Atheist Authors Lex Bayer and John Figdor Struggle With Logic

While this started as a review of an article at Salon, it has turned into a partial review of a partial bit of a book, and a bio. The book excerpt was at Salon, and the personal sketch was at MyTown, links below. The book is called, "Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart".
It is yet another attempt to repackage Atheism as a moral pursuit, but without principles. So they attempt to come up with some principles, and the initiation of that attempt is described below.

The new atheist commandments: Science, philosophy and principles to replace religion

The authors of this new book, titled,"Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, $32, 188 pages)" are challenging the Ten Commandments, claiming that their new commandments are better than God's. This is a bold statement, arrogant enough to consider what revelations in logic analysis these two authors might have for us.

"We begin by suggesting a framework of secular belief. It begins with the simple question, How can I justify any of my beliefs?

When thinking about why we believe in anything, we quickly realize that every belief is based on other preexisting beliefs. Consider, for example, the belief that brushing our teeth keeps them healthy. Why do we believe this? Because brushing helps removes plaque buildup that causes teeth to decay.

But why do we believe plaque causes decay? Because our dentists, teachers, and parents told us so. Why do we trust what our dentist says? Because other dentists and articles and books we’ve read confirmed it. Why do we believe those accounts? Because they presented many more pieces of information confirming the link between plaque, bacterial growth, and tooth decay. And why do we believe those pieces of information?

There seems to be no end."

At this point the authors reach the infinite regress issue. They have already demonstrated that their logic is outside of Aristotelian logic because no valid and true deductive argument is based on "preexisting beliefs". In order for a deductive argument to be valid, it must have a certain form; in order to be true it must be supported only by true premises, grounded in self-evident first principles. But on they go:

"...the process of justifying beliefs based on other beliefs never ends—unless at some point we manage to arrive at a belief that doesn’t rely on justification from any prior belief. That would be a foundational source of belief.

But this creates a paradox of its own: we can only justify a belief by basing it ultimately on source beliefs, and source beliefs by definition have no justifying beliefs. So the only way to justify a particular belief is to start with an unjustifiable belief.

It’s like getting down to the last turtle to find it resting on … nothing at all.

How maddening! Instead of clarifying how we can decide what to believe, we’ve instead proven that the only way to justify beliefs is to acknowledge that certain principles must be accepted without justification."

Logic for them apparently is too much to handle - no wonder it's maddening; failing to recognize actual universal axioms, they presume that justification extends beyond accessibility, or at least is not accessible to them. No, self-evident truth is not a paradox, and they have not "proven" that; it's merely a lack of education and comprehension on their part: either they do not recognize self-evidence, or they have not heard of the First Principles of Thought given to the world by Aristotle, taught in every Logic 101 class, and presented in every logic text. Let's go through their whole conundrum and try to analyze their logic by comparing it with Aristotelian, disciplined deductive process.

"One approach to this challenge is to treat the problem the same way mathematicians approach proofs: they determine a core set of assumptions and then prove theorems based on those assumptions. Instead of presuming source beliefs are beliefs based on faith, let’s instead regard them as the starting assumptions for a logical proof. We can put forth a set of core assumptions and then develop a broader system of belief based on those assumptions. If the resulting system fails to create a cohesive and comprehensive system of belief, then we can start over. The initial assumptions can then be reformulated until a set is found that does lead to a consistent, meaningful “theorem of life.”"

And so they go completely awry and off the rails into the abyss, merely because they have not studied actual logic and have taken upon themselves to develop their own system. Aristotle and 25 centuries of logic students must be spinning in their graves.

What they propose here is to create arguments on varying sets of subjective starting principles, rather than principles which are self-evidently correct axioms of existence and truth, i.e., the First Principles. If the argument's conclusion turns out wrong with this particular set of starting premises, then try another set of subjective starting principles, different from previous sets of principles. Repeat, until your selection of "basic principles" finally gets the answer you like. If you like the answer, then you like the premises you have selected to support your answer.

The process of selecting premises to support a conclusion is a logic failure called "rationalizing". It is entirely different from discerning the principles of geometry by starting with a rectangle of known characteristics, then cutting it diagonally corner to corner and thus by previously knowing the area of the rectangle, dividing by two, the equation for the triangle is developed because the equation for the rectangle is known. In geometry the answer can be known true even visually, before the equation is developed (Area of a triangle=1/2(LxW)).

But this is not the case for disciplined deduction. Deduction of the Aristotelian genre (still taught in Logic 101 classes today) requires that there be known, completely true, First Principle grounded premises in order for an argument to be declared true - and further, the argument must be of correct form in order to be valid; and the problem of incorrect form comes up for these two, below.

Next they put into play "logic principles" the first of which is not actually a principle of logic, starting with Ockham's Razor:

"Two other ideas may be useful in selecting a set of starting assumptions. The first is to favor simplicity. This is called Ockham’s razor, after the fourteenth-century philosopher and theologian William of Ockham."

Einstein blew this away as a necessary part of logic when he demolished Bohr's simplistic model with his proof of Brownian motion; Einstein observed that a thing "should be as simple as possible, but not simpler". Ockham's Razor failed, demonstrably and scientifically, and it is not an immutable principle of logic; it is merely a suggestion.

However, the authors strike paydirt with their version of Reduction Ad Absurdum, which they should have applied to the First Principles before making arguments with random sets of premises.

"A second tool for choosing basic source beliefs is to think about what it would mean to deny a particular source belief. In other words, if a particular belief were not true, would the resulting worldview make sense?"

But they charge ahead toward the cliff of Materialism.

"We propose that to develop a coherent framework of factual belief, we need to accept three core assumptions:

1. An external reality exists.
2. Our senses perceive this external reality.
3. Language and thought are tools for describing and understanding what our senses perceive.

Here they go clear over the cliff: There is an obvious set of external reality which our senses do not perceive and that includes much of quantum mechanical functioning which is a verified science, as well as the nature of consciousness and agency which we detect only via their consequences and not their causes. This failure is explained in their next list:

"The First Three Non-commandments...

"To rephrase the three core assumptions in light of the concepts we have just discussed, our starting assumptions are:

1. An external reality exists, and “truth” signifies an accurate description of that reality.
2. Our five senses are our only means for perceiving this reality.
3. Language and thought offer ways to analyze, communicate about, and contemplate the nature of the reality.

These core assumptions can be summed up as (1) a belief in existence, (2) an ability to perceive that existence, and (3) instruments for using those perceptions."

In "rephrasing" and especially then in their summary, the authors are changing meanings slightly. Initially they implied an external, physical reality; now they have changed over to an implication of "all existence", and further the implication that all existence can be perceived, physically. They have illegitimately smuggled in the necessity of Philosophical Materialism, merely by wording prestidigitation.

By eliminating any possibility of knowing anything about non-physical reality via logical deduction, they have artificially restricted all reality and knowledge to material "things" which physically exist, and can be perceived by our senses. This is a dishonest restriction, both because it is hidden in implication, and because it summarily dismisses other options without even recognizing their possibility of existing.

But they take upon themselves to declare Three Commandments, based on faux "bedrock beliefs", i.e. faux first principles:

"Because these three assumptions are the bedrock beliefs of all subsequent beliefs we will propose, they will serve as the first three non-commandments:

"I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.
II. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.
III. We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world."

So what they have done is to declare slippery principles which they declare to be non-commandments, that are actually rationalized conclusions which they are using to justify whatever set of first principles they need in order to produce those conclusions. This is circular and blatantly so: the conclusions are used to justify the premises, and the premises are selected to justify the conclusions. And it is also the logic failure of Affirming the Consequent. Further, as we have shown above, their logic chain is not based on actual First Principles, rather it is designed to smuggle in an ideology, that of Philosophical Materialism. Nonetheless, for them it is necessary in order to justify their march toward justifying Atheism. Certainly that is the point of the book. Bayer and Figdor are logic chopping, seeking only to justify their foregone conclusion, not seeking to allow Aristotelian, grounded, deductive logic to dictate a rational conclusion to which they must be bound. And again that is the definition of rationalization, a logic fallacy.

The idea that this represents "science and philosophy" as replacement principles for religion is absurd, maximally, due to its completely false use of "logic" to rationalize their desired outcome. There is no "science" involved and if logic is a subset of their "philosophy", then their philosophy is logically absurd.

Let's do an actual Reductio Ad Absurdum (which they have not done); but first reality under their theory:

1. If material existence is all that exists, then thoughts, memories and consciousness must be material "things".
But:
2. When dead brains are removed and analyzed, there are no lumps of dead qualia, thoughts, dead memories, dead consciousness or dead intellect that are found; this leaves qualia, thoughts, memories, consciousness and intellect outside of physical existence, and under Philosophical Materialism, then, they don't exist. That's why Atheist philosophers concentrate on proving that they all are delusions.

3. When death occurs, life stops but there is no change in mass or energy in the system at that moment. Yet the system changes over from an open system to a closed system, and from negative entropy to positive entropy. Such systemic reversal at death requires a radical systemic change which is not physically detectable as changes in mass/energy. Possibly the losses are just brain states, but the brain is massively parallel and not clocked, so there are no discernable brain states. Under Materialism this is inexplicable.

Now if we take the contrary, i.e., allowing for the possibility of non-physical existence:

1. If more exists than just physical existence, then qualia thoughts, memories and consciousness might be non-physical. Thus they would not be found as physical lumps in a dead brain.

2. When dead brains are removed and analyzed, the absence of lumps of thoughts, memories, consciousness and intellect lumps is not contradictory.

3. When death occurs and life stops, the systemic changes which are not physically detectable as changes in mass/energy are not inconsistent with life being a non-physical attribute. Relying on non-existant brain states or other fabricated explanatory stories is not necessary.

It is the contrary to the authors' proposition which is reasonable, and the authors' Materialist proposition itself which is faulty. Materialism fails the Reductio logic test.

Presupposing the answer by smuggling the answer into the premises, is anti-rational. It is indicative of ideology-driven false "logic" procedures.

Presumably these two authors will continue with the rest of their hypotheses in Salon at some later date. Hopefully I will see that and will snag it as it floats by so it can be analyzed also.

... ...

But now I see that there is more on these two:

"Atheism's friendlier, humanist face"

"Bayer and Figdor want to emphasize atheism's "humanist" values. A humanist, they say, is someone who believes in the goodness of human beings and seeks rational ways to solve human problems.

Their book is set up as a series of steps that lead readers through the basics of using inductive reasoning and classic philosophical approaches. Bayer and Figdor also offer up their own version of the 10 commandments, which they call their "non-commandments." Their non-commandments, which include the belief that people can use rational thought as a tool for understanding the world, led both to conclude there is no life after death. "Some people might say 'I don't know' is a more appropriate answer, since I've never experienced death," Figdor says. "I've never encountered a mind without a brain. So if the brain dies, it's reasonable to assume the mind that lives in that brain dies with it."

They also reject the idea of an "objective morality" or an absolute moral truth. They argue instead for a "subjective morality," which guides people to understand their own thought processes so they can choose how to act in any given situation.

For those who fear this approach gives rise to a dangerous moral relativism, Bayer and Figdor say humans operate out of "enlightened self-interest," which teaches them they are more likely to be happy and get what they want if they cooperate. Humans also are biologically hard-wired to be empathetic and be interested in the happiness of others.

"I take pride in conducting my life in a moral manner and in my ability to derive happiness from the happiness of others," Bayer says. "I feel good when my friends think of me as a person of high morals and integrity."

The reason that Atheists use inductive reasoning is so that they can do the types of false arguments which are shown above. Creating a universal category of all-X to put observations into requires finding only items which are already in that category, such as Xn, Xn+1, etc. If it is a universal category, then no instance of a non-X can be found. But if a logic chopper encounters an unwanted and inconvenient Y which refutes the all-X proposition, then its existence is denied as a delusion, or the Y is claimed to actually be an X and we will know that some day. Thus finding objects which fit into Category X becomes a triviality, a banal pursuit devoid of meaning, because the process makes ALL objects fit into category X, with no proof that such is actually the case. I.e., X is universally the case with nothing existing which is not an Xn - because we have defined all objects that way for the convenience of the desired conclusion: intellectual fraud.

And again, that's why Atheists use induction and eschew deduction.

It is interesting to note the two non-coherent positions: "conducting my life in a moral manner" and "...argue instead for a 'subjective morality'..." Obviously if a person defines his own morality, then he will consider himself moral; the sliding scale of "...choos(ing) how to act in any given situation" makes one perfectly moral in "any given situation" - how could he go wrong? Resulting in a tautological position of perpetual "morality" regardless of what he does makes morality a completely useless word, in fact a mockery of something that conceptually means something else entirely. It is, in fact, the opposite of a moral system; it is a justification for whatever behavior one chooses to be called what it is not: moral.

I am moral because I decide what is moral.
I decide what is moral, therefore I am moral.

He cannot be immoral or amoral under his own system, so his claim to be moral cannot be falsified - under his own system. It is tautological, having defined himself as moral, regardless of his behaviors. But if judged by a different, absolute moral system, rather than his own sloppy self-referential definitional system, he would be beholden to something other than himself and his own variable moral principles. And that would not sit well with him because it would place constraints on him from which he is otherwise free. The whole point is this: No Constraints. It's how Atheists roll.

As for friendly humanism, re-read the three Humanist Manifestos, starting with the First Manifesto and comparing the latter manifestos with the first. Humanism was, and is, totalitarian, because humanists are the moral authorities who desire to place their moral principles (non-principles? hardly) on the rest of society, and all its institutions. Dawkins is a humanist; PZ is a humanist; Silverman is a humanist. Look carefully at every Atheist who wants to eradicate all religion and all absolutes and to Atheize government, schools, and all of society, and you will find a humanist behind the hate. And analyze for yourself whether humans, especially Atheists, are hardwired to be empathetic. Try to find the empathy which the American Atheists, or the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or the New Atheists, and especially the Humanist/Free Thinkers display, say during their "Reason Rallies" or conferences where women are afraid to attend.

The claims of these two authors are glaringly, painfully absurd.

Note: Excerpted from “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart” by Lex Bayer and John Figdor. Copyright © Rowman & Littlefield.

ADDENDUM:
Found at reddit, a Q&A with Bayer and Figdor who both respond to this question:

When and how did you both become atheists?

Lex_Bayer [responds]
Hi. I started questioning my religion and God in high school. I went to a Jewish Day School in South Africa. In the book I relate the moment when I realized that I should start thinking more for myself. It was after performing the Jewish ritual of Kapparot. In college I took the time and energy to think about these things more deeply and from that point forward was comfortable letting people know that I am an atheist.

John_Figdor [responds]
I became an atheist, somewhat ironically, during confirmation class as I was becoming a member of the UCC church where I grew up. Reading the Bible cover to cover, and discussing it with other broadly secularly-minded Christians helped me understand that I didn’t get my beliefs and values from a 2,000 year old book.

It is very common for adolescents to reject everything which represents authority, especially authority to limit their behaviors. A very high percentage of Atheists from Bertrand Russell to Dawkins, etc. gained "freedom" in their pubescent periods, well before the maturation of their frontal cortex which does not occur in some until the age of 28. So that, plus their logic attempts to justify that, explains their rejection. And that is far more explanatory than their faulty logic.