Daniel Henson makes up a story

Henson has a paper which he calls Dossier of Reason. Is it? Let’s take a quick look.

Here is just part one, The Problem of Predisposition, which he seems to think drives all personal philosophies:

I. The theist defines a god. He defines his nature, his character, his actions and concerns.

This is abjectly ignorant of actual Theism. By making up a phony Theist, Henson has predicated his entire argument on a completely false premise. Actual Theism observes physical reality (empirically) and then deduces whether non-physical observable traits which exist could have physical, deterministic causes. If not, what sort of causes must they have, if they are not independent “causes without a cause” themselves. This is a legitimate thought process, and is entirely different from the Atheist thought process which eliminates a priori the ability of a non-physical process to have any other source than deterministic physical causes. This Atheist restriction is without any rational reason; it is dogma only.

Henson’s definition is a Straw Man. Atheists charge opponents with creating Straw Men in virtually every argument situation, and rarely if ever is their charge correct. Yet Atheists use Straw Men constantly in their own arguments, as is demonstrated here. It’s as if they fear that which they use the most, as robbers fearing being robbed because that is what they do and are familiar with.

Here the charge of Straw Man is legitimate. Henson has fantasized a target to attack in further arguments. Because he actually has fully defined his target, his argument might be valid regarding that target. The issue is whether that target represents actuality, and it quite obviously does not, except in Henson’s mind.

Because he conceptualizes Theists as fools, this entire work is seen to be an exercise in Atheist bigotry.

But for grins, let’s at least take a look at his second proposition.

II. The theist rejects thousands of other definitions of god without considering most of them.

False in the first place: Theists are aware that other gods are worshipped and that if they exist they are subsidiary to the creator of all of them, rendering them rationally trivial.

In the second place that is immaterial to any claims that a deity does not exist; it is merely the basis for a Tu Quoque Fallacy and nothing more.

This is interesting; a compendium of logic errors in a paper titled "Dossier of Reason". Let’s do the next one:

III. There are billions of people who reject the theist’s particular definition of god, who have as little regard for the theists (sic) definition of god as he does for their definition of god(s).

This is an appeal to popular opinion fallacy, which has no bearing on either facts or truth; it is used as prejudicial data, but it is not evidence for the lack of a non-physical agent.

IV The theist’s choices in defininig god are very likely determined by culture, accident of birth, and childhood indoctrination.

While this has some credibility in terms of demographics, it has no bearing on whether a non-physical agent actually exists; it is another set of prejudicial data which is without any truth value regarding the actual subject. And it includes the fallacy from number I, above, assuming that the deity is created by humans as the first premise in the argument (circular).

V. The Outsider Test.

This is a bogus assumption which assumes that there are no logical arguments to be made, and proceeds to attack arguments which are neither necessary nor sufficient, nor even useful for the actual subject at hand. All logical arguments are ignored as if they do not exist. This is prejudicial to the maximum, and has no value in determining the credibility of actual Theist arguments.

That’s it for part one. I see no need to continue, since every argument is false or prejudicial and non-essential. In terms of philosophy and logic, this paper is a non-starter.