More Dialogue with Dan from Dante’s Inferno

Back in May, a blogger named Dan (or facilis on this site) posted a response to one of my rare articles on religion and atheism on his blog, Dante’s Inferno. I, of course, being the argumentative person that I am, had to respond.

Dan, after much thinking/real life work, presumably, has returned fire, addressing all of my main points in some description. What else can I do besides respond again?

For those who didn’t read the first post, this is a debate about five arguments a commenter on the blog Uncommon Descent laid out in support of theism (aka. belief in God). It also has a little bit of a naturalistic ethics discussion going on at the start of it. Let’s just say, if you like The Atheist Experience, you’ll like, or at least understand, this post.

My previous comments will be in dark red, while Dan’s will be simply italicized. All grammatical errors in Dan’s writing aren’t due to me, unless my computer has a copy-paste problem. I do, however, take full responsibility for my own mistakes.

Now in response to my point about science not being able to decide ethics.

Hmm. These are good points, but most of the objections come down to one thing: what do you classify as “knowledge”? I don’t pretend to think that my moral decisions are in any way an absolute truth, or knowledge that can be gained by observing and testing reality. They are simply the product of the society in which I was brought up in. As such, by judging for myself that killing is wrong, I’m not claiming that I have found out anything new. Thus, no new knowledge. It’s as simple as that.

However I would beg to differ. Ethicists study ethics and moral truths for a living and publish books and materials examining ethical systems. It seems ethics is a valid field of study.

You’re conflating the study of ethical systems with my claim that ethical “knowledge” isn’t really knowledge. I can study art without claiming that the art contains within it absolute truths. Of course, art contains many emotional and subjective messages, unique to the artist, but nobody really claims that they represent anything objectively true. The same is true with ethicists.

I’m not denying that ethicists don’t do valid work, I’m just saying that what they discover is not some “objective morality”. They start with their own building blocks, and work their way up to an ethical system.But this is beside the point. Ethics isn’t objective just because people study it, that’s what I’m trying to say.

And I would think ethics would be pretty bad if people just followed what society taught. I mean in India (before the British arrived) it was considered culturally acceptable to burn a widow on a funeral pyre with her dead husband. I’m sure we can agree by simple reflections on moral truths that things like this are wrong even though society accepts them.(That moral argument is just lurking around the corner isn’t it?).

Well, wrong according to our moral system. And you would have every right to be outraged if someone did that. But it’s not objectively bad to kill someone, no matter how much you want it to be. This does not mean that I would ever consider killing someone, as I realise the value of living in a society where people don’t spontaneously and randomly kill people. I also have nothing to gain from killing someone except being a social outcast, so it’s certainly not desirable. It’s things like this that stop me, and most of the general public, from committing heinous acts of murder, and they form part of our society’s ethical system.

I’d like you to define these “moral truths” that you mention, and tell me why they’re truths and why you know they’re truths.

The objection to science not being able to prove science doesn’t hold up either, because a system of gaining knowledge can be shown to be effective by what it produces in the form of tangible progress. For example, the scientific method has allowed people to fly in machines crafted of metal at hundreds of kilometers per hour all around the world. If science did not work, then the fruits of science, the great technologies that most of us enjoy today, would not work or exist. This seems to justify science outside of itself very nicely.

I would agree and I think you have proven my point. As you said you can only justify science “outside of itself”. My point was exactly that there are things outside science.

Yes, there are things outside of science, but are they reliable systems of gaining knowledge? Do emotions tell you about the nature of the Universe? I’m not sure that you’re justified in saying that, because there are things outside of science (and I do not mean that in a metaphysical way), that those things are equal or greater than science. You need to back up claims like that with a bit of evidence.

Plus, Dan’s point that “this seems to be an untenable view because there are many things that the scientific method cannot prove” seems to be a bit backwards. A worldview shouldn’t be constructed around what it can and cannot prove. The inability to “prove” that love is a supernatural force that transcends time and space should not be a limiting factor.

But my point was that there are weaknesses in this view. Many worldviews have been discarded because of their weaknesses. And I think I would disagree with Jack on the second point. If Jack was deeply in love an through his experience did come to believe that love “transcends time and space” (which some philosophers like Plato believed) I think he should reject his worldview if his experience contradicts it.

Yes, I agree, if I did believe something, it would be consistent of me to change my worldview to suit that. But, this assumes that I could ever have an experience that would make me “believe that love transcends time and space”. And me changing my worldview doesn’t make it right. I could just be driven by emotional reasons, not rational ones, which would be likely if something like love was involved.

Plus, not being able to prove something is not a weakness. I think we need to step back right here and think about what you’re arguing for. Science is a method. It is built around evidence and logic. By denying that science can be used to find something out, you’re effectively saying that… What are you saying, Dan? That it doesn’t interact with the world? What there is no evidence for its existence? I’m slightly confused as to what your motives are here.

As to the coherence of God , I think the idea of God (once properly defined) is quite logically consistent. If Jack wishes to bring up any specific problem I will address it.

There aren’t any inconsistencies that I want to bring up here, as some of them may be covered later in this post. We’ll return to this point at a later date, I suppose.

As to free will, I believe in it largely of the basis of my personal experience of my freedom to make choices. I don’t think anyone has provided me with good reason to doubt this intuition of human freedom we possess.

I’m not very up on various “compatibilist” deterministic free will philosophies, but I do know they exist. As such, I’m not going to claim that hard determinism is the correct view, as some philosophical naturalists claim that free will does exist, it’s just not supernatural in origin. Thus, I don’t think I can give a very good opinion on this subject anymore.

But what I will say is that just because you think that you feel like you have free will, that doesn’t make it so. Plus, there are theological reasons, from within the Christian worldview, that makes free will, in any sense of the term, impossible, due to God’s omniscience.

I also think rejecting free will leads to many difficulties. For example how can a person be morally responsible for a choice if it is completely predetermined? Zoologist and determinist Richard Dawkins compared punishing a criminal to beating a car that malfunctioned because the criminal is just acting out his predetermined action as a broken car is.

Even if free will does not exist, does that affect the legal system? I would argue no, since you don’t put people in prison to make the person suffer for their moral actions, but to prevent them from undertaking any harmful actions again. If we’re predetermined to do certain things, that doesn’t mean we can’t take action against people for what they’ve done.

Now to address his responses to my arguments

Kalam Cosmological Argument(KCA)

Now Jack and I agree that the universe began to exist and physical time and space came into being at the Big Bang.

I’ve been thinking about this since I wrote the last response, and I’ve come to the conclusion, which is common in the skeptical community, as it’s where critical thought leads you, that we don’t know if the Universe had a beginning. Sure, there was the Big Bang, but when we trace the expansion of the Universe back through time, we come to halt at the Planck time, 5.39×10^-44 seconds “after” the Big Bang, where our maths breaks down and we can’t, currently, investigate further.

This brings up the puzzling point that we don’t know if the Universe began or not. And since no positive argument can be made on the basis of pure uncertainty, this pushes most of the cosmological arguments for God out the window.

However, I’m going to humour Dan and go on to what he says about the cause of the Universe:

However Jack raises an objection when we deduce a cause of the big bang. I emailed to confirm it and what I think his objection is based off the assumption that a cause comes before its effect in time. However  I think this assumption is ill-founded as it fails to take into account simultaneous causation. We observe simultaneous causes and effects all the time. For example , open up an old watch and you will see 2 gears spinning simultaneously. Now we know that one gear actually causes the other to spin , but in this case we can acknowledge cause and effect are simultaneous. Some cases of simultaneous causation are also apparent in quantum mechanics (if you hold to the Coppenhagen interpretation that says observing a wave function will cause it to collapse simultaneously with observation). The famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant used the analogy of a ball and a cushion for simultaneous causation. Imagine a heavy ball resting on a cushion ,such that it creates a depression in the cushion. Now imagine that this ball and cushion had existed this way from eternity past. Someone might ask, what is the cause of the depression in the cushion? Obviously the answer is the bowling ball. Even if the depression had existed for eternity we can still say in this case the cause (ball) exists simultaneous with its effect(depression). To put it differently causal priority does not imply temporal priority.

Now my position is that God’s act of creation was simultaneous with the beginning of the universe so it is immune to Jack’s objection.

This argument is flawed, pure and simple.

Okay, so you assume that the act of creation happened simultaneously with the beginning of the Universe, and you use a ball/cushion analogy to clarify the concept. But that’s a false analogy!

A ball can rest on a cushion for, theoretically, an infinite amount of time. If we assume that the ball was always resting on the cushion, then we have a case for simultaneous causation, even though such a scenario could never exist in the real world. But God’s act of creation is not like the ball/cushion system at all. Has God been “creating” the Universe for an infinite amount of time? If not, then there is no case for simultaneous causation.

Plus, this doesn’t remove the charge that time needs to exist for cause and effect to have any meaning. The whole idea of simultaneous causation says nothing about the absence of time, and therefore I’m not sure you can dodge this argument with such flips and tricks.

Now in my conceptual analysis of the cause of the universe I said there were 2 possiblities for something existing in a form that is non-physical ,immaterial…etc were abstract objects (like numbers and sets) and a mind/consciousness.

There’s no reason to think that minds can exist outside of physical brains, so how can you, as a theist, justify the existence, purely on “say-so” grounds, of a supernatural cause of the Universe that is a mind?

To make myself clear I was not saying that these sorts of things actually exist. I was just saying those were the possibilities. For example I doubt that numbers and sets exist independently of minds, however I acknowledge that there is a possibility that these things exist. Many atheists deny the existence of God and non-physical minds , however acknowledge that there is a possibility (even if it is small) that a non-physical God can exist.

I’m not going to “deny” the existence of “non-physical” minds, because I’m not even sure what they would be like. What use is a mind that cannot act on the Universe? If it is not connected to a physical body, a mind is literally useless, in the sense that it cannot do anything! I’d like you to justify your belief that a non-physical mind, even if it could exist, which I am, for some reason, allowing you within the context of this argument to hold as true, could affect the physical world.

To paraphrase Spock from the new Star  Trek movie (who is quoting Sherlock Holmes) ,“when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”

Avoiding issues related to false dichotomies, I’ll agree with that. But what you really should be doing, Dan, is rather than construct arguments for God based on negative principles, such as “God is the only explanation left”, you should build up positive arguments, like “Here’s why God exists”. I know you attempt to do this later, but I’m just saying, negative arguments are not as convincing and are always harder to make watertight.

For my second piece I distinguished between personal and inanimate explanations. Personal explanations explain things in terms of minds or personal agents and their volitions. Impersonal explanations put things in terms of physical laws and initial condition and matter and energy. I argued that there could not be an impersonal explanation (and Jack agrees).

I agree that the natural process is wrong by definition, but you can’t/haven’t justified the dichotomy of natural vs. personal, and neither have you demonstrated that a personal agent can exist outside of a natural process.

Now Jack’s objection is that I pose a false dichotomy. However it is only a false dichotomy if there are other options I have not covered. But it seems like an explanation is either personal or impersonal. I do not think there is any “in-between” these 2 options. And also I am not assuming that a personal agent exists outside of these natural processes. All we need to say is that there is some kind of possibility. If Jack even thinks there is a miniscule possibility that a personal agent like God exists then this argument is successful.

Coming back to one of the original points I made in this post, we don’t know what caused the Big Bang, or whether or not it needs a cause. Now, I used the phrase “the natural process is wrong by definition” to state that a normal, everyday process could not be the cause of the Universe, but this was too vague, and possibly incorrect.

The process that triggered the Big Bang could very well have been natural in a physical sense, but we just don’t know. As such, you haven’t eliminated the “natural” side of the personal/natural dichotomy that you insist is valid. If you haven’t done that, you have made no case towards the existence of a creator God.

Plus, by stating that you don’t need to assume that a personal agent can exist outside of the Universe, you’re effectively saying that you don’t need to justify it. I think you do. According to our current knowledge, personal agents cannot act outside of the physical Universe, and are intricately tied to it. Without demonstrating that personal agents can be free of such “impersonal” causes, you are not free to assume that they can, and any possibility of God existing is therefore withheld until you do that.

Argument from the existence of the universe

Jack levies the same objection he used at the Kalam. However as I pointed out earlier this objection does not take simultaneous causation into account.

See my objection to the Kalam.

The Evidence of Fine-tuning

I’m not quite sure which of my premises Jack is objecting too.

My argument went kind of like this

1)fine-tuning is highly probable under theism

2)fine-tuning is highly improbable under atheism

3) Therefore fine-tuning confirms theism over atheism

The premise I am objecting to is the hidden one that you do not state: that the Universe contains evidence of fine-tuning. This is where your argument breaks down.

Now Jack tries to invoke anthropic reasoning here. However I think this does not help him . Let us use an analogy. Imagine someone filled all the chambers in a gun with bullets. He removes only one bullet . Jack is playing Russian roulette with this gun. One turn goes by and he is relieved to have survived. Two go by ,3 and all the way to 100 turns. Undoubtedly Jack would begin to question if the gun was jammed. It is a true statement that Jack would have died had he not been so lucky. But this does nothing to blunt the improbabilities. Or imagine he was holding a dice. Someone tells him that anytime he rolls a dumber less than 6 a crack sniper would take him out. He rolls one , twice , 100 times but keeps getting sixes . Jack would stat to feel something suspicious was going on. Now had jack rolled some other number he would be dead. But this does nothing to blunt the force of the improbabilities. So I think the fine-tuning does offer support for theism over chance

Ah, I get your reasoning! I see the error in my ways, this is a great argument for God… He must exist, I see it now!

…

Sorry for the sarcasm there. It just… slipped out.

Another false analogy is what this is. By comparing the beginning of the Universe to a game of Russian Roulette, you are assuming that there is some inherent probability of the Universe turning out the way it did. I would agree with that, but in Russian Roulette, you click the trigger until you die. With the Universe, it’s a one-pull game. You don’t get any second chances.

The nature of your argument that makes it superficially so appealing is that you construct the analogy in such a way that the sheer improbability of me surviving Russian Roulette 100 times is supposedly carried to the nature of the Universe and its constants. You’re right in assuming that there is probably some reason for the gun not firing, especially after such a large number of events. However, this does not translate to the Universe.

As previously stated, the Universe had its constants set once. Only once. Is this a good sample set of events on which to base an argument from improbability? Nope. Why is such a deistic explanation needed for something that could have happened by random chance? There is no inherent improbability for anything happening once, especially when we know nothing about the conditions in which the event took place.

Plus, Dan, you’re trying to say with this argument that a personal cause jammed the gun, possibly, and therefore a personal cause created the Universe, possibly. But what if the gun was jammed because of some atmospheric phenomenon, or the bullets were randomly defective? Such causes are possible, so what not a cause like that for the setting of the constants of the Universe? There are more ways to explain something than just “someone did this”.

If you, Dan, try to refute this argument by saying that “random chance” cannot set the constants of the Universe, you’ve just removed the power of this argument. You may as well have left it out, because you’ve just retreated to the cosmological argument again. I’m not suggesting that you could refute it like that, but I’m just warning you of the outcome if you do.

4)The intelligibility of the Cosmos and laws of Nature

1)the intelligibility of the universe is improbable under atheism

2)The intelligibility of the universe is not improbable under theism.

3)the observation of intelligibility is evidence for theism over atheism.

I would like to contest Premise 1. Why is it improbable? I would like Dan to further explain this premise.

I think it seems evident that this is true. Just contemplate it. Under atheism, we are just some species that evolved out here is these vast cosmos. Why would we expect the laws hat govern the cosmos to be understandable by things with our level of intelligence. It seems possible that they would be so complex that we could not understand them ,or so choatic that we couldn’t draw regular inferences. Or be such that it would be difficult to measure these laws. There seems to be no reason (assuming atheism) we should think the world.

There is no reason that think that the Universe should necessarily be understandable under atheism, but then again, flipping it, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be. Therefore, you have proven nothing with this argument, you’re just drawing on supposed impossibilities that you haven’t fleshed out or supported in any way.

As with the fine-tuning argument, you’re drawing on a sample size of one and coming to probabilistic conclusions about the nature of the Universe and its origins. This isn’t a valid line of reasoning.

5)The reliability of thought

Now it seems Jack does not undertstand the power of this argument . This means that Jack’s naturalism cannot provide a sound basis for rationality.

Imagine a broken ,unreliable computer. it sends out a number of messages that Jack can read. However Jack doesn’t know whether these things are correct or not. He has to withhold judgement. He can’t believe in the computer.

Now jack’s brain is like the computer. How can he trust it? And if Jack can’t trust his own thoughts , he cannot even trust the fact of naturalism because that is also one of his unreliable thoughts. Paradoxically , if naturalism is true , Jack can’t trust his own thoughts about naturalism.

So I think my arguments are still standing.

I know this may be hard for you to understand, but… I assume I can trust my own thoughts. Think about that for a second. If I don’t, then I cease to function as a being who can think logically.

Hmm. Maybe that won’t make you understand. Let’s… let’s flip the scenario, shall we?

Okay, you’re a Christian. You believe God has created you, so you believe your thoughts to be reliable. However, in this hypothetical example, God does not exist, even though you believe he does. What does this say about you? Are your thoughts reliable?

You say that if naturalism is true, I can’t trust my own thoughts about naturalism, but the same applies to you, if you believe your own argument: if naturalism is true, you can’t believe your own thoughts about God. The nature of the Universe and what we want it to be like are completely different. I assume the Universe is rational. If it’s not, okay, it’s not. What happens now? If it is, then God doesn’t instantly grab a logical foothold. This is why your argument fails.

If I was Jack I would start to seriously question the plausibility of my naturalism/atheism. Jack has said that 1) The universe popped into existence of nothing completely uncaused!! 2) This universe somehow exists for no reason and there is no explanation of its existence 3)Against overwhelming improbabilities the universe came out so that it is habitable to life. These odds are so low no sober gambler would face them in Vegas. 4)The universe is not only habitable , but it came out in such a way that humans can study and understand it well by chance 5)Jack can’t even trust his own rationality.

I don’t think these facts bear well for atheism.

1) I said no such thing. I never claimed that the Universe popped into existence at all. I don’t make that claim, and neither should anyone else, as it’s unjustified.

2) There’s no reason to think that it exists for some metaphysical reason, so until someone justifies such a claim, I won’t hold to that opinion, plain and simple.

3) The Universe happened once, and what happened happened. Not enough events of Universe-creation have occurred to make a probabilistic argument.

4) See 3.

5) And if I’m right, neither can you, according to you. But that doesn’t affect the facts. Plus, I still trust my own thoughts. Who wouldn’t?

Ah, that was fun. Kinda. I suppose Dan will respond again with more false analogies and unjustified arguments soon, so more responses will be coming up, you can count on that.

Remember, so long as there are religious people, there will be arguments for God out there and apologists who use them. All we atheists can do is batten down the hatches or stand up and face the storm. Judging by the quality of some of these arguments and their logical incoherency, I don’t blame the non-believers who choose to never debate apologists.