are Atheists, there is no possible way to determine in advance what sort of behavior any given Atheist will consider moral. For this reason Atheists are unable to generate any trust.

>Insert standard slavery argument< Does the slavery argument invalidate the position that Atheist morals are self-derived and based on the presumption of the moral authority of the self? No. The slavery argument is a blatant Tu Quoque, intended to veer the actual argument off into the weeds. The fact of slavery is that the debate was over who was fully human and deserved the respect of full humans, an issue that still plagues Atheists, who reserve the right to make that determination as they wish. It was Wilberforce and the Theists that brought the initial logical and moral leverage to end slavery. Atheists cannot justify why slavery might be immoral, because morals are culture dependent. And the fact that they still reserve to themselves the right to determine who is and who is not fully human renders Atheists not trustworthy.

” However, today you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people who thought that way. Society, and thus morality changed. Morals are entirely secular in their origin and vary from society to society and time to time.”

False. This view of morals completely reduces the concept to nothing:

If [morals are secular], AND [morals are relative to the seculars involved], THEN [morals can be any behavior whatsoever];

This definition attempts to absolutely destroy the concept of right behaviors, decency, and valued character traits. No, rather it does destroy those things, and it leads to distrust of Atheists.

More text borrowed from the prior post:

Yes, this is the concept which many Atheists use: morals are socially derived, so in a given society, whatever they choose for themselves is Moral, by Atheist definition. This total flexiblity in moral sense is the reason that Dawkins observed that it is not possible for him to fault Hitler, who was doing the socially-derived moral thing. Under the Atheist concept of morality, there is exactly no morality as a fixed concept. As society “evolves”, it can accept killing fetuses, then killing defective postnatal babies (PNAC), then killing old people by denying health care (Obama's "grandma"), then killing subnormal individuals who “can’t have a productive, happy life”, then killing subnormal ethnic groups who are not productive, etc., and there is no end to this "rational" progression.. This is only an example, not an actual progression, yet it is not precluded under Atheist variable moral theories (think Peter Singer).

These progressions, while not yet in force, of course are not morals, they are Consequentialist tactics which are deemed moral, because Atheists thought them up and call them such. The word "morality" has come to have no meaning under Atheism, because it encompasses any and all behaviors, discriminating against none. A concept which has no capacity to discriminate or differentiate against what it is not, is useless: morality = any and all behaviors. Under Atheism it has no meaning.

In the shorter term, however, Atheists find that they cannot generate any trust from others, because they believe in the total variability of Consequentialism as their ethic/tactic. In fact, there is no reason for one Atheist to trust any other Atheist, because of the extreme fluidity of their “moral” system.

Here the Tu Quoque is driven home:

” If you go back through the writings of the day, you essentially find the same kind of thing going on. “God demands that XXX is immoral, you need to repent!” Yet society does change and the religious fanatics of the day fade into obscurity. In another 15-20 years, we’re all going to look back and wonder why anyone made a big deal about gay marriage. The religious will find some way to justify it by interpreting the Bible differently because they’re part of society as well and they need to fit in. The idea that atheists have no morality is laughable in light of the fact that so-called religious morality is just as malleable.”

None of the Theist moral tenets are malleable. What is malleable is the understanding brought to the tenets. Atheists refuse to understand that, or at least they show no sign of understanding that. What has changed is not the religious tenet, it is the underlying secular issues of whether a certain race or group is fully human, an issue on which Atheism is consistently on the side of "not fully human", and the consequences attached to that position.

” In reality, all morality is secular because all morality comes from our need to live together in a cohesive social group. It wasn’t spoken into reality by some imaginary father figure in the sky, it was made up by people who have to find a way to live together. Atheists recognize this simple and demonstrable fact.”

Then demonstrate it empirically; the hard data you generate should be interesting. Being evidence based, you will surely wish to provide that for us. If you cannot, then your claims are not accepted.

” The religious do not. If anything, we ought to criticize the theists for their anti-social, immoral behavior. After all, you don’t see atheists dragging gay people around behind their cars or burning crosses on the lawns of their black neighbors. That’s religion, folks.”

Atheists do things in a bigger way, killing thousands and millions at a time. 250,000,000 at last count just in the last ten decades. In fact, the biggest hazard to gays is other gays, from their violence and their diseases, and from themselves through suicide; and the biggest hazard to blacks is other blacks and abortion. Your comments are bigoted and misapplied; Atheist murders are commonplace around the globe. Take a look at China, North Korea, and Cuba for continuing Atheist brutality. That's Atheism folks.

” These are all moral commandments which aren’t taken seriously anymore.”

False. They were functional codes. Like traffic laws or EPA regulations.

” Christians find some way to justify it, saying Jesus came and “fulfilled the law” and made them moot, but hey, a fixed moral system is a fixed moral system. If it can change, if it demonstrably has changed, it’s not fixed is it?”

You conflate the functional codes with the moral codes. A necessary error for the Atheist view of the Bible.

” So where is the much vaunted claims of theist logic and reason? We have a word for what’s happening here, it’s “hypocrisy”. Purely “do as I say, not as I do” and that’s absolutely dishonest. Now maybe this individual has never thought about their religion that way, certainly I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t tell you how many Christian apologists I’ve run into who make exactly these kinds of claims and when I point out the exact same thing I’ve pointed out here, they run and hide. They knew about the inconsistencies in their beliefs, they just choose to ignore them.”

This is absolute bullshit. The claims I made were in regard to Atheism, its fallacies and non-coherences. There were no “do as I say” statements. None. All that was provided was the pointers to the obvious irrationality which accompanies all of Atheist thought. This last portion of his blog veers into irrational claims about positions which were not taken. He has presumed that my position must be X and so he declares that X and I are hypocritical and absolutely dishonest. That alone is enough intellectual dishonesty on his part to demonstrate the underlying irrationality to any observer. He declares inconsistencies in my beliefs without any knowledge whatsoever as to what my position might be. If there is any bigotry and hypocrisy involved in this exchange, it is right here in his charges.

However, let me make my position clear:

Atheism is not provable using materialist empirical techniques and demanding such is a Category Error; so Atheism is a belief without proof: a blind belief. As a bind belief it is indiscernable from any other religion which is so based. And not all belief systems are so based; some have intellectually justifiable beliefs (rationally probable, and fully grounded).

Materialism cannot support its own claims using its own principles, and is therefore internally contradictory and false. The use of philosophical Materialism in a worldview is fatal to any truth claims about that view of existence.

Atheo-Materialism is ultimately indiscernible from Positivism; Positivism has long since been discredited.

Atheism has no morals attached and is vulnerable to any behaviors, which it will define as moral. This is because there is no differentiation in Atheist morality: all behaviors can qualify as moral, if a group (or even an individual) so claims.

Atheists presume for themselves the moral authority to define morality for themselves and others, and then to declare others immoral, hypocritical, etc. even though in Atheist land all behaviors are moral depending upon the group which holds them moral (especially under Consequentialism).

Atheists want to believe that theist precepts are as variable as the Atheist moral void produces; in fact, although people fail the precepts, the precepts do not change. Moreover, the secular cultural influence on the understanding of those precepts requires shaking loose the secular influence in order to comprehend the actual meaning of the precept, free of secular bias. This is called radical fundamentalism which is morally condemned under Atheo-Secularism. That condemnation is an aspect of the Special Pleading which is common to Atheist reasoning: all behaviors are moral unless the group holding to that behavior is Theist.

The charges against me above are made in a vacuum and are false; and the pretension of having knowledge which enabled judgment is also fallacious. So if there is bigotry here, on which side is it demonstrated?

Note 1: Parsimony, Mach and Einstein
Ernst Mach advocated a version of Occam's razor which he called the Principle of Economy, stating that

"Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses."

Taken to its logical conclusion this philosophy becomes positivism:
the belief that there is no difference between something that exists but is not observable and something that doesn't exist at all.

Mach influenced Einstein when he argued that space and time are not absolute but he also applied positivism to molecules. Mach and his followers claimed that molecules were metaphysical because they were too small to detect directly. This was despite the success the molecular theory had in explaining chemical reactions and thermodynamics.

It is ironic that while applying the principle of economy to throw out the concept of the ether and an absolute rest frame, Einstein published almost simultaneously a paper on brownian motion which confirmed the reality of molecules and thus dealt a blow against the use of positivism.

The moral of this story is that Occam's razor should not be wielded blindly. As Einstein put it in his Autobiographical notes:

"This is an interesting example of the fact that even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices."