Tag: religion

A review of the gods debate

Robert Beisert reviews On the Existence of Gods:

In the past couple of weeks, an amazing written debate on the existence of gods (not God, but gods) was published to the Amazon store. Theist Vox Day (Theodore Beale, for those who care) and atheist Dominic Saltarelli exchanged three rounds of debate concerning the question of whether or not gods could exist. Though it does not establish an airtight case on either side, it serves as an interesting launching point into the debate itself.

He does regret that the arguments were not examined more deeply, but a debate is simply not the idea mechanism for that sort of thing. I would like to consider some of the ideas Dominic and I discussed in more detail at some point, but right now my hands are more than full.

Anyhow, it’s good to see that people who are serious about the subject appear to have thought rather well of both the approach as well as the exchange of ideas.

And don’t miss A Pius Geek’s review of Iron Chamber of Memory, which he says has more in common with Victor Hugo than James Patterson.

Mailvox: atheism and the motte-and-bailey analogy

BJ, an atheist, didn’t feel the topic that was debated in On the Existence of Gods was entirely fair.

As an atheist, I agree that Vox won the debate. His arguments were more
persuasive and coherent. Dominic was a good sport, but he was attacking a
castle with no cannons, no towers, no ram, not even a ladder. I don’t think it is a fair debate topic, though that is not Vox’s fault.
It’s what Myers originally claimed and what Dominic agreed to. But it’s
not a fair view on the subject.

This is the standard motte and
bailey for defending theism. You replace ‘proof of god’ with ‘doubt of
science’ and hope no one calls you on it (Dominic didn’t). Then you push
the atheist into admitting they can’t rule out the possibility of the
existence of something which may resemble a god or gods. Most people
consider that a win.

The problem I have with that is no priest
suggests the possibility of a god or gods, they talk about very specific
gods with very specific rules, demand very specific obedience, and ask
for very real money. None of them can prove their god is real but that
is the bailey position; when they are under attack they retreat to the
motte position, which is just “you can’t prove god(s) DON’T exist.”
Kinda weak basis for tithing 10% of my income.

On the one hand, this is an entirely reasonable point with which I agree entirely. In fact, I repeatedly point out, in both On the Existence of Gods and in The Irrational Atheist, that the argument for the existence of the supernatural, the arguement for the existence of Gods, and the argument for the existence of the Creator God as described in the Bible are three entirely different arguments.

One could further observe, with equal justice, that none of these three arguments suffice to establish the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth or the existence of the Holy Trinity as described in the Constantinian revision of the original Nicene Creed.

The problem, however, is that BJ reverses the motte-and-bailey analogy as it is actually observed in the ongoing atheism-Christianity debate. For example, even in the debate he criticizes, Dominic’s sallies were initially directed at all forms of supernaturalism before being knocked back by my response which observed that the supernatural is a set of which gods are merely a subset.

More importantly, there was never any retreat to the Christian bailey. It simply wasn’t the subject at hand; the purpose of the debate was to challenge the atheist claim to the motte claimed by PZ Myers. And as for Dominic supposedly failing to call me on the very rational and substantive grounds to doubt the legitimacy of science, particularly as it relates to science’s ability to address the subject of gods, that was an intelligent tactical move on his part, because I would have easily demolished any attempt to rely upon science in that manner.

As readers of this blog know, I don’t regard science as being even remotely reliable in its own right, I consider its domain to be limited, and there is considerable documentary, logical, and even scientific evidence to support that position. It is certainly an effective tool, when utilized properly, but it is not a plausible arbiter of reality.

In any event, those interested in the subject appear to find On the Existence of Gods to be a worthy addition to the historical discussion, as it is currently #2 in the Atheism category, sandwiched between a pair of books by Richard Dawkins. If you haven’t posted a review yet, I would encourage you to do so.

Reviewing the debate

Steampunk Koala – now there’s a name – reviews On the Existence of Gods:

First, let’s address the format…. All in all, it worked extremely well, and I would like to see it used elsewhere.

The second thing, and perhaps the most important thing, was the effort that went into defining what a god is, as well as evidence and logic. It’s very rare to see it even come up in a debate in a meaningful way, and that has always struck me as foolish. It seems a  bit like arguing for or against string theory but never actually defining the model you are using.

I have long felt that this is the largest issue with the discussion, as the average  Atheist I have talked to has built a mental narrative in which they cannot lose by defining a god as a being who does magic, magic breaks physics and is fake, and anything that falls within any form of natural law is not magic, therefore not a god. As Vox very neatly points out, there is an issue of scale to be considered, regardless of where you draw the line.

Likewise, I know a lot of fellow Christians that feel that examining the topic closely is either a waste of time or even a bit sinister, as though wondering about how it all works is going to somehow change the facts.

It’s also worth noting that I found the material compelling enough that my first attempt at this review ended up blossoming into a short book length examination of the arguments made rather than a review proper. There is a lot of meat here for the taking…. On the balance, this book is a must-read for any serious seeker, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum.

I have to confess that as a game designer, it is gratifying to see that some readers have recognized the merits in the debate format. And it’s good to know that many of those who are very familiar with the subject nevertheless found it to bring something new to the age-old discussion. On the Existence of Gods is available at Amazon.

Do we need God?

It is not an exaggeration to say that of all the books that comprised the critical response to the initial onslaught of the New Atheism, the most effective was The Irrational Atheist. This was due to the fact that, unlike most of the other books on the subject, it directly addressed the various arguments presented by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others. Since then, the New Atheism has largely subsided in the public eye, and yet, if the relevant statistics are to be believed, Western society remains heavily influenced by the inept secular philosophy that provided the foundation for the New Atheist wave, secular humanism.

The first noteworthy thing about C.R. Hallpike’s book, Do We Need God to Be Good, is that the reader is nearly two-thirds the way through the book before he can reasonably ascertain which way the author would be predisposed to answering the titular question. Nevertheless, I must admit that Hallpike’s book is even more effective than TIA, because instead of refuting the atheist arguments used to attack religion, it targets many of the philosophical foundations upon which those arguments are dependent.

Hallpike is an English anthropologist, and if Wikipedia is to be trusted, apparently one of more than a little note. This is unexpectedly relevant to the topic, because, having lived with the primitive tribes of Papua New Guinea for years, Hallpike has amassed, and published, considerable first-hand evidence concerning the way in which pre-civilized societies are actually structured. And it is through the expertise he has acquired that he effortlessly demolishes a vast edifice of pseudo-scholarship that has been erected under the name of “evolutionary psychology”:

Normal science proceeds from the known to the unknown, but evolutionary psychology tries to do it the other way round…. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized, therefore, that our profound ignorance about early humans is quite incompatible with any informed discussion of possible adaptations. Ignoring these drastic limitations on our knowledge has meant that many so-called ‘adaptive explanations’ are merely pseudo-scientific ‘Just So Stories’, often made up without any anthropological knowledge, that have increasingly brought evolutionary psychology into disrepute.

Hallpike provides one devastating example, cited from the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which it is claimed that humans lost their body hair and took to wearing clothes as the result of sexual preferences expressed over one million years ago. He then points out that while our ignorance of primitive sexual preferences is complete, “at least we know they could not possibly have had clothes, because these have only been around for a few thousand years.”

His critique of secular humanism is even more effective, as the sins of the evo-psych enthusiasts can be reasonably put down to a combination of observable ignorance with a predilection for writing fiction. It is one of the more powerful refutations – to say rebuttal is simply not strong enough – one is likely to encounter in print, as Hallpike not only highlights the philosophical competence of the secular humanists, but casts serious doubt upon their self-professed motivations as well.

Given the importance that Humanists ascribe to science, and the revolutionary claims of modern biology about the nature of Man, it is quite striking that the only interest they seem to have in biology is using it to attack religion, not to reflect on what it has to say about Man. Yet if one takes the claims of evolutionary biologists seriously, especially their denial of consciousness and free will, it is hard to see how the very idea of human agency and moral responsibility could survive at all. Although Humanists prefer to ignore these issues, in the words of Francis Crick, ‘tomorrow’s science is going to knock their culture right out from under them’, and they need to come to terms with the obvious incompatibility between their liberal Western values and a genuinely Darwinian view of Man.

It is remarkable that despite the fact that his critique of evolutionary psychology is well within his professional wheelhouse, Hallpike is at his most effective when criticizing secular humanism by its own professed standards. After tracing its intellectual history back to the 14th Century, Hallpike reviews the foundational work of two influential humanist philosophers, A.C. Grayling and Paul Kurtz, and points out the conclusively damning fact that none of the qualities of the ideal secular humanist nor the detailed program of what all proper secular humanists should believe have anything to do with the principles of science or secular humanism!

We are also given a detailed programme of what all rightthinking people should believe about human rights, sexual morality, abortion, euthanasia, parenting, education, privacy, crime and punishment, vegetarianism, animal rights, separation of church and state, and government. This seems a remarkably detailed set of conclusions to draw from the two simple premises of ‘no supernatural beings’, and ‘thinking for oneself’, but in fact none of it follows from these at all. What we are actually getting here is a highly ethnocentric summary of the fashionable opinions of Western secular liberals in the early twenty-first century, and who in Britain would read the Guardian.

Humanism is a prolonged glorification of Self, success, and the gratification in every possible way of ‘the fat, relentless ego’, which is why it has a particular loathing of religion. 

Having executed the sacred cow of secular humanism in a manner brutal enough to make a Chicago slaughterhouse butcher blanch, Hallpike proceeds to examine other modern belief-systems, including Objectivism, Behavioralism, and Collectivism before proceeding to directly address the question posed in the beginning of the book.

While his answer is a reasonable one, it is not exactly straightforward. His answer is ultimately yes, that Man needs God to be good because the moral significance of God is the provision of a worldview that provides men with objective value and moral unity as God’s children, elevates spiritual values over purely material ones, and justifies personal humility in the place of self-worship.

I highly recommend Do We Need God to Be Good to anyone who appreciated TIA. It’s intelligent, well-written, and highly-accessible; I would have loved to have published it. And I am very pleased to be able to say that Dr. Hallpike will be the guest at the next Open Brainstorm event, which will be Tuesday night at 8 PM Eastern. I will be sending out the initial invitations to Brainstorm members later today, and provide the registration link to everyone else tomorrow.

Brainstorm members, please note that you will be receiving a review copy of the ebook with your invitation to the event.

On the existence of gods

Dominic and I have decided two things. First, we are going to publish the three-round debate with an introduction by him and a conclusion by me as an ebook and audiobook. Second, AFTER the book is published, we are going to continue the debate. Two or three rounds more should be sufficient. Then we will combine the two debates into a single print edition.

Anyhow, I’m interested in the three judges getting in touch here for two reasons. First, to see if they are interested in reprising their role as judges – and I’m talking about the SECOND Christian judge, not the first one. And second, I’d like to know if the Agnostic judge still has his notes and would like them to be included in the book.

It was very interesting to re-read the debate again, since I had forgotten most of it, after reading Umberto Eco’s exchange of letters with Cardinal Martini. And frankly, I thought our debate was not only more interesting, but more intellectually demanding.

Sadly, the impact of my point about the scientific perspective being intrinsically temporally limited by the speed of light being shattered was reduced, though not at all undermined, by the discovery of the CERN researchers that a loose fiber optic cable was to blame for the neutrinos showing up faster than expected.

Standing by the faith

Wheaton College is showing some spine in insisting that its Christian professors actually be Christian in a theologically meaningful sense:

Wheaton College can confirm reports that on January 4, 2016, per College policies and procedures, Provost Stanton Jones delivered to President Philip Ryken and to Dr. Larycia Hawkins a Notice of Recommendation to Initiate Termination-for-Cause Proceedings regarding Dr. Hawkins.

The Notice is not a termination; rather, it begins Wheaton College’s established process for employment actions pertaining to tenured faculty members.

This Notice follows the impasse reached by the parties. Following Dr. Hawkins’ written response on December 17 to questions regarding her theological convictions, the College requested further theological discussion and clarification. However, as posted previously, Dr. Hawkins declined to participate in further dialogue about the theological implications of her public statements and her December 17 response.

This is the woman who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which appears “to be in conflict with the College’s Statement of Faith.”

And it is in conflict. Christians don’t worship the same God as Muslims, which should be obvious since Christians consider Jesus Christ to be divine and part of the Godhead, whereas Muslims consider Jesus Christ to have been nothing more than a mortal prophet and a lesser one at that.

Any time you hear that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God, you know that you’re hearing little more than fatuous unitarianism.

The First Amendment isn’t merely dead

It is outdated, irrelevant, and at this point, civilizationally destructive. John Wright explains:

The First Amendment was never anything but a cease-fire and peace treaty of a Christian v Christian civil war, which was extended, out of Christian charity and and English sense of fairplay and goodsportsmanship, to Jews and other religions.

It was never a suicide pact, never an invitation for socialists at home and soviets or Islamists abroad to overturn our system of protecting our God-given liberties.

The challenge is how to protect some semblance of free speech while strictly limiting, if not banning outright, the exercise of all non-Christian religions in Christendom. This is theoretically possible, as history demonstrates. But as events are rapidly demonstrating, in the current circumstances the latter is going to take precedence over the former.

The age of fairplay and goodsportsmanship is over. You don’t have to like it; I certainly don’t. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to accept it. And if you can’t bring yourself to do so now, don’t worry, you will soon enough.

Cucky churchians

It’s not merely cuckservatives who are betraying their nations. And not just Americans. Plenty of liberals and Europeans are more than a little cucky too:

A group of 84 bishops have written to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to allow more Syrian refugees to settle in Britain, a published letter showed.

The call comes days after 300 senior lawyers, former law lords and retired judges described Cameron’s offer to take 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years as “too low, too slow and too narrow”.

The Church of England bishops called on Cameron to accept 50,000 over five years, in a letter initially sent privately in September but made public following a “disheartening” lack of response from Cameron.

“As the fighting intensifies, as the sheer scale of human misery becomes greater, the government’s response seems increasingly inadequate to meet the scale and severity of the problem,” said Bishop of Durham Paul Butler, speaking on behalf of the bishops.

“It is disheartening that we have not received any substantive reply despite an assurance from the prime minister that one would be received.”

Not that there is any doubt that the Church of England deserves to fade into irrelevance, but it’s a pity they can’t limit the damage they’ve done to their own vanishing church.

UPDATE: These idiots aren’t just idiots, they’re complete hypocrites:

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Rev David Walker, urged ordinary people to welcome asylum seekers from the war-torn country and said it would be ‘a sad reflection’ on society if they did not. He claimed, however, that it would be wrong for a refugee family to move into his own recently refurbished house because of the language barrier and their ‘alien culture’.

He ought to be sent to Syria as a missionary. Forcibly, if need be.

The dangerous faith

I doubt it has escaped anyone’s attention that with a few exceptions, the atheists, agnostics, and pagans around the world are content to make common cause with very nearly any religion except for one particular faith. As J.B. Bury observed nearly 100 years ago in his epic Cambridge Medieval History, which I cannot recommend more highly, this is not a new development:

Jesus Himself, had His followers allowed, might have had a place between Dionysos and Isis; but Christianity, which according to Porphyry had departed widely from the simple teaching of the mystic of Galilee, was sternly excluded from the Neoplatonist brotherhood of religions. Its idea of a creation in time seemed irreligious to Porphyry; its doctrine of the Incarnation introduced a false conception of the union between God and the world; its teaching about the end of all things he thought both irreverent and irreligious; above all things its claim to be the one religion, its exclusiveness, was hateful to him. He was too noble a man (philosopkus nobilis, says Augustine) not to sympathise with much in Christianity, and seems to have appreciated it more and more in his later writings Still his opinion remained unchanged: “The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal, and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error.” Christianity was the one religion to be fought against and if possible conquered.

What Neoplatonism did theoretically the force of circumstances accomplished on. the practical side. The Oriental creeds had not merely gained multitudes of private worshippers; they had forced their way among the public deities of Rome. Isis, Mithra, Sol Invictus, Dea Syra, the Great Mother, took their places alongside of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, etc., and the Sacra peregrina appeared on the calendar of public festivals. As most of these Oriental cults contained within them the monotheist idea it is possible that they might have fought for preeminence and each aspired to become the official religion of the Empire. But they all recognised Christianity to be a common danger, and M. Cumont has shewn that this feeling united them and made them think and act as one.

From Communists to Muslims to SJWs, various philosophies and religions have been more than happy to attempt to coopt Jesus Christ, because they believe he is dead. What they cannot countenance are the servants of the Living God, the followers of the Risen Christ, who despite our manifold failings, our observable flaws, our complete falling short of the glory of the God we worship, insist on attempting to tread upon the hard and narrow path rather than obediently follow the gentle, easy, thoughtless ways they advocate.

Christianity is the dangerous faith because it is the one faith that is rooted in truth rather than lies. It is the one real connection Man can make to the Divine. Yes, our understandings are imperfect, yes, we see as though through a glass, darkly, yes, our interpretations are various and contradictory, and yet, only in doing so, only through relentlessly pursuing the truth to the best of our ability can we begin to approach Truth.

Those who consider Christians to be self-righteous entirely miss the point, including those who consider themselves to be righteous Christians. To be forgiven is not the same as being sinless. To be repentant is not the same as to be blameless. It is not necessary to put on sackcloth and with Augustine melodramatically label ourselves the worst of all sinners to recognize that we are no better, and in some cases are considerably worse, than the virtuous pagan.

For better or for worse, we are who we are. We have done what we have done and we can never change the past. But what we don’t have to do is remain broken, frightened, sin-enslaved beings. That, through the grace of God, is the one thing we can change.

And that is what the enemies of God, in all their various guises, cannot abide. Because that is the one freedom they can never offer.

Brainstorm with Roosh

VOX: Now, recently you’ve begun talking a bit more about spirituality, which I have to say strikes me as a little strange coming as it does from a notoriously hedonistic agnostic individual. What is the source of this shift in emphasis? Is it related to what you are talking about?

ROOSH: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and only by crossing the line, by going way beyond my sexual and entertainment needs, have I seen where the line is. Most of my life I have based on the scientific way, facts and logic, but it wasn’t giving me the answers. I don’t see the answers and I see some of it is wrong. People are structuring their life on science that in 100 years, 500 years, 5,000 years, will be shown to be a joke. Just like how humans used to think the earth was flat. People right now think that just because a study came out that this is fact, but it’s not. So, what can we learn, or what is the best way to live? I think the best way to come up with that is to look at how humans have lived for thousands of years. A book like the Bible was a guide that was a manual for billions of people and it still is. It has been used for so long that maybe there is something in it that I should look at. So, I am reading it now.

VOX: It will probably astonish thousands of people to hear that! Whether you are talking about the Bible, the Ancient Greeks, or Heian Japan, there is an awful lot of wisdom to be found there simply because they lived. We don’t need to reinvent every single thought about the wheel.

ROOSH: What I don’t get is why modern Western culture has been so quick to throw all that away. Throwing everything away for this experimental way to live. I am reading some of the old stuff and it makes sense. It makes sense! And I look at what the media and the universities are showing us now and I see Bruce Jenner being celebrated for being mentally ill, and I think I am going insane here! It doesn’t make sense why this is happening. We are living in a weird time and it scares me. I’m not even there in the USA and I am thinking that maybe on the ground it is not that bad, but then I go there to visit and it is that bad. People are now reciting talking points that five years ago I would have said are weird. Now it is part of the general audience and in how they act. Now people are calling everything sexist. I remember in the US last year, I heard a woman use the word microaggression and I thought that was a joke the first time I heard it. Now it is becoming common and I am thinking, man, I don’t know how it is getting here and I wish I could stop it but I can’t. (Laughs) What we have to do as men is hold on. This is not going to end well.



If you’re interested in obtaining a copy of the transcript, it is now available at Castalia House. If you are interested in attending tomorrow night’s member’s only event, you can sign up as an annual or monthly member.