Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Sacerdotus Is (Even More) Stupid (Than Previously Thought) Pt. 1


Author's note: I know I just wrote that I'd be spending more time writing about social issues and lay off atheism for a bit, but a recent attempt to rebut my blog post on why I'm an atheist got my attention and prompted me to make a response. I'll get back to social issues when this is done.


A supposed "philosopher" who challenged me on my post Why I'm An Atheist, wrote a follow up to my follow up, and in it he claims again, that's he's refuted me and that I'm ignorant of science and philosophy. The exact opposite is true and I can easily show why. His arguments are so bad, they are laughable. And I don't mean this to be facetious, I mean this with all seriousness. He makes so many common argumentative mistakes and factual errors that I cannot take him seriously that he has a degree in philosophy and science. If he does have a degree, he should get a refund, because he apparently learned no serious critical thinking skills because of it. His arguments are on the caliber of the same old tired internet apologist, like the many wannabe William Lane Craig clones out there. Only he's at the low end of the spectrum.

The supposed philosopher's pen name is Sacerdotus and he accuses me of nothing more than ad hominem attacks. This is false, and a common misunderstanding of what an ad hominem attack is. An ad hominem attack is when you attack your opponent instead of attacking their arguments. I attacked his arguments, quite successfully, in addition to attacking his character. So I made no ad hominem attacks because I addressed his sad excuses for an argument, quite successfully. The reason why I call him stupid in most post (aside from being accurate, is because he calls atheism stupid. I'm giving him a taste of his own medicine, and he calls it an ad hominem! The irony.

I'm going to refute his attempt at refuting my refutation to show how he still just doesn't get it, and is making the same mistakes over and over. His words will appear in block quotes. In the beginning of his post he writes,

As Socrates said, "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."  Well, we now see the loser show his/her face via ad hominem, so to speak.  He even calls me "gay," which shows he clearly is the losing party.

I called him gay because he is gay, not because it is a slander, and he's a Catholic who defends the church. I find that relevant. If you're going to defend a church that for centuries tried to destroy your existence, that is telling and relevant. If he's not actually gay, then I apologize.

Notice how his replies are just a restatement of his/her previous errors already refuted and how he/she avoids addressing my refutation directly.  I will once again re-refute his/her nonsense and show how they are false when vetted against science, philosophy, and theology just as I have before.  

The point is he didn't actually refute my original arguments. And so what I did was I just explained them further with more insight into why his responses didn't refute them. My arguments mostly went right over his head because they're too sophisticated for him, despite his supposed (and apparently useless) degree in philosophy. My arguments are the culmination of years and years debating theism and they are not entry-level arguments. They rely on a deep understanding of science and philosophy, like a deep understanding of special relativity, which Sacerdotus clearly doesn't have because he doesn't understand at all what special relativity implies for our understanding of time and causality.

So let me refute his attempt at a rebuttal one by one to show (very easily) how his arguments all completely fail. This will be done over several parts throughout this week. Starting with my first argument:

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Toxic Masculinity And Toxic Feminism


Feminism is a tainted word now, and there's a growing backlash against it and self-described feminists.

The problem of course is that we have this one word 'feminism' that labels a wide variety of ideas ranging from basic gender equality to 'all men are rapists,' and when someone criticizes 'feminism' they may be criticizing something entire different from how you define feminism. That's why the first thing you should ask a critic of feminism is "How do you define feminism?" Their definition might be a give away to exactly what your disagreement is.

And this is exactly why I think we need a term like toxic feminism to distinguish it from feminism simpliciter. 

Traditionally feminism meant and stood for gender equality: men and women should be treated equally and not discriminated based on gender. Most people, and even many conservatives today are down with that. But in recent years many new ideas spread under the label of 'feminism' have gone way past the basic common sense notions of gender equality. And these more extreme views are what I like to call toxic feminism; it's the female counterpart to toxic masculinity.

For example, some feminists today are spending all of their time complaining about the "patriarchy" as if sexism is as bad as it was in 1960. They're saying things like "everything is sexist...and you have to point it all out," and they're applying wicked double standards clearly biased against men. Case in point:


As the old saying goes, if you think like a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. In other words, if you're convinced that everything is sexist, you will start to see sexism everywhere — even where there isn't any. You will get many false positives, and it will be very hard to admit you're wrong because your whole identity will be wrapped up in pointing out sexism.

This is very dangerous, especially to the good, rational feminists, because the toxic feminism being promoted is making all feminists, and feminism, look bad. There's a whole industry of people gaining notoriety criticizing and exposing feminism's uglier ideas, from Sargon of Akkad, to Paul Joseph Watson, to TJKirk, to Milo Yiannopoulos, and women like Laura Southern. Toxic feminism is giving the Right legitimate arguments against liberalism, and that's why I consider it so poisonous.

And I don't deny toxic masculinity (which I will be writing more about in the future). There is no ridiculous either/or dichotomy. You can acknowledge the feminist's claim to toxic masculinity is at least in part legit, and you can acknowledge that 'feminism' has some terrible ideas being promoted under it.

Nuance people, nuance!

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Why I'm An Atheist - 13 Reasons & Arguments For Atheism



More than three years ago I wrote a post entitled Why I'm An Atheist, where I briefly explained some of the reasons why I don't believe in god. That post, which was long over due at the time, needs an update. With each passing year I get much better at understanding the arguments for and against the existence of god, and since that post came out I've created several new arguments of my own. Rather than write it in essay form, which I did in the original post, I'll instead outline the main reasons and arguments briefly, one by one. So here we go.

I'm an atheist because....

1) The traditional notion of god isn't coherent


In order to even consider the possibility that a god exists, we first need a coherent concept of god. The traditional notion of god in classical theism is that of a timeless, changeless, immaterial mind, who also must be infinitely good, infinitely wise, and can do anything logically possible. There are some variations on this concept, but almost all traditional or classical theistic gods have these basic characteristics. The problem is that a timeless, changeless being by definition cannot do anything; it's necessarily causally impotent and nonfunctional. Change requires time, and time requires change. This is logically certain. And to create something, one must do something. Doing requires a change, regardless of whether that change is mental or physical. A being that cannot do anything cannot be omnipotent. As a result, the traditional notion of god is self contradictory. The theist's only resort here is special pleading. That's why I like to get all theists to agree beforehand that god is not beyond logic. That is, god cannot do the logically impossible or be the logically impossible. Once a theist agrees with this, they've cut themselves off from special pleading as an option. Some theists think god is atemporal before creating the universe, and temporal after creating the universe. But it isn't logically possible to exist timelessly and then suddenly jolt yourself into time out of your own will, because your will was timeless and frozen. It couldn't change into the state to want to change.

Given the necessary rules of logic the traditional attributes of god are incoherent:

P1. It is logically impossible to do something without doing something.
P2. It is logically impossible to do something without change (even if everything is immaterial).
P3. It is logically impossible for change to exist without time.
C. As such, a timeless, changeless being cannot do anything.

The failure of theists to come up with a coherent description of god is enough by itself to warrant atheism, but there's many more reasons to think no gods exist.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Quote Of The Day: Ayaan Hirsi Ali On Female Independence


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I really need to write more about feminism, and sex, and gender relations. In fact, I'm long overdue for a lengthy post on that. I've got a lot of thoughts on it, believe me. But I've just been so hard pressed on time with work, the conference, and personal things. This year it seems I will not have blogged as much as the past two years, unless I really pick up the pace these last few months. Perhaps quality is better than quantity?

Anyway, I came across this quote by Ayaan Hirsi Ali from her book Infidel. She talks about how the financial independence of women gives women dignity. I agree. Her quote reminded of my mother, who after divorcing my father didn't run to another man to take care of her. She instead went to college, got a bachelor's degree, got a job, and became financially independent from that point on. And I'm proud of her for that.

As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn't prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn't have to beg him for financial support.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Simple Logic Showing How The Principle Of Sufficient Reason Is Self-Refuting


A few weeks ago I was debating the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) with a bunch of theists and a pantheist over in the combox of Strange Notions.

To me, the PSR is blatantly false, and relatively easy to prove so. The PSR's own assumptions can show how it's self refuting. In this blog post I want to compile some of the logic I use to show what entails from the PSR's stated premises that show it's flaws. Consider this:


1. The PSR demands that everything has an explanation.
2. Explanations can only be either necessary or contingent.
3. If an explanation is contingent, it will need a further explanation that is either necessary or contingent.
4. If a necessary explanation is not an eventual option, then the only possible explanations will have to be either an infinite regress of contingent explanations, or a brute fact.
5. A fourth option is impossible because the PSR demands only two possible kinds of explanations, which will ultimately terminate in 3 logical possibilities.

(Furthermore...)

6. Since brute facts are incompatible with the PSR, and an infinite regress of contingent explanations would require a necessary explanation for the chain's existence, the only real ultimate explanation for the PSR is a necessary one.
7. Since this universe is not logically necessary (necessitarianism is false - per argument below), the last remaining option per the PSR — the necessary option — also fails.
8. Even positing a god who creates/explains the universe doesn't resolve the problem because it is not logically necessary that god create our particular universe.
9. Since the PSR negates all 3 options, the PSR's logic is inherently false.
10. This means one will eventually have to come to the conclusion that brute facts are a necessity. (Even an infinite chain of contingent explanations will itself be a brute fact).


Now some of these steps need further justification.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

The "God Has Morally Sufficient Reasons" Theodicy


It's been a bad few months in terms of natural disasters. Back-to-back hurricanes Maria and Irma devastated countries and regions in the Caribbean that were already struggling financially, killing at least 59 and 75 people, respectively. Prior to this, hurricane Harvey slammed east Texas dumping more than 25 trillion gallons of water, flooding the Houston metro area and gulf coast with as much as $180 billion in damages, and killing at least 82 people in the process. A series of earthquakes rocked southern and central Mexico killing at least 422 people, including 25 children at a school. Thousands more were injured, and perhaps millions more were affected by property damage from the natural disasters.

It's in times like these that I'm reminded of the problem of evil — specifically natural evil. Natural evil is an evil for which "no non-divine agent can be held morally responsible for its occurrence." Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, droughts, meteor impacts, and diseases that cause sentient beings to suffer or die and for which no human being is responsible are examples of natural evil.

Natural evil doesn't exist on atheism since there is no conscious creator, designer, or sustainer to nature. But since many theists do believe nature has a creator, designer, and sustainer who is also omnibenevolent — meaning perfectly and infinitely good, there is big problem with natural evil on most forms of theism, particularly Christian theism. To deal with the stinging issue of natural evil, theists have come up with theodicies, which are attempts to explain why an omnibenevolent deity can coexist with moral and natural evil.

Once such theodicy is what I'm going to call the "God has morally sufficient reasons" to allow evil theodicy, or the MSR theodicy. According to the MSR theodicy, god allows natural evils so that some good thing can come from it at a later time, kind of like how the pain you endure at the dentist (an experience I had the other week) is all for the greater good of having healthy teeth. It appears that the MSR theodicy is a variation of the soul building theodicy, which says that natural evils can be god's way of challenging moral agents to goodness or some soul building benefit.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Thinking About Taking The Pro-Truth Pledge


I've been a bit busy lately and haven't had much time to blog. I've been working with friends on putting together the first ever atheist conference in New York City and it's taking up much of my time. I'm currently in charge of recording and editing video promos for the event and this takes weeks of commitment. I'm also in charge of maintaining the site and various other event planning details.

I will have much more on this event in the upcoming weeks and months, but if you're interested, check out our site TheAtheistConference.com right now. Tickets just went on sale last week. We haven't heavily promoted it yet because we're waiting for a big event. But when the grand announcement is made, it will be made on all of our social media, including our Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as my site of course. I will also be speaking at the event moderating a panel. Stay tuned!

I also have many lengthy blog posts in the pipe that will be published later this month, including a critique of the "God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing suffering" theodicy.

I will also be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this weekend for the annual Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist Conference. The Gotham Atheist contingent and I are going down there to help out and promote our conference. So that's going to take a few days away from blogging. I will hopefully have a lot in the second half of the month.


I've caught wind of the pro-truth pledge that's being talked about. In the age of Trump and rampant lying, asking people to take a pledge towards telling the truth is a necessity. There are people who are willing to lie about anything in order to further a political, economic, religious, or social goal. The ends always justifies the means, and it's leading to horrible behavior.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

What Questions Would You Ask A Catholic Philosopher?


Over on Strange Notions, they advertised an AMA (ask me anything) featuring Catholic philosopher Edward Feser. Readers, particularly atheist readers, were encouraged to write in questions, and some would be chosen for him to answer in a future post on the site.

I've read and reviewed his book The Last Superstition a few years ago, and was not particularly impressed by it. There were so many questions that arose from reviewing his book that Catholics like him fail to adequately explain that I decided to compile many of them into a single blog post.

Here is the list that I'd ask Feser, or any other Catholic philosopher, about their philosophy that I think makes little sense. It was compiled from a comment of mine on the site that used questions from my review.

  1. When did the rational soul begin to exist during the course of our evolution? Did Homo naledi have it? What about Neanderthals? Or Homo erectus
  2. Given evolution, was there a single human who got a rational soul whose parents didn't have one? If so, was he or she able to talk or think in a way their parents weren't? 
  3. Was this person as rational in capability as the average modern person is today, and were their parent's behavior like homo erectus or some other transitional hominid? 
  4. If natural selection could get us homo sapiens to the point where we acquired "such a level of complexity that it was possible for an animal to exist which was capable of having a rational soul," then why do we need god or the soul as an explanatory force for that matter?
  5. What is a squirrel's perfect essence? Does it depend on the species? Or geographic region? Does the North American tree squirrel have a different "Form," then say, the flying squirrels of Asia? And does a squirrel's "perfect" essence evolve as squirrels were evolving and changing or does it suddenly come to be in one squirrel generation? Any "genetic defect" that an animal might have could give it an advantage to its environment. That's one of the driving mechanisms for how evolution works after all. And that "defect" might become spread throughout that entire population through natural selection and gene flow. At what point does the mutation become the "Form" or "essence"?
  6. What is the perfect form, essence, or nature of a human being? David Hasselhoff? Brad Pitt? Michaelangelo's David? Joseph Smith? The Islamic prophet Mohammad? Or is it Jesus?
  7. In The Last Superstition, you make several arguments against abortion. Among them, you say it's a "particularly violent interference with nature's purposes." (146) I suppose that would mean circumcision is too, right?
  8. God lacks passive potency, Thomists claim, but how can god create or become Jesus and not change?
  9. How can something with no size, shape, location, mass, motion or solidity act on bodies, or act on anything physical, especially without violating the conservation of energy and quantum field theory?
  10. If god doesn't reason or choose things in anything like the human sense of doing so, and he's timeless, how and why did he decide to create a universe that is apparently contingent on his will?
  11. Why does the universe have to be essentially ordered? Why does an atom need to be continually held in existence by a god? Is it metaphysically impossible for god to create something physical that continues to exist without sustenance? Is that something god can't do, like creating a stone he cannot lift?
  12. How does the "soul" go from act to potency without something outside to actualize it?
  13. From the Aristotelian perspective, how could we even distinguish a series of events having a final cause versus a series of events that didn't?
  14. How are Forms able to somehow have a causal relationship with the atoms in the physical brain via the "intellect," in a way that physics has not already discovered — since that is indeed what the Thomistic view would entail?
  15. What is it that makes the body proceed to move in a way that's in accordance with the intellect? Was it going to do so anyway via a purely material process irrespective of the intellect and will? If so, what's the point of the intellect here? How is it causal? Is it just a coincidence that the physical body moves according to what the intellect and will just so happens to think?
  16. Couldn't god have created us with a different nature, which would rationally entail a different kind of morality? Couldn't god, for example, have made humans reproduce by laying a large amount of eggs ensuring that only a few could possibly be raised to adulthood instead of giving birth to live young? What principle prevents god from doing that? In other words, was god's choice in creating our nature the way it is at all arbitrary, or is there some logically necessary reason why he created our nature the way it is? If so, what's that logically necessary reason?
If there are any Catholics out there who want to take a shot at these questions above, please do so in the comments below. I'd appreciate your efforts.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

The Top 10 Cognitive Biases We Need To Be Aware Of


Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment, and are often studied in psychology and behavioral economics.

This is a list of what I think are probably the 10 most common and perhaps most harmful cognitive biases we have when we're discussing or debating. They constantly derail productive discourse and prevent us from thinking rationally and reaching truthful conclusions. Oh, and we all have them.

Here are the top 10 cognitive biases starting with the mother of all biases:

1. Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirming evidence.

It also includes the tendency to be much more skeptical of evidence that disagrees with your existing beliefs.

Example:
  •  When we're looking for data to back up our views we notice that the ones that support it stand out as if they're blinking, and the ones that don't support it we ignore. It's so much easier for me to brush off disconfirming evidence and come up with easy justifications for it. 
How to fix it:
  • Be more skeptical about data that supports your views. Since your views are relying on that data, you should do an extra amount of work to ensure it is accurate. A few years ago when Chinese scientists claimed mathematical proof the universe came into existence spontaneously from nothing, I didn't accept it as proof despite my desire to do so. I made sure that the evidence stood the test of time first. 
  • Try and seek out data that is critical of your own view. I look for criticism of atheism all the time. I look for criticism of my political views all the time

2. Sunk-cost bias: the tendency to believe in something because of the cost sunk into that belief. (Hanging onto losing stocks, unsuccessful relationships, etc.)

Example:
  • Religious people holding onto creationism to the point of absurdity because they've believed it for so long.
  • My own belief in free will was held for years because I had held it for a long time and it had become such a deep part of my identity.
How to fix it:
  • The amount of time you believe in something should bear no importance to whether or not the view is true. 
  • Consider that the things you've believed for a longer amount of time might even mean they're less likely to be true, since you were likely younger and less knowledgeable when you started believing them.

3. Anchoring bias: the tendency to rely too heavily on a past reference or on one piece of information when making decisions.

Example:
  • We all have the tendency to refer to one piece of information that caught our attention because knowing all the pertinent information is just too difficult.
  • Scientific studies in health or medicine that get a lot of attention that are then falsified are still being used by people as the basis of their view.
How to fix it: 
  • If you're relying on a single data point to assess an issue or to come to a conclusion on it, you need to make sure that data point is accurate and representative of the subject matter. 
  • Don't base your views on a single data point, or let it too strongly influence your assessment. Read up on other studies. 
  • Recognize that you will likely make a guess about something based on a suggested value that is deliberately given to you in order to bias you in a particular way.

4. Framing effects: the tendency to draw different conclusions based on how data are presented.

Example:
  • According to a CNBC poll 4 years ago that surveyed two different groups. one was asked whether they opposed Obamacare, and the other the Affordable Care Act. 46% of the group that was asked about "Obamacare" was opposed to the law, while 37% of the group asked about the "Affordable Care Act" was opposed to the law.
  • At the same time, more people support "Obamacare" (29%) than those who support ACA (22%.) In other words, having "Obama" in the name "raises the positives and the negatives," as CNBC put it.
How to fix it:
  • Just like how peer review process withholds the names of the person being reviewed and the reviewer to help eliminate this bias, you should sometimes withhold the names of people or organizations when making a case. 
  • You should also study the merit of the data on its own rather than dismiss it entirely based on its source or whose name is associated with it. I will recognize for example when my political opponents are correct. 

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Another Reason Why The Claim "Goodness Is Grounded In God" Fails


Suppose I have five different theists who each believe in five different gods with varying moral attributes before me. They each argue that goodness is grounded in god and that without god there is no way to have objective moral values.

One by one they make their case and describe their god's moral attributes — one god loves homosexuals, the other four hate homosexuals; three are highly jealous, the other two humble; three say eating meat is immoral, the other two are indifferent to meat eating; two of them think men and women are equal, the other three say men are superior to women; three of them think abortion is justified, the other two say it isn't.

Suppose I'm also told by all believers that all of the gods share the same basic properties that the traditional notion of god has: timeless, changeless, immaterial mind, who also must be infinitely good, infinitely wise, and can do anything logically possible.


How can I ground moral goodness in "God" when I have multiple gods who each ground different and incompatible moral values — without having an objective standard that exists independently of all these gods that I can use to assess them by?

You see, telling me that god grounds goodness does nothing to tell me what goodness actually is and how I can identify goodness from non-goodness. It states an unintelligible, circular argument: God is goodness, and goodness is god.

Each theist tries to tell me that only their god grounds goodness, and not the others. But going by the whole notion of "God" grounding goodness, there is no way for me to tell which one actually is without an objective standard independently of god. I certainly can't rely on my moral intuitions. Moral intuitions are often culturally relative, and will be different in different people.

For this, any many other reasons, the notion that goodness is grounded in god fails.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Nuance People, Nuance!



I've been inspired to write a short rant about how we need to promote the idea of nuance in our social, political, and ideological views. To me these nuances are common sense, but all too often in today's discourse they are all but forgotten.

  • You can hate Nazis and white supremacists and still be critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. 
  • You can be critical of US and Western foreign policy and still think that Islamic terrorists are inspired by the Islamic religion to commit violence.
  • You can agree with basic feminism, which is gender equality, and still be critical of many proponents and ideas of third wave feminism. 
  • You can think political correctness has gone too far and still agree that we should have some basic norms of respect and decency. 
  • You can think political correctness has gone too far and still be a liberal or a conservative who's against racism and sexism.
  • You can stand up for the freedom of speech for people with hateful ideologies and still be against what their ideology is about.
  • You can think Islam is a sexist, homophobic, and violent religion and still respect the human rights of Muslims.
  • You can stand for trans-rights and not be transphobic for not wanting to have sex with them.
  • You can stand for the rights of racial minorities and be critical of the crime problems and social issues in their communities.
  • You can be a liberal and be critical of Islam, contemporary feminism, and political correctness.
  • You can be a Republican or a conservative or even a Trump supporter and not be a racist, sexist, homophobic, Nazi sympathizer.
  • You can be for higher taxes on the rich and more government regulation and recognize that some tax laws and government regulations hurt the economy.
  • You can be an atheist and think that religion has positive social benefits.
  • You can think that there is legitimate criticism of Islam and not be an anti-Muslim bigot.
  • You can agree that some racists criticize Islam and not all critics of Islam are racists.
  • You can think that immigration needs to have controls and limits and not be a racist xenophobe.
  • You can stand for the rights of Muslims and not be a Jihadist.
  • You can support a political candidate and not agree with all their positions.
  • You can support a public figure and not agree with all their positions.
  • You can be critical of the State of Israel and not be an anti-Semitist.
  • You can be critical of the Palestinians and not be a Zionist.

These are just some of the nuanced views that are possible that today's social, political, and ideological debates seem to completely leave out. Because we've become way too tribalistic and black and white in our thinking, what we need to do is constantly remind ourselves and others that nuance exists. It's more important now than ever. As I think of more nuanced views in my interactions, I will be adding them to this list. If you have any suggestions to add, mention them down in the comment box and please spread the word!

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Thomism Can't Even Stay Consistent With Its Own Principles


I've been embroiled in several comment threads over at Strange Notions, a Catholic apologetic site, on a variety of issues related to metaphysical first principles and brute facts. There, I've tested out my argument that brute facts are unavoidable to the many Catholic apologists on the site, including Dr. Dennis Bonnette, a retired professor of philosophy who now teaches free classes at the Aquinas School of Philosophy, and is contributing author on the site.

As a reminder, that argument is:

  1. The traditional notion of god in classical theism is that of a timeless, changeless, immaterial mind, who also must be infinitely good, infinitely wise, and can do anything logically possible.
  2. All of god's will and desires must exist timelessly and eternally in an unchanging, frozen state.
  3. That would mean that god timelessly and eternally had the desire to create our particular universe, and not some other universe, or no universe.
  4. Our universe is not logically necessary; it didn't have to exist, and god didn't have to create it.
  5. The theist would have to show that it was logically necessary for god to create our particular universe in order to avoid eventually coming to a brute fact.
  6. There is no way to answer this question, even in principle, with something logically necessary.
  7. Thus at least one brute fact must exist even if god exists.

I think my argument is irrefutable, but I'm not so cocky that I'm unwilling to debate it. In fact, debating it is exactly what I need. I wish to put it up against the best minds in Thomism to see how they respond. And after a week of debating the argument back and forth with Dr. Bonnette, I basically got him to tacitly admit that god's eternal desire to create our particular universe, and not any other universe, or no universe, is a brute fact. He didn't acknowledge it's a brute fact of course, and he denied that it was, but he had to ground his explanation in circular reasoning.

First, one of the metaphysical first principles that Thomists like Dr. Bonnette argue cannot be denied is the principle of sufficient reason, which states that everything must have a reason, cause, or ground for its existence. Furthermore, this reason will either have to be contingent or necessary. That is, it's either going to be dependent on something else for its explanation, or its explanation will be contained within itself, meaning, it's logically necessary.

Dr. Bonnette's view is that god's substance is identical to his will. This means that a god with a different will is a god with a different substance, and in effect, is a different god. So god with eternal desire A is a different god than god with eternal desire B. For simplicity I said let's just call them god A and god B.

There is no logically necessary reason why god A exists, rather than god B, since both are logically possible and neither is logically impossible (assuming god is not incoherent). So Dr. Bonnette's metaphysics (if granted) only covers one aspect of this: that there needs to be a god. But it doesn't demonstrate why there needs to be god A vs god B, or any other god with a different eternal and unchanging will (which again, will be a different god).

Since there is no logically necessary reason why god A has to exist, the reason why god A exists and not god B/C/D/E... etc, cannot be based on a logically necessary reason. Hence his metaphysics fails to explain why we have the particular god we have. Given this, only non-necessary, contingent reasons can explain why. They will all necessarily be reasons that could have been otherwise, and ultimately when drilling down to why any particular answer explains a non-necessary aspect of god's will (and therefore his substance) he must terminate in a brute fact at some point since there is no logically necessary reason available to him.

A few comments later he says,

The reason why God A exists and not God B is because God A does exist and God B never did. God B was never a real possibility because the only God that exists is God A. You are again trying to go back in time and think of two possibilities. God is outside of time and there never was an actual possibility of any God but him.

The explanation in his first sentence isn't a logically necessary one, and so he's admitting god A is not logically necessary. And saying that god A exists simply because god A does, can be applied to the eternal universe: The reason why our eternal universe exists and not another eternal universe is because our eternal universe does exist and another eternal universe never did.

It makes the logical grounding of god A no more justified than the atheist's grounding for the universe. The Thomistic theist in this sense has no edge over the atheist.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Is Mental Causation verifiable?


Whenever I debate a theist on the topic of mental causation—which almost every theists believes in—I almost always hear the claim that if mental causation exists you wouldn't be able to tell scientifically; the mind is non-material. This strikes me as odd. Why would this be the case? Anything that can affect physical matter is in principle verifiable and open to science. So I thought of this dialogue to show why this view makes no sense:


Person A: The ghost is moving the cup across the table.

Person B: There's no way to tell if the ghost moved the cup across the table because the ghost is non-material.

Person A: What are you talking about? We can see the cup moving across the table with nothing touching it.

Person B: No, it's impossible to tell if a non-material thing affects a physical thing.

Person A: Are you insane? The cup is moving right now and nothing we can see is moving it.

Person B: No, it's impossible to tell if a non-material thing affects a physical thing.

Person A: It's moving! We can see the ghost affecting physical matter, and we've scientifically ruled out all other possibilities.

Person B: No, it's impossible to tell if a non-material thing affects a physical thing.

Person A:

Monday, May 8, 2017

I Don't Live As If Death Is Final



I was recently rereading the preface of the updated edition of Hitch-22, the memoir of the late Christopher Hitchens, whose diagnosis of esophageal cancer just a few months after the book's release would kill him a little over a year later. Having just learned of his diagnosis, and not knowing whether he'd celebrate another birthday, Hitchens is writing— beautifully as always — with the prospect of death staring at him in the face, and one sentence stood out on the original read that I had to read again.

If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or making of it. 

It struck me, given his insight induced by his condition, that although my naturalistic philosophy entails death is final, and that our loved ones never return to us in any way once they're gone, I certainly don't seem to be living as if that's the case. I seem to be living as if I'm going to be reunited with all my loved ones after they die, as if the amount of time I'm going to be able to spend with them is infinite.

I was recently on the phone with my mother and she told me, as many mothers do, that I don't call her enough. And it's true. I barely call my mother. I can go months without a peep. And it's not the case that I hate her; I love my mother and we have a decent relationship, so it's not like I'm trying to avoid her. It's just, you know, when we get older and move away and our parents are not in our lives and they get a little annoying with their neurotic concerns about us, there's the tendency to avoid them.

But we're acutely aware of our own mortality, and that of the others around us. And we know that if we live long enough, we will see our parents die. And then they will be gone forever. And while I know that's true, I don't seem to be living as if that's true. I don't seem all that concerned of the prospects that I will one day lose both my parents and never see them or hear from them ever again.

I've been wondering lately what that's going to be like. I feel like I might be purposely distancing myself from my parents to be less emotionally reliant on them, as an attempt to make their eventual deaths less burdensome. But is that logical? Am I missing out on worthwhile interaction with my family that I will never have when they die? Will I strongly regret this missed interaction with them when they die? I really don't know. But Hitch's advice would prescribe a visitation. And I'm sure his motivation was very real to him when he wrote it.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Here's What You Have To Believe In Order To Deny Eternalism


I've recently gotten marred down in another debate over eternalism vs presentism via private email. It's a debate I generally like having because it's one I know I can win. Plus it's a great way to get to know Special Relativity, one of the coolest and most fascinating scientific theories. What I want to emphasize here is what one has to deny in order to deny eternalism and hold to either presentism or possibilism, because it's not always apparent to those who do so.

In order to deny eternalism, one has to deny one or both of the following. They have to either:
  1. Deny that the speed of light travels at constant speed regardless of the speed of the light source.
  2. Deny that we can accurately measure two non-parallel distances as being of equal length with any physical instrument, such as a ruler or tape measurer, or even sense in any way that they are equal or unequal.
The denier of eternalism must accept one or both; there is no logical way to deny at least one and still deny eternalism.

The reason why is because logic demands it.

If... 
(1) the speed of light is constant for all observers and isn't changed depending on whether or not the light source is moving,
And...
(2) we are able to physically measure two perpendicular distances accurately using any device such as a ruler or tape measurer,
Then...
(3) if two beams of light travel an equal distance to a single point and arrive at the same time, they must have been emitted at the same time and the events that emitted them must have been ontologically simultaneous. 
And...
(4) if two beams of light travel an equal distance to a single point and arrive at different times, they must have been emitted at different times and the events that emitted them must have not been ontologically simultaneous.
In order to deny (3) and (4) you must deny either (1) or (2) or both (1) and (2). There is no other logically possible way to do so.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

For The Sake Of Absurdity


In recent years I have more and more come to celebrate and embrace the absurd. I have an intense infatuation with what is preposterous, ridiculous, and incompatible with sound reason. I think this is why I love religion so much. It's the absurdity of it that fascinates me and the humor drawn from the absurdity that I find so appealing. Now the philosophy of absurdism within existentialism is about conflict between the search for meaning in world and its meaninglessness. And my view on this, as an atheist, is to embrace the meaninglessness of the world, rather than commit suicide or believe in a religious transcendental realm. One way we can do this is to celebrate the absurd.

But what's the absurdity? Is it the meaninglessness of the world, or the religious view of the world created by a designer who confers meaning? Well if you ask me which one is supposed to be the absurdity, it's both. They're both absurd. The world having no meaning, and the world having meaning given by some god are both absurd. The very idea of those two things are absurd too. Every worldview is absurd if you ask me. Existence itself is absurd. But we can make the most of it by finding subjective meaning in things, like art, or music, or philosophy, and so long as we don't ever confuse these things with any notion of objective meaning, this can make life more pleasurable.

But I say, we should also embrace the ridiculous of the absurd by creating more of it. I routinely tell absurd jokes with deliberate non-sequitors simply because they're absurd. I routinely emphasize natural absurdity contrived by nature. And I try to create absurd situations when ever possible, just for the sake of absurdity for laughs. The more absurd, the better. Humor is the celebration of the absurd.

There is a dark side however to celebrating the absurdity. Donald Trump as president is absurd. Totally and completely absurd. In some ways, I like it because him and his presidency are absurd, and I know people who've voted for him solely because they thought it would be absurd if he was president. Now I think his presidency is a "total disaster" and "Sad!" — to borrow his own phraseology, and I truly fear for the future. So I think sometimes it's proper to set aside one's embrace of the absurd for the sake of human well being. The absurd we celebrate should be harmless, and other than rustling a few feathers, no one should be seriously hurt from the absurd if it can be helped. The presidency of Donald Trump, while a daily monument to absurdity, is going to seriously harm the world. His lack of concern for man-made climate change alone is enough to do this.

So I urge you to consider the absurd. For laughs, try inventing a religion with the goal of making it as absurd as possible. Do it with friends, and try to out do each other. Make an absurd joke that has no obvious punchline other than the absurdity of the joke itself. Tell an absurd story just for laughs. Emphasize the absurdity of the news, situations, or of life in general. For example: How can relationships thrive in a society that increasingly celebrates individuality? It's absurd when you think about it.

Don't confuse any of this with being the same thing as Albert Camus's philosophy of absurdism. That's a deeper intellectual project. I'm simply recognizing his thesis and arguing that we should cope with life's objective meaninglessness by celebrating absurdity.

Monday, March 20, 2017

Neil deGrasse Tyson Admits We Have No Free Will


I've been a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson for years now and had the chance to meet him a few years ago at a bar. One thing I didn't like about him was his ambiguity towards the issue of free will. It wasn't clear that he acknowledged that we don't have it in his many talks. But recently he did acknowledge that we don't have free will and that it's an illusion when talking about time in a video by Vsause3. And he acknowledges the illusion of free will due to eternalism by recognizing that our worldtubes are complete and locked into the block universe! He says this towards the end of the video below. It's definitely worth a watch.



Thursday, February 16, 2017

Make Atheism Great Again!



As I spend more and more time in the atheist community I've been beginning to notice a fairly common and recurring theme. And that is, sadly, that atheists can be just as close-minded, and dogmatic, and tribalistic, and ignorant on the issues as almost any religious person can.

Atheists have a reputation for being rational, free thinkers—more knowledgeable on religion than the religious are, and more knowledgeable on science than the general public is. There is certainly some truth to that. But there is also certainly some truth to the notion that being an atheist doesn't automatically make you rational. And it should be patently obvious to all that atheism is by no means an inoculation against irrational views.

As someone who's a very thoughtful and intellectual atheist and who's deeply familiar with most of the subjects relevant to atheism, I can say for sure that I encounter irrational views all the time among my fellow atheists, ranging from politics, to science, to a whole spectrum of social issues—and it pains me when I hear atheists say incredibly stupid things. So I'm going to outline a few problems I see in the atheist community and offer some remedies on how atheists can fix them.

1) Stop saying philosophy is dead. The one thing that pisses me off the most that I keep hearing atheists say over and over is that "philosophy is dead because hey, we've got science now!" This is a very popular view among atheists that is also ceaselessly reiterated by some of the most high profile people in the community, most notably Stephen Hawkins and Lawrence Krauss. But they're completely wrong and here's why.

Science can never replace philosophy because they do too different things. Science is an epistemology, it's a series of methods for understanding the world we experience that uses hypotheses, repeatable experiments, and formulating theories that explain facts. But not every fact is best obtained through science, and indeed, science itself has to make philosophical assumptions that it cannot prove. For example, what the scientific method should be  and what science is (and there are disagreements) cannot be resolved by science, it has to be resolved by philosophy. And this means philosophy is more fundamental to science, and covers a wider range of topics.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Review Of My Debate Plus Night Of Philosophy


So, what a week it's been. President Trump has banned refugees and residents from 7 Muslim majority countries, sparking outrage around the world, he revived the Keystone pipeline, and has introduced "alternative facts" into the dialectic. Oh yeah, and I had a debate about the abundance of open source information and attended the Night of Philosophy event at the Brooklyn Public Library.

First things first — the debate review. This was my first formal public debate and I hope will certainly not be my last, but I was not as experienced as our opponents were and it showed. They were both fairly experienced and formidable debaters. The format was two-on-two, with my friend Thomas Kim, who ran the NYC debate group for 5 years on my team. And on our opponent's team were two men named Avi and Lenny. Avi is an assistant coach on the debating team of a private K-12 school, and Lenny was on the debating team in college. They did a really good job debating for their side and we made some mistakes we should have looked out for.


First, Thomas and I didn't prepare as much as the other team did, and that was generally evident. Second, I wasn't as forceful as I should have been. I was just too reserved. I held back from trying to make the other team's arguments look bad. Third, since there was no rebuttal period, the closing statements acted effectively as a rebuttal period, but I didn't use my closing statement to do that. Instead I just reiterated many of the same points I made in my opening statement when I should've rebutted the other team's arguments. On top of that, Thomas's arguments were even less forceful than mine, making our entire case much softer and less polemic than our opponent's. And as a result of all these mistakes, we lost. And I really hate losing debates. How do we know we lost? The audience was asked before and after the debate and more people switched to the other side's view from ours.

So that's the bad. What's the good? I nailed my opening statement. It was nearly perfect and much better than any of my rehearsals. I was loud. I was confident. I gave great fucking opening speech. A woman even came up afterwards and told me how good it was. But unfortunately, it was all down hill from there. I will be putting up the bullet points from my debate in the near future.

Over all it was a good experience. I learned a lot and I can definitely see what makes a good public debater a good debater. I can see now why so many inexperienced public debaters just skip to their prepared speeches. That's the mistake I made. I didn't use my time to rebut my opponent's arguments as I should have. Also, many debaters just aren't aware of the format they're in. I made that mistake by failing to recognize there was no formal rebutting period. But I will definitely be better for my second debate. Here are some pictures:

Saturday, January 7, 2017

The Importance Of Understanding Weak Emergence In Moral Ontology


I've been somewhat obsessed recently over the idea of weak emergence in understanding how all the layers of ontology fit into one another. This is an area that I think trips up so many people, both atheist and theist alike.

One reason why is that many people will think that naturalism entails that only the most fundamental layer of ontology has an sort of real status of existence. This view is known as eliminative materialism. Alex Rosenberg, a prominent atheist philosopher, told me back in 2015 that he thinks eliminative materialism is the logical and inevitable outcome of a naturalistic ontology. On this view only the most fundamental constituents that science tells us exist are real. Everything else is an illusion. That means people don't exist, color doesn't exist, solidity doesn't exist, and consciousness doesn't exist. In other words, all higher level phenomena has no ontological status whatsoever. If it isn't fundamental, it's an illusion.

Contrast that with the view that physicist Sean Carroll proposes, which he calls poetic naturalism. It's poetic because there are "many ways of talking about the world." We can talk about the universe in terms of fermions and bosons or we can talk about it in terms of people and societies. In other words, the emergent world of people, plants, animals, color, solidity, consciousness, countries, and economies—all the higher level phenomena—exist, at least in a certain sense. They don't "exist" in exactly in the same way that fermions and bosons exist. They exist as higher level emergent phenomena. However, some things really are illusions. Free will, souls, and the flow of time really are illusions, because they require certain things to exist fundamentally that don't; they can't truly be said to have any kind of real ontological status. Compatibilistic free will, which acknowledges that there isn't any real libertarian free will, is another matter. Bottom line, one has to understand how and why some emergent phenomena are or aren't illusions.

The major problems with this arise from our innate inability at understanding emergence; it's not at all intuitive and it's also extremely complex, generally requiring exceptional knowledge in both science and philosophy, which, let's be honest, most people don't have. And that's why so many people, both atheists and theists, even those reasonably knowledgeable in either science or philosophy, come to the conclusion that naturalism entails eliminative materialism.

Richard Dawkins echos this sentiment in one famous quote from his 1995 book River Out of Eden, saying, "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” (p. 133)

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