A Pair of Bulls

Two bulls once met across a fence.

 

The first bull said to the second “Where are you from?“, to which the second replied “Outside your fence. How about you?“

 

The first bull answered “Oh, I also came from outside the fence, but I found life to be better here. Indeed, I tried living within many different fences, but they all left me hungry. The farmers would give me shredded paper, or tofu, or elbow macaroni, or ground up cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but none of these sated my hunger. Our Farmer, though, he feeds us grain and water and salt. You could join us, if you like.“

 

The second bull looked over the fence at the herd, and nodded. “I can see that you are well fed and healthy. I can see a certain appeal to joining. I must know, though: why didn't you just go out of the other farmers fences and eat the food nature provided you with, though? I've found it to be quite nourishing.“

 

The first bull looked at the second. “I can see that you are healthy as well, and you are lucky indeed. All truly nourishing food comes from Our Farmer, and so you must have been milling around near a place he left food out. He's not unkind, you see, and so doesn't only feed those of us in his fence. It must be scary, though, having no reliable source of food.“

 

“No reliable source of food?“ asked the second bull, confused, “I get my food from the same source your Farmer does, from the ground itself. Without the middleman, my source is at least as reliable as yours.“

 

“While, yes, there is some food to be had from the ground,“ rejoined the first bull, “the food of Our Farmer is better. You see, he's where grains come from, and corn, and apples. You can't get those from the ground. I'll be the first to admit you are doing very well on your ground-food diet, but there are two big problems. One is that the ground can't supply the most important things, so you'll never be completely nourished, and the other is that you can't rely on the ground to only give you good food, so you'll end up eating bad things.“

 

“That's what I have a sense of smell and of taste for,“ said the second bull, “and a memory. I can figure out which things from the ground are good and which are bad. Grains, for instance. I found some, growing in the ground, far from here, and I can tell they're good food. Your Farmer doesn't have the monopoly on grains. You certainly look like you're fed on grains, but your Farmer's got to get them somewhere, and it's the ground.“

 

“Of course, your senses are good to have, but they're not enough,“ pointed out the first bull. “Even if grains did grow in the ground... which they don't... your senses weren't enough to tell that they're good. That's why it's important to be in Our Farmer's field. He knows what's good for us, even when our senses don't. He tells us what is good to eat and what is bad, and he gives us the good things to eat. Simple as that. All we have to do is digest them... which isn't always easy...“

 

“Well yes, naturally it's not easy.“ interjected the second bull, “If it didn't take any effort to digest the food, it would all slide out the other end with no benefit gained...“

 

“But we aren't reduced to relying on our senses. Granted, you can use your senses to tell that we've got something good going on here, that's how I decided to join the herd. I could tell that there was something special about Our Farmer's food...“

 

“But there's nothing special about your Farmer's food!“ objected the second bull. “There's something special about your food, but not because it comes from your Farmer. If your Farmer were replaced by a mechanical bull, grains and corn and apples would still be good food, it would still come from the ground, and it would still be the right food for the likes of you and me. The food, yes, that's special, but getting all worked up about it being tied to your Farmer is not only unnecessary, but could lead you to make mistakes. You'd be better off learning, yourself, how to tell good food from bad and how to find the good food where it grows in the ground.“

 

“But, you see, we already can tell good food from bad: the food Our Farmer gives us is good, and anything else is at risk of being bad. And we already can find the good food where it comes from: it comes from Our Farmer.“

 

“You can't see that your Farmer is a fallible middleman between the source of proper food and yourself, you don't believe that complete nutrition can be derived from the actual source of all nutrition, and you want me to join you?“ queried the second bull.

 

“I can't see why you wouldn't want to. I see that you can tell that our food is good. We have a nice big herd, too. You don't seem to be in a herd. Aren't you lonely? If you had calves, would you want them to be lonely and underfed?“

 

“Until you realize that there are more important, more fundamental things than your Farmer and are able to discern them with your own eyes, I cannot be a member of your herd. If I had calves, it would be wrong to raise them among closed eyes, even if they were well fed and never lonely, for it would be far too easy for them to never learn to open their own eyes, thinking they have food and friends and that truth is only of secondary importance.“

 

“But,“ protested the first bull, “Having Our Farmer's food and being in the fence really is what matters...“

 

“Just so,“ lamented the second bull, “just so.“

Rumor Mill

Some assumptions to make about the assumptions that people hearing a rumor are (for better or worse) entitled to make:

Rumors that are acknowledged as true should be assumed to be true, and the acknowledging party gains trust, though the trust-gain diminishes in proportion to the amount of time the rumor was extant but unaddressed.

Rumors that are denied without transparent supporting evidence should be assumed to be true, and the denying party loses trust .

Rumors that are not addressed should be assumed to be true, and the non-addressing party loses trust.

Rumors that are denied with transparent supporting evidence are may be assumed to be false, and the acknowledging party may gain trust, if examination of corroborating evidence addresses plausible levels of skepticism.

Re: On the FSM, the IPU, et al., part 2 of 2

This is post 2 of 2 in response to the following AiDs post.

Firstly, we should point out that, as per New Atheist “reasoning,” the primary point to make is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves namely: who spaghettied the spaghetti? We may likewise ask: who amassed the meatballs?
Since we cannot answer these questions the Spaghettied One does not answer anything.

Your word order is misleading, here. You could say that "The primary point I want to make is that, per New Atheist 'reasoning', the FSM is not a real alternative because...". Your current word order, however, indicates that you think that "according to New Atheists, the primary point of the FSM is that it is not a real alternative because...". Unless you are actually starting the article off on the terrible foot of committing the transgression that you accused many atheists of doing earlier (not knowing what you're attacking), this latter version is inappropriate.

As best I can tell, the primary point of the FSM is to hold unsound religious (and, particularly, various Christian) arguments up to the light after stripping away the centuries of tradition and taboo. And, insofar as there are some, reveal sound religious arguments to be worthwhile despite the dubious company they keep. This point is largely achieved at the tips of two lemmas: First, by repeating the essence of an argument with only superficial elements altered, the invalid conclusion becomes more obviously invalid, so the flaws in the argument are more visible. Second, when anti-FSM people (atheist and non-atheist alike) attack the FSM position, the essence of the attack can be repeated, with only the superficial elements changed back, in order to make an equally valid (or invalid) attack on the original argument.

For example,
Christians argue that Christian creationism should be given 'equal time' in the classroom.
Pastafarians argue, mutatis mutandis, that FSM creationism should be given 'equal time' too.
Everyone sane realizes that the Pastafarian argument is bupkis.
Sufficiently many people realize that the Christian argument, which is in essence the exact same argument, is insufficient.

For another example...

A Christian says:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has a physical body and thus, is not immaterial nor spirit: it has extension in space is therefore limited by spatial dimensions and restricted by locality and thus, is not omnipresent. One adherent of the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster made specific reference to its “noodly appendage.”

A Pasfatarian replies:

That's a good point! And, come to think of it, your god had a physical body (Jesus) and thus, was not immaterial nor spirit: he had extension in space was therefore limited by spatial dimensions and restricted by locality and thus, was not omnipresent. At least one adherent of the cult of your god made specific reference to the "hand of God". Gosh, I guess you're right, and neither the FSM nor your god could be the creator revealed by natural revelation!

For another example...

A Christian says:

Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster is physical it is subject to the absorption and deflection of light particles and is therefore visible and particularly hued. Bobby Henderson did claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is “invisible and can pass through normal matter” and so either Bobby Henderson is a false prophet or the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows how to traverse dimensions.

A Pastafarian replies:

Oooh, another zinger! And it hits both of us, again! Since Jesus is physical he's subject to the absorption and deflection of light particles and is therefore visible and particularly hued. But the Bible does claim that your god is invisible, "eternal, immortal, invisible" (1 Timothy 1:17) and so either the Bible is a false holy book or your god knows how to traverse dimensions.

For another example...

A Christian says:

Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s physical body consists of spaghetti and meatballs the constituents of the godhead are as follows: eggs, salt and pepper, flour, water, beef and or pork, basil, parsley, mushrooms, bread crumbs, oil, etc.
Since these physical entities must have, by necessity, preexisted the Flying Spaghetti Monster it cannot be the uncaused first cause. Moreover, the constituents of spaghetti and meatballs must have been amassed by an Intelligent Chef who not only had access to various physical ingredients and knew how to put them together just right, fine tuned them, but utilized cookware and some form of energy with which to cook the ingredients.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is made of the very materials which it is alleged to have created. It could not have created itself since it would have to have been in order to have created itself.
Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster is composed of various complex parts that were merged it had a beginning.
Since it is physical it is not immaterial.
Since it had a beginning it had a cause.
Since it had a beginning it is not eternal.
It experiences time and is not eternal.
It is limited by space. This is true even if it can pass though matter since it has to “pass through” it in order to make its way to another location. Therefore, it is not omnipresent.
Since it is composed of material objects it is not a contingent being.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not pass the test of natural theology.

A Pastafarian replies:

Darn. Totally ridiculous. You're right. Moreover, since your god's physical body consisted of flesh and bone the constituents of the godhead are as follows: calcium, protein, hemoglobin, water, etc. Since these physical entities must have, by necessity, preexisted your god it cannot be the uncaused first cause. Moreover, the constituents of flesh and bone must have been amassed by an Intelligent Biotechnician who not only had access to various physical ingredients and knew how to put them together just right, fine tuned them, but utilized labware and some form of energy with which to compose the ingredients.

Your god is made of the very materials which it is alleged to have created. It could not have created itself since it would have to have been in order to have created itself.
Since your god is composed of various complex parts that were merged it had a beginning.
Since it is physical it is not immaterial.
Since it had a beginning it had a cause.
Since it had a beginning it is not eternal.
It experiences time and is not eternal.
It is limited by space. This is true even if Jesus could walk on water since he has to “walk on” it in order to make its way to another location. Therefore, it is not omnipresent.
Since it is composed of material objects it is not a contingent being.

Your god does not pass the test of natural theology.

Could you easily pick out the flaws in the Pasafarian's replies? I hope so, since I think even I could... though I might not be able to do so while sticking to any sort of commonly-held Christian theology. I could say that Jesus isn't God, for example, thus cutting off the physicality problems altogether. I could say that God can execute miracles such as being immortal invisible and immaterial yet also being incarnated as a visibly physical mortal, with a cherry and being multiple persons at the same time on top. I'm sure you could come up with much more elegant justifications why your argument doesn't apply to your god but does apply to the FSM.

But unless you were basing your arguments on more than things that don't boil down to "Yeah, but MY god can do and be anything I want him to be!" the Pastafarian can then throw your illogic back in your face. The FSM's body is not the FSM, simply its body, and anyhow the FSM can execute miracles such as being immaterial and aspatial while still having one-or-more physical locations. Yay miracles.

Since you're writing as if you think you're waging an actual attack on the FSM, it sounds like you actually are guilty of the thing you accused many atheists of in Part 1. "Mariano exhibits a lack of knowledge of the very theism against which he argues—Pastafarianism." You don't seem to realize, among other things, that the Miraculous Nature of the FSM allows it to be invisible, eternal, uncaused, and immaterial while still having a temporally and spatially limited and interacting body. You argue that it's not uncaused based on perfectly reasonable conclusions about its physical body, but you seem ignorant of the Miracle that the FSM is the uncaused causer.

I can't really blame you much for your ignorance... most people are the kind that, if an atheist, would fall into the 'many atheists' group. Moreover, Miracles of eternal-yet-temporal and embodied-yet-immaterial are, as far as I'm concerned, junk... so I can't fault you for focusing only on one half of the contradiction, the same way I don't fault many atheists for their approach to theistic (and in particular Christian) miracles. It's still ignorance, though, and after your accusation in Part 1 it's also rather hypocritical.

Re: On the FSM, the IPU, et al., part 1 of 2

This is post 1 of 2 in response to the following AiDs post.

Many atheists exhibit a lack of knowledge of the very theism against which they most often, if not exclusively, argue—the Bible’s Judeo-Christianity. Worse yet, they think that they are well versed by claiming that they were “raised Christian” (whatever that means), “went to Sunday School,” “was an altar boy,” “saw the movie (hyperbole intended),” etc.

In your opening sentence, you lay a heavy accusation against many atheists. I think your accusation, as it turns out, is quite correct, but there are some key pieces to it that you fail to add. For example, why would someone who was raised as a Christian, went to Sunday School, was an altar boy, and went to Jesus Camp (hyperbole intended) exhibit a lack of knowledge of the very theism against which you think they most often argue?

You will, I'm sure, note the insertion of 'you think' in my last question. When Bob the Rabid Atheist is ranting about the awfulness of some straw-man version of Christianity, I'd argue that Bob is not exhibiting a lack of knowledge of the straw-man, but rather a lack of knowledge of your particular flavor of Christianity. If you take Bob's foaming-at-the-mouth diatribe to be actually targeted at what you believe, then Bob would be exhibiting a dreadful lack of knowledge of what you think he's arguing against. I hope you can see that my adding 'you think' is not there in defense of Bob or his argument, but really is an important point of clarification.

On top of that point, I'll add something else that's not at all in Bob's favor: For all that Bob really is knowledgeable about his straw-man, chances are that Bob thinks that his straw-man is one and the same thing as "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity". Just as he exposes a lack of knowledge about what you think he's talking about (but isn't), he engages in the mistake of thinking he's talking about one thing (what you think he's talking about) knowledgeably when he's actually talking about something different (his straw-man) knowledgeably.

So much for Bob's diatribe bearing any weight, huh? As I said, you've laid a heavy accusation, but I don't think you laid it quite as heavy as it should be.

That still leaves two very similar questions open, though: Why would both you and Bob be confused about whether he was discussing a straw man or "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity"? Bob doesn't have much excuse, having grown up in a Christian environment, having had Christian indoctrination in Sunday School, and presumably displaying sufficient competence or understanding to be an acceptable altar boy. I can't speak to your qualifications, but I would guess that, at least on the surface, it would be reasonable for you to be able to tell the difference as well. And yet both of you get confused.

Let me say that again: Both of you are confused on the subject of what Bob is attacking (successfully or not). The question is why would either of you be, and the answer is that you both believe there is something properly called "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity". As if there were just one such thing. As if there were only One Obviously Correct Way to interpret the One Obviously Correct translation of the One Obviously Correct compilation of Judeo-Christian holy texts.

The problem is, Bob's straw man, pallid though it is, actually is one of the many versions of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity". What you think he's arguing against (very ineffectively) is a different version of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity". Neither of them are all that close to my Catholic neighbor's version of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity", or my Mormon neighbor's version of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity", or my 'Twelve Tribes' (http://tinyurl.com/9jqxwa) neighbors' version of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity".

Bob actually exhibits a sound grasp of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B) and his attacks (rabid as they are) are actually pretty on-target... which is why very few people actually adhere to "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand T). Instead, they might be like you, and follow "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand D), which is free of most of the serious problems of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B). Or they might be like someone in the Twelve Tribes, who follows "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand T) which so radically reinterprets some particular bible compilation that it rarely has anything in common with "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B) or "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand D). Or they might be like a Mormon, who follows "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand M) which uses texts that a Catholic knows are not sources for "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand C).

So, yes, please do condemn Bob for attacking the straw-man of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B). Please help Bob, and the many other atheists like him, know that his arguments against "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B) are actually correct but they're not very relevant because what you care about and believe in is "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand D) which is quite different. Make sure he knows that even if he does manage to understand, become knowledgeable on, choose to continue not believing, and ultimately attack "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand D), he is not automatically an authority on "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand M) or "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand C) or "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand T), and will have a lot more work to do if he wants to address those. Go ahead and let Bob know that the range of possible brands of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" are endless, and that his time would be far better served by helping people figure out what they should do and why they should do it, than going around trying to tear down every incarnation of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity".

Do not, however, make Bob's mistake and get stuck in the rut of thinking there is just One Obviously Correct "Bible's Judeo-Christianity". It's something that many Christians do, and it sets a terrible, terrible example for ex-Christians like Bob to follow, as well as for many atheists who never were Christian in the first place. Also, it happens to be one of the prominent features of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand B), and it would be pretty embarrassing if someone actually DID use that brand!

One tangent to stave off a potential misreading: Please do note the use of "One Obviously Correct", rather than "One Correct". It's the difference between "what you know to be true" and "what actually is true" - just because you can in all honesty say that you know something, that does not make your knowledge correct.

I find that many atheists not only lack knowledge of Christian theology and the contents and contexts of the Bible but lack a basic understanding of natural theology / natural revelation, which seeks to infer the cause of the universe from nature (nature not meaning biosphere alone but the universe as a whole).

On the first part, I, for one, have moderate levels of knowledge about a few brands of "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity", but there are a lot more that I don't know the first thing about than there are that I can converse usefully upon.

On the second part, I freely admit that I have never yet had any clear explanation of 'revelation' or 'natural revelation', and would welcome one if you've got one.

We end up with atheists seriously arguing that the concept of God as postulated by Christian theology is on a par with postulating the existence of imaginary friends, fairies, celestial teapots, sky daddies or Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorns.

No kidding. Again, it's back to the problem of confusing "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (brand X) with "the Bible's Judeo-Christianity" (The Obviously Correct One). If such atheists were clear that the concept of gods as postulated in all theologies which had thus far been clearly and unambiguously explained to them were on par with imaginary friends etc., I imagine theists would be less frustrated, more willing to explain what they actually believe, and get less defensive... which in turn would lead to atheists actually thinking about things that could be actual issues rather than straw-men, being less rabid, and getting less defensive in turn.

So, on to some explanation of 'natural revelation'?

Assumption 1: The universe began to exist.
Assumption 2: Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
Conclusion 1: The universe had a cause because it began to exist.

Well, the conclusion certainly follows from the assumptions, but I'm not yet persuaded that the assumptions are true in all possible worlds (i.e. necessarily true). Also, some clarification is needed on what you mean by 'universe' and 'exist' and 'cause'. For example, is the universe everything-everything (includes all of 'physical reality' as well as 'minds' and 'spirits' and 'souls' and 'gods') or is it everything-interactable (all physical forces and everything governed by those physical forces) or is it everything-metainteractable (all physical forces, everything governed by those forces, all the patterns that can arise among physical forces and things, and all patterns that can arise among patterns)?

Since time/space/matter began to exist: whatever caused it is...

Already, the scope of 'universe' is important. Clearly, you treat 'time' as part of 'the universe', but it also seems like you treat the notion of "anything which could be viewed analogously to time" as automatically part of 'the universe' as well. There's a (Science Fiction) story in which there is a universe which began to exist, which did have a cause, and time (as it had meaning within the universe) began to exist when the universe in question began to exist, but the cause of the universe in discussion came from a different universe, with a different and distinct 'time' all of its own. It might be fair to say that the caused universe's cause was timeless with respect to the caused universe, but not that it was timeless.

In anticipation of the objection that the caused universe is not properly 'a universe', and 'the universe' should encompass both caused and causing universes, I'll point back to my objection that you have not yet been clear on what constitutes 'the universe'. The first thing I'll be looking for in your definition is "How a causing-universe can be required to be part of 'the universe', but God is not required to be part of 'the universe'".

Since whatever caused the universe did cause it, that is; made something happen or caused an effect, whatever caused it is volitional, self-conscious and personal (meaning exhibiting characteristics of personhood or personality—conceiving plans, making decisions and taking actions).

Assuming your reasoning isn't just wishful, you're skipping a whole heap of important steps here. Or is it legitimate for me to just say "Since whatever caused the universe is atemporal, aspatial, and amaterial, whatever caused it is avolitional, aconsious, and apersonal (meaning exhibiting no characteristics of personhood or personality)" and have it automatically be true because I feel it's right?

Thus, we see how just in these few examples we learn quite a bit about the characteristics one should find in the universe’s cause.

If it began to exist. And if all things which exist have a cause. And depending on what you mean by 'universe' and 'time'. And if all causings originate in volition, self-consciousness, and personal-ness...

That's too many IFs to say we've learned much of anything, to say nothing about "quite a bit".

Clear definitions

When someone starts trying to clarify what they mean by words, I immediately whip out a search/replace and swap out the words-being-defined with nonwords, to make sure I don't accidentally equivocate between my accustomed definitions and the way the person is using the words. In this case, if you're curious, I used QUABBIN and HONEOKE.

Step two is to pull out some paper, or some mind-mapping software (in this case, I did use XPHLOMAS) and connect all the properties and examples and associations for each of the unknown words. For example, I put "Human (passing on DNA)" and "Baseball bat (hitting balls)" as examples for QUABBIN, and "Baseball bat (given by famous user of baseball bats)" as the lonely example for HONEOKE.

Step three, I set things aside for a while and try to give enough time that I can forget what words had originally been there, to reduce the influences of my normal language assumptions. Then, just looking at the mind-map, I try to figure out if there are already any terms in my vocabulary which come close to fitting the information related to my QUABBIN and HONEOKE nonwords.

Sometimes there are and they happen to be the original words, and that's very convenient, because apparently I use the words the same way as the person I'm corresponding with. Sometimes there aren't, and so I set up some automatic filtering so that when a message comes in the swap is automatically done to put in QUABBIN or HONEOKE... the new concepts I'm learning about... and then swap those back to what the person originally used when I send a message back out.

Sometimes, however, the descriptions seem to fit different terms or, worse yet, multiple different terms that I already use. This is also a good result, because it makes it clear that the attempt at definition either was incomplete or has lead to revealing an important disconnect in how we're relating concepts to each other.

Take, for example, the following attempt at figuring out if I had any names for concepts like QUABBIN and HONEOKE... the former I tried out as 'functional capacity' and the latter as 'price' or perhaps 'monetary compensation required for an exchange to be considered'.

In the course of the analysis, I had to swap out a few more words, which are left in their unguessed form for now.

I have often written of “functional capacity/price” just like that; as compound and interchangeable terms and concepts. But as of late I have been speculating as to what sort of difference there is between “functional capacity” and “price” (something beyond quoting a grammatical dictionary).

Everything has a “functional capacity” but not necessarily “price.”

It seems that “functional capacity” is intrinsic but “price” extrinsic.

For example, a baseball bat has a functional capacity: to hit balls. Yet, a baseball bat that was given to me by Reggie Jackson has functional capacity and now also has price since I gave it price.

Thus, rocks, chinchillas, cucumbers, stars, humans, etc. all have functional capacity as a natural consequence of the fact of their existence.

Another example, a human being has a functional capacity such as passing on their DNA. Yet, price does not seem to the sort of thing that we commandeer for ourselves, not something that we can assign to ourselves but something that is given unto us, bequeathed upon us by others.

For instance, when my young son sees a word that he does not yet know, even if he can actually read it, he will ask, “What does that mean?” If we suddenly underwent worldwide amnesia written texts would be priceless—we give price to words even as the original author employed the words due to the agreed upon price(s) that we have given them.

So, clearly the find/replace might have been improved by swapping "-less" with "lacking -", since priceless ends up being a rather different word than, say, "free", but otherwise not bad so far.

Moreover, it seems that whatever prices we have to other human beings are HALOKE. Ultimately, presupposing absolute materialism; everything is functional capacityful but priceless. This is because our functional capacity is a function while price is of a whole different category more akin to something ethereal—a concept.

There's a HALOKE there replacing 'HONEOKE-ettes' because it looks like another term is being defined.

Our functional capacity is that we perform certain functions and the function serves a certain functional capacity and is then done with. However, if price is something that we give to ourselves or that other, COLET humans, give to us then it is fleeting since one day—whether we are a Mother Theresa or a Joseph Stalin—anything and everything that we have ever thought, said or done will simply not matter in the least bit: be it tomorrow, in a year, in a decade, in a century, in a millennia—we will be gone and nothing that we have ever thought, said or done will be the least bit relevant.

I'm neither an actuary nor a slave trader, so the idea of assigning prices to humans is reasonably foreign to me... but every time a decision is made to tax X amount for safety regulation Y aimed at saving an average of Z lives, I guess there's effectively a price being set, so I can at least partially grok this. It seems like the author is also assuming that price is never allowed to change, though...

Also, I'm curious what this COLET term is about. The original is a term that, when used in carefully controlled mathematical settings, is very useful, but tends to be nonsensically used anywhere else I've seen it, so it gets a placeholder. So far, it is something that applies to at least some other humans.

Thus, to recap: since functional capacity is part of a process functional capacity serves its, well, functional capacity and is done with.
However, since price is a concept that exists within a PHLOMAS—either ours (which I do not accept but would be willing to entertain) or that of others—once the PHLOMAS ceases to function the price ceases and so we see that ultimately everything is priceless once the façade, or consoling delusion, of HALOKEs are exposed for what they are—nothing. Nothing, perhaps, but a fleeting bio-chemical reaction within the PHLOMAS of a fleeting bio-organism.

There's HALOKE again. Apparently HALOKEs are illusory, consoling delusions, next to nothing, and transient epiphenomena associated only with certain kinds of life.

Also, this part seems to contradict the earlier idea that price is something agreed-upon. Why should a certain price stop being agreed upon just because one of the agreeing parties kicks the bucket and their PHLOMAS (whatever that is) presumably ceased to function? Generally, there's other people out there to carry on the agreement. Sure, if there's only one person in the world left who thinks something has a certain price, then if they die, that price vanishes with them... but since price is supposed to be something agreed-upon, once you're down to one person it's not really a price anymore, is it?

Apparently, this leads to the idea that nothing actually has any price, so it's apparent that either the author and I are living in very different worlds, or (more likely) HONEOKE didn't get explained clearly enough. But, just for fun, let's see where the rest of this goes...

If we were not conscious we would merely be, pretty much what we are on a materialistic/naturalistic view, bio-organisms who are one day moving about and the next worm food—worms who are merely bio-organisms who are one day moving about and the next food for something else.

As an aside: I can only wonder why we long for, seek for, strive for, live for, die for, price.

That's a big question. Even if you ask the littler and more specific question of the same things about 'price of oil', it is still a big question!

Let us presuppose that price does truly exist.

What is price?

It is a concept.

What is a concept?

A concept is an PHLOLET.

Where does an PHLOLET exist?

An PHLOLET exist in a PHLOMAS.

Which raises the questions of "What is a PHLOMAS" and "What is a PHLOLET". It seems clear that a PHLOMAS is some kind of container for PHLOLETs, and that PHLOLETs are some collection of abstract patterns which includes concepts, but that's about it so far.

Is price non-COLET or COLET?

If it is COLET then it is not truly price (though it could be functional capacity), so it is non-COLET.

Ok, so COLET applies to some other humans and possibly HONEOKE/price. At least, the question of whether COLET applies to price is supposed to be a meaningful one.

Aside from the problem that COLET and non-COLET are currently in need of clarification, I'm concerned that here in the conclusions/argument section is a brand-new assertion about price/HONEOKE - that there is a 'true price' which is non-COLET, and that COLET prices are 'not true price'. It's not cool to go redefining terms in the middle of an argument.

Does price change or is it unchangeable?

If it changes then it is not price (“change” here price from price to something else and not just a change within the original price in which case it is still price).

Again, another redefinition mid-argument. Plus a re-affirmation of either living in different worlds or insufficient up-front definition. Also, something about the sentence just reads... weird. I suspect that this is not only a mid-stride redefinition, but also a case of using the incompletely defined term itself in the process of redefining it. Don't get me wrong, I adore properly constructed recursive definitions! I just don't appreciate improperly constructed ones.

Thus, price is an non-COLET and unchanging PHLOLET that exists in a PHLOMAS.

What sort of PHLOMAS contains an non-COLET and unchanging PHLOLET?

A PHLOMAS that is non-COLET and unchanging.

What sort of being possesses an non-COLET and unchanging PHLOMAS

Ah-ha! Apparently a PHLOMAS (a PHLOLET container) is something that can be possessed, and they come in different varieties. And, moreover, there are some kind of discriminatory ownership restirctions - only some sorts of beings can possesses a PHLOMAS that is unable to change and isn't COLET.

Moreover, COLETness is something that can apparently apply or not apply to a PHLOMAS.

An non-COLET and unchanging being.

Since COLET is not yet defined, this doesn't convey much about what kind of being can own certain kinds of PHLOMAS, but it does at least indicate that some beings can be COLET (certain other humans) while it's also sensical for a being to be non-COLET (at least, it may be sensical for beings incapable of change... which doesn't sound like any beings at all, so perhaps this is a clever way of saying 'no beings can own a non-COLET and unchangeable PHLOMAS')

Therefore, while everything and everyone has a functional capacity only the non-COLET and unchanging being can give us price.

Before even worrying about COLETness, I note that the human being certainly doesn't fit the bill for 'the unchanging being', nor does the broader notion of the living being. The newly dead being (insofar is you can call anything non-living a being) is still going to be decomposing, but possibly this works for the sufficiently-long-ago-dead being. No more physical changes, and you might stretch a bit and say the dead being can be said to exist (be a being) in the memory of the living being. If enough time has passed, that amounts to either 'forgotten'... which I'll discount as a form of being-in-memory... or 'ossified to a static but memorable footnote that is reliably passed down through the generations'.

I don't know how COLET/non-COLET further narrows this down, but it looks like the final conclusion is that 'true' price is something that is only assigned by the memory-beings that remain of significant historical figures.

Or, in other words, I don't think I had enough information to figure out what was actually supposed to be conveyed by HONEOKE.

On the other hand, QUABBIN seemed to pose no difficulties, so it looks like I may have got that one right.

Incidentally, the original that I'm trying to understand can be found over at AiDs

Star Trek: Life in the Machines?

Consider a class of robot with three components: base, arm, and controller. Suppose that each of these components comes in two types, red/green and blue/yellow, and that two robots are fundamentally the same if each of their components has the same color, or each has the complementary color. Thus, a red-based, red-armed, blue-controlled robot would be 'the same' as a red-based, red-armed, blue-controllered robot, as well as 'the same' as a green-based, green-armed, yellow-controllered robot, but not, for instance, a green-green-blue robot.

Suppose some goofball decided to plunk down one of these RRB robots in a room full of robot components (of both colors), with instructions to make more RRB robots. Now, this instance of RRB robots making RRB robots might be termed self-replication, but... really... you're just sticking three things together. There's no effort to gather resources, they're supplied externally. It doesn't count.

Or does it?

Take a look at our planet's foremost self-replicating system: strings of nucleic acids which differ by having a (G)uanine, (A)denine, (C)ytosine, or (T)hymine nucleotide on them. A GATTACA string is essentially the same as another GATTACA string, as well as a CTAATGT string, but not a GTAATCT string. These little guys do not go out in search of five parts Carbon, five parts Hydrogen, five parts Nitrogen, and one part Oxygen, they do not hand-assemble them into Guanine nucleotides, they do not actively give rise to more of themselves. When tossed into a soup with the appropriate enzymes and building blocks, however, it's hard for chemistry to resist the temptation to copy the things, so it doesn't resist. Does DNA fail to self-replicate simply because it doesn't do its own resource gathering or part assembly... because it's not even as active as a robot arm?

Well, DNA does, sort of, do its own resource gathering. In addition to providing a template that's easy to copy in the right circumstances, it also provides information which (again, in the right circumstances) produces organisms which do go out and gather the necessary resources (often by killing other organisms and taking the resources they'd amassed). It also provides information that, in the right circumstances, can be used to set up "the right circumstances". In addition to being easy to copy, DNA has information which (in the right setting) can be used to put together a setting which will both copy the DNA, and be the right setting to use its information.

Ever worked in a place with a photocopier? Ever been passed one of those office jokes that is funnier if you make copies of it and pass it to other people... especially people who work in places with photocopiers? Especially people who also think the joke is funnier if they make copies of it and pass it on? In short, have you ever had in your hands something easy to copy which had information which, in the right hands, made it more likely to both get copied and to have those copies end up in the right hands?

It makes me wonder how the United Federation of Planets is supposed to survive as depicted, given they have 'replicator technology'. It's the office photocopier, with a vengeance. Given a device that can replicate things with molecular accuracy, what are the chances that nothing will ever develop an appeal... that there'll never be a Plush-Tribble replicating fad? What are the chances that nobody will ever replicate something that the right kind of people will want to replicate and pass on to the right kind of people? And, if that happened, what are the chances that the things that were the most attractive to replicate wouldn't get replicated a lot?

Of course, there would be energy constraints. You can't replicate as much as you want for as long as you want, so eventually the constraints might be bumped into, and you could only replicate so many Plush-Tribbles, R/C Model Starships, and Novelty Nose Insignia. What are the chances that, once the limit was reached, the demand for these things would be equal... that
you wouldn't start getting more Starships being replicated than Insignia, for example... and that once more people were participating in (and helping spread) the Starship replicating craze, that the Insignia craze wouldn't get swept away for eventual lack of support? What are the chances that the Insignia craze wouldn't either go away, or change in a way that got people to start replicating Insignias more than Starship models?

Plush-Tribbles, Model Starships... there's no need to claim these things are alive. There's no need to even claim they replicate themselves, though they replicate themselves as much as DNA self-replicates. Not alive and potentially not-replicating though they may be, they are in competition with each other. Changes, even small ones, in the nature of any of them will alter which are dominant and, possibly, which continue to even exist. Not alive and potentially not-replicating though they may be, one should expect to find that, as time goes on, replicator-crazes will become more and more effective at getting people to A> replicate them and B> pass them to other people who will do parts A and B because, if nothing else, as time goes on any craze that doesn't do those things won't stick around, while any craze that does will grow. And whichever crazes are best at achieving those end effects are the ones you should expect to see clogging up replicator resources.

Perhaps a craze becomes easier to replicate by requiring less replicator time/power. Perhaps by being cuter. Perhaps by having internal motors and controls that move the item closer to replicators. Then again, moving into the replicator would do even better. Then again, having a protrusion that hit the 'replicate' button would do even better than just getting in. If for some reason the replication process wasn't always exact (Like that episode where the coffee got replicated before the coffee cup got replicated... oops... sploosh!) then any minor difference that got something more effectively replicated (be it through direct action, or its incidental effects on human nervous systems (i.e. "OOOOh so CUTE!")) would end up becoming more and more common, and establishing a new baseline that new (or just modified) crazes would have to surpass somehow.

Superficially, at least, it would seem that it's not necessary to be alive, or even to take upon yourself the burden of replicating, to be able to evolve. All you need is a system for performing usually-accurate replication and an environment which applies that system non-uniformly... even a little amount of preference would be enough. Looking at Star Trek replicator technology, I wonder why the Star Trek universe isn't plagued by evolving replicator-fads.

M_0, basic moral approximation

Reason arises from reason as I think anyone could see it to be the more reasonable conclusion. Morals are rooted in person-hood.

Morals are rooted in reason, with special emphasis on conclusions regarding person-hood. Reason arises from awareness of reasons. Reasons arise from predictive control. Control arises from things with dynamic feedback whose continued existence is contingent on the nature of the feedback. Such things arise from any system or pattern which self-replicates. Self-replicating systems arise in all sorts of situations, including purposeless ones with no reason involved.

But you don't need to think about things that clearly (sketchy as it was) to get a basic rule of thumb: When investigating the morality of X, begin with the question "If X had been a normal, acceptable practice that most people in the last ten thousand years engaged in, where would we be now?"

Loving your neighbor? We'd be a lot better off than we are now. Love FTW!
Cannibalize your neighbor? We'd have died out. Double plus unbetter!
Eat pie? Not so much different if we did or didn't, so not a moral issue.

Now, you can certainly object that people aren't infallible in their abilities to figure out what would have happened if something had been some other way, but that doesn't mean there's no objective truth of how it would have been. It simply means that, like people aren't infallible in their abilities to speak on behalf of gods, getting a grasp on the objective stuff is hard, despite it being there.

Remember, though, this is only one rule of thumb. A first step, an approximation, not the entirety and final ending point. For some things it's entirely sufficient, but clearly not for everything. When you're dealing with simple stuff like "you and your ancestors failing to even have been able to exist", no problem. Things like "stealing and bearing false witness in order to prevent adultery" need later approximations, since teasing out whether the resulting state of things would be worthwhile or not is a lot harder. You might think it'd be good, someone else might disagree. Better tools are needed, I don't disagree.

But, looking back to reply number 7, even this simple rule of thumb is sufficient for anyone (who's mildly sentient and not psychopathic) to condemn cannibalism far, far more than they can condemn eating pumpkin pie. And it works for anyone, not just atheists. No supernatural references required.

A prayer for the immoral

Background context: In a post by Dave Pinn, as well as in this blog entry by Antipelagian, as well in a comment by "mds", it is apparent that these three people can't conceive of morality in the absence of gods. Which, if they're wrong about their beliefs, is pretty scary. End background.


I've often seen the phrase "I'll pray for you" used as a wonderfully compact shorthand for "I can see that you're in a really bad way. Bad enough that you can't see your way out of it. Bad enough you may not even be capable of realizing that it's not the only way you can be. I know that it's possible to be a better person, so I have hope for you where you don't even know there's hope to be had, and where you don't even realize hope should be had. I may not be wise enough to show you the way out of where you are, but I can hope that you'll see that there is a way, and somehow stumble along it, and perhaps by sharing these hopes with you your eyes will open just enough to accomplish that."

Technically, there are usually implications that the perhapses and the somehows will be arranged by one or more supernatural entities, but it really boils down to the stuff above.

In that spirit, Antipelagian, I'll pray for you and Kevin Underwood and Dave Pinn and mds like I prayed for Jeffrey Dahmer and like I pray for everyone like all five of you.

Anyone who after deep and honest and searching thought, firmly believes that without gods there can be no solid basis for moral judgement... that's someone who's in a very bad place indeed. That's someone who, for all that they may limp along by relying on instinctual reactions or following codified rules or acting out of fear of punishment, is fundamentally without morality.

I don't know where exactly to lay the blame for the situation you're in, and it may be different in each case. Sometimes it seems that people are there because that is where their chosen religious authorities say they should be. Sometimes it seems to be a case of someone being stupidly shortsighted or willfully ignorant. Sometimes people are just lazy. I don't know why you and Dahmer and Pinn and Underwood are the way you are, and I know it's a sufficiently bad place that you probably can't even realize how bad it is, but I'll pray for you.

I'd dearly love to give you some much needed hope, and help you realize that morality can rest on truth without being propped up by law or punishment or instinct. I'd love to play a part in helping you, or anyone else like you or Dahmer, get your feet on a moral foundation so solid you could change religions a thousand times and no pronouncements from any gods would shake you, because they would either be telling you to do what you already did, or they would be wrong.

Alas, I don't think I'm equipped to do that... not from where you are now... and the risk of leaving you without either a moral foundation or religiously derived moral crutches would be too great. You may think like Underwood and Dahmer, but at least for now you have reason not to act like them. Getting your thoughts out of their bad place requires would require abandoning your reasons as well, and while you wouldn't need those reasons if you had a solid moral foundation, leaving you without any reasons at all would be too great a risk.

So, much as I'd love to lay out how morality can exist without gods, please don't bother asking. I will, however, pray for you. That's all I can do.

Returning the Question

An initial and important concession: When he gets rolling on the follies of religions, Dawkins's politeness is sometimes lacking. I have no trouble seeing that there's a definite and large component of mockery in his response in that clip.

That said, it's not pure mockery. The guy in the video (James White, I assume?) is right in saying there's mockery there, but anyone saying it's nothing more than mockery is clearly missing some important points.

For this to make sense, imagine that you've just read a book that someone loaned to you, and when you give the book back, they ask "Well?" Nothing more, that's their entire question.

Chances are, you know (or at least think) that they've got some particular question in mind, such as "Well, did you enjoy the book?" or "Well, has your opinion about the wood-construction issue changed?" or "Well, how did that make you feel?" or "Well, did you find the plot well developed and the characters believable?" Indeed, most people would, given the question "Well?", answer one of the expanded questions instead. "I really liked the book" or "That made me think differently about wood-construction" or "Wow, what a sad book!" or "That author sure can write!"

Then again, perhaps you're not confident in what the person's "Well?" is asking. You could try to get clarification by asking them to kindly expand their question but that often just confuses people, because they know what they were asking and it's not clear how you couldn't know, so your question doesn't make sense. Alternately, you can figure out what question they were asking by requesting that they give you their answer to their own question. If they say "I thought it was sad", then their question was probably "How'd it make you feel", for example.

So: there are times when asking someone's question back to them can be useful to figure out what they're asking.

Don't leap to conclusions yet.

Sometimes, however, it may be the case that you know that I know all your opinions about the book. There's nothing I could ask you to answer about the book (including your own question) that I don't already know, so it would be rather awkward to turn the question directly back on you.

I still may want to know which question you were asking, though, so if I knew we'd both read some book (say "The Logger") but hadn't discussed it, I might shift the perspective a bit and say "Hmm... imagine I'd just lent you The Logger, and you were handing it back, and I asked 'Well?' What would you say?" Your response from that should illuminate which variety of "Well?" you had in mind, and then I can ask the question you meant to ask, rather than one of the many many questions you didn't.

So: there are times when asking someone's question back to them, with the perspective appropriately shifted, can be useful to figure out what they're asking.

Please continue to avoid jumping to conclusions.

Suppose you like chocolate ice cream far more than any other flavor, and I feel the same way about strawberry. We're hanging out on a hot sunny day, talking about stuff, and in the course of things you ask me "Is there anything that wouldn't be worth doing to get some chocolate ice cream?"

Being more than a little smart, I probably realize that, if you were to answer your own question, the answer would be 'no' (keeping in mind we're just hanging out, and not having a semantically nuanced debate). But, not being that great a lover of chocolate, my answer is... well... just the same as your answer would be if I'd asked the question about strawberry instead of chocolate. So, I could say "yes, plenty of things wouldn't be worth it", or I could say "not for you, perhaps" or I could give you the answer that most accurately answers your questions for all perspectives at once: I could ask you "Well, is there anything that wouldn't be worth doing to get some strawberry ice cream?"

So: there are times when asking someone's question back to them, with the perspective appropriately shifted, can be useful to answer the question in the clearest way possible.

Please remember that I'm not claiming Dawkins was the epitome of politeness in his response before jumping to conclusions, but at this point you may be able to jump safely.

"What if you're wrong?" is a hugely open-ended question. It's not so much a question as a giant swath of questions and, without the question being any more specific, the only appropriate answer would be "In that case, I'm wrong." End of story, that's all there is to say. And it's very unlikely that the question whose answer is "In that case, I'm wrong" was what the girl in the audience meant to ask.

So, what did she mean to ask? Given the setting, probably something like "How would your behavior, morality, and means of pursuing truth change if you were wrong about the non-existence of Yahweh, and what manner of apologies would you need to make?" I can imagine other questions, but hopefully everyone will consider that a fair approximation of what she probably had in mind (if not, I'd love to hear what else people think she was asking!)

Well, perhaps that's what she meant, perhaps it wasn't... perhaps she didn't even know what she was trying to ask. However, for Dawkins and many others, the answer to what she probably meant to ask would be... well, it's rather complicated and hard to explain in a sound bite. It's quick to say that it's the same answer to "How would your behavior etcetc change if you were wrong about the non-existence of the Hindu pantheon", and (whether you can imagine it or not) it would be the same answer to the question "How would etc etc wrong about the non-existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster". Answering any of those questions is complicated and hard to explain quickly, but they all fundamentally have the same answer.

And that's useful, because chances are that the girl who asked the question probably has essentially the same answer to the Hindu version of the question, and the [insert Central African religion] version of the question and, if she could bring herself to not feel mocked, probably even the Flying Spaghetti Monster version of the question. (That's an if that I think Dawkins guessed badly about. I think he should have stuck with nonsynthetic religions like Hinduism or the Greek Pantheon. Bad call on his part, it raised the mockery level at the expense of making the point harder for theists to see. Net loss.)

The point is, if the girl has the same answer to the Hindu question as Dawkins does, and Dawkins has the same answer to the Hindu question as to the Yahweh question that the girl probably meant to ask, and all of those questions are pretty darn hard to answer concisely... well, it makes sense to answer by asking the question back with an appropriate shift in perspective. Once the girl answers Dawkins' question, she has found the answer to her own question.

He's still a dink for digging up undersea Ju-ju's rather than sticking with something straightforward, less prone to bad reactions, and classically buff like Zeus, though.

revelation vs Revelation, trustworthyness, reliability of senses, and falsifiability

I've seen it claimed that Theists and scientists alike work off Revelation, requiring things to be revealed. Forgive me if I'm leery of sentences that use a word once (especially a Capitalized One), and then essentially (re)define it in a later clause, but I've seen many trains driven through the logical holes created by such sentences.

The revelations (I'll use small 'r' here) that scientists require are of a rather particular and restricted nature which, because of its restrictions, benefits from a relevance not shared by personal, divine, transcendentally introspective, or Theistic Revelation (big 'R'). Big-R Revelation can be privately accessible to only those special few to whom it is Revealed. Big-R Revelation can be contingent on holding certain beliefs, conducting your life in certain ways, or somehow getting yourself into the appropriate relationship with the appropriate supernatural entities. Big-R Revelations can be incorrect (as you say: there can certainly be "false revelations"). There's a lot of things that are able to be big-R Revelations, and the more different things something can be, the less you can say about it.

Small-r revelation... the stuff which scientists depend upon to be revealed in the course of their inquiries... is terribly constrained by comparison. Small-r revelations cannot depend on your beliefs or supernatural relationships. Small-r revelations must be publicly accessible, in the sense that any criteria one must satisfy to observe the revelation are objectively verifiable ("you must have access to a 520nm laser" is ok, "you must be in a truly prayerful state of mind" is not).

There's a lot of things that aren't able to be small-r revelations, which means there's more that can be said about them. In particular, by virtue of their publicness, we can distinguish whether something is a true revelation or a false Revelation (i.e. "Yes, yes, we're sure that it has been Revealed to you that by mixing soap and ballpoint pens with a potato masher, you initiated Cold Fusion. Please forgive us for not funding your research after it turned out your discovery could not be repeated when anyone aside from yourself was able to observe the process.")

In that regard, at least, I agree with the point that "it is not impossible to distinguish between one revelation or the other as being true or false." That only holds for small-r revelations, though... the kind that, yes, scientists work off.

Big-R Revelation, though, the kind that scientists don't use (except in the same manner as daydreams, science fiction, and off-the-wall questions from their occasionally surprising mother-in-law: as inspiration for a direction of inquiry) and which a number of Theistic positions depend upon, does not have the benefit of having a way that one can distinguish between true ones and false ones.

Or, rather, there are Revealed ways to make such distinctions, and naturally those Revealed ways confirm themselves to be true Revelations, but they also are confirmed to be false Revelations by other such Revealed ways. If, contrary to what I suspect you believe, the ways which had been Revealed to you (or those whose authority you submit to) for distinguishing between true and false Revelations were actually false... how would you discern that? How could you discern that?

This also relates to moral relativism or "agreeing-to-disagree". Consider yourself fortunate if you haven't heard anyone say something like "well, there's what's true (Revealed) for me, and what's true (Revealed) for you, and they're not the same thing, so the best we can do is live and let live, and agree to disagree." Statements like that can only be based on big-R Revelations, which can differ from person to person, and without any non-Revealed means for anyone to discern the truth or falsity of a Revelation, you really are stuck treating them all on equal footing.

Well, except for things that have been Revealed to you, of course, because even though those may be false Revelations, it's been Revealed to you that they aren't. And, even though that may have been a false Revelation, it's been Revealed to you that it isn't. And, even though that may have been a false Revelation, it's been Revealed to you that it isn't. And, even though that may have been a false Revelation, it's been Revealed to you that it isn't. And even though it's clear that you never actually can get into the clear with this line of reasoning, most people will stop after finitely many steps and conclude that, yep, their Revelations really are true and are have been adequately confirmed.

Being stuck treating almost all Relevations on equal footing is where one becomes mired in the neighborhood moral relativism, since you're stuck dealing with the situation that, even if not all claims are true, most claims are equally true, and that's a bad place to be in and a hard one to get out of.

But that's the price of giving big-R Revelation a role in arbitrating truth.

Comments to the effect of "one can similarly point to Theists in regards to the truth of an immaterial reality", are not unwelcome comment, because it's a false similarity that runs afoul of the difference between little-r revelation and big-R Revelation.

Scientists, confined to little-r revelation, have a limited ability to disagree. Now, I'm not saying they don't disagree! I wouldn't deny some of the terrible and unfortunate rows in the history of science, nor would I sweep under the rug the incidents where conflicting positions benefited from a dialectic resolution that led to understanding superior to either initial point of view. That said, the publicness and commonality of little-r revelations does put a severe damper on the extent to which honest scientists (be they be Muslim or Infidel) can disagree.

Theists, on the other hand, manage to generate more and more disagreements as time goes on, thanks to their centering on big-R Revelations. Whether it's how the Catholic church isn't orthodox while the Orthodox church isn't catholic and the Mormons are Christians who aren't Christian (depends on which Christian Theists with sufficient training and experience you ask), or it's how the truth of immaterial reality that the sufficiently trained and experienced Hindus have a consensus on fails to match up with the truth of immaterial reality that the sufficiently trained and experienced Jews have a consensus on, it's decidedly not the case that there is consensus among all trained and experienced Theists as to the truth of immaterial realities.

So, mentions of consensus, Theists, and immaterial realness do well to highlight a corollary to my objection to big-R Revelation: while small informed consensus can be useful for approaching truth in the context of little-r revelation, it becomes useless in the context of big-R Revelation. Since, as I said before, searching for truth is important to me both in itself and as a necessary path to discerning "The Good", I'm loathe to see potentially useful truth-seeking tules rendered useless!

Shifting gears.

In bringing up trustworthyness, I admit that irrationality does not prevent someone from holding a true position: there's an... interesting... character in this area who is known for ranting down streets spouting general nonsense punctuated by the occasional exclamation of "...and therefore Lincoln is DEAD!" It's a rather disconcerting tirade but, all other things aside, I can't fault the correctness of his conclusion.

In his public proclamations, at least, the guy is certainly irrational. With the exception of loaning him money (you can't give him money unless you're ready to avoid him henceforth, he WILL remember you and eventually return anything you send his way), it's pretty safe to not consider him trustworthy... at least as far as communication goes. I'm not under the impression that his irrationality or the untrustworthiness of his reasoning are grounds to claim that Lincoln is still alive and well, and that neither age nor gunshot wounds have slowed him down much at all.

All that said, if he exclaimed about one of those American presidents that most Americans never learn about (let's say Wuggie, for example) and you were an American like most, I think you'd be wise to take the position: "I don't know who Wuggie is, whether Wuggie even exists or not, and given existence, whether Wuggie is dead or not... and a proclamation that Wuggie is real and really dead that comes from an irrational and factually untrustworthy person does not serve to persuade me of any such things."

In discussions about atheists accusing Theists of irrationality, it seems that sometimes the concerns is less with how Theists related to what they thought was true, and more with how atheists relate to what theists think is true. As such, while irrationality and untrustworthiness would not preclude a Theist from having randomly stumbled upon the truth, such conditions would preclude other people from taking them seriously. Not knowing whether they've actually got the truth or not, and knowing that a broken clock is more than twenty thousand times more likely to be wrong than to be right, if you're going to leap to any conclusion other than "I don't know", it's wiser to conclude that the irrational person is wrong, rather than right.

Changing gears again.

Stage magic such as sawing lovely assistants in half, which step far outside the constraints that reason imposes on truth, can be properly distinguished from the truth. For those not steeped in Revelations of the truth of ESP, mind-reading tricks can be distinguished from truth as well, despite the senses and intuition continuing to insist that there's not room for other explanations. Hidden-information legerdemain tricks, however, can only be properly distinguished from the truth by A> cracking the trick, or B> running it enough times in a controlled manner to demonstrate that the appropriate statistics are wrong. A> is obstructed by taking advantage of known unreliabilities in perceptions, and B> isn't relevant to this issue. Unless I've accidentally constructed a false dichotomy, this is a setting where, no, you can't properly distinguish the illusion from the truth.

Gear shift.

What is entailed by 'falsifiability'? 'The truth' is, unless you subscribe to irrationality, necessarily not falsifiable. There aren't just certain truths about the world which are not falsifiable: if you think you can find a truth which is falsifiable, I'll show you that what you've got isn't a truth.

No, it's not truths which anyone ought to try to falsify. That's a fool's errand. It's assertions of truth. It's claims of truth. There are certain claims which are not falsifiable. Lots of them, actually. Solipsism's a perennially annoying one. Claims that the world came into existence half a second ago, and everything burst into being in such a way that there appears to be a historical record and memories and, in general, a "past". Assertions that every time someone pats a kitten, four invisible intangible green monkeys who are powerless to interact with anything in any way spring into existence. These are claims about what is true, and they're not falsifiable.

Yes, of course the monkey thing could be true and, if that were the case, you couldn't prove otherwise. That's not the complaint, though. The issue is that we have no way (not even in principle) of knowing whether the monkey-claim is correct or not.

One can certainly say something doesn't have to be falsifiable in order to be true... and that's weaker than could be said. One can even say that something must not be falsifiable in order to be true, since what is true is (to those indulging in rationality) not false. If you want to say that a claim doesn't have to be falsifiable in order for the claim to be correct... yeah, you can have that one too. The negation of the kitten-monkey claim is equally unfalsifiable, and that doesn't mean that such monkeys do spontaneously manifest, any more than the original claim's unfalsifiability means they don't.

The problem is that whenever you have a position which depends on the truth or falseness of the content of a claim, and that claim's correctness with respect to the world cannot, even in principle, be established, then you're saddled with a position whose relevance to the world cannot, even in principle, be established. You can claim it's relevant until the cows come home, but there's no possible way to demonstrate that it actually is, because such a demonstration would serve to confirm or falsify the unfalsifiable claim, and that's not an option (it violates the assumption that the claim is unfalsifiable, and unless you're irrational, that's not a tenable situation.)

In other words, if unfalsifiable claims form part of a foundation, then everything that truly depends on them for support can have no impact on any aspect of the world, in any way, whatsoever. They cannot make anyone's lives better, or make anyone happier, or lead to more peace, or endow every young girl with a kitten that she wouldn't get anyhow, because if they did, those differences would serve to make the unfalsifiable claims falsifiable.

In short: Unfalsifiable claims can't help to justify a set of beliefs, because the truth or falsity of what they assert is necessarily irrelevant.

Disjointed Reply

In response to http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/2008/02/atheism-from-eastern-mind.html

That wouldn't have been the distinction I'd have drawn between East and West, but it's an interesting and important distinction and I'm happy to run with it. A concern I have about revelation-based truth acquisition is similar to what strikes me as poor about solipsism: when two (or more) people are the recipients of mutually exclusive revelations, you may know that at least one of them (if not all) are wrong, but you don't have any firm ground on which to establish which is which. A Prophet of the Five Powers has had a truth revealed to her, and a Pirate of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has had a conflicting truth revealed to him, and of course they both have further revelation that theirs was the true revealed truth... it seems like if Revelation is the arbiter of truth, you necessarily land in a world of agreeing-to-disagree which is only a tiny step away from moral relativism and, well... that's no good!

I, personally, hold "The Good" as a central object in my searches for truth. There's a whole lot of truth out there. Some of it is almost certainly unimportant (The most common shoe color in London during January, three hundred and twelve years ago). Some of it is very likely "The Bad", if anything (The truth of how to build a bomb that will maximize the number of man-hours spent in agony). The particular parts of the truth I'm most interested in, though, are the ones like "What is The Good" and "How can that be achieved?"

You say it's a common claim among atheists that Theism runs afoul of either bad logic or lack of evidence. You then dismiss (rightly, I think) the bad-logic angle. Yeah, it happens, and it's pretty bad sometimes (I've seen too many false dichotomies to say otherwise), but on the whole, I'm happy to give people credit for generally reasoning decently. Then there's the evidence issue.

Here I think you're being too 'fairly general' to be useful. You seem to implicitly treat evidence as an overly simple thing. Given some observation, it either is evidence or it is not, and if it is evidence, it is only evidence for one thing. That's the level of evidence it seems you're dealing with and I think it's far too coarse-grained. Observe the sky for a while, and you'll get all sorts of evidence. Some things will be evidence for both "the sun revolves about us" and for "we orbit the sun". Some things are strong evidence for a point, while others are only weak evidence for that point (though perhaps strong evidence for a different point).

I certainly would agree and not say that it is "incumbent of rationality to dictate what is true"... flowers do not grow to support the sun, as you say... but it does place constraints on what can be true... given flowers whose growth depends on the sun, it is not an option to have "no sun has ever shone". Even if someone is irrational, they could be right... a broken clock is right twice a day... but they are not trustworthy on the subject of what is right, for all that they could be. The broken clock is wrong 43,198 times a day.

I'm confused when you're expressing your preference for false explanations over a true claim of "I don't know". Admitting no knowledge about the nature of some thing does not imply that one has no knowledge about one's (lack of) knowledge about the nature of that thing. Do you prefer making up false explanations of what color clothes I wore yesterday to simply admitting the truth, that you don't know? Why is that preferable?

You say you we may have faith that what we perceive correlates with reality... and that makes me worry that you put too much trust in the mechanisms of perception. I will grant that when we perceive things which are related to our immediate survival, that should correlate with reality: If it didn't, our ancestors would have died right quick and we wouldn't be here imagining such things. That the occupation of stage magician continues to this day, however, should be a warning sign that not all perceptions are reliably in tune with reality. Perhaps they match up a good deal of the time, but not enough to be able to just wave off the troublesome question of "What if you have stumbled into one of your perceptual blind spots?".

On 'purpose', it looks like you're essentially saying "you cannot truly say 'ought', you must always say 'ought, in order to'". Be it "You ought to pray five times facing Mecca, in order to obey the Creator's will" or "You ought to eat, in order to stay alive". In that regard, "you cannot acquire an ought from an is" because there's no such thing as a raw ought, but you certainly can acquire all "ought, in order to"s from is. And, being that's the best one can do whether or not one's employing deities, it doesn't seem that atheists or Theists have any particular advantage or disadvantage here.

On a tangent born of curiosity: Concerning the objection you have (the one that's "mostly against the Agnostic"), what objection (if any) do you have against those who aren't Theists who have a foundation whose conclusions are true regardless of the existence of gods but which does not provide conclusions for all questions, who admit to the existence of that foundation, and who admit to their ignorance on matters which that foundation does not supply answers?

Where you speak about "it is claimed within scientific circles that a general consensus is necessary...", I think the earlier issue of being too general in your treatment of evidence comes up. In this case, the people needed to form a general consensus are visibly not "a majority of all people". When it is said that "the general consensus is that the spin blah blah of particle foo bar has a waka waka property of gadzooks" (in much more precise language, of course!) it is not expected that, around the world, from children to old men, more than half the people agree on this esoteric particle property interaction thing. Rather, what is required is a general consensus -among those with sufficient training and experience to understand and contribute to the field-. As a rule, that body of people will always be a miniscule minority of the world.

Indeed, "scientific consensus" is an excellent example of where revelation/intuition-based truth arbitration falls apart. You say "We believe the minority to be wrong not on the basis of numbers, but on intuition" and, indeed, that is how people behave, and when it comes to verifiable facts about "what is", that intuition-driven belief of the masses has been highly wrong again and again and again. I'm not saying that all minorities are automatically right, but history is far too littered with the majority being egregiously wrong... on the level of "a sort of "delusion""... for the majority to be given special status when it's the majority among the informed -and- the ignorant, rather than the majority among the informed. And this isn't just a matter of details. I'm loathe to drag out such tired old examples, but... Geocentricity? Flat Earth? Spontaneous generation of maggots? Uniform acceleration due to gravity? The Five (or Four) Elements?

Finally, with regards to your closing about "I don't know" or "I deny" requiring explanations: aside from convert-atheists (You know, like the formerly Catholic atheist whose new creed is "There is no God, and Mary is not His Mother") the non-knowing or denying of atheists is uniform: they don't know the Five Powers, they don't know Zeus and Family, they don't know Yahweh, they don't know the Catholic god, they don't know the Orthodox god, they don't know Allah, they don't know the Demiurge or the Father, they don't know the Baptist god, they don't know Mithras, they don't know any of the Pharoahs (at least, not in their allegedly divine aspects), they don't know Amaterasu, they don't know Rama... the list goes on and on. Once they've been given a description of one, such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they may shift from "I don't know what you're talking about" to "I deny that such a thing could be as you claim it to be", but to date, I've not heard of atheists making any odd exceptions in need of particular justification.

Theists, on the other hand, are essentially defined by making exceptions to their list of supernatural beings which they either don't know or explicitly deny the possibility of. If an atheist is called upon to justify their denials (not an unfair call) and their ignorances (I think that's asking a bit much, as there's an infinitude of possible supernatural beings to explain one's ignorance of), so too is a Theist called upon to justify their denials, and their ignorances, and why they're making an exception, and why that exception doesn't apply to any others among the infinitely many possible supernatural beings.

ID without a presupposed creator?

I came across a site that seems to be mixing the usually immiscible elements of "Intelligent Design" and "atheism". Here's the opening post.

Apologia pro apologia

I am, to a limited degree, a Twelve Tribes apologist. I'm not a member, but I'll stand up and offer some defense on their behalf on some issues. This post is intended to clarify my qualifications to do so, make clear ways I'm not qualified to do so, explain my motivations for doing so, and make it clear that I see issues they're not defendable in.

First, an item of 'lack of qualifications'. I'm not a member. I've never been a member. Despite what I'm sure they hope, I'm not going to be a member unless the entire organization changes in some pretty fundamental ways. More on that later. I can't offer the insider perspective of an accepted member, and I'm quite aware that there are things I haven't been told.

Next, some degree of qualifications. My information regarding the Twelve Tribes does not come predominantly from the web (I've read a lot of what's available on the web, and I'll say more about such material soon.) I've spent a large amount of time in a small handful of their locations. I've spent some time at one of their businesses. I've spent some time at one of their houses. I've visited a couple of their other houses and businesses. I've had extensive conversations with a number of men, women, and children. I've had some of them over to my house on a number of occasions. I've attended a few of their regularly scheduled ceremonies, and a couple of the sporadic ones. In short, I have interacted extensively with some members of the Twelve Tribes on a personal level.

Another degree of qualification: Communication is one of my particular fields of study. For anyone with some personal experience of these folks and some reading of what's available on the web (including their own internal publications), there seems to be a vast disconnect between what they say about some subjects and what they actually do. A lot of that (not all, but a lot) is due to the Twelve Tribes as a group having some remarkably bad communication skills in some areas. When I say 'remarkably bad', I mean it the same way I would accuse someone who said "Let's go forth and pillage that village!" when they meant "It's time to harvest the apple crop" as having some remarkably bad communication skills. I have at my disposal some tools and skills which make it easier for me to understand what they mean (despite what they say), and I count this as a qualification.

Time for a disqualification: My ability to translate is limited by my ability to observe what they do as individual people. If there are areas where information is being deliberately held back from me, that'll result in inaccurate translations. Any argument I make has to be qualified with "Assuming what I've seen has been accurately representative". This isn't much of a drawback, though, since the same applies to any source of information, and I do have the advantage of having a more reliable source.

Qualification: I do have first-hand information. Aside being an International House of Porn, the Web is a great source of information, but it's not a great source of reliably reliable information. Any dork with a keyboard can contribute a Wikipedia article, and unless the number of people who really know what they're talking about is larger than the number of people who think they know what they're talking about (but don't), what you're going to see will be, effectively, worthless garbage. Emotionally charged, rabble-rousing, call-to-arms garbage, but garbage nonetheless. If you pick a random topic, and think about how many people really have good, reliable, well-researched information on it, you should come up with a pretty small number. If you look at the same topic and imagine all the schmucks who think they know more than they really do, you should come up with a larger number. Information on the web about the Twelve Tribes -could- be accurate, but most of it is exceedingly unreliable, and much of it is distressingly second-hand.

So, while my first-hand information -may be- deliberately compromised by the agendas of the people in the Twelve Tribes that I interact with, keep in mind that stuff on the web is -probably- compromised by the agendas of the people writing it. Really, I suggest you actually drop your assumptions and biases and try to dig up information for yourself, but that's usually asking too much.

Qualification: I'm not a member, and I'm not going to be a member. I realize this is, in some regards, a disqualification, but it cuts both ways. I'm not subject to their indoctrination, I've got no pressure to keep certain things secret, and I've got reasons for not being a member. I see that they have some real issues, and I'm not interested in ignoring those points. Not in order to join them, and not in order to make them sound better than they are to anyone else. Moreover, my objections are based on a decent amount of first-hand, personal information, not on the shallow knee-jerking that comprises most of what's on the web.

And that leads into my motivations. There are bad things... really bad... about the Twelve Tribes. There are good things... really good... about the Twelve Tribes. I'm aware of some stuff in each of these categories. I would very much like to see them abandon the bad stuff and do something fantastically great with the good stuff, but that requires that they realize the bad stuff is actually bad. So, I'm motivated to affect the situation so they're more likely to be able to see what they're doing wrong.

There's a problem, though. Well, a bunch of them, but the first is this: It's hard to see what you're doing wrong unless someone else you trust can point it out to you. Individually, the Twelve Tribes have got this point figured out and use it heavily, and generally use it well. (That's one of thier good things.) As a group, however, they don't trust anyone but themselves, and so as a group, they're not in a good position to overcome their blind spots and be able to see the things they're collectively doing wrong. So, I'm motivated to affect the situation so they (as a group) might be able to trust some other source to help them identify bad things in themselves.

That raises another problem: There's got to be a trustworthy entity to give trust to, otherwise you're just setting yourself up to get screwed. To a certain degree, you can base trust on the benefit of the doubt, but if you've already observed that someone isn't trustworthy, you'd be an idiot to trust them... and the Twelve Tribes are largely in this situation. They get attacked, over and over, for things they don't believe and things they don't do... largely because the attackers are ignorant of what's actually going on, and too lazy to find out (aside from reading what's available on the web, which I've already lamented.) If I had a drinking problem, but was very good at never injuring anyone (drunk or not) and always paying all my bills (drunk or not), then someone who came up and attacked me on the grounds that I hospitalized folks and never paid my dues would be... something less than credible. I wouldn't be interested in seeking their help with my drinking problem, that's for sure. In a similar manner, the Twelve Tribes are quite justified in not listening to external criticisms, even the few that are relevant, because as a general rule, external criticisms are wildly untrustworthy. So, I'm motivated to affect the situation so that there are some trustworthy outside sources that could help the Twelve Tribes identify bad things in themselves.

And that leads to why I'd be, to a limited degree, a Twelve Tribes apologist. If you'll allow me to indulge in some hyperbole, I'd like to ride forth and vanquish all the criticism, venom, and moral indignation that's born of ignorance and misunderstanding... and I want to do so in order to clear the field for criticism born of good, accurate, trustworthy information. I want to take down people's inappropriate attacks on the Twelve Tribes and divert those energies to appropriate attacks. I want to stop people from reinforcing the currently established fact that the Twelve Tribes can't trust outside perspectives, because if they don't have outside perspectives they can trust they won't be able to overcome and clean themselves of the truly bad elements hiding in their collective blind spots.

Morality Play

Why be moral? Because doing otherwise doesn't make sense. Doing otherwise doesn't work well in the long run. Doing otherwise will result in shooting yourself (and others) in the metaphorical foot. In a nutshell, not being moral is shortsightedly stupid.

I'm not talking about why just [insert group here] should be moral, here, I'm talking about why anyone should be moral, and that's because the reasons that immorality doesn't work have nothing to do with supernatural entities. Whether the universe is blamed on Brahma, Yahweh, Allah, The Force, or nothing at all, there are certain aspects that couldn't have been put together any differently (at least, not without having a meaningless, completely self-contradictory undifferentiated mass in which everything that exists does not exist, and vice versa). There are some constraints on how a natural world could be which can't be violated by the most super of supernatural forces, and morality arises from those constraints.

Concisely: Morality, coming from a source beyond any supernatural entity, and being a property of every natural system, is relevant to everyone, whether they add supernatural entities to their worldview or not.

One concern many theists have seen is that many atheists seem to think that the morality of theists is somehow inferior. At this point, perhaps it's clear why. If someone said to you (I'm temporarily assuming the reader is a theist) that morality didn't come from your god, but rather came from, say... following laws... you'd be rightly concerned. There's a misattribution going on, and worse yet there's the risk that if people run around thinking "Morality equals lawfulness" and some jerk puts a bad law on the books, people will think that following the bad law is moral. Ack! Worse yet, since the law is open to various degrees of interpretation, someone with the authority to decide on how the law is interpreted might attribute the wrong spirit to the letter, and so now everyone is compelled to follow a law ("be moral") even if it is what you know to be immoral! Double ack! You could even have people saying "Well, without the law, there'd be no reason to be moral... might as well drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die!" when you know full well there are more important reasons than the law to be moral. Triple ack! And on top of it all, you're painted as immoral for worrying about higher levels of morality than that dictated by the law. Quad overkill ack!

That's the kind of misattribution that many atheists go "Quad overkill ack!" over when they hear people claiming that morality comes from supernatural sources. There's a misattribution, there's the ability to subject morality to various biased interpretations, the bad interpretations can be handed down in some cases from a priviledged few and thus spread alarmingly quickly, people start saying things like "Sure you could be moral, but why?", and brights in general are often suspected of having an inferior class of morality simply because they're trying to get their morality from the proper source.

When atheists are saying that morality without gods is superior to a morality dictated by gods, it often comes from a similar concern to a theist saying that morality dictated by gods is superior to a morality dictated by human laws. Sure, you might get lucky and manage to keep in line with the true source, but there's far too much room for human bungling and misattribution of why things are important.

Then again, sometimes it's coming from a common combination of bitterness and pompousness. Every group has people like that, too.

There's also something similar to misattribution that's a concern, though it's not quite the same. I'm thinking of an experiment that was done at a daycare center. In a nutshell, there were often a few parents every week who picked their kids up late, which wasn't so great for the daycare workers that had to stay to watch the not-gone-yet kids. The center started charging a 'late pick-up fee', and... late pickups went up! What was a matter of being inconsiderate before was now merely a matter of a very small fee for a very convenient service. Worse yet, when the center dropped the late fee, the late pickups didn't go down. Hey, they're doing the extra service for free now! No conscience pangs AND no hit on the wallet, how great is that?

By misattributing an issue from the realm of morality to the realm of externally enforced consequences (in this case, by adding a penalty fee) people were led to ignore the moral aspect and think only of the inflicted consequences aspect and, worse yet, when the consequences were taken away, they didn't revert to moral behavior, but acted as if the action were now just fine!

Whenever I hear someone say "Sure, you could be a moral atheist, but why?" I worry that here is someone who wouldn't be moral if they weren't essentially being told to, and it's scary and sad. Perhaps there are people who couldn't be moral if they weren't told to, in which case it's a good thing someone's telling them to... but I suspect there are a lot of people who could once have been moral simply because it doesn't make sense not to, but who've been led to misattribute the source of morality and, in so doing, have lost their capacity to actually be moral, and only retain the ability to act morally.

It's also possible that there are people who believe in supernatural forces but don't mistakenly label those things as sources of morality... people who are fundamentally moral, and simply add a layer of religious decoration on top of it without mistaking the decoration for the real thing. I have not, to the best of my knowledge, ever met anyone or heard of anyone who fit this description, so it certainly seems unlikely to me, but perhaps that is more an upshot of how pervasive modern religious piekories have to be in order to survive, and less a property of religious piekories in general.