Saturday, April 4, 2015

Daylight Atheist’s Scientistic/Positivist Verificationist Evidentialism

Having taken a look at Greta Christina’s evidentialism, we now take a look at her source of inspiration: The Daylight Atheism rules for convincing Atheists that there could possibly, maybe, exist a deity.

The Daylight Atheist has provided a handy list of items which would suffice to convict the non-believer that belief is warranted.

1. Verified, specific prophecies that couldn’t have been contrived.

Atheists commonly hedge with the lubrication of the term “verify”, which allows them enough fluidity of meaning to run from all arguments, deductions, experiences and knowledge which is not empirical. That means there is a restriction requiring physical evidence which is experimentally replicable, falsifiable, and which is successfully replicated, non-falsified, with open data and published in peer-reviewed journals. Not that this detail is specified up front, it is not. But in a pinch their demand will devolve to exactly that Philosophical Materialist, Scientistic requirement, the failed Logical Positivism of AJ Ayer which is rejected by actual Atheist philosophers, including Ayer himself.

The exception to this Scientistic/Positivist verificationist evidentialism is notably two-fold: no such requirement exists for Atheism/Materialism, nor for evolution, because those beliefs are blind-beliefs which are tightly held under the Appeal to Authority of Atheist scientists who are failed philosophers and Atheist philosophers who cling to religious scientism (and differentially, not to material evidence for their own blind-beliefs, because there is none in their favor). Still, we need to give a fair hearing to what this Atheist claims:
“If the Bible, for example, said, “On the first day of the first month in the year two thousand and ten, the pillars of the earth will shake and a great part of the New World will be lost to the sea,” and then January 1, 2010 comes and a tremendous earthquake sends California to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, I would become a believer.”
This is a safe bet, under the knowledge that the actual bible does not engage in such rhetoric. Further, it is a requirement for a purely physical, material manifestation, which confirms the underlying ideological Philosophical Materialist restriction being placed on the evidence. There is always a touch of dishonesty in invoking a physically unverifiable ideology to support the requirement for physical evidence for verification (internally contradictory).

And we note now that the "evidence" above, being a single sentence, is far outweighed by the list of conditions for rejection, including the condition which refutes the claim for the believability of the original argument:
“The book or other source from which it comes must have at least a decently good record on other predictions.”
So the original statement that such a prophesy, taken singly, would be believed is contradicted by this new caveat, which obviously nullifies it in advance, conveniently removing any rational possibility of occurrence and thereby creating a faux safe-zone for the author, which he built out of impossible conditions.

And the author does go to pains to reject the Christian claims of biblical prophesies which were made centuries before Jesus’ time and were fulfilled by the birth, life, death of Jesus, ostensibly due to non-verifiability; i.e., overt rejection of historicity as a process. This is another appeal to religious Scientism as the only source of knowledge under Atheist Philosophical Materialism. So we have uncovered three ideological, unprovable blind belief pre-conditions which are made out to be necessary for the acceptance of belief. This is non-coherent (internally contradictory). And it is, at its core, also a Category Error because the requirements are now obviously for the evidence to be (a) material, (b) replicable under Scientism, yet the entity being tested for is not material, not subject to scientific testing. So this whole exercise is intended to create automatic rejection because there is an evidentiary lock-out installed directly into it.


2. Scientific knowledge in holy books that wasn’t available at the time.

Here is another very safe bet, especially since scientific knowledge is not fixed, it is highly variable and contingent, never considered "truth". An example: the bible has always claimed that the universe had a beginning; science did not, until the Hubble red shift and the big bang theory became popular amongst cosmologists based on new knowledge – a very historically recent change which brought science into congruence with that particular feature of the few biblical claims. Science changes its own belief systems and realistic practitioners of science never claim truth for what they know to be contingently held, fragile beliefs, all of which are inductively based, including non-falsifications.

The claimed need for scientific knowledge to pre-exist renders this author either ignorant of the principles and properties of science, scientific knowledge, or deceptive; that places the author's positions squarely into the category of blind-belief in the accuracy and truth of current science which is religious Scientism in its worst form: designating truth to current contingent science knowledge status.

That intellectual defect is sufficiently damaging that one does not even need to take into account the fallacy of expecting books of history and moral guidance to have any claims at all regarding Philosophical Materialist issues. Science changes its knowledge set daily, while the books of history and moral guidance are timeless and unchanging by their very nature. If the author wished to falsify those tomes, he chose a specific way which is completely outside the realm of those books categorical focus, a very specific Category Error.

3. Miraculous occurrences, especially if brought about through prayer.

This is the standard Atheist misappropriation of prayer as a causal candy machine. Atheists demand something from prayer that is not biblically attributed to it (regardless of the pseudo-Christian “prosperity preachers”). Here is the author’s statement of candy machine prayer:
“But it wouldn’t have to be so dramatic; even minor but objectively verifiable miracles would do, especially if they could be invoked by prayer. If a hospital did a double-blind study to determine if intercessory prayer helps the sick, and it was discovered that only the patients prayed for by members of a certain religion experienced a dramatic, statistically significant increase in recovery rate, and this result could be repeated and confirmed, I would convert. ”
So we note here a strong tendency of this author to create his own cartoons or caricatures of religious principles, and then to make those into demands to be satisfied in order to generate belief in the existence of a deity. He has reduced the deity to a servant of each and every human. Under this reductive misunderstanding, every human could require the deity to perform whatever service the human demanded of it. By creating this absurdity the author has again guaranteed that his condition would never be met, especially by any self-respecting deity. This, then is yet another designed-in logical lock-out, a designed safe-zone for the author to protect him against deity realism.

4. Any direct manifestation of the divine.

The essence of this is: “I require the deity to perform directly for me”. In this case, the deity must reveal its existence in a manner which I command for it. (Greta Christina demanded huge words in the sky, easily interpreted in all languages; a YouTube Atheist demanded that the divine hand present him with a cheeseburger). What the deity wants for me is irrelevant. What I demand of the deity is what is important here, and the deity must produce to my specifications.

Once again the Atheist makes demands on the deity with the expectation that his demand has more weight than the wishes of the deity. Plus, the wishes of the deity in the matter are not even a consideration; the Atheist knows who is boss here, and it is not the deity. Absurdities are piling up.

5. Aliens who believed in the exact same religion.

This is so obviously a designed-in logic lock-out that it is ludicrous to have even included it. By this point in the article the author apparently thinks that reasoning people have already dropped out before getting this far.

6. A genuinely flawless and consistent holy book.

This is an ecclesiastic argument, not an argument against the existence of a deity. What the author really is demanding is a book written by the deity, handed to mankind, and preserved in its original condition from the beginning of… whenever, with discernable fingerprints of the deity. The author already knows that the New Testament, for example, is a historical series of viewpoints of several people regarding the same events and their meanings. The narrative is consistent, but the reported facts occasionally differ in degree from each other, with some giving additional facts not included by others, or of a different kind. Which is how accurate reporting works, of course, as those who are reporting gather facts from differing vantage points. This is rejected because obviously the deity did not directly write it. So on that basis alone it is rejected.

But historicity is not what the author is interested in, because what is being demanded once again is another logic lock-out. This is no different from the demand that God hand him a cheeseburger; it is a demand on the deity made from hubris on the one hand, and refusal to accept historicity as knowledge under the hegemony of Differential Philosophical Materialism/Logical Positivist Verficationist Evidentialism, again, a system of blind-belief which is itself unverifiable under its own principles.

7. A religion without internal disputes or factions.

Human fecklessness and misbehavior as they exercise their free will has exactly no bearing on the existence of a deity. If anything, it tends to confirm it by decorating the existence of non-determinism in living creatures, a phenomenon which is impossible under deterministic Scientism and Philosophical Materialism. So yet again the author has provided an exercise in self-refuting illogic as a demand for belief in a deity.

8. A religion whose followers have never committed or taken part in atrocities.

Refer to #7, because this is the same issue: the author wants free will to stop if there is a deity; that is irrational.

9. A religion that had a consistent record of winning its jihads and holy wars.

Here the author has once again forced his cartoon, caricature deity into the place of any actual theistically claimed creator, especially a creator of free will. There is no rational expectation for a deity to favor such a thing; the Hebrew testaments even explain why. And again he has created a logic lock-out, impossible to achieve and thus of no particular danger to his worldview. The fact that it is absurd is no barrier to its utility as an argument for the intellectually weak to admire.

Finally the author gives us more stuff which is rejected outright, a priori, as non-credible; that’s fine, he can not believe as he wishes, asserting blatant rejectionism as his reasoning. But I will take on this final claim:

10. Though I’m always happy to debate the merits of evolution.

Should the author happen to venture this way, I challenge him to provide the objective material knowledge which proves conclusively that either the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution OR the Extended Synthesis theory of evolution is objectively true, incorrigibly and immutably self-evident or at least premised on First Principles which underlie the empirical scientific method of evidentiary verification and fully loaded with necessary and sufficient material evidence.

And further, to provide disciplined, grounded, valid deductive arguments showing the precise progression from deterministic material laws of mineral behaviors to the non-determinism and agency, self-awareness, intellect, qualia, etc. in living creatures, AND including the nested information systems which inhere in replication and the communication systems which inhere in all living things. When he provides that type of evidence for evolution, then we would have something to discuss. After all, if he believes in evolution, he needs convincing material, replicable, objective evidence, right? Perhaps he would share.

10 comments:

Phoenix said...

Stan

I was meaning to ask this question for a while.Does Quantum mechanics falsify the Laws of Logic,or at least the Law of Identity and by implication Leibniz's Law too?
The banal tautology simply states A is A.It's impossible for A to be Not A,simultaneously.
However in the crazy whacky world of the subatomic level we find that an electron for example is both a wave and a particle simultaneously.What are your thoughts on this?

Stan said...

It's my personal belief, without proof, that the Copenhagen understanding is incorrect, and that Quantum Field Theory is more probably in the direction of a more correct model. Quantum Field theory states that there are no actual particles, that every "particle" is actually a bundle of energy with individual patterns of charge and radiation. The idea of mass, for example, is now restricted to the concept of inertia, which is resistance to change of momentum. In that understanding, bundles of energy of a certain charge or radiation type would have the same characteristic - strong resistance to position change due to the proximity of lower charges, and less resistance to change due to the proximity of higher charge bundles. The momentum/inertia concept of mass holds for tight bundles of energy just as it does for physical particles.

The idea that mass is actually the momentum of energy bundles eliminates the apparent paradox of particle/wave found in the Copenhagen understanding, and is more parsimonious in other ways as well. However, QFT is not as widely accepted as Copenhagen, partly because it is not taught while Copenhagen is taught.

I found two layman level books which explain Quantum Field Theory pretty well:

Brooks, Rodney A.; Fields of Color.

Wilczek, Frank (Nobel Laureate in physics); The Lightness of Being; Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces

The second book is probably the one to have, if you only get one book; both are good though.

Unknown said...

From what I understood in quantum theory any two objects entangled with one another are infact not separate objects but single objects spread across space. These objects are connected by as of yet "unknown" means. (Perhaps wormholes in the smallest scales of the universe.)

If the objects are not individual from one another but are rather the same exact object just "stretched" (Very elementary term for my elementary understanding) across space and seemingly outside of time as it is traditionally understood then I don't necessarily see a violation of Leibniz's Law.

Admittedly I find the idea that something can be numerically identical to itself and yet be remote from itself the same time. The state of flux, or what is sometimes referred to as the "ether" that hypothetical area where probability exists right before the collapse of a wave function.
All things are I suppose assumed to be possible at that point. So it would make sense to me to say that an idea I have at any moment may be the numerical twin idea of someone in Iran. Or 12 photons in the room I am sitting in are also the exact 12 photos at Alpha centauri. However if thats the case I cant see why it is restricted to set amounts. Because it would seem if one thing is everywhere, then all things are everywhere and exists everywhere at once without consideration for time and distance.

Im not sure if it actually violates the laws of logic' nevertheless I can see a bending of the rules where in a quantum universe logic is what you make it, and not necessarily "What is".
If that were the case, and one were able to program a parcel of universe, one could make whatever laws they want within that area, which would not affect said programmer in the slightest.

If traditional physics are the building blocks of the universe, then Quantum physics are the Primal forces of nature, the very source code of existence. One might meddle in the building blocks, but tinkering with the source code may have highly negative repercussions.


The problem I have found with anything quantum related is that it is a "feel good" science. By that I mean that its easy to get taken away in the fluff of nonsensical speech, and wind up turning people off to it, including myself sometimes.

Example: "Entanglement is a product of everything being woven into a single fabric of consciousness"

The above statement, is not provable in any particular way of course, but does in fact stand tested to a degree. In fact what is known about quantum mechanics is known by observation, an observation which is believed to change outcomes. If that is the case, then a consciousness is needed to create or at least witness the events of that subatomic universe at every single moment.

I find it very difficult to speak eloquently about anything quantum related without sounding like some kind of stoner; an unfortunate side effect of fuzzy logic and whacky physics.

Phoenix said...

Thanks,I'll see if my local library has any of those books.And just when I thought I was getting comfortable with C.I.
===
Cameron
You make an interesting point.

Admittedly I find the idea that something can be numerically identical to itself and yet be remote from itself the same time.
Can you cite an example for such an instance?

Unknown said...

"Admittedly I find the idea that something can be numerically identical to itself and yet be remote from itself the same time.
Can you cite an example for such an instance?"

I can only give theoretical instances, and even that is nothing more than a haphazard guess at best.

Theoretical example:
Bilinear occupation, That is the same object occupying the same space in two different locations within a single dimension.
Here comes the gobbledygook crazy talk, apologies ahead of time.

I'm only using Time travel in this example to reference distance.

It is said that time travel is possible, but only into the past, as the future has not happened yet. If that is the case, then it is logical to assume that the You of five minutes ago does infact still exists just as the you on now exists only "Over there". You were sitting in a chair then, and you are sitting in one now presumably. You are both numerically Identical but temporally remote by no more than 5 minutes.

If you could look at this from another dimension it may appear that you as an individual are drawn out like a long line with many potentialities springing off of you (A long but fuzzy line). Seeing yourself in that manner you would realize that you are not in fact at any single point, but are actually at every point simultaneously. You are in a state of flux by your very existence. This could be the quantum aspect of entanglement.

If one could read this line and understand it, one could tell you literally everything that has ever happened and will ever happen to you in great detail.

From our point of view, things appear to be disjointed and separated by space ie "distance" and traveling in 3 dimensions typically takes time, could be seconds or years. I suspect we see it this way because while we may be in a state of flux continuously we do have a span of time in which we exists, and that span invariably moves forward from the time we were created. A person moves forward in their life riding a wave so to speak, in an ocean which is their time frame and at the head of this wave is their conscious view of reality; the singularity where everything gets compressed along the line at that single point. I imagine it's like being squeezed through a tube as long as your lifespan, and where the walls compress and touch each other at any given point along the tube at this alleged singularity is your perception of reality at that moment in time and that space.) It is the "now" moment of your life.

The tube IS you, and your conscious view of it is not necessarily separate from it, but simply follows a line of continuity from beginning to end like electricity running down a wire; except the wire is the electricity in this case.
Everything perceived within the singularity is nothing more than static, foam, background noise and oddities of the Universe, and are as much a part of your existence as anything else, and this is why one can observe things taking place, but may not fully understand why they are taking place in the manner that they are in regards to quantum nature; ie observing particles as well as other observations.

Using this logic the argument can be made that if you are at any moment in a singularity then you are in fact not at every point within the stream. But "quantumly speaking" you are if viewed from outside of the singularity. Inside you are a here and now moment but outside you are an elongated instance as a whole.

Now I know that was a long winded and perhaps non scientific example. But I'm no scientist, I just try to grasp it as best as I can and put it together the best I can with my abstract reasoning abilities.
So what I am suggesting is that via Bilinear Occupation multiple and numerically exact replicas of the same objects can and do exists at all points in time and regardless of space or distance. In a sea of literally endless potentialities identical replication is 100% expected I would think.

Sorry its not a peer reviewed case study. LOL
I just enjoy this kind of thinking

yonose said...

Hello there!!

Cameron O,

I find what you write interesting. Bilinear methods of mathematics are solved by statistical methods, as those are "spatial frequencies".

The problem with such an approach, is that you are using a single parametric approach which is time or frequency dependent.

And the possible limitation as a discrete variable, could be overcome by taking covariance in multiple parameters (somehow like the chaos theory).

If it is possible to reunite GR with QM, we should have analogous treatment of analog and digital signals alike (just an analogy). To do so, EM Field theories should be thoroughly revised.

Levi-civita should be a good place to start...

Kind Regards.

Phoenix said...

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this issue of the Law of Identity and the wave-particle duality of photons.

-The law of identity states that every object can only have a single identity.A dog cannot be both a cat and a dog.

-Photons exhibit both particle and wave properties.This seems to contradict the Law of Identity...but does it really?
According to physicist Louis de Broglie,all matter behave like waves under certain conditions.Therefore physical reality contradicts logic (if one is to apply this type of reasoning)
This reasoning could extend to hermaphrodites and trannies too,since they appear to exhibit both male and female characteristics.We could even extend this further into amphibian territory which are both land and water creatures.
As one can see,this leads to many complications,and we're forced to reject logic using this method of reasoning.

-However,if one is to apply the Law of Identity to meaning,an object's identity only then that would not produce any problems.
A wave is not an object,it is a disturbance from one location to the next.
So when a photon is exhibiting wave-like behavior it is merely a disturbance of photons by photons.
Thus the wave-particle duality seems to be merely one of semantics and cannot be used to explain away the laws of logic.

yonose said...

Pheonix,

de Broglie is Right.

The thing is, the configuration of matter can be described by using QFT, up to certain extent.

To get things straight, in the Quantum World, mass is a subset of matter.

The reason why Newtonian mechanics applied to EM Fields and the quantum world are not correctly unified as of yet, is merely because of stubborn academic celebrities.

The theoretical model which is presumed to be the closest form, o the understood real behavior of a wave is something like this -in words-:

Think about a plane, which extrudes itself from one of its sides, and it parametrically rotates, at the same time. which gives the attribute of torsion. A good way to describe such a thing is by the concepts of a tensor, an affinor, and finally a versor. Those are no vector mechanics anymore.

What you have is some sort of a helicoid. Traversal wave theory is just a minimal representation of a EM Wave, and should not be trusted as complete. Waves as such are a 3D phenomena, so it makes sense that mass should be attributed to them.

"So when a photon is exhibiting wave-like behavior it is merely a disturbance of photons by photons.
Thus the wave-particle duality seems to be merely one of semantics and cannot be used to explain away the laws of logic."


You are getting it!!

Actually wave-particle duality is more a matter of what I'm saying above.

What you say is something common with Quantum Electrodynamics, which is the dispersion of Light by Light.

Of course, the Feynmann Diagrams are just a very simplified version, and do not take in count so many important constraints.

Remember that, there are still too many dishonest academics out there full of the same excruciatingly indoctrinating misinformation.

If anybody may understand the phenomena by words and adequate, basic definition, why bother with "beautiful"mathematics???

Physics is not about such a thing. Making physics hard to understand, is part of the celebrity physics cartels, they want the money.

Kind Regards.

Phoenix said...

Yonose

I had to read your post a couple of times before somewhat understanding you.
===
"beautiful"mathematics???"

I envy anyone who knows what a beautiful equation looks like.

yonose said...

Hello Phoenix,

Maybe I did not contextualize the part of "beautiful mathematics" correctly.

Theoretical Physics is about the application of any type of language which may help to understand natural phenomena, by means of a controlled experiment. This term I strongly believe is familiar for both of us.

Of course, Theoretical Physics has become the mathematical fashion du-jour, with string theory and all those messy, but inconclusive theories.

This is what I mean by "beautiful mathematics", I'm making a sarcastic remark about such a subjectively common behavior among theoretical physicists.

From a mathematical, almost meta-linguistic perspective, of course it makes sense, but this is not math, its physics, unfortunately!!

Physics should go back to its experimental roots without relying way too much in empirical trial and error.

Kind Regards!