Responding to Jeffrey Jay Lowder's Second Post Regarding My Ignorance and Lack of Knowledge and Integrity.

[Note: Be forewarned: this turned out to be very long.]

I just realized that given the last Lowder post was called the “third”, there must also have been a second (see how I did that?). Sure enough there is one. His rebut starts with this:

”If Stan knew as much about philosophy as he claims, he would know that questions don’t have defeaters. “

I never claimed to be a philosopher: I would never, ever do that, and I have written on why I would not ever do that. For one thing it seems to compromise thought processing due to the need to attain and maintain credentialing in the peer world; that stifles many paths. For another, it requires up-front rejection of all previous philosophical musings in order to produce something new, thereby producing necessary radicalism, which is an acceptable pathway. But yes, I did use a somewhat confusing term there, and the question should have been a clear assertion, with no inference required of the reader.

However, Lowder took an unnecessary shot at something which I don’t claim, in an obvious attempt to demean me, as a person, which is a reduction of his integrity in my estimation, not to mention a cheap rhetorical tactic.

Lowder said this:

"Because atheists, naturalists, and materialists aren’t required to believe that God, the supernatural, and the immaterial, respectively, cannot exist, there is no justifiable reason for Stan’s insistence that they prove as much."

Jeffery Jay Lowder is right in this sense: Atheism has no principles or beliefs attached to it all. None. Atheism, taken by itself, is a void, a negation, a rejection, and nothing more. There are no positive assertions or principles attached to basic Atheism, only the negative assertion that “there is no deity” (or in one of its deviant forms), which is more of an anti-principle and anti-belief.

However, atheists don’t sit still at that point, they proceed directly to backfill the void. What they backfill the void with is up to the individual. Some become Marxists, some become materialist/naturalists, some become metaphysical naturalists who do only induction, and so on. There is no intellectual or philosophical or moral limit on what the atheist might become, after the void. So the one thing which atheists have in common is the rejection of deity, and even then some claim only not to have any deity beliefs, some claim that there is no deity, some claim that it is “probable” that there is no deity, and so on. So it is true that the only thing that can be said about atheists is that they have no beliefs in common at all, except that they do not accept theism.

This lack of commonality in positive principles is what I refer to as the atheist void. But the void does have some fairly common consequences, including rejecting absolutes (except for a few personal preferences here and there); the need to create a personal moral theory or at least some principles which can be called morals in an emergency, or some principles which can be applied to the Other for shaming, but generally nothing which is absolute for the behavior of oneself. And there is the general drift toward Leftism and Messiahism which emerges from intellectual condescension and self-righteousness.

But, leaving that digression, many atheists do make some claims despite having no common principles, claims like “we are good without God”, or various teapot/FSM/unicorn/euthyphro false analogies, or naturalist/materialist demands for natural/material evidence, or demands for answers to prayers for cheeseburgers to be handed to them by God, etc.

But none of this atheist effluential ejecta addresses the real need for disciplined knowledge, or even acknowledges such a need. And that topic is generally met with thunderous silence when the topic is broached in terms of the necessities and sufficiencies required for actual objective conclusions.

So what I do now is to repeat my original statement, in the following manner, so as not to trigger the literalism police as I have in the past. I agree that clarity is essential in the pursuit of disciplined knowledge. So here is another attempt to make it clear what is required, if one claims any certainty regarding a material-based ideology - and if atheists don’t possess certainty, then why do they make such a big deal out of their contingent beliefs? (note 1)

” In general atheists claim that atheism is based on evidence and logic. Were that the case, and were atheism a robust truth, then there would be both empirical, experimental, falsifiable and not falsified, replicable and replicated, peer reviewed with open data, physical evidence (under physicalism); and/or a disciplined deductive argument which is of valid construction, grounded and demonstrably true premises, which passes the test of Reductio Ad Absurdum. “ (yes I changed the term to reductio).

And kindly notice that this statement, which is not a question, applies to whatever “atheism” is being claimed by any given atheist, whether it is that “God does not exist”, or “God cannot exist”, or “maybe God sorta kinda exists”, or “God probably doesn’t exist”, or “I refuse to give reasons for rejecting theism”, and so on. The point is that atheists, being in a contra-religion, never seem to want to discuss the actual objective, physical justification for their intellectual existence in the objectivity void, in real, empirical terms as are presented in the statement above.

Next Lowder declares my request for actual empirical data to be gibberish:

”Stan continues:

It is apparent that the concept of empirical evidence is different for JJ Lowder, in that it seems to refer to personal inferences which are taken from material situations, and even then not all of the claims even refer to actual material “things”. Perhaps this is a consequence of habitual inductive thinking; but the term “empirical” should ring a bell, one would think. Empiricism is the gold standard for material evidence. However, under mataphysical [sic] naturalism, who knows what the criteria might be, since they would likely be metaphysical? That renders them nonfalsifiable, empirically, though, and thus they can’t actually qualify as knowlege.

Lowder replies:

This is mostly a bunch of philosophical gibberish, but let me attempt to clarify what I think they key issues are. (1) As a Bayesian, I believe evidence is a term that describes a relationship between two or more propositions. One proposition (A) can be evidence for another proposition (B) insofar as A increases the probability of B. (2) For “ultimate” metaphysical hypotheses like supernaturalism, naturalism, and theism, we can objectively compare the intrinsic probabilities of such hypotheses using such criteria as modesty and scope.

And here is the rub: the act of objectively comparing propositions which have no actual objective source (objective: replicable, falsifiable, experimental data) is an exercise in comparing possible to probably fantasies. If neither A nor B have any real world existence, the comparison can still go on, despite the ideological bias which is hardly possible to avoid. And the fact that no one at Lowder’s place, nor Lowder himself has addressed this issue seems to convey that they don’t care about grounding A or B in objective empiricism or demonstrable valid and disciplined deduction. In other words, the propositions and their justifications are inferential all the way down, under inductive unknowability.

Next, Stan:

”The idea that subjective conclusions which are inferred from observations are conclusive, is incorrect.”

Lowder:

”Once again we see Stan attacking that stupid “atheists must believe conclusively / categorically / incorrigibly that God cannot exist” caricature of atheism. (What wouldStan do without that idea?)”

Actually what this statement really means is that their own inferred, inductive calculations are without any actual value, conclusively; so when they draw their conclusions (the probability of A is greater than the probability of B), they are not conclusive conclusions. As asked above, if atheists – this group anyway – can’t or won’t consider their conclusions to have actual knowledge value, then why do they persist in the selective use of induction at the expense of other available, more conclusive methods which they won’t use? And why do they persist as active internet atheists, if they admit to the lack of such knowledge? Could it be that the exclusive use of this specific tool always gives the answer they want, given that they can drive it that way?

Finally there is this exchange:

” Stan then complains I did not respond to the following challenge.

Stan:

Here’s the challenge to atheists: Rather than disproving disproof, as your approach has been, the more straightforward simple proof for atheism illuminates the problem for atheism:
When you can prove, conclusively, robustly, and incorrigibly that there positively is no deity in existence, cannot under any circumstance be a deity in existence, and have the material evidence for that, or even a disciplined, grouunded, [sic] deductive argument for that, then you have proven your case (atheism), and not until.

Further, when you can prove, conclusively, robustly, and incorrigibly that there positively is no non-material existence outside and beyond the capacity of material detection, and have the material evidence for that, or even a disciplined, grounded, deductive argument for that, then you have proven that case (materialism/physicalism as closed system), but not until.

Failure to provide these straightforward proofs would indicate that atheists and physicalists cannot have actual knowledge which supports their atheism and physicalism. Without that knowledge, atheism and physicalism are no more supported than mere fantasies.

Lowder:

”At the risk of repeating myself, here is my response.

1. Atheists qua atheists don’t believe that there “cannot under any circumstance be a deity in existence,” so there is no justifiable reason for Stan’s demand that they provide such evidence.

2. Atheists qua atheists don’t believe that there “is no non-material existence outside and beyond the capacity of material detection.” Here Stan seems to be confusing atheists with materialists, and so his demand of atheists is misplaced.

3. Stan’s assertion–that the belief that God does not exist requires a deductive proof to be justified–is just that: an assertion or a claim which requires some sort of justification. I do not find such a reason anywhere in his post. On the contrary, it seems to me that there is good reason to think Stan’s assertion is false. Just as theism can be justified if the weight of the evidence makes God’s existence highly probable, atheism can be justified if the weight of the evidence makes God’s existence highly improbable.”

First, “atheists qua atheists”? Lowder makes a claim for all atheists, now. His data here is lacking. But the assertion certainly can apply to himself, yet certainly not everyone I conversed with at his blog. So the universal is unwarranted. Nonetheless, the previous discussion of this, (way above) applies. And the conclusion applies: the use of self-created, ideologically-biased, prejudicial premises creates only fantasy conclusions.

Whether or not atheists don’t have a certainty belief, the challenge remains: if they cannot meet the criteria shown, then their atheism is not justified as anything more than a relativist belief system, in this case justified by forcing biased premises into a logical format for drawing a “probable” conclusion which they prefer. (note 2)

Now, for number 3. Lowder thinks that “the weight of evidence makes God’s existence highly improbable”, therefore a disciplined deduction is not necessary. Let’s see.

1. Theism accounts for all natural phenomena. Metaphysical naturalism does not, but probably claims that it can, even though it can’t at the moment.

2. Metaphysical naturalism is an arbitrary designation of a category which is not evident without significant justification. Even many atheists do not hold to metaphysics, and naturalism is without any material proof even possible for its belief in a closed, exclusive system. So the combination of naturalism with the non-physicalism of metaphysics is not accepted by a very wide swath of atheists and naturalists. The theory is thus a minority position within a minority position.

3. The refusal to admit the usage of deduction into the closely held cloister (which is dedicated to induction at the exclusion of the more direct connection between first principles and undeniable conclusions) seems odd, to the point of protective of a culture of willful self-delusion.

4. This is strengthened by use of ungrounded propositions to “support” other ungrounded propositions as increasing the probability of their truth. By ungrounded I mean that any probability calculations involving these propositions cannot be based on anything other than wishful thinking, because the actuals cannot be known; so probability must be created out of nothing in particular to support the argument. The probability is pure opinion.

5. The actuals are specified as mutually exclusive and binary (either there is a God or there is not a God). So it is either a 1 or a 0. So the priors are not based on any knowledge of whether the actuals are 1 or 0, they are based on prejudicially selected instances which are used as propositions and are assigned probability, also prejudicially. There is no other way to assign probabilities in the case of ideological, non-physical, competing theories of origin.

An example: Until 80 years ago it was thought that an infinitely old, fixed universe was more than just probable, it was truth; Einstein thought so until Hubble showed him the red shift. That particular probability went from 1 to 0 very quickly.

If simple naturalism is true, then there are logical lock-outs, such as the physical emergence of consciousness, agency, intellect, qualia, etc., from minerals, for example. The naturalist has no way to deduce those physical realities, and apparently avoids even trying to do so, in favor of comparing Just So Stories.

If metaphysics is added to simple naturalism, there is still no way to deduce the emergence of consciousness, agency, intellect, qualia, etc., using “metaphysics”, because there are no known or objectively knowable principles of “metaphysics”, and thus there are certainly none that override the principles of physics. So what then is the probability of the existence of this agency called “metaphysics”, which explains the physically unexplainable? Whatever probability is assigned is without any reasoning or grounding possible, other than the fatuous attempt to create a new metaphysical, supernatural agency (non-deity), for the use of atheism – to defeat the existing theory of a metaphysical, supernatural agent (deity). This is implied, not stated; to state it is to illuminate its absurdity.

Here Are Some Tests For Prejudice:
1. Are all cases covered? Are all objections covered?
2. Are the arguments grounded in objective fact, or are they ungrounded opinion?
3. Are the arguments based on reproducible, falsifiable principles?
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias
5. Is this a search for emergent truth, or a search for justification?


From the philosophy pages, some definitions:

induction
Probable reasoning whose conclusion goes beyond what is formally contained in its premises; see deduction / induction.

deduction / induction
Distinction in logic between types of reasoning, arguments, or inferences. In a deductive argument, the truth of the premises is supposed to guarantee the truth of the conclusion; in an inductive argument, the truth of the premises merely makes it probable that the conclusion is true.

Next: Addressing the “Rule of Total Evidence”, of which Lowder provided a scan for my edification:

Lowder’s source (Unknown text-type book):

”It is difficult to say in a general way what “available evidence” means in this context. How much research is required to be sure that we have accounted for all available relevant evidence? Obviously, we are seldom in a position to spend years of our lives - or even hours – acquiring evidence that is “available” in the sense that it is part of the store house of human knowledge. Often we must make judgments and take actions (such as agreeing to an operation) in the absence of evidence that may be “available” but that we are unable to obtain because we lack time or money. The requirement of total evidence is not intended to place unrealistic restrictions on reasoning. It only demands a reasonable effort to find appropriate reference classes. To follow the rule of total evidence, we must not ignore –through carelessness, prejudice, or laziness – evidence that is within our reach, and we must not suppress evidence that is known to be relevant.

Admirable in intent (ignoring the first excuses for not having time, etc.), but lacking two things: first a definition or set of criteria for what qualifies a concept or item as “evidence”; second, how to avoid bias in arguments consisting of ideological concepts which are ungrounded, either physically, or logically in first principles. So this seems to be an ethic which is not accompanied by operational details.

For example, the problems with naturalist solutions to features of life (i.e. consciousness, agency, etc., as given above) do not yield to naturalistic explanations; only bias can conclude otherwise, because those things cannot be deduced, nor can they be replicated via current objective science. Further, the extension of naturalism into metaphysical realms produces no actual explanations in terms of the metaphysical agent(s) and metaphysical principles by which the observable features of life are produced outside and beyond the physical realm. So there is nothing there upon which to confer a probability, except via opinion.

So the idea of Total Evidence must also take into account the questions of what qualifies as evidence, how explanatory it actually is, whether it is complete or merely implied, whether it is objective rather than a personal or shared bias, the personal integrity of the claimant, the objective of truth vs. justification, and so on. This issue does not exist in disciplined deduction.

So, after having claimed that I have no integrity, how will JJ Lowder defend his own?

NOTES:
Note 1: The observation that the atheists always choose the prejudicial “probability” of no God should indicate that their actual beliefs are subsumed in their choices, and their arguments are mere artifacts which reflect those actual beliefs.

Note 2: Let’s check Lowder’s own inductive arguments, here:

First argument: Lowder:

”False. A circular argument is an argument in which the conclusion is stated in (or entailed by) one or more of the premises. Consider the following argument which uses Bayes’s Theorem.
Let B be our background information; E be the existence of human consciousness; T be theism; and N be naturalism. 1. E is known to be true, i.e., Pr(E) is close to 1.

2. N is not intrinsically much more probable than T, i.e., Pr(N | B) is not much greater than Pr(T | B).
3. Pr(E | T) =1 > Pr(E | N).
4. Other evidence held equal, N is probably false, i.e., Pr(N | B & E) < 1/2.
Which premise(s) entail the conclusion? Answer: none. This shows the argument is not circular.
There are instances where opinion of the calculator would not necessarily be a factor; atheist calculations of the probability of the truth of atheism would not qualify as objective, however, and would not qualify as one of those instances.

Premise 2 is a declaration of probability, an assertion, not a fact. If this were a calculated probability based on say, proper sample sizes out of a distribution, then that is one consideration. But the manner used by Lowder for ideological considerations is the inverse of that. What the ideologist does is to create the probabilities for N and T out of no data whatsoever. So the prejudice involved and injected into the premise is palpable. It cannot be otherwise, without actual objective (empirical) reasons for determining the probabilities. Therefore, the prejudice for the outcome is contained in the premise: it is decidedly circular, and denial of the ideologist cannot change that. The second half of the last sentence of item 4 seems to verify this(!)

The problem is NOT with induction; the problem is with the application of induction to improper uses.

Second argument:

Lowder: ” This is a yet another statement of Stan’s prejudice. To show why it is false, let’s consider an actual evidential (Bayesian) argument for naturalism.

Consider William Lane Craig’s version of the fine-tuning argument which goes like this.

1. The fine-tuning of the universe’s initial conditions is either the result of chance, necessity or design. (Premise)
2. It is not the result of chance or necessity. (Premise)
3. Therefore, it is the result of design. (From 1 and 2) This argument is clearly valid. We want to know the probability of (3). As in the case of DA1, the probability of (3) will depend upon the probability of (2). If we have a very weak degree of belief that (2) is true, say we think Pr(2)=0.25, then, by itself, this argument only warrants the belief Pr(3)=0.25.

If we jump directly to the biased presupposition (in bold), it is obvious that the Pr(2) is purely based on “weak belief”, which is given an arbitrary value of 0.25, with no reasoning or data or evidence whatsoever.

The ONLY justification given is “if we have a very weak BELIEF”, and “SAY we THINK”.

This obviously contains beliefs, and personal thoughts, as probabilities for evidence: it even says so.

It is logically absurd to claim that no bias is involved in this process, when it is used for ideologies. It is designed around prejudice. It actually requires prejudice. To claim, as Lowder does above, that this is an "evidential" argument, is false; it is personal bias. Under the circumstances (inductive logic used for ideological purposes) it is apparent that the pursuit is an exercise in willful self-delusion, and that the use of it in a context of "intellectual" or "philosophical" elitism is purely self-indulgent.