tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71104606877736449772024-02-20T04:55:21.534-05:00Atheism And The CityExploring Philosophy, Religion & Atheism
In The Context Of Contemporary Urban LifeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1091125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-18615393195154973622021-01-10T21:36:00.002-05:002021-01-10T21:36:45.060-05:00Why The Kalam Cosmological Argument Is Incompatible With Libertarian Free Will (Meme Edition)<p>I've argued before that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is incompatible with libertarian free will, but it requires a few assumptions. First it must be the case that thoughts are not merely events but are things that pop into existence. Second, to say the "agent" is the cause of its thought requires an agent to somehow be distinct from its consciousness, such that it can make decisions prior to consciousness. For example, if an agent causes its thoughts it can't do so consciously, because the cause would be prior to the thought, which is the consciousness. I fail to see how an agent can have any control over such an unconscious experience. I created this meme to illustrate the problem.</p><p>Feel free to download and share on your social media.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4BssxSwgzpHZwX_xMeNI9j7O7YoEMLRGlV6MYNlKpZMOqArkLGfpbRsxg3T4cTvTTxuB6DXjX6q0pWRHQyl_A_7Xzcb4Czuf02Bmft9b3cbMNniXAtW0Ftm238-6ARa9-253u5-Do5I/s2048/KCA+and+Free+Will.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1371" data-original-width="2048" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4BssxSwgzpHZwX_xMeNI9j7O7YoEMLRGlV6MYNlKpZMOqArkLGfpbRsxg3T4cTvTTxuB6DXjX6q0pWRHQyl_A_7Xzcb4Czuf02Bmft9b3cbMNniXAtW0Ftm238-6ARa9-253u5-Do5I/w640-h428/KCA+and+Free+Will.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-62431955777229572232021-01-10T21:12:00.000-05:002021-01-10T21:12:13.560-05:00The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: Why Even God Cannot Satisfy Its Requirements (Meme Edition)<p>Appealing to the principle of sufficient reason is something almost all theists do. I created a <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2019/02/munchhausens-trilemma-what-every.html" target="_blank">meme</a> years ago on why Munchhausen's Trilemma makes the PSR impossible to adhere to. Realizing that version was too big, I've now created a more social media friendly version. Feel free to download this and upload to your social media.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinnd8Ez6YcVKU6_h28SiBDzVYZW85PpAO9I8T-XqvneyI8YM2Uijg7w0Xs7rKETVt1K8Bf2X9jsjTQIxLIiNR_H0JoRlaQMna5Sa-GVG80w7gTLhRVeNrIdJm0olfethraSqju7pmw6u8/s2048/PSR+MEME+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1207" data-original-width="2048" height="377" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinnd8Ez6YcVKU6_h28SiBDzVYZW85PpAO9I8T-XqvneyI8YM2Uijg7w0Xs7rKETVt1K8Bf2X9jsjTQIxLIiNR_H0JoRlaQMna5Sa-GVG80w7gTLhRVeNrIdJm0olfethraSqju7pmw6u8/w640-h377/PSR+MEME+2.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-47841344767856169972021-01-10T20:59:00.002-05:002021-01-10T20:59:53.379-05:00Something From Nothing: Why Almost Everyone Gets The Big Bang Wrong (Including Atheists) Meme Edition!<p>I created an <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/01/why-almost-everyone-gets-big-bang-wrong.html" target="_blank">infograph </a>years ago on why almost everyone gets the big bang wrong but realized it was too big for social media, and so I created a more meme friendly version. This topic is one of my biggest pet peeves because it allows the theist to make claims that just aren't true, especially regarding cosmological arguments. Feel free to download this and upload to your social media. Spread the word!</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzO0n9VxsHdUHmxGWO4myjY9tYwX9KGOfIrSQm6wTue849-Mmh5Y04DV7ICsLJkS2jNqOvGn6p_d_0hBVV74_JRAcY_nf6EluCnwP8AYOD86T1-z43llosntBic67iokNlzQPnHkKnJME/s2048/Big+Bang+Meme+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1207" data-original-width="2048" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzO0n9VxsHdUHmxGWO4myjY9tYwX9KGOfIrSQm6wTue849-Mmh5Y04DV7ICsLJkS2jNqOvGn6p_d_0hBVV74_JRAcY_nf6EluCnwP8AYOD86T1-z43llosntBic67iokNlzQPnHkKnJME/w640-h378/Big+Bang+Meme+5.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-1825117391510989312020-04-15T12:43:00.002-04:002020-09-03T13:16:03.586-04:00It's Been A While...<br />
I haven't blogged in months and it's mainly because I've gotten tired of refuting theism and religion. I just don't have the time and interest for long-form blogging anymore, so I'm taking an extended break. I might occasionally post an argument I think of, but I don't know how often I will do that. If you want to follow me in any capacity, you can follow me on Twitter, because that's the only place I'm still active. Just click on the Twitter link over to the right.<br />
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I recently made a simple argument there:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">1. The Christian god is eternally & intrinsically trinitarian.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">2. If a god is logically possible it's logically possible there is a god that's not eternally & intrinsically trinitarian.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">3. Therefore, the eternal, intrinsic trinitarian nature of the Christian god is contingent.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #8899a6; font-family: "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: nowrap;">— The Thinker (@AtheismNTheCity) <a href="https://twitter.com/AtheismNTheCity/status/1244975231053312001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2020</a></span></blockquote>
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What this argument demonstrates is that the Christian god's intrinsically trinitarian nature is not logically necessary, and therefore the Christian god's existence is not logically necessary. Since it is logically possible a different (non-trinitarian) god could exist, such a god is not necessary. This is the same logic theists use when they claim the universe could have been different, and therefore is not necessary. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!<br />
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One could claim god is not <i>logically </i>necessary but is <i>metaphysically </i>necessary, instead. But I could make the same argument about the universe. (<a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world.html" target="_blank">And I have.</a>) Once you acknowledge god is not logically necessary, you can't argue its metaphysically necessary without allowing the atheist to make the same argument about the universe. I really hope most atheists and theists come to understand this, since most currently don't.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-69711509885960479342019-08-10T20:58:00.001-04:002020-09-03T13:36:46.135-04:00Quote Of The Day: A Neural Network Framework For Cognitive Bias<br />
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A particular question comes up for me when debating god's existence about why we homo sapiens would have so many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" target="_blank">cognitive biases</a> built into our thinking if it is the case that god created us for the purposes of knowing god's existence and the truth (as many theists claim): <i>Why would god design us with so many flaws hindering our ability to know the truth if our very purpose was to know the truth?</i><br />
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For example, why would god give us a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_blank">confirmation bias</a> that makes it difficult for us to notice contrary evidence? Can this all be swept under the rug with the ol' "<a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2017/10/the-god-has-morally-sufficient-reasons.html" target="_blank">God has morally sufficient reasons for this</a>" explainer? If that sours the theist, one attempt to deny all this is by saying our cognitive biases are not hardwired. But, here's a paper demonstrating <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6129743/"><i>A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias</i></a>.</div>
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I leave you a select quote from it (emphasis mine).</div>
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The brain (like all neural networks) functions in a highly associative way. Correlation and coincidence detection are the basic operations of neural functioning, as manifested in, e.g., Hebb’s rule (Hebb, 1949; Shatz, 1992), the ‘Law of Effect’ (Thorndike, 1927, 1933), Pavlovian conditioning (Pavlov, 2010), or autocorrelation (Reichardt, 1961). As a result, the brain automatically and subconsciously ‘searches’ for correlation, coherence, and (causal) connections: it is highly sensitive to consistent and invariant patterns..........<b>Examples of heuristics and bias resulting from associative information processing are the control illusion (people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are in control (Langer, 1975; Matute et al., 2015), superstition (Skinner, 1948; Risen, 2015), spurious causality (seeing causality in unconnected correlations), the conjunction fallacy (Tversky and Kahneman, 1983), the representativeness heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981a), and the previously mentioned story bias</b>......In line with the Hebb doctrine (Hebb, 1949), the neural network framework contributes to an explanation of these phenomena by the way (the weight of) connections between neurons are affected by covarying inputs. Synaptic strengths are typically altered by either the temporal firing pattern of the presynaptic neuron or by modulatory neurons (Marder and Thirumalai, 2002). Neurons that repeatedly or persistently fire together, change each other’s excitability and synaptic connectivity (Destexhe and Marder, 2004). This basic principle, i.e., “cells that fire together, wire together” (Shatz, 1992), enables the continuous adaptation and construction of neural connections and associations based on simultaneous and covarying activations.</blockquote>
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I'm not sure one can fully deny that cognitive bias has any neuro-biological basis at all.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-71644801944127180512019-07-03T13:34:00.001-04:002019-07-03T13:40:43.579-04:00Quote Of The Day: "Nones" Are Growing And They're Not Civically Engaged<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/ryanburge" target="_blank">Ryan Burge</a>, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and opinion writer for the <a href="https://religionnews.com/author/ryanburge/" target="_blank">Religion News Service</a> is fearful for the future of civic engagement in the US because the rising "nones" (those with no religious preference), are the least likely to volunteer.<br />
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In his recent <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/07/03/rise-of-the-nothing-in-particulars-may-be-sign-of-a-disjointed-disaffected-and-lonely-future/" target="_blank">OP-ED</a>, he created the following treemap of the religious composition in the US as of 2018 taken from the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/news/announcing-2018-cooperative-congressional-election-study" target="_blank">Cooperative Congressional Election Study</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://religionnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/webRNS-Burge-Oped1b-070219.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://religionnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/webRNS-Burge-Oped1b-070219.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Protestants, once a dominant majority, now are only 39% of the US population, followed by the "nothing in particular" nones at 20%. Further down the list, atheists and agnostics make up a combined 12%. So the percentage of atheists, agnostics, and nones according to this study would be 32%, a third of the US.<br />
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This worries Burge, as those with nothing in particular are less likely to volunteer or engage politically, he writes:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "domine";"><span style="background-color: white;">No matter how one feels about religion, it’s undeniable that religious traditions have spent decades building networks that operate behind the scenes to support those who are most vulnerable in our society. As the number of socially detached people grows, the ability of faith groups to fill in the gaps will be diminished, and once these ministries disappear, it seems highly unlikely that they can be quickly or easily replaced.<br />
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Finding ways to get these individuals to reintegrate into their communities might lead to benefits not only for these individuals but also for towns and cities in their fight to re-create social capital.</span></span></blockquote>
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Should those who promote secularism be worried if this is true? Unintended consequences have a nasty tendency of rearing their ugly heads in unexpected places. It seems to me that those who are "nothing in particular" are nothing in particular <i>because </i>they are less likely to be socially and civically engaged. Religion is just one more thing they are disengaged from. If that's the case, it may be impossible (or at least very hard) to get them to participate in the areas traditionally done and cultivated by religious communities and institutions. And while secular organizations have made some inroads in <a href="https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/volunteers" target="_blank">promoting volunteerism</a> in recent decades, the bulk of the future civic engagement might indeed by at the hands of a shrinking population.<br />
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Interestingly, Burge separates the nones from atheists and agnostics in his piece and argues that <i>educational level</i> is the main factor of decreased civic engagement. The nones have the lowest levels of educational achievement while atheists have some of the highest. So while all this news looks bad on the nones, it doesn't necessarily look bad on atheists.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-47063194128605570152019-05-31T14:26:00.000-04:002019-05-31T14:26:34.817-04:00Religions And Birth Rates: Not What You Think? | Hans Rosling<br />
It seems that I discovered Swedish born statistician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling" target="_blank">Hans Rosling</a> a little too late. He died February 7th, 2017 of cancer, just before I stumbled upon his many inspiring talks on the changing facts of world data.<br />
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A point Rosling made over and over again is that many of us are operating with 20 or 30 year old statistics in our heads in terms of how we think the world is. We tend to think, for example, that many third world countries today are statistically where they were in the 1980s and 90s in terms of birth rates and poverty rates. This makes us mistakenly think that in countries like India and Bangladesh, women are still on average having 6 or 7 kids. In the last 30 years, birth rates have dropped in almost the entire world, and it is always directly correlated with reductions of poverty and rising standards of living.<br />
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This brings me to the topic of religion and birth rates. It is commonly believed that religions like Islam encourage high birth rates and that this will ensure that the population of Muslims around the world will outpace and outnumber all other religions and those without religion. While it is true that Muslim majority countries have on average more children per woman than non-Muslim countries, when the standard of living is raised, the birth rate drops, just as it does in the rest of the Western world.<br />
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In India in 2018 the birth rate is 2.2 per woman, in Bangladesh it is 2.0, Indonesia, 2.3, Iran, 1.6, Bahrain, 1.9, Qatar, 1.8, Turkey, 2.0, and Saudi Arabia, 2.4. These countries have dramatically increased their standard of living since the 1980s, when they had birth rates 2 or 3 times higher. To put this in perspective, the US birth rate in 2018 was 1.9, roughly on par with many of these countries.<br />
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Muslim majority countries that haven't increased their standard of living, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Mauritania, still have high birth rates of 4.3, 4.2, 6.0, and 4.5 respectively.<br />
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What this all means is 2 things: (1) the Islamic world is not immune to lower, Western-level birth rates. That is to say, there is nothing necessarily <i>intrinsic </i>about Islam that prevents countries from lowering their birth rate as they economically advance, and (2) to lower birth rates one must tackle poverty. This means it is not necessarily the case that Islam will come to dominate the future population with its higher birth rates as organizations like <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/" target="_blank">PEW have predicted</a> (to which<a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2015/06/did-pew-project-future-of-religion.html" target="_blank"> I think they made several mistakes</a>).<br />
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Watch Rosling explain in his eccentric way in more detail in his 2012 Ted talk. (Also check out his site <a href="http://gapminder.org/">gapminder.org</a> to see the data for yourself).<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-11482613659092028862019-05-22T11:33:00.000-04:002019-05-22T11:33:19.412-04:00Socialists Are The New Atheists (Sort Of)<br />
A recent <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/254120/less-half-vote-socialist-president.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=NEWSFEED&g_campaign=item_&g_content=Less%2520Than%2520Half%2520in%2520U.S.%2520Would%2520Vote%2520for%2520a%2520Socialist%2520for%2520President" target="_blank">poll from Gallup</a> came out this month that showed socialists are now the least trusted group to be president, and atheists now are only the second least trusted group. The survey showed that 60% of Americans would vote for a well-qualified person for president who happened to be an atheist, compared to only 47% for a socialist on the same conditions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLppIyzTDxurRRg0_gOzQKMn3K58M4tX92j374GEvPhiIXVRfbkAyZoDPxoa4CrPOBgreHTzkGj8K_jVJVrAMJiggy4W7EzG3v1Twm_oPkz4-o7PRcXen104f4MlYcTj9bpWZszWNIcAA/s1600/atheist+socialist+poll.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="688" height="563" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLppIyzTDxurRRg0_gOzQKMn3K58M4tX92j374GEvPhiIXVRfbkAyZoDPxoa4CrPOBgreHTzkGj8K_jVJVrAMJiggy4W7EzG3v1Twm_oPkz4-o7PRcXen104f4MlYcTj9bpWZszWNIcAA/s640/atheist+socialist+poll.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Twenty years ago, another <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias-presidential-candidates.aspx" target="_blank">Gallup poll</a> showed that only 49% of Americans would vote for an atheist, similar to where socialists are now. While there are obvious differences in what a socialist is and what an atheist is (socialism is a political and economic ideology, whereas atheism isn't), both carry negative stigmas, however. Both are, for example, unfairly associated with the worst of the communist regimes of the 20th century.<br />
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Still, while the acceptance today for an atheist president in the US is only 60%, it used to be only 18% back in 1958. That's a 42 percentage point increase in 61 years. At this rate, atheist presidents will be accepted by all Americans by 2070! But I'm sure that will never happen, as there will always be a contingent of Americans who will never trust an atheist in the White House. Though given the trend, which could speed up in the coming years as Boomers begin to die off and the more secular Gen Xers and Millennials become the most important voting blocks, we should see a viable openly atheist presidential candidate at some point likely in the next 20 years.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-86079426485695361792019-04-16T20:56:00.000-04:002019-04-16T22:18:53.476-04:00"No Religion" Largest Single Religious Affiliation<br />
I haven't been able to blog not nearly as often as in the past due to more important obligations, so I have a quicky here. The 2018 <a href="http://www.norc.org/Research/Projects/Pages/general-social-survey.aspx" target="_blank">General Social Survey</a> (GSS), which tracks, among other things, religious adherence indicated that the number of "nones," or Americans with no religion has risen above all religious denominations. The nones are now at 23.1%, higher than the number of Evangelical Protestants—long America's dominant religious group—who have fallen in recent decades to 22.8% (though statistically within the margin of error.) The below image is courtesy of <a href="https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1108183399364263936" target="_blank">Ryan Burge's tweet</a>:<br />
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Judging from the trends, it appears that most of the surge among the nones is coming from the Mainline Protestant denominations, with slightly less coming from Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. I've been listening to many arguments from conservatives about how the decline in religion is having and will continue to have major unintended social and political consequences. In recent years I've become open to the possibility of there being some positive social effects religion has on populations that may be lost once traditional religion declines as an unintended consequence.<br />
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If it really is the case that the religious give more to charity than the secular, for example, this potentially could be a problem. The secular, who tend to lean left in their politics, usually see government as a solution to helping those in need through programs like tuition free college, universal healthcare, and universal basic income (<a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2019/04/what-would-i-do-with-extra-1000-month.html" target="_blank">which I just wrote about</a>). Conservatives, who tend to lean more religious, think this should be handled in the private sector through the churches or synagogues, as it had in the past. This is one salient reason why conservatives tend to hate the idea of government providing social and economic safety nets: it reduces the need for organized religion.<br />
<br />
I personally think it's a horrible idea to promote religion as a means to provide social and economic safety nets on large scales. Sure, locally it may work. But as a solution to our nation's ever worsening healthcare and economic plights, it would be catastrophic. I don't want to have to be guilt tripped into paying for my next door neighbor's medical bills when he can't, and neither, I'd argue, would most Americans. Conservatives have to face the reality that America is rapidly secularizing and it's never going back. Our job now is to figure out what unintended problems this will bring, and how they should be solved without a nod to religion.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-16474977190602550862019-04-03T19:50:00.000-04:002019-04-04T13:13:42.546-04:00What Would I Do With An Extra $1000 A Month?<br />
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The 2020 presidential race is nearing full swing and in my opinion there is no shortage of good candidates to choose from on the Democratic side. A little less than a year ago I came across <a href="https://www.yang2020.com/" target="_blank">Andrew Yang</a>, an Asian American entrepreneur running for president in a campaign centered around UBI: universal basic income.<br />
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His idea of UBI is you'd give every American citizen between the ages of 18 and 64 $1,000 per month, no questions asked. I've been warming up to the idea over the past few months and I'm basically at the point of supporting it, although I stop short of an enthusiastic consent.<br />
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The "freedom dividend" as Yang calls it, would be paid for by a 10% <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax" target="_blank">value added tax</a> or VAT that would make corporations pay a larger share of the tax burden and hinder the offshoring of their revenues that many larger businesses like Apple use to pay a much lower share of taxes. All other developed countries use a VAT and it's argued by some that it's time the US does the same. I generally support the idea even though I've heard criticisms of how a VAT tax introduces a disincentive to consumers, since the costs are eventually passed on to consumers.<br />
<br />
Setting aside any issues with the tax increases of a VAT, the pay off would be in the dividend. So I've been asking myself what I'd do with an extra thousand dollars in my bank account?<br />
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Well I could think of a few things:<br />
<ul>
<li>Help pay my rent</li>
<li>Go on better vacations every year</li>
<li>Consume more goods and services (eat out more, and at more expensive restaurants, buy more clothes, electronics, etc.)</li>
<li>Save it for retirement</li>
<li>Spend it towards further education</li>
</ul>
<div>
Here's what I would not do:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Quit my job</li>
<li>Stop working or stop being motivated to work</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br />
When I saw Tim Pool in person earlier this month, he spoke out against UBI because he said his teenage self would have been lazy with a thousand dollars every month. We'll that may have been true of him, but does it characterize what most people would do with a no-questions-asked thousand dollars a month? I'd say probably not. UBI is not supposed to resolve all problems, it's supposed to keep people afloat and give them a supplemental income as automation starts taking away our jobs.<br />
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Before I commit myself to big policy ideas I like to hear multiple perspectives so I'm still open to good criticisms of UBI before I fully commit. Right now, I think it is a promising idea and would be revolutionary in its practice for the US.<br />
<br /></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-5629660211275129962019-03-17T00:33:00.000-04:002019-03-17T00:33:46.153-04:00Quote Of The Day: The Realities Of Dating Inequality<br />
I just read an excellent article over on the free thought online magazine <i><a href="https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-dating-economy/" target="_blank">Quillitte </a></i>about how the new dating economy creates differing levels of inequalities between men and women, with (no surprise) men having more inequality than women. In other words, male attraction to females is much more spread out based on women's appearances, whereas female attraction to males is much more concentrated to the top fifth of attractive men.<br />
<br />
Applying the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient" target="_blank">Gini coefficient</a> to men and women using the number of swipes on dating apps like tinder, the Gini coefficient of males is 0.542, whereas it's a much more egalitarian 0.324 for females. Towards the very end of the article the author, <a href="https://quillette.com/author/bradford-tuckfield/">Bradford Tuckfield</a>, makes a slight critique of the progressives who cheer on the end of religion (which would include people like me) in how they're reacting in apparent dismay to the unintended consequences that come along with shattering traditional institutions of sexual regulation, like marriage and monogamy, usually grounded in the authority of the church:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The result of these cultural changes is that the highly unequal social structures of the prehistoric savanna homo sapiens are reasserting themselves, and with them the dissatisfactions of the unattractive “sexually underprivileged” majority are coming back. It is ironic that the progressives who cheer on the decline of religion and the weakening of “outdated” institutions like monogamy are actually acting as the ultimate reactionaries, returning us to the oldest and most barbaric, unequal animal social structures that have ever existed. In this case it is the conservatives who are cheering for the progressive ideal of “sexual income redistribution” through a novel invention: monogamy.</blockquote>
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If you read this blog, you know I take strong comfort responding to criticism of secularism and atheism. But this is a new one for me I haven't considered. The dismantling of religion and the values it stands for comes with the unintended consequences of what a free market dating landscape looks like, where the bottom 80 percent of men who are largely unattractive to the majority of women end up struggling in the dating economy in a manner similar to how the bottom 80 percent of people in our economy are. This phenomena gives rise to the "incels" — the involuntary celibates, who for various reasons haven't been able to secure any success in the free market dating economy, and who often yearn for the "enforced monogamy" of the past.<br />
<br />
This got me thinking. I'm not a fan on marriage, though I wouldn't argue that no one should get married. I think for many people — perhaps a majority — marriage is the best option for them. Most people are naturally monogamous and prefer to have one long term romantic partner in their life. A minority of people are naturally polyamorous, or are serial daters who prefer frequent, short term, mostly sexual, relationships. Marriage is declining, especially among the poor, and this is due to a variety of reason I won't dive deep into here. But am I unknowingly championing the fall of the dating and sexual realities of the bottom 80 percent of men? I might be, and I'm not crazy about that reality because I might be in the bottom 80 percent of men in terms of attraction. So what should I do? Well, I don't have all the answers now, so I might have to write another blog post about that in the future.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-23783045651588927812019-02-18T18:08:00.000-05:002019-06-15T18:28:38.629-04:00Munchhausen's Trilemma — What Every Atheist Should Know<br />
So you're an atheist and you find yourself in a debate with a theist or an agnostic on some issue relevant to being godless. It could be about morality, or why the universe exists, or how did we all get here, or why our universe happens to be the particular way it is, or a similarly related issue. Perhaps the other person is even another atheist who's just curious and asking questions.<br />
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And as witty and as intelligent as you are, for every question of theirs that you answer, they keep asking "Why?" until you've eventually exhausted your explanatory capability, much to your chagrin. This is inevitable, even if you're the world's authority in every field of science and philosophy. At that point, they express doubt that atheism is a coherent position. After all, to them it can't ground the most basic questions about reality in an all-encompassing explanatory framework. Atheism as an explainer just seems to lead to a dead end.<br />
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But here's where the clever atheist, who's learned in philosophy comes back. If this were me in such a predicament, I would remind my interlocutor that it is <i>logically impossible</i> to have an all-encompassing explanatory framework. And that's because of a little known trilemma in epistemology known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma" target="_blank">Munchhausen's trilemma</a>:<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Given Munchhausen's trilemma, all explanatory chains must terminate in either an infinite regress, a circular grounding, or an axiom that cannot in principle be further explained. Not even science, math, or logic is immune from the trilemma. They all start with certain fundamental axioms and build up from there.<br />
<br />
Let's take morality as an example. Munchhausen's trilemma is necessarily true for all moral systems too. Theists think they have a way out. They don't. Both divine command theory and natural law theory all necessarily terminate in the trilemma. Regarding the former, saying god is identical to the good—which is the most common way divine command theorist try to avoid each horn of Euthyphro's <i>dilemma</i>—strips the definition of "good" of any meaning. It's also circular: <i>god is good and good is god.</i><br />
<br />
It has another problem too: If a devout ISIS member just defined his god—who's perfectly fine with having infidels beheaded just for being infidels—as identical to "good," and a Jesus-loves-everyone-including-abortion-and-gay-marriage liberal Christian defined his god as identical to "good," then I<a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2017/09/another-reason-why-claim-goodness-is.html" target="_blank"> as an atheist have no basis for determining which god</a> is <i>actually </i>identical to the good without an objective basis that exists <i>independent </i>of all gods. Hence no god could be the source of goodness.<br />
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Regarding the latter, natural law theory takes our human nature and draws final causes from it. Things that prevent or run contrary to the outcome these final causes are immoral, and things that enhance the outcome of these final causes are moral. But there's nothing necessary about our biological nature, and if it were different our final causes would be different, as well as what's moral and immoral. If god created us with a biological nature where females had to cannibalize the males post coitus, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_cannibalism" target="_blank">as some species of insects do</a>, then <i>that </i>would be moral. So on natural law theory, what biological nature god created us with was totally arbitrary, since morality depends on a species' nature and there's nothing logically necessary about our nature. Therefore, on natural law theory, the explanatory chain for what's moral ends with god's arbitrary eternal and unchanging will about the nature of the species it would most closely identify with—since nothing logical demands god created human beings with our exact biological properties. God <i>just wanted it that way</i>, and any explanation why will have to be grounded in the trilemma, since a logically necessary explanation is not an option.<br />
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The ultimate questions of existence—<i>Why are we here? Why does the universe exist?</i>—will hit the same fate since there is no logically necessary reason why we exist or our particular universe exists. That alone is enough to be able to deduce the necessity of the trilemma. <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/11/why-brute-facts-are-unavoidable.html" target="_blank"><i>Not even god can escape it.</i></a><br />
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So when you encounter a person lamenting on the lack of an ultimate explanation in atheism, you can kindly introduce them to the fact that <i>no world view is technically capable of such a feat</i>. All explanatory chains will either go on forever, terminate circularly, or terminate in a brute fact. This may not be psychologically satisfying for most people, especially those raised in a religious context, but there's no avoiding it no matter how hard you try. And once you realize the trilemma and accept its truth, it has the tendency to mitigate your epistemological angst. Personally, I think that out of the three options, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/11/why-brute-facts-are-unavoidable.html" target="_blank">a brute fact is preferable</a>. Reality most likely has a fundamental layer that didn't have to be that way, but <i>just is</i>. Asking "Why?" beyond the fundamental brute fact of reality is like asking "Are we there yet?" when you've arrived at your destination: the buck stops here.<br />
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We just might not ever know if we've arrived at our destination.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-85732928425864654012019-02-11T20:14:00.000-05:002019-02-11T20:14:40.087-05:00"Socialized Medicine" Vs Free Market Healthcare: A Critique — Part 2<br />
This is part 2 of a critique of Chuck Braman's argument for pro-capitalist healthcare, <i><a href="http://www.chuckbraman.com/right-to-medical-care.html">The Real Right to Medical Care vs. Socialized Medicine</a>. </i>To read part 1 <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2019/02/socialized-medicine-vs-free-market.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
About halfway through the section of his blog post entitled The Right to Medical Care and the Causes of the Medical Crisis, he turns on Medicare and Medicaid:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
These programs were instituted to make the increasingly expensive medical care more affordable to the poor and the elderly. However, since such programs represent an even further collectivization of costs than collectivized insurance, drawing their funding as they do from the entire body of taxpayers rather than from a smaller body of insurance holders, they have lead to the pricing of medical care beyond the reach of the uninsured middle class. As a result, their implementation has lead to the current call for complete socialized medicine.</blockquote>
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As per the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/080615/6-reasons-healthcare-so-expensive-us.asp" target="_blank">investopedia article</a> I cited in part 1, it is not Medicaid and Medicare that are primarily driving up the cost of healthcare, it's other factors that are the result of a for-profit system. There are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/medicare-pricing-drives-high-health-care-costs/2013/12/31/24befa46-7248-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html?utm_term=.b248c0ae3cca" target="_blank">arguments </a>however, that Medicaid and Medicare contribute to rising healthcare costs by settings prices too high for services which the private market then is influenced by. Chuck's view is that this is what makes many people think the solution is to have the government pay for <i>all </i>insurance. I argue that this misses the point.<br />
<br />
Private healthcare costs are going up because of price gouging by the hospitals and medical equipment providers mainly because with healthcare—especially emergency healthcare—you don't have the option of shopping around. You don't know what tests are needed or how much they will cost. You're in a state of panic, pain, fear, and ignorance. You're not a doctor. You're not in a position to be negotiating the cost of things with doctors and nurses. You're not in a position to be shopping around for the best deal. This is a completely different kind of market from buying shoes or a new TV. And people like Chuck do not realize that. Or if they do, they foolishly think it doesn't make a difference.<br />
<br />
Chuck then machine guns through eight different reasons why he thinks socialized medicine fails and why past implementations of socialized medicine are the reasons why the existing system is failing. Let's break them down one by one.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
First, of course, is the increase in prices which necessarily follows when one is able to bid on a limited supply of goods and then pass the expense off to an anonymous group. Such bidding on government-supplied goods leads inevitably to government-imposed price controls and rationing as the only possible means of controlling costs, followed thereafter by the government's further refusal to allow anyone to bid the price up any further even using their own money.</blockquote>
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Limited supply of goods? Are we talking about the limited supply of doctors due to medical licensing? There will always be a limited supply of goods. Does Chuck think that the supply is artificially limited due to licensing? Would it be fixed by allowing anyone to practice medicine? Chuck doesn't define socialized medicine, and he makes no acknowledgment that it's different from single payer. On single payer, the doctors, nurses, hospitals, device and drug makers are still privatized. But without cost controls in place, they can jack up the prices to as high as can be. That's why in the US you see <a href="https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/why-everyone-is-talking-about-a-629-band-aid.html" target="_blank">cases of $629 band aids</a>. And this is why the cost of prescription drugs, as well as almost every kind of test costs more in the US than other counties, and this makes healthcare costs about twice that of all other developed countries as a percentage of GDP.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/blog_healthcare_percent_gdp_1995_2014.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/blog_healthcare_percent_gdp_1995_2014.gif" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="800" height="411" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Source: Mother Jones</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a name='more'></a>The free market also allows rationing. When a health insurance provider says they're going to impose lifetime caps, that's rationing. When they deny coverage to people born with preexisting conditions, that's rationing. I don't understand why so many free market types think rationing is only a thing governments do.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Second is an increased demand for medical care, in the form of increased visits and increased services.</blockquote>
<br />
This is a popular argument. It says that when you make healthcare available you get more people using it, and when more people use it, it makes it more expensive. There is mixed data on this as far as I know. But is the solution to simply have poor people not have healthcare? That's costing us in many ways. And if the free-market solution is for charity to pay for people's healthcare costs, then wouldn't that increase the demand also? There are several options on the table for a single payer system to address this. One is by making people pay <i>something </i>at the point of service, like a low co-pay, just like how many people on private insurance plans do today. Many countries with universal healthcare have such a model. Single payer does not require all services be completely free at the point of service.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Third is the recent phenomenon of irrational standards for malpractice and radically increased malpractice awards. This follows from the notion that if medical care is a right, then a right to medical care as such means a right to the best medical care available. As a result, providing a patient with anything less than the best, most expensive medical care comes to constitute malpractice, whether or not the doctor is being compensated to provide such care. Fear of malpractice lawsuits has lead to the new phenomenon of doctors practicing defensive medicine, i.e. conducting medically unnecessary tests to provide a record for their defense in the event of a lawsuit. Defensive medicine is estimated to account for more than one-third of the total cost of health care in the U.S. today.</blockquote>
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This is a decent point and one I acknowledged as a driver in the rising costs of healthcare. We need solutions to this. We could consider a solution by Richard Jackson over on <a href="https://www.jacksonhealthcare.com/media-room/surveys/rick-solution-to-defensive-medicine/" target="_blank">Jackson Healthcare</a>:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Eliminate personal financial liability for physicians' unintended errors, so they can treat patients based on what's needed, not out of fear of a lawsuit.</li>
<li>Create independent, expert medical review boards to review claims and determine if negligent treatment has been provided to the patient.</li>
<li>Establish separate boards to award consistent, fair compensation to wrongfully injured patients.</li>
</ol>
<br />
It's possible that a single payer system can fix or at least lessen the problem. A report published by <i><a href="http://www.pnhp.org/reader-old/Section%205%20-%20Quality%20and%20Malpractice%20Issues/Gordy%20Malpractice%20Primer.pdf" target="_blank">Physicians for a National Health Program</a></i> argues that a single payer national health insurance program (NHI) could "significantly reduce the malpractice problem". They give 4 reasons why this is so:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1) Single payer NHI will reduce malpractice costs, because the costs of any medical care needed as a result of an injury will be covered within the NHI system.<br />
2) Single payer NHI will foster a single data system, which has the potential to improve patient safety by enabling the disclosure and tracking of systems problems and thereby reducing medical errors.<br />
3) Single payer NHI will eliminate financial barriers to access as well as any incentives for providers to avoid seeing complicated and sick patients or to withhold care. This will lead to increased trust between doctor and patient.<br />
4) Options other than caps on non-economic damages must be explored including: (a) use of practice guidelines to help reduce negligence; (b) alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration; (c) no-fault reform, providing compensation to patients whether or not the injury is due to negligence; (d) enterprise liability making institutions such as hospitals, large group practices, and HMOs responsible for compensating medical injuries, thereby creating incentives for institutions to improve the quality of care offered in their institution.</blockquote>
<br />
I can't say that they'll all work, but it's something. Chuck does not propose how the free market would solve the problem of defensive medicine, especially given how he proposes no licensing for doctors at all, which will increase incompetency.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fourth is an intense demand created for prohibitively expensive new technology. Traditionally in medicine, as well as in any other field, new technology does not raise costs; initial buyers, who must pay out of their own pocket, are few, allowing the item to slowly develop a market as experience is gained in producing it, during which time its cost falls while its quality improves. Since costs for medical technology are collectivized, however, new, prohibitively expensive technology, which individuals would not be able to afford if they had to pay out of their own pockets, is demanded universally as a matter of right.</blockquote>
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So here Chuck is saying that the way healthcare should work is by making people pay for expensive technology out of pocket instead of having the costs collectivized, which is what insurance does. He seems to be making the case against insurance entirely, which collectivizes costs. Or he's complaining about the existing "socialized medicine" we have collectivizing costs, which apparently according to Chuck is causing the problems that socialized medicine attempts to resolve. Chuck would apparently rather have expensive life saving treatment simply unaffordable to most people until costs can come down, like the way all technology gets cheaper. So if you're the unlucky person who needs a drug or procedure that is expensive because it's new, then you're out of luck. Better hope you can start a successful GoFundMe campaign.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Fifth, prices are collectively bid up on patented drugs which need not fear competition, while at the same time prohibitions against price discrimination prevent lower-priced versions of the same drugs from serving the market of the uninsured. (In addition, of course, FDA regulations greatly increase the development time of drugs and further inflate their prices.)</blockquote>
<br />
I don't mind an FDA ensuring that drugs have a basic level or testing and safety checks before hitting the market. The alternative is drugs hit the market and then we realize years or decades later that they're killing people. Chuck would prefer that. I do however think drug patent laws are absurd. Cheaper generics should be easier to hit the market. Any drug that has R&D funded by the government should be cheap. And most importantly, we should negotiate drug prices like every other country does. We don't. We're forbidden to in the US. And that's why the drug companies will charge he high prices they do. They say it's to cover the cost of R&D, but the fact of the matter is is that 9 out of the top 10 drug companies are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/?utm_term=.5674ce8bce0f" target="_blank">spending more on marketing</a> than they are on R&D.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/02/Screen-Shot-2015-02-11-at-9.03.17-AM.png&w=1484" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="800" height="422" src="https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/02/Screen-Shot-2015-02-11-at-9.03.17-AM.png&w=1484" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Source: Washington Post</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Sixth, lack of profit and loss incentives causes wasteful spending on expensive equipment. The government responds to such wastefulness by such means as requiring a certificate of need before it will authorize such expenditures. As a result, expenditures often end up being restricted on necessary as well as unnecessary equipment.</blockquote>
<br />
I've never heard this argument before. On a single payer system the hospitals and device makers are still private, and they still have a profit and loss incentive. If the government employs the doctors and nurses and owns the hospitals, that's another story. You could incentivize profit by financially rewarding hospitals that cut costs or drug makers that make useful drugs.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Seventh, government-imposed cost-controls on public patients leads to cost-shifting to private patients, which becomes necessary in order for physicians and hospitals to make up their losses. (Such cost controls include categorizing treatments into diagnostic related groups (DRGs), categories for which the government pays a flat fee, no matter what the actual cost of the treatment, which could be more or less than the fee according to the individual circumstances.)</blockquote>
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What makes physicians and hospitals have to make up for losses is uninsured people using the emergency room as their healthcare provider. And Chuck's free market "solution" will lead to millions more people without health insurance, only making the problem worse. Chuck most likely wouldn't want hospitals to have to treat anyone who couldn't pay, so his solution to this would be let them die on the street.<br />
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Now it is true that the increase in the number of seniors due to the aging baby boomer generation is costing hospitals more because most of them are on Medicare, which generally pays less than private insurers. It is also the case that the administrative costs hospitals have have been increasing and could be reduced with a single payer system dramatically.<br />
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Eighth, the bureaucratic controls imposed by the government in order to contain the costs increase costs by increasing paperwork and administrative costs.</blockquote>
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I'm not sure of the precise meaning here. It seems to be that Chuck is saying government intervention in healthcare increases administration costs. Just about all researches have found the exact opposite is true. The administrative costs for Medicare are at about <a href="http://1.4-/">1.4-</a><a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep/20/bernie-s/comparing-administrative-costs-private-insurance-a/" target="_blank">2% of operative expenditures</a> or around <a href="http://mforall.net/files/CAHI_Medicare_Admin_Final_Publication.pdf" target="_blank">5% at the highest estimates</a>, while for private insurance it is anywhere between 12-18% or <a href="http://mforall.net/files/CAHI_Medicare_Admin_Final_Publication.pdf" target="_blank">20-25% on the highest estimations</a>.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most ironically, and above all, the need-based right to health care and the collectivization of costs required to pay for it eliminates the real, rational right to care in the instances where those who would be able to afford to buy medical care now cannot do so.</blockquote>
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Chuck wraps this section up with a critique of labors laws, which libertarians almost unanimously hate, and he mentions an ironic twist that I cannot fully get my head around. I will leave it up to the reader to interpret what he means, because it makes no sense to me, and end part 2 right here.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-56493084583510710202019-02-03T11:24:00.000-05:002019-02-04T15:28:10.491-05:00"Socialized Medicine" Vs Free Market Healthcare: A Critique — Part 1<br />
I really, really love debunking viewpoints and arguments that I think are wrong. I mean like <i>really </i>love it. I'd write critiques of views all day long if I could and had the time, but I have this pesky thing called a job which sucks out the day's prime hours.<br />
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But on par with my love of critique, here I want to begin a series of posts critiquing a free-market libertarian's defense of market based healthcare. This will also be a learning experience for me. I use critique as a way to better familiarize myself with opposing viewpoints, and I'd highly recommend others strongly consider debate as a form of learning as well.<br />
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There's a lengthy blog post called <i><a href="http://www.chuckbraman.com/right-to-medical-care.html" target="_blank">The Real Right to Medical Care vs. Socialized Medicine</a></i> by Chuck Braman, who's a giant fan of Ayn Rand's views on markets and economics. In it he tries to argue that socialized medicine leads to a crisis and that the best way to fix this ailing problem is "pro-capitalist reform" in the healthcare industry. I'm going to be breaking this down in a series of posts section by section where ever I think it's incorrect (which will be most of it). So here it goes.<br />
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Chuck starts out:<br />
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For decades the cost of health care, unlike the cost of other economic goods, has risen relative to prices in general and to people's incomes. The cost of health care is now so high that a radical reform is necessary. The current type of reform being advanced by the Clinton administration, however, is an anachronism. It is, to be exact, the enactment of a full system of socialized medicine, a system based on the mistaken and discredited tenets of Marxism, which will aim to reduce the cost of our partially socialized medical system by means of its full socialization accompanied by price controls and rationing.</blockquote>
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It's definitely true that the cost of healthcare has gone up far faster than inflation and the cost of other services. But according to an article on <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/080615/6-reasons-healthcare-so-expensive-us.asp" target="_blank">investopedia</a>, healthcare costs are going up rapidly because of six primary reasons: (1) skyrocketing administration costs, which by the way "socialized medicine" wouldn't require, (2) not negotiating drug costs, which would save hundreds of billions and which every other developed country does, (3) defensive medicine whereby doctors order unnecessary tests even when they know the diagnosis so they won't get sued, (4) using expensive mix of treatments like mammograms, MRIs and Caesarean sections more often than other developed countries plus an over reliance on more expensive specialists instead of primary care physicians, (5) the wages and work rules that enable high pay-commanding specialists, and (6) branding, which results in an industry where the prices are made up and set as high as they can be.<br />
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Having universal healthcare can solve many of these problems because they're caused by for-profit incentives.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>One other thing. "Socialized medicine" is not the same thing as single-payer. In socialized medicine the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors and nurses. On single payer the hospitals can still be privately owned and doctors and nurses can still be privately employed, just as most of them are now. But instead of paying a private health insurer premiums every month to cover part of your medical expenses, you instead pay the government through your taxes to cover all of your medical expenses. The government is the single payer and in a sense replaces the private, for-profit healthcare insurance companies. If you don't know that distinction, you don't know the first thing about the healthcare debate, or you're deliberately lying to make single payer look scarier. Chuck goes on,<br />
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The correct concept of rights is based on the individual's right to life, which right includes the right to take the actions necessary for sustaining one's life. Rather than being a claim to goods to be provided by others, it is an injunction against the whole rest of society to leave one free so that one may produce the values which one's life requires. Such a right can only be violated by the initiation of physical force, so that under such a concept of rights the initiation of physical force is abolished, and cooperation among people is achieved through voluntary trade rather than the forced transfer of wealth from one person to another. On a social and economic level, in a division-of-labor society, this right, the right to life, is exercised by selling one's goods or labor (what one produces) for money to buy another's goods and labor (what another produces). Applied to medical care, this means that the right to medical care is the right to all the medical care one can buy from willing providers. Such a right is exactly what is currently violated by medical licensing legislation and all regulations and legislations that artificially raise the cost of medicine, because all represent different forms of the government initiating, or threatening to initiate, physical force against producers and traders who themselves have not initiated physical force, and thus physically restricting their right to produce and trade.</blockquote>
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Here Chuck goes into his Randian philosophy of rights and there's much to say that I do not have enough time to go into. This concept of rights supports Chuck's entire philosophy on economics and healthcare. He says that no one has the positive right to someone else's stuff, like money, or labor, but one only has the right to life. The idea that the selling of one's goods or labor for money to buy another person's goods or labor is a strictly voluntary trade, as if it were two people voluntarily trading baseball cards, is not entirely accurate. Though it often seems this way at first glance to many people, the labor market is one where there are dramatic power imbalances. One's right to life is dependent on them eating, drinking, and having shelter, and that means that laborers can't just chose not to sell their services. No one dies from not having a certain baseball card, but everyone dies by not being able to obtain food. This is especially true when it comes to medical care. When one cannot afford the cost of a necessary exorbitant medical procedure, one's right to life effectively ends.<br />
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So I disagree with Chuck's starting point. I see no reason why it is immoral for a legitimate government to take a <i>percentage </i>of one's earnings to spend on things that are good for the entire population, like healthcare. Without that you'd get a system where market forces would end up killing millions of people like senior citizens, those who are sick and who have rare or expensive medical needs, and the poor—who will never be a part of any company's financial best interests to insure or treat since they have little money and will often have the highest costs to the system. Chuck's system of totally private and unregulated medical care could only ever lower costs by kicking out the people who need it most and leaving the healthy population left over. That means senior citizens and those who are sick and who have rare or expensive medical needs will be routinely denied. That's every insurance companies dream and it would be made possible by severing all governmental oversight of the industry.<br />
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Then Chuck explains how the Clintonian view on medical care is a "needs based" system where the runaway medical costs were created by three cornerstones: (1) medical licensing, (2) wage and price controls, and (3) Medicare and Medicaid.<br />
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Medical licensing increases the costs of medical care by lowering the supply of medical providers. Historically, it has been supported by doctors because it is a means of increasing their wages by virtue of creating a monopoly. As to the extent that is has actually raised the standards by which medicine is practiced (which is limited, since the qualifications imposed by licensing are largely arbitrary), it is through the means of reducing the number of options available to consumers. This is because instead of the market offering a full range of skilled practitioners offering various services at various prices, it essentially must now offer only a higher range of skilled practitioners offering this same range of services at a higher range of prices to fewer people. As a result, it primarily victimizes the poor, thereby playing into the hands of those who advocate socialized medicine.</blockquote>
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Here Chuck is literally arguing that we should have no legal standards for practicing medicine. Literally anyone with any experience should be able to prescribe medicine or perform surgery. I suppose the free market alone will determine who's reputation suffers. Where is the evidence the standards are arbitrary? In New York State, where I live, the standards <a href="http://www.op.nysed.gov/prof/med/medlic.htm" target="_blank">seem pretty rational</a>: complete 60 semesters in a NY State program or equivalent, graduate from a medical program registered by the NY State Education Department, supervised clinical clerkships, proof of education, post grad training requirements — you know, basic assessments of one's competence in the medical field.<br />
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Chuck would throw all that out the window and legalize the ability for anyone to call themselves a "Dr." People would be able to perform surgery in their homes after watching YouTube video tutorials. What could possibly go wrong Chuck? Saying that medical licensing reduces the number of doctors is like saying that drivers licenses reduces the number of drivers. Yes it does, and for good reason. We shouldn't allow 8 year olds to drive. I'd assume Chuck isn't for 8 year olds driving, but who knows. He's pretty libertarian and t<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITP93pqtdQ" target="_blank">he serious ones do think driver's licenses are absurd</a>.<br />
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The second step towards socialized medicine in the U.S. resulted from a string of events following the government imposition of wage and price controls during World War II. It occurred because the government made a single exception to its prohibition of wage increases during this period by allowing employers to pay for tax-free medical insurance for their employees. Because this was the only possible means of increasing wages (and therefore the only possible means of competing for employees), and because the individual employee's alternative to this insurance was taxed by the government, the scope of coverage offered by this form of insurance, as opposed to the traditional private insurance offered up to that point, was artificially encouraged to be made comprehensive rather than to being limited to providing only for emergencies. (In current dollars this form of comprehensive insurance costs the equivalent of $5000/year per family, whereas in current dollars the cost of coverage limited to medical emergencies costs about $2000/year per family.) </blockquote>
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Here Chuck describes how during WW2 the US government made companies freeze wage increases due to high inflation. Companies were raising wages because the supply of labor had decreased during the War. So companies offered comprehensive healthcare as a way to lure workers. This is why in the US healthcare is tied to employment. I'm critical of this era of US history too, but only because we <i>should have</i> enacted universal healthcare like almost all other Western countries were doing at that time. Chuck's view would entail that the government let wages (and thereby inflation) increase to whatever level the market would allow, even if that resulted in millions of people unable to afford food or basic needs.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Following World War II, coercive labor unions made such insurance a standard part of their contracts. The effects resulting from such employer-provided comprehensive insurance are (1) a psychological mindset among employees, akin to that which exists in socialist countries, that medical care is a right of employees that can be provided essentially for free, and (2) an economic situation, akin to that which exists under socialism, whereby all costs are borne collectively by a group rather than by individual people.</blockquote>
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The way insurance works is by spreading risk. The costs are borne collectively by a group rather than by an individual person by pooling people together. That's how it works. Chuck here seems to not understand the basic purpose of insurance, much like Paul Ryan. So here Chuck seems to take issue with the idea that companies offering healthcare to employees made employees think healthcare was a right given to workers. He seems to prefer the idea that only individuals should buy health insurance and that even employee sponsored health insurance is bad. Wow! Chuck also thinks most people should just buy catastrophic coverage instead of comprehensive coverage, and have no price controls on drugs whatsoever, as we basically have now. On top of that he's arguing that anyone should be able to practice medicine with no requirements. This will ensure most people either cannot afford insurance, or afford enough insurance, or will go to cheap and unqualified people to perform surgeries or diagnose illnesses, which will inevitably lead to people dying or being injured through of malpractice. That's Chuck's solution to the status quo. Brilliant.<br />
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This wraps up part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 of this critique shortly.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-70027417688555096322019-02-02T16:02:00.000-05:002019-02-02T16:02:35.601-05:00"God: Eternity, Free Will, and the World" Refuted — Part 5<br />
A few months ago over at the Catholic apologist's site <a href="https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/">Strange Notions</a>, where I sometimes debate theists (but am now banned from), a post was written by Catholic philosopher <a href="https://strangenotions.com/author/dr-dennis-bonnette/">Dr. Dennis Bonnette</a> that was almost entirely addressed at some criticisms I've made on the site in the past year.<br />
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This is the final response of my series of that rebuts his post. For parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 click <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world.html">here</a>, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world_16.html">here</a>, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world_30.html">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/11/god-eternity-free-will-and-world.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<h3>
How God's Eternity Relates to the Temporal World</h3>
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In the final section of Dr Bonnette's post he attempts to logically reconcile the existence of an unchanging, timeless god with a changing dynamic universe, and as before we will see his attempts fail at nearly every step. He writes,</div>
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Some argue that every change in the temporal world requires a change in God to initiate that new causation that changes the world. For, how can one thing initiate new motion in another without itself changing in the very act of “sending forth” its causal influence to the world?</blockquote>
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Such reasoning may make perfect sense to a mentality mired in philosophical materialism. But, it makes no sense at all in existential metaphysics. Physical agents change as they cause effects. But to think that this also applies to spiritual agents is absurd and illogical.</blockquote>
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This is flat out wrong. In my criticisms of the impossibility of an unchanging being doing things that require time (which requires change) I pressed its <i>logical </i>impossibility. That is to say, <i>nothing in my view depends on materialism being true</i>. The theist has a <i>logical </i>problem, not a material problem. When I argue that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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P1. It is <b><i>logically </i></b>impossible to do something without doing something.<br />
P2. It is <b><i>logically </i></b>impossible to do something without change (even if everything is immaterial).<br />
P3. It is <b><i>logically </i></b>impossible for change to exist without time.<br />
C. As such, a timeless, changeless being cannot do anything.</blockquote>
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I am stressing the fact that logical impossibilities hold true regardless of metaphysical materialism or immaterialism. No amount of hand-waving can wiggle you out of this, as we will see. He continues,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Since <a href="https://strangenotions.com/whatever-is-moved-is-moved-by-another/">whatever is in motion or is changed must be moved or changed by another</a>, maintaining that a cause cannot cause change without itself changing would entail an infinite regress among simultaneous caused causes and make impossible an Uncaused First Cause. This is because it would mean that every cause would be an intermediate cause in need of a prior proper cause. If every cause has a prior cause, any causal regress among proper causes would have to regress to infinity. But, I have shown elsewhere that <a href="https://strangenotions.com/why-an-infinite-regress-among-proper-causes-is-metaphysically-impossible/">an infinite regress among simultaneous proper causes is metaphysically impossible</a>. For one thing, the sufficient reason for the final effect would never be fulfilled. Therefore, it is manifestly false to claim that every cause must itself change in order to cause a change in another.</blockquote>
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Regarding the infinite regress issue, his argument presupposes the principle of sufficient reason, which I've argued is <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/07/the-scholastic-principle-of-sufficient.html" target="_blank">self-contradictory on the Scholastic view</a>. Without the PSR, Bonnette's argument cannot be made plausible. It's assuming a first principle that can easily be challenged, which is a recurring theme in most if not all the arguments made in his post. Bonnette's assuming the PSR, showing a supposed problem that an infinite regress of causes entails given the PSR, and then is deducing from this that there <i>must </i>be an unchanging cause. If your conclusion is incoherent, it cannot be true, and so something must be wrong with your premises or assumptions, or both. And that's exactly what we have here. Bonnette makes no attempt to actually demonstrate the logical coherency of a timeless god who does things which would require change and therefore time. He just assumes such a being must exist given a deduction from the first principles he adheres to.<br />
<a name='more'></a><blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Causality in metaphysics is simply a subdivision of the principle of sufficient reason. The notion of causality arises from metaphysical analysis of the effect, not of the cause. If every being must have a sufficient reason for its being or coming-to-be, then either a thing is completely its own reason for being, or else, to the extent that it does not completely explain itself, something else must. That “something else,” or extrinsic sufficient reason, is what we call a “cause.”</blockquote>
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This is another misleading claim. Causality in <i>Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics</i> is a subdivision of the principle of sufficient reason, but that is not true of metaphysics <i>simpliciter</i>. In metaphysics, there are many views of causality that deny such a Scholastic perspective. And as I've stressed before, the Scholastic version of the PSR is either self-refuting, or so watered down that it would allow an atheist to justify the same claims the theist is claiming. God cannot be its own reason for being because the god of Thomism is not just some generic deity, it is a very specific god with a specific non-necessary will that also happens to be identical with its nature and essence. Hence, god's essence is at least in part non-necessary, and ergo god cannot be said to be its own reason for being. As Bonnette says earlier in the post, he admits his specific god is not <i>logically </i>necessary.<br />
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Thus, the causality principle states that every effect requires a cause. What is changing or in motion fails to explain its own coming-to-be, and hence, needs a cause. Nothing in this explanation of causality logically implies a change in the cause as causing – <i>only something happening to the effect.</i></blockquote>
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The problem here once again is that Bonnette makes no attempts to actually demonstrate the logical coherency of a timeless god who does things - which requires time and therefore change. He just assumes such a being must exist given the first principles he adheres to. He furthermore assumes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_presentism" target="_blank">philosophical presentism</a>, by which things objectively come into and out of being simultaneous with a universal "now." All of AT metaphysics is built on this presupposition, and Bonnette has never made a single plausible argument justifying this claim's truth. In other comments on his site, he's denied both presentism and eternalism, and proposed a view made on a site called Arcane Knowledge, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2019/01/an-argument-demonstrating-why-arcane.html" target="_blank">which I recently refuted</a> as inadequate, incoherent, and forcing one into denying anything at all exists, which is metaphysical solipsism, in order to avoid eternalism.<br />
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God Remains Immutable as Temporal Events Unfold</h3>
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In the final section Bonnette tries to wrap up his arguments, writing,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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God, in a simple eternal act of will, causes all events in physical creation to take place at their appointed times. All beginnings and changes take place in creatures, not God. <i>Indeed, time and space themselves are part of the world’s created limitations.</i> If Christian belief that the world began in time is true, God simply willed the creation of the world to be with a beginning in time – again, something happening to the world, not to its timeless Creator.</blockquote>
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But nothing here demonstrates how it is logically possible to eternally and timelessly continuously create a dynamic changing universe. How can it be that there is a state of existence when only god exists, and then god creates a universe without any change in god? God literally does nothing and somehow a universe springs into existence from god's causal power! This is claiming you can do something without doing something, a logically possibility. You can try to deny creatio ex nihilo, a belief in Christianity since the religion started, and claim the universe eternally coexists with god, but then you must affirm a form of eternalism, the view that all moments of time in the history of the universe—past, present, and future—have equal ontological status. The caveat with that is that eternalism makes god unnecessary, since the block universe cannot have come into existence: its intrinsic eternality demand it exists. And that means any claim that the block universe still requires an explanation will only force you to provide an explanation why god eternally willed a specific block universe, rather than another, in addition to assuming a view on causality that eternalism would negate!<br />
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There are too many problems for us to fully reiterate here, but we can summarize Dr Bonnette's mistakes as such:<br />
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<li>Dr Bonnette makes no case for god's actual coherency being timeless yet doing things in relation to the spatio-temporal dimensions. He just assumes it must be the case since his first principles (like the principle of sufficient reason) seem to entail an infinite regress of causes is impossible. </li>
<li>Dr Bonnette has no case for god's free will, and just assumes god is free due to god not having any external causes affecting it. That alone is not free will.</li>
<li>Dr Bonnette's definition of free will is inadequate. He's asserted a claim about free will on his view that are contradictory with what his metaphysics entails: </li>
<ul>
<li>That we have real alternative possibilities available to us to choose, yet our universe is a manifestation of god's eternal, unchanging will, which means our specific universe and all the events within it—including every decision we make—are the only possible ones that manifest. There are no real alternative possibilities.</li>
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<li>Dr Bonnette simply has no case for god's necessity and admits his god is not <i>logically </i>necessary. When he says his god is necessary, what he really means by "necessary" is "suppositional" necessity—really just an <i>after-the-fact</i> claim for his specific god's existence</li>
<li>The atheist could make the same argument about an eternal block universe, claiming it is suppositionally necessary, though not logically necessary: it exists the way it exists, therefore it was necessary to be that way. This shows the Scholastic version of the PSR is inadequate to justify theism.</li>
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And that's why there is no need for any rational person committed to truth or reason to accept the view that god is either necessary or has free will.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-15947544599115937872019-01-22T16:30:00.000-05:002019-01-22T16:30:00.185-05:00Quote Of The Day: High Tax Rates And Growth Unique Only To The Post-War US?<br />
Continuing on from my recent <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2019/01/quote-of-day-paul-krugman-on-high-tax.html" target="_blank">QOTD post</a> from economist Paul Krugman on high marginal tax rates for the rich, another <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/opinion/ocasio-cortez-taxes.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">New York Times OpEd</a> by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman provides a counter argument to a popular critique proponents of higher tax rates often receive.<br />
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When one argues that higher marginal tax rates do not hinder growth and point to post-war United States as an example of that, a common rebuttal is that the US was in a unique circumstance at the time: it could afford higher tax rates because the rest of the world was effectively destroyed. Saez and Zucman use post-war Japan as a counter example of that. Post-war Japan was destroyed and poor by modern standards. It had the US and Europe as competition, and yet it grew rapidly from 1946 to the 1960s and 70s, while it had a top marginal tax rate as high as 85% during those years:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />A common objection to elevated top marginal income tax rates is that they hurt economic growth. But let’s look at the empirical evidence. The United States grew more strongly — and much more equitably — from 1946 to 1980 than it has ever <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html?module=inline">since</a>. But maybe in those years the United States, as the hegemon of the post-World War II decades, could afford “bad” tax policy? Let’s look then at Japan in 1945, a poor and war-devastated country. The United States, which occupied Japan after the war, imposed democracy and a top marginal <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/moriguchi-saezREStat08japan.pdf">tax rate of 85 percent</a> on it (almost the same rate as at home — 86 percent in 1947). The goal was obviously not to generate much revenue. It was to prevent, from that tabula rasa, the formation of a new oligarchy. This policy was applied for decades: In 1982, the top rate was still 75 percent. Yet between 1950 and 1982, Japan grew at one of the fastest rates ever recorded (<a href="https://wid.world/country/japan/">5.1 percent a year</a> per adult on average), one of the most striking economic success stories of all time.</blockquote>
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Their source comes from a paper by Chiaki Moriguchi and Emmanuel Saez (same author as the OpEd), on the evolution of income concentration in Japan from 1886 to 2005. A graph from <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/moriguchi-saezREStat08japan.pdf" target="_blank">that paper</a> shows Japan's marginal tax rate during those years. This provides an interesting counter argument to the popular rebuttal that only the US could afford higher marginal tax rates due to its unique circumstance as the only unscathed country after World War II, and I'd love to hear a rebuttal to Saez and Zucman's argument in the comments if anyone wishes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWyLxWUXFTmzO9rta0T5XW6tHtxAs3xOzWvZj-t_FooFVA6V7Nf0cbvMv7cmTT1QKYl6RLxnjyLgWX9am2PyHQHEDCj1-8WUjKetD96yH2fWlEP2AVv6qvJFLIq_PoHLjJpDHeLU5hiw/s1600/japan+marginal+tax+rates.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="711" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWyLxWUXFTmzO9rta0T5XW6tHtxAs3xOzWvZj-t_FooFVA6V7Nf0cbvMv7cmTT1QKYl6RLxnjyLgWX9am2PyHQHEDCj1-8WUjKetD96yH2fWlEP2AVv6qvJFLIq_PoHLjJpDHeLU5hiw/s1600/japan+marginal+tax+rates.PNG" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-26696350813018262042019-01-16T21:24:00.000-05:002019-01-17T10:38:41.309-05:00Survey: Few Americans Find Meaning In Faith<br />
An interesting <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/" target="_blank">survey from Pew came out recently</a> that detailed where Americans find meaning in life and it showed a relatively small number mention spirituality or faith.<br />
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A hot topic in the debate between atheists and theists is where millions of people will find meaning, once they've left religion for atheism. It is argued, mostly by social conservatives, but even by some liberals, that religion is the largest provider of meaning in life and that in the absence of traditional religion the void left by that absence of meaning will be filled by anti-social elements, like drug addiction, and radical ideologies, be they far Right or far Left.<br />
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Well, Pew's survey seems to challenge that perspective, at least somewhat. Despite Americas being seen as a highly religious population among the Western nations, only 20% of the respondents in the survey even mentioned spirituality and faith as something that provides them with a sense of meaning. Family by far topped the list, with nearly 70% mentioning it, followed much lower by career and money, at 34% and 23% respectively.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/pf_11-20-18_sources_of_meaning-00-02/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Americans most likely to mention family when describing what provides them with a sense of meaning" class="attachment-large size-large" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?w=309" height="426" sizes="(max-width: 309px) 100vw, 309px" srcset="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png 309w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?resize=218,300 218w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?resize=160,221 160w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?resize=294,405 294w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?resize=200,276 200w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-02.png?resize=260,358 260w" width="309" /></a></div>
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Despite the fact that when the survey is measured by what is the <i>most important</i> source of meaning, faith comes in second, I am positive that these numbers will be decreasing in the next few decades due to the ongoing rapid secularization of the US.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/pf_11-20-18_sources_of_meaning-00-03/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Religion second to family as ‘most important’ source of meaning in lives of American adults" class="attachment-large size-large" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?w=415" sizes="(max-width: 415px) 100vw, 415px" srcset="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png 415w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=226,300 226w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=160,213 160w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=304,405 304w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=200,266 200w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=260,346 260w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-03.png?resize=310,412 310w" /></a></div>
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And not surprising, black Americans mention spirituality the highest of 3 racial groups, corresponding with the known high levels of religiosity among them.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/pf_11-20-18_sources_of_meaning-00-12/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Black Americans find more meaning in religion than do whites, Hispanics" class="attachment-large size-large" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png?w=309" sizes="(max-width: 309px) 100vw, 309px" srcset="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png 309w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png?resize=300,265 300w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png?resize=160,141 160w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png?resize=200,177 200w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-12.png?resize=260,230 260w" /></a></div>
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Age-wise, the survey affirms the decrease in religiosity among those who are younger, with only 10% of those who are 18-29 mentioning faith and spirituality as providing them a sense of meaning. Regarding religious faith itself, the differences between the generations are even more dramatic.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/pf_11-20-18_sources_of_meaning-00-23/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Younger Americans find less meaning in religion" class="attachment-large size-large" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?w=620" height="282" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" srcset="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png 620w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=300,136 300w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=160,73 160w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=200,91 200w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=260,118 260w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=310,141 310w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-23.png?resize=420,191 420w" width="620" /></a></div>
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Those are are college educated find more meaning in learning. This seems to make a lot of sense, as someone interested in learning is probably more likely to go to college in the first place.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/pf_11-20-18_sources_of_meaning-00-09/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="College graduates more likely to mention finding meaning in learning" class="attachment-large size-large" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?w=344" height="265" sizes="(max-width: 344px) 100vw, 344px" srcset="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png 344w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?resize=300,231 300w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?resize=160,123 160w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?resize=200,154 200w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?resize=260,200 260w, http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-09.png?resize=310,239 310w" width="344" /></a></div>
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Other highlights from the survey:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Married Americans more likely to mention family and religion than unmarried Americans</li>
<li>Among evangelicals, religion ranks as the most important source of meaning</li>
<li>Americans with higher household income, more education are most likely to mention friendships, good health, stability</li>
<li>About a quarter of college graduates (24%) and those with household incomes of $75,000 or more (23%) mention being in good health when describing what gives them a sense of meaning.</li>
<li>Conservative or very conservative Americans are more likely than liberals to mention (in their open-ended responses) their spirituality or faith as a key source of meaning in their lives (33% vs 9%)</li>
<li>Liberal Americans are also more likely than conservatives to say that social or political causes provide them with “a great deal” of meaning (19% vs. 10%)</li>
<li>And among those identifying as “very liberal,” three-in-ten (30%) say they find a great deal of meaning in social or political causes, almost three times the rate seen in the general public</li>
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So what gives <i>me </i>meaning? Where would I fall on this survey? </div>
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<div>
I would tend to align with what many liberal, college educated people find meaningful in life: social and political causes, as well as hobbies and learning. I'm not a family oriented person. My friends give me more comfort than my family does. And learning perhaps gives me more meaning than anything else. I can spend hours every day on Wikipedia gobbling up information, Googling random facts, and pouring over data sets online. Recently I just spent an hour on the University of Virginia's <a href="https://demographics.coopercenter.org/racial-dot-map/" target="_blank">racial dot map</a>, to see the racial geography of where Americans live. The internet has made data geeks like me have endless hours of entertainment. In fact, the main reason why I want to live longer is to just see what discoveries humanity makes.</div>
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I'm also making a documentary on <a href="https://www.freewilldocumentary.com/" target="_blank">free will</a>, the first feature length documentary dedicated exclusively to the topic. Making this documentary in recent months has given me motivation to get up and live another day. I've found that having short term projects to work on that I'm passionate about has given me tremendous meaning in my life. If I couldn't participate in such hobbies, I'd find it difficult to find meaning in life.</div>
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When I discovered "New Atheism" about 10 years ago I can honestly say it breathed new life into me. I found a social and political cause I could get behind: critique religion and religious thinking and promote rationality, while fighting for the separation of church and state. To this day this is still a major passion of mine. I still debate religion nearly every day online, and while doing so it's helped me find a deeper passion for science, philosophy, history, and politics. This puts me in line with most other atheists:</div>
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<a href="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/11/PF_11.20.18_sources_of_meaning-00-28.png" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="635" height="401" width="640" /></a></div>
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Lastly, I don't brush off the concerns of those like Douglas Murray who, while an atheist himself, worries about the ideas filling the void left by the absence of religion. Almost a year ago I wrote a post about <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/02/social-justice-new-religion-of-left.html" target="_blank">social justice becoming the new religion</a> of the Left. This survey affirms our suspicions that many liberals find meaning in social justice, which has replaced spirituality and faith. There are no doubt obstacles ahead of us here, but <i>going back to traditional religious belief is never the way forward</i>. That will always be the way backward. I offer some suggestions on how to move forward in a series of posts starting <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/02/what-should-replace-religion-in-post.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-72802613454815415682019-01-15T13:41:00.000-05:002019-01-22T01:08:40.596-05:00An Argument Demonstrating Why Arcane Knowledge Is Wrong About Special Relativity And Eternalism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a website called <i><a href="http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/" target="_blank">Arcane Knowledge</a></i> written by a Catholic named Daniel J. Castellano that includes <a href="http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/physics/physics1.htm" target="_blank">several articles on Special Relativity</a> that try to argue that the theory <i>doesn't </i>entail <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)" target="_blank">eternalism </a>(the view that all moments of time have equal existence). Now if you've read my blog at any length, you know I'm a big proponent of the view that <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/08/does-special-relativity-entail.html" target="_blank">Special Relativity does necessitate eternalism</a>. So naturally, I disagree with much of what is written on the site.<br />
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Many of the theists I've debating eternalism with have cited this website and its arguments against the reality of a 4 dimensional spacetime block universe. (Not surprisingly, they've all been Catholics subscribing to Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics).<br />
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Through a year long debate with a Catholic who frequently cited Arcane Knowledge in an attempt to deny Special Relativity entails eternalism, I've constructed an argument below showing how the arguments used on Arcane Knowledge to deny eternalism forces one into a dilemma: either (a) affirm you are the only thing that exists at any given present moment for you (literally deny the existence of everything else), or (b) be forced to agree events in the past and future exist (effectively affirming eternalism).<br />
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Over on <a href="http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/physics/physics1.htm" target="_blank">the site</a>, Daniel argues that from any event considered present, no events in the absolute future or past will have any objective ontological status, but any events in "elsewhere" <i>could physically </i>exist. In Special Relativity, "elsewhere" is a term given to all the places not in an event's absolute future or past (which are its future and past light cones, respectively). In other words, elsewhere is the <i>totality of spacelike separated events</i>. According to Daniel, one cannot say whether any events in elsewhere exist when one is at the present moment, seen below in the spacetime diagram as a green dot (the coordinates of this dot at (0,0) on the X and Y axis). It is physically possible, according to this view, that any set of events <i>can possibly </i>exist in elsewhere.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivPn_hIIGbXij3MSp7OlBxIHn_iC-e0knh5DAJtYfy_Y3P_HxXSXSdI5Hq3t3Hi5I060ASB4i-Jco1zsICdNpMyLEb-4hL7YzV_MVs58QYVisEntdUMg0t0FgruAQYch7K8PLbfHUu-j4/s1600/point+presentism.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivPn_hIIGbXij3MSp7OlBxIHn_iC-e0knh5DAJtYfy_Y3P_HxXSXSdI5Hq3t3Hi5I060ASB4i-Jco1zsICdNpMyLEb-4hL7YzV_MVs58QYVisEntdUMg0t0FgruAQYch7K8PLbfHUu-j4/s1600/point+presentism.png" /></a></div>
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This interpretation of Special Relativity is problematic in several ways, and I will show how. If an event's absolute future and past objectively <i>doesn't </i>exist, this would have to apply to all other events that exist, since there's nothing special about any given event we make the center of a spacetime diagram. Given this rule, no other events can exist in elsewhere that are in the absolute futures or pasts of any other events in elsewhere. For example, in the diagram below, it is possible events A and B can exist, since they're not in each other's absolute future or past.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjegDfL5FCScskGhnfaOjXeVV-wX_gjzFjI379FJ1vCF0BqZ-9jgkZ_8_uIq6M4alyClZY09HN1ZRFN65EBcTAF-39wWz3Y1QC92cDkwjhyqhdrvjt702Zd1ol4J_Or7LosyEh0gIuSqsY/s1600/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future+-+Copy+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="644" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjegDfL5FCScskGhnfaOjXeVV-wX_gjzFjI379FJ1vCF0BqZ-9jgkZ_8_uIq6M4alyClZY09HN1ZRFN65EBcTAF-39wWz3Y1QC92cDkwjhyqhdrvjt702Zd1ol4J_Or7LosyEh0gIuSqsY/s400/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future+-+Copy+2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
But in this diagram below, it cannot be the case that <i>both </i>events A and B exist, since event A is in the absolute past of event B, and event B is in the absolute future of event A.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cqJZRnoK2po_8cSvGJ9VWixOy3ppQFQKllzSaF5XVIXAGBb1BerJreFkLgBcWoJOs2yb7wcMw23Br328LcLaq2bT-6PEkQk4oggETFlNE7fsEMFsZHEJa1lfyjHj0h5GBxKiVx0HJBM/s1600/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="821" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cqJZRnoK2po_8cSvGJ9VWixOy3ppQFQKllzSaF5XVIXAGBb1BerJreFkLgBcWoJOs2yb7wcMw23Br328LcLaq2bT-6PEkQk4oggETFlNE7fsEMFsZHEJa1lfyjHj0h5GBxKiVx0HJBM/s400/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future.png" width="500" /></a></div>
<i>A quick side note of what is meant by the absolute future and past: The absolute future and past of an event are all the areas relative to that event's location where all inertial frames would agree are objectively in the future or in the past if they were all in that event's location, even if they're moving relative to each other. They are the future and past light cones.</i><br />
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<a name='more'></a>Given this background knowledge, I will demonstrate the above stated dilemma. The argument starts with some very obvious and non-controversial starting points that virtually all theists — and just about everyone — can affirm, such as a denial of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_solipsism" target="_blank">metaphysical solipsism</a>.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>P1:</b> You are not the only thing that exists at any moment you consider present (i.e., other things exist).<br />
<b>P2:</b> It is possible for any 1 or more event events in "elsewhere" to be what else exists apart from you at the moment you consider present at (0,0) so long as none of the events are in each other's absolute futures or pasts (i.e., all such events must be spacelike separated).<br />
<b>P3:</b> Events A and B below are two such possibilities of other events/things that could exist apart from you when you are at present moment (0,0) (from P1 and P2 above).</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR0jk1t0Kv4KUmllVecT6a6SLXFaocAE23Ls_xsDDjA0P4Xw1VxnIIwsTJRKXN5uFwRgXKAGsocT6BHUJkBclgy7diyOzrSDyuMIoRwyYTXlX2MAEnZzyEdSLFF-1tuekLO314XybVrE/s1600/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future+-+Copy+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="644" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR0jk1t0Kv4KUmllVecT6a6SLXFaocAE23Ls_xsDDjA0P4Xw1VxnIIwsTJRKXN5uFwRgXKAGsocT6BHUJkBclgy7diyOzrSDyuMIoRwyYTXlX2MAEnZzyEdSLFF-1tuekLO314XybVrE/s400/phils+dilemma+part+2+past+future+-+Copy+2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>P4:</b> Both events A and B and you are in the same reference frame (not moving relative to each other) and will agree on simultaneity as per the rules of Special Relativity.<br />
<b>P5:</b> You will all agree on what is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, etc, as per the rules of Special Relativity.<br />
<b>P6:</b> Event A happens Monday. It's clock and calendar all read Monday and all other reference frames will agree that when event A happens, it is Monday in event A's frame. Any frame not moving relative to it, such as the frame you and event B are in will agree as per the rules of Special Relativity.<br />
<b>P7:</b> Event B happens Friday. It's clock and calendar all read Friday and all other reference frames will agree that when event B happens, it is Friday in event B's frame. Any frame not moving relative to it, such as the frame you and event A are in will agree as per the rules of Special Relativity.<br />
<b>P8: </b>It is Wednesday at your present at (0,0):</blockquote>
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<a href="https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fe1ad6a3748feb71d9a286f380c24fe9c6baeeb9416821f88fa2d40cbfb6703.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="559" height="303" src="https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fe1ad6a3748feb71d9a286f380c24fe9c6baeeb9416821f88fa2d40cbfb6703.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>P9: </b>Given 1-8 above, the view that says it is <i>physically possible</i> that any events in "elsewhere" can exist, entails that at your present moment on Wednesday at (0,0), it is <i>physically possible</i> events on Monday and Friday exist (i.e., events technically in the past and future have equal ontological status with you at 0,0). </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Conclusion:</b> This view entails the existence of past and future events.</blockquote>
<br />
Remember: all things in this scenario (you, events A and B) are <i>not moving</i> relative to one another, so talk about different frames or disagreements on what speeds their clocks measure is futile. The only way to deny the conclusion is to deny it is <i>physically possible</i> for events A and B to exist when it is Wednesday at (0,0) for you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Possible responses:</b></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I cannot say events A or B exist because they are in elsewhere. I must remain completely agnostic to their existence.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<div>
If it is even <i>physically possible</i> events A and B <i>could </i>exist, denying eternalism while maintaining this view is in contradiction.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hence you cannot be agnostic on the existence of an event like A and B, <i>you must positively affirm it is physically impossible that they exist while you are at (0,0)</i>.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
No agnosticism is allowed, lest you want to affirm literally nothing else exists besides you at any given time, which means this response:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>I deny the first premise that other things could possibly exist in elsewhere.</li>
</ul>
<div>
This leads you directly to a form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_solipsism" target="_blank">metaphysical solipsism</a>: that you are the only thing that exists. Once you start denying "things could possibly exist in elsewhere," you're literally saying you're the only thing that exists! As such, <i>affirming solipsism is the price one has to pay in order to deny eternalism.</i> So by affirming such a claim, you've solved a problem by taking on all the problems with solipsism.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hence the original dilemma stands. Either:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(a) affirm you are the only thing that exists at any given present moment for you (literally deny the existence of everything else); or</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(b) be forced to agree events in the past and future can exist (effectively affirming eternalism).</blockquote>
<div>
<br /></div>
Maintaining the view that any events/things can <i>possibly </i>exist in elsewhere while affirming eternalism is <i>false</i>, cannot be done coherently.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, it is helpful to note that by saying "events/things <i>can possibly </i>exist in elsewhere" you're not saying you have knowledge of <i>specific </i>things existing when you are at (0,0), like knowledge of a specific event or person. All you're saying is that <i>something else</i> in addition to you exists whatever it is, which is tantamount to saying, <i>you are not the only thing that exists at any moment you consider present (i.e., other things exist). </i>What those <i>somethings </i>specifically are you can be completely agnostic about, but there is <i>something else</i> that exists besides you, lest you assert some kind of metaphysical solipsism.<br />
<br />
Lastly, what's true for you at (0,0) would necessarily have to be true for all other events at any given time, and when you add up all the possible events that can exist in everyone else's elsewhere, you get a block universe, which is eternalism. (Daniel has also denied presentism is true on his site as well).<br />
<div>
<br />
And that's why Arcane Knowledge has not in any way refuted eternalism! Now this is not to say Daniel is completely ignorant. His articles contain factual information about the topics he writes about, which is why I can understand how so many are fooled into agreeing with his conclusions. But this is due to the reader's own ignorance. If you understand the subject matter fully enough, you can easily spot his errors.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-90640803684533878652019-01-08T12:55:00.000-05:002019-01-08T12:55:44.136-05:00Quote Of The Day: Paul Krugman On High Tax Rates For The Rich<br />
Happy New Year! As we embrace a new year amidst the ongoing government shutdown (which isn't affecting me at all), newly sworn in congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-the-rookie-congresswoman-challenging-the-democratic-establishment-60-minutes-interview-full-transcript-2019-01-06/" target="_blank">said in an interview</a> with 60 minutes that top tax rates on the super rich for income above $10 million should be 70%! The conservative blogosphere predicatbly blew up.<br />
<br />
This all got me thinking about tax rates again. Back in May of 2017 <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2017/05/my-tax-plan.html" target="_blank">I proposed a tax plan</a> with a rate of 45% for income above $10 million, far lower than Cortez's 70%. Many have claimed that her rate is far too high. Too "radical" as <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/ocasio-cortez-proposes-massive-tax-hike-on-the-wealthy/" target="_blank">Anderson Cooper described it</a>. It definitely seems radical, even when you consider that the highest marginal tax rates in the 1940s and 50s were as <a href="https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24489" target="_blank">high as 94%</a>.<br />
<br />
Enter Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman. In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">recent New York Times OpEd</a>, he writes on how many other economists (even some Nobel prize winning ones) calculate the optimal top tax rate to be over 70%:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance. (Although Republicans blocked him from an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board with claims that he was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/opinion/06diamond.html?module=inline">unqualified</a>. Really.) And it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To be more specific, Diamond, in work with Emmanuel Saez — one of our leading experts on inequality — estimated the <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.4.165">optimal top tax rate</a> to be 73 percent. Some put it higher: Christina Romer, top macroeconomist and former head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimates it at <a href="http://ceg.berkeley.edu/research_117_2123314150.pdf">more than 80 percent</a>.</blockquote>
<br />
Krugman continues on how the top tax rates is based on two primary factors: Diminishing marginal utility and competitive markets, [emphasis mine]<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Diminishing marginal utility is the common-sense notion that an extra dollar is worth a lot less in satisfaction to people with very high incomes than to those with low incomes. Give a family with an annual income of $20,000 an extra $1,000 and it will make a big difference to their lives. Give a guy who makes $1 million an extra thousand and he’ll barely notice it. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What this implies for economic policy is that we shouldn’t care what a policy does to the incomes of the very rich. A policy that makes the rich a bit poorer will affect only a handful of people, and will barely affect their life satisfaction, since they will still be able to buy whatever they want. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So why not tax them at 100 percent? The answer is that this would eliminate any incentive to do whatever it is they do to earn that much money, which would hurt the economy. <b>In other words, tax policy toward the rich should have nothing to do with the interests of the rich, per se, but should only be concerned with how incentive effects change the behavior of the rich, and how this affects the rest of the population. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Seems reasonable. Tax the rich <i>too </i>high, Krugman argues, like at 100%, and you'll stifle all incentive to work any harder resulting in diminishing returns. But what's "too high" is a threshold beyond an optimal top tax rate that would drive the largest tax revenue, that experts argue is much higher than the top tax rates that currently exist. He continues, [emphasis mine]<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But here’s where competitive markets come in. In a perfectly competitive economy, with no monopoly power or other distortions — which is the kind of economy conservatives want us to believe we have — everyone gets paid his or her marginal product. That is, if you get paid $1000 an hour, it’s because each extra hour you work adds $1000 worth to the economy’s output. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In that case, however, why do we care how hard the rich work? If a rich man works an extra hour, adding $1000 to the economy, but gets paid $1000 for his efforts, the combined income of everyone else doesn’t change, does it? Ah, but it does — because he pays taxes on that extra $1000. So the social benefit from getting high-income individuals to work a bit harder is the tax revenue generated by that extra effort — and conversely the cost of their working less is the reduction in the taxes they pay.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Or to put it a bit more succinctly, <b>when taxing the rich, all we should care about is how much revenue we raise. The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue.</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And that’s something we can estimate, given evidence on how responsive the pre-tax income of the wealthy actually is to tax rates. As I said, Diamond and Saez put the optimal rate at 73 percent, Romer at over 80 percent — which is consistent with what AOC said.</blockquote>
<br />
So a 70% top marginal tax rate may not be that radical and ruin all incentive. I've been debating with several conservatives on Twitter recently and it seems that they all make the common conservative argument that <i>any </i>raise to the tax rates will discourage anyone, especially those already wealthy, from working harder. Krugman cites a chart showing the top tax rate and growth rate, which does not show a correlation between lower top tax rates and growth, contrary to what conservative-leaning economists always argue.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/05/opinion/190105krugman1/190105krugman1-jumbo.png?quality=90&auto=webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="672" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/05/opinion/190105krugman1/190105krugman1-jumbo.png?quality=90&auto=webp" /></a></div>
<br />
In light of all this I'm reconsidering my view on what the top tax rates should be, and my 45% top tax rate proposal now seems awfully low now.<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2017/05/my-tax-plan.html" target="_blank">my blog</a> post:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Federal tax rates for individuals:<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cols="4" frame="VOID" rules="NONE"><colgroup><col width="32"></col><col width="227"></col><col width="86"></col><col width="22"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="17" width="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" width="227"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" width="86"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" width="22"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="CENTER" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 3px 1px 3px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Income amount</span></td><td align="CENTER" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 3px 3px 3px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Tax rate</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="17"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">0 – 2,500 </span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">0.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="17"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">2,500 – 10,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.1" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">10.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">10,000 – 40,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.15" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">15.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">40,000 – 90,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.25" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">25.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">90,000 – 150,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.28" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">28.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">150,000 – 250,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.33" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">33.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">250,000 – 500,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.35" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">35.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">500,000 – 1,000,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.4" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">40.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">1,000,000 – 10,000,000</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.43" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 1px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">43.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="32"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 3px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">10,000,000 – above</span></td><td align="RIGHT" sdnum="1033;0;0.00%" sdval="0.45" style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 3px 3px 1px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">45.00%</span></td><td align="LEFT"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="LEFT" height="17" style="background-color: white; color: #15152a; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="background-color: white; color: #15152a; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></td><td align="LEFT" style="background-color: white; color: #15152a; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-2370060419782408542018-12-26T20:07:00.000-05:002018-12-26T20:07:39.869-05:00Interactive Map Of Religious Belief in Europe<br />
Continuing on with my love of Pew Research's surveys on religious trends, they recently put out an interactive map that shows you the religiosity of 34 European countries according to 4 factors: (1) importance of religion; (2) religious service attendance; (3) frequency of prayer; and (4) belief in god.<br />
<br />
Here are some highlights from the survey:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Romania </b>is the most religious European country in their overall combined index, <b>Estonia </b>the lowest.</li>
<li><b>Armenia </b>has the highest level of belief in god with "with absolute certainty" with 78%, and <b>Germany </b>is the lowest with 10%.</li>
<li><b>Greece </b>has the highest percentage of people who say religion is very important in their lives, with 55%, and <b>Estonia </b>is the lowest with a mere 6%.</li>
<li><b>Moldova </b>has the highest percentage of people who say they pray daily, at 48%, and the <b>UK </b>has the lowest at just 6%.</li>
<li><b>Poland </b>has the highest percentage of people who say they attend religious services at least monthly, at 61%, and <b>Finland </b>has the lowest at 10%. </li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It seems that the most religious countries in Europe are roughly on par with where the US is. But the US will be catching up with the rest of Western Europe in a generation or so, if the numbers continue at the rate they are now.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Unfortunately, embedding the tool doesn't seem to be working, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/how-religious-is-your-country/" target="_blank">so click this link here to check it out</a>. Screenshot below for reference.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVEMgGePVBlIy4HXGGO1JMfvG2pX3xWD0k9V0AFQ2vXm4qXwfZTCO7EIi_fxzBy3eHb5tQA98XgJCsW2vRCTP-GT7r5aU15RXjcmxfvhzv7_R_kvwn0A5fw-2ydHRD5PvOOKaHABvCxXM/s1600/religion.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="671" height="614" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVEMgGePVBlIy4HXGGO1JMfvG2pX3xWD0k9V0AFQ2vXm4qXwfZTCO7EIi_fxzBy3eHb5tQA98XgJCsW2vRCTP-GT7r5aU15RXjcmxfvhzv7_R_kvwn0A5fw-2ydHRD5PvOOKaHABvCxXM/s640/religion.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-24858285207761479092018-12-20T16:28:00.000-05:002018-12-21T01:52:43.822-05:00A Few Recent Studies On Secularization From Pew<br />
Pew is a treasure trove of cultural and demographic data for nerds like me. I can spend hours on the site pouring over all their new studies.<br />
<br />
Here are some recent graphs <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/08/why-americas-nones-dont-identify-with-a-religion/" target="_blank">that caught my attention</a> on religion and the rise of the "nones" in the US and Western Europe. From <i><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/08/why-americas-nones-dont-identify-with-a-religion/" target="_blank">Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religion</a></i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
People who identify as “nothing in particular” give a variety of responses when asked about their most important reason for not affiliating with a religion – and no single reason predominates. A quarter say the most important reason is that they question a lot of religious teachings, 21% say they dislike the positions churches take on social and political issues, and 28% say none of the reasons offered are very important.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FT_18.08.07_whyUnaffiliated_questioning.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FT_18.08.07_whyUnaffiliated_questioning.png" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
As expected, questioning religious teachings is a major reason why people leave religion:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Six-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Americans – adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – say the questioning of religious teachings is a very important reason for their lack of affiliation. The second-most-common reason is opposition to the positions taken by churches on social and political issues, cited by 49% of respondents (the survey asked about each of the six options separately). Smaller, but still substantial, shares say they dislike religious organizations (41%), don’t believe in God (37%), consider religion irrelevant to them (36%) or dislike religious leaders (34%).</blockquote>
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In another survey of Western Europe, it shows how most unaffiliated adults were raised Christian, disconfirming the misconceived idea that if two Christians have a kid, that kid will be a Christian its entire adult life. Assuming kids will all keep the same religion of their parents is what lead Pew a few years back to <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2015/06/did-pew-project-future-of-religion.html" target="_blank"><i>over estimate</i> the rise of the percentage and absolute numbers of the world's religious population by 2050</a>. From the recent study, you have an 86% chance of having been raised Christian if you're not currently religious in Spain. And the median number of the unaffiliated raised Christian in Western Europe is 60%.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-24069715371208453652018-12-12T19:34:00.000-05:002018-12-12T19:34:29.629-05:00The Satanic Temple's Protest for First Amendment Rights<br />
I recently came across this video from Vice about The Satanic Temple's push to get a plurality of religious representation at the Arkansas state capitol grounds. The back story is that they have a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/26/606029241/arkansas-installs-a-new-ten-commandments-monument-at-its-capitol" target="_blank">monument to the 10 Commandments</a> on government property, violating the separation of church and state, and if not removed it should at least be accompanied by monuments to other religions, like Satanism. Seems fair enough, but of course this is not going over well in the deep Christian south.<br />
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It is amusing to see just how real residents of the state take the statue of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet" target="_blank">Baphomet </a>— a catoonish representation of the "Adversary." They literally believe a statue will bring upon Satan's wrath. It goes to show you how far we still need to progress on the secularization of the US.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-74420120277270542642018-12-12T01:02:00.000-05:002018-12-12T01:02:52.617-05:00Quote Of The Day: Max Tegmark On Time As The Fourth Dimension<br />
Some people, I think, for reasons not fully known to me, will just never understand the concept of 4 dimensional spacetime. I've been engaged in a year long debate with a contributor to the Strange Notions site on my blog over <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/08/does-special-relativity-entail.html" target="_blank">Special Relativity's entailment of a 4 dimensional spacetime block</a>, and despite dozens of images and a book's worth of explaining, he just doesn't get it.<br />
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I've come to the conclusion that to the lay person who has not bothered to learn Special Relativity, it is very hard if not impossible to explain this without the help of a realtime conversation and the ability to illustrate arguments. What really bugs me is when people make claims about Special Relativity or spacetime, or any of its implications, who have clearly not bothered to learn or understand the basics of the theory. But such is the case. Willful ignorance comes natural to us, so I can't say I'm surprised when I experience it.<br />
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I stumbled across<a href="https://philpapers.org/archive/ROMPPO.pdf" target="_blank"> a paper</a> by Argentinian physicist Gustavo Romero, who's written several papers on the 4 dimensional block view. In his paper he quotes MIT physicist Max Tegmark on time as the fourth dimension and its illusory nature. It's interesting to hear the dominant view among physicists, which so profusely contradicts our everyday experience of reality in the manifest image.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Time is the fourth dimension. The passage of time is an illusion. We have this illusion of a changing, three-dimensional world, even though nothing changes in the four dimensional union of space and time of Einstein’s relativity theory. If life were a movie, physical reality would be the entire DVD: Future and past frames exist just as much as the present one.</blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-7446810849812387842018-12-04T22:13:00.000-05:002018-12-04T22:13:20.116-05:0070% Of Americans Support #MedicareForAll <br />
I had no idea that that 70% of Americans supported Medicare For All, but a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-progressives/" target="_blank">recent survey</a> from Reuters says just that. I'm sure the number is up dramatically in recent years, given the abundant failures with our existing system, and the newfound momentum on the Left for universal healthcare. Most Democrats in the US are openly supporting a Medicare For All system, and it seems inevitable that we'll eventually get it.<br />
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Personally I support a Medicare For All system, even though I'm not firm on how an exact implementation would work, as there are many ways it could be implemented. I'm also openly looking for people who disagree and are willing to debate this with me. Nothing makes you learn a topic better than debating it.<br />
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So if anyone opposed to Medicare For All and who supports a free market style system wants to debate in the comments below, feel free.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-88383146980185752922018-11-19T20:08:00.000-05:002018-11-21T19:19:23.389-05:00"God: Eternity, Free Will, and the World" Refuted — Part 4<br />
A few months ago over at the Catholic apologist's site <a href="https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/"><i>Strange Notions</i></a>, where I sometimes debate theists (but am now banned from), a post was written by Catholic philosopher <a href="https://strangenotions.com/author/dr-dennis-bonnette/">Dr. Dennis Bonnette</a> that was almost entirely addressed at some criticisms I've made on the site in the past year.<br />
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This is part 4 of that criticism. For parts 1, 2, and 3, click <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world.html">here</a>, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world_16.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world_30.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<h3>
Objections Answered</h3>
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In this section of the post, Bonnette tries to answer the objections to god's necessity and free will he's written thus far, but on analysis he's failed to fully articulate and understand the dilemma. He starts writing,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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First, some think that God being the Necessary Being is inconsistent with the contingency of his free will choosing to create this world, which did not have to exist at all. Although God is the Necessary Being, this necessity refers primarily to his act of existence, since <a href="https://strangenotions.com/divine-simplicity/">his essence is identical to his existence</a> – thus, making it impossible for him not to exist.</blockquote>
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Of course, all these claims merely attempts to define god into existence. It's the word salad at the heart of Thomism's case for god. Since I've already addressed this problem in past episodes of this series, I will move on to the heart of the matter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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The term, “necessary,” with reference to the divine nature <i>cannot </i>be capriciously defined to suit some contrived anti-theistic argument. Its meaning originates in the context of St. Thomas’ Third Way, which refers solely to a being whose necessity for existence comes from itself and not from another.<a href="https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/#note-7494-4">4</a> Such a being must be that being whose essence is its very act of existence.</blockquote>
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When I criticize the Thomist's claim that god is necessary, I'm simply using the general, uncontrived, definition of something that is <i>logically </i>necessary, meaning, logic necessitates it's outcome or truth. If what the theist means by "necessity" is really just <i>suppositional </i>necessity, then they are making a much weaker claim under the guise of a much stronger claim. I've argued this is deceptive, and is the lie at the heart of Thomism. He continues,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Hence, God’s necessity means primarily the necessity of his existence. As shown by St. Thomas above, that necessity also pertains to God’s willing his own goodness, since it is equivalent to his own being -- <i>but it is not necessary for God to will things other than himself.</i><a href="https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/#note-7494-5">5</a></blockquote>
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But again, you can't define something into existence. Now I understand Bonnette is not making the case for god here and is instead responding to objections, and so he's starting from certain statements he thinks are already proven elsewhere. I just see monstrous flaws in those statements to the extent that they are in no way proven. If it is not necessary for god to will things other than himself, that means everything god does will that is not necessary <i>must have a contingent explanation</i>. The Thomist's own principle of sufficient reason demands it. Hence the dilemma in <a href="https://www.atheismandthecity.com/2018/10/god-eternity-free-will-and-world_30.html" target="_blank">part 3</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Thus, when God chooses freely to create this world as opposed to any other, this choice does not make him to somehow become a “contingent” being. He is still the one and only Necessary Being, but he makes a free choice that in no way contradicts his existential necessity.</blockquote>
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Nothing about the above is concluded from what came before it. God never "freely" chooses anything. And if we assume god does for the sake of argument, the reason why god chooses to create this world as opposed to any other <i>must be due to contingent reasons</i>. Since god's essence is his will, and his will to create specific lesser goods is contingent, god's essence is contingent. Hence, god is a contingent being that cannot be fully explained <i>in principle</i> by necessity. He continues,<br />
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Second, some object that God cannot have free will, since that would necessarily entail a change in him, which his immutability and eternity forbid. But this is to make the gross error of thrusting God into time – as though he was first not making a choice and then later making one, which would be a change in him. </blockquote>
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Unless one misconceives God in a material, temporal fashion, the metaphysical insight required is to grasp that God’s very substance is an eternal act of will in which some objects are willed necessarily and others are willed non-necessarily. This is not an act having temporal duration in which choice begins at some point. God is simply his own act of choosing – a choice eternally identical with his very substance through <a href="https://strangenotions.com/divine-simplicity/">divine simplicity</a>.</blockquote>
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According to Bonnette, god is an eternal, unchanging will, that could not have been different than what it is, and it's will includes non-necessary things. That would mean it cannot be explained by necessity <i>in principle</i>, which can only mean god's will <i>must </i>be explained by something contingent. This can only lead to an infinite regress of contingent explanations, which means god could not have freely willed it because every explanation to why god wills the unnecessary things must refer to something else, and the infinite regress <i>itself </i>will need an explanation, according to the Thomist. Hence god is logically trapped out of free will, since free will requires (among other things) not being forced by outside elements. A theist here is forced to claim god is not forced by outside elements, but there is no <b><i>ultimate</i></b> explanation why god wills the unnecessary things. By definition there can't be.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Third, it was objected that God’s choices are not really free, because his choice is identical to his nature, and therefore, is determined by his nature. It is true that God’s nature determines what he is able to do and that his actual choice is identical to that nature. But, <i>this will prove to be unproblematic</i>. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While God might have made other logically possible choices (and there might be other logically possible Gods), <i>such hypothesized alternatives are not metaphysically possible</i> – given that the one and only actual God, who is immutable, has made the choice he has <i>actually </i>made. These hypothesized alternatives may be metaphysically possible in an absolute sense, but they are not so <i>de facto</i> – given that only one God actually exists and has made the actual choice he has eternally made.</blockquote>
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And here is where the Achilles heel of the Thomistic case for god cripples them. Once you admit there are other logically possible gods, you cannot say your god is <i>necessary</i>. For if the theist claims our universe isn't necessary because there are other logically possible universes, the same would apply to god. The theist can say the universe doesn't have existence as its essence, but technically neither does god. The theist just defines god as having existence as its essence, but obviously I can define the universe the same way. The theist can come back and say such a claim is impossible because the universe came into being and undergoes change, but obviously that presupposes presentism is true (which no one can ever prove). The theist has to prove <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_presentism" target="_blank">presentism </a>or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_block_universe" target="_blank">possibilism </a>at the very least to make his case even have wings, let alone get off the ground. Dr Bonnette has tried to prove true presentist-sense motion happens on Strange Notions before but he does not know what he's talking about. Motion doesn't disprove eternalism. Motion simply means something different on eternalism. Motion simply means that in spacetime, worldtubes are not all parallel. They are angled relative to each other, which means that at different times they are different distances. That's what motion is. This is why I love eternalism: it destroys the Thomist's metaphysic.<br />
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The fact of the matter is is that if god can be "necessary" while there are "other logically possible" Gods," so too is the case with the block universe: we have this universe, and given that it eternally exists, hypothetical alternatives are not metaphysically possible – given that the one and only actual universe exists (assuming there's no multiverse for the time being). Hence, the Thomist has nothing on the atheist has far as explanatory power. He just pretends he does, disguised in fancy, philosophical dressing. That's how he's able to pull his charade. Dr Bonnette continues on,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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What is <i>de facto </i>metaphysically impossible renders the alternative “logical possibilities” not logically possible at all, except as contrary-to-reality mental imaginings. That is, <i>they are not actually real possibilities at all</i>.</blockquote>
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Ok, but then the same is true with an eternal block universe: it eternally exists, and although it is not logically necessary, <i>no other alternatives are possibilities at all</i>. In fact, this is a perfect time to have a side-by-side comparison of god and the block universe.<br />
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Looking at a side-by-side comparison of god vs the block universe, it is clear that they share many of the same attributes. This means that just about any argument made for god can be made for the block universe. But the theist will remind us that the main difference between them is that god is non-physical, and the block universe is physical. Because of this, they argue, it is <i>possible </i>that another physical universe could exist, which would mean the universe cannot be necessary, unlike god. But the slight of hand the theist makes here is that when he says "possible" he means <i>logically </i>possible, as in, it's <i>logically possible</i> that another physical universe could exist. But of course, Dr Bonnette admits the same thing about god! It's logically possible that another god exists, he acknowledges (or admits, depending on how charitable I want to me), but it is <i>metaphysically impossible </i>that another god exists because "only one God actually exists and has made the actual choice he has eternally made" as <a href="https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/" target="_blank">he says in the post</a>. <i><b>But the same exact thing would be true of the block universe</b>.</i> Given that the block universe as a whole is eternal, unmoving and unchanging, it is <i>metaphysically impossible</i> that it <i>didn't </i>exist. Thus the theist here has nothing above the atheist. But—since we do know the universe exists, <a href="http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/08/does-special-relativity-entail.html" target="_blank">and have extremely good reasons why eternalism is true</a>, that means the atheists <i>has an advantage over the theist</i>. Dr Bonnette goes on,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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God is actually able to do only what he actually freely wills to do, since on the supposition that he wills a certain choice from all eternity, that will cannot be changed -- because of the divine immutability. Thus, there is, in fact, no distinction between what God is able to do and what he does do – but <i>what he does do, he does freely with respect to goods that are less than his own goodness</i>.</blockquote>
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Dr Bonnette of course has no justification in saying god freely wills anything. He simply calls god's unnecessary will "free" since the other will is necessary. The fundamental explanatory problem of why <i>this </i>unnecessary will vs a <i>different </i>unnecessary will is still there. Since a necessary explanation is off the table as an option, the will can only be explained by an infinite regress of contingent explanations.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Given the divine nature, God is determined to will his own existence and goodness necessarily. But, he is also determined to will lesser goods than his own existence non-necessarily, which means that <i>he is determined by his own nature to act freely</i>. That is to say, with respect to the willing and creation of lesser goods than his own goodness, God is <i>determined </i>to be <i>not-determined</i>. His nature determines that the divine will’s act with respect to certain specified objects, such as the creation of this particular world, is <i>not necessary</i>, and therefore, is perfectly free.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Thus is resolved the problem of God’s nature “determining” his choice.</i></blockquote>
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Being determined to will lesser goods does not entail those lesser goods are done freely. It is logically possible to be determined to will something that isn't necessary. Furthermore, the claim of being "perfectly free" if granted for the sake of argument, does not get god out of the underlying dilemma that since it is the will in question isn't necessary, any explanation to why it is X rather than Y <b><i>must </i></b>have a contingent explanation, given the aforementioned Thomist's own PSR, thus the dilemma.<br />
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This dilemma is not refuted anywhere in Bonnette's post, and given that according to the principle of sufficient reason:<br />
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(a) all explanatory chains must eventually terminate in a necessary explanation or go on infinitely<br />
(b) the explanation for god's lesser goods is unnecessary,<br />
(c) therefore, the explanation for god's lesser goods can only be an infinite regress of contingent explanations.<br />
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I technically do not need to include the two options in (a). I could just say <i>all explanatory chains must eventually terminate in a necessary explanation </i>and still justify my point. God's "free will" cannot be used as an explanation, because even something freely willed must have an explanation. It's the <i>type of explanation</i> that implodes the theist's case.<br />
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And that wraps up part 4. Some of this is indeed a bit redundant, but it's necessary for me to stress the point.<br />
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When closely examined, you can see that for all the sophistication on Strange Notions, the arguments there implode under scrutiny. Dr Bonnette simply has no case for god's free will, and the linchpin of his case for god, and for that of Thomism, is exposed as nothing more than a clever word play, implying a logical necessity for his god's existence, yet it is really just an after-the-fact claim for his god's suppositional necessity—a claim the atheist could make about an eternal block universe. I will follow up with the refutation for part 5 shortly.<br />
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