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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Are you a bright?

As immediately evidenced by its being an already existing word, 'bright' is not one of my own new words. Nonetheless, the efforts of the Brights Movement are worth noting, and 'a bright' is a useful noun to add to the vocabulary.

From the site:

What is a bright?

• A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
• A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
• The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview
  

Considering that, if this blog were a person, it would be a bright (noun, noun, gotta remember it's a noun. This is not site which is bright, it's a site written by a bright!) it seemed appropriate to give The Bright's Net some linkspace over in the sidebar.