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DOESN’T IT TAKE JUST AS MUCH FAITH TO BE AN ATHEIST?

12/4/2019

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[The following, posted in Debunking Christianity and in A Tippling Philosopher​, is an excerpt from my small book, Atheism: Q & A, the Kindle version of which is, for promotional purposes, free December 4 through December 8. The book consists of short entries that answer common criticisms of atheism. The paperback isn't free, but it is inexpensive — and might make a nice Winter Solstice gift for anyone who holds misconceptions about your views.]


The complaint that it takes just as much faith to be an atheist is a strange one. After all, it seems to imply that there’s something wrong with believing on faith — even though in every other context faith is regarded by believers as a virtue. Maybe all that is meant, however, is that everyone is in the same boat, ultimately basing their views on something other than reason and evidence, and that the atheist therefore has no right to single out the religious for criticism.

But is this really true? Does atheism rest on no firmer foundation than religion?

It’s often said that one cannot disprove the existence of God, and that therefore anyone who claims there is no God is going beyond the available evidence. The atheist must as a result rely on faith; if he didn’t do so — if he were sincere about relying only on reason and evidence — he’d be an agnostic instead.

This is a really bad argument, however, and the reason is simple: lack of proof does not mean lack of evidence. I cannot prove that the abominable snowman does not exist, but it doesn’t follow that my disbelief in that creature is a matter of faith: I have good reasons for concluding that the whole thing is a myth, even if these reasons fall short of proof. In fact, to claim that faith is needed whenever there isn’t proof is to claim that just about all our beliefs are a matter of faith; strictly speaking, there’s very little one can prove.

Even if the existence of God can’t be disproven, one can have good reasons for believing God does not exist. For instance, an all-powerful and perfectly good God would almost certainly have created a world with far less suffering than what we find, so at least that kind of deity — the one most theists accept — is at best highly unlikely. One can even reasonably claim to know that no such deity exists: knowledge does not require certainty, for once again, there’s very little we can be certain about. If knowledge required complete certainty, most of our scientific, historical, and even everyday knowledge would go out the window.

One should also be careful about insisting that God can’t be disproven. At least on certain definitions of “God,” his existence can be conclusively ruled out (and in my book The Truth about God I argue that on the traditional meaning of the word “god,” all gods are in fact impossible).

One final comment: it’s interesting that the religious often say their faith can be defended by reason. Their beliefs may be based on faith, but that doesn’t mean they cannot be backed up with hard, logical evidence — or so many theists claim. And yet, when they criticize atheists as being just as dependent on faith, they are obviously implying that atheists have no good reason for their beliefs. Which is it, then? Does faith rule out reason or not? One can’t have it both ways.




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THE REAL REASON GOD IS A PERFECT BEING

11/6/2019

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The God most theists believe in isn't merely a powerful non-physical being who created the universe; he is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, perfectly good and perfectly free being. And apparently male. Theologians might claim that he is also immutable, timeless, perfectly simple, impassible (that is, not affected by anything), and several other things besides. But what reasons could anyone possibly have for believing in such a God?

The standard arguments for God's existence — even assuming that they worked — do not support the above claims. For example, design arguments at best conclude that some intelligent being is responsible for the characteristics found in the universe (or for some of these characteristics). They don't say that this being is all-powerful or all-good; they don't even show that this being created the universe out of nothing (she might only have rearranged previously existing matter), or that this being still exists. Nor do they show that monotheism is more likely than polytheism. Cosmological arguments fare even worse: at best, they show that there is some ultimate cause that is itself uncaused, or that necessarily exists. But by themselves, these arguments do not support the idea that this ultimate cause is an intelligent being, much less that it is a perfectly just and benevolent heavenly father, or one who has any of the other properties claimed by theists.

Then there is what one might call the argument from scripture: the Bible, it is said, shows that God is at least to a great extent as described above. However, the Bible at most only suggests this. It says, for instance, that “with God, all things are possible.” But that is rather vague, and can be interpreted in more than one way. True, if taken at face value, it says God can do anything; but it can also be read more poetically as a suggestion to put one's faith in the very powerful — though not necessarily all-powerful — creator being. And there are other passages in the Bible that if taken at face value are incompatible with God being omnipotent. (The Bible does at least state pretty clearly that God is male. But that's the most ridiculous of the divine properties that believers insist on.)

There are also, of course, the ontological arguments, and those do say that God is omnipotent, perfectly good, and more. But hardly anyone accepts ontological arguments. When they first encounter Anselm's “proof,” most theists suspect that some trick is involved, and rightly so.

It seems clear that the real reason theists accept most of these claims about God is because that is what they want to believe. In the entry on omniscience in The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, George Mavrodes mentions three reasons, besides the Anselmian “perfect-God” theology, why someone might claim God is all-knowing. First, there are biblical passages that “suggest a very wide scope for divine knowledge.” (This has exactly the same problem as the ones used to support belief in an omnipotent God. A “very wide scope” isn't necessarily an all-encompassing one. Plus, there are biblical passages that suggest God isn't all-knowing.) Then there is “the conviction that without an appeal to omniscience one could not maintain a full confidence in God's ability to achieve His purposes in the world.” Finally, there is the idea that God is a being fully worthy or worship, and only a perfect being qualifies as such.

These last two reasons, however, translate to “I believe God is all-knowing for otherwise I wouldn't have as strong as possible a reason for putting my faith in this being.” And if that's a good reason for believing God is all-knowing, or has any of his other commonly-claimed properties, then we might as well believe that carts can pull horses.



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
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ON THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY, PART 2

10/9/2019

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In Part 1, we saw that the Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT) attempts to avoid the Euthyphro dilemma by postulating that God's nature is such that he would never command, say, torturing babies (and thus make torturing babies good). However, it was argued that this solution doesn't work, for in place of the original dilemma, we can now ask, is what God commands good only because he has that specific nature, or would his commands still be good if his nature were different?

If the former, then what makes his commands good is that they are compatible with the particular nature that he has, and not merely because they are his commands. But then God is not needed as a basis for morality, since in this case what makes something moral is just that it conforms to what any being with that nature would want (whether such a being exists or not). And that is inconsistent with the MDCT.

If the latter, however, then his commands would still be good even if his nature were entirely different. And that means that if he did command torturing babies, it would be good to do so — and thus we have not avoided the problem that plagued the traditional Divine Command Theory.

Unsurprisingly, the above criticism has itself come under attack by proponents of the MDCT. Their attempts to fix the theory, however, reveal a deeper problem — namely, that they have two incompatible views as to what is essentially moral. Like almost everyone else, they believe that what's essentially moral are acts that are kind, fair, etc. Yet they also believe — or want very much to believe — that what's essentially moral is whatever God wants.

Some of them openly attempt to have it both ways. William Alston, for instance, claims that “God is good by virtue of being loving, just, merciful and so on” (i.e., he wouldn't be good otherwise) — but then says that these very things are good only “because they are features of God” (i.e., they wouldn't be good if there wasn't a God).* But that makes no sense.

We can perhaps more easily see that it doesn't by means of an analogy that Alston himself makes (though he of course draws a different conclusion from it):

The standard for the meter unit used to be a platinum bar kept at a constant temperature in Paris — just as the standard of goodness for divine command theorists is God. But now, if we think of the meter as being defined as the length of that bar (whatever it is at any given moment), it follows that if the bar expanded slightly, the meter would also become slightly longer. This corresponds to the view that good is defined as the will of God, so that if his will were different, what is good would be different as well. If, on the other hand, we think of the bar as being a meter because it is of a particular length, then if the bar expands slightly, it is no longer exactly a meter long. This corresponds to the view that God's will is good because he is a caring being, and would not be good if he weren't. But it's one or the other; one can't have it both ways. To claim that the bar is a meter long because it has that particular length, and that a meter just means the length of that bar (whatever it is), makes no sense. And that is what Alston is doing when it comes to morality.

Some proponents of the MDCT have attempted to escape the dilemma by claiming that God's properties are necessary. God could not be anything but the caring being that he is — and this, it is said, means that one cannot meaningfully consider what would be the case if he were different.

But even supposing God's properties could not be anything other than what they in fact are, it still remains the case that we don't necessarily know what they are. Therefore, it does make sense to ask what it would mean on this theory if God commanded something like torturing babies. To put it another way, we must distinguish between metaphysical and epistemic possibilities. It may be metaphysically impossible for God to command such a horrible thing, but we don't know that it is, and so must consider it as a possibility.

At this point, the proponent of the MDCT may reply that the theory is supposed to explain the metaphysical basis for morality; it isn't necessarily supposed to guarantee that we know what the correct morality is. We may not know what is or isn't possible for God to command, but the fact remains that there are certain things that it would be impossible for him to ask of us — and if in fact he is necessarily a caring being, he could not command horrible things like torturing babies.

But now the question one should ask is why the theist feels so confident that God's nature is that of a caring being. It can't be simply because he has revealed this to us, for he could be a being with the opposite characteristics who has so far been lying! Obviously, the reason theists think he is kind, fair, etc., is because they regard such things as good. But that just means they regard them as good independently of God having that nature. And that's incompatible with the MDCT.

The same thing applies if the proponent of the theory simply defines God as a caring being — so that if these weren't the creator's properties, the creator wouldn't be God. In that case, we could be certain that God wouldn't command horrible acts. But again, the question is, why define God this way unless it is because such properties are already regarded as good? The meter bar was selected as the standard in part because it was of the right length, the length of other measuring instruments that already existed to represent (albeit less precisely) meters. Similarly, God is thought of by divine command theorists to be the standard of goodness because he is thought to have a nature that is of the right type, a type that is independently regarded as good.

Proponents of the theory therefore should either admit that they accept independent moral principles, or else bite the bullet and say that morality depends on God's morally-arbitrary will, so that even torturing babies might turn out to be good. The MDCT does not solve the problems found in the traditional Divine Command Theory.


* William Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in William Lane Craig, ed., Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, p. 292.



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
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ON THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY, PART 1

9/21/2019

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If you ask the average believer why killing an innocent person is wrong, chances are they will say something like, “because God commanded us not to murder.” This suggests that most Christians agree with the traditional Divine Command Theory (DCT). On this theory, what makes something right or wrong, good or bad, is God's will. Thus, killing an innocent person is morally wrong because God has a rule against murder, charity is right because he wants us to love our neighbor, and so on. I doubt whether the majority of Christians actually accept the DCT, however.

On a previous post, I argued that, if people actually learned morality from The Bible, then they would not find anything in it morally problematic. Similarly, if believers thought that what makes something right or wrong is nothing more than God's will, they should not find any of God's commands disturbing. On more than one occasion, the biblical God commanded the slaughter of women and children. If the DCT is correct, then that was obviously the right thing to do. Remember, all that it takes to make something good is God willing it. And yet, even when theists bite the bullet and say that there must have been a good reason for such a command, they show by their hesitation that they do not find it obvious at all. Similarly, consider the fact that God regarded slavery as permissible. Why don't most Christians today accept that? After all, the permissibility of owning other human beings follows straightforwardly from the DCT and the claim that the Bible is the word of God. But fortunately, most Christians apply an independent moral standard, and as a result reject the pro-slavery position (even if to do so they have to make up some excuse for God).

Most believers are also unaware of the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. In other words, they fail to distinguish between

“God wants us to do x because x is good,” and

“x is good because God wants us to do x.”

Thus, when they say that charity is good since God commanded us to be charitable, they may (at least upon reflection) actually mean the first of the above. But that is inconsistent with the DCT: If God wants us to do x because x is good, then the goodness of the act is independent of God's desiring it. The actual DCT is represented by the second option. That second option is, however, problematic, even if one ignores the bad things God commands in the Bible. For if all it takes for something to be good is God's will, then God can will that torturing children is good. And that is the main difficulty found in the DCT. If God were to will the opposite of what he supposedly has willed — if he decided that murder was good and charity bad — then killing innocent people would be right, and helping those in need would be a sin. And that's something most believers cannot accept.

It also follows from the DCT that if there is no God, nothing is right or wrong, which is rather implausible. Imagine two possible worlds that are exactly alike in every respect, except that in the first God exists, while in the second he doesn't. If in the first world, torturing children for fun is just about the worst thing one could do, how could it be that in the second world, the same act doesn't matter one way or the other? The suffering caused by the act is exactly the same in both worlds, so why should the existence or non-existence of God make any difference?

As implausible as this consequence of the DCT is, however, many believers welcome it, for it gives them an argument for theism (if there were no God, nothing would be right or wrong; but obviously some things are right and others wrong; therefore, God exists). Personally, I think this is too high a price to pay for having such an argument. To say that torturing children for fun is conceivably not immoral just so one can maintain that there is a God, is itself immoral. But whatever the proponent of the DCT thinks about this, the original dilemma remains. Either God has a moral reason for what he commands (in which case there is an independent moral standard and the DCT is false) or God's commands are morally arbitrary (in which case he could make anything right or wrong).


The Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT) is designed to escape the horns of this dilemma by introducing a third option. According to the MDCT, God cannot will just anything to be good or bad because he wills in accordance with his nature. God is by nature loving, just, faithful, etc. He therefore would never command us to torture children or do anything else inconsistent with what such a being would want. According to proponents of the MDCT, this solves the problem, for now one no longer must choose either horn of the dilemma. (The problem that without God, nothing would be right or wrong remains, of course.)

But does this solution work? Not if the third option is problematic as well. The point of both the DCT and the MDCT is to explain the source of moral value. But the MDCT just raises a new Euthyphro-style dilemma: Is what God commands good only because he is a caring God, or would his commands still be good if he were different?

Let's consider each alternative in turn. Suppose that the first is correct: God's commands are good because he has a caring nature, and would not be good if he were uncaring. Then what makes his commands good is not that they are God's commands, but rather that they are those that a caring being agrees with. And if so, then there is an independent moral standard at play here. It must be the case that caring is good and its opposite bad, and this has nothing to do with God. And that's incompatible with any DCT, modified or not, for it means morality does not depend on God after all.

Suppose that one picks the second option instead: It is because they are God's commands, rather than because they are those of a caring being, that they are good. This way, morality depends on God. However, if God were the opposite, then his commands would still be good. And that means the original problem hasn't been solved. Therefore, the modified theory is no better than the original theory.


On the next post, I'll consider attempts by apologists to escape this problem.


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]



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IS SCIENCE INCONSISTENT WITH NATURALISM?

8/27/2019

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In “The Explanatory Emptiness of Naturalism” (another essay in Gilson & Weitnauer's anthology True Reason, which I mentioned a couple of posts back), religious philosopher and “former atheist sociopath”* David Wood, argues that, in order for there to be science, naturalism must be false. There are various reasons why he claims this is the case. These include the usual suspects, such as that naturalism is inconsistent with our ability to reason and that it cannot account for the uniformity in nature which science requires. (I've previously covered these issues, or something closely related to them, and rather than repeating myself have placed links to them below.) 

Some of the other reasons he offers also involve common complaints against naturalism, but in ways that are odd in this context. For example, he argues that naturalism is incompatible with the existence of the universe, and from this concludes that under naturalism it would be impossible to practice science! (After all, there first has to be a world before anyone can be a scientist.) But notice how odd this argument is (in addition to being wrong). Arguing that naturalism is incompatible with science because it is inconsistent with the existence of everything is, at the very least, overkill. Why worry about naturalism's incompatibility with science if naturalism is inconsistent with so much more than that? 

The last reason Wood covers for why naturalism and science don't mix is what he calls the problem of value. Naturalism, he says, implies there are no objective values. This, of course, is specifically denied by ethical naturalists, which is something Wood fails to mention. (Like most apologists, he writes as if anyone who is a naturalist must not accept objective morality.) Nevertheless, an argument can be made that Wood is partially right here: No one has ever been able to give a good account of moral principles based on natural facts. However, nothing about the ability to do science follows from this. 

Wood tries to show that lack of objective values rules out science as it's currently practiced by pointing out that at least some science is pursued as an end in itself. That is, although science can be pursued as a means to other ends (e.g., to improve health or food production), much of it is done for its own sake. But that means it is done because scientific discovery is regarded as good in itself. And this, he tells us, cannot be, given naturalism. For on the naturalist view, nothing is objectively good, but only good according to someone or other. The crux of his argument is this: 

“If we seek scientific knowledge because we value knowledge as good in itself (not simply for its benefits), and naturalism holds that nothing is good in itself, then naturalism will always undermine science” (p. 119). 

Wood's essay and the others printed in this book are attempts to show that it is Christian thinkers, and not atheists, who have reason on their side. And yet they contain arguments like the above. The equivocation in Wood's statement is so obvious that it could be used as an example of a fallacy in logic class. 

There are two distinct meanings of “good in itself” in the above passage. On the one hand, “good in itself” means that which is intrinsically, as opposed to instrumentally, good. In other words, that which is pursued as an end in itself as opposed to as a means to some other end. It is in this sense that some scientific knowledge is pursued only for its own sake, whereas other science is pursued with a more practical goal in mind. On the other hand, “good in itself” is used to mean objectively good (as opposed to the subjective sense in which something is considered good by some but not necessarily by others). Wood then conflates the two meanings. 

If there are no objective values, then the value that some of us put in knowledge itself is a subjective preference. We desire to know things. (Lots of other people couldn't care less, so they don't value such knowledge. That's their right.) There is no inconsistency at all in pursuing such knowledge while maintaining that it is not objectively valuable. The knowledge is regarded by us as valuable. It doesn't follow that it must be a fact, something everyone should acknowledge, that such knowledge is good. 


* Conservapedia 


Links: 

On an issue related to naturalism and reason: Stealing from God: Reason, Part 1 

On naturalism and the uniformity of nature: Presuppositionalism and Induction ​



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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THE CLAIM THAT THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS

8/1/2019

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Instead of answering atheists' arguments, some believers just deny that there is such a thing as atheism. On their view, everyone knows that there is a God, and so-called atheists simply block out that fact because they don't want there to be someone who makes moral demands on them. (As everyone knows, we atheists just want to be able to do whatever we feel like, morality be damned — which explains why we are always robbing banks and torturing puppies.) But what reasons are there for thinking this is the case? Several have been suggested. 

One common argument states that no one can consistently live like an atheist. So-called atheists obey moral rules, for example, which they should have no reason to obey. For according to atheism, it is said, it is no better to be kind and help those in need than to be a serial rapist and murderer. Yet many so-called atheists speak out against injustices in the world, and in doing so reveal that they are not true heathens. 

There are two basic problems with this line of thinking. First, that it is based on a misconception. Atheism doesn't imply there is no morality. One can lack belief in God and still believe in moral principles — and even in moral truths. And for those of us who do not accept the idea of moral truth— those of us who view morality as ultimately based on preferences and desires — it remains the case that we have those preferences, which we therefore have an interest in promoting. And that is enough. 

The second problem is that, even if it were the case that atheists were being irrational in behaving morally, it wouldn't follow that they actually believe in God. It could just mean we are being irrational. So this argument cannot show that there are no atheists. 

Similarly, there is the presuppositional argument put forward by such apologists as Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen. They held that not only morality, but science and even logic presuppose the existence of God. Thus, whenever atheists make scientific claims or even present any reasons for their views, they must already believe in God. 

But again, not only is the claim that science and logic presuppose God false, even if it were true, it wouldn't prove that there are no atheists. Any atheist with logical and scientific views in that case would just be mistaken about their views not requiring the existence of God. They could nevertheless fail to believe in God. 

Rather than appealing to morality and rationality, some theists just say that God reveals himself to all directly, so that “deep down” everyone knows about him. But one problem with this argument is that no one has been able to point to any good evidence that this is the case. Any psychological evidence that everyone actually believes is at best shaky. Let's face it: it's just not easy to know what is going on in someone else's mind. 
(There are atheists who argue on similar grounds that there are no true believers, and I find their view equally unconvincing.) What's more, there is evidence against the claim — and quite a bit of it. There is the fact that lots of individuals spend much of their time arguing in favor of atheism, for example. The psychological case would therefore have to be extremely strong to counter this opposing evidence, and it certainly doesn't appear to be. In addition, if God does reveal himself, then presumably he reveals himself as the biblical God, according to Christians making this argument. But then how can one explain competing religions? Hindus and Buddhists would also have to be in rebellion against the Christian God, yet they impose all kinds of different moral demands on themselves. And on this view, that makes no sense. 

Finally, there is the view that God makes his existence evident by his creation of the world. As Romans 1:20 puts it, “his eternal power and divine nature... have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they [unbelievers] are without excuse.” But this is just a simplistic version of the design argument, an argument that has been refuted too many times to count. And even if the believer thinks that the argument holds up, the fact remains that it has been criticized by many — which implies that many of us do not think the world makes the existence of God evident. 

There is an additional problem here as well. If the existence of a creator were obvious from the creation, then for anyone rebelling, belief in a creator who makes no moral demands on us — like the god of deism — would be a better alternative than atheism. After all, the Christian must admit that, even if the existence of a creator is obvious, the existence of the Christian God specifically — and thus, of the moral obligations he imposes — are not (as, once again, the existence of many competing religions demonstrates). So why go to the extreme of denying the creator as opposed to simply denying those moral obligations? 

Not one of the common arguments for the non-existence of atheists is convincing in the least. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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THE WEAKNESS OF CHRISTIAN EXPLANATIONS OF EVIL

7/6/2019

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Here are a couple of the “reasonable Christian responses” (as he calls them) that apologist John M. DePoe offers for the existence of natural evils (True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism, ed. Tom Gilson and Carson Weitnauer, pp. 218-219): 

(1) There cannot be free will in any meaningful sense unless the world is governed by laws that make it behave in a sufficiently regular manner. These laws, however, “are also the cause of various phenomena, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and diseases.” It follows that one cannot avoid the existence of such natural disasters without eliminating our ability to exercise free will. 

(2) Natural evils aren’t intrinsically evil; they are only bad when they harm moral agents. It follows that “if people had not chosen to settle in an area prone to tornado activity or on a fault line, there would be no associated evil event.” 

To the second, he adds that God may “permit natural evils in order to preserve the responsibility that comes with free agency.” If he were to put a stop to earthquakes, after all, then those who chose to live on a fault line would no longer be held accountable for their poor choice! 

These excuses for evil are, like the majority of those put forward by Christians, so obviously inadequate that they are laughable. A rebuttal shouldn’t even be necessary. But for those who need one, here it is, briefly: 

(1) Free will may necessitate the existence of natural regularities, but the existence of natural regularities doesn’t necessitate hurricanes, earthquakes or diseases — or anything else that causes death and suffering. 

(2) There is nowhere that people can choose to live that does not carry with it some risk. Sure, some areas are riskier than others. But what about all those people who carefully avoid fault lines, tornado-prone locations, and so on, but get killed by, say, a highly infectious virus? And what about all the people who have settled in dangerous locations which they did not know were dangerous? The inhabitants of Lisbon in 1755 did not even know about fault lines. (In addition, the harms done by disease and natural disasters aren’t limited to moral agents. There are other sentient beings to consider.) 

The main question Christians should be asking, however, is why most of these explanations are so bad. That they are is evidence that apologists are defending the indefensible. 


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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END TIMES PROPHECIES

5/30/2019

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Most people realize there have been many failed prophecies regarding the Second Coming and Armageddon. A few are particularly well-known, such as Jesus’ own prediction that the end would come within the lifetime of some of his followers. Here are a few others from among the hundreds of failed attempts to predict that momentous event: 

Irenaeus (2nd century), one of the important early Church fathers, said the end would come in the year 500. 

Martin of Tours, a well-known 4th century bishop, claimed it would occur before the year 400, and, at the time he wrote, had no doubt that the Antichrist had already been born. 

Many, of course, predicted the year 1000 would be it, including Pope Sylvester II, who was undoubtedly surprised that he lived until 1003. 

Pope Innocent III (13th century) said it would happen in 1284, exactly 666 years after the founding of the Muslim faith. 

Martin Luther said it would occur by 1600. 

James Usher — the “earth was created in 4004 BC” guy — said it would be on October 23, 1997. (He had said that the creation was on the evening of October 22.) 

Cotton Mather, famous for being one of the principal instigators of the Salem Witch trials, predicted the end would come in 1697, and then revised it twice when his predictions didn’t come through. 

Jonathan Edwards, the influential 18th century clergyman, said (along with many others) that the millennium would begin in 2000. (Maybe he thought it had something to do with Y2K?) 

For John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, it would begin in 1836. 

William Miller, leader of a group known as the Millerites, claimed that the end times would start on March 21, 1844. After that didn’t pan out, he revised it to October 22. When that prediction also surprisingly failed, the Millerites called it the “Great Disappointment”. 

One of Miller’s followers, Ellen White, co-founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, explained the great disappointment with her revelation that, actually, what happened was that on that date, Jesus began his work of “investigative judgment” — examining Christians one by one to see who does and who doesn’t merit salvation. Obviously, it’s a big task, as he’s been at it for nearly 175 years. (Though I’m sure he takes Sundays off.) 

Wilbur Voliva, famous as the autocratic leader of the early 20th-century flat earth community of Zion, Illinois, after five previous failed predictions, said the Earth would disappear in September of 1935. He also predicted he would live to 120, which would have put his death in 1990. What he planned to do between the earth’s disappearance and the time of his death remains unclear. 

Herbert Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God and an influential broadcaster, predicted the end for 1936, then revised it three times, all the way to 1975. 

Pat Robertson, on an episode of the 700 Club, predicted the end would come in 1982. Later, he said it would occur on April 29, 2007. More amazingly, according to one of his assistants, he actually thought he might televise Jesus’ appearance in the skies. 

Jerry Falwell was so certain he would be raptured that he didn't think there was any reason to get a burial plot. He died in May of 2007. 

If a theory is supposed to be confirmed by its ability to make predictions, the “theory” that the end of the world may be deduced from Scripture has been a dismal failure. But that, of course, won’t discourage future prophets. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
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ON THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

5/15/2019

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In addition to denying the is/ought gap (see my previous post), those who attempt to argue for the existence of a scientific morality often deny the so-called naturalistic fallacy. This is the fallacy of defining moral concepts in non-moral terms, as Sam Harris does when he says that “good” just means “that which increases the overall well-being of conscious creatures.” Other examples of the fallacy include defining the good as happiness, or as what helps promote human flourishing, or (to use a supernaturalistic example) as what God commands. And the reason this is a fallacy is that, no matter what one picks as the definition of “good,” someone can ask whether that thing is actually good without thereby making any kind of mistake. 
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Harris, as might be expected, specifically denies this: “it makes no sense at all,” he says, “to ask whether maximizing well-being is ‘good’.” Yet at one point in The Moral Landscape, he himself ends up asking this very question! In endnote 50 to the second chapter (p. 210), Harris considers a challenge to his view which asks whether “it would be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of some superbeings.” That is, if by eating us, their gain in well-being was greater than our loss (so that the overall amount of well-being in the universe increased), then wouldn’t it follow that our becoming their dinner would be a good thing? Harris has no alternative but to admit that it would: “Provided that we take the time to really imagine the details (which is not easy), I think the answer is clearly ‘yes’.” 

Now, whether you agree with Harris or not (I sure don’t), the larger point is that there is a real question here. And Harris in effect admits as much when he grapples with the issue. He says that we first must “really imagine the details” and then only “thinks” the answer is yes. But if “good” just meant “whatever increases the overall amount of well-being,” then there should be no hesitation about this. Given that the aliens devouring us increases well-being, it would immediately follow that it was good. What could be more obvious? (Compare: if I were to ask you whether a particular man who has never been married is actually a bachelor, you wouldn’t have to “really imagine the details” of his unmarried existence and then answer that, as a result, you think he is a bachelor.) The fact that this thought experiment presents a real challenge to Harris shows that he doesn't think of "good" as synonymous with "increases well-being." 

The naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy because moral terms do not mean the same as anything non-moral. That’s just not how moral concepts function. When someone claims that something is good, they do not mean only that it increases well-being (or that it promotes human flourishing, or that it was commanded by God). I also think it’s important to point out that the approach taken by those like Harris and Carrier (as discussed on the previous post) is unnecessary. I suspect that the only reason it ever occurred to them to argue as they do is because of apologists who claim that atheism cannot justify morality. But in order to answer these apologists, one does not need to claim that morality is objective, much less that it can be made scientific. 


Moreover, atheists in particular might think twice before arguing against the naturalistic fallacy, for it is closely related to one of the most important arguments used by nonbelievers, the Euthyphro problem. This is the problem raised regarding to the Divine Command Theory, which states that what God commands is by definition good. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask of a divine command theorist whether it would be good for God to, say, command torturing babies. But that’s just another instance of asking whether something that is defined by some as good is actually good. 


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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“OUGHT” AND “IS” REVISITED

5/3/2019

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It’s nearly as predictable as if it were a law of nature: Every few years, someone argues with me online that Hume’s Law (that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”) is wrong. And usually, the challenge comes from an atheist who is convinced that they must set this law aside in order to defend moral realism — and thus answer critics who say that atheism cannot justify morality. 

There are two basic points such people should learn about this. First, that Hume’s Law is a simple matter of logic; in the sense Hume was talking about, an “ought” cannot be derived from an “is,” period. Second, that in itself this does not show there are no moral truths. It doesn’t even show that ethical naturalism (the view that there are “natural” — and thus in principle scientifically discoverable — moral truths) is false. Anyone who wishes to maintain that there are moral facts discoverable by science is therefore welcome to attempt to do so some other way, in spite of Hume’s Law. 

All that this law does is point out that, if none of the premises in an argument contain the term “ought” (or some equivalent, or something that implies it), then the conclusion cannot meaningfully contain it either. And that’s just a straightforward consequence of the nature of deductive logic: You cannot derive a conclusion that isn’t in some way already contained in the premises. For example, it’s impossible to validly conclude that Socrates is mortal if none of the premises you start with mentions Socrates in any way. Similarly, if none of your premises mentions “oughts” in any way — if they are all “is” statements — then you cannot validly conclude an “ought.” It’s as simple as that. If you want to argue against Hume’s Law, at least understand that you are arguing against the nature of deductive logic itself. 

So why do so many people think Hume was wrong? The main reason seems to be that they are unclear what his law is really about. Thus, for example, my recent online challenger argued that what we ought to do is obviously determined by our nature — and thus that oughts are derivable from what in fact is our nature. This is an old argument. Here’s Ayn Rand saying essentially the same thing in her 1963 essay “The Objectivist Ethics”: 

“…the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgements is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality… So much for the issue of the relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’.” 

But this merely assumes that we ought to value our lives. And that is to already start with a hidden “ought” in the premises. Rand hasn’t derived morality from non-moral facts alone. 

Richard Carrier, in “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them)” — published in Loftus’s anthology The End of Christianity, though not endorsed by him — attempts a similar derivation of values from facts. His argument is that it is an objective fact that we desire certain things (e.g., that our cars run well) and also that there are objectively correct and incorrect ways of achieving such desires (e.g., in order for a car to function properly, its oil needs to be changed regularly). “And,” he tells us, “wherever both [of these things] are an empirically demonstrated fact, the imperative they entail is an empirically demonstrated fact.” Thus, that you should change your car’s oil when needed “is factually true independent of human opinion or belief.” 

The rather obvious flaw here is that the “ought” in the conclusion only follows if it is the case that you also ought to desire your car to run well — or, once again, if there already is an “ought” in the premises. The mere fact that you do desire it doesn’t cut it. And it’s very easy to show why not. Suppose, for example, that Manson desires to murder a bunch of people, and that in order to do so, he needs to acquire some weapons. Then by the above logic, it is “factually true independent of human opinion or belief” that Manson should acquire weapons. Which means that when the authorities put him in jail (thus taking away his ability to go get guns and knives), they did something factually wrong! 

I’m sure Manson would agree. But that certainly doesn't make it true. 

(Hume’s Law is often conflated with the naturalistic fallacy, which therefore is also denied by Sam Harris, Richard Carrier, and others. Next time, I’ll point out a reason atheists in particular might want to defend this fallacy.) 

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]



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