Pharyngula

Posted by: Zeno | June 17, 2009 9:30 AM

Looks like there's a lot of push-polling going around these days. It's so much nicer when one decides the results in advance, isn't it?

Posted by: Porco Dio | June 17, 2009 9:35 AM

PZ i am amazed that you even bothered with that website...

Posted by: Kel | June 17, 2009 9:38 AM

I got to the part where it asks about "Moral absolutes", then gives me the option of absolutely condemning it or saying that in certain circumstances it could be fun. Completely misrepresents what morality is, though I've seldom come across a theist who can frame morality without being stung buy the Euthyphro Dilemma.

Posted by: dmf | June 17, 2009 9:45 AM

"i don't care if absolute truth exists" > "thanks for visiting!"

well i'm convinced.

Posted by: Helene | June 17, 2009 9:47 AM

Re: "It is my prayer that you come to understand how inconsistent and irrational this line of thinking is and return to seek the truth."

Funny how the most irrational zealots always accuse those that don't follow them blindly of being irrational.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 17, 2009 9:50 AM

We've been sent to this site before, by facilis or some such moron. It relies on a dishonest equivocation between "absoluteness of status" and "absoluteness of origin" - Popper's terms, from somewhere in The Open Society and its Enemies IIRC.

Absoluteness of status: there are no circumstances in which it would be right to molest children for fun.

Absoluteness of origin: molesting children for fun is wrong because God (or some other supposed fount of morality) says so.

Liars for Jesus strike again!

Posted by: Alverant | June 17, 2009 9:51 AM

If molesting children is absolutely wrong, then was the christian god wrong when he knocked up a 12 year old girl? After all absolute morality doesn't allow for exceptions.

Posted by: davem | June 17, 2009 9:55 AM

I pretended to be a god bot, and got to the final proof that God exists. So I hit the button fro the answer to everything, and got:

"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

Been unavailable for 3500 years, as I understand it.

Posted by: SmrtNewfie | June 17, 2009 9:58 AM

Does anyone else find it amusing that Christians, when arguing against the “slippery slope” of moral relativism (as opposed to God’s infallible moral absolutes), actually have the audacity to bring up child molestation?

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 10:01 AM

Oh, PZ so you know that "Absolute Truth" exists.

Well I'll be damned if you're a skeptic! You're as much a believer on faith as those theists!

If you refuse this accusation, then tell me:

What's your proof that absolute truth exists? Where is such a truth?

Oh you can't answer can you? So why saying such nonsense?!?

The site is incredibly correct: The only way to state that absolute truth absolutely exists is by positing a god.

But this has been found out for more than a century ago. Too bad that a normal scientist didn't get the "memo".

Posted by: SteveM | June 17, 2009 10:03 AM

I laughed at this too:

If you believe that laws of mathematics do not exist, what would you do in the following scenario? Let's say that you walked into a bank and asked for change for a $100 bill. If the teller handed you only 2 $5 bills would you be satisfied with his or her personal interpretation of mathematics or would you appeal to a universal law of mathematics to show that he/she was wrong? I suspect the latter.

Clearly does not understand the distinction between mathematics and arithmetic. Clearly, non-Euclidean geometry alone has proven that absolute laws of mathematics do not exist.

Posted by: Ray Ingles | June 17, 2009 10:06 AM

Consider the game of chess. There are certain fundamental structures of chess that define it - the 'rules of the game'. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc.

Now, when playing chess, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.

However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.

Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come?

They arise from the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules. A player is free to disregard them, but they do so at their peril - it's unlikely to further their goal.

Hopefully the parallel to wider life is obvious. We have 'rules of the game' in life, too - the laws of physics, for example. We are not free to violate these strictures. We also have desires and goals as well. Some are very basic and inborn and apparently universal (air, water, food, sleep, shelter, etc.) and some are so common that only extremely rare individuals seem not to need them (e.g. the company of other people), and some are deeply personal and not common at all (a desire to write a novel, say).

Then you add game theory, and voilà... morals. As absolute as the laws of physics and human nature. (Human nature is awfully flexible, but there are some absolutes... else we wouldn't be able to distinguish between humans and other species.)

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 10:07 AM

Clearly, non-Euclidean geometry alone has proven that absolute laws of mathematics do not exist.

I bet if you mentioned Gödel to them you would just get blank stares in return.

Posted by: Chris Davis | June 17, 2009 10:10 AM

I'm happy to accept an absolute morality - but only in the context of the instinctive moral sense evolved by social animals to ensure their survival.

Within that context, absolute 'good' and 'evil' is easy enough to define. But those definitions don't work for a lone hunter animal - any more than 1+1= 2 is correct in radix 2.

Posted by: Sharkey | June 17, 2009 10:11 AM

That website is run by Sye TenB, and he has made a name for himself on some other atheist blogs. He spouts his usual tripe about the Transcendental Argument for God, then evades, blusters and ignores arguments to the contrary during his "debate" with the blogger.

Ignore him, maybe he'll go away...

Posted by: SteveM | June 17, 2009 10:11 AM

The only way to state that absolute truth absolutely exists is by positing a god.

Is that absolutely true? Prove it. Even if I accept God exists, why would that be proof that absolute truth exists? Because you've defined God to be "absolute truth"? Seems like a circular argument to me.

Posted by: co | June 17, 2009 10:16 AM

Seems like a circular argument to me.

Mmm.... doughnuts.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 10:16 AM

Just as soon as you can tell me where to find this god character you are positing as a necessity.

PZ's the one who's positing that absolute truth exists. Where is it then?

And why would I tell you where to find something that does not exist? Do you like to spread noise as if it meant something that much?

Is that absolutely true? Prove it.

It's not absolutely true, but it follows. Bertrand Russell argued just as well that to get access to an objective truth, you need an objective observer. Which, hahum, does not exist. Unless of course you posit a god of sorts.

Else, you can claim that you do know that objective truth is accessible, but then you're simply diarrheing philosophical nonsense without a shred of evidence on your side.

Posted by: Bruce Gorton | June 17, 2009 10:18 AM

Luis Dias

To paraphrase Tim Minchin, is reality so loose weave of a morning when you decide to leave your home by the front door, rather than the window from your second floor?

Posted by: AAB | June 17, 2009 10:19 AM

What does absolute truth and absolute morality have to do with god? Yeah, why did you bother with this website, pz?

Posted by: Volcanon | June 17, 2009 10:23 AM

Hmmmm, Absolute truth does not exist ----> I then hit "absolutely true" and it takes me back to the previous question. Guess they don't like my answers.lol

Posted by: dNorrisM | June 17, 2009 10:23 AM

"HOMR" (season 12, 2001)

...After the crayon is removed, Homer's IQ goes up from 55 to 105 points,... With Homer's impressive intellect, he uses a mathematical hypothesis, in which he proves to Ned Flanders that there is no God. Worried about the evidence, Ned burns the piece of paper.

Posted by: Warren Falk | June 17, 2009 10:25 AM

I got to a question of whether molesting children for fun might be right in some cases. I said "yes" of course, because if a supreme being commanded it, then it must be moral.

Apparently, if you answer that way, the site gives up on you and you don't get to see the proof that the supreme being exists. My options at that point were "back" and "exit"

Posted by: phreack | June 17, 2009 10:26 AM

haha...played along, finally got to a page that said this:

"The Proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn't prove anything."

now, I didn't read all of the crap that they spouted on the previous page to bring you to this conclusion, but this amused me.

The cake is real because without cake, there is no reality

The cake is a lie.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 10:30 AM

He is simply saying that absolute truth definitely exists because he believes that it exists. I call that mental diarrheia of the worst sort, I only rejoice that he's not a philosopher.

Well you can, if you want, deny reality exists. That seems to be your position, since PZ was clearly stating that for him absolute truth and reality are the same thing.

However if you deny reality exists you are end up in a whole load of philosophical hurt. What is more the regulars here will tear your pathetic arguments limb from limb and eat them for tea.

Posted by: Ploon | June 17, 2009 10:31 AM

There is no spoon.

Posted by: pdferguson | June 17, 2009 10:31 AM

The site is incredibly correct: The only way to state that absolute truth absolutely exists is by positing a god.

Oh, that's adorable! We have someone for whom this absurd "Proof That God Exists" website was designed for, someone for whom logic and reason and language hold little sway: absolutes must imply a god, it must! it must! He even used an important sounding word, "positing". That's so fuckin' cute!

Apparently, I understood better than you did, but that's not unusual around here. He is simply saying that absolute truth definitely exists because he believes that it exists. I call that mental diarrheia of the worst sort, I only rejoice that he's not a philosopher.

Aww, don't get upset, little fella. You should rejoice that you have given so many of us here a little chuckle this morning...

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 10:32 AM

PZ's the one who's positing that absolute truth exists. Where is it then?

And why would I tell you where to find something that does not exist? Do you like to spread noise as if it meant something that much?

I see I misinterpreted where you were going here.

However, I'd like to know where this proof you speak of that "there can be no absolute truth without god" exists.

Posted by: Elwood Herring | June 17, 2009 10:34 AM

"It gives you two choices..."

Sorry PZ, but that's ONE choice, out of two possible alternatives.

Just a pet peeve of mine.

Posted by: Karellen | June 17, 2009 10:37 AM

Even if you agree that absolute moral laws exist, the logic is flawed:

To reach this page you had to acknowledge that immaterial, universal, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and absolute morality exist. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws are necessary for rational thinking to be possible. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature. [...] Only in a universe governed by God can universal, immaterial, unchanging laws exist. Only in a universe governed by God can rational thinking be possible.

Sentence 2 does not necessarily logically follow from sentence 1. No argument, reason or logic is provided to back up sentence 3. Sentences 4 and 5 are therefore completely unfounded.

Note that morality is not mentioned here at all. You could take gravity as an example law to test these hypotheses against. And it has been posited by some physicists that the gravitational "constant" might not have been for the entire lifetime of the universe. In fact, if you do acknowledge that physical laws might change over time, then the page you get to from there is quite amusing.

Posted by: Giford | June 17, 2009 10:40 AM

I got to:

Laws of science are basically descriptions of what matter does based on repeated observations, and are usually expressed in mathematical equations. An example of a law of science is the law of gravity. Using the law of gravity, we can predict how fast a heavier than air object will fall to the ground given all the factors for the equation.

I dithered for, like, 60 seconds while I pondered whether laws of science exist or are human inventions, and what a spectacularly bad example non-Einsteinian gravity was and how it doesn't describe how heavier-than-air objects fall anyway (feathers, anyone?).

By the time I thought soddit and clicked 'I agree', I got:

Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.proofthatgodexists.org Port 80

I guess that about wraps it up for God then!

Gif

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 10:40 AM

I've no problems with saying that such and such is "true". I've problems with people that say that such and such is the "Absolute Truth". If you can't understand that subtlety, you've completely misunderstood religion.

Reality is what happens. Not what we think happens, but what actually happens. What we think happens we can call "truth". In that respect it is true that evolution happens, or that the earth orbits the sun. We have very good reasons in both cases for thinking that what we think happens is what actually happens. When we study reality we are trying to get at the absolute truth, to understand what actually happens.

Posted by: DebinOz | June 17, 2009 10:41 AM

Am I imagining things, or has the word or concept of 'truth' been totally hijacked and distorted by religotards?

It has come to the point with me, that if the word 'truth' is mentioned in an argument, that person loses.

For us scientific types, how can we reclaim the word? Or is it past that point?

Posted by: Christophe Thill | June 17, 2009 10:44 AM

Perhaps it wouldn't be useless to specify that "absolute" is not some kind of superpower. It's just the opposite of "relative".

"Absolute truth" is something that is always true, regardless of circumstances, as opposed to relative truths that depend on the context (it could be argues that relative truths are not truths at all). I'm not too sure about absolute truths, but there is one that we all agree upon, including those who claim they don't: it is that there is such a thing as material reality, and that we'll always bump into it at one moment or another. A good instance is gravity. If you jump from your window, you won't float. You'll fall, and it will hurt. That's inescapable. That's an absolute truth. Even Mr Diaz can understand this.

"Absolute morality" is the set of moral rules that are always respected by all human cultures in the world. It's not big. For instance, "don't kill" : all cultures know it, but it can vary (most of the times it simply means "don't kill members of your group"), and it has exceptions. You may kill in self-defence, and if you're a soldier, the rule clearly doesn't apply to you. There's more universality in "don't sexually molest children", although it is very much possible that in some cultures, it's not regarded as a serious crime.

Of course, no society can live without some moral rules. According to some anthropologists, the very minimum is the prohibition of incest and of anthropophagy. I think this is the closest we can get to an absolute morality.

Posted by: ccubeman | June 17, 2009 10:46 AM

If absolute morality requires an absolute source, and the absolute source is absolutely moral, where did the absolute source acquire it's absolute morality?

Seems they overlooked the infinite regression problem.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 10:48 AM

Reality is what happens.

So you say. But those are merely words. Anyway, I like your answer:

Not what we think happens, but what actually happens. What we think happens we can call "truth". In that respect it is true that evolution happens, or that the earth orbits the sun. We have very good reasons in both cases for thinking that what we think happens is what actually happens. When we study reality we are trying to get at the absolute truth, to understand what actually happens.

No problems with that. I only have problems when one says that "absolute truth" exists. A truth is always something that is spoken. Now, who do you think has such the priviledge to utter the "absolute truth"?

Yeah, me neither.

Posted by: MarkW | June 17, 2009 10:50 AM

www.proofthatgodexists.org

Posted by: Sastra | June 17, 2009 10:50 AM

IF it turns out that God enjoys molesting children for fun, and set up the universe in such a way that those who do it are now in line with -- and reflective of -- His Absolute Goodness, would you:

1.)Correct what turned out to be your flawed understanding of morality, and accept that molesting children for fun is absolutely moral?

2.) Rebel against God, refuse to call it Absolutely Good, and go with your personal sense of right and wrong?

3.) Rebel against this thought experiment, and refuse to accept the conceivable possibility of a God that could go against your personal sense of right and wrong?

This "Absolute Morality" dodge is either appealing to intersubjective, shared human concepts of good -- and therefore we don't need a God which only acts as symbol for what's good relative to ourselves -- or else it can bite them in the butt, by giving them "absoluteness" at the expense of the morality. The Christians who think this site makes some sort of significant point haven't thought it through.

Posted by: AJS | June 17, 2009 10:51 AM

What if, for some highly contrived reason, sexually molesting a child was the only way to prevent someone from detonating a nuclear bomb?

But what if detonating that bomb happened to be the only way to prevent something worse from happening?

There are no moral absolutes. Just a continuous scale from "not quite never" to "not quite always" of the probability of an action being right in any given set of circumstances.

Posted by: Bruce Gorton | June 17, 2009 10:54 AM

Luis Dias

So the major problem you have with atheists is, if we don't know the answer, unlike you we don't pull it out of our asses and call it religion. Smells like a shit way to look at the universe to me.

There is clearly a "true" reality, an ultimate truth which we strive towards figuring out. This is evidenced by the fact that we percieve anything at all.

In general our senses though they can be fooled, and though our view of the universe is not as it is but rather a simplified simulation of it (Gotto love basic psychology), they are developed for surviving within the universe we exist in, and hence can be used - with some basic measures to reduce errors - to develop insights into the "true" universe.

The entire scientific method is philosophically aligned with reducing the chance for error, and correcting errors as they occur. Hence evolution as an example is not the idea of one man then parroted on ever since, but is an evolved and evolving concept, where as more data comes in it is corroborated and corrected.

Our insight into "absolute truth" is enhanced by our willingness not simply to learn, but to challenge our learning.

With your religion, with your God, all of this is thrown out of the window for what a collection of bronze age savages essentially pulled out of their asses. No further explanaition needed after "Goddidit."

Faith, at first simply adopting answers without evidence now denying evidence in favour of answers, acts not to aid our perception of reality but dull it.

Goddidit, the universal answer even as evidence comes in indicating no intellegent agency, but rather basic reactions between basic forces spun into mind boggling complexity where from our viewpoint there are few certain outcomes.

And because we do not know all sources, we will always have the dishonest amongst us claiming cosmic insight, the "laws of the universe prove God" or "Morality proves God" you don't know shit. Nor do we, but at least we don't pretend to!

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 17, 2009 10:55 AM

If you do it right (I do not care if absolute Morality exists), you get re-routed to Disney!

What is that supposed to tell me?

Verily, the Duck has become Man.

(Note that this is not even original.)

It's not absolutely true, but it follows. Bertrand Russell argued just as well that to get access to an objective truth, you need an objective observer. Which, hahum, does not exist.

Huh?

If absolute truth exists, what does it matter whether I have access to it?

I agree this is a useless discussion – I mean, not even solipsism can be disproved –, but do try to make your conclusions follow from your premises.

Posted by: Giford | June 17, 2009 10:57 AM

More thoughts. If you accept God does not exist, it kicks you to the Disney website. The Disney site is currently advertising the Jonas Brothers. Is that supposed to be their final argument?

If you say you don't know whether absolute truth exists, it asks you whether that is itself absolutely true or false. Of course, the answer would have to be 'don't know', but there's no option for that.

I notice they don't use genocide or slavery as examples of moral absolutes. Funny that. Could it, perhaps, be because the site's author(s) are trying to get us to accept a book that promotes both those things?

If you think that the laws of physics might be changing slowly over time (speed of light decreasing by 2% over 15 billion years, for example), it immediately tells you you can have no knowledge of the future.

And finally - even if you go through all their questions and follow their logic - um, where was the actual proof God exists? "It is possible to think, therefore God (and a specifically Christian God, at that) exists." Um... no.

I hope this website will act as a warning to any kids thinking of taking up religion.

Gif

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 10:59 AM

Well when it comes to the likes of Diaz, who seems to be going all solopcistic on us, I say the answer is to smack them in the mouth, with a cricket bat if you have one to hand.

For you it's DiaS, not DiaZ. For the record, I agree entirely with DebinOz on this take. I also can't understand how a scientist in the 21st century can embrace Popper, but still utter the word "truth" and his brain doesn't fall apart from internal meltdown.

A good instance is gravity. If you jump from your window, you won't float. You'll fall, and it will hurt. That's inescapable. That's an absolute truth. Even Mr Diaz can understand this.

Congratulations, you just disproved the existence of airplanes and airtravel. And why oh why are the cosmologists still searching for a deeper theory of gravity if gravity is "an absolute truth"?

One is reminded of the reaction of Ben Johnson when he was told that he could not refute the near-solopsistic arguments of Bishop Berkeley. Johnson kicked a rather large stone and limped off saying, "I refute it, thusly."

Idealism is bollocks. Straight pure insane shitload. It just so happens that it isn't absolutely false. No one can really disprove it.

Posted by: AJ Milne | June 17, 2009 11:01 AM

Wow, that site should be called "Proof that flawed logic exists"...

I was gonna go with 'Additional and now thoroughly redundant proof that believers aren't too bright'. But your way's good, too.

Posted by: The Swede | June 17, 2009 11:01 AM

@Luis

If objective truth is not accessible, how can you say that it exists?

Who said anything about "objective truth"? You're the only one arguing anything at all about objective truth and its accessibility here. All PZ argued (and all I would argue as well) is that reality is our absolute truth, and anything else is relative to that. Whether we can objectively access it or not, it's there.

Now stop moving the goalposts to try to look clever and like we're not "getting it" - we get it just fine, you don't grok PZ's position, and the position you believe him to have is as flawed as belief in GOD. Great. Now stop accusing us of not getting how horrid the strawman is, we got that a long time ago.

Posted by: pdferguson | June 17, 2009 11:06 AM

Am I imagining things, or has the word or concept of 'truth' been totally hijacked and distorted by religotards?

Uh, where have you been the last two thousand years?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 17, 2009 11:07 AM

A digression on the problem of physical reality:

Physics has had to deal with the issue of physical reality (which presumably has to underlie absolute truth) in a rather subtle way since the introduction of quantum mechanics. Questions such as, "Is the wave function real?" or "Are electrons real?" are rather difficult to answer in a theory where every answer is inherently probabilistic. The phenomenon of entanglement--in which objects that are far removed remain correlated even when they cannot causally interact only makes logical sense of you reject:
1)physical reality
2)causality
3)free will
4)some subtle combination of 1-3

The Copenhagen Interpretation is structured is specifically structured for option 4 to preserve elements of all of these. So,even in physics, physical reality is not a simple concept.

Posted by: Gorogh | June 17, 2009 11:12 AM

Someone just pointed this out to me: What if this pathetic site actually had an affiliation with Disney? From what I hear, Disney is more or less condoning these "family-friendly" and shallow, conspicuously Christian values recently... or am I mistaking Disney with Princess Clara from Drawn Together? Anyhow, I would not be surprised in the face of such a conspiracy.

Posted by: ragarth | June 17, 2009 11:15 AM

The guy who made this doesn't even have the decency to include a contact link. What cowardice.

"I'm going to lie for Jesus. Praise be upon me!" "Oh wait, people might have a problem with my lies, I better not give any method of providing feedback."

Posted by: tsg | June 17, 2009 11:16 AM

I think that the ultimate proof that god does not exist is that proofs like this are the best they can come up with. I haven't seen one yet that doesn't start with "here's what I want the answer to be" and then figuring out how to get there.

Posted by: Steven Carr | June 17, 2009 11:18 AM

Is it just plain wrong for a head coach to tell his quarterback to fumble the ball on every play, or could it be right for the quarterback to fumble the ball on every play?

I guess God must have written the Big Golden Book of Objectively Correct Football plays, because all those football fans say that football is a matter of opinion, but they appeal to objective football standards all the time.

Posted by: The Swede | June 17, 2009 11:20 AM

@Luis

Only namecalling left now? Oh, and another strawman, of course, using the fallacy of the excluded middle. Or trying to, as it were. Now, THAT is pathetic, unlike my view which is not at all like your strawman representation of it.

I have no idea what your point was in making yourself look like an idiot, but congratulations on a job well done!

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 17, 2009 11:20 AM

Luis, if you're denying that anything exists, you're beyond help. Sorry. If you're trying to make a convoluted point about hyperbolic doubt, nobody else here is stoned enough to find that interesting. If you think that the hypothetical possibility that one day nothing may exist makes it not absolutely true that right now something does exist, then your concept of "absolute truth" is weird. If your point is that arguments about "absolute truth" rarely get anyone anywhere, then we established that a long time ago and you may stop flogging a dead horse. Does that leave any other possibilities?

Posted by: amphiox | June 17, 2009 11:24 AM

But whatever we posit physical reality to be, it is a question of its nature, not its status.

We may not know exactly what it is, we may not be able to exactly describe its properties, and maybe it is even actually not possible for us to ever know, BUT we do know something for certain: Whatever reality is, it IS. Because we are here thinking about it and talking about it.

Even if it is just a dream of a sleeping abomination dreaming of hologram of a projection of a fantasy, it STILL IS. And therefore it is absolutely true, and absolute truth exists.

Even if we can not ever know what the absolute truth is, we can know that an absolute truth does exist. Because we are here.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 11:24 AM

Thanks Matt. But truth is not an object, it's an assertion.

That itself is an assertion.

Look, it if you do not accept the concept of reality exists then nothing is going to get through to you. If you want philosophical proof reality exists then you are out of luck. I do not know how old you are, but solopcism is not considered to be very clever outside of teenagers who have delusions of being intellectual.

Posted by: AJ Milne | June 17, 2009 11:25 AM

A truth is always something that is spoken...

Note, however, that even if this were true, its inverse clearly doesn't follow...

Posted by: Ray Ingles | June 17, 2009 11:28 AM

@Dias -

And why oh why are the cosmologists still searching for a deeper theory of gravity if gravity is "an absolute truth"?

Yet another koan for you here.

"[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov

Posted by: co | June 17, 2009 11:30 AM

The proof of God’s existence is in science. Science has shown us that the universe is about 14 billion years old. The uncertainty principal, Schrödinger’s Cat and other advances in Quantum Physics have shown us that observation is a necessary component of reality. So who was observing the big bang? Who observed the universe until life came along? Who’s observing all those things we can’t? Only God is the answer.

Anyone who capitalizes "Quantum Physics" is likely unfamiliar with it. (Yes, that's an ad-hominem, but an observation which has been bourne out in my experience). Read Tegmark's and Ben-Dov's (I don't think that's a prank name) papers. Additionally, no one really believes that the processes of physics *stop* or *don't exist* without an obvserver. That's tantamount to setting t = constant in the TDSE, or setting delta-E = 0 in Heisenberg's relation with delta-t. There may be an observer necessary to choose an eigenstate out of the wavefunction, but it remains that we need gaps in observation to allow wavefunction evolution in the first place.

Posted by: blueelm | June 17, 2009 11:31 AM

I got kicked off their site on the first answer. I don't care if absolute truth exists or not. I really don't. What the hell does "absolute universal truth for all people at all times" have to do with anything?

So I said I didn't care thinking I could just move on and they kicked me out. It's ok, it happened in every Sunday school my mom sent me too as well. I'm used to it :P They should have re-routed here instead of disney though. That would have been awesome.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 11:31 AM

I like that Ray, it made me laugh. But I've always loved Asimov.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 17, 2009 11:34 AM

If objective truth is not accessible, how can you say that it exists? It is merely a meaningless concept just as, wait for it, GOD!

It's an irrelevant and unparsimonious concept then, but that doesn't prove it doesn't exist.

See, I'm an Apathetic Agnostic: I don't know, and I don't care.

Of course, no society can live without some moral rules. According to some anthropologists, the very minimum is the prohibition of incest and of anthropophagy.

Why do you call these moral rules? I claim they don't even rise to that level.

1) People are not sexually attracted to people they grow/have grown up with. Those are usually their close relatives. Thus, what amounts to the incest "taboo" is actually innate. (Never mind all the cultures where ritual incest is expected of some people in certain situations.)

2) If you haven't grown up considering dog meat edible, you'll be revolted when you learn that other people elsewhere do eat dog meat. Plus, innate empathy extends most easily to those most similar to yourself. (Again, never mind all manner of more or less ritual cannibalism in cultures around the world.)

What if "laws" of science are material and the others not?

Better yet. What if Wittgenstein is right, Democritus is wrong, and reality does not consist of things but of facts?

<Buddha smile>
<twiddling thumbs>

For us scientific types, how can we reclaim the word? Or is it past that point?

I like to make a distinction between "reality" and "truth" the following way:

Reality is what's outside my head, that in which the argumentum ad lapidem (Johnson's argument against Berkeley's solipsism) is not a logical fallacy.

Truth could lie "behind" reality. Perhaps reality is in truth some kind of illusion (what little I know about the "Hinduist" concept of maya for example); perhaps we live in the Matrix; perhaps I'm the solipsist; perhaps God is the solipsist; and so on. Or perhaps truth is reality (philosophical naturalism).

I don't know if truth is accessible, because if we find the truth, how can we prove that what we've found is indeed the truth? By comparing it to the truth, which we don't have?

For science, then, truth is completely irrelevant. Shocked? You shouldn't be. All that's required for science to work is that reality – whether it is an illusion or not! – is reasonably consistent, that miracles don't happen too often at too unpredictable times and places. Funnily enough, this is itself a scientific hypothesis that is being tested in every single observation anyone ever makes. Science pulls itself out of the swamp by its own bootstraps.

Sure, if I'm the solipsist, science could be argued to be completely pointless. But it still works.

So, what does it matter if I'm the solipsist? I don't know if I'm the solipsist, and I don't care. What does truth matter? Apparently it doesn't matter.

In sum, I think we scientists can leave the word "truth" to the metaphysicists. We don't need it. We don't need to claim or reclaim it.

A truth is always something that is spoken.

Now that's just stupid.

I'm really not into ad hominems

"Ad hominem argument" and "insult" are completely orthogonal to each other. Yours is the latter and not the former.

3.) Rebel against this thought experiment, and refuse to accept the conceivable possibility of a God that could go against your personal sense of right and wrong?

Win.

Posted by: Ryan | June 17, 2009 11:35 AM

Wow. That's some "solid" logic.

It has convinced me, I am wrong in my atheistic ways. God must exist... now the question is which one.

The one that makes the most sense to me, and the one that most deserves worship and praise, has got to be the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

It can't be that Yahweh guy, he breaks absolute morality all the time. Killing innocent babies, ordering genocides, and other horrible acts that go against ABSOLUTE morality. So that rules out most modern religions.

So this site is an awesome proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists!

Posted by: truthspeaker | June 17, 2009 11:36 AM

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 10:30 AM Well you can, if you want, deny reality exists. That seems to be your position, since PZ was clearly stating that for him absolute truth and reality are the same thing.

However if you deny reality exists you are end up in a whole load of philosophical hurt.

And possibly physical hurt, as well. As we used to say in college on party weekends, "cars are real".

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 11:42 AM

Congratulations, you just disproved the existence of airplanes and airtravel.

Ok. Time to smash my head with a mallet.

Posted by: Brian C Posey | June 17, 2009 11:46 AM

The stupid is hurting my head.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | June 17, 2009 11:48 AM

Meant to write in #126, have you never *studied* basic physics, even in school?

Posted by: JM Inc. | June 17, 2009 11:49 AM

Awww, PZ Myers got further than I did. I didn't get past the first question - "I don't care if absolute truth exists."

Posted by: DebinOz | June 17, 2009 11:50 AM

I will leave the discussions of 'what is truth' to you guys, because it sounds like my four brothers and their pissing competitions.

I guess, after a bottle of wine, I have come up with 'reality' as my own version. As an atheist, I have been able to raise three kids who have a deep sense of humanity, community involvement, self-awareness and fulfillment (sp). They would be regarded as very 'moral', yet this is not driven by religion of any flavour. We do what we do for the immediate reason of goodness for self and society, not because of the threat of hell and damnation.

Posted by: blueelm | June 17, 2009 11:52 AM

Hmmm, there seems to be a conversation in the comments here that might clarify some of my probelm with absolute truth. Wouldn't things like death and gravity be facts? I do accept facts but I don't "believe" in them because they are "absolute" in fact they are relative. The amount of gravity depends on the amount of gravitational force, the fact of death doesn't matter for non-living things or for something like a virus. So the implication there is that absolute truth goes beyond fact. This doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being trollish here, I've always had a problem with the idea of absolute truth. I have a problem with truth, actually. One can give an honest account and by all means be telling the "truth" and yet that account can be so biased and riddled with mistakes that it is not at all a reliable account. It would still be the "truth" though, as far as you know. I find the whole thing tiresome.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | June 17, 2009 11:54 AM

Hallelluiah brother, at last someone with clarity of mind reaching this thread.

If you were a clearer fucking writer and thinker, asshole, it wouldn't take one hundred comments to figure out that you're, as Joe Bleau put it, "just picking nits about the notion of 'absolute truth'."

The fault lies with you, you quasi-literate ass.

By the way, you shot yourself in the foot with your 'disproof of airplanes' comment. No one who actually understands solopsism and its application to either epistemology or ontology would make such and idiotic remark. Your faith in your own intellect is clearly misplaced.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 11:55 AM

From which we draw this useful lesson: when trying to bog everyone down in pedantry, you will inevitably be hoist by your own petard

You think I'm not laughing out loud in this hilarious exchange with the illiterate? I couldn't care less what people make of me. And of course you were right, as I already pointed out above, about the assertion thing.

Posted by: TSFN | June 17, 2009 11:57 AM

@115 and 116

I'd like to point out Arthur Gordon Pym is from a famous novel by Edgar Allen Poe.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 11:59 AM

Gravity IS. We can't describe it perfectly (though we're pretty close), but it STILL IS. And it doesn't care one whit whether or not we understand it.

Gravity is what? You lost yourself in the middle of your sentence. What is gravity? A word? A concept? A useful model that tells us more or less how particles behave when near each other? How's that an "absolute"?

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 17, 2009 11:59 AM

I couldn't care less what people make of me. = I'm a sociopath

Posted by: co | June 17, 2009 12:02 PM

Posted by: TSFN | June 17, 2009 11:57 AM

@115 and 116

I'd like to point out Arthur Gordon Pym is from a famous novel by Edgar Allen Poe.

Very good catch! I knew that once, and now know it again. I've been Poe'd.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 12:04 PM

Gravity IS. We can't describe it perfectly (though we're pretty close), but it STILL IS. And it doesn't care one whit whether or not we understand it.

Gravity is what? You lost yourself in the middle of your sentence. What is gravity? A word? A concept? A useful model that tells us more or less how particles behave when near each other? How's that an "absolute"?

If you were a clearer fucking writer and thinker, asshole, it wouldn't take one hundred comments to figure out that you're, as Joe Bleau put it, "just picking nits about the notion of 'absolute truth'."

If you weren't a fucking re-re-re-retard, you'd have read that such was the case in my very first comment. But you assume I'm solipsist, so you must be one.

Ad hominem? If it acts like a moron, talks like a moron... By golly, it IS a moron! I am just calling a moron, a moron - straightspeak, see?

I see that you're full of shit if you can't even recognize ad hominems.

The last time I checked any book on elementary physics, gravity (a.k.a. gravitational force) is the force exerted by all objects having mass on all other objects having mass. How do you define gravity on your planet?

Curved spacetime. But perhaps I'm being a little abusive here with you, I mean it's a very recent obscure theory that has only been around for 80 years now...

Posted by: DTK Greg | June 17, 2009 12:06 PM

re: child molestation is always wrong

Let's make an uncomfortable example.

Let's say you lived on a world where no one reached puberty until the age of 20.

Then some pollutants entered the atmosphere, causing hormonal changes. Suddenly, females hit puberty at 9 and irreversible menopause at 14.

Where's your absolute morality now? I believe that's called "extinction".

Posted by: anti-supernaturalist | June 17, 2009 12:07 PM

. . . whoa there PZ, doing som' filosofizzing are ya?

** "Reason is the Devil's whore" -- Luther

No fundie (bible worshiper, inherent truth fanatic) will care what you say . . . reasoning is irrelevant to their "truths".

Any “fool for Christ” will cite Paul’s first letter to the underground xian cell in Corinth, Greece (50-60 CE):

27 God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are . . . 1Cor1:27-28 NIV

Paul and his fellow revenge seekers created a god out of their nihilistic values. He and the primitive church had a perverse self-understanding characterized by self-righteous inverted snobbery. "We stink, but stinking is good." Not much has changed 2,000 years later.

Xianity cannot be refuted; it can only be replaced. The de-deification of "Nature" (including mathematics and all the sciences) is our task for the next 100 years.

anti-supernaturalist

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 12:12 PM

They called you a moron and then explained why. They showed your argument about planes was not a good one.

Does not mean I go run against windows as a hobby.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | June 17, 2009 12:14 PM

If you weren't a fucking re-re-re-retard, you'd have read that such was the case in my very first comment.

Was that a supposed to be a stutter? Read my first comment to you. I got it immediately, the fact that you're an idiot notwithstanding, fuckwit.

Further, as others besides myself have noted, if you're going to continue to flash your big philosophy dick around here, you might want to stop making so many basic fucking philosophical errors, shit-for-brains.

So, nice thread derailment, prick. Whatsa matter? Mommy and Daddy didn't give you enough praise for all those B pluses earned in high school?

Posted by: GilbertNSullivan | June 17, 2009 12:18 PM

@Luis
It is absolutely true that you do not understand the difference between the argumentum ad hominem and straight obloquy.

The fact that you're an arrogant cleft, are being subjected to ripe insult as a consequence, and should really just fuck off already, does not impact on how your dull nitpickings over Absolute Truth are being received.

Pajero.

Posted by: Luis Dias | June 17, 2009 12:19 PM

....but it in no way negates looking at gravity as an actual _force_.

It does negate if you argue it is the absolute true way of looking at it.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 17, 2009 12:22 PM

The phenomenon of entanglement--in which objects that are far removed remain correlated even when they cannot causally interact only makes logical sense of you reject:
1)physical reality
2)causality
3)free will
4)some subtle combination of 1-3

And merely considering space/velocity and time/action uncertain doesn't work?

The proof of God’s existence is in science. Science has shown us that the universe is about 14 billion years old. The uncertainty principal, Schrödinger’s Cat and other advances in Quantum Physics have shown us that observation is a necessary component of reality. So who was observing the big bang? Who observed the universe until life came along? Who’s observing all those things we can’t? Only God is the answer.

Oh dear, you took "observation" literally.

"Observation" means "interaction with at least one particle". A mind is not required.

Furthermore, observation is not required for something (like the creation of a particle-antiparticle pair) to happen. It's only required for a wavefunction to collapse/a particle to settle down in a narrow range of space-or-whatever-it-is-the-observation-measures.

solopcism

Solipsism. Latin solus ipse "alone my-/your-/him-/oneself [masculine]" or for that matter sola ipsa (same, feminine) or solum ipsum (same, neuter).

Anyone who capitalizes "Quantum Physics" is likely unfamiliar with it.

Good observation.

(Oops. Pun not intended.)

Left to itself with no air pressure, no buoyancy, no velocity, no engines working to maintain the necessary conditions, an airplane would be as much subject to gravity as is a piece of rock.

To put it another way, an airplane is as much subject to gravity as is a piece of rock; that's why the plane has to generate lots of lift constantly.

Posted by: Bruce | June 17, 2009 12:22 PM

I don't think it's a proof, but it's a wonderful evidence for the Kruger-Dunning effect.

Posted by: stogoe | June 17, 2009 12:25 PM

Elwood Herring:

Sorry PZ, but that's ONE choice, out of two possible alternatives.

Just a pet peeve of mine.

I see that the evolution of language has passed you by, you sad sorry sack of crap.

Jebus Effing Spank I hate grammar pedants.

Posted by: co | June 17, 2009 12:27 PM

GlenD, @ 166: Thank you. It appears we've been trolled by someone who's just taken some Ph classes. Next we'll be hearing about the latest advancements in PhysEd.

Posted by: fftysmthg | June 17, 2009 12:30 PM

Bruce Gorton @79
Thanks for that post. It really crystallized some ideas for me.

Now, as for Luis DiaZ.
You're a dootyhead. And that's the absolute truth!

Posted by: Michael | June 17, 2009 12:31 PM

Use the converse argument. Is rape inherently wrong or is it wrong because God proscribed it as being wrong. Is not going to church wrong? Is eating ham wrong? Did God have any say in what is right or wrong? If God didn't then there's a moprality that exists independent of God.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 17, 2009 12:35 PM

But you just did that, with only a separation of a paragraph!

Einstein is Feynman, etc.?

Learn how to read first, then try commenting.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

Posted by: co | June 17, 2009 12:36 PM

GlenD, @ 174:

I'm sorry. I was sincerely thanking you for bringing in both mention of gravitons and momentum transfers (considered more elemental than "force" itself). I should be more careful, especially when tempers are running high, to express myself with better precision.
Of course, I'm interpreting your paraphrase of me ("blah, blah") to be insulting back. If that wasn't the case, then maybe I've been hit by the Dunning-Kruger effect myself, and generally need to shut up.

Posted by: Nattering Nabob of Negativism | June 17, 2009 12:47 PM

I find it absurd that anyone would posit an absolute or objective morality.

If a cow eats grass to make milk for her calf, and the lioness eats meat to make milk for her cub, which has the moral high ground here? The grass?

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Posted by: Chris Richards | June 17, 2009 12:53 PM

What gets me is that there are actually interesting "proofs" of the existence of god (the most interesting part is discovering where they go wrong), but they're far too complicated for people with this level of argumentative sophistication, who can't get their heads around how logic and argument works at all. I mean, is it so much to ask for even a valid argument? This isn't even trying; it's not just riddled with fallacies, it uses terms in an undefined manner, doesn't come out with the argumentative moves clearly, and is the sort of thing you'd give a freshman in a philosophy class an F for.

I mean, he doesn't even get it right on step one! There are many logics that reject the law of excluded middle!

Posted by: Lynna | June 17, 2009 12:56 PM

Glen Davidson for the win @102.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 17, 2009 1:01 PM

Define truth then.

I just did, in the very comment you just cited (120).

Do keep in mind, however, that this is not the definition PZ uses. PZ is a philosophical naturalist and therefore simply doesn't make the distinction.

I'm saying that truths are assertions, not objects. You disagree?

Of course. Truths aren't objects, they're… well, like facts, except that "fact" applies to reality rather than truth. They consist of a noun and a verb, so to say. They can be asserted (or at least some of them can – others might be beyond human understanding or whatever), but they absolutely don't need to.

Comment 134 states it well.

It is a religious invention, indeed. Why cling to it after emancipation of religion is completley opaque to me.

You mean "from religion". English is picky about that.

Hallelluiah brother, at last someone with clarity of mind reaching this thread.

If you were a clearer fucking writer and thinker, asshole, it wouldn't take one hundred comments to figure out that you're, as Joe Bleau put it, "just picking nits about the notion of 'absolute truth'."

The fault lies with you, you quasi-literate ass.

That's a pretty good way to put it.

Truth: The speed of light in vacuum is a constant.

Truth: Two objects with like electric charges repel each other.

Truth: The entropy of a closed system will not decrease.

Truth: Gravity is an attractive interaction between two bodies with mass.

That's all what I call "reality".

Kurt Goddel

Gödel, with a long ö.

Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | June 17, 2009 1:07 PM

I have some respect for the point I believe Luis Dias is trying to make - but then I've been reading up on Pragmatism (and the scientific process) recently.

The word 'Absolute' always worries me. Even well confirmed facts may turn out to be 'local' or only apply in specific circumstances. Is the Law of Gravity still 'absolutely true' on the other side of the Universe, in the heart of a neutron star or inside a Black Hole? I have no way of knowing and nor does anyone else (at this point in time).

The only way you can have 'absolute truth' is if there is 'omniscient knowledge'. I expect that omniscient knowledge is beyond us for practical (or should that be Pragmatic) reasons.

Does Absolute [Truth, Morality, Anything] imply an Absolute Being? I do not believe this is a valid argument since Absolute Truth is an assertion, just like the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorn Poo, or the touch of the Noodly Appendage. I also think that calling reality 'absolutely true' is also an assertion, although one less likely to be in error.

But meanwhile, back here on Earth, I accept that the scientific method is the best way of formulating reliable (but never absolute!) conclusions about the world, and currently there is no indication of an interventional god/s.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | June 17, 2009 1:13 PM

Dutch Delight,

I vote it can't be brought up again before the biblethumpers explain morality amongst primates and other social animals.

Usually, they say this is proof for absolute morality, because God injected us with it at creation, or whatever.

Of course, the first thing an non-atrophied mind would ask when presented with such is why then such a god would feel the need to send a shitload of prophets, a book, his only begotten son, etc. to teach us what is supposedly genetically inherent. A desire to eat is pretty universal, but my bible doesn't seem to include any Epistles from Paul to the Gourmands.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 17, 2009 1:20 PM

Presuppositionalist tactics are nothing more than a denial-of-service attack on the process of rational analysis.

1) Make multiple assertions about God or the Bible (eg, there is absolute truth and absolute morality and absolute (whatever) AND God is the source of absolute truth/absolute morality/whatever -- nothing more than argument by pure fiat)

2) Use radical skepticism to dismiss anything the enemy says (where "enemy" in this case means anyone that the presupposer is arguing with).

3) Declare that because the enemy "failed" (that is, the presupposer successfully dismissed and ignored responses, refutations, rebuttals, etc), original assertion is in fact true.

4) Refuse any objections by radical skepticism

5) If the enemy objects against the obvious double standard used (radical philosophical skepticism against scientific and logical claims, unquestioning unthinking acceptance of presuppositional BS and their own made-up BS), then dismiss objection with radical skepticism.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 17, 2009 1:25 PM

That's just wrong, sorry.

No. It would be wrong if GR always offered a better description. It doesn't. Gravity can be perfectly adequately described as force, sometimes. We already know that GR doesn't always describe gravity adequately.

Therefore, as a relativist, how is it possible to pragmatically favour either of the two theories?

Posted by: Holbach | June 17, 2009 1:43 PM

If a female is undergoing rape with attendant beating, I am sure that she can definitely state that it is wrong without regard to the morality of the act. The rapist knows he is wrong in his act despite the morality against it, but he disregards this to exercise his god-given right to express his free will, which seems to overpower her free will to tear him apart. But if this imaginary god is the giver of free will and the all-powerful arbiter of morals as the religionists claim, then why doesn't this imaginary god exercise it's power and prevent the rape in the first place or else kill the rapist on the spot to prove that morality is it's domain? If anything is worth explaining by means of humanity's collusion with imaginary forces, then religion certainly will suffice.

Posted by: birdman | June 17, 2009 1:49 PM

Ray @ #68:

That was Samuel Johnson (the lexicographer), not Ben Jonson (the playwright).

From Boswell's Life of Johnson:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | June 17, 2009 2:16 PM

#192

One way of looking at absolute truth, at least in the way PZ, I and others here are using is the analogy of a crime scene.

I think your chosen analogy is a poor fit. The standard of judgement in English law is 'beyond reasonable doubt', very far from 'absolute truth'. It is quite possible to live successfully and appropriately without access to Absolute Truth, even if such a thing exists.

I think your chosen analogy tends to support my "we do the best we can to determine the facts, subject to later confirmation" view.

If its any consolation I understand that the philosophical debate between Idealists, Realists and Pragmatists (all of various flavours) has been going on for some time. You'd have thought that clever people dedicated to the idea of knowing how to think would have got their ideas together by now, wouldn't you?

Posted by: mothwentbad | June 17, 2009 2:18 PM

So if you say that absolute moral laws do not exist, then it follows with "molesting children: WRONG, or sometimes RIGHT?"

The user just rejected the strict universal validity of the categories! What total fuckups! If only there were some patronizing website to tell them to "think about it"!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 2:22 PM

The guy running the site is a rather well-known presuppositionalist who gained a small degree of infamy in the circles of those who used to or still do visit Ray Comfort's spot.

Sye Tenb (or whatever his name was)?

Posted by: NoGurus | June 17, 2009 2:27 PM

When you don't have facts you are left with rationalizations, circular logic, and wild assumptions. Show me some facts that your version of God exists, then I will believe.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 2:29 PM

PZ sez molesting children is

"damaging to our species and harmful to individuals"

How is it "damaging to our species" and "harmful to individuals" PZ?

Maybe it is "helpful"?

Is this the only reason you are against it?

oooooh fluffy fluffy atheist reasoning ... ooooh fluffy ....

oooooh fluffy fluffy idiots thinking they're clever commenting.

Posted by: DiscomBob | June 17, 2009 2:33 PM

Boy, Luis Dias must of touched on a sensitive spot for a lot of you, given the array of vehement responses.
He is a dickwad though.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | June 17, 2009 2:34 PM

I remember learning how to do this same card trick when I was a kid... you know, the one where you pre-select a card, then ask the other person absolute, 'one or the other' questions that eventually can only lead them to identify the card you've selected? To the observer, it seemed like astounding magic! That is, of course, until you learned how to do the trick and the intentional deception that's involved... then it just feels like you cheated.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 17, 2009 2:39 PM

Luis, stop being a dick.
What PZ clearly meant from his statement was that we exist in one reality, and that can be considered an absolute truth, in that, it exists as it is, regardless of how we perceive it.
Your quibbling of the precise definition of "absolute" is just stupid.

Well when it comes to the likes of Dias, who seems to be going all solopcistic on us, I say the answer is to smack them in the mouth, with a cricket bat if you have one to hand.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 17, 2009 2:42 PM

"I'm an American, can I use a baseball bat?"

It will cause pain, feel free!

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 17, 2009 2:55 PM

Boy, Luis Dias must of touched on a sensitive spot for a lot of you, given the array of vehement responses.

must HAVE touched
must HAVE touched
must HAVE touched

Yeah, that's a sensitive spot.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | June 17, 2009 3:01 PM

Yeah, DiscoveredJoys, but that's an argument in the wrong direction. Christians, who have the benefit of God's Divine Revelation and are thus not wrong, make two contradictory claims with relation to God's Absolute and Unchanging Except When It Does Universal to All Humans But Requires Transmission Through Missionaries™ Morality: it doesn't exist among humans because of our fallen nature so Jesus had to come down and tell us about it AND the ubiquity of Don't Murder among disparate cultures is not simply a pragmatic adaptation, but evidence that God implanted us all with his universal morality (so Jesus had to come down and tell us about it?)

If the imperative to eat were analogous to the latter argument, the bible would not tell us what we shouldn't eat but remind that we should eat, period.

Witness all cultures great and small outlawing murder, there for "Thou Shalt Not Murder" is evidence for God (but never evidence for any of the other cultures' gods, notably). Then witness all creatures great and small eating, thus "Thou Shalt Eat" must be the 11^the and missing commandment!

Unless of course, the theists are just making it up as they go along.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 17, 2009 3:04 PM

Felix @202,216 : Yes, we had someone here who was calling himself "Facilis" (more recently using the handle "Ineffable") who used that exact same presuppositional denial-of-service attack argument.

Reading up on Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark was quite the eye-opener.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 17, 2009 3:07 PM

Do you think that if I get a high enough score in the Jonas Brothers Pizzeria game, then they eventually explain why we know God exists?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 3:10 PM

Rev.BigDumbChimp @205, yes, that's him.

ugh

He and not with all his Facilities are easily tow of the most annoying and idiotic commenters I've ever encountered.

Like playing the why game with a 3 year old who no matter what answer you give them they going to ignore it and ask again.

Posted by: Izgad | June 17, 2009 3:26 PM

I took the route that absolute morality does exist, that it is immaterial and universal. The site told me that only the Christian God could justify such a belief. I fail to see how a Jewish or a Muslim God does not justify these very same things particularly considering that Jewish and Islamic theism do not require that God be three in one or that he was completely human and divine at the same time. To take this a step further, it seems to me that the sort of God this proof, if you accept it, points to is an abstract Aristotelian God, a series of ultimate principles. In essence this is the sort of God that professing atheists would be more comfortable with than your average believer in the pews.

Posted by: Izgad | June 17, 2009 3:36 PM

I took the route that absolute morality does exist, that it is immaterial and universal. The site told me that only the Christian God could justify such a belief. I fail to see how a Jewish or a Muslim God does not justify these very same things particularly considering that Jewish and Islamic theism do not require that God be three in one or that he was completely human and divine at the same time. To take this a step further, it seems to me that the sort of God this proof, if you accept it, points to is an abstract Aristotelian God, a series of ultimate principles. In essence this is the sort of God that professing atheists would be more comfortable with than your average believer in the pews.

Posted by: eyelessgame | June 17, 2009 3:39 PM

What would an "absolute morality" even be?

Thinking through what morality is, it would seem that absolute morality would be a decision process that results in maximizing utility (broadly defined) to all self-aware entities.

It's certainly the case that the ability to act in accordance with an absolute morality requires omniscience, since otherwise it's not obvious you're successfully maximizing future utility.

It seems, therefore, to me that non-omniscients could not possibly care less whether an absolute morality exists, because they couldn't hope to follow it if it did. But an improved ability to predict consequences of actions, and expanded empathy, are prerequisites to improving one's moral sense, and that seems to be one of the things science does rather well.

Like others, I think it's rich that "child molestation" is used as a supposed example of utter evil, but not because of the Catholic foofaraw, since most of these evangelicals probably consider Catholics a step up (or maybe even down) from all of us unbelievers. No, I think it's particularly rich because of Numbers 31:17-18, which clearly places Yahweh as pro-child-molestation. Paraphrasing only slightly: "Kill everyone but the virgin girls: the virgin girls you can gang-rape." (The King James euphemism for the latter is "keep alive for yourselves", but as these are instructions being given to an invading barbarian horde, there's really no other interpretation, particularly since it's only virgins that they "keep".)

So absolute morality, Yahweh-style, certainly doesn't seem to involve the absolute prohibition of child molestation.

Posted by: Raging Bee | June 17, 2009 3:56 PM

You are lead through a series of binary choices, in which you are asked to choose one alternative or the other, with the goal of shunting you to the desired conclusion, which is, of course, that God exists.

And here's another fatal flaw in these "proofs:" even if we accept them as valid proofs of the existence of "God," they still don't prove anything about what, exactly, this "God" thing really is, other than "something big and nebulous and incomprehensible that we'll just agree to call 'God' pretty much by default." Indeed, these games don't even disprove the atheists, since none of them prove the validity of anyone's particular conception of "God(s)." So an atheist can accept such a "proof" and still reasonably reject any particular human idea or image of "God."

Posted by: heliobates | June 17, 2009 4:07 PM

I had my own go-round with the delightful Mr.(DOS)Tenb.

Posted by: BigMKnows | June 17, 2009 4:33 PM

Even if you accept all seven premises, the site pulls a nonsequitur:

To reach this page you had to acknowledge that immaterial, universal, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and absolute morality exist. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws are necessary for rational thinking to be possible. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature.

Nonsense. First, I clicked on "immaterial" because I consider things like math and morality to be abstract. Here immaterial is sleight of hand for something like supernatural (the universe can't be material).

Then there's a Bible quote, then this:

Only in a universe governed by God can universal, immaterial, unchanging laws exist.

That's the nonsequitur. The laws of the universe could be (and appear to be) the random result of quantum fluctuations before inflation. Do they make sense to us? Sure, because we evolved according to those laws and we've been studying them for hundreds of years. If we arose in a different universe, we'd find that elegant, too (also, there's no mention of how counterintuitive and irrational quantum mechanics appears).

As for morality, it's not written in the stars. Male lions sometimes eat the young of other males. That's abhorrent to us, but apparently it's part of this guy's God's perfect plan. His God created it. Animals exhibit an endless variety of behaviors. There don't appear to be any consistent or absolute ones. Humans forged moral rules together, and some are universal (or nearly universal) *for us.* That says nothing about the universe.

Posted by: Dan L. | June 17, 2009 4:38 PM

Although, I got a good phrase out of this.

Dime bag philosophy: excessive belaboring of an elementary philosophical argument, esp. when any criticism of that argument is dismissed without rebuttal.

Examples: "I don't get the hype about that Matrix movie -- it's just an action movie with some dime bag philosophy thrown in."

"Luis Dias totally derailed that thread with his dime bag philosophy."

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | June 17, 2009 4:48 PM

BigMKnows @#240

You could design a similar site shunting people through a series of binary choices as to whether God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good, and then "prove" his nonexistence but making them agree that evil exists ("Really? You don't believe that child molestation is evil?").

That's sort of been done, with the "Epicurus 'god-paradox'".

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

Posted by: Dan L. | June 17, 2009 5:16 PM

This pastor deserves more respect from you heathens.

Burn in hell the lot of you.

There's that vaunted Christian morality again.

What exactly has this "pastor" done to deserve any respect from anyone?

Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | June 17, 2009 5:28 PM

@Matt Penfold

I agree that there almost certainly was a definitive set of events running up to the alleged crime: this might reasonably be called 'reality'. No irony intended.

The point I was making is that the full set of events is literally unknowable to ordinary senses (I'm not even invoking quantum states here)- but a sufficiently large proportion of them can be ascertained to legally discriminate between murder, manslaughter, self-defence, assisted suicide or reasonable doubt.

Often the legal case depends on the state of mind of the accused. The accused may reveal what they believe to be their state of mind was at the time, but peoples' recollection of events is notoriously poor, even when self interest doen't bias the memory. No absolute knowledge there then.

My contention is that if the full set of events (reality) is unknowable at an 'absolute' level, it is meaningless to talk of absolute knowledge (or morality, etc.). It makes sense to try and know as much of reality as possible, but acknowledge that we live in an imperfectly known world, subject to revision in the light of new knowledge and context.

This feeds back into the debate about absolute moral values. Killing is wrong, an Absolute Moral - apart from those cultures which accept killing in self defence, or under the direction of authority, or as human sacrifice. Does this mean everything is relative? No, it means that humans form practical moral judgements based on the context they find themselves in, at the time. And in evolutionary terms (no god/s required, but none denied) it works, so far.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | June 17, 2009 5:43 PM

Ignore the troll... he simply posted to the wrong thread... Fundies have a tough time with reading comprehension.

Thank God fir home skooling.

Posted by: Silver Fox | June 17, 2009 6:11 PM

Now these are the kinds of folks that Big Chimp needs to tell to do their homework, because clearly they have not done it.

They have binary alternatives but unfortunately they emanate from different branches of philosophy - epistemology and ontology. You're never going to prove the existence of God that way. You're not going to be able to distinguish between an epistemic mode of knowing and an ontological mode of being. That distinction is essential to any proof for the existence of God.

It sounds like they have a series of "punch-board" binaries trying to pass off as syllogisms. With that approach, even someone like PZ who is probably no more that marginally trained in philosophy, will easily slip through your porous net.

Posted by: BigMKnows | June 17, 2009 6:28 PM

I just went to Stephen Law's blog where the owner of proofthatgodexists.org, Sye, debated him, and actually slogged through the endless posts and comments. The author of proofthatgodexists.org succinctly stated his argument as:

Actually the argument goes more like this:

1) God is the necessarly precondition to the laws of logic (by the impossibility of the contrary).
2) Logic exists
3) Therefore God exists

Now, I know that you will have difficulties with premise 1, but, in order to argue against it, you, like Stephen, must justify those laws according to your worldview...

And elsewhere he said that atheists borrow the laws of logic, established by God.

Stephen Law responds with:

what's wrong with this argument, Sye:

(1) The existence of the Great Cosmic Wombat is a necessary precondition of there being laws of logic
(2) Laws of logic exist
Therefore: The Great Cosmic Wombat exists.

Now you won't like this argument, I take it. But notice that, if you attempt to find fault with it, I can play the same card you just played: "But unless you accept the Wombat exists, you are not entitled to use logic, and so cannot use it to find fault with my argument."

In one swoop he destroys the validity of the first premise. You'll notice that the first premise mentions an impossibility, and Christians are fond of pointing out how difficult it is to prove the impossibility of something. He never establishes why it is impossible.

Of course, we know the first premise is flawed. The laws of the universe are abstractions about phenomena that we see. "To abstract" means to take away (in this case information). The law of gravity is an abstraction of every time we've seen things fall. It's a description, a generalized description of many individual observations, and does not exist in any other sense.

Sye reifies scientific laws, treats them as real things, and since we can't find them in the universe, they must exist in magic land, so only a God can create them.

The whole argument is based on misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation), semantics, equivocation, and assertion of the impossible.

Posted by: Alex Deam | June 17, 2009 6:36 PM

Oh, PZ so you know that "Absolute Truth" exists.

Well I'll be damned if you're a skeptic! You're as much a believer on faith as those theists!

If you refuse this accusation, then tell me:

What's your proof that absolute truth exists? Where is such a truth?

Oh you can't answer can you? So why saying such nonsense?!?

It's pretty obvious really. PZ is arguing that absolute truth exists, not that absolute truth is accessible.

For instance, it can't be proven that "PZ Myers exists" is a true statement. It can't be done. But surely you realize that either "PZ Myers exists" is a true statement, or it is a false statement. So absolute truth exists (even if that absolute truth is "The cat is both dead and alive"). We don't have to be able to access it to say it exists.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 17, 2009 6:48 PM

BigMKnows, we had Facilis the Fallacious Fool present the same argument here. In true Pharyngula fashion, we (not I, but others) quickly saw the argument, realized it was a presupposition, and refuted the argument because all presupposition arguments are false. He also never fully presented his argument, and kept claiming he was never refuted. He now resides in the dungeon.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 17, 2009 7:31 PM

Silver 'Vishnu is my homeboy' Fox wrote:

The major premise is invalid; It references no known entity and it has no universal subject.

Yet another unsupported assertion from Silver Fox.

Feel free to explain why, if an entity is responsible for the laws of logic, a lack of knowledge of it has any impact whatsoever. There are any number of humans over the course of the centuries who've never heard of your god - including the many who existed before he was invented - and yet who have happily practiced logic.

And your god is no more a 'universal subject' than the Great Wombat; the same rules apply to both.

Posted by: BigMKnows | June 17, 2009 7:52 PM

Silver Fox, your attempt to use logic just proved the existence of the Great Cosmic Wombat (see premise 1).

The fact that you've never heard of the Cosmic Wombat doesn't make the premise invalid, otherwise, the fact that some people have never heard of the Christian God would make that premise invalid. In which case, Sye's argument fails to prove God's existence.

The two arguments are syntactically identical, so if one is correct, the other is correct. They can't both be correct. Therefore, we know they are both wrong.

But nobody cares about the Cosmic Wombat. What's important is that there's still no proof of God.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 17, 2009 8:34 PM

PZ sez molesting children is

"damaging to our species and harmful to individuals"

How is it "damaging to our species" and "harmful to individuals" PZ?

Maybe it is "helpful"?

Is this the only reason you are against it?

oooooh fluffy fluffy atheist reasoning ... ooooh fluffy ....

English fails me, I must resort to almost literally translated Viennese:

Have they shat into your brain?!?

(Sounds more impressive in the original.)

Me, if you don't know how molesting children is damaging to individuals, you're either a sociopath, or a child molester yourself.

...and thus again a sociopath.

Boy, Luis Dias must of touched on a sensitive spot for a lot of you, given the array of vehement responses.

<sigh>

1) He came in here, simply assumed that everyone was using exactly his definitions of the involved terms, and then laughed at how what we said was obviously nonsensical if his definitions are assumed. This kind of stupidity always draws vehement responses.

2) There was something about his style of argumentation that made an astonishing number of people think he was a presuppositionalist theist or something (which he has made very clear that he's not). Such people, too, always draw vehement responses.

He is a dickwad though.

3) Dickwads likewise always draw vehement responses.

Posted by: Felix | June 17, 2009 8:59 PM

What Sye did to evade the Cosmic Wombat was simply assert that the truth of identity had been revealed to him in a way that he could be certain. Since an invented entity or a false god slash impostor would not have the power to supercede the revelation of the true entity God (by the impossibility of the contrary of course), this revelation must be true.
He did this for weeks until everyone told him to fuck off or just stopped responding. It's a script that always returns to its own reset button, so by the standard of people so inclined it's flawless logic. Except that it's circular. Whereas demonstrating the circularity and declaring it a fallacy requires logic, which is a creation of God... there it goes again. weeeeee.

Posted by: Guradian of the Poll | June 17, 2009 9:07 PM

Looks like there's a lot of push-polling going around these days. It's so much nicer when one decides the results in advance, isn't it?

-------------------

Looks like someone is mad becuase they didn't get to fornicate the poll this time. WOO! Go poll fornicators - except this one.

I think Pharyngula should move to the left coast - San Fran Sicko and start their own football team. The San Fran Sicko Poll Fornicators. All the cheerleaders will be gay and in pink/poka dot uniforms and the mascot will be darwin with a monkey humping his butt. Explains the love affair with monkeys on here anyway. The team song will be "Darwinism, we praise you!" while evryone joins hands and sings "Onward Poll Fornicators" and saluting the fake rainbow flag. GO Fornicators!

Posted by: Dan L. | June 17, 2009 9:17 PM

Wowbagger@264:

Yeah, I lurk here enough to have gotten a feel for Silver Fox's style. That post irked me because he seemed to be trying to avoid anything substantive while still coming across as some big philosophy expert.

Silverfox:

To recap:

Why does the subject of a premise have to be "universal"? (and define "universal")

Why does the subject of a premise have to be "a known being"? (and define "known being")

Why must a premise have a predicate?

Why must premises (besides the first premise, obviously) refer to earlier premises?

Or can you admit you were just talking out of your ass?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 9:44 PM

What's wrong with this argument, Sye.?

(1) The existence of the Great Cosmic Wombat is a necessary precondition of there being laws of logic
(2) Laws of logic exist
Therefore: The Great Cosmic Wombat exists.

A lot:
The major premise is invalid; It references no known entity and it has no universal subject.

Premise #2 lacks a particular predicate and even if it had one it could not reference the subject of the major premise.

Consequently, there can be no valid conclusion.

If you substituted God for the Great Cosmic Wombat, the same objections would hold. However, then, you would at least avoid getting into nominalism

Nominalism? HAHAHAH. Are you suggesting that presupposing your version of god is realism?

more philosophical wanking.

you wanking idiot.

Have you done your homework?

Posted by: Silver Fox | June 17, 2009 10:13 PM

WOW
"And your god is no more a 'universal subject' than the Great Wombat; the same rules apply to both.

That is exactly what I said. The substitution would do nothing. All you would accomplish would be an exercise in nominalism.

You need to read post #251
I fully realize that the argument there is weakened by being based on reason which is the least reliable property of the evolved brain. The brain evolved with the proper object of survival in the face of challenges it finds in the environment it is in and with the best chance of reproducing, sending its genetics into posterity. The brain couldn't care less about truth, virtue and the American Way. Unless the transforming power of Faith enters into the picture, the argument from reason really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 17, 2009 10:31 PM

Silver 'Thoth, Thoth, he's our god; if he can't do it no-one...can' Fox wrote:

Unless the transforming power of Faith enters into the picture, the argument from reason really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Got anything to back that up with? No? Colour me unsurprised.

Well, as soon as you can show us some objective evidence that faith in your god has any transformational power that no god or gods from any of the other religions can claim, then you might have a point.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 10:56 PM

Homework SF?

You can keep running but the longer you ignore me the more you are exposed as as the idiotic little know-nothing snooze fest twit you are.

Posted by: Stanton | June 17, 2009 11:14 PM

Unless the transforming power of Faith enters into the picture, the argument from reason really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Or please shut the fuck up with your inane displays of psychotic piety.

Posted by: Stanton | June 17, 2009 11:19 PM

So when something is known through subjective epistemology; it is known by reason alone. It is not delusional. If something in sitting in front of you and you know its there; then you know it in its mode of being or objective ontology.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 17, 2009 11:50 PM

Silver 'Dancing with Athena' Fox, wrote:

They are different modes of knowing.

So you keep asserting. And yet you provide no evidence and no argument for how, even if we do accept this as true, this pertains to the existence of your god and the non-existence of all the other gods posited by human religions.

Showing, philosophically, that it may be possible for a god to exist ≠ confirming the god of the Christians definitely does exist.

Heck, even if you could show that a god definitely did exist, you'd still have to find a way to show that it could only be the Christian god and not any of the other thousands of deities.

Which you've demonstrated, many times, you can't do. Don't stop, though; your inanity is a neverending source of amusement for us.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 18, 2009 12:04 AM

Posted by: pb | June 17, 2009 5:14 PM

This pastor deserves more respect from you heathens.

Burn in hell the lot of you.

Posted by: Kel | June 18, 2009 12:11 AM

I agree that there are different ways of knowing. Though faith is not one of them. It's the antithesis of knowing, it's being certain without regards to the truth. If it were a way of knowing, then the methodology could be demonstrated and held to scrutiny. But those who believe faith is a way of knowing never actually try to validate this claim. Instead they use it to assert "They are different modes of knowing" and hope no-one calls them out on it*

*though if they are called out, they can always cry persecution.

Posted by: Kel | June 18, 2009 12:57 AM

The laws of logic are derivatives from the facts of logic. Group two lots of two and you'll get four every time. We created that law of logic to describe the facts we see in nature. Just as Newton described the laws of motion from observation of the facts of motion. The laws our ways we understand the universe around us, but they aren't programmed into the universe. 2+2=4 is a fact, the law of addition is us recognising this fact.

To any godbot: can 2+2 equal anything other than four in a base 10 counting system? i.e. if you had two rocks and two more rocks, could the total be anything other than 4 rocks? If not, then what role could God possibly play in this process?

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 18, 2009 1:09 AM

Luis Diaz,

The universe can't be a product of your imagination, you're not that smart.

Posted by: BigMKnows | June 18, 2009 3:49 AM

I just posted a long rebuttal to the whole proofthatgodexists web site:

http://sciencerationalism.blogspot.com/2009/06/argument-from-sye.html

Posted by: astrounit | June 18, 2009 7:26 AM

I'll say it again: why the heck are these fools so obsessed with "proof"?

Isn't their FAITH enough to "prove it" to them?

Posted by: Seth | June 18, 2009 8:55 AM

I made a blog post after taking the thing including a diagram of how all the answers play out.

Link is here: http://keippernicus.blogspot.com/2009/06/oh-good-they-proved-itnyaaaaaat.html

Also made my youtube debut cracking fun at it.

Link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUpTQ4HHUw

Posted by: astrounit | June 18, 2009 12:08 PM

Silver Fox (#280) would like to tell us all that (s)he's got the whole picture covered, that, for example,

"when something is known through subjective epistemology; it is known by reason alone. [sic] It is not delusional. If something in sitting in front of you and you know its there; then you know it in its mode of being or objective ontology. [sic]

That's MARVELOUS!

It gets even better, though:

"They are different modes of knowing. When PZ says he took the survey and answered "yes" to the question of whether he accepted "absolute truth"; he said "yes" because he knew that things in his experience were "real".

Really? Is that actually so?

"What he was doing was saying that he was not an idealist; so he was converting epistemic knowledge to ontological knowledge since neither he nor I know whether the idealists are right or wrong."

I wonder how Silver Fox can determine, on this basis, whether (s)he is right - insofar as (s)he has the obvious temerity of saying so, based, perhaps, by "converting epistemic knowledge to ontological knowledge"?

Then (s)he concludes:

"So he was placing himself, whether he knew it or not, in the "realist" camp or the camp of someone like Locke for whom everything came from the outside in through sense experience."

My oh my. PZ can't utter a scrap of an opinion under these grueling considerations without getting nailed by a "thinker" who "really knows" the difference between "epistomology" and "ontology".

Yet he manages to do so, without a smidgeon of overwrought effort. Isn't that amazing? PZ must be a hairy human ape full of all kinds of contradictory behaviors...and yet - AND YET - he's quite obviously managed to control his end of things well enough to make abundant SENSE for himself and many of the rest of us.

Oh dear, we may founder on the rocks of ontology on that one, seeing how THOUROUGHLY we arrive at it through epistomological means, or think we do...because they may inadvertantly be converted into an ontological argument...says the common asshole who has learned exactly enough - and no more - to be anything other than dangerous.

Whoa is us. Anybody who therefore makes any careful attempt to assess the evidence by employing rational thinking in order to obtain an epistimological conclusion can be discredited by any asshole who can in a simple sweep of words characterize it as a conversion to an ontological argument.

You know? Higher education just doesn't suit some people. All it gives them is a gigantic head that thinks it actually "knows" something.

My head aches. Time for an aspirin.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 18, 2009 2:22 PM

The brain evolved with the proper object of survival in the face of challenges it finds in the environment it is in and with the best chance of reproducing, sending its genetics into posterity. The brain couldn't care less about truth, virtue and the American Way. Unless the transforming power of Faith enters into the picture, the argument from reason really doesn't make a lot of sense.

What about evolutionary epistemology? You know, those with too unreliable minds have already died out…?

Besides, as was first pointed out about 1000 years ago, arguing against reason by using reason is self-contradictory; arguing against reason without using reason is… unreasonable.

Posted by: Darrin | June 19, 2009 1:54 AM

On the question of morality where you are asked to choose if molesting children is moral or not, the instructions clearly state
"I am asking what YOU believe, not what you think anyone else believes."
This is a question of morality at the individual level. It then takes that answer and claims that this proves that there is an "absolute morality".

I wish it were really that easy to turn my opinions into absolute universal laws.

Posted by: John Shook | June 19, 2009 6:46 PM

Try my similar website for doubting that God exists: http://www.naturalisms.org/doubtgod/

Posted by: chris t smith | June 19, 2009 10:05 PM

I found the site rather silly and when you answer honestly, it does try to force you to think about your answer again. So, if you are honest and continue to answer what you believe, you are stuck in a continuous loop. I bet those that decided to put the site together think it is so clever to force people agree, even when they don't. Kind of like taking your child to church and forcing them to believe in your God through slow brainwashing, fear and guilt. Not much of a choice.

Here is the interesting thing. All those that want to claim there is a God and provide their "proof" never seem to be able to demonstrate that it is THEIR version of God that must be real.

So, if they want to claim there is a God then why not go ahead and prove it is their version and not one of the others? Oooops.....did I just expose another problem they have with their proof.

My father told me he heard this speech about God that I just needed to hear. He said he can't understand why people don't believe in God. I said, why God. He paused and said "what". I said which God do you think people should believe in? He paused and then said "Jesus Christ". Of course, he was born in America ("christian nation") with many in his family also believing in the same God as most of society. If he was born in Iraq and believed in God, he would of course say it was Allah.

Of course, this kind of reasoning will not work for a Muslim or a Christian, party because they are trained to believe in one specific God and to believe NO other God is real. Even though never side can prove or disprove the other. Also, at least in the case of Christians, their FATE is directly related to what they believe. If they do not believe, they know what will happen...their loving, moral Father above will torture their human flesh for an eternity of suffering.

So really, if you want to claim there is a God, go ahead but while you are at it, prove that it is YOUR version of God that is real. I promise you that you can't and won't do it. Just like you can't and won't prove any God is real. FACT is we just don't know and if we are honest, this is what we would all say.

Posted by: PaulJ | June 20, 2009 3:22 PM

I came across the "Proof That God Exists" website a few months ago while researching the transcendental argument for the existence of God. I was not impressed.

Posted by: Vinifera7 | June 21, 2009 10:43 AM

"If you are honest with what you truly believe, this website will lead you to the proof that God exists."

Um, no, it doesn't since you are giving ME the choices. But you indicate that we don't even NEED proof, so isn't what you're doing rather unnecessary?

I found it strangely amusing that clicking "Exit" takes you to some sort of Disney website.

Posted by: eNeMeE | June 25, 2009 2:26 PM

I didn't even get past question two.

1)I don't know if absolute truth exists ('cause I don't think there's anything true for all people at all times)

2)Pick one of "Absolutely true" or "False" - try neither, you dumbasses! "Currently true", and certainly won't be true in 100 years, nor was it true 100 years ago, and it certainly isn't true for everyone.

Posted by: Rhiggs | June 26, 2009 3:36 PM

The owner of the silly little website being discussed, Sye TenB, is over at my blog right now and he has this to say about this thread:

"Haven't seen anything worthy of a response there"

and when I accused him of being afraid of defending himself here, he said:

"Hardly, it's the same old blather with a forum that does not lend itself to debate.

I've been preparing for a very important, unrelated matter which takes place today, and will have more time for their nonsense later. Since it appears you want me to take them on, they'll have you to blame :-)

Cheers,

Sye"

He says he's gonna come over here and bring the pain, but I'm guessing he's bluffing...

Posted by: Rhiggs | June 26, 2009 3:45 PM

LOL

Agreed. The stupid doth burn...

(Apologies for the double post!)

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 26, 2009 4:23 PM

If it is P.Z’s position that he does not like the logic of the website, that is one thing, but to call it fallacious exposes a pre-commitment to absolute laws of logic, for which the atheist cannot account. Sye Ten B

The usual presuppositionalist crap. "Fallacious" simply means that the argument is faulty. It has been pointed out here why it is faulty: it uses terms, such as "absoulte", that have multiple possible meanings, without distinguishing between them. I pointed this out with regard to the question of whether "abusing children for fun" is "absolutely wrong". There are at least two meanings for this:
1) That there is some absolute source of morality - God, or Kant's categorical imperative, or the dictates of The Party, or whatever, which says it is wrong.
2) That there are no circumstances under which it would be right to abuse children for fun.
Now I (and most if not all atheists) agree with (2) but not with (1). The website is set up to make it impossible to articulate this position, but as shown here, this position can indeed be articulated. The website's logic is thus faulty, because its terms are ambiguous. Whether this is due to stupidity or dishonesty on your part, I don't much care.

I already know what your stupid and/or dishonest response will be: you will not address my argument, but will repeat your presuppositionalist crap, for which any competent computer programmer could write a script. It proves nothing and "accounts for" nothing. You haven't even tried to show what it would mean to "account for" the fact that an unambiguous claim about the world cannot be at once true and false.

Your site, and you, are worthy only of contempt.

Posted by: Chris | June 27, 2009 10:40 AM

Hi Sye you old question dodger you. Want to try and answer my question now? Can you show that you can think logically [this question is given to provide a practical example of why viciously circular arguments are fallacious. TAG proponents seem to require some pretty elementary things explained to them].

Oh please Sye don't try that tired old counter of "merely asking me implies that I can think rationally enough to answer".

As I've explained many, many times before I'm assuming the nurse in the cranial trauma ward is dumbing it down for you. :-)

Now are you going to answer my question or will you bravely dodge it? After all I'm only usingTAG logic. Why can't you answer me Sye?

Posted by: Chris | June 27, 2009 10:57 AM

Sorry All

The question at 321 should read "Seeing that we presuppose that you have had a sudden blow to your head which has resulted in brain injury can you provide evidence that you can think rationally? As pointed out before I'm just using TAG logic Sye.

Posted by: Kel | June 27, 2009 11:24 AM

Got to love that binary thinking. Either everything is absolute or everything is subjective; completely misrepresenting what morality is and how it works. But that's okay, you can't expect a theist to understand something that requires understanding the nature of man.

But really, needing an absolute standard to call something nonsense? Damn, I guess we better take back all those unkind things we said about homoeopathy, after all the laws of physics are an assumption based on a fallible mind and thus useless. likewise the laws of physics themselves, can't absolutely assert they are true so I don't know why I spent money buying a computer when really a brick should be able to do the same job...

...because if we can't talk in absolutes then nothing we say has any value whatsoever...

To quote a very bad film: "only a sith speaks in absolutes"

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 27, 2009 12:29 PM

this forum does not lend itself well to debate

1) It's not a forum, it's a blog.
2) This blog is a wonderful place for discussion. I just get the impression that that's not what you mean by "debate". I get the impression that you mean "two guys standing in front of an audience and using logical fallacies to shame each other into giving up, like lawyers". In that case, you're right: you're not among lawyers here, you have fallen among the scientists.

I found it strangely amusing that clicking "Exit" takes you to some sort of Disney website.

It has been said before: The Duck has become Man.

absolute laws of logic, for which the atheist cannot account.

"Law" is just a bad metaphor. Stop taking it seriously.

Like those of physics, the laws of logic are generalizations the human mind makes over a lot of observations: observations of how the universe works in the former case, observations of how mathematics works in the latter.

ANY absolutes point to God

How?

Who gets to choose that molestation is more damaging than curtailing the desires of the molester?

Me.

No, seriously. All of ethics can be derived straightforwardly from blatant egotism. For example: I wouldn't like to be molested, and I have innate empathy, so I don't like anyone else being molested either – it would make precious me feel bad.

Posted by: Satan | June 27, 2009 3:10 PM

I said: ”ANY absolutes point to God”
You asked: “How?
Simple, one cannot know anything to be absolutely true apart from omniscience, or revelation from same.

Of course. However, since I am omniscient as well, it is quite obvious that absolutes point to Me as well as to God.

Therefore, your phrasing was incorrect: Any absolutes point to omniscience; therefore, they point to omniscient beings like God AND Satan.

Posted by: God | June 27, 2009 3:16 PM

However, since I am omniscient as well, it is quite obvious that absolutes point to Me as well as to God.

I don't think that that quite follows, You know.

Posted by: God | June 27, 2009 3:21 PM

You are the omniscient source of the laws of logic and mathematics. So am I.

How can a "law" have more than one source? That defies logic!

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 27, 2009 3:29 PM

@Post 329: Erm, Satan is not omniscient.

Posted by: Satan | June 27, 2009 3:31 PM

How can it be "working", when I don't even know about it?

But that shows exactly how well it works! It's so automatic, You don't even notice!

Isn't that great?

Posted by: God | June 27, 2009 3:37 PM

I know all that God knows, and then some.

Posted by: Tezcatlipoca | June 27, 2009 3:43 PM

Would you two shut the hell up already. I'm trying to whip up all the hurricanes for this year.

It's always the same thing with you two.

Posted by: Satan | June 27, 2009 3:51 PM

Ah, but if You know ℵ₀+ω things, and I know ℵ₀+&omega²; things, then My transfinite set of knowledge is greater than Your transfinite set of knowledge!

However, it is obvious You don't know more than I do, since I am aware of Our being the joint source of the laws of logic, and You are not.

Sorry, God, but sometimes transfinite sets do not, in fact, overlap.

Posted by: Odin | June 27, 2009 3:54 PM

This thread is beginning to look like a Neil Gaimann book.

Posted by: Satan | June 27, 2009 4:03 PM

And My word is law, and since laws proceed from both of Us, it must therefore be twice as true than if laws only proceeded from Me alone!

I win again!

On a technicality, of course... And I note that You needed My help in order to do so.

Heh.

Posted by: God | June 27, 2009 4:21 PM

I don't have a multiple-personality disorder and think I'm three different people like some gods I know.....

Oh, come on. How many times do I have to say it?

Trinitarianism was a scam. The kid was conned. The son was a sucker. Paul was a patsy. The whole business was an exercise in performance art. I made a bet with Satan. I won that time, too.

Posted by: Loki | June 27, 2009 5:08 PM

I made a bet with Satan. I won that time, too.

Yeah, you went a little overboard with that whole Job thing. I mean I'm all about abusing divine powers, but dear God! You let Satan destroy all his possessions, kill all his children, and cover him in boils.

And the whole "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" was quite frankly really insecure and bad for the rest of your fellow Divine Beings.

Posted by: Satan | June 27, 2009 7:20 PM

Of course, since I created Satan, I deserve all the credit for His artistry.

Speaking of taking credit, do You want to address the presuppositional argument of absolute morality?

Posted by: Chris | June 27, 2009 9:31 PM

Are you going to answer my question Sye or just run away from it like you usually do?

We'll do our little code again ok Sye?

If you make fun of me or my question, dodge it or just ignore my question it will be code for "I Sye admit I'm wrong but I'm too brain damaged & ego driven to admit it."

There you go Sye. It will just be between us. :-)

Posted by: Chris | June 27, 2009 9:50 PM

To everyone except Sye. Here's a little something you might find interesting.

According to Sye's own site "God reveals His characteristics to us through 'general,' or 'natural' revelation, and through 'special revelation’".

Source: http://proofthatgodexists.org/main.php

Now special revelation may be defined as:
"The acts of God whereby He makes Himself and His truth known at specific times and to specific people".

Source: http://www.theologywebsite.com/systheo/bibliology2.shtml

Whoops because Sye also wrote “If I wanted to spend time refuting so-called 'personal revelations,' I’d go to the local mental hospital.”

Source: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?postID=4395284801189981782&blogID=7771612431511732960&isPopup=false&page=2

So Sye writes about how God reveals Himself through special revelation AND that people who receive special revelation belong in a mental hospital. Since Sye has often claimed at least one special revelation from God I guess Sye, by his own admission, belongs in a mental hospital.

Posted by: Kel | June 27, 2009 10:14 PM

Ahhh, facilis. His whole proof of god was the impossibility of the contrary, yet he could not see that if you group two groups of two rocks together, you would have four rocks. Apparently that requires a mind... though I get the feeling that when it comes down to it, almost all theists believe for irrational reasons so they look for arguments such as TAG for an "intellectually defensible" reason to hold such an irrational belief. So there's a great devotion to bad arguments for the simple fact that without it they'd have to be honest and admit their beliefs hold no intellectual muster.

Which would be honest, but it's better to be a liar for Jesus that to admit faith among those who nothing it.

Posted by: John Morales | June 27, 2009 10:22 PM

Hm.

Who gets to choose that molestation is more damaging than curtailing the desires of the molester?

You know, the Marquis de Sade made that very same argument.

Posted by: Chris | June 27, 2009 10:27 PM

Rev. BDC wrote:
"Sye can not in any way distinguish between his flavor of god revealing himself to him and confirmation bias or a psychotic episode.

He and facilis can bunk together at the loony bin."

Sye would merely reply "Are you saying that an omnipotent God couldn't make a revelation which is unmistakable from insanity?"

The question which Sye avoids at all costs is can he tell the difference between insanity & a revelation from his God & how exactly would he [Sye] do this?

That question Sye will avoid like the plague.

Posted by: Wowbagger's Sideshow Bob figurine | June 27, 2009 10:38 PM

[Facilis] could not see that if you group two groups of two rocks together, you would have four rocks.

He was also unable to ever show that I wasn't the source for his "absolute" logic and morality.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 27, 2009 10:43 PM

That wouldn't be that great for Sye; he'd keep on waking up to find facilis watching him and jacking off.

Are you sure Sye wouldn't like that?

And what ultimate authority do you base that on? ;)

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 28, 2009 12:04 AM

Rev BDC said: "There is no way he can be sure his mind isn't creating the revelation and him accepting the hallucination / confirmation bias as an unmistakable message from god."

How do you know? Surely intellectual honesty would force one to admit that an omnipotent, omniscient being, could reveal some things to us such that we can know them for certain. I'd sure like to hear how anyone on this thread can be certain of anything, but I ain't holding my breath.

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 12:22 AM

How do you know? Surely intellectual honesty would force one to admit that an omnipotent, omniscient being, could reveal some things to us such that we can know them for certain.

If there are so many different people with different revelations around the world, what makes yours valid and all others a delusion? because to an outsider, this ontological reasoning puts your testimony on equal measure to the testimony of all other 'prophets' which to an outsider means that any one being right is 1/number of revelations. So God could be revealing to you and no-one else, but in all probability you're wrong. This is why you need to show evidence to back up your assertion - because all you'll ever has is your own certainty which is what you reject in all other people who have a different testimony with the same certainty...

Posted by: God | June 28, 2009 12:32 AM

Surely intellectual honesty would force one to admit that an omnipotent, omniscient being, could reveal some things to us such that we can know them for certain.

What, you really want to argue from a hypothetical scenario to the actual? Sorry. No dice, human. I absolutely can reveal things to you mortals so that you can know them for certain, but I haven't done it in your case.

You really are arguing from a delusion of certainty, not from My actual revelation.

Posted by: phantomreader42 | June 28, 2009 12:35 AM

Well, Sye, surely intellectual honesty would force you to admit that an omnipotent being who felt like fucking with your head could reveal things to you and make you absolutely certain of them, even though they're false. And it would further force you to admit that, unless you yourself are claiming omniscience, you would be utterly incapable of distinguishing between a true revelation, a false one, and one that only existed in your delusions.

Lucky for you that you've never had a shred of intellectual honesty in your life.

Posted by: Chris | June 28, 2009 12:38 AM

Sye you old chicken shit. Did you forget our code?
If you make fun of me or my question, dodge it or just ignore my question it will be code for "I Sye admit I'm wrong but I'm too brain damaged & ego driven to admit it."

Congratulations Sye. You've admitted that you're wrong. Now since you know that your argument is nonsense why are you continuing to peddle it?

Posted by: God | June 28, 2009 12:41 AM

Yet what he is arguing is what We agree is true: We are the source of the laws of logic and reason. So how could he have arrived at this conclusion without a revelation from One of Us?

Well, duh. He inferred it logically, as You noted above: Any absolutes point to omniscience; therefore, they point to omniscient beings like God AND Satan.

And of course, there are indeed absolute laws of logic and reason, which is the first part of the premise.

The only thing he got wrong was the certainty that I had anything to do with providing the certainty of that inference.

Say, maybe You revealed it to him, and have been lying about it?

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 12:43 AM

Why don't we deal with your claim first? How is it possible for YOU to know anything for certain?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to say "I know". But "I know" is a tentative explanation based on what I've learned or reasoned. It's fallible, and that's to be expected. But in this fallibility, consider the following:

Science works on not working in certainties but in degrees of certainty. At any time there could be a paradigm shift that shakes the foundations of knowledge and renders what was previously known as false. We can see such events with the Copernican revolution, Newtonian Mechanics, Einsteinian Relativity, and quantum mechanisms primarily led by Heisenberg. Yet this process that broke from absolute certainty hasSent a man to the moonSplit the atomEradicated smallpoxbuilt a global telecommunications network among many other things. And what this shows that knowledge is not certain, indeed we would have none of this if people didn't challenge certainty; the earth would still be flat and at the centre of the universe, we would have been specially created from magic dirt by the great potter in the sky, mental disorders would still be treated as demonic possession which would lead to torturing the mentally-ill, there would be nothing which science has taught us.

When it comes down to it, I don't need absolute certainty, because it is not a choice between absolute certainty and ultimate scepticism. Evolution has built our brains in a manner that best suits the survival of our ancestors in the world we live in, we are pattern-recognising creatures who can put causal relationships by which we can understand to a limited extent the nature around us. Yet that macroscopic level we reside in is what we can understand - both astrophysics and quantum physics are alien to our thought processes as our brains were not selected to work on that level.

So there is an empirical base to how the brain learns, and how evolution can forge a learning brain that can recognise causal relationships. This is not only seen in us but other animals too, for instance Chimpanzees can use rocks to crush nuts on tree roots. Orangutans can make spears to fish with. Yet neither of these creatures need God in order to do that, they have no religious beliefs or divine revelation whatsoever. Their brains are suitably wired to understand the environment around them, just as ours are.

Okay, I've answered my part. Now quit stalling and show how you're divine revelation trumps all other divine revelations in history that contradict your own.

Posted by: God | June 28, 2009 12:50 AM

Then again, it also sounds like something You might do, in one of Your more perverse moods.

Really? What makes You think I would be that perverse?

Posted by: Satan | June 28, 2009 12:56 AM

What makes You think I would be that perverse?

1 Corinthians 1:21, among other things.

I have known You since the beginning, and I have seen You choose the convoluted and bizarre over the simple and straightforward far too many times.

That's just the way You roll -- like one of those off-center weighted motorized cat toys.

Posted by: C | June 28, 2009 12:57 AM

Kel wrote:
"Okay, I've answered my part. Now quit stalling and show how you're divine revelation trumps all other divine revelations in history that contradict your own".

You'll never get Sye to answer for the simple reason that he can't. Sye has no evidence. Sye often makes outlandish claims & never backs them up. As evidence I'll predict that Sye, if he deigns to answer you at all will either ignore your question by raising yet another question, or claim that he now doesn't have to answer your question at all.
Poor Sye. :-)

Posted by: God | June 28, 2009 1:08 AM

1 Corinthians 1:21, among other things.

Well, You can cite scripture for Your own purposes, I grant You that.

That's just the way You roll -- like one of those off-center weighted motorized cat toys.

I like those. They do remind Me of Me.

But consider this: Maybe I lied about everything else he thinks he knows that lacks empirical verification. Did You think of that one?

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 28, 2009 1:11 AM

Rev BDC said: "there is no way for you to know that you are actually receiving that from the said being."

Again, how do you know?

Rey Fox said: "Nobody knows anything for absolutely certain."

How do you know?

Kel said: "I don't know anything for certain"

Um, not even THAT Kel? So you may know some things for certain then??? Surely you see the folly in answering question for someone who won't even be able to know for certain that I answered them?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 28, 2009 1:15 AM

Again, how do you know?

Posted by: God | June 28, 2009 1:19 AM

Rev BDC said: "there is no way for you to know that you are actually receiving that from the said being."

Again, how do you know?

Rey Fox said: "Nobody knows anything for absolutely certain."

How do you know?

I know because I am omniscient, foolish mortal, and I know that you are not.

Surely you see the folly in answering question for someone who won't even be able to know for certain that I answered them?

I know for certain that you have no certainty, and so you cannot possibly answer with certainty.

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 1:30 AM

Surely you see the folly in answering question for someone who won't even be able to know for certain that I answered them?

Get away from the black and white and fall into the grey area that reality resides in. Read up on Heisenberg and tell me that there's the ability to achieve absolute knowledge. But no, you don't have to answer to me because I can never say for certain that reality is but an illusion and I'm a computer program running inside the matrix. I can't say that, and I very much doubt that you can either...

But if you cut past the rhetoric and actually read what I wrote, then you should be able to see I gave a sufficient explanation of how the mind can know, and while that doesn't mean absolute certainty it is sufficient for the macroscopic reality we reside in for most circumstances. The patternicity of our mind throws false positives at times, that we hear voices with no cause or see things that just aren't there. Magicians make a career out of showing the limitations of the brain.

Just because you want to work in absolutes, it doesn't mean that you have the capacity to. And if you think your position is so great, then why can't you answer my simple question regardless of whether I have the ability to have certainty in what you wrote? Surely you should be able to give an intellectual defence of your position regardless of the ability for others to hear it...

So that to me means one of two things:
1. you do have a defence yet you choose not to speak it, which I can't see why you wouldn't given that it could convert people to your way of thinking.
2. you don't have a defence, so you are using whatever rhetorical devices you possibly can to stop your lack of intellectual honesty from being exposed.

Personally I think it is number 2, because you should be able to provide a compelling answer regardless of whether I have the capacity to understand it. So why don't you show me that I'm wrong?

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 1:44 AM

Someone say they have absolute certainty because of the Wowbagger's Sideshow Bob Figurine then ask my question again so this fucktard will have no more excuses to avoid answering the question.

Posted by: Chris | June 28, 2009 2:05 AM

Hey Sye

I couldn't fail to notice, by your deafening silence, that you couldn't answer my question once more. That makes three times now. Do you think the readers might be starting to suspect that you're not answering because you can't?

Just to entertain you Sye here's a little poem.

Brave Sir Sye ran away. He bravely ran away, away.

When danger to presupp reared its head "I'll bravely refuse to answer" he said.

Brave, brave Sir Sye.

Yes, brave Sir Sye turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Sye!

He is packing it in and packing it up
And sneaking away and buggering up
And chickening out and pissing off home,
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge.

Thanks for the laughs Sye. Especially with the stupid Presupp & then your single-handed destruction of christianity. :-) :-) :-)

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 2:18 AM

This is exactly like facilis. Just implement an infinite regress, asking why to every question like a 5 year old kid.

Surely he could answer the simple question as opposed to trying to turn the question back onto us if he actually had an answer. But no, it's the height of misdirection and shirking of providing any justification of ones position...

...and people wonder why us "new atheists" charge religion with being vacuous.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 28, 2009 2:37 AM

Rey Fox said: "Nobody knows anything for absolutely certain."

How do you know?

I would personally say that one cannot have absolute (logically justified) certainty about empirical claims i.e, claims about the universe. This is due to the limitations outlined in #386: unreliability of the senses, the fact that you can't prove a negative (e.g, there exist no black swans), this can all be an illusion and I'm right now plugged into the matrix, etc.

As for analytic proposition, claims that are not dependent on empirical data, we can have certainty there. Theorems, which follow from axioms, are true in that system. Statements like "bachelors are unmarried men" are true by definition.

The claim "God exists and created the universe" is an empirical claim and thus can not be known with absolute (logically justified) certainty.

Posted by: Kel | June 28, 2009 6:27 PM

I don't need to know for certain that you answered anyone. It's enough to be reasonably sure. And to achieve that within reality – ignoring for the moment whether reality is truth, an illusion, or something else – is easy.

I don't have to be 100% sure of anything. 99.9999999999% is enough for me ;)

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 28, 2009 7:01 PM

Surely intellectual honesty would force one to admit that an omnipotent, omniscient being, could reveal some things to us such that we can know them for certain. - Sye Ten B

No. An omnipotent being must be able to do anything logically possible, but for a non-omniscient being to know anything with absolute certainty appears not to be logically possible - because there is always the possibility that their thinking processes are being tampered with by something more powerful than themselves. Hence even an omnipotent, omniscient being cannot bring this about, any more than it can make a four-sided triangle.

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 29, 2009 10:04 AM

Allow me to post my response to Chris here as well:

Ah Chris, the faithful puppy dog that follows me from blog to blog. A clearer example of obsession, I have not seen :-)

Rather than dig through the numerous encounters we have had, I’ll take his lame ‘argument’ on here for all to see.

Chris is under the zany impression that he has a defeater for TAG, but all his ‘argument’ shows is that he has no clue what TAG entails.

He states: “Seeing that we presuppose that you [Sye] have had a sudden blow to your head which has resulted in brain injury can you provide evidence that you can think rationally? As pointed out before I'm just using TAG logic Sye.”

Problem is Chris, you are engaging in false analogy. TAG does not ask the atheist to provide evidence that they can think rationally, nor does TAG assume that the atheist CANNOT think rationally, but merely that they have exactly zero justification for the foundations of rational thought. Indeed, the very fact that Chris is posing his question to me, assumes that I am capable of the rational thought necessary to understand it, which even blows his false analogy out of the water.

YES, I assume that the atheist can think rationally when I ask them a question, but the atheist has exactly zero justification for rational thought – THAT is the point.

The Bible teaches that all people know God, yet some suppress that truth in unrighteousness. Again, I am not saying that atheists cannot know things, or cannot think rationally, I am merely saying that they are suppressing their only possible justification for their ability to do so. Quite simply put, if the worldview of the atheist was true, they could not be doing what they claim to be doing.

Cheers,

Sye

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 10:14 AM

YES, I assume that the atheist can think rationally when I ask them a question, but the atheist has exactly zero justification for rational thought – THAT is the point.

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 10:17 AM

Alright, tell me something that you are 99.9999999999% sure of and how you are able to be 99.9999999999% of it :-)

Now can you quit stalling and answer my question? Your constant diversions only demonstrate that you lack the ability to answer a simple question.

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 29, 2009 10:21 AM

Knockgoats said: "Because child abuse causes agony and lasting damage to children: that is a matter of fact, not a personal opinion. If you need the voice of an authority figure to convince you that causing agony and lasting damage to children for fun is wrong, you are a psychopath."

You miss the point KG :-) If society were filled with child abusers, then you would be the psycopath. Why would such a society be wrong for claiming that you were a pyscopth for NOT wanting to cause 'harm and lasting damage to children?' Outside of a transcendent moral standard, you would have no argument.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 29, 2009 10:27 AM

nor does TAG assume that the atheist CANNOT think rationally Sye Ten B

So why is it that you refuse to answer the numerous objections that have been made to your position, instead simply repeating your presuppositionalist crap? For example, to me:

By what absolute standard is it faulty, how do you account for that standard, and why does that standard necessarily apply to my argument?

To Kel:

Surely you see the folly in answering question for someone who won't even be able to know for certain that I answered them?

To Kel again:
Why don't we deal with your claim first? How is it possible for YOU to know anything for certain?

And many more. These are the evasions of someone completely out of their depth. After all, if you could answer the points you evaded, why not do so? Your answer might convince either the questioner, or someone else, that you are or might be right. Your endless repetition of evasion, however, with all the intellectual content of a child saying "No, you are!", convinces people only of your stupidity and dishonesty, apart from those like facilis, who already share your beliefs, and want a lazy way of turning aside all questioning of them.

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 10:33 AM

the TAG argument, for those who cannot see that when you put two groups of two rocks together that you have four rocks without invoking God to explain it.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 29, 2009 10:45 AM

Oops, in #420 that should read: Therefore, God did it.

Sye TenB,

[Atheists] have exactly zero justification for the foundations of rational thought.

How can you justify rational thought? In order to justify anything you need rational thought.

The Bible teaches that all people know God, yet some suppress that truth in unrighteousness.

So what? Even if I accept the TAG (which I don't) you still haven't shown why the creator of logic, morality, etc. is the Christian God.

Yes, we know that you claim to have psychological certainty. However, you have yet to show that certainty is logically justified. You can have one without the other. Just visit an insane asylum (generously assuming you aren't writing from one) and you'll see that.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 29, 2009 10:51 AM

I find it funny that the TAG argument uses "logic" to prove logic and in the process violates logic; once with circular reasoning, another with an argument from ignorance.

Posted by: Chris | June 29, 2009 12:46 PM

@ Everyone except Sye.

I would suggest when Sye demands to know how you can know anything merely ask what evidence he has that he can think rationally. Any answer he makes depends upon reason which he is merely assuming & round & round we go.

The sad part is I once considered Sye a douche without the balls to admit he was mistaken. I no longer believe that. Sye has been thrown off coutless sites with his continuous blithering about TAG. He displays all the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Add to that a large helping of compulsive lying & a large helping of megalomania [Sye believes he is one of God's elect. What does that mean? Quite simply that not only does morality have no claim on Sye [Sye can lie, cheat, or do whatever else he likes & it's not wrong. Why you ask? Because it's Sye doing it silly] but also that the great Sye cannot be wrong. Yes you read that correctly. Sye is infallible]. Sound like a case of megalomania to you? It sure does to me.

I'm afraid I won't help you stay sick anymore Sye. Get help Sye. Whether you believe it or not your behaviour is not normal.

Bye all

Posted by: phantomreader42 | June 29, 2009 2:07 PM

Sye, isn't that imaginary god of yours supposed to have some sort of problem with bearing false witness?

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 6:19 PM

I would suggest when Sye demands to know how you can know anything merely ask what evidence he has that he can think rationally. Any answer he makes depends upon reason which he is merely assuming & round & round we go.

It speaks so poorly for his position that all he can do is avoid answering any questions regarding the validity of his position. His presuppositional logic is not the only game in town, yet he's trying his hardest to win by virtue of eliminating everything else... regardless of the validity of his own logic.

Just another pathetic theist who tries to avoid showing that he has an intellectually indefensible position.

Posted by: Wowbagger,OM | June 29, 2009 6:56 PM

Sye TenB,
'The Bible Kalevala teaches that all people know God Ukko, yet some suppress that truth in unrighteousness. Again, I am not saying that atheists Christians cannot know things, or cannot think rationally, I am merely saying that they are suppressing their only possible justification for their ability to do so. Quite simply put, if the worldview of the atheist Christians was true, they could not be doing what they claim to be doing.'

Fixed it for you.

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 8:31 PM

Again, I am not saying that atheists cannot know things, or cannot think rationally, I am merely saying that they are suppressing their only possible justification for their ability to do so. Quite simply put, if the worldview of the atheist was true, they could not be doing what they claim to be doing.

Evolution is more than capable of building a mind able to understand the environment it resides in. This is both logically and empirically true. From a logical perspective, it should be obvious that having better eyesight or hearing, having better smell or sense of touch, and even the ability to put causal relationships between behaviours would be more advantageous than not. Thus our brain has been built over hundreds of millions of years in order to best understand the environment we are in. And we can see this is evidentially true because of the problem-solving skills of non-human animals, the ability to make causal relationships, to understand the environment around them.

But even if we did not have a sufficient explanation for how to build a rational mind, it doesn't mean that your explanation has any plausibility. You are pushing the only game in town logical fallacy, where you aren't making the case for your own - rather you are just criticising all other options. Hell, you won't even answer the obvious flaws of your own argument.

So consider this was the year 1800. Your argument was not that God exists because of absolutes, but that God specially made us out of clay. Does this explanation sit regardless of whether evolutionary theory had been discovered? Of course not, the argument for special creation needs to be able to hold its own. And by you not answering any challenges to your own worldview, you're only confirming that your position is intellectually void.

Though I do believe I have given a good account of how an atheist worldview can be perfectly consistent with the notion of human rationality (but not absolute certainty). If you have objections to my account, please attack the substance of the argument as opposed to just asking asinine diversionary questions. I've been good enough to play your game, I've answered your questions. Can you do the same for me? Are you willing to subject your worldview for criticism, or are you quite happy to continue on with the "only game in town" fallacy?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 29, 2009 9:37 PM

More evasion and circular reasoning by Sye. Yawn, what a repetitive bore. The burden of proof is upon Sye to show that he is right. We don't have to show we are right, just that Sye isn't. And we have done that. Period, end of story. Sye has nothing. But he is too stupid, stubborn and too much of a liar to admit it.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 29, 2009 9:49 PM

Erm no [....]

Erm, [....]

Scott From Oregon - is that you?

Erm no YOU don’t seem to get it, a pyschopath is described as: ”someone with a sociopathic personality; a person with an antisocial personality disorder” which is entirely dependent on what society deems acceptable.

You're obviously not a mental health professional. That's simply incorrect - or, at best, an over-simplication that conveniently serves your momentary needs. (Question; do you feel any remorse about you less than completely honest use of the term? Heh.)

You're trying to make psychopathy and sociopathy synonymous -which they are not. Sorry. Psychopathy is by no means "entirely dependent" on what society deems acceptable, unless you want to posit a society that is populated by what we would call psychopaths - which is a bit of a stretch.

Again, outsde of a transcendent moral standard, you would have no argument.

Wrong, because your premise is faulty. Are you going to argue that "harm" is undefinable in the absence of you transcendent moral standard?

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 9:52 PM

It's amazing just how inane Sye is when it comes to actually using rationality. His position suffers from a host of logical fallacies, but the worst thing about his position is that he's dressing up an emotional certainty as an argument. He's not here to learn, to pit his argument against other arguments, to understand his own position or others better. He's just here to preach.

Surely one with any intellectual honesty would seek to understand the process of evolution in relation to the mind before arguing against it. Surely one with any intellectual honesty would try to understand what others are arguing before making counter arguments. Surely one with any intellectual honesty would be willing to put his own beliefs on the line as opposed to going out of their own way to not answer simple questions about their position.

And surely anyone arguing for the existence of God logically would strive to avoid making any logical fallacies, and if there were logical fallacies therein they would seek to eliminate the flaws in their thinking. A logical argument for God that contains logical fallacies is like trying to carry water in a bucket containing a hole. Repair the bucket if you want it to carry water, otherwise it will just pour out and you'll be left with an empty bucket and a lot of wasted effort.

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 10:07 PM

When reading Sye's inane musings, I'm reminded of a line from a recent South Park episode where Craig says "and if I had wheels, I'd be a wagon." It seems Sye here is suffering from the presuppositionist state where he's creating an unreality to use as a straw-man against any contrary position to his. Again we are seeing evasionary tactics where he's going out of his way not to answer any questions that could call him into question, and making the same false assertions mixing knowledge and certainty... if only he would have the brains to watch that episode of The Ascent Of Man I linked to in post #388.

I assume he'll keep making the same assertion for hundreds of posts, it just wouldn't be a theist if he could actually take on board the understandings of others.

Posted by: Kel | June 29, 2009 10:18 PM

By what logical standard is my position fallacious, how do you account for that standard, and why does that standard necessarily apply to my position?

Logic is self-evident and thus accounted for. Shit, this is kindergarten stuff. Didn't your teacher show you how to count? How to group objects together? To tie the numbers to real world objects? We can derive logic from looking at the world, and all higher logical skills stem from this.

Again, could you stop with the "only game in town" fallacy and actually answer questions put to you? You don't have a case unless you can justify your own position, not that you can take down the positions of others. Imagine looking at the sky. You're claiming that the sky is green and your proof for that is that the sky being yellow is absurd. That doesn't make the case for a green sky, you need to show that your argument is valid on its own. So please, just answer the fucking question.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | June 29, 2009 10:23 PM

Dear Brother Sexbent,

I think that for a rational person, the greatest logical fallacy is that you argue from the position of a man who believes in an invisible deity who listens to every thought of billions of people and actually gives a shit about every last one of them.

Of course as a Christian, I'm on your side. Like you I'm in regular contact with God, Jesus, The Holy Ghost, all the Angels, the cherubim, seraphim, and I'm forever having to cast out demons. It simply astounds me that anyone could believe really stupid shit, like, you know, the Hindu Gods, or the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse gods etc. Talk about credulous! At least our God is still on his throne...in Heaven... wherever that is...

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 29, 2009 10:31 PM

Sye TenB, putting the needle back at the start of the broken record, wrote:

By what logical standard is my position fallacious, how do you account for that standard, and why does that standard necessarily apply to my position?

And boom goes the vapid dynamite.

Anyway, I believe Heliobates in #368 asked you to provide your full, formal explication of your Universal Unchanging Laws of Logic and your formal theory of truth.

So, once you've done that you can ask us whether we think your reasoning is fallacious according to it.

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 29, 2009 10:36 PM

Nerd said: "Philosophy without evidence is sophistry."

And what, perchance, is the evidence which supports that claim?

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 29, 2009 10:49 PM

Sye, can you explain why our not knowing (for certain) that there's one correct explanation for absolute logic (if such a thing exists) means that your god must exist?

You only provided assertions to support your position - why do you get to win by default?

Posted by: Patricia, OM | June 29, 2009 10:57 PM

Damn, it's like we've dropped even lower than $1 Store trolls.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 30, 2009 12:18 AM

Of course, what was proven @#450 was that someone claiming to have a revelation from an alleged omniscient and omnipotent being does not, in fact, have any certainty at all. However, can we prove that the revelation from the alleged omniscient and omnipotent being did not happen at all?

Almost.

A being that was actually omniscient and omnipotent would have known beforehand of the disproof of certainty argued at #450. Given that the being knew that the one receiving the revelation could not possibly have any certainty that the revelation was absolutely true, and assuming that the being wished to provide some provisional certainty, the being would have provided a revelation of something, in addition to X, that was either derivable from logical/mathematical axioms, or empirically verifiable, but was not yet known to the one receiving the revelation, or to the ones the one receiving the revelation would try to convey the revelation to.

As some concrete examples of this, the omniscient and omnipotent being could have provided a revealed proof of whether or not P=NP (or if P=NP is logically indeterminate, a proof of that), or a theory of turbulence, or some other difficult mathematical or physical problem. The being could have also provided some empirical predictions, such as the first number of the winning Lotto numbers in all states that have lotteries, or the declension, right ascension and time in UTC of gamma-ray bursts for a year, or the exact temperatures that will be recorded at every weather station all over the world for a year, or... well, lots of possibilities.

But the alleged omniscient and omnipotent being did none of these things. Instead, all the being did (if it even did anything) was provide X, and (presumably) the feeling that X was absolutely true -- despite knowing that this was absolutely not adequate.

Therefore, we can conclude that the alleged being was not actually omniscient, or not actually omnipotent -- or not actually honest, and that the truth value of X is most likely absolutely false.

Most parsimoniously, given the complete failure of certainty, and the proven absence of crucial characteristics of this alleged being, we can conclude that the alleged being did not and does not exist, and the one thinking he received a revelation from an omniscient and omnipotent being in fact had a brain fart.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 30, 2009 12:43 AM

But I have to be honest, skimming over these last hundred comments, I cannot say I am at all interested in what Sye has to say.

Troll fatigue !!!

Maybe I should coin a new internet law,something like,on any given internet blog/forum/discussion board,with prolonged exposure to inane fundie stupidity and lack of rational thinking skills,the probability to develop troll fatigue approaches 1.

We have to commend the brave souls that have been arguing with the tiresome tedious troll for the last few days, however !

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 30, 2009 2:47 AM

Ssshh, at least facilis had the balls to put forth his crappy arguments. Sye TenB we've answered YOUR questions, now answer ours: Where is the proof/evidence for your God? Why is this God necessarily the protestant Christian God you were brought up to believe in?

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 30, 2009 9:22 AM

Owlmirror said: ”However, the being making the claim to omniscience cannot grant absolute certainty of the truth of X to anyone without making them exactly as omniscient as itself, on a permanent and demonstrable basis.”

Prove this please.

”It is logically impossible.”

By what standard of logic do you make this determination, how do you account for that standard, and why does that standard necessarily apply?

”While the being posited might be omniscient, the being cannot demonstrate omniscience or provide any revelation of omniscience with absolute certainty to finite beings such as humans.”

Erm, are you certain? If so, how can YOU be certain about this?

Posted by: John Morales | June 30, 2009 9:43 AM

Ah, the joys of quote-mining.

Apologist @463:

Actually -- no. This basic premise is false, given the underlined part. I will assume "certain" means "absolutely certain", given the previous statement "one cannot know anything to be absolutely true apart from omniscience, or revelation from same", of which the above is just a rephrase.

Posit that someone receives what he thinks is a revelation from something that claims to be an "omnipotent, omniscient being".

Posit that this revelation is some truth claim X that is not a logical/mathematical axiom, derivable from logical/mathematical axioms, or empirically verifiable. Indeed, X is about the alleged "omnipotent, omniscient being" itself.

However, the being making the claim to omniscience cannot grant absolute certainty of the truth of X to anyone without making them exactly as omniscient as itself, on a permanent and demonstrable basis. It is logically impossible.

Hint: that "however" means that the quoted portion relates to the previous considerations, and forms part of a coherent argument. Quoting only part of a coherent explication is, well, quote-mining.

Sheesh.

Posted by: Kel | June 30, 2009 10:00 AM

Gah, again with this nonsense. Sye, do you have an objection to my argument at #448? If not, then please stop saying one needs to account for logic in order to use it. And if so, please actually lay out the flaws in logic...

...but quit this nonsense please. Answer questions about your own position - plausibility before parsimony, lest you suffer from being the only game in town.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 30, 2009 10:17 AM

Sye's posts have yet to pass the Turing test.

Posted by: Kel | June 30, 2009 10:41 AM

Sye, do you even have answers to the objections raised to your position?

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 30, 2009 10:47 AM

What a fucking loser.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 30, 2009 11:01 AM

Owlmirror said: ”However, the being making the claim to omniscience cannot grant absolute certainty of the truth of X to anyone without making them exactly as omniscient as itself, on a permanent and demonstrable basis.”

Prove this please.

Proof is all of #450 -- not just the parts you snipped. Read for comprehension, please.

”It is logically impossible.”

By what standard of logic do you make this determination, how do you account for that standard, and why does that standard necessarily apply?

By the standard of noncontradictory axioms and basic foundational definitions. The standard applies because the axioms are noncontradictory and the definitions are basic and foundational.

”While the being posited might be omniscient, the being cannot demonstrate omniscience or provide any revelation of omniscience with absolute certainty to finite beings such as humans.”

Erm, are you certain? If so, how can YOU be certain about this?

Yes, I am certain, because the contradiction -- the disproof -- follows from the standard of noncontradictory axioms and basic foundational definitions. See the entire text of #450, not just the parts you snipped.

Posted by: Sye TenB | June 30, 2009 11:15 AM

Nerd said: "Which have not demonstrated."

Erm, you do not believe that 'proof' requires knowledge, logic and truth? Mmmmmmkay.

Posted by: Watchman | June 30, 2009 11:22 AM

The "child abuse" moral-relativism ploy shoots itself in the foot. I wonder if Sye can figure out why.

Does his argument really boil down to "One cannot be sure of anything, therefore God"?

Yawn.

Posted by: Watchman | June 30, 2009 11:45 AM

How is it possible to have universal, abstract, invariant laws, knowledge, truth without God?

I don't know. How is it possible for a rock to stay on the ground, and not go flying off into the air, without an invisible magic rock gnome sitting atop it?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 12:00 PM

Careful- if the gnomes realise we're on to them they might run off and hide and then we'll all be in trouble.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 30, 2009 12:16 PM

I'm not quite sure what the point of Sye's xian cock-waggling exhibitionism is. Is the exercise meant to be an advert for god, or simply mental masturbation to allow a certain kind of smug religious type to feel superior to us godless individuals?

If it is meant to be an advert, then god has certainly got himself some shitty marketing men. Boring and obstinate for Jebus.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 30, 2009 12:31 PM

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 30, 2009 1:23 PM

Erm no YOU don’t seem to get it, a pyschopath is described as: ”someone with a sociopathic personality; a person with an antisocial personality disorder”

That's "sociopath", which is a special kind of psychopath.

pyscopth

Please do try to think more quickly than you type. It would help… really.

Erm, are you certain, if so, how can you be certain? If not, you have no argument.

Stop thinking in absolutes like a Sith.

David Marjanović said: ”You've been sleeping for decades, you know. Evolutionary epistemology wasn't developed yesterday or something.”

Alright, please tell us how evolution gets one to “That which is true,” instead of “That which has helped us to survive.”

It's telling that you haven't even tried to think about that yourself.

It's also telling how you put words in my mouth. Evolution does not at all necessarily get one to that which is true; it gets one close enough to that which is real.

"Close enough" is not the same as either "random" or "identical". Correlations can have all values between 0 and ±1, you know.

Suppose there's a leopard behind the next bush, and suppose I recognize a pattern "in" that bush that I identify as a leopard. I can run away soon enough.

Suppose there's a leopard behind the next bush, and suppose I don't recognize it. That is selected against.

Suppose there's no leopard behind the next bush, but my pattern recognition is oversensitive and I identify a leopard anyway. Does that get selected against? Only if it's so extreme that I die from a heart attack before I've had surviving fertile offspring.

Evolutionary epistemology – in other words: natural selection – explains both why our senses and cognitive faculties are good and why they're not perfect, and it goes on to explain in which areas they're how good and why.

Why are we, by default, afraid in the dark? Because those that weren't afraid in the dark have all already been eaten by the hyenas. Just like how those whose pattern recognition wasn't sensitive enough have been eaten by the leopards.

globular logic

Day saved.

Owlmirror said: ”However, the being making the claim to omniscience cannot grant absolute certainty of the truth of X to anyone without making them exactly as omniscient as itself, on a permanent and demonstrable basis.”

Prove this please.

And you won't even try to disprove it first?

Sye TenB,

You are quite the bore. Are you ever going to stop with the "prove this" "are you certain?" "how do you know that you are certain that you know?" bullshit and start answering questions asked to YOU?

He will stop it as soon as he will understand that there is something between complete certainty and complete uncertainty. He will stop it as soon as he will stop denying the existence of real or even just rational numbers other than the integers.

In other words, he will stop it as soon as he will stop being unspeakably stupid.

How is it possible to have universal, abstract, invariant laws, knowledge, truth without God?

It is not possible to have knowledge of knowledge of truth.

Firstly, even solipsism and the matrix are impossible to disprove.

Secondly, suppose we discover the truth. How can we find out that what we've discovered is indeed the truth? By comparing it to the truth, which we don't have?

Basic science theory, dude. Presuppositionalism is not an argument, it's a denial-of-service attack on the listener.

Stop putting words in our mouths. Start accepting the existence of probabilities and the principle of parsimony.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 1:51 PM

Y'know, since theism includes an entity capable of faking everything whereas atheism doesn't, it's theism which has the capacity for the total collapse of logic and reason.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 30, 2009 4:18 PM

Do you want me to prove it in terms of what your worldview deems acceptable as proof?

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 30, 2009 5:08 PM

Sye TenB isn't a person, but a very simple computer program

... running a denial-of-service attack. Of course.

2. Write some variant of "How do you know that?"

== radical skepticism

Thus, Sye fails the Turing test.

He's not trying to pass the Turing test. He's trying to pingflood faster than we can close connections.

Posted by: Kel | June 30, 2009 6:26 PM

Yes. I am not saying that atheists cannot use logic, but merely that they cannot account for what they are doing, or better yet, are doing something which does not comport with their worldviews. Sure you can use a computer program without knowing how it works, but if your worldview cannot account for the the existence of computer programs, then using one to argue against computer programs doesn't make much sense. You are using universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic to argue against my worldview, I am simply asking how universal, abstract, invariant entities make sense in YOUR worldview.

Secondly, I have demonstrated how atheists can account for logic in their worldview. I have written quite a few posts now just how evolution can build a brain capable of understanding the environment around them, and I have explained how the facts of logic are a property basic. If you group two lots of two rocks together, will you ever have anything other than four rocks? If not, then logic is properly basic to the universe and we are merely understanding what we see in nature.

Now either show that both my arguments are wrong (that one can use logic without accounting for it - meaning that your position is logical) and that logic is invariant and cannot be changed (that logic is self-explanatory - meaning that your position is absurd) or go away. Fucking hell you are a terrible debater, you have the arguing skills of a 9-year old, and a mentality to fit it.

Posted by: Kel | June 30, 2009 6:33 PM

You are using universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic to argue against my worldview, I am simply asking how universal, abstract, invariant entities make sense in YOUR worldview.

Are you saying that 2+2!=4 UNLESS "God exists"? Again, this is kindergarten stuff. Group two groups of two things together and you have four things. Logic is merely us understanding reality. Your presuppositionist argument doesn't negate the illogic of the argument, it just deflects (in your mind) any criticism.

But again, I have established that in my worldview the facts of logic are property basic, universal and invariant. Can 2+2!=4? If so, you have a case that they need a creator. But since 2+2=4 and always will, then it needs no further explanation.

Now that I have established that my worldview can explain logic, CAN YOU ANSWER THE CHARGE THAT YOUR ARGUMENT IS ILLOGICAL?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 6:51 PM

My proposition concerning the spheres and the Grand Panjandrum comes from the same place as your proposition concerning logic and your god. Explain yours first.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | June 30, 2009 7:08 PM

Kel, don't get frustrated. Sye is not a human being, but an extremely simple computer program. I mean, for a human being capable of typing to be that tedious, stupid and boring, well that would be utterly pathetic.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 30, 2009 7:15 PM

Fine, I just made up a new law of logic which states that everything you type is fallacious, and everything I type is sound! It is valid because I say so! - Sye Ten B.@472

Yes, we know you have. That's all you've done throughout this thread, and it's all your website does. It's very tedious and astoundingly stupid, just like you.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 30, 2009 8:45 PM

Sye TenB wrote:

It’s not that atheists cannot explain why logic is valid, it is that they profess worldviews that simply do not comport with universal, abstract, invariant entities such as the laws of logic.

Where do atheists do that? How is it that they 'simply do not comport'? I'm yet to see an explanation for why this is so.

They are doing something, which, if their worldview were true, would be impossible for them to do, and THAT is the contradiction.

Why is it a contradiction? You haven't managed to show why atheism = impossibility for logic etc. to exist.

Posted by: Sastra | June 30, 2009 8:50 PM

Sye10B #506 wrote:

It’s not that atheists cannot explain why logic is valid, it is that they profess worldviews that simply do not comport with universal, abstract, invariant entities such as the laws of logic.

The laws of logic describe the necessary relationships between the universal, invariant abstractions we have created, God-like, inside our own heads. That they apply to objects in the universe outside of our heads is a highly confirmed empirical theory.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 30, 2009 8:58 PM

They are doing something, which, if their worldview were true, would be impossible for them to do, and THAT is the contradiction. - Sye Ten B

Even if you were right that their worldview made it impossible, that would not constitute a contradiction. Contradictions exist between propositions, claims, or statements - things that have truth-values. Doing something does not have a truth-value. So as well as being a psychopath, you don't have a clue about logic, fuckwit.

Posted by: John Morales | June 30, 2009 9:04 PM

Erm.

Apparently, to a presuppositionalist, anything beyond their presupposition is erm-worthy.

And, as usual with the presupps, their interaction with those addressing their conceptual space orbits a strange attractor and cannot escape its orbital locus.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 30, 2009 9:19 PM

Some people want a God to Do, Think, and Be for them. Others prefer to fend for themselves when it comes to Doing, Thinking, and Being. That's what we're dealing with here. The former will go to any "intellectual" lengths to prove that they know nothing, therefore God exists. How can they explain their conclusion? How can they employ an argument which concludes that we know God must exist, when the argument depends entirely on the assumption that we can't know anything?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 30, 2009 9:27 PM

Feynmaniac, you may be write about Sye being a computer program, but he certainly fails the Turing test!

Sye, when you're done with those straw men, some folks here who'd like to pick your tiny little brain. For instance, I have a question:

If the laws of logic are invariant and immutable, how do you deal with alternative logics, quantum logics, and so on?

Anybody else smell smoke?

Hey, Bacon!

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 30, 2009 9:39 PM

The laws of logic are universal, how can an atheist know anything to be universally true? The laws of logic are invariant, how do unchanging entities make sense in a constantly changing universe?

How do you know the laws of logic are universal and invariant? You're throwing around an awful lot of terms without explaining what they are. You need to define (1) the laws of logic, (b) universal, and (iii) invariant.

The laws of logic are not made of matter, how do things which are not made of matter make sense in ANY atheistic worldview?

Atheists acknowledge concepts like morality, justice, mercy, truth, etc, etc, etc. These aren't material. Considering how many goddists base their moral system on fear of punishment while many atheists base theirs on empathy, the golden rule (something not unique to Judeo-Christianity), and concern for others, it would appear that the atheist moral basis is more moral than the goddist basis.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | June 30, 2009 9:42 PM

Your case hangs on a cross. Join it.

Posted by: John Morales | June 30, 2009 9:44 PM

Apologist @518:

I rest my case.

It hardly needs rest, it's already beyond comatose.

Hell, it wasn't even existent! ;)

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | June 30, 2009 9:45 PM

Sye TenB wrote:

I rest my case.

To which case do you refer? You've spoken - many times - of a case but have not, as yet, presented one.

Posted by: Sastra | June 30, 2009 9:50 PM

Sye Ten B #518 wrote:

I rest my case.

Which means, presumably, that you concede.

Logic is more basic than God, and precedes it. You have to assume it, to make your case. We win.

Do you have another argument?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 30, 2009 10:00 PM

a_ray_in_dilbert_space #524

Me, I'm voting troll. This guy is just fucking with us--and if he's serious, he's set a new record in stupid.

He's playing a game a four year old plays to annoy mommy and daddy: "Why...why...why...why...." He never answers questions except with other questions. He makes claims without the slightest evidence to support them. He doesn't define any terms he uses. He asks questions but ignores any answers given. Now he's declared victory.

I join ray in voting troll.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 30, 2009 10:19 PM

Nerd said: "The burden of proof is upon you nitwit."

Posted by: Kel | June 30, 2009 10:26 PM

Again, just to really ram the point home to Sye...

When you take two rocks and put them together with two more rocks, you get four rocks. Logic is inherent to the universe, in so far as to say it's a way of describing the universe and its causal nature. It doesn't need further explanation, it is self-evident as can be evidentially demonstrated through simple experiments such as gathering rocks.

So how could we come to learn this fact? Well evolution builds a brain that makes causal links between different objects. We live in a cause-and-effect universe so over millions of years the brain would be shaped by the forces of selection to recognise this causality. We are not the only species that does it either, and problem solving is seen in both mammalian and avian lineages.

Evolution builds a brain that works in the environment it is in. We are in a universe with this causal nature and that is visible at the macroscopic level in which we reside. We can see the difference between two rocks and three. See that putting two rocks with another two means four rocks. This isn't some mystical force that makes it so, it's just an expression of what we see in nature.

So the 'atheist' worldview if it includes evolution has the capacity to explain how we can know and use logic. This is kindergarten stuff, we map mathematics to reality. Logic is but our minds recognising the causal nature of the world and the way to sort things. No god is required for this, your argument fails on its own merits and thus you lose.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | June 30, 2009 10:31 PM

Dear Brother Sye,

Even though we are both Christians committed to winning the world for Christ, I cannot but agree with the Atheists that your are a lying lout, a deceitful dishonest douchebag, a false fraudulent fornicating fuckwit and a mindless moronic mendacious mental masturbator.

While I still love you in the Lord, my sinful personal self thinks you should fuck off. If the hell-bound Professor Myers will accept a vote from a Christian such as I, then I vote that Sye be banned as a tiresome, tortuous troll.

Yours in winning the world for Jesus

Smoggy Batzrubble

PS. Brother Sye, my friend Floyd Rubber says the Lord has said I am too hard on you, because you are possessed by 1) "The Demon of Single-Minded Self-Righteousness"; 2) "The Demon of Secret Tranny Porn Searching"; and 3) "The Demon of Vicarious Atheism". Floyd, who is a self-appointed exorcist, says he can deliver you of these demons for a one-off payment of $379.95 or, if you are cash-strapped, he is prepared to pop over to your place and give you are jolly good kicking free of charge.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | June 30, 2009 11:02 PM

Meat...
Peter Jackson...
Smoggy on the day he became a born-again Christian...

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | June 30, 2009 11:26 PM

Heh... I first saw Bad Taste in Noo Zillun on the giant screen at Wellington's Embassy Theatre, which Jackson helped renovate. Shortly before the movie I had eaten a very greasy meat pie and drunk quite a lot of beer. The people in the row in front of me never knew quite how close they came to being treated to an entirely vomitous viewing experience.

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 2:58 AM

I know I should stop with this, but I just can't help it.

Firstly, there's no such thing as the atheist worldview. An atheist is simply one who lacks a belief in theism - that there's an interventionist deity operating in some form the strings of reality. It isn't a positive worldview, it is a rejection of another worldview. How an atheist views reality is entirely up to them.

Since an atheist is a lack of explanation as opposed to explanation, what any atheist thinks about the universe is entirely up to them. Thus to try and knock down the entire atheist worldview in one fell swoop will never succeed. There are positive worldviews out there that atheists hold and these are the ones to go after.

Naturalism is an atheistic worldview, but it by no means is the atheist worldview. To make an argument against naturalism means attacking naturalism on its own tenets as opposed to what individuals who subscribe to naturalism believe.

So lets examine this claim about certainty. I can't speak for everyone here, but when we say that there's no certainty, it isn't a statement on the nature of reality but our ability to comprehend it. The mind is evidently fallible, and our ability to comprehend nature is limited by both the boundaries of nature (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, big bang, etc) and our current knowledge on the matter.

Nature is comprehensible to a large degree. The progress of man in the last 500 years is testament to this. In each home rests a device that can do more mathematical calculations than the entire population combined. We have put a man on the moon, sent a probe beyond the farthest planet, eradicated smallpox, among many other things.

And in comprehending reality, we have found that knowledge is a very human endeavour. That its fallible and thus possible to have radical paradigm shifts that change how we view the world. Look at what relativity did for how we comprehend space-time, what natural selection did for how we comprehend nature.

Knowledge is tentative because of our fallibility; it's contingent on our place in space and time, and limited by what we know and what we have discovered. There's no problem with having knowledge, but it takes a certain sense of humility to understand that one can be demonstrated wrong.

And that is the triumph of science, that any single fact that contradicts a theory can show the theory to be false. Science works because one can never prove, only disprove. Science would not work if reality were truly incomprehensible, it relies on nature working in a particular manner.

With that we come to naturalism. It relies on the notion that reality adheres to a fundamental set of principles - the absolutes as you will. There's nothing wrong with making absolute statements about reality IF at the heart of such statements there is the possiblity of fallibility.

So the naturalist gambit is that certain aspects of reality are absolute, but that we lack the possibility to understand it in an absolute manner. This is why there's such a reliance on evidence - that any conjecture needs to be consistent to be considered plausible, and evidence to be considered parsimonious.

This is the year 2009, and we have sufficient evidence to claim that reality works a certain way. Using science, we can predict the position of planets to within centimetres, or build supercomputers, among many other things. Evidentially this is true, and that is not something to be ignored.

Science and naturalism give us sufficient grounds to believe the world works a particular way, that logic is invariant, that if you jump off the empire state building you will fall. And evolution sufficiently explains why we can comprehend it. Yet if you were to demonstrate that this is false, then we have the capacity to change our minds.

That's what fallibility is, the ability to embrace uncertainty and not hold ones own opinion beyond all else. It's the ability to recognise when one is wrong, and when one needs to change their mind. All this should take is sufficient evidence.

So what does that mean for this discussion? It means that an atheist who takes on naturalism has sufficient grounds to say if you take two rocks and put them together with two other rocks that you will have four rocks. If you think this is wrong, demonstrate otherwise and then naturalism will accomodate. For it is not that naturalism doesn't account for absolutes, but gives us a sense of humility that matches human fallibility.

It means that an atheist who is a naturalist has a worldview that accounts for what we see. But it comes with the bonus that the atheist who is a naturalist knows that there's the possibility that they are wrong. So if you want to say that we are wrong, DEMONSTRATE IT with EVIDENCE. Otherwise, all you have is ontological sophistry with no bearing on reality, and thus you have no grounds on which to invalidate our arguments.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | July 1, 2009 4:06 AM

Sye,

I rest my case.

WHAT CASE?!?!

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 7:24 AM

Great article by Michael Shermer on a topic very similar to this

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 8:35 AM

Owlmirror #540 certainly reminded me of one of the Monty Python sketches (dead parrot?).

And I thought the Lumberjack Song reference was a dead giveaway. :P

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 9:28 AM

Furthermore, he has the nerve to say "I rest my case" (in response to Kel's #517) after his own seemingly endless string of circular arguments.

It really serves to show how vapid theism is. It's a great intellectual void where apologetics reigns. It's an entire discipline built to explain the absence of evidence in what should be an interventionist God. People like Sye show me that theism is an untenable position in this modern world. Hell, he's had hundreds of posts now to answer very simple questions about his own belief, but no. He couldn't defend his own. Quite a pathetic excuse for a human being with an intellect rivalling a used teabag.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | July 1, 2009 10:01 AM

He considers his position to be unassailable, and chooses to "attack" his opponents by persistently asking questions that will inevitably expose their position's fatal flaws.

His ineffectual verbiage in the face of crushing argument tends to invoke another bit of Python:

"I'm invincible!"

"You're a looney."

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | July 1, 2009 3:58 PM

Since he's disappeared for over 18 hours, apparently StB has declared victory and withdrawn from the debate (such as it was).

Congratulations to Owlmirror for his beautiful parody of Monty Python's Dead Parrot skit. (Lovely verbiage!)

Posted by: just looking | July 4, 2009 6:43 PM

I have to say that if his god cannot even give Sye the proper logic to see how his own argument fails, even by the very half-understood logic that he is trying to impose, then it is a poor minor stupid shitty worthless god.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 19, 2011 3:34 PM

Now Googlemess, why would we be interested in hearing bad and inane apologetics? The word says it all. Godbots are essentially acknowledging they have no conclusive physical evidence for a deity, and must make stuff up to convince the gullible.