Several weeks ago Brennon, from Brennon's Thoughts, attempted to answer the challenge I’ve placed on my blog for anyone to critique my arguments. He has accepted and a few weeks ago we had a little back and forth discussion at his blog, which I’ve also copied on my blog. This is a continuation of that discussion. Thus far I do not feel he has successfully answered my arguments but we’ll see what he has to say in this and other posts and if he fares any better.
The first post Brennon has posted of his critique can be found here. My post that he is attempting to critique on William Lane Craig’s arguments for god can be found here.
Let’s begin and see if Brennon has successfully answered my arguments.
He begins by saying,
Part of the Arizona Atheist's challenge was to address his arguments against God. Well, in searching through his blog, I actually didn't see many. I did see attempted refutations, specifically of William Lane Craig.
I’ve never written too much about arguments for god specifically but I have written two pieces dedicated to the question. One is called
Against the Gods: Arguments Against God's Existence and the other, William Lane Craig's Arguments for God Refuted, which is linked to above.
As I have noted to AA, refutations of an opponent's arguments are not positive arguments for your own position. An opponent's arguments could all fail, and your opponent's position could still be correct. To show that they are wrong, one needs to provide arguments for one's own position. As of now, I don't see any positive argument's for his position. I will, however, deal with his attempted refutation of Craig's arguments. I have personally studied Craig's arguments quite extensively and think I have a pretty good handle on them.
Now, I do agree that just because an argument fails doesn’t mean something is automatically false, however, by refuting each of your opponent’s philosophical and evidence based arguments it takes away their ability to cite evidence for their beliefs. Do this, and they are left with nothing but faith. By refuting each argument for god it doesn’t mean there isn’t a god out there, such as a deist god for example, but if a theist’s justifications for belief are torn down and shown to be faulty and there is no other evidence one can cite for a position held, it is logical to abandon that belief.
I do not understand his statement that, “[t]o show that they are wrong, one needs to provide arguments for one's own position.” This makes no sense. One doesn’t need to provide evidence of their position to prove someone wrong; only provide evidence against another’s claims. Take god for example. By refuting each of a theist’s arguments you take away their intellectual justification for their belief. The very fact that I’ve shown there is no actual evidence of a god is all I need to do. Sure, as I said before, this doesn’t prove there isn’t a god out there, but how in the world can you prove something doesn’t exist that has no evidence going for it in the first place? That’s like trying to prove fairies don’t exist. There’s simply no evidence for them and therefore people naturally dismiss their existence. It is the same with god.
As William Lane Craig is quoted below, “The premises surely don’t need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence.” Exactly. And the evidence suggests that this is a goddless universe. Can we know this for certain? I don’t know. Perhaps sometime in the future we might as we gain more knowledge of our universe, but as of now, I’d say the answer is no. But, as Craig just said, based upon the evidence at hand we have to make the best calculated decision and the evidence tells us there isn’t a god out there.
I also believe the following is an illogical claim:
An opponent's arguments could all fail, and your opponent's position could still be correct.
If one’s arguments are all shown to be faulty and all alleged evidence for something shown to be false, all one can do is follow where the evidence leads. To argue that, “Well it could still be true” isn’t an argument. It’s faith.
Brennon continues,
AA first addresses Craig's (and most other philosopher's) criteria for a good argument. He quotes Craig as saying,
[L]et’s get clear what makes for a 'good' argument. An argument is a series of statements (called premises) leading to a conclusion. A sound argument must meet two conditions: (1) it is logically valid (i.e., its conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic), and (2) its premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But to be a good argument, it’s not enough that an argument be sound. We also need to have some reason to think that the premises are true. A logically valid argument that has, wholly unbeknownst to us, true premises isn’t a good argument for the conclusion. The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us in order for a sound argument to be a good one. But how much warrant? The premises surely don’t need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence.
AA's response to this is, "this is precisely part of Craig's problem. As I argued in my post Against the Gods, just because an argument is valid philosophically, and follows from it's premises, does not make it true. As even Craig says, the premise must have some solid evidence for it, and it naturally follows that if it doesn't, it should be discarded." How is there a problem for Craig when he acknowledges what AA says is a problem precisely in the quote that is being used to criticize the position?
It seems Brennon has misunderstood what I said, which seems strange since I tried to make myself as clear as possible. But I will do my best to correct his misunderstanding.
Craig’s point was that “[i]f an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But to be a good argument, it’s not enough that an argument be sound. We also need to have some reason to think that the premises are true.” (emphasis mine)
Craig continues, “The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us in order for a sound argument to be a good one.”
And that was my entire point. My goal, which I accomplished, was to show that Craig’s premises were false, thereby refuting his argument, even by Craig’s own admission. His premises were false, and therefore so were his conclusions. And even with Craig arguing that the argument would still be viable should the premises possibly be true is again nothing but faith as I said previously. It then becomes a matter of faith, not evidence and reasoned argument.
Please note: William Lane Craig is a professional philosopher. What constitutes a good argument is entry level philosophy. I think it's a little funny that we have a blogger critiquing a professional philosopher's definition of a good argument. AA may disagree with Craig's arguments, but Craig thinks they are sound; the premises are more plausible than their negations and the conclusions do follow logically. To refute them, AA must either show that they are logically invalid (ie break the rules of logic making them fallacious) or that at least one of the premises are false.
I did not disagree with Craig about what makes a good argument. As I said already I showed that even by Craig’s own statement, his arguments are false since his premises are false.
And I did indeed refute them with scientific facts that so far have not been refuted by anyone to my knowledge. We’ll see what Brennon has to say in future installments.
Part 2 of Brennon’s critique can be found here.
In this critique he is attempting to argue against my evidence against the Cosmological argument and says,
Actually, according to modern physics, there may (emphasis on MAY, see my comment here) be some indeterministic events at the quantum level, but there is certainly an explanation for why those events can happen, namely because the necessary framework needed for the events already exists. In this example (taken from retired cosmologist, Victor Stenger) the atom exists to emit a particle of light. But let's examine the example further. Stenger says that when an atom that is in an excited state drops to a lower level, it emits a photon, and that is an example of a causeless event. Um, really? Seems to me that the cause of the atom emitting a photon is the drop to a lower energy level. We may not know exactly why it happens, but it seems to me in just examining the quote that we don't have an uncaused event.
First of all the comments he links to are irrelevant because he was discussing how the universe coming into being from a quantum state is not ‘nothing’ when that doesn’t answer the current objection at all. As I told him in my reply in our earlier discussion I am discussing how certain events, such as with the decay of a radioactive nucleus, can seemingly happen without cause. The Bohm interpretation is not a very widely accepted theory [1] and even this interpretation says nothing about the behavior of an individual nucleus or atom. These things are still happening unpredictably, seemingly at random, and seemingly without cause. There may be some dispute, but it’s still an issue that has yet to be resolved. You can’t simply dismiss it because others disagree. Until more knowledge is gained it’s still a viable interpretation.
He also repeats his earlier mistake. It seems that Stenger is saying that the combined actions of an atom dropping to a lower energy level and emitting a photon are the actions that seem uncaused. Not that one event causes another.
Brennon further argues,
But even if there are events that seemingly are inexplicable, should we then jettison the PSR? I don't think so. In fact, this seems to amount to nothing but an appeal to ignorance. We don't know the cause, therefore there isn't one. I think, based on our common experience and the strong intuition we have that all things have a sufficient reason for their existing, we should reject the conclusion that there are uncaused events. Can you imagine if scientists started settling for this answer, as the Arizona Atheist has, and saying, "well at first glance we can't figure out the cause, therefore there most likely isn't one"? That would destroy all avenues of science. Just think of the ramifications in criminal forensics!
As I’ve said before just because our “common experience” tells us something is true doesn’t make it so. Where is the evidence that this event has a cause? Brennon has once again utterly failed to do this and is that not also a basic principle of the scientific method? Base your theories on evidence? Something that Brennon is not doing. He’s simply saying there must be cause, but he’s just speculating and has given me no evidence why this might be so. So it’s not I who is disregarding the scientific method, but him.
Not to mention that the scientific data really doesn't support his claim. Another example that has been cited by some atheists is radioactive decay. But, as a friend pointed out, we see that the environment affects how these isotopes decay, suggesting that there is a correlation in nature, which would suggest a cause.
Also consider that if the PSR weren't the case, then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn't simply exist for no reason, or why events don't simply happen uncaused. We always always always look for causes in association with events and existing things.
Premise 1 is also much more plausible than it's negation, which is another property of a strong premise. Consider Richard Taylor's story of finding a translucent ball in the forest. It is ridiculous to state that the translucent ball just exists there without a reason, and increasing the size of the ball up to the size of the universe wouldn't allay the need for an explanation of its existence.1
I did not cite all of what Stenger said about these events and in order to expand upon my argument, and refute Brennon’s argument, I will quote Stenger in full from his book God: The Failed Hypothesis:
Craig has retorted that quantum events are still “caused”, just caused in a nonpredetermined manner - what he calls “probabilistic causality.” In effect, Craig is thereby admitting that the “cause” in his first premise could be an accidental one, something spontaneous - something not predetermined. By allowing probabilistic cause, he destroys his own case for a predetermined creation.
We have a highly successful theory of probabilistic causes - quantum mechanics. It does not predict when a given event will occur, and indeed, assumes that individual events are not predetermined. The one exception occurs in the interpretation of quantum mechanics given by David Bohm. This assumes the existence of yet-undetected subquantum forces. While this interpretation has some supporters, it is not generally accepted because it requires superluminal connections that violate the principles of special relativity. More important, no evidence for subquantum forces has been found.
Instead of predicting individual events, quantum mechanics is used to predict the statistical distribution of outcomes of ensembles of similar events. This it can do with high precision. For example, a quantum calculation will tell you how many nuclei in a large sample will have decayed after a given time. Or you can predict the intensity of light from a group of excited atoms, which is a measure of the total number of photons emitted. But neither quantum mechanics nor any other existing theory - including Bohm’s - can say anything about the behavior of an individual nucleus or atom. The photons emitted in atomic transitions come into existence spontaneously, as do the particles emitted in nuclear radiation. By so appearing, without predetermination, they contradict the first premise.
In the case of radioactivity, the decays are observed to follow an exponential decay “law.” However, this statistical law is exactly what you expect if the probability for decay in a given small time interval is the same for all time intervals of the same duration. In other words, the decay curve itself is evidence for each individual event occurring unpredictably and, by inference, without being predetermined. (124-125)
In Brennon’s next section he goes after my logical argument:
AA then goes after Craig's statement on the logical validity of this argument. It is true that this argument is logically airtight. It is a deductive argument by which the conclusion follows necessarily if the premises are true. AA says, "logic by itself [and by extension, philosophy] while extremely helpful and right much of the time, can sometimes get you into trouble." Well yeah, and that's why Craig explains what constitutes a good or bad argument. If AA wants to discredit Craig's arguments, he either needs to point out a logically fallacious step in the argument (which none of Craig's arguments have) or dispute one or more of the premises. Simply saying that SCIENCE® defeats logic is ridiculous. Logic is at the base of almost every, if not every, discipline, including science. Science relies on, and wouldn't exist without, the rules of inference and deduction that logic presents us with. Empirical data is useless unless there is some means of interpreting it, which means logic must exist for science to exist. That also means that science must agree with logic if the conclusions are true.
And as I showed, the premise is not all together true judging by the evidence, therefore the argument fails. And yes, in many cases science does defeat logic. It was once “logical” to believe the earth was at the center of the universe, but science disproved that. And that’s just one example. Similarly, simply saying that, with our everyday experience, things seemingly always have a cause (or predetermined cause to use Stenger’s word), but this isn’t so, judging by the evidence we have at hand, which is the entire point. And as I noted in my paper refuting Craig, even if everything did happen to have a cause, the universe included, it's an illogical leap to automatically assume god did it. Where is the evidence of this being in the first place? That's like arguing the explanation for my missing sandwich must have been hungry fairies. Well, where is the evidence that fairies exist in the first place? Theists have a huge hole in their logic regarding this point.
Some of AA's fellow atheists apparently attempted to tell him this, by which he responded, "The fact that something is philosophically valid or "logical" doesn't make it true." Well yeah, nobody would argue with that. Recall that Craig said that the premises in a sound argument must be true.
AA continues, "Craig goes on to discuss his other premises, but given the fact that either they require no comment or they hinge upon the first premise, I don't think I need to go through the others. I've taken the very legs of this argument out from under Craig." AA is correct that the PSR is a necessary premise for this argument (which is the definition of a deductive argument, making the statement a little redundant, but I digress). But if he's correct, then AA has just postulated that the universe doesn't need an explanation for its existence. But AA's beloved SCIENCE® goes against that assertion, as does common intuition, but we'll flush that out in the next post on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument.
As far as my “fellow atheists”, it was actually only one person who commented on my argument about philosophy not always leading to truth and that was Luke Muehlhauser, author of Common Sense Atheism, which I addressed in my paper on Craig explaining why I felt he misread what I said.
And science does not always follow logic, just as I explained with the example of the earth being in the center of the universe.
Another person who is missing my point. Yes, logic is helpful much of the time, however, many arguments for god may seem logically sound by “common everyday experience” but where is the actual evidence that they are even true to begin with? That was my point. What evidence is available to show that the premises are even true? And as I’ve shown, the evidence disproves Craig’s premise.
Part 3 of Brennon’s critique can be found here.
He begins by saying,
He's going to prove the KCA's premises aren't true? That's a pretty bold statement. He also calls into question reasoning to the conclusion of a Christian deity using the KCA. But, as Craig has said (quoted in Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator in this case; he's said it in multiple places), "the kalam argument can't prove everything about the Creator."1 This is why classical apologists construct a comprehensive case. The kalam argument shows the existence of a monotheistic God, which does narrow the argument down to three religions, but it does not argue completely for the Christian God, and nobody has ever claimed that it does. Finally, as it pertains to the naturalistic scenarios, we'll see that there actually aren't any plausible ones.
How does any theist know that it was even their god that was the cause? As I said in my rebuttal, and Brennon quoted me as saying, it’s so convenient that their god just happens to fit the description of the cause that Craig says is supposedly needed for the universe to come into existence. But this claim that the Kalam leads to their god is never explained. It’s just supposed to be accepted. That’s nonsense. Where is the evidence? It’s nothing more than circular reasoning at its finest. Brennon argues that the argument says nothing about which god it might be, but it’s clear that the theist is playing games and is proposing a cause that just happens to be the same as their god.
AA ignores the first two points about premise one, and chooses to assert something about the third. But go back to the first two points. (1)Why should we ever seek to reject the notion that nothing comes from nothing? When we experience anything in our lives, we never would conclude that it popped into being uncaused out of nothing! As I said in my last post, can you imagine what that kind of thinking would do to science? (2)Also, consider the second point. If we are to reject the intuition that everything that begins to exist has a cause, then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn't simply pop into existence uncaused out of nothing. Craig often uses the example of a horse suddenly appearing in one's living room and defiling the carpet. The reason we leave our houses not worrying about these kinds of things is because we know things don't pop into existence out of nothing.
I rejected the first premise because, again, it was asserted without evidence as I noted in my paper. The same with the second premise. He simply uses a philosophical argument to “prove” an infinite universe is impossible, but again, where is his proof? As I showed there are models of the universe that take into account an eternal universe that are consistent with all the known laws of science.
In response to Craig's argument from the scientific evidence of the big bang, AA writes, "Again, as I've said already, just because Craig can't imagine an infinite universe doesn't mean it's impossible. Simply arguing that it's impossible without any proof is no argument." This is an example of the flippant dismissive rhetoric that AA uses. After citing a long step-by-step presentation of some of the reasoning in support of the second premise, he says that Craig is simply saying that an infinite universe is unimaginable. That is ridiculous and dishonest. Craig gives both scientific and philosophical arguments to support the second premise. The former uses the vast scientific support for the big-bang theory while refuting those who try to craft infinite universe models, and the latter uses arguments that show an infinite number of events is a logically incoherent idea (The Impossibility of an Actually Infinite Number of Things and The Impossibility of Forming an Actually Infinite Collection of Things by Successive Addition).
It’s not dishonest at all. Craig provided no evidence for his premises and that’s that. As I said, simply stating something is true without proof is no argument, which was one of the main points of my entire paper on Craig. And I also disproved Craig’s scientific arguments, which I’ll get to in a moment.
AA continues, "Second, Craig quotes Alexander Vilenkin from his 2006 book Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes and argues that because the universe cannot allegedly be past-eternal it implies a god, however, Vilenkin himself denies this interpretation just a few paragraphs after the statement quoted by Craig." The fact that Vilenkin doesn't agree with Craig's conclusions about the implications of his own theorem does nothing to take away from the fact that those implications exist. Vilenkin, I believe, has attempted to construct other cosmological models, the quantum fluctuation model for instance, which itself fails to refute Craig's second premise and has been shown to be an implausible model (as explained by Craig and Sinclair here).2
The Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin theorem shows that if a universe is expanding, it cannot be infinite in the past, but requires a past space time boundary. This precludes many of the models developed in the 80's to explain away the seeming singularity of the big bang model from being past infinite, including many inflationary models.3 Victor Stenger, who AA quoted in his post, presented the Hartle-Hawking model in his most recent debate with William Lane Craig a few months ago. Among other problems, Hawking admits that this model can be interpreted to have come into being out of nothing.4
AA then mentions a correspondence he had with Vilenkin, who seemed to dance around the implications of his theorem, saying,
[I]f someone asks me whether or not the theorem I proved with Borde and Guth implies that the universe had a beginning, I would say that the short answer is "yes". If you are willing to get into subtleties, then the answer is "No, but..." So, there are ways to get around having a beginning, but then you are forced to have something nearly as special as a beginning.
As ambiguous as this statement is, Vilenkin seems to be saying that there are people who are continually working on models to try to "fix" the past boundary of space time that the discovery of the expanding universe has implied. Sounds a tad like cosmology of the gaps, but I digress. The fact remains that with each new model that is offered up till now, it has failed in some respect to show an infinite past to our universe. The big bang model on the other hand has withstood the test of time and still remains the standard model used by many contemporary cosmologists.
While discussing Hawking’s theory which can be used to show the universe came into being “out of nothing” he mentions it but fails to address it. As for Vilenkin’s quote, which he says is “ambiguous”, he did not “dance around” it. He simply admitted that the theorem is not set in stone. During the discussion with the scientists I was privy to, they said how Craig’s description of the theorem was simplistic and Vilenkin outright said that the theorem doesn’t disprove an eternal universe and I also cited the theory of Anthony Aguirre whose theories seem compatible with Vilenkin's theorem and proposes an eternal universe, which Brennon does not address directly, though he links to a book by Craig that does and I will deal with that soon.
Failing with my proof against Craig’s argument Brennon simply declares victory and again makes claims without any evidence:
The fact remains that with each new model that is offered up till now, it has failed in some respect to show an infinite past to our universe. The big bang model on the other hand has withstood the test of time and still remains the standard model used by many contemporary cosmologists.
Modern cosmology is actually changing at a rapid pace and things are not as they once were. The very idea that the big bang was the beginning of the universe is a distortion of what the big bang is. [2] The big bang does not imply a beginning. Part of the reason for the newer models is because the big bang model as it was did not account for newer theories such as quantum mechanics, eg. the fact that no singularity occurred after all. [3]
AA then moves on to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He starts his "rebuttal" by saying Craig ignores the first law. This is simply a red herring. Even if Craig is being inconsistent, it still doesn't follow that the second law doesn't apply. But, I think Craig could easily reconcile the first law with creation ex nihilo by pointing out that these laws apply to the physical universe once brought into being by an omnipotent Creator. AA quotes some more of his conversation with Vilenkin, where Vilenkin promotes his view of how the so called "false vacuum" could provide a way out of this. This, I think, seems to be the "baby universe" hypothesis. Craig writes about this theory,
Is there some other plausible way of holding onto the eternality of the past in the face of the universe's disequilibrium state? Speculations have been floated in eschatological discussions about our universe begetting future "baby universes." It has been conjectured that black holes may be portals of wormholes through which bubbles of false vacuum energy can tunnel to spawn new expanding baby universes. . .The conjecture would require that information locked up in a black hole could be utterly lost forever by escaping into another universe. One of the last holdouts, [Stephen] Hawking finally came to agree that quantum theory requires that information is preserved in black hole formation and evaporation. The implications? [Hawking says,] "There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe."5
Craig also addresses Vilenkin's false vacuum theory on his website, in case what I have quoted fails to completely lay out the case.
I would encourage Dr. Vilenkin to read through Craig and Sinclair's comprehensive study of the failures of alternate cosmological models to lead to a universe that has existed for an infinite amount of time. I would think he would find little to quibble with. AA's contention that Craig is wrong because the scientist he cites disagrees with his conclusion is first of all a non-sequitur (as it could be Vilenkin simply hasn't realized the implications of his own theorem) and second of all incorrect because Craig has cited other sources that show that Vilenkin's way out is a dead end. Craig and Sinclair present a chart that summarizes the general main models and why they rule out a beginningless universe here.
While looking at the chart Brennon refers to in the book the first argument against an eternal universe is the supposed fact of a singularity, which if Brennon had read my paper closer, I cite Stephen Hawking as saying he was wrong about there being a singularity when quantum effects are taken into account. But I guess Brennon didn’t want to be bothered by that little fact.
As for Vilenkin’s theory, I contacted him about Craig’s critique and he responded thusly:
Dr. Kraig's [sic] main criticism is that the infinite ensemble of universes may not be there at the same time. As he explained in his article, the multiverse can be pictured as a finite space, which expands producing new island universes. The island universes also expand and become unboundedly large at late times. The alternative picture is that the island universes are actually infinite. The two pictures differ by the way in which time is accounted in different parts of the multiverse. They are completely equivalent if one thinks of the past, present and future of the multiverse as "really existing". Dr. Kraig [sic] does not accept this view and argues that the future is not there yet. I sympathize with this position on the intuitive level, but it is hard to defend in the framework of general relativity, because what is meant by "future" is different for different observers in the multiverse.
But I would say this point is peripheral to the issue being discussed. Let us work within the picture where the multiverse is finite but becomes unboundedly large in the future. For anthropic selection to work, the multiverse does not have to be infinite; it only needs to be very large. Then we need to know how large it is "at the present time". If we live very early in the history of the multiverse, then it might be rather small. However, since the multiverse is eternal to the future, the great majority of observers will live at very late times. So, if we think that we are typical observers (as we should according to the principle of mediocrity), then we should expect to live at very late times, when the multiverse is extremely large.
There are some other issues that Dr. Kraig [sic] has raised. He points out that we do not have any evidence for the existence of scalar fields assumed in most models of inflation. This is true, but other predictions of inflation are supported by the data. Moreover, at this time we do not have any viable alternatives to inflation that can explain the available data.
Another objection, based on Penrose arguments, is not articulated very well. I don't really see the point. [4]
Since it’s obvious neither I nor Brennon are experts in this field it’s essentially come down to an argument from authority and each one of us can argue until we’re blue in the face that what each individual says is accurate, but I suppose Craig will just have to duke it out with Vilenkin if he wants.
As far as the supposed “red herring” citing the first law is in no way an attempt to distract anyone from Craig’s argument. It is a valid objection. Craig is taking bits and pieces of the science that he feels supports his case while at the same time trying to diminish the evidence that goes against his case. And as I have shown it seems that Craig was mistaken about Vilenkin’s theory and, as Vilenkin noted, the second law does not apply given the “false vacuum.”
An excellent example of Craig’s “cherry-picking" of the scientific literature is Craig’s continuous attacks upon other cosmological models other than the big bang. As I’ve shown, Craig’s argument that a singularity is one proof against an eternal universe is sorely mistaken because as Stephen Hawking even admitted in his book A Brief History of Time he was wrong about there being a singularity when quantum mechanics are taken into effect. This has been known for a very long time, and yet Craig continues to trot out this same old strawman. This should tell an observant person right there that something is fishy about Craig’s “scientific” arguments if he isn’t even keeping up to date on what scientists are working on at the current moment. Or if he happens to make use of some new theory, he does his best to make sure it doesn’t contradict his predetermined conclusion: that he wants the universe to be caused and not be eternal. If anyone is using a “red herring” it’s theists like Craig and even Brennon, since he makes use of several of Craig’s arguments, that leave out very important information that would harm their case.
At the link to Craig’s book, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, he also attempts to refute Aguirre’s theory. I contacted Victor Stenger and told him about Craig’s book and the new book Stenger is writing he included some arguments from it and rebutted them. I feel very privileged that Stenger sent me a draft of the book and he addresses the claim about Aguirre in it. Since it’s a draft and not for wide consumption and all I wanted was an answer about Aguirre’s theory I’ll just partially quote Aguirre’s response and that will be all.
On page 157 of The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology Craig argues against Aguirre’s theory. Here is Aguirre’s response:
First, there is no singularity—that is the whole point. Second, he simply asserts that "the evolutionary continuity of the universe [is] topologically prior to t and our universe." And I'm not really sure what this means. I would agree in some sense that "There is no connection or temporal relation whatsoever of our universe to that other reality." But I'm not sure why this matters. In the Aguirre-Gratton type model, the idea is to generate a steady-state. If you do so, you can use the BGV theorem to show that there is a boundary to it. We have specified what would have to be on that boundary to be consistent with the steady state, and argued that this can be nonsingular, and also defines a similar region on the other side of that boundary (which in fact might be identifiable with our side, topologically.) There is no 'initial time', nor any 'time' at which the arrow of time changes. In the natural definition of time in this model, there is no earliest time, and all times are (statistically) equivalent.
So, up to this point, Brennon has quoted Craig as supposedly taking apart these other models when in fact it seems he hasn’t. Thus far, each of the “uncaused” events and eternal universe models have stood up to the attacks of Craig. The universe doesn’t necessarily need a cause and there are occurrences that take place that appear to have no cause.
The links to Craig’s book and the arguments within it, Stenger told me, were all refuted in his forthcoming book so I suggest Brennon pick up a copy once it becomes available. It’s very good and makes a few of the same points I do coincidentally, such as the argument that philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world. The argument might sound good, but does it match up to reality? That’s what science does. It tells us about the world as it is, not how we think it might be.
So far, I’ve shown how Craig ignores and distorts the work of scientists to bolster his own theistic beliefs and I’m sorry but Brennon has not given almost any evidence (and when he attempts to do so, Craig seems to be wrong on almost every point) proving any of my claims wrong.
1. God: The Failed Hypothesis, Stenger; 124
2. The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, by Victor J. Stenger; 171
3. Ibid.; 170
4. Personal communication with Mr. Vilenkin dated 8-18-10
Update - 8-23-10
Brennon has responded in the comments below to a few of my rebuttals to his first post. These are my responses.
It seems that Stenger is saying that the combined actions of an atom dropping to a lower energy level and emitting a photon are the actions that seem uncaused
Actually, the cause of this is fairly well known. The excited state of the atom is not natural. When the atom is bathed in light, it will eventually absorb a photon and enter its excited state. But this is not a natural state for the atom, and eventually it will release the energy it has absorbed to return to its original state, thereby releasing a photon. The cause of the lowering energy level is the release of the photon. Stenger's simply being dishonest.
When the atom is bathed in light? From my reading the atom itself produces light, or electromagnetic radiation during this event he describes and you’ve provided no citation or evidence that Stenger is being dishonest. If you really feel that way I suggest you take it up with him.
No I don’t believe it’s presumptuous since I’ve yet to see any theist use any decent arguments.
At least we have arguments for our position, whether you like them or not. You haven't provided any for yours.
I’m sorry but this means nothing, as I said before. Even though I haven’t written any positive arguments for god there are positive assertions out there but they are mainly philosophic and as I’ve said before I would rather use scientific arguments, not philosophical arguments.
If one’s arguments are all shown to be faulty and all alleged evidence for something shown to be false, all one can do is follow where the evidence leads. To argue that, “Well it could still be true” isn’t an argument. It’s faith.
This is still an extremely silly contention. Refuting arguments does reduce support for a position (if you've actually refuted them) but it will not ever prove the position is incorrect or untrue. A lack of evidence is not positive evidence in someone else's favor. At one point in our history, there was a lack of evidence for relativity theory. Did that mean relativity theory was wrong at one point? This is why it's hard to take you serious, AA. You dig your heels in to really bad arguments.
You seemed to have misread what I have said. I had said above that even though one is able to show a person’s argument to be wrong, it doesn’t prove their claim to be wrong. You’re attacking a stawman. I simply said that it leaves one with nothing but faith if there is no evidence for one’s position.
Vilenkin outright said that the theorem doesn’t disprove an eternal universe
Craig never said that it did. He did say that it proved that any universe that is on average expanding would have to have an initial boundary. That is what the theorem states, and is not simplistic. Vilenkin needs to actually read Craig's account and not rely on yours or other's second hand accounts, which are typically straw men.
Huh??? Craig cited Vilenkin’s theorem as one of his evidences that the universe did have a beginning. Just because Craig didn’t say outright that the theorem wasn't foolproof doesn’t make Vilenkin’s rebuttal any less effective. I also sent the article you referenced directly to Vilenkin and asked for his opinion, which I quoted above. I didn’t send anything “second hand” at all.
So, please before you wave your hand and dismiss me, perhaps I should be saying the same about you? You have not been able to satisfactorily answer any of my arguments and, like Craig, you resort to strawmen quite often. Though, it’s not all your fault since it’s mostly on Craig and you repeat some of his arguments.
Update - 8-24-10
Brennon has attempted to respond to a few of my rebuttals but he seems to have seriously misread some things I had said so I will correct those misunderstandings now. His ridiculous post can be found here. His post is oddly titled, especially since I do get the arguments. Brennon’s problem seems to be the fact that I’m not accepting his illogical conclusion for those arguments and so he falsely believes I don’t understand them.
He begins by saying:
One point he makes (that I didn't bring up in my post at all) is that David Bohm's deterministic model of quantum physics isn't widely held by physicists. So what? Most of the models of quantum physics are deterministic, and just because perhaps most physicists use the indeterministic model at the moment, it does nothing to prove that it is the correct model, and neither the argument from contingency nor the Kalam argument are damaged by the indeterministic model anyway. Both of those arguments work just fine on an indeterministic model of quantum physics; namely because the quantum world needs to exist for this activity to occur, and it didn't at one point.
Actually in our earlier discussion he did mention the Bohm interpretation and he had repeated an earlier argument and so I copied and pasted my entire reply from our earlier discussion to respond. I may have copied a few things that did not directly apply, but so what? He did not answer my objection.
AA then says,
As I’ve said before just because our “common experience” tells us something is true doesn’t make it so. Where is the evidence that this event has a cause? Brennon has once again utterly failed to do this and is that not also a basic principle of the scientific method? Base your theories on evidence? Something that Brennon is not doing. He’s simply saying there must be cause, but he’s just speculating and has given me no evidence why this might be so. So it’s not I who is disregarding the scientific method, but him
If AA were to remain consistent with this view, there would be no way he could function in life. First off, unless there is a great defeater (ie some evidence) for what is common experience, it is unjustified, irresponsible, and frankly stupid to deny it. Common experience tells us it isn't a good idea to fall out of an airplane. Just because I lack first-hand empirical data of this, I'm not going to deny it. He accosts me for not providing evidence for my position (which is silly, since the big bang model enjoys the most evidence of any model), but the irony here is really mind boggling, as there is no evidence that things can happen uncaused! Even on indeterministic quantum physics, the cause of the random elementary particles appearing and disappearing is the highly structured quantum vacuum, which is a sea of energy and is bound by physical laws. The quantum vacuum and the energy therein is the cause of these particles. The whole reason cosmologists are trying so hard to develop eternal models of the universe is to retain the intuition that all events do have causes!
Brennon has once again failed to grasp what I’ve said about logic and philosophy. He seems to believe that I believe that all things need evidence. Well, most experiences do provide evidence anyway, even knowing that falling out of an airplane is bad. I know I’ll most likely die. I’ve heard stories about people falling from great heights and dying and I know that the human body cannot withstand that much impact and that is in itself a form of evidence.
He also (once again with no evidence) asserts that all things have causes and bashes me for asserting otherwise, though I’m only citing Victor Stenger who argues that there are some things that appear to have no cause. It is up to Brennon to provide evidence that my cited examples of Stenger’s do have causes. As of yet he’s provided no evidence of this.
He then cites more of retired (since 2000) cosmologist Victor Stenger. Stenger has been out of the loop for 10 years, and as Craig showed in his debate with him recently, hasn't really been keeping abreast of current cosmology. He cites Stenger,
Craig has retorted that quantum events are still “caused”, just caused in a nonpredetermined manner - what he calls “probabilistic causality.” In effect, Craig is thereby admitting that the “cause” in his first premise could be an accidental one, something spontaneous - something not predetermined. By allowing probabilistic cause, he destroys his own case for a predetermined creation.
If there was some quantum existence prior to the big bang singularity, Stenger might have a point. But Craig's whole point that the universe has come into being uncaused out of nothing, and this is supported by modern cosmology. The big bang model isn't the postulation that there was this dot in outer space that exploded at some point. Rather, it is a model of the universe suddenly coming into being, all time and matter and space, at a single point and then expanding rapidly beyond that. As Richard J. Gott has put it, "The universe began from a state of infinite density."1 Just think about infinite density and what that would entail. Density is how tightly packed together a group of objects are. In this case, all of the universe would be infinitely dense. If something is infinitely dense, then its measurements are 0. "Infinite density" is synonymous with "nothing."
Actually, as Stenger shows in his book The New Atheism using nothing but established laws of physics that the universe could have come from a process called quantum tunneling, which is certainly not nothing. [1] And so Brennon is correct. Stenger does have a point. Also, there has never been anything about the big bang that implies it was the beginning of time and matter. That is another strawman by Brennon and Craig. [2]
I also would consider that a personal insult towards Mr. Stenger since, even though he has been officially retired for about ten years, he keeps up to date on new findings and consults with other scientists who are still actively researching so as to make sure he’s accurately describing newer scientific theories and viewpoints. In addition, theists also distort older scientific theories, like Craig does with neglecting quantum mechanics, which Stenger is fully qualified to critique. Brennon’s little ad hominem and poor attempt at discrediting my source adds nothing to his argument, and shows just how desperate he is.
Brennon continues trotting the same old strawman about a singularity:
PCW Davies comments,
If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.2
Cosmologists J. Richard Gott, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm, and Beatrice M. Tinsley write of the beginning of the universe that, "Space and time were created in that event and so was all the matter in the universe."3 Craig also cites John Barrow and Frank Tipler (cosmologists) as saying, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo."4
The rest of Stenger's quote just misses the whole point. Events happening in a purely probabilistic context at the quantum level still have causes. They are not deterministic causes, but are causes nonetheless. There is a similar analogy to this in the human mind. Those who hold to an agent-causation view of libertarian free will say that there are undetermined causes of human thoughts and actions, namely the mind behind them. Indeterministic causes are no problem for either cosmological arguments.
I know AA wants to find some source that will undo Craig's premise here, but Stenger has failed to do so. His arguments really aren't that impressive. And, since none of his counterexamples to Craig's premises are supported by anything but a very hazy and theoretical segment of science, all they are are possible counterexamples. So AA's contention that he has "disproved Craig’s scientific arguments" is just hubris-laced rhetoric. None of these things are proven at all, and aren't counterexamples anyway.
As I’ve said over and over again during this discussion, there was no singularity and so I can dismiss most of everything he said there. As for Stenger’s argument I do not have enough knowledge of physics to further argue the point but if Brennon wants to contact Stenger about it be my guest.
And that wasn’t my only argument either. I also included a logical argument. Even if the universe did have a cause there is no logical reason why it couldn’t have been a natural cause (as I’ve showed by citing Stenger). There is also the relevant point that, even if the universe had a cause, that’s no proof of a god. Theists are skipping several steps in their thinking to arrive at that conclusion.
He then goes on to say how science has disproved other things that seemed to be the case, such as geocentricism. First off, I don't think geocentricism would have ever been a common experience view, since common experience rarely deals with things at that level. Common experience for most people at that time would have had nothing to do with how the earth moves in space. However, there were pre-Gallilean scientists who did think that the sun moved around the earth. This was their model, which was shown to be faulty. Science is constantly morphing their theories and improving (hopefully) their models.
This makes no sense. This was the common view for a long time until it was disproved with scientific observations by Galileo.
AA says, "And as I noted in my paper refuting Craig, even if everything did happen to have a cause, the universe included, it's an illogical leap to automatically assume god did it." I've already explained this several times, and it has gone ignored.
Amazingly, AA then says, "And science does not always follow logic, just as I explained with the example of the earth being in the center of the universe." This really just makes one want to facepalm. AA is conflating the rules logic with "consensus view" here, one which may not follow the other. The rules of logic must be followed if the scientific method is to be accurate. If the rules of logic are broken, then something is wrong with the model science developed. Both the geocentric and the heliocentric models of our solar system MUST follow these rules if they are to be valid scientific models. And they do! It's just that one explains the empirical data better than the other. Seriously, if one can't understand that, then they have no business attempting to refute anyone's arguments.
It’s not necessarily logic that must be followed but the evidence that one finds in support of said model. It doesn’t matter how “logical” it is, if a model is to be accepted there must be evidence for it. Talk about a “facepalm.”
And then Brennon seems to want to throw a temper tantrum here because I do not blindly accept his dogma that his god must have created the universe.
On the cosmological arguments not proving the Christian specific God, AA again asks, "How does any theist know that it was even their god that was the cause?" I'm not sure if there's some sort of mental block that is keeping AA from getting this or not, so I'm going to write this in really big bold text: COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS AREN'T INTENDED TO SHOW A SPECIFIC GOD, BUT ARE PART OF A COMPREHENSIVE CASE FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE!!!
What the cosmological arguments do show is that if all space, time, and matter were brought into being by something, this being couldn't be bound by the universe. The thing that causes all of space, time, and matter to come into being cannot itself be in space, time, or made of matter. Therefore, it must be an immaterial, timeless, extremely powerful, personal causal agent. Ockham's razor would shave off unnecessary duplicates, and, therefore, we are left with a description of the God of monotheism, which could be the Muslim, Jewish, Deistic, or Christian God.
If Brennon had read what I said, I agreed that the argument does not point to a particular god, however, I am asking for evidence how one even knows it’s his god to begin with!!! That’s my entire point. According to Brennon, it could also be the Muslim god, but since christiantiy is his faith he wants it to be his god. But how does he know this? Maybe that will make it more clear?
On my question on why we shouldn't think that things can come into being uncaused out of nothing, he says, "I rejected the first premise because, again, it was asserted without evidence as I noted in my paper." What!? Are you kidding? We have no evidence that nothing comes into being uncaused out of nothing? How about every single thing that happens in life? How about we know for a fact that these computers we are using had a cause for their coming into being? The very text on the screen has a cause for its coming into being. He is also referencing his "rebuttal" to the principle of sufficient reason, which is silly, since this is not that. This premise is "everything that begins to exist has a cause" which is not equivalent to the PSR (though it is somewhat similar) and cannot be lumped in with it. The fact is, the burden of proof is on the person that says things can come from nothing, and there is nothing in the universe that resembles that claim. If AA wants to reference indeterministic quantum events again, then he has missed the point.
I wasn’t even referring to his comment about things “coming from nothing” so he missed the entire point right there. I was only addressing Craig’s philosophical argument for impossibility of an eternal universe and as I said, philosophy is not proof; not evidence and so I rightly rejected it. And it’s strange that Brennon berates me for supposedly thinking that things can come into existence out of nothing since I haven’t said that, and furthermore he has contradicted himself because he (falsely) claimed that the universe came out of nothing with the big bang. Earlier he had said, “But Craig's whole point that the universe has come into being uncaused out of nothing, and this is supported by modern cosmology.” So which is it Brennon? Seems that Brennon has made some big mistakes here in this section.
AA again ignores the philosophical arguments against actual infinites existing, which means that he has not even begun to refute the argument. I'm still waiting...
I don’t need to because Craig provides no evidence for this claim. I’ve gone over this.
A then gives a weak response to my refutations of some alternate models of the beginning of the universe. He leaves the Hartle-Hawking refutation untouched (I cited my source) and then says, "During the discussion with the scientists [Vilenkin and one other, I believe] I was privy to, they said how Craig’s description of the theorem was simplistic and Vilenkin outright said that the theorem doesn’t disprove an eternal universe." Thing is, Craig never says the BGV theorem disproves a past eternal universe. He says, as does the theorem, it disproves the past eternal universe which is on average expanding. Another straw man.
I looked for a rebuttal to the Hawking claim but did not see anything. As for the supposed “strawman” I just don’t get this gripe. Craig used the theorem as evidence against an eternal universe! That’s the whole reason Craig cited Vilenkin’s proof to begin with. Which, as I said, does not prove the universe to be finite and the theorem is not set in stone. There are theories that are compatible with Vilenkin’s theory that I’ve mentioned such as Aguirre’s. I disproved Craig’s scientific argument and it seems Brennon is just upset about it and is nit picking about any little thing he can think of now.
AA then brings up Anthony Aguire's model, which does avoid the BGV theorem. But, as Craig and Sinclair point out, Aguire's model temporally and causally disconnects previous universes from our own. "The other side of the de Sitter space [outside of our universe] is not our past. For the moments of that time are not earlier than t or any of the moments later than t in our universe. There is no connection or temporal relation whatsoever of our universe to that other reality."5 In other words, other universes have absolutely nothing to do with ours, on this model, and so wouldn't "connect" to make an infinite past universe.
I cited a response from Aguire in my last reply rebutting Craig and Sinclair’s argument already.
I’ve dealt with this quote ("The very idea that the big bang was the beginning of the universe is a distortion of what the big bang is.") above in citing many different cosmologists who obviously disagree with how Victor Stenger apparently portrays the Big Bang model. Fact is, the Big Bang model shows the coming into being of all space and time and matter from nothing, and does answer most of the questions brought up. Modifications can and are being made to this standard model, but the general scenario the Big Bang model presents us with is an absolute beginning of the universe. With the philosophical arguments that show that an actually infinite past is incoherent, this is what we should expect to see.
And I’ve said over and over again, when quantum mechanics are taken into account, there is no “beginning”; no singularity! I’d appreciate it if you’d leave out this obvious strawman from now on. And tell Craig too...especially since this was discovered in the 80‘s!
The point is we don't have an actually infinite past! With that model, you have multiple finite pasts in different, unconnected universes. AA then mentions that Vilenkin has a forthcoming book where he addresses some of Craig and Sicnlair's points. Well, since neither of us can get the book yet, it's a bit presumptuous to say that what they wrote has been refuted. AA then says, "It’s very good and makes a few of the same points I do coincidentally, such as the argument that philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world." 1) How could he say that a book that hasn't been released is very good? 2) He says that logic can't tell us anything about the world? Well, then we can't know anything about the world, because philosophical logic is the basis of Science. We use the methods of induction (which are always logically fallacious) and deduction that we get from philosophical logic. I seriously doubt that Vilenkin said anything so ridiculous.
A finite past has not been proven as I’ve tried to show over and over. I do not have the background to critique the argument against Hawking but according to Stenger his forthcoming book will tackle all of the arguments Craig used in his book Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. I corrected this point in the comments section of Brennon’s blog but I did not say it was Vilenkin who had a book coming out. It was Stenger’s book about fine tuning. In response to this, he replies, “Then you need to be careful where you place your citations, because it looked to me like you were attributing the forthcoming book and the position (which I also doubt Stenger takes) that philosophy is no good to Vilenkin.”
Sure, put the blame on me when I stated quite clearly,
“At the link to Craig’s book, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, he also attempts to refute Aguirre’s theory. I contacted Victor Stenger and told him about Craig’s book and the new book Stenger is writing he included some arguments from it and rebutted them. I feel very privileged that Stenger sent me a draft of the book and he addresses the claim about Aguirre in it.”
And...
“The links to Craig’s book and the arguments within it, Stenger told me, were all refuted in his forthcoming book so I suggest Brennon pick up a copy once it becomes available. It’s very good and makes a few of the same points I do coincidentally, such as the argument that philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world. The argument might sound good, but does it match up to reality? That’s what science does. It tells us about the world as it is, not how we think it might be." (emphasis mine)
How anyone could have misread what I had said I have no clue. Perhaps Brennon needs to slow down and actually read what I’ve said because this is not the only time he’s misread and plain ignored (assuming he even saw them) arguments (such as the fact that a singularity did not occur).
Second, I also said that Stenger sent me a draft of the book! READ READ READ!!! And I also said the it was Stenger who made the points about philosophy not leading to definite conclusions; evidence must be found to prove a proposition.
So, as we have seen, the models that propose to show an infinite past either actually have a finite past or lack sufficient evidence for them. They also fail to deal with the philosophical arguments that show an actually infinite past is an incoherent idea, and thus can't exist in reality! Just as philosophical logic shows that a married bachelor cannot exist, so too does it show that a past infinite is incoherent. I don't know why AA wants to deny that things that come into being have causes and then at the same time defend that the universe could be eternal. If things can pop into existence uncaused out of nothing, he doesn't need an eternal universe, and vice versa! He's simply being inconsistent.
Despite all his practiced rhetoric, AA hasn't refuted anything.
And as I’ve shown, Stenger refutes these models in his book and you’ve yet to refute Aguirre’s theory since I quoted him responding to Craig. And as I’ve said over and over again, philosophy doesn’t mean much. Evidence must be cited and so far Craig has shown that he misunderstands the scientists and misrepresents the science.
Again, another strawman...I did not say the universe “can pop into existence uncaused out of nothing.” That’s a misunderstanding and a strawman about the big bang.
Talk about rhetoric. I’ve quoted scientists whose theories were discussed by Craig saying themselves how he did not understand them and refuting his points! How much clearer do I have to be?
I took it upon myself to email Dr. Vilenkin to see if he actually said what AA says he said. I asked what he does with the philosophical arguments against actual infinites, to which he replied, "Multiverse explanation of fine-tuning does not rely on the existence of actual infinities. For the explanation to work, the universe does not have to be infinite; it just has to be very large -- and in inflationary cosmology it becomes arbitrarily large with time." Apparently there's some confusion here, since I was not asking about the fine-tuning argument, but about a past-infinite universe.
I then asked if he actually did say that, as AA put it, "philosophical logic can’t really tell us anything about the world." Dr. Vilenkin said, "No." (Apparently I mistakenly attributed this to Vilenkin when AA meant it to be attributed to Stenger, though I'm not sure Stenger would ever agree with that statement either, as it's ridiculously naive and simply incorrect).
Dr. Vilenkin also informed me that he has not read Craig and Sinclair's piece in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, and has had only limited correspondence with Dr. Craig.
And as I said before Brennon misread me badly and it honestly upset me some that he spread this misinformation to Vilenkin, but above he has edited it to correct this, however, Stenger did say this. As I said, it’s in his new book that’s coming out. And it’s not naive nor incorrect. Someone can sit there all day long and think up “logical” ways to prove or disprove something, but at the end of the day it all comes down to the evidence.
1. The New Atheism, Stenger; 171
2. Ibid.; 172
Update - 8-25-10
Because of the fact that 1. Brennon has utterly failed to even begin to answer the majority of my arguments with facts; mostly he resorts to strawmen and misconstrues science (just as Craig does) to bolster his case; and 2. His tone is becoming increasingly hostile and belittling and I do not appreciate it one bit, such as his use of ridiculous and immature online expressions, such as “facepalm” and the like when he was wrong to begin with! In response to my request that he stop this immature behavior he responded with more immature hostility saying, “Oh boo hoo. Debates include direct statements. You constantly want to play the victim in this debate, continually accusing me of having some tone you don't like. If you can't handle the debate, then don't ask for it.” To that I responded, essentially, that debate should be done professionally without mocking or disrespecting the other person if it can be helped. Brennon has failed to do this and when requested to stop this behavior he continues with more of his immaturity.
Thus far Brennon has utterly failed in this debate because:
1. He has failed to defend his position that philosophy can tell us facts about the world and can hold a candle to scientific facts.
2. He continuously erects strawmen by referencing the singularity when I’ve told him I don’t know how many times that given quantum mechanics there is no singularity. In addition, his main source of arguments, Craig’s The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, relies on conclusions inferred from general relativity which, as I’ve said over and over again, do not apply when quantum theory is taken into account. By the way, while looking at Craig’s Blackwell Companion the Davies’ quote talking about the singularity (on page 130) was from Davies’s book from 1978, ten years before Hawking repudiated his original beliefs about a singularity! Craig is the one being dishonest because he is citing old opinions! The other quote of Tippler and Barrow was also from 1986 and is again based on old research and opinion. Where are citations past the year 2000 and beyond? Or citations even after Hawking redid the calculations taking quantum theory into account in 1988? Another quote of Craig’s in his footnote is from 1976! Please, use some more recent scholarship. Unlike religion, science advances and opinions change based on new and updated research.
3. He continually erects the strawman that the universe “came from nothing” and that the big bang automatically implies a “beginning” when that is not accurate.
4. Despite quoting the scientists’ responses to Craig's criticisms Brennon seems to mostly ignore them and simply declares that Craig is correct, without even considering the fact that those scientists pointed out the flaws quite clearly in Craig’s critiques, such as Aguirre’s response I quoted and Brennon ignored.
5. Brennon has further failed to refute the other cosmological models that include an eternal universe, or quantum tunneling, which is perfectly compatible with the current knowledge we have of the universe.
6. Brennon has badly misread what I’ve said on numerous occasions and boldly put words in my mouth (most recently about saying that the universe came from "nothing” and oddly getting confused about who I was talking about, Stenger or Vilenkin), despite my being as clear as possible. Even after correcting him several times he repeats the same misunderstandings. It seems to me that, having failed to find answers to my arguments, he is getting emotional and desperate and is not reading what I say very well - if at all.
The above six points are why I don’t feel continuing this debate with Brennon is worth it. We are simply going around in circles, with him repeating his same strawmen over and over and continuously getting worse and worse at reading and comprehending what I’m saying. His last reply was riddled with misquotes and strawmen. Not to mention his ever increasing hostile attitude. I am not “playing the victim.” All I’m asking for is courtesy. Is that so much to ask for in a debate? Of course not. I’ve learned my lesson to disengage from those who continuously are disrespectful and can’t understand a damn thing you say, twisting and distorting everything until it’s not even clear what one is debating anymore. It’s just not worth it and I have more valuable things to do with my time instead of pointing out more errors by this rude, and misinformed christian.
From this point on I will ignore any responses from Brennon (they will most likely contain the same old strawmen I’ve been trying to correct this entire discussion anyway) and will not approve any more comments from him at this blog unless he can told his tongue and act his age instead of getting his panties in a bunch when someone points out all of his errors. I know William Lane Craig is his hero and all, but Craig certainly isn’t “all that” and is wrong about a lot of things. Facts are facts. Deal with it.
Update - 9-14-10
Though I wasn’t going to respond anymore to Brennon, he has stopped trying to argue those above strawmen on those particular issues and he has thus moved on to my next argument: the moral argument, which is just as badly argued as all the others. The post can be found here. Because of Brennon’s obvious lack of ability to engage in discussion without his immature ridicule I’ve decided not to respond directly to him, though have replied here for anyone who might happen to wander from his blog to mine seeing if I’ve responded.
Let’s begin.
Brennon begins by stating that,
Getting back to the Arizona Atheist's attempt to refute Dr. William Lane Craig's arguments for the existence of God, we now come to one of the most troublesome arguments for atheists to deal with; the moral argument. This argument is elegant in its simplicity in that it shows that if God doesn't exist, there is no basis of objective morality, a morality that would apply to all people no matter the time or majority opinion. But most atheists make profoundly moral assertions.
This argument may seem troubling to Brennon, but this gives away Brennon’s ignorance. Atheists make moral assertions by making rational, thought out (ie. subjective) choices about what is right and wrong, sometimes by following atheistic (godless) philosophies.
Ethical objectivism is defined as,
The view that the objects of the most basic concepts of ethics (which may be supposed to be values, obligations, duties, oughts, rights, or what not) exist, or that facts about them hold, objectively and that similarly worded ethical statements by different persons make the same factual claims (and thus do not concern merely the speaker’s feelings). To say that a fact is objective, or that something has objective existence, is usually to say that its holding or existence is not derivative from its being thought to hold or exist. (emphasis mine) [1]
Given the fact that objectivism regards things that exist independently from the human mind, this seems to be falsified both philosophically and scientifically. See here. All things depend upon a conscious agent to bring things into existence and that includes moral values. If no human being were alive none of our moral beliefs would exist. Say another species evolved that species very well could have very different morals than us. Even other human societies have differing moral values and so this is also falsified without even bringing up Prime.
Brennon continues,
The argument is deductive, and follows the form of modus tollens.
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist
3. Therefore, God exists.
To start here, AA attempts to simply get rid of the second premise by asserting that there aren't objective morals, but that morality is relative. AA cites a book that is explicating the history of slavery in the new world. The author describes briefly that St. Thomas Aquinas accepted some sort of slavery that was the basis for the attempted future enslavement of American Indians. Apparently AA is trying to imply that Aquinas was a-ok with slavery and this shows that objective morality is indeed an illusion. While I will shortly defend Aquinas' view, I must stress that this example does nothing of the sort. Simply offering examples of people who thought a certain moral abomination was morally good does not prove in any sense that morals are relative or that what that person did was right in any way. All showing past moral abominations does is show that moral abominations happened in the past.
Aquinas' view on slavery is far more subtle than AA is letting on here. Part of the reason for confusion is the ambiguous nature of the word "slavery." What exactly was Aquinas referring to? Aquinas is not referring to a slavery based on racial subjugation, but is referring to servitude in which one person has authority over another. Professor Hector Zagal from the Mexican Catholic institution, the Panamerican University writes,
“the Greek doulos, the Roman servus and the Medieval servus do not have the same meaning for the simple reason that the Aristotelic doulos is contextualized in a pro-slavery society and the Thomistic servus in a feudal society. We must not forget that feudal servitude is not equivalent to Greek slavery, since when Moerbeke translated for Saint Thomas the term doulos for servus, he was making a literal translation without considering the social context.1“
In other words, Aristotle's slavery (which Aquinas is analyzing) is not the same thing as Aquinas'. Zagal goes on,
“Thomas considers servitude something just, yet he distinguishes two kind of justice: justice simpliciter and justice secundum quid. Servitude is not just simpliciter, since all men are equal by essence, even more since all men have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Human nature is not predicable equivocally for every individual. Servant are as humans as their masters. Every man is truly a human person and, subsequently, is an individual substance of rational nature with an eternal destiny that is loved personally by the Creator. Attending to human nature considered in itself, all men are equal and, because of that, there is no preeminence of one over the other. The master as participant of the human nature has no domain over the servant. Servant and lord are essentially men.2“
So Aquinas clearly didn't approve of the early American kind of slavery that atheists always anachronistically read into pretty much every historical setting.
When christians try to make the early servitude seem less brutal than american slavery they are simply whitewashing history. I am unaware of the accuracy of the claim of some mistranslation since I do not speak those other languages, though every source I’ve read states that Aquinas accepted the existence of slavery because of man’s imperfect conditions due to the fall of Adam and Eve. He believed that due to the fall, man was subject to a higher authority (ie. hierarchical relationships) and believed that master and slave relationships were simply the way the world was and should be accepted because, like old age and death were to be accepted due to the fall, slavery should simply be accepted as resulting from man’s sin. Now, unlike Aristotle, Aquinas did not believe this inferiority was “natural” but he simply accepted this subjection due to man’s sin.
Feudal servitude, granted, was often not as harsh as american slavery in many cases, however, the serfs in return for tilling and working the land of a lord were allowed to stay on the land as long as he paid rent. In addition, for his tending of the land he was granted protection through the lord. However, the lines between slavery and feudal servitude is blurred since a serf could be evicted at the lord’s will, and his services could even be sold to other lords and barons, just as a slave would be, if his lord so chose. The serf was often made to work without any form of payment, though at rare times meals were used for that purpose. In England, a serf was denied the right of migration, and if he left he was hunted down and “recaptured as zealously as fugitive modern slaves.” Often times, just as a slave, if they were allowed to marry at all, a serf had to get permission to marry. [2] While serfdom was better than slavery as is often envisioned, there are many aspects of feudalism that make it very similar to slavery, and the very concept of slavery and feudalism are the same: as Aristotle said, “Some are marked out for subjection, others for rule,” and Aquinas’ view of the slave was shaped by Aristotle who saw “the slave as the physical instrument of his owner, who had full claim to everything the slave possessed or produced, including children.” [3]
Brennon continues,
AA then again reveals his ignorance about logic when he states, "This is a perfect example of my claim in my paper Against the Gods that just because all of your premises are true, it doesn't mean your conclusion is true, ie. god exists." AA needs to take an introductory class in logic. I do not say this to be mean or nasty or to insult him in any way! It is simply true. AA needs to understand how logic works. If the premises are true in a logically deductive argument, then the conclusion is true whether anyone likes it or not. That is why he needs to attack the truth of one of the premises. If he admits that the premises 1 & 2 are true, then he isn't an atheist.
He then immediately says, "This moral argument does nothing to prove god because there clearly is not any objective moral standard that we can call upon." Ok, so this is the premise he wants to attack; number 2. But this statement is baseless. It isn't clear that there is no objective morality. He says simply because most people believe in doing the right thing doesn't prove there's a god. No one is claiming that is how the argument works. The argument is deductive; unless there is a God, there is no right and wrong. Then he says that evolution created our moral intuitions. If that is true, then morality is relative, and saying it's wrong to kill babies for fun has no meaning. If morality is relative, then it's simply a matter of personal preference how one acts. Some people prefer to love their neighbors, others prefer to eat their neighbors. There's no moral value to any of those acts. (emphasis in original)
I don’t care if Brennon didn’t intend to insult me or be rude, the fact is that it’s Brennan who is being illogical. Why? Because even if objective morality existed that would not then mean that god had to exist. Why couldn’t they come from some other source? Again, more faulty reasoning by this christian. He’s simply arguing in circles. The moral argument no more proves god’s existence than someone arguing that moral absolutes mean that fairies exist. Brennon calling me ignorant is ignorance in itself! It’s more than clear that it is he who doesn’t understand logic.
Here again is where theists run into road blocks with morality. Human beings ourselves create the rightness or wrongness of an action. It’s been done for thousands of years, with laws being passed in various states and rules being changed throughout time. In one state something is illegal but in another state it’s legal. In one country something is legal; in another it isn’t. In one period of time slavery was legal and now its condemned by nearly everyone. Our moral values change over time, and despite Aquinas’s views on feudalism most christians throughout history owned slaves and freely participated in the slave trade. But over time their views began to change. The idea of slavery is relative to the time and place in which one lives.
Human beings create the wrongness or rightness of an action, period, and that’s a fact. I’ve given reasons and examples of why this is.
He continues with his horrible “rebuttal”:
However, I think we all know that objective morality does exist. It's always wrong to torture people for fun, No matter what culture you're in. No matter what time period. As I've pointed out before any argument that can be given against objective morality, a parallel argument can be given against the external world. But I apprehend these moral realities just as I apprehend the reality of the external world. Why should I let those whose moral sense is deficient make me question the existence of an objective realm of morality? I don't question the external world's existence because there are color blind people.
Brennon is being pretty vague there. What does he mean by “torture”? Could rape be considered torture? I believe so because it is a horrible experience and is sometimes a prolonged experience, like women who are strapped down for hours on end and repeatedly raped. Besides, rape is not considered wrong in all places, like in the tribe of the Yanomamo who see it as "standard behavior" and "is simply what happens." [4]
According to Brennon, I guess the several religious Inquisitions were considered wrong by those performing them. Of course, that would not be accurate. They believed they were doing god’s work by torturing people and suppressing heresy. So, no Brennon, torture has not always been “wrong, no matter what culture you’re in” or time period. That’s nonsense and another horribly wrong statement about history (just as during an earlier exchange Brennon made the horribly historically inaccurate statement that the Communists did things that “those who look to a higher moral authority might not have otherwise done.”).
As far as torture being done for “fun” that is also relative. What about the many people who engage in sadomasochism? Acts that some people find “fun” include receiving various amounts of pain, being whipped, bitten, burned, gagged, branded, cut with knives, and a host of other things I would certainly consider “torture,” however many individuals experience a lot of pleasure from it. So, yes, “torture” could certainly be considered "fun" relative to how each individual feels about certain acts.
Brennon continues his nonsense,
He then moves on to the Euthyphro dilemma, which really hasn't ever been an issue for Christian theists, and Plato, who himself was a moral realist, in no way "demolished the moral argument." AA claims that splitting the horns of the dilemma by positing that God's nature is the good doesn't work, but then doesn't say why. He simply ridicules the notion. Sorry, AA, ridicule isn't argument. He says, "God is simply "good" by nature, and therefore he wouldn't command anything immoral? Right. Is that why many people have claimed to hear god speak to them, and they then commit horrible atrocities?" What does that have to do with anything? Because some people do evil and claim God told them to that proves God did it? Sorry, but the weakness of AA's argument here is glaring.
Again, sorry Brennon, but just because Craig says something does not make it true. How Brennon can actually say that I don’t explain why god’s nature isn’t good is appalling since I wrote a few paragraphs about why!!! I’ll even copy and paste why for the curious reader. After I quote Craig’s nonsensical argument I say:
God is simply "good" by nature, and therefore he wouldn't command anything immoral? Right. Is that why many people have claimed to hear god speak to them, and they then commit horrible atrocities? One example is Dena Schlosser, who chopped her baby's arms off because god supposedly told her to. [10]
Other than peoples' supposed experiences with god (which can said to be either good or bad, depending on who you ask. According to one person, god told them to help the poor, with another, god told someone to kill another, or chop their baby's arms off), where can we attempt to determine god's nature? Well, nature itself, and as even Darwin saw, was oftentimes cruel with animals killing other animals for food. Even though Darwin never actually used this phrase, nature truly is "red in tooth and claw."
Another source is the bible. Unfortunately, this source doesn't seem to help Craig either because throughout the bible god is reported to have ordered the killing of multitudes of people. Examples include Leviticus 10:1-3; Numbers 31: 1-35, where god orders the murder of thousands of Midianites; 1 Samuel 6:19, the murder of seventy people simply for looking at a chest (the Ark of the Lord); Deuteronomy13: 5, among other verses, speak of killing those who do not believe or try to turn others away from god. There are many other examples besides these in the Old Testament. Even in the New Testament, while god greatly mellows out during this time period, his earthly incarnation in Jesus (if you believe in the Trinity as Craig does) does not always put forth some moral or righteous teachings. For example, Matthew 10:34-36, Luke 14:26, and Luke 12:51-53 all speak of dividing family and friends and how "a man will find his enemies under his own roof." . In Matthew 10:24-25 and Luke 12:47 Jesus apparently has no problem with slavery, and in these two passages, Jesus not only thinks that slaves are never above their master, but in a parable Jesus recommended that a slave be "flogged severely" if they don't follow their master's wishes. So much for family values and equality!
So far we've looked at all the sources we can find in order to determine god's true nature, and in both cases - in nature and the bible - we've seen that god is not always good, and sometimes commands people to do things that are clearly immoral, such as murder. Furthermore, Craig simply states that god is good without any proof whatsoever. He simply proclaims this as a fact, but this obviously isn't a fact. Therefore, it is wholly illogical to offer the argument that god's nature is good against the Euthyphro Dilemma.
Sorry, it’s actually Brennon’s argument that is horribly flawed. I took each and every source possible that I could use to determine god’s nature: the bible, nature, and peoples’ actions and sayings. They are all contradictory, so how in the hell can Craig simply declare god’s nature as “good”??!! Brennon, due to his blind devotion to Craig, apparently couldn’t see a logical argument if it landed on his face.
He continues,
He then moves on to a better question. In essence, he asks if God is good, then how do we go about knowing this good nature? Well, we are made in God's image, so innately we would have some sense of what His moral attributes are. We can also find out what God's duties to us are from His special revelation in the Bible. AA mentions this, but then brings up the incidents in the Bible where God orders the killing of people. Why is this a problem for God? God says that murder, which is unjustified killing, is evil. If God commands someone to kill someone else, that killing is justified. God orders the killing of people for just reasons. God has the power over life and death, so while it is wrong for us to kill willy nilly, God can take the life of anyone He wants. I go into quite a bit of detail in this combox discussion.
In assailing God for these killings, AA has revealed that he actually does believe in objective morality. If he doesn't, then what is he complaining about what God did for? Maybe God just wanted to kill someone. Who is AA to tell anyone else what they are doing is wrong? After all, right and wrong really don't exist. He says, "Even though morality is relative, it does not mean we can do whatever we wish. We still have a responsibility to our friends and family and there are various secular moral systems that have been developed throughout history that can guide us through this morally relative world." If we have a responsibility to our friends and family, then AA has pinpointed a moral reality that is objective, unless he's willing to admit that this is not an objective imperative, to which I'd ask why he brought it up in the first place. If this family responsibility is objective, then by the deductive reasoning of the moral argument, God exists.
During the discussion he cites Brennon clearly hasn’t got a decent moral compass or else he wouldn’t have said the following during a discussion with someone else:
David (the individual Brennon was speaking with): Concerning the slaughter of babies in the OT, you say:Well you're presupposing that God did this, . I am not presupposing, I am reading this directly from the books of Joshua and 1 Samuel (15)
Brennon: The presupposition I am referring to is that the people God had killed were innocent, you didn't mention the babies in that statement. I bring up the children later.
David: You say:Furthermore, we would have to realize that some specific commands God has given that are good may only be for that specific instance. How many times does one have to kill infants before it becomes a moral crime?
Brennon: Wwithout a command from God, anytime would be immoral.
David: If I do it once in a specific situation but not all the time--its okay?
Brennon: Only if that specific instance is when God commands it.
David: You say: It may be objectively true that it was right and good for the Israelites to kill all of the Canaanites at that moment in history due to a greater good that God perceived out of His foreknowledge. So you are saying that "the end justifies the means"?
Brennon: No, I am saying that God has a morally justified reason for commanding the death of the Canaanites. The death of the Canaanites was good and there is an even better good that came out of it.
David: I thought you had moral absolutes and it was only the atheist that practiced moral relativism?
Brennon: Acting as though the ends are what matter in moral decisions is not moral relativism, it would be more akin to utilitarianism. But that is not what I'm espousing. I hold to a mixture of deontological and virtue ethics.
Brennon later says,
Perhaps this will clear up my position:
If our moral duties come about because of the commands of God (which flow from His nature which is the good) then we are obligated to follow those commands. So I have no right to take an innocent life because God has said so. However, God does not issue moral commands to Himself because He is the locus of morality. He can give and take life as He chooses. That's why we accuse people who think they have that right with "playing god." God is under no obligation to allow anyone to live any longer than He chooses.
So that means that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites whenever He sees fit. The problem isn't, then, that He took the lives but that He commanded the Israelites to take the lives. Now you'll say "so He commanded murder!?!?!" No. He commanded something which without a divine command would have been murder.
Said another way, unjustified killing is murder, but with a divine command we have a justifiable reason to kill. Therefore, a divinely commanded killing is not murder.
Brennon’s argument is literally insane. He is giving the same justification for murder as many christians throughout history. It’s scary some people still think like this. Also, despite his semantics what he is talking about is moral relativism. It’s relative to god’s commands! The very issue the Euthyphro dilemma refutes!
Let me quote him from above in his post:
If God commands someone to kill someone else, that killing is justified. God orders the killing of people for just reasons. God has the power over life and death, so while it is wrong for us to kill willy nilly, God can take the life of anyone He wants.
You are fucking insane, Brennon. You sound like a christian terrorist and it’s scary!
But let me get back to his main argument in his post.
He says above,
He says, "Even though morality is relative, it does not mean we can do whatever we wish. We still have a responsibility to our friends and family and there are various secular moral systems that have been developed throughout history that can guide us through this morally relative world." If we have a responsibility to our friends and family, then AA has pinpointed a moral reality that is objective, unless he's willing to admit that this is not an objective imperative, to which I'd ask why he brought it up in the first place. If this family responsibility is objective, then by the deductive reasoning of the moral argument, God exists.
As I explained in the beginning, my reasons for this belief comes from my own belief that one should help friends and family. This can be explained through evolutionary traits, to better help ones’ kin and social network, though it’s certainly not an objective truth. Not everyone feels this way, and it’s also relative. If a family member needed help but they were using drugs I would not help them. It’s relative to the person’s circumstances and whether or not they deserve it.
Sorry, Brennon, but that’s not an objective truth.
In conclusion, Brennon says,
He says, "After all, even religion's morality is relative. It's dependent upon god's commands." He's either being dishonest or still doesn't get it. If morality is based on God's nature, then it is objective. It is a real reality that exists independent of any of us. If God created us, then we are obligated to follow His moral nature or face the consequences. Also, the moral duties God gives us are not arbitrary, but flow directly from His moral nature.
So, AA has shifted back and forth to wanting a moral objectivity when it comes to assailing God, to denying moral objectivity. But he's failed at giving us any reason to think morality is relative, he's failed at refuting the theistic response to the Euthyphro dilemma, and he's failed at refuting this argument in any way.
And as I said before, the Euthyphro dilemma refutes that absurd argument! It is relative to god’s commands, and claiming god is ‘all good’ is useless since neither Craig or Brennon has given one shred of evidence to that effect. In fact, the evidence I cited flatly refutes it.
Sorry, Brennon but tough talk and claiming victory does not make an argument effective.
Brennon has utterly failed to show that god’s nature is all good, while he also ignored my reasons for arguing that god’s nature is not good. He failed to show that there is an objective moral standard and failed to cite a single example of one, and he’s also proven that he has the mindset of a christian terrorist. If his god told him to kill me he’d do it. How fucking scary is that?
Now, he might argue in his defense that above he said, “If our moral duties come about because of the commands of God (which flow from His nature which is the good) then we are obligated to follow those commands. So I have no right to take an innocent life because God has said so.”, but he just contradicted himself, because just before he said that people are “obligated to follow [god’s] commands.” So, which is it? Though this isn’t the only contradiction I’ve caught Brennon in during this discussion. He truly has some illogical points of view, which make his contradictory and false worldview even easier for him to uphold. If something contradicts his beliefs, he simply makes up some excuse. It’s the way religious beliefs have survived for so long.
Brennon has not only failed to prove my arguments wrong, he also also succeeded in showing everyone just how morally bankrupted he is. Brennon, and many other theists, are like ignorant drones desperately trying to shove a square peg (their religious beliefs) into a round hole (reality) and they just look silly trying. I wish they’d just give up and embrace reality like other rational human beings.
1. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Second Edition, edited by Robert Audi, Cambridge University Press, 2005; 284
2. The Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith, by Will Durant, Simon & Schuster, 1950; 554-556
3. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Modern Slavery, by David Brion Davis, Oxford University Press, 2006; 55
4. The Science of Good & Evil, Michael Shermer, 2004; 90
Update 11-19-10
Well, as it so happens, Brennon found my piece refuting his claims about morality and I’ve got to say that as I read through it I found nothing that was an effective objection to what I wrote. Either he misunderstood my position, such as he did with Prime, or he strawmaned the shit out of my arguments. As for as my calling him “insane” what else would he expect when he actually comes out in favor of murder!?! And as I said, that is the exact same twisted reasoning of Christian terrorists! Of course, with Brennon’s twisted logic I guess there would be no reason for him to understand my shock about what he wrote.
There really isn’t even anything to respond to. Just correct his misunderstandings, but, he responded here. Below I’ve reproduced his piece and have placed a few comments in bold throughout.
I think I can begin by titling this, “Brennon Just Doesn’t Seem to Get...Well, Most of Anything” and I think that amply sums up our back and forth exchange.
I've taken a little break from the Arizona Atheist for several reasons, the main one is that this back and forth gets time consuming and time is something I don't have a lot of lately. Another reason is AA's lack of civility and his inability to reason in a straight line. It's clear he really hasn't studied the fundamentals of argumentation or logic, because he can't follow a simple argument, as is made clear when he shifts back and forth so dramatically from saying there is no objective morality to condemning me as "f[expletive deleted]ing insane" for differentiating between murder and a killing that is not murder. But, I will respond here for those it may actually benefit. I will respond to his woeful attempts at interacting with the teleological and ontological arguments in the weeks to come.
In the most recent post dated 9/14, AA begins, "Because of Brennon’s obvious lack of ability to engage in discussion without his immature ridicule I’ve decided not to respond directly to him, though have replied here for anyone who might happen to wander from his blog to mine seeing if I've responded." This is AA's main modus operandi when he can't understand some argument, or can't respond to it; play the victim. He seems to have trouble differentiating between a terse critique of his logic, and a personal attack on him. No one is personally attacking him, I critique his argument, and it is surprisingly weak, if not disoriented. But here's the thing, AA doesn't think that there are objective morals. So my question is why is he getting mad even if I did insult him? What's wrong with me insulting someone if I personally feel it's okay to insult? The fact is that AA is a rigid, almost dogmatic, moralist but he has to say he's not to avoid the conclusion of the moral argument.
I don’t know what his deal is but I wasn’t, or have I ever “played the victim.” He’s simply showcasing more of his immaturity. He said some things in our earlier discussion that I took offense to and I politely asked that he leave the ridicule at the door, but he never stopped, so I accuse him of being exactly what he is: immature. However, I’ve become accustomed unfortunately to some christians’ immature behavior when they can’t bring up a decent rebuttal to anything I say. And, perfectly in step with his immaturity, he defends it.
He continues, "This argument [that morality is subjective] may seem troubling to Brennon, but this gives away Brennon’s ignorance. Atheists make moral assertions by making rational, thought out (ie. subjective) choices about what is right and wrong, sometimes by following atheistic (godless) philosophies." I'm not sure what I'm ignorant about here, since I know this. How atheists arrive at their moral judgments has never been at issue in this debate, rather the debate is about whether there actually exists objective moral values and duties that all people are beholden to whether they know it or not. This is just a mini red herring.
He goes on,
Given the fact that objectivism regards things that exist independently from the human mind, this seems to be falsified both philosophically and scientifically...All things depend upon a conscious agent to bring things into existence and that includes moral values. If no human being were alive none of our moral beliefs would exist. Say another species evolved that species very well could have very different morals than us. Even other human societies have differing moral values and so this is also falsified without even bringing up Prime.
I don't know if AA is aware of what he just said here but, "All things depend upon a conscious agent to bring things into existence and that includes moral values" sounds like the cosmological argument to me. But we'll pass that off as an innocent misstep on AA's part and focus on the meat of this paragraph. First off, it seems ridiculous to say that things can't exist apart from the human mind. Obviously the universe does. Now, if AA actually meant perhaps that abstract concepts can't exist without the human mind, that also seems ridiculous. Would the laws of logic still hold in no human minds existed? I think they would. I can imagine a universe devoid of human life where modus ponens still was valid. But this is actually getting into the Transcendental argument for God. Since the laws of logic were still valid when and where there are no human minds, there must be a transcendent mind where these laws originate. But I digress.
Prime is a difficult concept to most people but let me explain it as basically as I can. If Brennon were not alive or even unconscious would be able to make any judgments about morality? No. Therefore, all morality comes from human beings. That’s a bit simplified but essentially that’s the jist of it. I’ve addressed Prime elsewhere so that’s all I’ll say about that.
I'm not sure how he thinks that objective morality, which is a metaphysical position, could be invalidated scientifically. I'd also like to see the philosophical argument that invalidates the position. "If no human being were alive none of our moral beliefs would exist," is just begging the question, since that is exactly what is being debated. He needs to argue that is the case. On the contrary, we all know, as AA shows himself in this very post, that there are things that are always wrong. It's always wrong to murder people. It's always wrong to torture innocent people.
He says, "Say another species evolved that species very well could have very different morals than us. Even other human societies have differing moral values and so this is also falsified without even bringing up Prime." Yes! That is exactly the point. If God does not exist, then our morals have evolved due to socio-biological pressures. But I'm sorry, if it turns out that extraterrestrials exist and they come to earth to rape our species in order to spread their own, it is still wrong, regardless of how their evolutionary history progressed. The Nazis evolved a society where it was right to kill Jews and homosexuals, but even if they had won and had eradicated the notion that that was wrong, it would still be wrong. Does AA disagree that the holocaust was wrong? He'd have to if moral relativism were true.
He then goes off into the discussion we had about slavery. This was a digression from the main point that came up because he wanted to show that morality is relative by showing that people in the past defended slavery. But I'm done arguing about that, as I have already shown that Thomas Aquinas did not have in mind the slavery where all humanity is stripped from the slaves, because Aquinas accepted that all humans have intrinsic value. The thing is, as I stated in the post he responded to, "simply offering examples of people who thought a certain moral abomination was morally good does not prove in any sense that morals are relative or that what that person did was right in any way. All showing past moral abominations does is show that moral abominations happened in the past." So the slavery thing isn't at issue here. Rather we are trying to determine whether some sort of slavery is objectively wrong.
AA says, "The moral argument no more proves god’s existence than someone arguing that moral absolutes mean that fairies exist. Brennon calling me ignorant is ignorance in itself! It’s more than clear that it is he who doesn’t understand logic." Actually, the moral argument is deductive, so if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. He must show that the premises are false to defeat the argument. He's been attempting to argue against premise 2, but he constantly reverts to some objective morality when he's offended by what I say and wants to criticize me for it. Why can't he be consistent here? I think it's because he intuitively knows that there are objective morals. Otherwise he has nothing to criticize me about.
Here again is where theists run into road blocks with morality. Human beings ourselves create the rightness or wrongness of an action. It’s been done for thousands of years, with laws being passed in various states and rules being changed throughout time. In one state something is illegal but in another state it’s legal. In one country something is legal; in another it isn’t. In one period of time slavery was legal and now its condemned by nearly everyone. Our moral values change over time, and despite Aquinas’s views on feudalism most christians throughout history owned slaves and freely participated in the slave trade. But over time their views began to change. The idea of slavery is relative to the time and place in which one lives.
Laws may reflect morality, but they obviously don't create morality. There has to be some reason why we institute certain things as laws, and it's obvious the laws against murder are there after everyone knows that murder is wrong. Laws also don't always deal with morality, but on social conventions. Yes, some states institute laws that say we are to drive on the right hand side of the road while others direct us to drive on the left hand side. It's obviously not intrinsically good or bad to drive on one side or the other. These are just social conventions.
He went around my argument here. I’m not talking about social conventions like what side of the road each country drives on, but laws about morality, such as the age of sexual consent or the legal age you can drink. It’s relative depending on where you live.
Furthermore, it's obvious that some governments can institute morally bad laws, such as the United States institution of slavery or modern Muslim countries who subjugate the rights of women. Laws may reflect morality, but it's obvious they don't create it. And is AA saying that slavery was right at one time, since that was the social leaning of the culture? If that's correct, then those who were fighting against slavery were committing a moral crime, which doesn't seem right at all. There are so many problems with this kind of morality, and it's obvious that not even AA can live consistently with it.
AA then goes on and seems to say that rape is okay if the culture approves. Really? I've got to say, I think that there is something seriously wrong if he thinks that is the case, and ought to look into counseling. I think it's clear to anyone whose mental faculties are operating properly that rape is always wrong in every case because it is a direct attack and defiling of a human being. But, it's true that if AA is correct and there is no objective morality, then rape isn't really wrong. Great white sharks forcibly copulate all the time. It helps their genetics spread. We're no different than sharks ultimately if God does not exist.
I never said rape is OK. I was simply using the one culture as an example to show that different places view certain acts as immoral and others do not. It’s despicable he attributes that belief to me! I HATE rapists.
AA says,
According to Brennon, I guess the several religious Inquisitions were considered wrong by those performing them. Of course, that would not be accurate. They believed they were doing god’s work by torturing people and suppressing heresy. So, no Brennon, torture has not always been “wrong, no matter what culture you’re in” or time period.
Apparently, AA is saying that it was right for the church to kill heretics for things they believed, since at the time this kind of thing was not thought to be bad. Well as unprovable as that is, since I'm sure at least the ones being subject to the Inquisitions thought it was bad, it isn't relevant to whether objective morals exists. Again, showing that certain people did bad things doesn't disprove objective morality, it just shows that people did bad things. Just as I sense that there is a computer in front of me right now, I also sense that it was wrong for the church to do what it did, and it has always been wrong and will always be wrong. I have no more reason to doubt that than I do that the mind-independent world exists, and I think everyone knows it.
No, the fact that some groups believe certain behaviors are right and others wrong, and these beliefs also vary throughout time, then that is proof of relative morality. It’s relative to the time and place you are!
He tries to resurrect the Euthyphro dilemma again, but I've already shown how this fails, since things are neither right because God declares them, nor are they right separate from God, but they are right because they match up to God's nature, which itself is the good. Therefore, morality is what it is because God is who He is. He then gives us moral duties in the form of divine commands that flow necessarily from His essential nature.
And as I showed that belief is based upon not a shred of evidence. It’s an ad hoc explanation at its finest.
I took each and every source possible that I could use to determine god’s nature: the bible, nature, and peoples’ actions and sayings. They are all contradictory, so how in the hell can Craig simply declare god’s nature as “good”??!! Brennon, due to his blind devotion to Craig, apparently couldn’t see a logical argument if it landed on his face.
It doesn't matter if sources that propound moral advice contradict one another to whether there actually is an objective moral reality. Craig can declare that God is the good because 1) reason tells us that the greatest conceivable being would be the good and 2) God has revealed it.
Circular reasoning and these is no evidence that god is “good.” I cited every source to determine god's nature and Brennon did nothing to answer this.
AA then examines my explanation about moral values and duties as they come from God as it relates. I said,
If our moral duties come about because of the commands of God (which flow from His nature which is the good) then we are obligated to follow those commands. So I have no right to take an innocent life because God has said so. However, God does not issue moral commands to Himself because He is the locus of morality. He can give and take life as He chooses. That's why we accuse people who think they have that right with "playing god." God is under no obligation to allow anyone to live any longer than He chooses.
So that means that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites whenever He sees fit. The problem isn't, then, that He took the lives but that He commanded the Israelites to take the lives. Now you'll say "so He commanded murder!?!?!" No. He commanded something which without a divine command would have been murder.
Said another way, unjustified killing is murder, but with a divine command we have a justifiable reason to kill. Therefore, a divinely commanded killing is not murder.
To this, AA responds,
Brennon’s argument is literally insane. He is giving the same justification for murder as many christians throughout history. It’s scary some people still think like this. Also, despite his semantics what he is talking about is moral relativism. It’s relative to god’s commands! The very issue the Euthyphro dilemma refutes!
First I want to point out AA's consternation at my defense of God's command to kill the Canaanites. Why is he so upset? He doesn't believe there are objective morals. What, then, is wrong with this and what is wrong with the Christians throughout history who have killed people? The only way this would be wrong is if there is an objective standard by which to compare it.
Second, whether things are objectively right or not are not relative to God's commands, but rather God's commands adhere to His necessarily moral nature. His commands to us to not murder (unjustified killing) flows from His essential goodness and justice. Now, God does not issue these commands to Himself. Further, God is not obligated to let us live any longer than He wants us to. It is His prerogative. But it isn't our prerogative. Now, if God does command us to kill someone, then we have a justifiable reason to kill them, ergo it isn't murder. Similarly, there are other times when killing is justified, such as in self-defense.
To this reasoning, AA let fly his, "You are f[expletive deleted]ing insane, Brennon. You sound like a christian terrorist and it’s scary!" When you know you've lost an argument, to save face often one resorts to the ad hominem. I think it's interesting that AA is apparently appealing to some objective moral standard to say that what I have said is evil or something. If there is no morality, AA, then there's nothing wrong with Christian terrorism (which we all know is a huge problem in this world; hoooo-ee!). What are you basing this critique on?
Anyway, it's obvious that AA wants to have his cake and eat it too. He's failed to recognize that past examples of immoral behaviors don't show that there isn't objective morality, he's defended past acts of immorality by saying that it was right at that time (totally making moral reformers like Ghandi immoral for their time), and then he attacked my morality as insane. Clearly, AA can't even keep his own thoughts straight on this issue. Until he actually gives some reason to think that the moral reality we all sense isn't a reality, but an illusion, then he hasn't refuted anything. But that isn't surprising at all.
Like I said, he didn’t refute a damn thing I said and like I told him previously, tough talk does not make an argument effective. And he also contradicted himself since before he said, even in bold font, that he wasn’t trying to insult me, but here he made his intentions clear. What should I think about this? Has Brennon just admitted to a lie? It seems that way. I’d also like to say again that I not condone rape and it’s despicable that he attributes that belief to me. I said that some cultures accept it, not me.
If you read my post and his reply it’s clear he did not have any factual or logical responses so I don’t have anything else to add and it’s more than clear that Brennon cannot debate someone without horribly misrepresenting their position. I won’t be responding further.
