A Guest Discusses "Love Sausage" and Similar Atheist Works

[Editor's note: this is a guest article by Steven Satak. Orignally an email, I am posting it in it's entirety with his permission. Thanks, Steve.]

I visited a webcomic site yesterday. One of the links addressed something I had never seen before, never even knew existed. It's a 'superhero' from a series called "The Boys".

http://www.comicvine.com/love-sausage/4005-60457/

I was intrigued with this just enough to follow the rabbit down the hole, to abuse a metaphor. I'd read 'The Authority' by Warren Ellis and was fascinated/repelled by the frequent use of homosexual characters, pedophiles and violence, all calculated to shock and titillate at the same time.

Well, come to find out it was a fellow named Garth Ennis, outdoing Ellis at the same game - shocking and titillating by going further and further afield. Everyone who is not a homosexual appears to be a violent homophobe or a rapist. It's like they distilled the very worst humanity has to offer and then gave them superpowers, and then wrote stories about how one group of twisted, damaged supers kills (in more and more creative ways) the others.

Ellis and Ennis, along with Alan Moore, are referred to 'the trinity'. They are also described as 'brilliant', a descriptive I have come to associate specifically with the meaning "a man or woman whose (tactfully) acknowledged arrogance is not only envied, but held to be excused by their being smarter than the rest of us". That this corruption will eventually neutralize those smarts is not usually mentioned, but shorthand is shorthand and I can read between the writing on the wall.

Right. So I followed the rabbit and found myself neck-deep in obscenity (a word I seldom use). It's like the author is giving the finger to every good thing in existence, but especially the God he claims does not exist. In the artificial comic book worlds these guys make up, God either does not exist or He is an asshole (no reason why He's that way, just the author's say-so).

I immediately formed a supposition - that these three are Atheists. I went and checked, and what do you know? They are, and quite vocal about it. Proud, even (imagine that!). Also noted for specifically portraying Theists (but mostly Christians) as either stupid or easily gulled. And at least Ennis appears to take a positive delight in humiliating characters that are apparently defined by their churchgoing habits. As though that were the only thing about them that mattered. In a sense it is, as the character is Ennis's whipping boy/girl, showing all us normal readers just how fucked up we really are despite all that God talk.

That this might also describe them appears not to be an option. Because they say so, of course, and because they are smarter than we are, what they say automatically trumps what we say to the contrary.

(an aside: apparently Garth Ennis encountered someone on 4Chan who expressed an interest in his daughter. Very unforgiving of the pedo interest, he was. Threats left and right. Apparently, it's fine for the comics he makes, but the least suggestion that he himself be forced to live under the same 'realistic' conditions is apparently out of court. As it should be. But the juxtaposition is funny. In his books, normal humans are there simply to be killed or abused.)

A light went on over my head. They contradict themselves - without God everything is permitted and it shows in their work. But they ignore the contradictions. How can they do that? They accuse theists of stupidity with no basis, yet they follow a mechanistic explanation of the world without explaining the built-in contradiction.

And I realized - they can do it because they SAY they can. But... but this 'because I said so' stuff is supposedly the sort of thing God says (and they reject), so again, how can anyone take what these atheists say seriously?

It's simple. Because they are smarter/richer/more famous than you. Or me. In other words, because they already have more power than we do. Or they make out they do. In our society they have the gun, so to speak, and they don't hesitate to put it to the head of anyone who disagrees with them.

You're stupid, so I'm automatically correct and we do it my way. Otherwise, you prove you don't value intelligence and only crazy people reject intelligence.

You're poor, so I'm automatically correct and we do it my way. If you were right, you'd be as rich as I am and actually have a say in things.

You're a nobody, so I'm automatically correct and we do it my way. If your opinion had any value, people would know about you and follow your every move. You would be a celebrity like me. They don't, so shut up.

This business of 'it is because I say it is' is funny. It's a closed loop of ego. Makes no sense, but as we are all Fallen, a lot of us secretly hope that one day we can have that kind of power - to defy logic itself and make things so just because we said so. So we too ignore the contradictions. After all, if enough of us agree they don't exist, they will go away. Right? If we can stomp down the pesky people who keep bringing them up - kill the messenger - the message will disappear, right? After all, if the message isn't delivered, it might as well not exist to someone whose entire outlook is about denying objective reality.

What a horrible freedom they have, these writers. I wonder if they realize what they look like from the outside? As viewed by normal people?

I already wish I could forget most of the stuff I have seen. It stinks and scalds of hatred and idiotic defiance. God help them all. I'll be honest, you've got more guts than I do. If I had to go to my blog every day and filter through that nasty hate-filled lunacy, I would be sorely tempted to chuck the whole thing.

A Review of a Book About Nothing

Edward Feser takes a look at this book by Lawrence Krauss.

The New Atheists are famous for book titles that promise something which they don't (can't) deliver, such as "Why Evolution is True" by Coyne; "How the Mind Works" by Pinker; "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett; "God, The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Cannot Exist", by Stenger; "God Is Not Great: How Religion poisons Everything", Hithchens; and of course "The God Delusion" by Dawkins.

Universe from Nothing:
Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
by Lawrence M. Krauss
Free Press, 204 pages

Addendum to “Austin Cline on C S Lewis”

[Note: This refers to the previous post on Austin Cline's review of C. S. Lewis's Miracles.]

Now that I have C. S. Lewis’s book, “Miracles”, in my possession, it is clear that Lewis did, indeed, address quantum issues, right there on pages 18 –20. Cline must have ignored or not read those pages, because he quotes page 22 where Lewis, in turn, quotes Haldane.

Even there, Cline misses the actual argument being made by Lewis. I’ll try to summarize that here, although I recommend getting the book for your own view of it.

First, Lewis says,

”All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning.”

Next,

”It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would , of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound – a proof that there are no such things as proofs – which is nonsense.”

This is Lewis’s actual argument. Then he proceeds to the quote provided by Cline:

”Thus a strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given long ago by Professor Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms’

Presumably Haldane was conflating mind and brain.

A page later, Lewis goes on:

”Now a train of reasoning has no value as a means of finding truth unless each step in it is connected with what went before in the Ground – Consequent relation.”
[Lewis had already addressed the “because” statement in mathematics: A = C because we have already proved that they are both equal to B]
“If our B does not follow logically from our A, we think in vain. If what we think at the end of reasoning is to be true, the correct answer to the question, ‘Why do you think this?’ must begin with the Ground –Consequent because.

This represents only the beginning of Lewis’s argument, up to page 23 out of 273. There are only a few possibilities here. Either Cline didn’t read the book, or he read the book with his brain turned around backwards. I think he didn’t read the book, because he claims that Lewis did not address the probabilism of quantum theory, when it is obvious that Lewis did just that. And as an interesting serendipity here, there is an article over at Massimo Pigliucci’s blog that addresses Cline’s “Frequentism”. In short, because something is declared unmeasurable now does not mean that it is unmeasurable permanently, or even in principle. While I’m not sure about that myself, I’m sure that Scientism would take that view rather than the rigid view of Cline. So even materialists don’t necessarily agree with Cline, much less those who actually read Lewis’s book.

Austin Cline on C S Lewis

Cline is hardly dispassionate; he claims that “C.S. Lewis wanted to explain nature on the basis of his supernatural god”. It is immediately obvious what prejudice will be applied to the subject. What Lewis actually did was to arrive at what he felt was an undeniable, incorrigible truth, that the existence of rationality implies something other than mere agglomerations of atoms.

”Lewis appears not to have understood that some events and systems are, even in principle, not explainable despite being entirely natural. No one disputes that the weather is completely natural, but while weather events can be predicted to varying degrees of accuracy, it’s not possible even in principle to explain every facet of them because they are too complex, chaotic, and probabilistic.”

Cline makes three associations without any attributions: weather events are “complex, chaotic, and probabilistic”. It is hardly arguable that weather events are complex. But Cline must support his claim that they are chaotic (first defining his interpretation of the word). And it is complexity vs current comprehension that leads to probabilism, not the inherent characteristics of weather: we use probabilities because not all the factors are known or can be taken into account. This doesn’t make them “unexplainable”, it just means that we can’t do it yet. Cline makes a leap to a-scientism when he declares the weather to be – presumably permanently, by nature – probabilistic. There is no reason to presume that weather patterns do NOT have causes, even if the causes are multitudinous in their complexity.

So Cline fails in this attempt to fault Lewis on his understanding of science. Cline himself fails.

And Cline’s reference to quantum events is a point made in a void:

”This isn’t necessarily true. Lewis was aware of advances in physics which revealed that events on the quantum level were probabilistic rather than deterministic, but he regarded this as a reason to think that there exists something more than “Nature” rather than as a reason to think that maybe nature isn’t quite what he (like others) assumed it to be. He rejected the findings of science because they conflicted with his assumptions.”

Quantum mechanics is far from a mature source of knowledge. Making philosophical truth statements on quantum mechanics is not convincing. Even so, the mind-matter connection in quantum mechanics (Is Cline aware of it?) seems to back up Lewis. There is more to nature than naturalists allow.

”Thus, what we encounter is a tactic which Lewis uses continually: the construction of a false dilemma fallacy in which he presents the “wrong” option in an unfavorable and incorrectly defined way against the “right” option which, he hopes, will seem more reasonable against his straw man. The idea of a third option, like rejecting both extreme determinism and supernaturalism, is never entertained.”

Cline is right, there are two additional options to the dilemma: (a) accepting both determinism and metaphysical existence, and (b) rejecting both determinism and metaphysical existence. But Cline makes the covert presumption that (b) is the correct answer, without any defense for it. What does it mean to reject, as Cline calls it, extreme determinism? Are we allowed to put any effect into a causeless category, determined purely by chance? Where does that leave empirical science?

No answer here, Cline moves quickly away and on to the idea that atoms don’t need to be rational in order for large agglomerates of atoms to be rational. He claims that requiring a characteristic of the agglomerate is not necessary for the individual component under the Fallacy of Composition. But the Fallacy of Composition says the opposite:

From the Fallacy Files:

”Some properties are such that, if every part of a whole has the property, then the whole will too—for example, visibility. However, not all properties are like this—for instance, invisibility. All visible objects are made up of atoms, which are too small to see. Let's call a property which distributes from all of the parts to the whole an "expansive" property, using Nelson Goodman's term. If P is an expansive property, then the argument form above is validating, by definition of what such a property is. However, if P is not expansive, then the argument form is non-validating, and any argument of that form commits the fallacy of Composition.”

Is property P expansive, if property P is “rationality”? No, rationality is not a property of atoms at all. Period. So property P cannot be either expansive or non-expansive, since it does not exist in the object of discussion.

If it does not exist in the object of discussion (an atom), then it will not exist in large aggregates of the objects, either. So intellect and reason cannot be presumed to arise from atoms, because that property does not exist in atoms.

The invisibility of atoms is not a property of atoms, it is a property of the human eye and its resolution, or lack thereof, at the size of individual atoms. This is a misdirection, and is “just one more example of Cline [not Lewis] constructing fallacious arguments". Misuse and misunderstanding the basics of logical fallacies is a trait that one must watch carefully when dealing with Atheist “analysis” of arguments which they refuse to comprehend.

Cline moves on to the Lewis – Anscombe debate. The details of the debate are presumably available in the accumulated papers of philosopher Anscombe – more about that coming up. There are two distinctly opposing views as to what happened at the meeting (now called a “debate”), and what Lewis’s reaction was. Two of his friends claim that Lewis was “devastated” by his defeat. Others claim, ignoring evidence to the contrary, that Lewis stopped his apologetics writings and focused entirely on children’s allegorical fantasies. But Anscombe herself has a different story of what happened that day:

"The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much…. My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis’s rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends – who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments of the subject-matter – as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection.”
(Note 1)

In his book, “Surprised by Joy”, Lewis chronicles his journey away from his schoolboy philosophy. His philosophy was strictly and rigidly Naturalist. He came to reject that philosophy as he progressed in his thinking through those early years, mostly at Oxford. By the time he wrote “Miracles” he had written explaining his previous thinking and why it was wrong. Cline seems to have missed this whole part of Lewis’ life story, which gives much of the strength to Lewis’ mature writings. In fact, it is doubtful that Cline has read a single page of Lewis; it is more likely that he got his information third-hand, and uncritically used it in his “critique”.

Cline’s essay on Lewis is segmented into falseness on the one hand and prejudice on the other hand:

”Lewis relied, for example, on a bizarre epistemology, according to which knowledge can only be attained indirectly by inferring from sensory perception to the objects supposedly lying behind them. Because of this, he felt that reliable knowledge depends upon logical reasoning — that we cannot come to have true, justified beliefs about the world without it.

This is a peculiar and extreme form of rationalism, but it’s not an epistemology which is compatible with modern science and thinking. It doesn’t enjoy wide currency today, even among Christians who ostensibly accept Lewis’ apologetics. If they do not accept the epistemological assumptions he uses, though, they cannot also accept his theological conclusions which they find so appealing.”

This is not even a good description of Lewis’ beliefs as a “naïve young man” who was a Materialist. It seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of Cline or at least a poor description of what he thinks Lewis thought.

Cline is not a reliable source for much of anything, certainly not theological theories. There are other, better sources.

For a very interesting paper on the anthropological argument which includes Lewis, see this:

http://www.cslewis.org/ffblog/archives/2005/09/does_mathematic.html

And by physicist Kyler Kuehn, a very interesting review of a book by Victor Reppert, ”C.S.Lewis’s Dangerous Idea”. Reppert apparently updated Lewis’s arguments and refutes attacks on them, fairly successfully according to Kuehn. The problem encountered is the standard problem with all philosophy, including apologetics: when you get to the bottom axioms you find something which cannot be proved, something which must be accepted and used as a presupposition.

http://www.ps.uci.edu/~kuehn/personal/reppert.htm

For example, Skeptics can always ask, “can you prove…” As in, “Can you prove that you exist?” “Can you prove that rationality exists?” “Can you prove that validity exists?” “Can you prove that logic means anything given that you cannot prove that validity exists, or that rationality exists, or that you exist, or that existence exists?"  It’s the obvious which is unprovable.

Of course none of these things can be proven using rationality. And that’s the final downfall of ALL philosophy and apologetics: the Skeptics can always find the final axiom which must be presupposed, and then claim that that voids the argument, because your premises, at their base, cannot, to the Skeptic's satisfaction, be proven. Or true. Or meaningful – or whatever. Taken to the radical skeptical limit, nothing can be proven rationally, ever.

So according to the Skeptics, you can’t make an argument from rationality if you can’t prove that rationality exists, and that necessarily done without unprovable presuppositions.  Perhaps this is something like what Lewis confronted in his discussion with Anscombe, the ultimate fate of all philosophy: failure at the level of axioms.

Keuhn concludes that Reppert’s assessment of the updated Lewis arguments are valid and work, IF one is allowed to presuppose that “rationality exists”. But that is too much for Skeptics, apparently, despite the obvious consequence that if there is no rationality then all their blitherings are meaningless, meaning that their charges of falseness are meaningless, too. So if their charges are to have meaning, then rationality must exist. (note 2)

I have Lewis’s “Miracles” book on its way. I might have to get Reppert’s book, too. Book acquisition never ceases.

But back to Cline, there is no need to believe what he says about Lewis or anything else. Look for reputable sources. Go deep. Then go deeper.

Note 1:
http://gavinortlund.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/the-lewis-anscombe-debate/

Note 2:
One skeptic claimed that because the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, it is merely informed of the brain's activity after the fact, so the mind cannot have beliefs. Reppert’s response: “You expect me to believe that?”  I suggest this response: “So you believe that there are no beliefs?”

The Red Neck, Blue Collar Atheist

I’m sure that we have all wondered what it would look like if Atheism were promoted not by self-anointed intellectuals but rather it were promoted by a self-anointed red neck, blue collar huckster.  Now we can know for certain what that is like.

Hank Fox is a self-described “redneck blue collar Atheist” who has written a book, not surprisingly called, “Red Neck Blue Collar Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods, & Faith”.  He provides a convenient on-line sample of the book which is a chapter on morality and being good without God.  So let’s take a look.

Fox goes to lengths to create a fictional church, one which claims to contain all morality.  “Those people” Fox declares, think that absent the Church, morality doesn’t exist.

” To those people, no deliberate moral act could take place outside the Baptist Church, or, specifically, Pineview Baptist Church. “If there is no God, what keeps you from robbing and raping?” is really the speaker’s way of saying just that.”

This model, he strongly asserts in a large and BOLDED sidebar, is ”widespread and extremely persistent”.   His evidence for this is merely his assertion that it is so; it’s a model, you see, but it is also TRUE, at least for Fox.

He tests this model of morality, “model 1”, with the assertion that (a) it is moral to open the doors for old people, and (b) you can “just know that”.  So morality is not contained in the church, at least if opening doors for the elderly is the epitome of morality – and it is declared so, as Fox uses it.  I.e. Church ≠ morality.

For Fox, this disqualifies model 1, QED.  But his evidence is still merely his assertion;  does morality really extend to opening doors for others?  If it does, who said so, and what gives them the right, the moral authority to declare that it is so?  Fox takes the moral authority upon himself, without explanation of his assumption of moral authority, and without apology. 

But let’s go back a bit and assess Fox’s position on understanding theology:

” The “theologian” business, the idea that you have to become an expert on the Bible to argue with Christians, that’s always bothered me too. As a freethinker, the LAST thing I want to do is spend huge amounts of time studying THEIR holy book. There’s a whole universe of other stuff I’d rather be working to understand, or enjoying.”

We, therefore, need to grant him his ignorance when he addresses the things he rejects?  Including his ignorance that the term “theologian” is not exclusive to Christianity, we can suppose.  One of the overarching characteristics of “red neck, blue collar” –ism, is that it is proud, PROUD, of its ignorance and stands tall to defend the right to be ignorant.  Of course, the RNBC’s do have that right; but it does not mean that they ARE right.  What Fox seems to be promoting is that within his bubble of ignorance there blooms a bud of wisdom regarding the objects of his ignorance.  But we can legitimately ask, how likely is that?  But maybe he has a case; we proceed with that hope.

Back to his original model, model 1, we can show conclusively that Fox does not know how pervasive such an attitude is despite his claim that he does.  If he had a poll that demonstrated these “facts”, he would have shown it for support.  Claims to know the universal thoughts and thought processes of humans, especially humans as numerous and diverse as Christians, can only be false.

 This model was a Fox-specific straw-man construction, a cartoon, based on his admitted ignorance of what constitutes the basis for a theological moral base.  It is common for Atheists to construct erroneous views of theology out of pure ignorance (with a little meanness thrown in, as we will get to in a bit).  There is no need, they suppose, to understand the actual premises; they can create false arguments for a supposed theology, and feel quite brilliant as they knock down their own false assumptions.

Fox continues to claim that opening doors for the elderly, being a moral act, can be moral in many religions and in Atheism.  He lays out a second model, model 2:

” In Model 2, religion itself, some kind of devout faith, is the real deal, the true source of morality.”

His effort here is to attach a selfishness to an ill-defined model, and he does it with a very clumsy attachment.  The assertion is composed of mixed thoughts: If religion is the source of morality, then no one outside the religion can perform moral acts, and the religion is selfish in claiming sole rights to morality.  The confusion of source with actor muddles this to the point of nonsense: the source does not prevent actions outside the circle of membership and to claim that it does is nonsensical.  The red neck equivalent would be something like this: If universities are a source of rational thought, then no one without a university degree can have rational thoughts.  In other words, the model and its conclusion reduce immediately to absurdity.

Undeterred, Fox forges ahead with another moral model.  This third one is two-part.  First, there is “no causal connection” between religion and morality.  Second, religion has no claim to morality at all:

” In fact, the only link between the two is the shaky one that religious people deliberately make in an attempt to make their religion seem necessary – the hijacking of morality by the members of Pineview Baptist Church, along with the pompous crowing that only they are blessed with a moral code.”

He goes on:

” The fact that the boxes of Religion and Morality are separate does not mean that PBC members can’t be extremely moral people. It does mean that moral people do not have to belong to PBC, or Judeo-Christian-Islamic Hootenanny, or any religion.

PBC members are not moral because they’re PBC members. JCIH believers are not moral because they’re JCIH believers. Neither are moral people somehow automatically PBC or JCIH members without knowing it.

People are moral because they care enough to make an effort to be good. Period.”

Fox has now declared his version of morality, but through the haze of the word "good".  He is correct in saying that membership does not make one moral.  But no one except himself is making that point, and he makes it in a straw man model made up just to prove this point (which again, no one else is making).

Fox had already attacked the Ten Commandments.  Perhaps he will share with us exactly what “good” means, and what is and is not good.  Even better, perhaps he will share with us exactly what the source of his moral certainty is and what constitutes the authority for making that moral declaration of which he is certain is "good".

But what he actually does is to attack the obvious:  Churches (he’s not dealing with the issue of the existence of God)… Churches are composed of humans and sometimes get things wrong (a foible which Fox attacks with juvenile lust).  Certainly some Southern churches have endorsed slavery (as have secular Democrats).  This proves exactly nothing.  It was Christian influence (e.g.  Mennonites and in Britain, Wilberforce) that led to the abolition of slavery, not secularism).  Nonetheless, Fox besmirches the church with whatever he can.

His next claim is that religion – as he sees it – takes away valuable time and resources from dealing with the actual problem, which seems to be the issue of “what is good”.  This inefficiency is apparently evil in Fox’s moral estimation.  Churches think they already know what morality is, but they should be spending full time trying to figure out what it is...?  Fox doesn't even do that.  He already knows what his morality is.

And this results in the following statement, perhaps indicative of the intellectual level of the entire discourse:

” Considering that you and your group will expend some of their time and energy in chanting, speaking in tongues, handling snakes, adjusting your funny hats, kneeling and praying with Brother Pat, lighting candles, arranging incense, polishing up the gold elephant statues, cutting parts off babies, poring over bomb designs – whatever your particular religion demands you do – you will definitely have less time for door opening. You will get less accomplished with your limited time, energy and intelligence applied to the mixed effort than if you had focused the full of your available resources on moral behavior alone.”

The self-righteous bigotry oozes forth.  Does Fox believe that his list is descriptive of Christian theology?  It doesn't matter whether he does or does not, because he uses his list as if it definitely were the fundamentals of theology, and he hates it, having selected it for that purpose.  Fox is not necessarily an Atheist so much as he is a hater.  And he has given us the foundation for his hatred by sharing the elements which disgust him.  Does this prove to him that there is no God?  We can’t know from just this chapter.  But it ‘s not over.

” The sad fact is, if your main focus is your religion and not your morality, you and your friends become less able to achieve some full measure of morality.

In his mind (and there only) Fox has divorced religion – or is it Christianity? – or is it all religious believers? – from morality, thereby enabling him to believe himself more moral than any religious persons and able to tell them so.  He, RNBC Fox, spends no time which is not focused purely on a full measure of morality, or so he implies.  His righteousness is measurable therefore as an efficiency co-efficient. 

As he proceeds it is becoming obvious that the authority and source for morality in Fox’s world is Fox.  Are his particular commandments coming up?  Or is it Relativism or perhaps consequentialism which the Atheist Fox prefers?

Fortunately for us, Fox does elaborate on how one “gets morals”.  First he sets up another strawman:

” It is impossible to be a moral being yourself, or a positive moral force in your society if you don’t understand something of the reasons for moral acts. People who think that only religious faith keeps you from committing crimes – and I’ve heard that silly question often enough “If you don’t believe in God, what keeps you from committing murder anytime you feel like it?” that it must be a pretty common idea – have no way to think about morality beyond “I have to do what my god says.”

Worse, contained within that question, a question suggested by everything taught in churches, is the statement that the natural desire of human beings is to rob and kill others and the only thing restraining them is their good Christian faith. Freighted within the question is the clear implication that compassion, love, charity, tenderness and decency are unnatural, alien traits to humans, and become available only after you start to believe in God. For people who believe that, every person outside their religion is automatically wicked.

To me, this is so far beyond insulting – not just to me but to the entire human species – it’s just plain filth. “

This bogus set-up is precisely NOT what is taught in Christianity – but of course Fox specifically doesn’t want to spend the effort to see what Christianity really is; he prefers to make stuff up, call it Christian or at least “religion”, and then to bash that little clay creation as if it were the real thing.  If he is insulted, he insulted himself and then took umbrage at the insult.

But he charges ahead with his declaration of moral causation:

” For instance, why open doors for old people? Why really?

Because it’s good to help those less strong than ourselves – it costs you almost nothing but might mean a great deal to the person you do it for.

Because it’s a win-win: It gives you a good feeling to know you’re helping someone, and it gives them a good feeling that someone cares enough to offer help.

Because if you help maintain the tradition of young people opening doors for elders, you yourself will probably someday benefit.

Because generous acts help maintain an overall friendly atmosphere in your society, which benefits everybody. If you help some elderly person, it’s likely someone else will follow your example and help your own parents or grandparents ... or your pregnant wife, or a handicapped child, or just someone tired and harried and in need of a little human caring.

Because compassion feels good, and even though the beneficiary of the act may be a total stranger, the act itself makes you a better person for yourself and your family.

Compare this list of reasons to the juvenile, simplistic “Because my supernatural sky-daddy commands it.” The two mindsets are not even in the same ballpark.

The same process holds for every other aspect of morality. “

Let’s review.

First, it’s “good” to do X because (a) it costs nothing, and (b) the recipient of X will like it.  I.e., it is good because the consequences are positive: Consequentialist.

Second, it’s win – win.  Consequentialist.

Third, it’s tradition and you might benefit.  Consequentialist.

Fourth, if you are generous it might get passed on.  Consequentialist.

Fifth, it feels good.  Consequentialist.

Simplistic Consequentialism never rises to the comprehension that designating only the ends as beneficial leaves open the question of the means to those ends, and whether a “good” end justifies any means whatsoever to get there.  Possibly Fox is not really Consequentialist, but has merely selected his moral declarations for this writing which are Consequentialist.  And possibly Fox has never even heard of Consequentialism, being of a proud Red Neck Blue Collar ignorant persuasion.  But fox is not above pompous conclusions:

” The guy who understands the real mechanics of morality is far more advanced, morally, than someone who robotically does what he’s commanded, who fearfully does “good” acts to avoid eternal fire, or who selfishly chalks up goodie points only for the purpose of bargaining for his own everlasting life.

He’s also a much better neighbor to those who hold other faiths, or no faith at all.

Fox makes up one last strawman, the presumption that a person is a robot if one thinks that the authority for making moral pronouncements should reside with someone other than Fox or any other human.  But the reverse is the case: why should any person take moral lessons from Fox, or from any other human?  Which human is it who has the unquestionable moral authority to dictate to all other humans such things as moral tenets?  Why should anyone conclude that Fox has some preternatural moral abilities that they do not have?

Returning to Fox’s first strawman (model 1), the church which contains all morals, and comparing that to Fox’s several positions including his pride in his personal ignorance, can we conclude that there is a deathless moral message contained in this chapter of Fox’s book?  Consequentialism is an easy, wide and comfortable road, and is not even really a morality; it is a technique for declaring that something you approve of and want is a "moral objective" and then filling in the tactics to get it.   The morality is had merely by declaring it to be moral (the Alinsky method); the reason it is moral is that the consequences are desirable to the declarer – true logical circularity.  Nonetheless, the declarer of the moral objective gets what he wants, and those opposed are thus immoral.  It’s that simple.

So what if a person decides that other people do not have any moral authority to tell him how to lead his life?  There are three choices: the person can determine his own moral code; he can choose to have no moral code; or he can look to a higher, Godelian authority.  Fox seems to have chosen the first, developing his own moral code and claiming that it is common sense, with the further expectation that it is universal, and the even further expectation that it will be accepted as "reason".  And he also seems to think that those not taken by his particular bias are not moral, which is the exact charge he makes against others, and in that sense he is just another denomination of the same church.

Perhaps Fox is unaware that human moralists are a dime a dozen, and that none of them, him included, have any claim on unquestionable moral authority of a universal nature which makes their declarations of any value to other humans.  Fox will find a following who enjoy his sarcasm (which they interpret as “humor”).  But there is nothing of a universal nature in his, or for that matter, any moralizer’s pet theories.  And certainly one would expect morals, if they exist, to be universal; otherwise they are just opinions, and that is what we have here, Fox’s opinions, strewn with false theology, false demography, and with copious sarcasm and a little undisguised hate.  If that works for you, then buy his book.

Addendum:
Can you think of instances where it would not be moral to open doors for old persons?  I can.
1.  The door is the exit from an airplane in flight.
2.  The old person doesn't want to use the door.
3.  The door is to a bathroom which is currently in use.
4.  The door is to a mass shower with fake shower heads that issue toxic gas.
5.  The door releases a cage full of lions into an arena containing elderly gladiators armed with soup spoons.

The immediate response to this list might be that this sort of thing was never Fox's intent.  It is right in line, however, with Fox's perversion of Christianity, a tat for his tit, as it were.  There is no use in protesting a distortion if distortion is your own form of intellectual currency.

6.  The door is a trap door beneath the elder's feet.  Perhaps this might be OK if the elder lands on a giant whoopie cushion?
7. The door holds up a concealed ironing board which will goose-egg the elder. (An old Marx Bro. fav.)
8. That's enough: point should be made by now.

Stephen Hawking and the Grand Design

Stephen Hawking has published another popular-culture targeted book of science, this one called “The Grand Design”. Written in collaboration with Leonard Mladinow, it is clear from the cover that Hawking has the spotlight. It is not clear who actually wrote the book. Books intended for the popular market are a special thing. In the introduction to Feynman’s book on quantum electrodynamics, ”QED”, physicist A. Zee wrote that there are three classes of audiences to be addressed by scientists who write books on their specialties: students who might be inspired to continue to study; intelligent, curious laypersons; professionals in the field (note 1). Many authors and publishers, says Zee, wring the meaningfulness from the pages in order not to spook lay readers.

Zee also quotes Steve Weinberg, who claimed that “lay readers only want to learn a few buzzwords to throw around at cocktail parties”. Further Zee quotes Hawking who said that every equation in a book halves the number of readers. Consequently, most books of popular market science contain references such as “given two numbers, the high priests have a way of producing another number”, with implied faith that what the high priests produce is correct, meaningful, and applicable to the topic at hand.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have produced a popular book of the kind that references the high priests. There are many things that are stated as fact that must be assumed true without much in the way of proof; proof of the ordinary kind is eschewed, and even history is denied (more on that below). Grand Design finally morphs into a faith-based belief system, after reviewing modern physics in its several forms, and stacking some dubious axioms. The narrative starts early on toward that belief system by declaring in the first pages that “philosophy is dead”. Whether either author has an awareness of philosophical issues outside Materialism is immediately in question, especially since nowhere in the ensuing text are any of the basics of ethics, for example, discussed or even acknowledged. The entire point of the book is to stack up the models in a manner that might sift out a source for the universe that could eliminate the need for a First Cause, much less an intelligent one. One supposes that ethics must fall where it may under those conditions.

The case being made here is that, given a series of assumptions, there are some conclusions that can be made. These conclusions are that:

(a) Time had no beginning due to excessive warp of space-time making time just another crunched up physical dimension (completely unlike time as we know it), thereby creating a boundary-less universe; this is compared to the shape of the earth: there is nothing south of the south pole. Without time at the start, it being all bound up tight, there is no “beginning”, no time south of crunched-time.

(b) Applying Feynman’s “sum over histories” to our universe creates a situation where the universe has many histories, not just one, as the model for quantum particles suggests. Sum over histories, or path-integral, is the idea that a particle takes ALL possible paths to a desitination simultaneously, i.e. all histories apply.

(c) Defining life simplistically allows for high probabilities of creating life; denying free will helps.

(d) And finally, given that gravity provides a negative energy which balances positive energy use for creating mass, a universe can spontaneously create itself from nothing, with nothing to restrict it. Given that the energy in a universe must be zero, gravity and mass cancel out.

The ideas that are reached are philosophical – no need for intelligence in order for intelligence to exist; no need for mass-energy in order for mass-energy to exist, and so on – all based on speculation.

The speculation is embedded in assumptions and even the equations themselves, which are mentioned but not shown. For example, the problem of infinities arises throughout. This amazing statement ensues following a discussion of supersymmetry:

”This [the equivalence of force and matter] has the potential to solve the problem of infinities because it turns out that the infinities from closed loops of force particles are positive while the infinities from the closed loops of matter particles are negative, so the infinities in the theory arising from the force particles and their partner matter tend to cancel out. Unfortunately, the calculations required to find out whether there would be any infinities left uncanceled were so long and difficult and had such potential for error that no one was prepared to undertake them. Most physicists believed, nonetheless, that supergravity was probably the right answer to the problem of unifying gravity with the other forces.” (note 2)

Canceling infinities? Unknown possible uncanceled infinities? Such is the state of the scientific knowledge that is used to reach the beliefs being espoused.

Again,

String theories also lead to infinities, but it is believed that in the right version they will all cancel out” (note 3)

There are also the paradoxes and philosophical presuppositions slipped past:

A paradox: if only the four space dimensions existed in the early universe, and time was a space dimension, not actually time, then how did the expansion progress – given that progress requires time? Motion requires time. It can be argued that physical existence requires time (or there are no measurements possible to confirm or deny it, plus, mass only exists in temporal motion from t(n) to t(n+)).

Another paradox: The no-boundary condition (a presupposition) provides a means to:

“remove the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning, but it also means that the beginning of the universe was governed by the laws of science, and doesn’t need to be set in motion by some god.” (note 4)

Declaring that there was no beginning, it always existed in boundary-less and timeless form, and then declaring that in the beginning scientific laws existed… is self-refuting.

A strange tautology: The statement that “the laws of science apply at the beginning of the universe” is a tautology, IFF science understands what happened, perfectly, and documents that understanding. That tautology is in no way a refutation of anything in particular – it is a definition of scientific knowledge. The idea that science, by its existence, refutes a deity is false. Science produces an infinite regress of next questions. This book does not ask those questions. Questions not asked by the authors are discussed below, near the end.

Presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theory will subsume Newtonian theory, and that means that determinism is guaranteed, even if it is probabilistic. (note 5)

Another presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theories of particles will apply to the universe when it was quite small; this is not apparent, because the initial universe was infinitely dense, with particles collapsing into who knows what. This presupposition is a giant leap of faith.

And another presupposition: It is presupposed that there is no explanation for free will if we are just a mass of atomic subparticles (This is also known as Darwin's Horrid Doubt). The immediate conclusion is that free will cannot exist because of our composition, which is deterministic. (note 6) This is a Philosophical Materialist conclusion, not a scientific data driven one. And this leads to the bizarre conclusion that follows:

”Because it is so impractical to use the underlying physical laws to predict human behavior, we adopt what is called an effective theory [ OK we admit that free will exists…]. In physics, an effective theory is a framework created to model certain observed phenomena without describing in detail all of the underlying processes…. In the case of people, since we cannot solve the equations that determine our behavior, we use the effective theory that people have free will. The study of our will, and the behavior that arises from it, is the science of psychology.”(note 6 again)

We must be very clear here. They deny free will based on quantum composition; they do admit to the creation of a contingent theory based on observation that models the existence of free will in humans! They choose the quantum compostion as Truth, and ignore the model based on observations of facts!

Zee sets the environment straight for us: ”Theoretical physicists are a notoriously pragmatic lot. They will use whichever method is easiest. There is none of the mathematician’s petulant insistence on rigor and proof. Whatever works, man!” (note 7) One cannot let observations interfere with the pursuit of a faith.

There is an admission up front in the Grand Design. One must abandon all prior knowledge. Period. The universe, if viewed from the many-histories viewpoint, does not have a single history. The universe, like Fenman’s particles, has many, many histories, and must be examined from the present backwards, not from the beginning forwards. If this is the case, then all knowledge, having been historically derived, is null and void.

This necessarily includes logic, which is based in observations of the characteristics of the universe over many human lifetimes and even eons. Logical demands are of no value in the quantum world, and that is now being applied to the universe, in fact to all universes. And along with free will being destroyed by quantum determinism, logic is destroyed by many-histories.

So the logic of canceling infinities, or uncancelled infinities or any other paradoxes is of no concern.

Where exactly does this leave science? Does science still require experimental confirmation and non-falsification? The authors say yes, and yet their conclusions are firm, unyielding faith statements.

Or is experiment and verificaton an artifact of logic in science which is no longer required for believing in The Grand Design?

The Grand Design, taken alone and without the expertise of cosmology, quantum theory, might seduce the unsuspicious who are truly willing to abandon logic-based rationality in order to stack unproven and likely unmathematical speculations into a belief system. In fact, science might some day robustly lead to a new view of the universe and its origin. But that robustness is not available within the parameters of this book.

Also ignored in this book are the subsequent questions not being asked: Whence gravity? If we start with nothing, why would we expect gravity to appear as a balancing entity, a rule out of nowhere? Why gravity? Why not nothing? Whence the laws of science, or rather the order that science describes, even if probabilistically? What about the mind-connection in quantum mechanics, does that apply to the universe too? Whence the origin of the no-boundary existence of four crunched-up dimensions, and if they just exist, how did they get to the point where time became time? Where are these other universes? Why do we not see new universes all the time and everywhere, if there are truly no constraints on spontaneous creation? Why don't neighboring universes create warp in our universe? It goes on and on.

But I am most curious about this: Were these two authors compelled by determinism to write this book? Or did they have free will to stack all these unknowns into their belief system? That’s the question I’d like to see them answer, non-philosophically, of course. I’ll need data and replication; I'm thinking that the "effective theory" holds, and better than the quantum theory of the universe.

Note 1: A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xii-xiv.

Note 2. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 114-5.

Note 3. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 115.

Note 4. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 135.

Note 5. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 72-3.

Note 6. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 32.

Note 7. A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xvi.

The Coherence of a Deity

In his book, Atheism – A Philosophical Justification, 1989, Michael Martin, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, makes arguments that are not commonly made, attempting to discredit any logic or coherence behind the concept of God. This book consists of 346 pages devoted to trying to prove that there can be no deity by attacking a single set of concepts.

Martin tries to make his assault almost encyclopedic, including ideas about Positive Atheism, Negative Atheism, Theodicies, Atheist arguments against a deity, teleologic arguments, as well as the idea that Atheists cannot be considered moral.

The Concept

The first sentences of Chapter 1 set the ground rules:

”What must be shown in order to support negative Atheism with respect to the existence of the Christian-Hebraic God? How does one justify the view that one ought not to believe in an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God who created the universe?”[1]

From the last paragraph of the book:

”In view of the fact that the controversy between atheists and nonatheists in Western society has usually been about the question of an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful being exists, there was good reason to limit the discussion to atheism in the narrow sense.”[2]

Thus, Martin sets up a thesis for defining a deity according to an ecclesiastic viewpoint which he presumes represents all Hebraic-Christian conceptions, one which he proposes to knock down in order to justify Atheism. His presumptions that the qualities, “all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing”, are necessary attributes for defining and fully justifying such a being are never questioned nor are they supported in any fashion; they are assumed as valid.

The basic premise of the argument he makes in this book is that it is noncoherent to assume the existence of a being that could be “all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful” , and that these characteristics are necessary and sufficient to the concept of a deity. He uses this understanding of a deity in all of his arguments. He assumes that by defeating these three assumed characteristics of a deity, that the entire concept of the existence of a deity is defeated.

From his personal background, Martin was brought up an Atheist in a Catholic neighborhood [3]. In his discussions with friends, his Atheist views were not treated with scorn, and presumably he learned theism from them. He later studied the philosophy of science and became fascinated with “the incommensurability of scientific theories”. He became a professor of philosophy.

Professor Martin makes the following statement regarding the analysis he performs in the book:

”It is far better, in my view, to develop certain middle-level principles of justification that are in accord with our ordinary and scientific rational practice and to argue for atheism in terms of these than to justify atheism in terms of some larger and more controversial theory. In fact, if one had to wait for the availability of a general theory of rationality and justification, that is free of problems and widely accepted before judging that some belief was irrational, a judgment might never be made. Moreover, although I use inductive arguments in this work, I provide no general account of inductive arguments. I appeal to common rational practices regardless of how their details are construed by inductive logicians. Although I am sympathetic with some general theories of justification, the coherence theory in particular, I leave their defense to others. Indeed, since this book’s basic quarrel is with one version of foundationalism, I can with complete consistency accept other versions of foundationalism.

This is a striking admission of not adhering to known logical principles, and not caring to define them. Based on these two factors, choosing insufficient characteristics as the necessary and sufficient characteristics of a deity, and choosing to ignore disciplined logic, the entire book proceeds.

While Martin attacks theodicies of many varieties, that alone is not necessarily a conclusive argument against the existence of a creating deity. He attacks the existence of a deity straight on in the Positive Atheism section, starting with Chapter 11.

Attacking the Concept

The same mode of attack is used throughout the book. So illuminating its use in one attack pretty much covers the same issue in the remaining arguments. Here we will start with Martin’s attempt to maneuver general terminology into a specific case of non-coherence, using “all-knowing”, or omniscience as the target.

In terms of all-knowing, Martin defines omniscience as “having all knowledge” and then tries to refine that definition in order to accomplish coherence for a being to have such knowledge. He claims that philosophers have defined three categories of knowledge: “Propositional or factual knowledge, or knowing something is the case and is analyzable as true belief of a certain kind”; “Procedural knowledge, aka knowledge-how”, or knowing how to do something; “knowledge by acquaintance” which is direct acquaintance with material objects. And later he seems to use another undefined quality, “moral knowledge”, or knowledge of immoral entities such as lust and envy.

By the end of this process, he has decided that there are types of knowledge that a deity could not conceivably have.

First, being disembodied, God could not have “knowledge-how” (skill knowledge), based on the logic that he could not understand how to do gymnastics because he has no body. [4]

Initial comment: This decision is based on the presupposition that humans, or at least the author, can know exactly what it is that a disembodied but coexistent deity could know. It is more likely that the author does not know the limits of the deity’s knowledge, than it is that a deity “could not know” certain things.

Second, Martin asserts that a morally perfect God could not have knowledge of lust and envy.

”One aspect of lust and envy is the feeling of lust and envy. However, part of the concept of God is that He is morally perfect, and being morally perfect excludes these feelings. Consequently, there is a contradiction in the concept of God.” And, ”Freedom from such feelings as lust and envy is precisely what religious believers expect from a saint, and it is inconceivable that God would be less morally perfect than a saint.” [5]

Initial comment: This definition of moral perfection is in error. Moral perfection is not produced by ignorance of immoral choices nor is it produced by absence of ability to be tempted; moral perfection is produced by strength of character which allows one to behave morally in the face of immoral temptations. This requires knowledge of moral vs. immoral choices. So this argument is a definitional failure, having been based on a non-valid premise.

Third, a deity cannot know that he knows everything, unless he has explored the infinite reaches of space-time, which is impossible. A super-set declaring to be a complete set of all knowledge is not possible.[6]

Initial comment: The assertion that both time and space are infinite is unprovable and in the case of space, not necessarily a scientifically valid premise considering that string theory posits a wrap-back universe, perhaps toroidal in shape. In the case of time, it had a start; it is also possible that it will have a stop; there is no reason to declare infinitude as a fact. Further, to an entity with no restrictions from mass-energy and space-time, the scope of the universe, its history and its future might well be all visible – or comprehendible – all together, or as we might say, in unison. Limitations due to time-sequentiality and limitations of large distances are meaningless if there is no time or space from the vantage point.

Fourth, Martin attacks the idea that God is “completely free”. Richard Swinburn has argued that God is perfectly free. Martin defines this as freedom to do anything in the future. But, according to Martin, God cannot know in advance whether He will perform a miracle because God cannot know the future:

”God cannot know now that He will or will not intervene in some future event. Consequently, He cannot know now whether any event will occur in the future. He cannot know what the future actions of his creatures will be; he cannot know what His own future actions will be; He cannot know if any event governed by natural laws will occur, since He cannot know now if He will intervene in the natural course of events. This seems to cover all future events.”[7]

Initial comment: Again this is blatantly materialist, and the non-material, extra-dimensional, time-free and space-free characteristics of a deity are completely opaque to Martin.

Fifth; Martin then attacks moral perfection:

”Given that God cannot know whether any particular future event will occur, it follows that God cannot know whether His past actions have been moral. This is because the morality of His past actions and forbearances depends in part on what will happen in the future, [long term consequences] which He cannot know.”[8]

Initial comment: Once again the argument is made based on a material understanding of the deity, one that is not necessary in order to posit such an entity, and one that ignores the non-material characteristics of a being without space-time and mass-energy limitations.

Martin applies the same logic to omnipotence as well as the Problem of Evil, as well as other Atheist stumbling blocks. He makes the following comments concerning theodicies in general:

”… the continued failure of theodicies [to provide conclusive proof of the existence of a deity] provides inductive evidence that no explanation of evil is possible. Thus the failure of the theodicies considered in this chapter [Natural Evil, Ch 16], combined with the failure of other theodicies , provides inductive evidence that no adequate theodicy of natural evil is possible”.

Initial comment: As he stated in his introductory comments, Martin eschews all logic except inductive logic and the idea of coherence. He fails to acknowledge any limits to the validity of inductive logic, including the inductive fallacy. He also fails to understand the limits of coherence and its inability to apply to non-temporal entities and non-simultaneous situations.

He makes another assertion in a later chapter that it is essential for theists to provide an acceptable theodicy for the Problem of Evil, or else the problem stands as a refutation of the existence of a deity. There are two insurmountable problems for this assertion: first, the only explanation that seems acceptable to Materialists is a purely Materialist explanation which would presumably explain the motivations of a deity completely constrained to within Materialist requirements and Materialist paradigms; this is a non-coherent demand. Second, there is no reason for theists or anyone else to assume that they know anything about the motivations of a deity.

The Premises

Are these basic arguments correct, despite the initial objections pointed to above? Let’s start with questioning the basic premises.

Is it necessary for the human understanding of a First Cause that the First Cause be necessarily omniscient in the sense that Martin projects? Or is Martin’s interpretation of omniscience a folklore or fable sense? As he develops his sense of the qualities of omniscience, he finally comes to this definition:

”If P is omniscient, then P would have knowledge of all facts about the world. Let us call this totality of facts Y. If P is omniscient, then P knows Y. One of the facts included in Y is that P is omniscient. But in order to know that P is omniscient, P would have to know something besides Y. P would have to know:

(Z) There are no facts unknown to P.”

Martin quotes Pucceti who argues that (Z) is impossible. It is declared that the deity cannot see the future, cannot see the infinite limits of space and cannot see the infinite reaches of time.

However, the argument here is based on a Materialist viewpoint of the deity. In fact the entire system of arguments that Martin sets up is based on material limitations of a proposed deity, which are predetermined limits to the existence of a deity; these then are dogmatic limits. Claiming that the deity is time-limited is a claim for an artificial limitation which is not necessary for a conception of a deity which exists outside of space-time, having created space-time.

There is no reason to limit the concept of such a being to time-limitations such as those to which we humans are subject. Plus existing outside of time and without mass, plus not being of our universe, all these things automatically exempt the deity from the restrictions, not just of those particulars, but also from the secondaries: laws of nature, which are time and mass dependent, and laws of logic, which are based on observations of the characteristics of the laws of nature. So the very idea that a deity must be logically coherent is absurd, since the deity exists outside of the domain within which logic and coherence exist and to which domain they are restricted. An entity existing without time, outside of time, is beyond our time-bound capability to understand.

Let’s examine this further.

COHERENCE OF A DEITY

Where is God?

Where does God exist? The Materialist arguments made in this book are contingent upon a Material deity, one that is, at a minimum, bound by space-time and mass-energy, and that these limitations disallow certain “all-“ characteristics that humans allegedly attribute to a deity. But Materialism is disallowed if actual attributions to a deity are considered, including not being bound to Materialism, and not being bound to Material “truths” including, ultimately, time-based functions such as logic and coherence. Let’s pursue that.

If we assume that String Theory is originally based in sound science, that the mathematics is demonstrably and replicably sound, that the mathematicians are neither deluded nor illuded, then it is possible that the Theory is about something rather than nothing. It is possible that accurate mathematics could project through our material reality and into adjoining realities which are not apprehended materially. It is also possible that the theory is correct in positing 11 dimensions – now expanded to 26 possible dimensions, of which we occupy only three, those which we designate the three physical dimensions of space: x, y, and z.

Since the Theory posits that the extra 8 (or 23) dimensions are extra-material and in all likelihood unknowable; cannot respond to the material requirements of science (making some doubt that the theory is science on that account); and since the theory says nothing about the ability of some intelligent entity to exist in one or more of those dimensions or outside all of the dimensions in some supervisory dimension coexistent with all of ours, then it is possible to posit that such a non-material being might exist, might inhabit extra dimensions not available to material scrutiny, and that it is not in any way dependent upon the space–time continuum that binds humans. This is a coherent solution to the question (unasked here), where is God.

Logic is Time-Sequentially and Simultaneously Based

Since space-time is a prerequisite for sequential logical functions, such as cause and effect scientific propositions, which are sequential, as well as if / then logical propositions, which are simultaneous, there is no reason to believe that such logical functions or operations are valid or even necessary in dimensions outside of our space-time. Logic and coherence are resident only in our universe, and are based on the observation of the rational functioning of our universe: the behavior of mass-energy within space-time.

Since mass-energy, along with space-time, were created at the big Bang as posited and mathematically demonstrated by Hawking et al., there is no reason to believe that an entity existing outside our own dimension would be required to leave mass-energy tracks in our space-time continuum. For the same reason, there is no reason to believe that time exists in dimensions outside our own space-time continuum. Although the extra dimensions of string theory might possibly be time based, there is no reason to presume that a supervisory dimension(s) would necessarily be.

Hence, requiring an entity such as might exist in those dimensions which are not available to humans to be subject to space-time and mass-energy restrictions, as well as sequential logic, is itself not coherent, because it requires something of that entity that is not essential to that entity for its existence.

Coherence

This argument resolves to this: The existence of a creating deity cannot be understood using the artifacts of material existence, which are space-time and mass-energy. So coherence or non-coherence, being time dependent, do not apply, except to members of the x, y, z universe which are dependent upon space-time and mass-energy.

While it might be tempting to conclude from this that the deity can, in fact, be non-coherent, there is no reason to assume anything other than that the deity is either totally coherent, at least with regard to his interface with the members of this particular coherent universe, or at least partially coherent, under our standards. There is no possible driving logic that proves him totally non-coherent.

It is also possible to conclude that we can know nothing of such an entity, other than that which he chooses to reveal to us. So we cannot know how the terms, ”all-knowing, all-powerful, all-whatever” actually apply to such a being, except that we can presume that they do not presuppose any noncoherence in a potentially completely coherent being.

Conclusion

Thus, “omni-coherent” is an underlying characteristic that is ignored in Martin’s analyses. Omni-coherence is a limit to be placed on the other omni-characteristics, which are erroneously assumed to be definitive by Martin in all of his arguments.

Martin’s entire underlying thesis in this book is that undermining a [strawman, or incorrectly understood] folk-ecclesiastical viewpoint of a deity is sufficient to justify Atheism. Even such a thesis is demonstrably incorrect, since no human derived ecclesiastical viewpoint (especially a materially limited viewpoint) can be presumed to be sufficient evidence to justify knowledge of the existence of such a creating entity. [9] So destroying that ecclesiastical viewpoint is without value in justifying disbelief.

Martin declares certain personal opacities up-front, particularly his disdain for the rigors of certain logical processes. It is apparent that there are other opacities in operation, too, specifically an understanding of the science of origins and dimensions. Much of this has been developed since the book has been written. Still, the selection of obtusely defined, materially limited characteristics as the sole necessary and sufficient characters of a creating deity seems to be insufficient for any sort of argumentation in a serious debate that goes beyond theodicies and the arguments above. The arguments made resolve to the level of word thrashing rather than existential disproofs.


[1] Martin, “Atheism – A Philosophical Justification”, pg 26.

[2] Ibid, pg 476.

[3] Ibid, pg xi.

[4] Ibid, pg 288.

[5] Ibid, pg 291.

[6] Ibid, pg 297.

[7] Ibid, pg 298.

[8] Ibid, pg 299.

[9] Knowledge of meta-material factoids or truths cannot come from material sources. Other sources produce such knowledge. For example, higher mathematics can be justified materially even though its source (logical abstraction) is not material. Thus knowledge comes from logical abstraction as well as from empirical investigation. Now there is descriptive mathematics, based on physics, that describes non-material, or meta-material entities, such as parallel dimensions.

Book Review: Steven E. Landsburg’s "The Big Questions"

Dr. Steven E Landsburg is an economist at the University of Rochester. This is his third book.

From an overview perspective, Landsburg's writing is clear, accessible and engaging. It is not likely that his position will be misunderstood, no matter what your opinion of it might be.

Landsburg admits up front that he takes on the Big Questions from an economist’s viewpoint. What this actually means doesn’t surface immediately. So I will reveal it early on: Landsburg is a philosophical Consequentialist.

Consequentialism, especially in the economist’s world, is the valuing of actions by their consequences – at the surface. More deeply it is the moral evaluation of actions based on cost / benefit ratios. This leads directly and inevitably to several conclusions: global governance by consequentialists, and the leveling of all peoples to equal outcomes as determined by cost / benefit analyses. While Landsburg doesn't overtly endorse this conclusion, neither does he take pains to abjure it.

With that held in our minds, We start, with Landsburg immediately taking on ontology with a breathtakingly over-simplification of a number of variables to arrive at these conclusions: (a) all existence is mathematics, and (b), the existence of mathematics proves there is no God.

Here’s how that works in Landsburg’s universe:

The first premise is that mathematics is real and immutable; it exists because it is necessary that it exists and it cannot NOT exist.

Premise 2 is that because computer software can run on any computer, it is independent of the computer (the computer is just baggage). This leads to,

Premise 3: The mind is software, the brain is hardware; the mind is independent of the brain (isn’t this a variation on Duality?).

Premise 4: The computer / brain baggage can be eliminated altogether, since it doesn’t matter what computer is used to run the software.

Premise 5: Consciousness – being software - is not a function of the brain; consciousness would exist independently of the brain.

Premise 6: If software is developed that is conscious, it would be conscious without the computer.

Premise 7: Since all hardware is merely “baggage” and can be eliminated, then all reality is actually software – which is basically mathematics.

Conclusion: All reality is actually mathematics.

Next,

Mathematics could not have been created because it is essential, necessary. (In fact, the universe exists expressly for mathematics, which must exist)

Therefore God could not have created it.

And thus, since there is no existence that is not mathematics, then God didn’t create anything that exists, ergo: no God.

This Atheodicy, like all analogies, fails in its inability to be comprehensive. Starting with Premise 4, the analogy goes astray, wandering off into absurd thoughts that are taken as Truth, even axiomatic. To declare that computers can be eliminated is of course absurd. To declare that all reality is mathematics is absurd: if mathematics is metaphysical (and it is), then there is no physical existence, if the premises are valid.

Are mathematics truly essential, immutable? What is immutable is the numbering of objects, where 2 objects added to 3 objects always leaves 5 objects; as Landsburg says, the number three is essential - without it mathematics and logic fail. But wait. Without objects, mathematics is without meaning despite being metaphysical and abstract. If 2 plus 3 does not refer to objects, then "2" and "3" are meaningless symbols. Outside space/time mathematics as we know it is just as likely to be false as it is true, and there is no evidence possible to prove otherwise. Moreover in multiple dimensions our concepts of mathematics would never suffice to describe objects of 6 or 9 or 11 dimensions. So there is no reason to think that our mathematics is immutable outside our dimensions, and there is no coherency conflict with the concept of a creating deity.

It is difficult to tell if Landsburg is just playing with us to see what we will stomach, or if he is seriously setting up the rest of the book.

But as we proceed, we see that he is definitely a materialist in the sense that he measures the values of outcomes (benefits) using material measures. So he contradicts his Atheology as he goes along.

Landsburg does not shy away from taking on scientific questions, including quantum mechanics. He several times declares admiration for Dawkins (an early life influence on Landsburg) and Dennett, yet never mentions Aristotle, Newton, Hume, Locke, Popper, Boole, etc. although he does give one sentence to Feynman, and he creates a fictional conversation with Einstein. But science really is a cause and effect sort of business, which is Landsburg’s forte’. Science just doesn’t try to invoke morality for its principles... well, science which subjects itself to the scientific method, anyway.

One wonders if all economists are afflicted with the cost / benefit approach to morality. Given the affliction with Keynesianism, one might guess, maybe so.

As Landsburg says, “Morality then, is a biological accident”.

And, “My problem with deontology [abstract moral absolutes] is that I can’t think of anything that is always wrong. I’d cheerfully cut off the ears of a small child to cure malaria.”

Again, “…my ‘self interest’ accounts for everyone’s interests. That’s what a moral judgment should do…”

So he develops what he calls “The Economist’s Golden Rule”:

“Roughly, the rule is ‘Don’t leave the world worse off than you found it.’ A corollary is ‘Don’t spend valuable time and energy is nonproductive ways’”.

This “roughly” translates to: your moral capital is measured by your contribution. If you are not totally productive, you are losing moral capital commensurate with your lapse of productivity. You are valued by the amount of moral capital you accumulate, or lose.

The moral valuation of an individual becomes numerically quantifiable based on cost / benefit calculations. If this does not raise both red flags and the hair on your neck, well I can’t help you. Because the immediately obvious next step is to make certain that individuals are, indeed, evaluated and their morality assured. And the quality of the individual’s moral benefits would be defined not by the individual but by elites who know better than the individual what that individual “should” be doing.

Consequentialism is not just compatible with Alinskyism, communism, socialism/totalitarianism and eugenics, it is the fundamental moral theory underlying those aggressive philosophies.

Western culture was not founded on assured outcomes. It was founded on the freedom to personally assume the cost of pursuing a yet unrealized benefit. The probability of achieving the benefit is frequently inversely proportional to the magnitude of the benefit – yet no one is precluded from pursuing benefits for which they can pay the cost and are willing to do so, no matter what the ratio might be. This could be thought of as the underlying premise for liberty, freedom and private ownership of property. Assured outcomes are the darlings of elitist, socialist, totalitarian thoughts and agendas.

While Consequentialism is the main thrust of the book, one last interesting feature intrigued me, a section called “How to Think”. But I was disappointed to find, not a treatise on logic or rational thought, but a series of articles on what to think, not how. Only two subjects are worthy of mention here: his attack on Al Gore’s use of phony metaphors in a section called “Don’t Blather”; and the final tiny section called “Delight in Losing Arguments”, which I quote here in its entirety:

“Argue passionately for your beliefs; listen intently to your adversaries, and root for yourself to lose. When you lose, you’ve learned something”.

And learning something is a benefit that is (usually) worth the cost.

Put more water in the soup, there's better times a'comin...

I admit it, I’ve been in a mood for the past week. For one thing, getting the farm ready for winter is a chore, one that gets more annoying every year that I get older, which seems to be escalating. But those tasks are well underway now, and that’s not really the underlying issue. That comes from the sameness of the daily news, the constant downhill “progress” that the country is undergoing, the incessant beratings and cursings from the Left. And there’s David Brooks assuring the world that he is the centroid of the political universe, Republican flavored, and that Rush and Beck and the tea partiers are merely niche, unimportant little people.

Disgusting, predictable, and boring. The one bright spot is a book I am reading by Thomas Sowell. This book proves that there is a time machine somewhere, because Sowell obviously used it to crib my posts of the past two years and then publish all that stuff clear back in 1993. Only he did a bang-up job on the data and evidence.

The book is “The Vision of the Anointed”. Sowell does the legwork that is necessary to completely illuminate the conditions surrounding the crises that have been defined by the Left, and wars declared on them. He says,

“Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia in the 20th century, several key elements have been common to most of them:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.

2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.

3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.

4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes."

And there are stages to each of the Leftist “wars”:

1. The Crisis: manufactured and promoted with emotional and moral stridency; as Sowell demonstrates with real data, there is no actual crisis.[1]

2. The Solution: always interventionism and restrictions on the masses.[1]

3. The Results: always takes the situation to its negative perigee.[1]

4. The Response: measurement is based on false initial conditions, so that a positive – though false – result is reported. (Example: instead of discussing the absolute value of unemployed, the administration promotes the “decrease in the rate of unemployment” and declares success: "stepping back from the brink".)[1]

Sowell analyzes the initial conditions, the purported threat, and the actual results of several Leftist “crusades”, including the infamous “war on poverty”, “demanding sex education to solve teen pregnancy”, “criminal rights”, “health care: infant mortality”, “discrimination in education”, “mortgage discrimination”, and so on. And finally, the response of the Left to the luminous failure of each crusade is shown.

I particularly remember both the “war on poverty” and the “homeless crisis”. The war on poverty spent cash like Obama would - volcanically, building nice new high-rises for the poor… who immediately destroyed them. As Sowell points out, both poverty and crime are epiphenomena of an underlying attitude that didn’t change. In fact, the attitude was reinforced into concrete entitlement, an attitude that was not attacked until Reagan.

The homeless panic was fueled by guilt-ridden claims of millions of homeless people freezing or boiling, depending on the season. This caused local news reporters to go out and count the street people and the “jungle dwellers”, and report that the problem must surely be somewhere else. After a year or so, the crisis disappeared on its own due to lack of homeless people, and the discovery that the small number that did exist didn’t want housing. Mostly they wanted to be left alone.

And of course education is always a panic due to the continual sorry test scores, and drop-out rates of ~50% in big cities. This always requires more taxpayer large$$, despite the negative correlation between government interference and education quality. Homeschooling is proven to far out-produce the government schools at a fraction of the cost per student.

I haven’t finished Sowell’s book yet, and still I recommend it based on the first 80 pages. The analysis that he did over a decade and a half ago fits the ObamaCare crisis like a hand-stitched glove.

There. I feel better now.


[1] Italicized comments here are mine, not Sowell's.

Culture of Corruption

If you have been aware enough to shut off the TV and the newspaper subscription, and look for the actual factual news over the past half year, then you are at least aware of the high level of Chicago style corruption that infests the U.S. federal government. But it is hard to assemble a picture of the breadth and depth of the corruption tapestry as a function of the individual players, who are now interwoven into Leftist power.

But Michelle Malkin did assemble that picture. And it is to be found in her #1 selling new release book, Culture of Corruption. This is the Obamacrat story that is a secret only if one depends solely for information on the "mainstream media", that dying fount of leftist propaganda and suppressed news.

The book is comprehensive, almost a reference book, documented to a fair-thee-well. Not sure how the union SEIU fits into national politics, or why its purple shirted goons harass, beat, and follow dissenters home? Not sure what ACORN really is? Not sure what Michelle Obama's past is, or her role today? Not sure how many lobbyists Joe Biden is related to? Not sure why "czars" are needed in Obama's world? (and on, and on...)

Get it. Read it. Pass it on (if you can part with it). You can't have mine, I need it.

Liberty or Socialism?

Mark Levin's new book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" has gone number one on Amazon the first day of its release. While I have not yet received my copy, I have been able to read excerpts from bloggers who have received and read theirs, and posted book reviews. One such review is here, and an excerpt follows. One innovation that Levin makes deserves to be made a permanent part of the lexicon: the false label “liberal” that the Left has bestowed upon themselves is replaced with the more descriptive and accurate term, “statist”:

It is observed that the Statist is dissatisfied with the condition of his own existence. He condemns his fellow man, surroundings, and society itself for denying him the fulfillment, success, and adulation he believes he deserves. He is angry, resentful, petulant, and jealous. He is incapable of honest self-assessment and rejects the honest assessment by others of himself, thereby evading responsibility for his own miserable condition, The Statist searches for significance and even glory in a utopian fiction of his mind's making, the earthly attainment of which, he believes, is frustrated by those who do not share it. Therefore he must destroy the civil society, piece by piece.

For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature delegitimized. Through persuasion, deception, and coercion, the individual must be subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state -- not family, community, and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state.

The Statist's Utopia can take many forms, and has throughout human history, including monarchism, feudalism, militarism, fascism, communism, national socialism, and economic socialism. They are all of the same species -- tyranny. The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word -- equality.

Equality, as understood by the Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the most just society, imperfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human characteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended, are both engines of liberty.

The Statist, however, misuses equality to pursue uniform economic and social outcomes. He must continuously enhance his power at the expense of self-government and violate the individual's property rights at the expense of individual liberty, for he believes that through persuasion, deception, and coercion he can tame man's natural state and man's perfection can, therefore, be achieved in Utopia. The Statist must claim the power to make that which is unequal equal and that which is imperfect perfect. This is the only hope the Statist offers, if only the individual surrenders himself to the all-powerful state. Only then can the impossible be made possible. ...

For the Statist, the international community and international organizations serve as useful sources for importing disaffection with the civil society. The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, to doubt their institutions, and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders -- as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. They need to listen to the voices of condemnation from world capitals, and self-appointing global watchdogs hostile to America's superior standard of living. America is said to be out of step and regressive, justifying the surrendering of his sovereignty through treaties and other arrangements that benefit the greater "humanity." And it would not hurt if America admitted it's past transgressions, made reparations, and accepted its fate as just another aging nation -- one among many.

The Statist must also rely on legions of academics to serve as his missionaries. After a short period of training and observation, academics receive a sinecure -- a personal stake in the state via lifetime employment through a system of tenure. The classroom is to shape the beliefs and attitudes of successive generations of malcontents and incubate the quiet revolution against the civil society. Academics help identify the enemies of the state, whom their students learn to distrust or even detest through distortion and repetition -- corporations as polluters, the Founding Fathers as slave owners, the military as imperialists, etc.

This is a concise statement of the several positions that I have taken on the utopianism of the consequentialist, Atheist Left. I am anxious to receive my own copy in a few days and spend the night reading it.

I am currently engaged in some other books along the same vein, although they might not have the same impact. These include The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, and The Road to Serfdom, both by F.A, Hayek; Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg; and the striking book, United in Hate, by Jamie Glazov.

There is also blog chatter about depression amongst the lovers of liberty. One comment stands out: the disaster has already occurred; our situation now is one of response to the disaster.

This is a time for action, not for depression. As another says, the cure for depression is action. The response will determine the future of our culture, whether socialist equal outcomes, or personal liberty to pursue one’s own path.

Ethics and Saul D. Alinsky

I have just finished reading “Rules for Radicals”, Saul D. Alinsky’s 1971 guide book for directing the efforts of the radicals of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Alinsky had forged a feared name for himself as an agitator and organizer during his long career. He had written a previous book, "Reveille for Radicals", (1946) that he found was being used as a tactical guide by radical “organizers”; but they were missing the point by looking for tactics there: thus a new book was needed.

Although Alinsky died in 1972, his organizational web of community organizers continues to influence the outcomes for many neighborhoods which are otherwise without a voice. Can this be a bad thing?

There is no doubt that there still exist large segments of the population that are poverty stricken, hopeless, and which regenerate themselves into yet more poverty and hopelessness, denied basic rights by congealed knots of power which maintain an onerous, repressive status quo. This is the entire world as Alinsky sees it. His purpose in life is to do something about it. This book outlines how this might be brought about. The question is whether the cure is real, and whether the cost is worth it.

Alinsky makes several points that tie into one common thread: by collectivizing the numerous repressed humans – the sole resource in areas of extreme poverty – a leverage can be brought to bear on the existing power base that can cause the base to work against itself, and in favor of the collective. This Alinsky calls “jujitsu” in reference to the art of helping a larger attacker throw himself with just a little leveraged help from the defender. The collective threatens the power base, the power base reacts (badly), and the collective wins more power and concessions.

The first page gives notice of what is to come:

“The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away”.

The stark philosophy - Alinsky claims no philosophy, merely tactics and action - quickly folds in on itself. While claiming the high road of pursuing the “democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, co-operation, equal and full-opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life”, Alinsky goes into a denial of ethics altogether:

“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with , he does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.“

As for the ethics of means and ends:

“The man of action views the question of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of the ends and principles.” [emphasis added].

In his ten rules of the means and ends, is this statement – rule three:

“in war the end justifies almost any means”.

And rule 8:

“The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.”

And rule 10:

“You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments”.

These are justified by a new virtue:

“Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of “personal salvation”; he doesn’t care enough for people to be corrupted for them”.

As for tactics, anything goes. Of course some things – ridicule for example – work better than others, but on the whole, the course of action is opportunism coupled with constant pressure on the power base; using the reaction of the power base against itself. But any tactic is justified, since there is no fixed ethic, certainly no overarching moral component other than the success of the mission.

In these ways the similarity of Alinsky’s approach to secular humanism and the humanist experiments of the early 20th century is striking. While at several spots he urges the radical community organizers to desist from offensive behavior, he also calls for nothing to be out of bounds, there being no bounds to be outside of. By lionizing the “community” and demonizing the knots of power, Alinsky sets the stage for the idea that the overall populace is more important than any individual – while simultaneously denying that precept! It is an exercise in relative thought that produces the obvious paradox. But the paradox doesn’t matter, so long as the objective is still in sight. As he points out early on, it is more important to the radical to adequately rationalize motives after the fact than it is to devise rational motives up front.

The denial of rational motives, the prioritization of humanity over human, the use of any means that will produce, these are enough to discredit the methods of Alinsky. Barack Obama not only accepted these premises, but taught them during his two stints in Chicago’s ghettos (which are still there, unrecovered). These principles are in keeping with his mother’s secular humanism and his grandfather’s Marxism.

Why should we believe anything that an Alinsky disciple says? Where do we think that an Alinsky disciple will take us, once he has seized power? What shall we do to protect ourselves from him? Are principled actions as effective as unprincipled actions? We shall see.