Discuss. 

These are the things I am eager to learn about the Obama experiment:

1.  Can an intelligent person if put in the right place in power actually make amazing positive changes to the world that stick?

2.  Can the American populace respond well to a well thought out agenda that isn't about ideology or instant gratification?

3.  Can said intelligent person maintain their integrity from start to finish in such a position of power?

4.  Can the landscape of petty partisan politics actually be leveled up to something better or will it just go back to the way it was when said person leaves the arena?

Discuss!

Obviously I'm interested in lots of issues as far as Obama and politics go, but these are the most important broad themes I'm personally interested in seeing play out.  I liked Michael Moore's perspective in an interview he did with Sean Hannity.  We're giving Obama lots of slack and time to figure out some very big complicated problems.  And if he doesn't come through, a whole generation of people are going to give up hope, and retreat back into the political cynicism their parents are so used to.  And I can see that.  Easily.

Ben  

Intro:

I see the declaration of universal bias often enough with Christians, especially with presuppositionalist Christians who seem to be looking to justify how outrageously biased they are rather than attempting to make impartial arguments. 

The type of "self awareness" (that everyone is biased and can't help it) John Piipo promotes in his recent post on "The Myth of Objectivity" can take many turns.  It's not completely untrue, but it does matter what you do with that information.  That seems to be where we differ.

Piipo said:

Actually, it's more like asking a married man to not treat his wife as though she really is the most beautiful and talented woman in the world when having conversations with bachelors.  Should everyone marry her? 

Some people are able to do both, you know.  Like news commentators who make it clear when they are giving their opinion on the news story they dispassionately brought to our attention.  Has FOX news made us forget this so quickly?

That's a red flag for me, too.  But that doesn't mean there aren't people who work really hard to pull it off.  The label "unbiased" needs to be given, not taken.  Earned, not demanded.

It seems the author is reacting to people who use the accusation of bias as a personal attack.  However, their fallacy doesn't justify giving up on trying to more and more objective.

The last line of a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that Piipo includes says:

Indeed.  Too often I see this topic come up from Christians in order to attempt to end an objective conversation, rather than begin it.  I'm hoping this is a sign that perhaps Piipo is a different brand of Christian than what I am used to.  However he doesn't put much focus on it and seems to declare otherwise in the rest of his post. 

Hello,

I think I'm with you here if you go one step further and discuss various virtues and methods for creating less biased discussions and learning environments.  Such as:

Isn't it just as much a myth that everyone is *equally* biased? 

Isn't it just as much a myth that we can't work to become less biased? 

Isn't it irresponsible to fail to *seek* a neutral starting point in our arguments for whatever view we defend?

We wouldn't want the observations in your post to turn into excuses for remaining really biased in our approach to situations involving all sorts of people with different viewpoints would we?  How could we hope to empathize with them if we declare ourselves lost causes?  I'm assuming that's not what you meant here, but I'm wasn't sure.

take care,

Ben

Hi Ben - thank you for responding.

A few responses:

1) I don't think it is a "myth" that everyone is equally biased. By "bias" I mean, e.g., the definition Hans-Georg Gadamer gives in Truth and Method. this comes out of the Kantian tradition in philosophy. "Bias" means: pre-judgment. In Gadamer and Kant this is not only not a negative thing, but without it one would not understand anything at all. So in that sense everyone is qually biased; viz., in the sense that all of us are 100% biased. That being said, "bias" can differ from culture to culture.

2) I don't think one can "work to become less biased." In fact, that idea is, in principle, unachievable. It's a Cartesian fallacy. One might as well try to conceive of "square circles" or "unmarried bachelors."

3) "Neutral starting points" cannot be gained. Instead, use logic to express one's truth-claims. Then, evaluate them.

Thanks so much for commenting - blessings!

Joe,

So you don't see any difference for example between ideological opponents who are able to see and articulate their opponents positions more charitably and those who clearly tend to see whatever they want to see and make straw man arguments? 

To say everyone has equal pre-judgment is like saying no one in the history of the world has ever changed their mind or been convinced by a new argument or been uncertain about their position.  All pre-judgement is not created equal and I wonder if you might be trying to justify a subjective lack of personal interest in seeing things from other perspectives.  I see no way to apply what you've said to actual life.  How am I misunderstanding you? 

Ben

Some of us work very hard and earn the occasional title, "the least biased I've ever seen."  So it always sounds like quitter talk (not to mention dubious) when people get defensive, point fingers at everyone else's biases, and thereby proclaim their own biases immutable and irreproachable.  It's like they think there's simply no way to do better and that their bias can't possibly be affecting their clarity of thought and the relevancy of their arguments on a given issue.  Obviously that's probably not always true.  And maybe it's not always worthwhile to point out someone's bias as the cause of faulty arguments, but the golden lesson on the path to becoming less biased is, "Listen carefully to your own condemnation of bias in others and follow prescriptively whatever would turn your description, if applied to yourself on your own side of the fence, into natural praise."  It's not rocket science.  It's just a matter of doing it.  And doing it better the next time around and so on.  And if you personally have given up on this, or don't care, that doesn't everyone else is right there with you.  We're not all created equally lazy. 

Ben

Intro:

It should be no surprise we atheists have our pessimists in our ranks.  It's a shame when people turn their subjective perspectives into an ideology to be imposed on everyone else at the expense of the contrary evidence. 

Christian depiction of the human condition seems to be spot-on. This is one thing Christianity gets exactly right. There is something deeply and seemingly irremediably wrong with us. We stain everything we touch. Even the citadel of reason is breached. As an academic, I long regarded intellect as a very high if not quite the highest good. Now I think it is grossly overrated. I have come to realize that I.Q. and rationality are hardly correlated at all. On the contrary, I have discovered the appalling extent to which very many of the smartest people employ their intellectual gifts and high-powered intellectual tools (like analytic philosophy) to create and defend pernicious ideologies and towering lunacies. Maybe worse are those who sell their intellects to the service of the highest bidders. “Reason is a whore,” said Luther, and, by God, he was at least 90% right.

Link

John,

I think that's called pessimism, cherry picking, and confirmation bias, John. It's upsetting to see both Parsons and yourself take this route. It's only "spot on" if you are stuck in your own psychological rut. On behalf of the goodness of the human race where it can be found, please keep the insults to yourself.

thanks,
Ben

Of course, I think if this is the strongest argument for Christianity then it's pathetic, you see. And I think Parsons would agree.

That all humans have something irremediably wrong with us?

John,

Well I didn't say humans haven't done lots of bad things or that IQ is a guarantee of good behavior.  That's such a simplistic view of human psychology as though what goes into making a stable moral agent with good character only has to do with something like their ability to pass an advanced placement math test.  That's just plain silly.  Just because the skeptical movement emphasizes reason as its primary virtue doesn't mean that a holistic lifestyle doesn't include healthy portions of a whole lot of other things working in conjunction with each other like a well oiled machine.  Your view turns reason into an idol, and obviously with the wrong expectations of it, it will fail you.  Reason is the slave of your emotions and if your emotions are screwed up, reason isn't necessarily going to save you. 

As I recall, I originally pointed to cherry picking and confirmation bias as though the things you've listed necessarily characterize *everyone.*  Would *every* psychologist be misled in such a way as you've described?  Hardly.  One Christian once told me that the reason his psychosomatic healing story couldn't possibly be a cookie cutter psychosomatic healing story was because the person who had their subjective symptoms prayed away was a registered nurse.  Yes, because all nurses are created equally objective.  Why are you aping Christian logic, John?   

How do you explain all the people who have never done any of the things you've listed and never will?  To even ask this sounds silly, and yet here I am.  Surely you've thought about it before, right?  What gives?  It's called disconfirmation.  Do I need to tell you that what they show on the nightly news doesn't actually characterize the entire world?  Surely not.  

Do you like have any arguments against the Christian doctrine of total depravity or are you totally on the same page with the ideological self-deprecaters?  This post basically says, "Christians, they got psychology right!"  And that's just plainly ridiculous on so many levels.  I'm assuming you would claim to have grown up a bit emotionally since your apostasy, right?  So I'm a little perplexed here.

If I've misunderstood your point of view in some way I apologize.  Feel free to bring me up to speed. 

Ben 

John,

I agree, we shouldn't feel like we are immune from all manner of failures.  However, that seems beside the point. 

I was questioning your meta-analysis of the human condition.  There are people who are more well adjusted than I am, who are more moral than I am, who are more happy than I am, who are prone to less mistakes than I am, and who have a lot more experience than I do navigating life's difficulties.  And there are plenty of people who aren't as good as I happen to be at those things.  There is definitely a way to make a distinction between sociopaths and the best person ever (whoever that was) with a wide enough spectrum in between.  You can make a list of all the characteristics and values that you think make up a decent human being, and someone out there majors in just about all of them and someone minors in just about all of them.  Why wouldn't that be true? 

Perhaps you might disagree about how practically wide the spectrum is.  People who have clinical depression for example could try to tell themselves that people without it aren't doing much better than they are.  And they're probably wrong.  They are wrong enough to say there's good reason to desire to not be depressed all the time.  And there are people out there who aren't depressed all the time.  And yes, it sucks that such things are unevenly distributed, but that doesn't change reality. 

Sure we're all imperfect, but that doesn't justify the level of indictment you seem to have applied in such broad strokes and that's what I don't think is fair to humanity.  If you don't mind me saying so, your view appears to be more about you getting in touch with your own sense of humility rather than being dispassionately realistic with the evidence the world presents. 

You say you are dreadfully like other people, but why can't you be *delightfully* like other people in other ways?  Have you no positive qualities?  Does no one respect anything about you?  I find that hard to believe.   

Ben

I think I can agree to that, but it doesn't seem like that's where we started out.  We've gone from "irremediably wrong" to "has a mess it can sort out."  Humanity needs to get its act together for sure, and I think it has the qualities to do it over time.  I doubt we'd even be having this conversation if that wasn't the case.   

As to the why question, that doesn't seem terribly mysterious to me.  The engine of human character isn't perfect and requires genuine care and informed maintenance to run at peak efficiency.  That kind of thing simply isn't evenly distributed amongst the world (on top of genetic problems).   Plus we're living in the wake of inherited collective cultural prejudices, biases, and various other errors and systemic cultural difficulties that were never planned out in the first place.  It's like asking why all the modern roads are so screwed up. 

I can't say that I'm really looking for another answer.  Do you think I'm missing something? 

Ben

Do I honestly have to write a "how not to be a pessimist" guide for dummies?  Really? 

Ben

Intro:

Patrick Shawhan was one of the theistic contributors to the student debate at Skepticon 2.  We've recently become facebook friends and he messaged me some follow up questions he said he'd love me to answer. 

My definition of "evidentialism" (or rather, just "evidence") is as wide as whatever you can present in terms of giving good reasons for believing in whatever is true.  Even if we maintain some distinction between philosophical and logical evidence, the evidence of mind-only experiences (like dreams), and say forensic evidence, one could only imagine that theism would have a meaningful contribution to the most stereotypical and narrow definition of evidence in addition to other avenues.  I know of no avenue theists pursue that I reject ideologically. 

For instance it's logically possible to have a sensus divinitatis like a connection to the divine internet.  But incidentally when we click on Google's webpage, even if our computer screens were only in our heads, we could easily cross check and confirm sufficiently that in fact we were having objective individual experiences of the same thing.  We can't do that with theism and so it only has a rather vague contribution to this particular evidential pot.  There are better explanations.  Granted the shorthand if an atheist doesn't explain why they reject it can look like some kind of ideological shortchange, but that's just experience and laziness talking for many atheists.  It's just that they are well aware that brand of evidence has been bad and they expect it to continue to be as bad.  I don't think any of the atheists on either panel would be that close minded if simple cross checking tests could be applied to show a sensus divinitatis is real and actually does what theists claim it does.   

In fact, it should be noted my entire case involved no physical evidence whatsoever, brought up the very issue of internal coherency, didn't even mention science, and so I don't see how it makes any sense to describe my point of view with labels like "evidentialism" or "scientism."  I certainly have arguments along those lines as well, but I'm not dependent on them.  In my view, a truly well rounded worldview takes everything into consideration and it's not all hinged on just one brand of evidence.  Overall, it's more about abduction than coherency, but obviously coherency plays a part just like explicitly scientific evidence does.  My question for you would be, why is it so necessary to saddle critical atheists with such terms whether they apply or not?     

Shawhan's second question:

Why do you believe that an entity outside the time-space continuum must be static?  Is that of logical necessity?

Yes.  I'm sure there could easily be other space-time continuums, but that's generally not what is being claimed on behalf of God.  He's categorically "timeless" meaning he's not changing on any temporal axis.  If you can't change, you are by logical necessity static.  I really don't know what's so difficult about that.  God, the Father can't do a single operation a mind does (other than exist) if he cannot go from one state to another.  He can't "think" or "experience" anything and so there's just something we can call a coherent "mind."  It doesn't even make sense to say that he began to create anything since that implies he's on a timeline where at one point he wasn't creating anything and then he was.  A temporal axis is universal in the sense it has nothing necessarily to do with matter or physical laws.  It describes change in the most generic sense possible.  So there's no way to mystify that away.  A timeless god is as good as an inanimate object.

It seems the more sophisticated philosophers have started rejecting the timeless god for less orthodox definitions (link), but I'm not sure I've ever met a grass roots theologian who believed God was constrained by time.  And really, time is liberating.  It allows you to do things.  It's funny that it's seen as some kind of petty hang up "contingent beings" have. 

Ben

Intro:

For those of you who don't wish to scour my lengthy review of Charlie Self's closing remarks on the pro debate, here's the video of my opening statement from the student debate. 

I got great reviews from everyone and I'm amazed I nailed it so well.  And by nailed it so well, I mean I like was able to string coherent sentences together in front of everyone.  haha   

Patrick Shawhan, right after the debate, said I got the Romans 3:8 quote wrong (as in backwards), but it seems he is mistaken. 

I'm glad Rob Lehr is on top of this and cruising along in the editing and posting the videos.  Thanks Rob!

Ben

Intro: 

Dr. Charlie Self is a minister who participated in the Pro-debate at Skepticon 2 and he has posted his opening statement and written up his follow up thoughts in a post called, "My Debate with Atheists at MSU." 

Self said in his opening:

That is definitely the world I'm fighting for.

That is also the type of atmosphere on my blog I seek to promote as well.  Having sustained and recurring egotistical feuds while not advancing any genuine discussion is recipe for internet misery.  One can have a hundred heated and unpleasant conversations with "enemies" or several pleasant conversations with friends.  Easy choice.

Self says:

I agree.  I imagine theists feel the need to say things like this because they are on the receiving end more often than not of "in your face" atheism that tends to merge criticism of beliefs with something that sounds suspiciously like an ad hominem characterization of the person who they believe is wrong. 

Self declares:

I agree.  It seems to me we shouldn't be bothering with a debate when in reality responsible supernaturalists (if there is any substance to the claims) should be taking us on safari and bringing the accountability of the rest of the scientific community with them to rigorously test the claims and settle the dispute for everyone.  That kind of behavior would move this debate to an entire new level rather than having someone drop a drive by anecdote on us like we haven't heard claims like this before.  And really, there's hardly a reason to even respond to all the back and forth on the rest of the issues here if this would happen.  We should be going to Africa to see some real magic.

Self rightly says:

I agree.  However this call to humility should not be a smokescreen for pride in their theistic conclusion.  We should not be humble in order to conclude God, we should be humble whether we are able to conclude God or not.  There is a such thing as agnosticism.

Self notes: 

I agree.  And that's why having these conversations about understanding morality in non-supernatural terms are so important to our growth and maturity as a culture.

Self summarizes (and slightly misrepresents) Richard Carrier's argument:

Stated like that makes it an argument to the future which is logically fallacious.  Carrier is taking into considerations the success of naturalistic explanations in the past and the complete failure of supernatural explanations and making a probable inference to the success of natural explanations in the future in areas where we have incomplete knowledge.  I don't think Self called this an "argument to the future" and so plausibly he means to say what I've said here, but just in case, I thought I would clarify.  If not, that would be a straw man.

Self says:

There is a great deal of incoherent talk on this issue from the atheistic side.  Unbeguiled in the comments says:

I noticed this as well.  What Stenger seems to not be aware of is that he spends way too much time talking about his something version of nothing which has nothing to do with anything relevant to these discussions.  It should be a footnote at best, it isn't, and that's confusing.

Self says:

But then goes back to his opening statement:

It seems there is some misunderstanding about how "coherency" and "paradox" relate to each other.  At best, I would say by admitting Christians live with fundamental paradoxes it seems to follow that they don't really know whether their worldview is coherent or not.  That would mean that we are assuming by "paradox" we mean "apparent paradox."  At worst, they've admitted their worldview isn't coherent, but then they say it is anyway.  Either way, Self's opening statement is inaccurate.  Continue reading →

Intro:

I will not be summarizing the debates or the talks from Skepticon 2 here.  I'm going to take it for granted that you were there and state my follow up thoughts.  Blogs that give better intros can be found elsewhere.

If I'd had the opportunity to address everything, I would have made a point to agree with the majority of Martin Monacell's opening.  I'm assuming he was assuming that we'd argue bad things have happened because of religion and therefore religion must go.  Rather we argued that religious faith is a wild card in our culture that does as much harm as good, that we don't need it, and that it is probably false. 

He seemed particularly interested in how secure his objective moral values are.  It seems they completely lost this point when it was admitted by them in the question part that it really would suck to live in a world where people weren't moral and that we might have a point that this is a good enough reason to promote and condemn certain kinds of behaviors.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to comment on the morality aspect since my job was to focus on the philosophical problems the theists had with naturalism.  It would have been nice to curtail many of the things Ryan and JT said about evolution and morality.  Kudos to DJ Grothe [see below] for picking up on it and giving his view of evolution and morality in his talk the next day. 

It's a bit silly to keep trying to make something out of faith.  Martin said as I recall that faith is the logical conclusion of doubt.  Oh really?  Because in normal person land, not believing something is a perfectly legitimate conclusion when in doubt.

The second student theist, Patrick Shawhan, went a little bit more in depth.  It is a bit annoying when they want to prove their worldview in just a different way and they use rhetoric like "God cannot be proven or disproven" like a debate isn't technically over at that point.  It's like oh boy, "Let the confusion begin!"  What they mean of course is they don't want to fork over certain cliche' kinds of evidence like divine footprints and fossils to show that God actually exists.  Obviously they don't have any.  Whatever they are going to present in well rounded thinker land to show their worldview is more likely true than another is still some kind of evidence. 

They attack "evidentialism" making it seem at first glance to many science enthusiasts like they are anti-evidence.  Of course, they have to clarify they aren't against science or evidence, but at that point most atheists are trying to figure out what in the world the issue is.  I know my debate partner Ryan didn't get it.  I know Victor Stenger in the next debate didn't get it when it came up again.  I know a certain guy in the audience didn't get it when he asked Stenger what the hell the anti-evidentialism thing was all about.  My girlfriend didn't get it and asked me a few times to re-clarify.  I'm sure they are not alone.  I had to go around explaining to people after the debate what the hell Shawhan was talking about because of how convoluted their approach is. 

First of all, evidentialism isn't self refuting because its a tool and not a complete worldview.  We can just drop the "ism" and note that to deny evidence is to simply deny all of human experience.  To deny your own experience as valid is to make one wonder what in the world "valid" ever meant in the first place.  Doesn't mean every experience corresponds to reality, but it does mean every experience means something.  It may mean your brain is messed up or that you are hallucinating or high or something, but that's what critical thinking and cross checking is for.  Even God can't validate his experience apart from his own experience as that is logically impossible.  So even though there may be some kind of weakness there, it's just a weakness any conscious entity is saddled with in any event. 

So who in their right mind is hypercritical of evidentialism?  Probably people who don't have much in the way of evidence when they should have it.  Christians are great at forgetting to take ownership of the fact their version of theism entails a number of normal (non-philosophical) claims that have already been heavily investigated and turned up negative.  What about modern miracles?  The efficacy of prayer?  Creationism?  Demon possession?  Witchcraft?  I think a typed out checklist should be submitted to Christians before the debate asking which of these Biblically endorsed magical claims they supposedly take seriously.  [I'm probably going to do that next time.]  So even if they have some philosophical point, if they drop the ball on all the "normal evidence" they are arguing for some other supernatural worldview. 

So anyway, the other bit of confusion comes from the fact that neither team of theists was willing to say, "Thoughts are magic, therefore the anti-magic worldview must be false."  Then they might actually have to prove that thoughts and all things mental are actually magical.  Naturally they can't do that and won't do that, but they will assert their incredulity and their conclusion all the while confusing every sensible person in the audience with their twisted way of approaching the debate.  Every theist that goes there does that, because ya know, it just sounds so darn silly to just come out and say you think thoughts are magic.  So they say everything but, and that confuses everyone.  Continue reading →

It's so hard to find songs that actually appeal in some significant philosophical way to me.  I'm not above willingly hearing what I want to as far as entertaining music goes in order to make ends meet in a culture that bombards us with trite nonsense.  Just wish what I misheard on the radio had been the actual lyrics.

The chorus to Kevin Rudolf's "Let it Rock" goes:

Instead of what is highlighted, my cognitive biases interpolated, "What they says, for God..."   Meaning, the way people used to conceive of what makes life worth living in a passionate way for God needs to be replaced with a passion for life in a humanistic sense. 

And the song had introduced God earlier in the song:

So it wasn't an implausible interpretation, but it was wrong.  Oh well.  There's a whole bunch of other stuff going on in the song I'm not even going to try to understand, so it's not a significant loss.  But it does remind me how few songs seem to be available in my philosophical genre. 

Ben

Update:  Saint Gasoline has a very interesting post interpreting the entire song as a fully humanistic anthem.