Tom's Blog

A recent post at uncommon descent

2011-03-24T22:20:00.000-05:00

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/on-the-calculation-of-csi/comment-page-4/#comment-375029

MathGrrl says "Thank you in advance for helping me understand CSI. Let’s do some math!"

I confess to only skimming through this thread as it seems to be pretty much a rehash of the pro-ID, or we might say pro-mind, and the anti-ID, or we might say the naturalist/materialist/physicalist - NMPist - view which claims (apparently) that the source of biological information (complex, functional, specified, or whatever) is time plus natural selection, that is to say, the laws of physics. In other words, what is the CAUSE of information?

Most every biologist I've read, even on the pro-NDT side (Mayr, Crick, Dawkins, Coyne, etc...) has no problem with the idea that there is indeed such a thing as biological information. Dawkins actually says in "River Out of Eden" on page 19 that "Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information." I quote him not to offer a "proof" of this but merely to point out that since the discovery of the structure of DNA by Crick and Watson the idea of biological information has taken on ever increasing importance in biology and is widely recognized to exist. Laying aside for the moment whether or not it can be measured to mf's or mg's satisfaction.

Just for fun, let's consider human information. The kind that is created by, well, humans. Like this post. What is the source of this information? Is it also the laws of physics as the NMPist would have us believe? Or is it mind, as I would have us believe?

If we consider the prerequisites for human information I think we can identify at least 4 or 5 depending on how you count language. Let's count the symbols and rules of language as 2. Those rules operate within the laws of reason so these rules (Being, Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded Middle, Causality) are pre-req 3. How are the symbols arranged in order to encode a message? It seems as though they must be freely chosen. Otherwise, how to account for the fact that I am typing this instead of that? There is no POSSIBLE explanation grounded in physical law for why I am typing this instead of that which suggests the question, well then, if physics isn't doing it then what is? That's for another time. The last thing that is (at least) required is intentionality or purpose. A "scientist" might say "causality." What is it that causes these letters to appear "out here" in cyberspace? It seems that whatever it is that is freely arranging these English symbols in a (one hopes) logical fashion is also intending to do this. Otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't be done.

To recap, we need:
Symbols, rules, reason, free will, and purpose. Without these there is no human information.

So the NMPist now has to explain the existence of this information in terms of the laws of physics. If he wants to be intellectually honest, that is. After all, if NMPism means that all that exists is physical then obviously it follows that all explanations of these physical things MUST be found in the laws of physics. (Never mind for a moment the glaring - embarrassingly so - fact that these laws are also abstract and therefore beyond the reach of "science" because they cannot be sensed. I doubt that anyone has ever tasted or heard the law of gravity.)

Can the laws of physics explain any of the things on my list? No. It is not even conceptually possible since information (although encoded in a physical substrate) is not itself physical. And if it's not physical then physics can't explain it.

Let me try to illustrate with some examples.

Why does "the dog" refer to Fido and "der Hund" also refer to Fido? Can this possibly be explained by reference to the laws of physics? No. It cannot. Why does "Es regnet" mean "it's raining in German and means absolutely nothing in English? Can this be explained by reference to physical laws? No. It cannot.

If b < c, and a < b, then a < c. This is necessarily true. Not even God can make it not true. So explain that in terms of physical law. Cannot be done.

Free will cannot be explained by reference to physical law. Indeed the thorough going NMPist denies free will because everything must be explained by reference to physical LAW. We have the delicious irony of the fool denying that he has free will even as he exercises his free will to form the thought that he has none.

Intentionality cannot be explained by physics. Indeed, this is why Dawkins and the rest rail against the idea of there being real purpose or design or intentionality in the universe. Let me offer a quick modus tollens argument to show the idiocy of this line of thinking.

If I did not intend to be writing this post, I would not be writing this post. But I am writing this post. Therefore I do INTEND to be writing this post.

For me, it is not too great a step to get from human information to biological information. There HAS to be a code for information of any kind. The code is not based on any laws of physics that I've ever read about.

In fact, Yockey (2005), the physicist, says they are not. Oh heck, let me quote him. He says on page 5 that:

"The belief of mechanist-reductionists that the chemical processes in living matter do not differ in principle from those in dead matter is incorrect. There is no trace of messages determining the results of chemical reactions in inanimate matter. If genetical processes were just complicated biochemistry, the laws of mass action and thermodynamics would govern the placement of amino acids in the protein sequences." BUT THEY DON'T. OK, that last part was me, not Yockey, but that was his point.

In addition to the code there must be rules (else how did we recognize the existence of the CODE?). There must be free will (the code is not determined by the laws of physics - although - obviously - none of the chemical reactions violate the laws of physics). And purpose. Sigh. Why would there be anything at all unless someone (or SomeOne) determined that there would be? At any rate, I do not expect this will gain any traction in the anti-ID camp but every now and again one has to try.

If mg is still reading you might ask yourself what "doing math" actually means. At its essence it's manipulating symbols according to various and sundry laws. Mathematics is a language too. A universal language. So how is it that you can manipulate those symbols freely?

:-)

A post at uncommon descent

2011-01-04T22:59:00.000-06:00

R0bb @ 87

“First of all, it is not clear to me which of those 5 items are required by definition and which are empirically observed to be associated with “information”. Perhaps you could clear that up. If none are required by definition, then is “messages being communicated and causing other reactions” a sufficient definition of tgpeeler’s usage of the term?”

Here are the five prerequisites, as far as I can tell, for the (human) origination, communication, and reception of information.
1. symbols
2. rules (or language)
3. free will
4. intentionality or purpose
5. rules of reason

I don’t think of these as “required” by definition or empirically observed. The way I would describe this list is that the items in it are logically required AND empirically observed in ALL cases of human information.

What I mean by logically required is this. If there is no language, i.e. a set of symbols and rules, then there is no possible way to encode information. The symbols of the language may not be an alphabet. They may be pictograms or braille or sign language or musical notes or whatever. Everyone gets this. It’s impossible for any of us to even think apart from some language. It’s the way in which we formulate and frame our thoughts.
If there is no free will then there is no ability to use the language to create the information. Free will is required as I must be able to pick and choose from among the available symbols so as to arrange them in a specific order according to the rules (vocabulary, grammar, syntax) of the language so as to create information, or a message, we could also say.

If there is no intentionality or purpose (Dawkins and others deny the existence of real purpose in the universe. Therefore, his metaphysics asks us to ignore him, even as he tries mightily to convince people of the truth of his claims. I suggest that we “listen” to his metaphysics and ignore him. It’s all his thinking deserves, really.) then there is no information and no communication. We can see this with the modus tollens form of argument. If I didn’t intend to be writing this post then I wouldn’t be writing this post. But I am writing this post. Therefore, I do intend to write this post.

The rules of reason, or first principles, or laws of rational thought, whatever makes sense for you, are Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded middle, and Sufficient causality. They are foundational, that is required, for all rational thought. All communication relies upon this principle even though the communication itself may deny these laws. For example, I can say that I do not exist but this presumes that “I” refers to me, that I do in fact exist (else how could I say that I didn’t?) and that I cannot exist and not exist. So rational thought is required for the creation of information.

In that sense, these prerequisites are logically necessary.

In the empirical sense, you will never find human communication that does not have all five of these components. Examine every book ever written. Examine every letter ever written. Examine every speech ever made. Examine every piece of software ever written. You will ALWAYS find these five elements present.

The problem that this creates for the ontological naturalist (or physicalist) is threefold.

First, none of these things on my list can be explained by reference to physical laws. So we see modus tollens again. If naturalism were true, then physics could explain everything. But physics cannot explain symbols, or rules, or free will, or intentionality, or rationality. So naturalism is false. The connection between the antecedent and the consequent is a necessary one since that’s part of the definition of naturalism – the causal closure of nature. Therefore, the conclusion is certain. It’s necessarily true. It cannot be anything but true. Ontological naturalism is FALSE.

The second problem is obvious. Since these things cannot be explained, they are merely denied.

The third problem is equally obvious. One cannot deny the existence of information (and thus language, free will, intentionality, and rationality) without using information. The claim that “information does not exist” is ludicrous on the face of it because the statement contradicts itself.

The result is this. If you subscribe to some sort of “serious” ontological naturalism (the natural, material, physical world is all there is, roughly) then you lose. Game over. You don’t have a rational or empirical leg to stand on. Come on over to the light. You will see a lot more clearly here, I promise.

Another reply in the same thread...

2010-12-24T23:12:00.000-06:00

LT @ 54

“tgpeeler (41), You present a nice case. Let me ask, though, whether you find terms such as “past,” “cause,” and “first” in the context of the origins of the universe. Are these terms, as we are using them here, appropriate and applicable to the origins of the universe?”

First of all, thank you. Second of all, absolutely these terms are appropriate in the context of the origin of the universe. I’m curious, why anyone would think they wouldn’t be? Those are all “finite” terms and the universe is finite, ergo…

“When it comes to our universe, we have a scientific case for claiming that we can explain it without having to go outside of it. For a very high-level, 101, explanation of what I’m saying see Sean Carroll’s video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVqJw7T1WU.”

I watched this and I read Hawking’s book about two weeks after it came out last fall. He may be a stellar physicist but he flunks logic 101. I found Carroll’s comments to be mostly parroting what Hawking had to say so he flunks logic 101, too. I don’t have time to undo or correct all of the logical errors Carroll made in about three minutes, much less the ones Hawking made in an entire book, but I will comment on this phrase uttered by Carroll starting at 2:22 in the linked youtube video.

“The universe could just obey its own laws. It could be a natural, physical, material universe obeying the laws of physics and that can be a complete explanation of everything.”

The universe is FINITE. That means, according to the law of identity, that it began because that’s part of what finite means. And if it BEGAN, then it needs a CAUSE or EXPLANATION of its beginning, else it wouldn’t be here. But it is here. To just say that “we can explain it without having to go outside of it” without providing some rationale for that statement, some evidence, some proof, some argument, is ridiculous. On the face of it, it’s false.

To say, in the absence of any empirical evidence whatsoever, that universes can create themselves because Einstein said the net energy of the universe is zero and that the law of gravity allows them to, is utter nonsense. For one thing, as far as I’ve read, not that I track it closely, dark matter and/or dark energy comprise about 94% of the observable universe and no one really has a clue about what they are. I know for certain that the four fundamental forces have yet to be unified, the M-Theory metaphysical project not withstanding. But I’m supposed to believe that Hawking KNOWS that universes can be spontaneously created because of the laws of physics, the precursors to this natural, physical, material universe, “allow” that to happen? Ha. Sure. Not likely. Are you kidding me? Can anyone say or spell thermodynamics??

The other thing that strikes me right off the bat about this is something that the naturalists/physicalists/materialists never seem to grasp and which “we” allow to pass all too easily and often and it is this. What explanation do the laws of physics have for themselves? What explanation do the laws of physics have for the mathematical language in which they are expressed? Can either the language (the mathematics) or the physical laws be empirically detected? In other words, can they be sensed? No. They cannot. If you think they can, feel free to tell me what the Pythagorean theorem tastes like in your reply to this post.

So Hawking and Carroll cannot even rationalize the existence of the laws (and the language in which the laws are written) that they say allowed the universe, and other universes, to merely pop into existence. Think of this. That this kind of commentary purports to be scholarly, or if not scholarly, at least authoritative, is just amazing to me. That these guys are not summarily laughed off the stage only reflects the general level of ignorance of rational thinking in America, at least, and I’d probably also say the “West” in general.

“One of the arguments I’ve made to Kairos is that when going “outside” our universe, we are hard-pressed to extrapolate from the present (e.g., as you say, “things are changing in the present”) to a past as far back as the very origins of our universe.”

And why are we hard-pressed to do that? Why would you say that? I do it effortlessly all the time and so do many others out here.

“So, I think most everything that you or I could possibly say about a “first cause” would not only be uncertain, but I might wager it would be wrong (including this statement I just made). But now I’m speculating wildly, too.”

Of course you are. I am not. I am rigorously reasoning. There is a big difference. This is supposed to be a responsible conversation. That means that anything that anyone says that is logically sound is absolutely certainly true. It doesn’t matter when or where it’s said or by whom.

“I said before that we have a scientific case for the universe creating itself from nothing (I think this is close enough to the famous statement from Hawking’s recent book). I’m saying it’s a great or even a good case; I’m only asserting that there is a case. This much I think is indisputable.”

Did you actually read Hawking’s book? There’s also a case to be made that politicians are NOT lying, thieving, traitorous vermin that have destroyed the US economy but that doesn’t make it true. I’m sure some people think a “case” can be made that OJ is innocent, too. So what? I’m not interested in “cases,” I’m interested in rational arguments supported with empirical evidence. And so should you be.

“So, I have your case and I have Hawking’s case. I think the question at this point is how should reasonable people evaluate the two cases against each other (and other cases, as may be appropriate). Taking a neutral stance toward both cases, we need to know what criteria to apply in determining the quality of cases and the comparative evaluation.”

I am all for ignoring authority and going with the quality of the argument, i.e. reason and evidence.

“My intuition is that this is as far as any of us can go.”

May I sincerely and with no malice aforethought suggest that you go with reason and evidence over intuition. The argument I have presented is an exercise in pure reason, backed up with empirical evidence. The universe is finite. Therefore it needs a cause that cannot be finite. I recommend that you “get over” your speculation and intuition and start rigorously reasoning and demanding real evidence from the people who influence your thought.

p.s. And if that is not enough, please consider the claim Carroll made in the quote above. “It could be a natural, physical, material universe obeying the laws of physics and that can be a complete explanation of everything.”

Oh really? So physics can explain “everything.” I suppose, if everything means everything then I have a few questions for Carroll (and you).

Can physics explain information (or thought)? Or the necessary prerequisites for information (or thought)? – NO. (see the questions below)

Can physics explain Language (symbols and rules) – NO.

Can physics explain Free Will (the ability to manipulate symbols according to a certain set of rules – in this case English – so as to encode information, a message, into them) – NO.

Can physics explain Intentionality (the conscious, deliberate intent to communicate the message) – NO. (If I didn’t intend to say anything, I wouldn’t be writing something. But I am writing something. So I DO INTEND to say something.)

Can physics explain the Laws of Rational Thought (First Principles). Being, Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded Middle, Sufficient Causality. Without which no coherent thinking is possible. (If 10 is less than 20 and 5 is less than 10. What do we know about the relationship between 5 and 20? Exactly, 5 < 20.) – NO.

Can physics explain mathematics? (See can physics explain Language.) – NO.

Can physics explain the Mind. That which reasons, freely chooses, and acts intentionally? – NO.

Must we go on? Physics cannot be a complete explanation of everything. Anybody with a normally functioning mind that has not been polluted with the intellectual virus of naturalism knows this. What does physics have to say about why it’s wrong to steal or murder or rape? Come on, man. You’re killing me…

A reply to another naturalist

2010-12-21T16:16:00.000-06:00

LT says “GEM’s argument in Item C seems to amount to COMPLEXITY, therefore NO EVOLUTION. It appears to be an argument from personal incredulity based on the idea of teleology. That is, the result of the process is really unlikely and the chances of getting to that specific result are almost infinitesimal. Yet, this is post hoc thinking, if I’ve represented GEM correctly.” (my comments to this paragraph follow)

I don’t believe you have. In fact, you couldn’t have gotten it more wrong. The argument is not “I can’t imagine how something this complex could arise by chance and time so it must not have.” The argument is “we ALWAYS find mind behind information in every aspect of life so it bears thinking about that biological information may also be caused by mind.” What, pray tell, is so difficult to comprehend about that?

A couple of problems for you are: you can not come up with one example of (human) information that does not involve language (symbols and rules), free will, rationality, intentionality, and mind. Not one. Second, there is not one example of information in the animal world that does not involve the use of symbols and rules.

If you are an intellectually “serious” (that is you strictly obey the laws of rational thought)naturalist/materialist/physicalist (in my experience there is no such animal) then you must deny the existence of free will, rationality, intentionality, and mind. Indeed, you have no explanation for language, either. You cannot, by means of physical laws, explain how symbols are arranged so as to mean something. You cannot, by means of physical laws, explain free will. You cannot, by means of physical laws, explain intentionality. In other words, the intellectually serious naturalist can’t explain Jack S. about anything that matters to human beings. Your fakery (that you can) is breathtaking.

You, who reject the very existence of everything that makes information possible, by means of information presume to inform rational, serious people that time and chance and the laws of physics can account for everything. Why can’t you see the insanity of this? You can apparently deny everything that makes information possible, while using information in order to make that denial, without your head exploding. I can’t connect to that but perhaps that’s just me.

p.s. The argument from “personal incredulity” can be perfectly valid. I’m sure you use it all the time. Let’s say I offer you a foolproof way to beat the lottery. All you have to do is give me 50% of your “certain” winnings up front. Gonna jump on that deal? Didn’t think so.

I have personally seen hundreds of thousands of books, millions, even, and probably read close to five thousand. I’ve never seen one yet that did not have an author. Therefore, I think I am perfectly justified to be incredulous when any intellectual poseur comes along and trots out the nonsense that biological information, which is orders of magnitude more complex than human generated information, can be explained by “natural” causes. What a joke. I am entitled to my incredulity. Indeed, I am forced by an overwhelming mass of evidence and the relentless authority of reason to be incredulous. When you come across one book, just one book, without an author, let me know and I’ll start paying serious attention to what you have to say. Until then, not.

On "natural selection"

2010-11-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

Here’s the thing about ‘natural selection.’ It is just a phrase that performs some linguistic sleight of hand. It’s a meaningless phrase that means “Designer” but purports to represent a purely mechanical, that is to say, physical process, i.e. one without a designer. So ‘ns’ means that no designer designed the apparent design in a universe that contains no real design. WTF, over? Excuse my technical Marine Corps acronym. (It means “where’s the fire” or something like that, I forget.)

Of Molecules and Men, Crick, page 67.
“The crucial point is the one at which natural selection could begin to act, since from then on the system could go on improving itself.”

Act?? Improving itself?? The laws of physics do not “act” and I’d be willing to bet (a lot) that they could “care” less about improving anything.

River Out of Eden, page 98. “… The true process that has endowed wings and eyes, beaks, nesting instincts and everything else about life with the strong illusion of purposeful design is now well understood. It is Darwinian natural selection.”

So let me get this straight. In a universe of no purpose and no design, a “natural” process (living things procreate) has somehow managed to produce organisms that have the “strong illusion” of things that do not actually exist (design and purpose), by a process that is blind and purposeless. Oh yeah, I’m buying that.

The God Delusion, page 189. “natural selection has set up the perception of pain as a token of life – threatening bodily damage, and programmed us to avoid it.”

Are you kidding me? Think about what is being said here. The laws of physics “set up the perception of pain as a token of life” – what does that even mean? Somehow the laws of physics “decided” that pain was a good way to inform us that our bodies were being damaged and that it PROGRAMMED us to avoid pain?? They cannot even avoid using the language of purpose and design as they deny the existence of purpose and design.

“Throughout this book, I have emphasized that we must not think of genes as conscious, purposeful agents. Blind natural selection, however, makes them behave rather as if they were purposeful…”The Selfish Gene. p. 196.

The abuse of the law of identity is stunning. Blind ‘ns’ makes them behave ‘as if’ they were purposeful. What is this but a ludicrous assertion that defies reason? Something blind that has no purpose make things behave as if they were imbued with purpose but actually had no purpose?

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” River Out of Eden. p. 132.

OK, so Dawkins knows that ‘ns’ is just another way to say physics. And note the lack of purpose. He says that in a universe of no purpose, what we should expect to see are complex beyond imagination creatures that are obsessed with purpose and meaning who are created by blind forces to only think that real purpose and meaning actually exist. In other words, I’m trying to get this Orwellian lingo down – in a universe of no purpose, only physics, that physics has created human beings (and everything else) that THINK that design really exists in the universe, but it really doesn’t!!! I think I’ve got it now. Where is the March Hare and the Queen of Hearts. And this is what Dawkins would expect a priori???? Pullease.

On physics… Dawkins again… from The God Delusion, page 181. “The physical stance always works in principle, because everything ultimately obeys the laws of physics.”

Did I “obey” physical laws when I chose this particular set of symbols to communicate this message? Or was something else going on? What physical law says that periods end sentences and commas act as pauses? What physical law says capitalize the first letter of a sentence plus names and proper nouns?

The Blind Watchmaker, page 5, Dawkins. “All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way.”

Dawkins “gets it.” Natural selection is just another way to say “physics.” But here’s a curious thing. I looked through the four fundamental forces of the universe currently recognized by the best physical theories and here’s what I found. Electromagnetism, gravity, nuclear weak, and nuclear strong. Hmmm. Conspicuously absent is “natural selection” as a “force” in nature. If ‘ns’ has causal power, is actually a FORCE in nature, then the physicists would know about it. But they don’t. ‘ns’ is a meaningless phrase that means that living things live and only living things reproduce. Gee. Who’d a thunk?

If ‘ns’ means that there is some sort of differential reproductive advantage then that should be measurable. But it’s not. It doesn’t mean anything other than what I just said. If something is alive, hello, it must be fit, by definition, or it wouldn’t be alive. So we say that living things are fit and that fit things are living. And we say that only the living things reproduce and somehow that, THAT, accounts for the amazing panoply of life on the planet. Dear God in heaven. How can people be so, so gullible?

It’s as if I say the champions always win the tournament and therefore the tournaments are always won by the champions! And if I say it in a breathess manner and with authority then some people might think I’m on to something. Hardly. But it “explains” the results of every tournament ever won. NO! It’s just a definition. ‘ns’ is a definition, too. It means “being alive.”

And the most obvious abuse of logic in the whole ridiculous idea of ‘ns’ is the notion that there is a “struggle for survival” in nature. Wait a minute. I thought the universe was blind and indifferent and PURPOSELESS? Why would “physics” or the “universe” care if anything survived or not? And why would anything that was accidentally animated have any intent to “survive?” Much less “care” or “struggle” to do the same??? This is just irrational on the face of it but they have gotten away with this nonsense for so long that even people who know better think that ‘natural selection’ is some kind of real force in nature.

Let me offer a counter proposal as to what is going on. There is indeed differential reproduction and there is indeed adaptation to environment but what we are witnessing when we see this is not ‘natural selection’ at work but we are seeing the intricate interplay of exquisitely designed creatures with their environment. The information already exists in the genome so the weasel changes color in the winter, for example, when environmental cues are detected and somehow responded to by the weasel. Presumably without his knowledge. I doubt that there are weasels running around Canada right now fretting about when their fur is going to change color. There is no mysterious or magical or mythical ‘ns’ going on. Here’s the ‘ns’ story: somehow a weasel had a mutation and it turned his fur white one November, just before the first snow fell, and this weasel therefore had an “advantage” and his offspring… well, this is just too ridiculous for words. Gould had a phrase for this kind of thing, borrowed from Kipling, “just so stories.”

p.s. Here’s one of my all time favorite Dawkins explanations of how birds got wings. Don’t be drinking anything while you read this as you will risk exhaling it through your sinus cavities.

The Blind Watchmaker, p.89-90.

“What use is half a wing? How did wings get their start? Many animals leap from bough to bough, and sometimes fall to the ground. Especially in a small animal, the whole body surface catches the air and assists the leap, or breaks the fall, by acting as a crude aerofoil. Any tendency to increase the ratio of surface area to weight would help, for example flaps of skin growing out in the angles of joints. From here, there is a continuous series of gradations to gliding wings, and hence to flapping wings. Obviously there are distances that could not have been jumped by the earliest animals with proto-wings (or as he earlier called them, flaps of skin, my editorial comment). Equally obviously, for any degree of smallness or crudeness of ancestral air-catching surfaces, there must be some distance, however short, which can be jumped with the flap and which cannot be jumped without the flap.

Or, if prototype wingflaps worked to break the animal’s fall, you cannot say ‘Below a certain size the flaps would have been of no use at all.’ Once again, it doesn’t matter how small and un-winglike the first wingflaps were. There must be some height, call it h, such that an animal would just break its neck if it fell from that height, but would just survive if it fell from a slightly lower height. In this critical zone, any improvement in the body surface’s ability to catch the air and break the fall, however slight that improvement, can make the difference between life and death. Natural selection will then favour slight, prototype wingflaps. When these small wingflaps have become the norm, the critical height h will become slightly greater. Now a slight further increase in the wingflaps will make the difference between life and death. And so on until we have proper wings.”

On naturalism and materialism - a post I made on UD in August (2010)

2010-11-12T09:27:00.000-06:00

Late to the party again.

JMcL “1: If atheism is true, then so is materialism.”

I’ve always approached this in the opposite way. That is, if materialism is true, then God cannot exist and neither can souls or minds because God and minds are not matter.

If only matter exists, then everything must be subject to the laws of physics. (what else is there plus it seems to be inductively true to a virtual certainty)

After all, naturalism, materialism, and physicalism all define themselves in terms of the causal closure of nature so the laws of physics governing the behavior of matter is just part of the definition.

Atheism is a conclusion of materialism, not the other way around. In my opinion, anyway.

In fact, I’m not sure that you even need this premise for the rest of your argument to follow. Let’s see how it would play out if we turned the first premise around.

1: If materialism is true, then atheism is true. (True by definition but as we will see not needed.)

2: If materialism is true, then the mind is reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain. (This is also true by definition.)

3: If the mind is reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain, then human autonomy and consciousness are illusory because our free choices are determined by the dual forces of chance and necessity. (maybe say the laws of physics – quantum/chance, necessity/gravity) (also true by definition)

4: Human autonomy exists.

5: Therefore, the mind is not reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain.

You’ve set up modus tollens:

If materialism is true we’d have no free will. (2 and 3)

But we do have free will. (4)

Therefore, materialism is false. (conclusion of modus tollens) (5)

But this begs the question, I think. For you have still only asserted but not proven free will. Fortunately, there is a way around this.

It’s more cumbersome than the way I will use at the end but I think this will give you the missing piece.

What you need to do is link the creation of information with free will. In fact, this JUST occurred to me as a decisive argument for free will. Cool. So here’s how it goes.

In order to create information, contingency is required. (I already knew this part)

This is self-evidently true. Any algorithm based upon, say gravity, would necessarily result in a sequence of letters like aaaaaaaaaa.

Drop object.
If object falls. Type a.
If object ~falls. Type any other key at random.
Result will be aaaaaaaa.

OK. But how about chance? Say we could set up an algorithm based on quantum activity like radioactive decay. Somehow we map time of particle decay to an alphabet and every time a particle decays we type the letter that is associated with that time.

So now we are faced with insurmountable odds. Say 26 letters, a space, three punctuation marks, and ten numbers, total of 40 characters in our “alphabet.” Now, what would the odds be of getting a meaningful string of letters ten letters long? Our denominator would be 40^10 which is 10^10xlog40 or 10 x 1.6 = 16. So to get a meaningful string of letters we have 10^16 possibilities of meaningful strings. The problem here now is to put some meaningful number on the numerator and to be honest I really don’t know how to do that. I’m sure it’s a lot fewer than 10^16 but how to get it? As it turns out, we don’t need that number because we have ASSUMED that certain combinations of letters have meaning and others don’t. Why is that and how could physics account for it?

Well, we immediately see that physics cannot account for it because physics has nothing to say about our alphabet of symbols and the rules that govern the arrangement of them into words and phrases that mean something. Find a law of physics that bears on why “dog” means man’s best friend. That’s not what physics is about. Physics is about sub-atomic particles in energy fields and their interactions. Physics has nothing to say about the symbols or the rules that give meaning to certain arrangements of symbols.

So by definition physics is excluded. It’s a category mistake to even say it can. It’s tantamount to saying information is physical. We’ve seen that law cannot produce information (no contingency) and we’ve sort of seen that chance cannot do it. (Take a 100 letter string of meaningful characters and our denominator is now 10^160. Random doesn’t hack it.)

But with my mind I can effortlessly pick and choose letters and organize them in what I hope is not a completely incoherent ramble and arrange them in various ways so that I communicate my message. So what I am saying, inelegantly, I’m sure, is that free will is required to generate information. That’s the insight I just had earlier. I’ve always said that physics couldn’t do it and I’ve always said mind can do it but I’ve never said what about mind actually makes it happen and it’s FREE WILL! For if there is no free will, if there is only law, then even given an alphabet, there is no information. So that’s how I would try to work that in.

But here’s an even easier way to defeat the “isms.”

If naturalism, etc… are true, then physics can explain everything. (This is true by definition.)

But physics cannot explain language. (As we have just seen why.)

Therefore, naturalism is false.

It is not only false, it cannot be true. It MUST BE false. The only way to prove it false is to generate information by means of physical law. But physical law says nothing of symbols and rules which comprise language and which are necessary for encoding information.

This is devastating to neo-darwinism as well but it’s late. In any case, I’m sure this will offend someone’s sensibilities and I can see that tomorrow.

p.s. This doesn’t get us to theism and God but now the immaterial is on the table and any of the first cause arguments that rely on the impossibility of an infinite regress can easily prove that the First Cause is uncaused, eternal or infinite, and immaterial.

p.p.s. This is a great idea you have.

Language and Physics

2010-11-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

Language can be reduced to physics because:
Meaning in language is merely the result of computational minds having the same dictionaries (that they built up by evolution). Symbols represent objects and that matching pattern is stored in the brain. So, the symbols "CAT" match the stored definition and thus "mammal", "purr", etc.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I don't really understand what you are saying. How do you even have a mental dictionary without language? And how do you have a language without symbols? How do you explain those symbols in terms of physical laws? The fact that the symbols "cat" "match" a connection to a certain kind of mammal is a free will, mental mental function that has nothing to do with physical law. That cannot possibly be explained by general relativity or quantum physics. Ever.

Reply to comment from Rich

2010-04-09T13:42:00.001-05:00

"The real problem for tgpeeler is conflating abiogenesis with evolution."

Hi Rick, actually, I don't think so. Evolution cannot get going without life and the naturalist explanation of life (abiogenesis) is the one a true proponent of evolution must agree to so the argument applies equally well. It really doesn't matter if I'm talking about the origination of the information of life or any changes to that information after life began. The central issue remains information. And you can't get to information apart from mind. Physics cannot get you from quarks, leptons, and forces to English, Greek, mathematics, COBOL, or whatever. Or, as I would argue, in the case of the language of life, Mind.

WSJ article: Man vs. God

2009-09-15T04:18:00.002-05:00

This is a reply I wrote in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal regarding a short essay they published by Richard Dawkins on what evolution means for God. There were two parts to the article but the other one, IMHO, didn't rise to the level of even being wrong. The text of my reply follows.

In the WSJ article where Richard Dawkins argues that evolution “leaves God with nothing to do,” I beg to differ. In this brief reply, I will show why.

Dawkins makes the typical Darwinian mistake and he is very plain about it. He says that life is produced by the laws of physics. Several times he refers to physics as the causal power that has given us life. Granted, it took a little time, but the answers to the story of life are ultimately found in the laws of physics. Or so he says, on several occasions. Dawkins also says in the article, regarding the origin and progression of life, that the answer is: “Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information.” He goes on to immediately say that: “We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet.” But can this possibly be true? Let’s see.

The real problem for Darwinian evolution is that it is impossible to get from matter, energy, and the laws of physics to information, and therefore life. Here’s the Cliff Notes version.

Life and information are inextricably linked. This has been known since Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA. Dawkins himself, in his book River Out of Eden, makes the statement that “life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.” I would argue that life is more than that but we agree that life in a very real and fascinating way is intimately wrapped up with information.

So why can’t physics explain information and therefore life? It’s pretty simple, actually. The reason is because physics cannot explain language. Language, which is the only thing that we know of that encodes, transmits, receives, and decodes information, requires two things: symbols and rules. Symbols are the representation of one thing for another and the rules are mutually agreed upon conventions for the use of those symbols. Without these two things we do not have language, and without language we do not have information. Needless to say, if we don’t have information, we don’t have life. So if physics cannot explain language it cannot explain life.

Here’s why physics cannot explain language. Physics has nothing to say about symbols, or the rules that govern their use. Using English as an example, nothing in physics tells us why “cat” means a certain kind of mammal and “act” means to do something, or something done, or a segment of a play, depending upon the context. There is no part of physics that even pretends to address these issues. In fact, the laws of physics that Dawkins worships are themselves written in the language of mathematics. One might justifiably wonder, by Whom? So it appears to me, a curious layman, that it is actually impossible for the Darwinian enterprise to explain language, therefore information, therefore life. Who would want to believe a theory like that?

So what role for God? Perhaps John the Gospel writer had it right almost 2,000 years ago when he opened his book with: “In the beginning was the Word…” Or, as we would say, Information.

Hi Allan

2009-08-11T16:32:00.002-05:00

I'll do better than publish your comment as a comment. I'll put it here so the two or three people who read this will be sure to see it. Plus, we can just discuss things here if you like. I don't have the patience for "Dawkins land." It's like dealing with people who think the earth is flat or who think the moon is closer than Chicago because they can see the moon but not Chicago. Let me know what part of evolution I "caricature." We can start there.
Regards,
Tom

Alan Fox has left a new comment on your post "A post I made at Uncommon Descent":

Hi Tom

Are your questions just rhetorical, or are you looking for answers? You are unlikely to get much response from anyone other than dyed-in-the-wool creationists at UD, as ID critics get routinely weeded out.

Why not go back to Richard Dawkins' forum if you are genuinely interested in understanding evolutionary theory, rather than the caricature you portray? I would have posted at UD but I'm banned there.

I wonder if you'll approve my comment?

A post I made at Uncommon Descent

2009-08-07T16:29:00.001-05:00

(The link is at the bottom.)

Seriously, does anyone really believe in Darwinian evolution anymore? On the one hand we posit Mind as the source of biological information and on the other hand we posit "natural selection" plus genetic mutation. How DO they stack up?

"Natural selection" (I use scare quotes deliberately) is based on at least four faulty assumptions. The first is that there is a "struggle" to survive. But the materialist philosophy which is the basis for this "science" says that there is no purpose in the universe. So how can that be? There is no purpose in the universe but somehow there is a struggle for survival. We can't have it both ways, now, can we? It's either purpose or no purpose. If you allow purpose in order for "natural selection" to work then you have to explain the existence of purpose. Which you can't do. So neither do you get it for "natural selection."

The second false assumption on which "ns" is based is that populations increase geometrically (a Malthusian myth). They don't. The planet would be overrun with critters if that were true, but we aren't, so it isn't.

The third false assumption (also a Malthusian myth) is that food supplies increase only arithmetically. Thus the false problem of the "struggle for survival" wherein the overpopulating organisms compete with each other for a diminishing food supply. Those better able to adapt, live, and those that don't, die.

What nonsense. Living things live and only living things reproduce. Wow. What insight. Being alive necessarily, by definition, means "being fit." If I'm not fit, I'm not alive. If I'm alive, I'm fit. This, THIS, is the major mechanism for the creation of biological information? ha ha chortle chortle. You must be kidding me.

The fourth faulty assumption is that it even exists. I guess I could have started with this one and saved a few words. This is what I find absolutely hilarious about "ns" as an explanation for anything (it's not). This is the idea that it has causal power in nature. That is, if it is to have explanatory power at all, "ns" must have causal power. But if "ns" has causal power, and all causal power resides in physics, then "ns" must be part of physics. No? But it isn't. Ask a physicist about "ns" being one of the forces in nature and he will laugh at you, if he bothers to do that. There are four forces in nature and "ns" isn't on that list. So my unsophisticated mind reasons like this. If physics is all that has causal power (and this is the claim of the "isms" - m'ism, n'ism, and p'ism), but "ns" isn't mentioned in any of the physics books, i.e. it is not recognized as a part of physics, then it has NO CAUSAL POWER and therefore it’s not real. It’s a myth. Oh it's "real" enough if you are reading a biology book and if you take "real" to mean that someone believes it is real. But appealing to "ns" to explain anything in biology is like appealing to Santa Claus to explain Christmas presents under the tree. How funny is that? And grownups do it all the time. Even some ID proponents make this horrible, horrible mistake. Acknowledging that “natural selection” can account for anything (“micro” evolution but not “macro” evolution). But wait, don’t organisms change? Don’t they adapt? Yes, they do. But it’s not “ns” that we see, it’s the interplay of exquisitely designed creatures with their environment. The information already exists that allows for organisms to adapt. It’s not something “magically” generated on the fly.

But wait, there's more hilarity. There are those, (I've read their books) who think that genetic mutations PLUS "ns" can account for an increase in biological information and thus new species. So that's akin to taking an essay and randomly altering selected letters, possibly rearranging or duplicating some words or sentences, and saying that will improve the essay. This is pretty cute in an odd sort of way. Kind of like watching a little kid pound on a piano and they think they're playing a symphony.

So we've missed, as usual, the real problem which is not the alteration of biological information but the ORIGIN of it. So now we're back to the crux of the problem. To explain life you must explain information. To explain information you must explain language. To explain language you must be able to explain symbols and rules. If you are a materialist, naturalist, physicalist, you ONLY have physics with which to explain anything. So how does physics come to bear on why "cat" means one thing and "act" means another? Go ahead. Tell me what laws or forces explain the use of symbols. Well, of course, none of them do and they never will. And they don’t because physics explains the material world but we are talking about the immaterial world. But the “ists” deny the existence of the immaterial world (Gods, souls, minds, laws (except physics, of course, but no moral law)). They apparently accept the existence of information but somehow it escapes their notice that information, although encoded in material substrates, is immaterial. Another logical contradiction. This from people who allegedly worship reason as they mock ID. Pretty funny stuff, you’ll agree.

The bottom line is that information always reduces to, or is explained by, Mind/mind, not matter. And naturalism, materialism, and/or physicalism, the philosophical basis for contemporary science (and much philosophy) is utter nonsense. I guess people who will believe that "ns" plus random information changes can write the biological equivalent of Shakespeare, and then some, will believe anything.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/hieroglyphs-the-linguistic-challenge-to-darwinism/comment-page-2/#comment-329188

Finally

2009-05-23T20:50:00.002-05:00

So we're done with this. For those that have bothered to read along, my apologies for indulging this longer than I should have. Libtard refuses to seriously engage so I will not be publishing anything else he has to say. If you want to read his "response" to my last post it's in the comments. Again he fails to engage in any meaningful way. Good luck to him. Really.

nearing the end of this ever so tedious bit on naturalism

2009-05-20T09:20:00.005-05:00

"Why are you failing to differentiate or trying to equate ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism? That's an honest question."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Frankly, I am beginning to wonder if that's an honest question or not. I find it hard to imagine that you have actually read and considered anything I've written. My last post was obviously about ontological naturalism and not about methodological naturalism. I am trying to get you to COMMIT to a point of view, that is to take a stand behind some truth claim, whatever it may be, and BACK IT UP. Presumably with your methodological naturalism or however you would like to do it. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and give this one last shot.

I do not equate ontological and methodological naturalism. The first is obviously ontological, that is, about what exists and the second is epistemological, that is, about what is true about what exists, including if it does exist. I perfectly understand the difference, as I have previously, and in painful detail, noted. What you apparently fail to grasp, or will not grasp, or will not even think about for more than two seconds so you could have a chance to grasp, are the following:

There are no privileged truth claims, scientific, religious, or otherwise. This means that EVERY truth claim ultimately stands or falls on reason applied to evidence. I have explained this time and again in this blog. I will not answer it again so don't ask me "why?"
Ultimately, the only way to know what is true is by the application of reason to evidence. (If you are calling this methodological naturalism then we have a point of agreement. Although that is not what methodological naturalism is, because methodological naturalism doesn't give place to the undeniable and sovereign role of reason in matters of truth.)
Issues of ontology must be settled epistemologically. If you get the ontology wrong, you are finished in your quest for truth. What exists is a CONCLUSION, not an assumption. Ideally, that conclusion is based on reason and evidence. One is either a materialist/physicalist/naturalist, a dualist, or an idealist. For the record, I am a dualist. I believe that both the material and abstract worlds are "real."
Ontological naturalism can stamp its feet all it wants but screaming ever louder "there is no God" doesn't make it any less false.
A commitment to ontological naturalism entails a commitment to methodological naturalism. Ontological naturalism denies the existence of anything that is "outside" of nature. This obviously includes God but less obviously includes souls or minds, mathematics, reason, moral law, economic law, physical law, law of any kind and many other things.
Do I really need to disabuse you of the notion that ontological naturalism is false? Just in case, I will by means of the following thought experiment. Let's define "nature" as all that exists in space/time. That is about as broad as I can make it so you should have no problem with that definition. I will also assume that it is wrong to be rude to a waiter. If this is true, then it is wrong right now. It is wrong today. Therefore, it must be wrong yesterday, since yesterday was once today. It must be wrong tomorrow, because tomorrow (Thursday) will eventually be "today" (now Wednesday). Therefore, this moral law, which says it's wrong to be rude to waiters, is independent of time. It's also wrong to be rude to waiters in Houston, New York, LA, and in Paris. If there were waiters on the moon, or on Alpha Centauri, it would be wrong to be rude to them there, too. Therefore, this moral law is also independent of location, or space. Therefore, a reasonable person, such as yourself, would deduce that this moral law exists independently, i.e. outside of space and time and therefore exists independently, i.e. outside of nature. Notwithstanding the fact that it also exists THROUGHOUT space and time. Therefore, the idea that nothing exists outside of nature, ontological naturalism, is the biggest crock of bullshit ever foisted upon an unsuspecting and unthinking public. And if being rude to a waiter doesn't do it for you, morally speaking, then substitute holocaust or polluting the environment. I'm sure there is something you think is intrinsically and always wrong.
A commitment to methodological naturalism (or more accurately, empiricism), while it does not entail ontological naturalism, makes no sense apart from ontological naturalism.
The role of reason in the search for truth is supreme (argue/reason with me about this point and you will eventually get it).
Reason leads inexorably to God. This is anathema to ontological naturalism. It may be permitted in some construals of methodological naturalism, but in general, it is not. Reason applied to evidence also leads inexorably to God. If all cats are mammals and Felix is a cat then Felix is a mammal. If everything that begins to exist needs a cause (true by definition) and the universe began to exist (true by reason AND evidence) then the universe needs a cause. Case closed. Now we can discuss the nature of that cause but that a cause is needed is irrefutable.
There is an inherent dishonesty in naturalism of any stripe. Ontological naturalism is nonsense as shown by its inability to account for anything that matters to human beings. Morality, for one, say, as we saw above.
Methodological naturalism has pretensions of intellectual respectability but does not explicitly acknowledge the role of reason in the quest for truth. Therefore, when reason inevitably leads to God, as it does, and for good reason, the methodolical naturalists fall back on the idea that reason is now incompetent to conclude about God because that is outside of nature. And once again they demonstrate either their intellectual degeneracy by confusing premise and conclusion or their moral degeneracy by knowingly espousing what they know to be a lie.
Intellectual integrity means accepting the authority of reason in matters of truth. If you do not have this then I am wasting my time and if I do not have this then so are you.
It's a major failing of mine, ask anybody who knows me, that I am not very patient with people who care nothing for getting at the truth. Until this last post of yours, I had thought you to be one of those who was interested. But now, I think not. I'm happy to be proven wrong, however.
You have two options here. Either specifically address the arguments I have made or make arguments of your own about how things are and how you know that they are. Otherwise, we're done here.

more with libtard on naturalism

2009-05-19T10:41:00.002-05:00

"Data is just data without an explanation and reason is what provides that explanation. It’s the EXPLANATION that is key. There should be no disagreement over data. It’s all about understanding it and explaining it."

"Where does the supernatural enter into that?"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I’m going to assume that there is a genuine lack of understanding here so I’m going to go over this one more time.

First of all, this is why it is necessary to define terms up front AND to make intellectual commitments to what those terms mean. Therefore, we need to get this straight. My goal in this post is either to get you to agree with what I propose what “naturalism” and “nature” will mean for this conversation, or get you to modify it so that we have a common term, in other words, a term that we are using univocally. If you cannot, or will not, commit to what the term means, up front, and stick to it, there is no possibility of reaching a rational accord. Since, by refusing to make that intellectual commitment, you are rejecting a first principle of reason, which is Identity. A thing is what it is. And non-contradiction. If it is what it is then it is not something else. And excluded middle. It either is what it is or it is not. Being, of course, is bound up tightly with identity. In order to have an identity, something must exist. And sufficient cause. Or causality. Things don’t “just happen.” Every event, or effect, in space/time has a cause. I’ll assume that you are rational and accept these principles. If not, speak up now and we’ll be done.

That said, “nature” (according to the tenets of “naturalism”) is all that there is. This typically means the “natural world” or the “physical world” or the “material world.” It means that anything outside of “nature” is supernatural. God would be “supernatural,” for example. Or other gods, should they exist.

Perhaps this isn’t specific enough. So let’s further break it down to describe what is natural (or physical or material) in this way. Something is physical or material, i.e. part of nature, if it:
- Can be located in space/time
- Has mass and/or inertia
- Is responsive to gravity (photons have no mass but are affected by gravity)
- Is comprised of sub-atomic particles in energy fields
- Can be empirically detected
- Can be described or explained by physics or our best physical laws
- Can be used to move or heat matter (energy)
- Can be converted to energy
- Or is recognized by the methods of science (if it’s not broad enough already)
- Everything else, then, by definition, would be “supernatural,” that is, “outside of nature.”

Your task is to agree with this definition, or modify it so that you do agree, and then we’ll proceed.

More conversation with libtard (he is quoted and italicized)

2009-05-18T15:52:00.005-05:00

"Sigh, I was afraid our discussion would come back to this, which is why I explicitly avoided directly definitions or usage of ontological and methodological naturalism in my prior comments, in which I tried to explain why I hold the position of accepting the latter while rejecting the former."

I understand this. But I my question still remains. The one doesn’t make sense unless the other is true. And ontological naturalism is about as far from being true as it is possible to be. This, the falsity of ontological naturalism, by the way, is the CONCLUSION of a sound argument that accounts for all the data. It is not an usupported a priori premise that is grimly held on to in spite of devastating arguments to the contrary.
>>>>>>>>

"Methodological naturalism says: we wish to understand the truth, and the best way we have found to do that is to rely on what we observe."

This is incomplete. This is empiricism and it's not what methodological naturalism claims. It also, by definition, excludes anything apart from the natural, even where sound arguments from reason and evidence demand a conclusion of God. So there is implicitly, at least, a definition of what qualifies as "truth" in this system. Where is the role of reason in understanding the truth? Data is just data without an explanation and reason is what provides that explanation. It’s the EXPLANATION that is key. There should be no disagreement over data. It’s all about understanding it and explaining it.
>>>>>>>>

"This is so profoundly true that I don't understand why you are trying to reject it? We have made observations such that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. We have made observations such that a year is 365.25 days. We have observed that tides are caused directly by the moon."

I do not reject it. I reject your characterization that observation alone is the final arbiter of truth. It’s evidence or observation, if you please, PLUS reason that gets us to the truth. And, by the way, ontological naturalism cannot account for reason.
>>>>>>>>

"Consider if we had two competing explanations for tides; one said that the moon correlated very closely with tidal motion and therefore was likely inter-related or directly responsible. Or a second theory that said that periodically a god-like Neptune creature materializes in the sea, displacing water."

Consider if we had two competing explanations for the origin of the universe. One said, it beats the hell out of me but I know for sure it isn’t God or anything “supernatural.” One said, based on an exercise in pure reason PLUS multiple observations, that the universe began, therefore it had a “beginner.” Which one would you be more likely to believe?
>>>>>>>>

"If there is any kind of evidence of the Neptune-like creature, that theory has some credibility. Likewise, if there is any variance in the correlation of the moon to the tides, it casts doubt on that theory. Its really just simple competition; which explanation is the most plausible in light of what we can observe? Which is to say, the "best" explanation for something is that which fits all of the known observations of the time and does not make unreasonable implications (ie. some physics theories imply that the universe only had a very tiny chance of ever existing; these theories are given less weight)."

I have no quarrel with this and if you think I do then you haven’t read me very carefully. PART of what makes a theory a good explanation is that it accounts for all the data. That is another way of saying that it must be internally consistent. It must be RATIONAL.
>>>>>>>>

"All I'm saying is that when we, as rational human beings, want to explain how something works, we base it on the story that best fits the facts. If new facts emerge, we change the story to fit."

Sigh. No shit.
>>>>>>>>

"Can you give a counter-example?"

Of what?

>>>>>>>>
"In any case, I'd be happy to move on to discussing another point, unless you feel this particular issue requires more examination."

Only of your estimation of the value of reason in getting at the truth. I’d be interested to hear your explanation of that.

and more on naturalism

2009-05-17T19:13:00.006-05:00

I would just answer your comments with comments but I am afraid they will get lost if I do that.

"I do not take the position of ontological naturalism; instead I take the position of methodological naturalism. I define ontological naturalism as "nature is all there is, and all basic truths are truths of nature". I define methodological naturalism as "the best way to understand and seek knowledge is to reference natural causes and events." I differentiate between the two by stating that methodological naturalism says nothing about the supernatural other than that it is not the best way to seek knowledge."

But here's the thing. How can you presume to the second without assuming the first to be true? Otherwise you have committed yourself to saying that you don't know about how the world is, really, ontologically (what exists) BUT you are going to pretend that "the 'best' (are there other ways?) way to understand and seek knowledge (presumably of what you don't know exists) is to reference natural causes and events." And what does that mean, exactly? Is it the same thing as reason and evidence? But what if that reason and evidence points to something "supernatural"? You are still unclear about your fundamental commitments in terms of both ontology and epistemology. How can an epistemological program of methodological naturalism lead to anything "outside" of nature? And if you don't commit to ontological naturalism, then why a commitment to epistemological naturalism?

libtard and naturalism continued...

2009-05-12T13:28:00.003-05:00

"You made this statement: "All truth claims, whether "scientific" or "theological" must ultimately be grounded in facts about the world explained in a logical way."Why?

You are kidding, right? What other way is there to know what is true? Tell me that.

Early man could tell you that every day, without fail, the sun rises. But he could not say why (or made up a story to explain it). Science would call this an observation. Its also a truth, even without the capacity to understand or explain it.There are two components to this; the observation that the sun rises, and a reasoning for that behavior of the natural world. The observation is a direct result of the natural world. Reasoning is a construct of man." (my emphasis)

I agree that the observation, or the "fact," is "the sun rises." We know that is not literally true but rather it appears to rise because of the rotation of the earth in its orbit around the sun. The reasoning that mankind did to come to that conclusion is not a construct of man. It is something we do but it is not something we invented or created. Do a simple thought experiment. Assume that all human life vanishes. Assume that an alien comes by to visit. Do the laws of reason change for him or is he bound by them, too? Yes. Or can he invent or create new laws of reason? No. The laws of reason are the laws of reason just like the laws of physics are the laws of physics. We discover them but we do not construct or create them. They are part of reality just like matter and energy yet they are not part of the "natural" world. Odd then, how anyone can subscribe to "naturalism."

If all cats are mammals and Felix is a cat then Felix is a mammal. Even God can't make that not so. This is the power of reason. Reason transcends space and time. It works here and on the moon (but unfortunately not in Washington DC, not for decades) and it works yesterday, today, and in the future.

This is (one of the many places) where I part company with naturalism. Another is the existence of mind. If reason is not part of the natural world, yet it clearly exists, then how do you account for that? How does a naturalistic position account for a purely physical being (which we are not, but which a naturalist would claim we are) being able to reason? Can a neuron reason? Can a bunch of neurons reason? Well, no, but we do it somehow and it does involve neurons but neurons don't do it.

"I do not claim that reasoning is part of the natural world; it most certainly is not. However, I do claim that all reasoning *about* the natural world must be based on observations of the natural world."

We need to define our terms. I don't want us talking past each other. If we are using terms univocally that will fix that. So what do you say the "natural world" is? What do you say are the fundamental commitments of ontological naturalism? Then I'll get to the rest of your arguments.

Thanks.

Another reply to libtard

2009-05-11T15:37:00.003-05:00

First of all, I genuinely appreciate your engagement with my arguments. So thanks for that. Now, to the business at hand.

You say: "Or are you arguing that science can be performed without the need for naturalism?"

The answer is yes. It is yes because I include reason as necessary to the truth seeking enterprise about the entire universe. Whether the subject is the physical world of sub-atomic particles in energy fields or language and information, mathematics, economics, etc..., reason is the Sovereign of truth. I use a capital "S" for a reason and it's explained in an earlier post. Reason is the ultimate authority of what is and is not true. Think not? Then argue with me about it and you are forced to reason. Facts are not "subject" to reason. They just are. But the explanation of those facts, aaah, now that's another story. Any explanation of anything that contradicts itself cannot possibly be true. Let me pick on the poster child for scientific irrationality, Richard Dawkins, who says that there is NO PURPOSE IN THE UNIVERSE on the one hand and then writes books about how the struggle to surive is at the bottom of the evolutionary process. Well, which is it? How is "struggling to survive" not purposeful? How is his writing a book not purposeful? His metaphysical claim is false or his empirical claim is. Actually, in this case, they both are false but that's another story. How anyone can take that guy seriously is beyond me. Way beyond.

If science is about making inferences from data (reasoning from effect to cause, essentially) then reason is part of the natural world. But they say it isn't. I don't get that.

The first question is ontological. What exists? If we get that wrong, everything else is wrong. But we can get that right through the exercise of pure reason. With apologies (not really) to Kant. But science rejects reason in that capacity yet relies on it for "scientific" explanations. Seems odd to me.

Reply to libtard

2009-05-11T14:55:00.003-05:00

libtard says: "You seem to be confusing the definition of naturalism as used in scientific inquiry with that of philosophical naturalism. You may wish to refer here. To quote: "Methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism are distinguished by the fact that methodological naturalism is an epistemology as well as a procedural protocol, while philosophical naturalism is a metaphysical position. Although there is variation in the views of modern naturalists, Kurtz's definition captures these two most important aspects of modern naturalism: (1) the reliance on scientific method, grounded in empiricism, as the only reliable method of acquiring knowledge about the natural world, and (2) the inadmissibility of the supernatural or transcendent into its metaphysical scheme."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I am confused about many things but this isn't one of them. I perfectly understand the difference between methodological naturalism and ontological (or philosophical) naturalism. All of this is based on a false premise and that is that there are ANY privileged truth claims. That is, truth claims that do not need to stand on reason and evidence. All truth claims, whether "scientific" (about the "natural" world - which is ALL that exists under ontological naturalism) or "theological" (about the "supernatural" world of God, souls, minds, purpose, design, reason, and so on) must ultimately be grounded in facts about the world explained in a logical way. We live in one universe and that universe is only one way. God either exists or He does not. There is not a "scientific" universe for some and a "religious" universe for others.

All truth claims must be rational, that is internally consistent, and they must explain all the data. Claims that meet these two standards and can also make predictions about the future have superior epistemic status in my book. Now, I can conduct any number of exercises in pure reason that tell me true things about the universe. Kurtz would certainly disagree but he would certainly be wrong. For example, before I measure the sides of any right triangle I can know that the the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides. I can know that the universe had a beginning, that time had a beginning. That if I consistently spend more than I make I will be worse off for it. I can know a lot of things without empirical evidence. Empirical evidence will certainly confirm my rational deductions because nothing can contravene reason and be true. I can know, as an exercise in pure reason, that God most certainly exists. He cannot not exist. He is a necessary Being, as opposed to a contingent being.

One of many mistakes Kurtz makes is to ignore the role of reason in the epistemological process. He defines it out of existence by using the phrase "natural world" (What is that, exactly, if it is not the physical, i.e. the empirical world?? And the laws of reason can hardly be considered "physical" by any stretch of the imagination.) and then says, without argument, that God is off the table as far as methodological naturalism is concerned. Well, let's try to be intellectually honest here. If I am claiming that methodological naturalism (an epistemological enterprise) is the only way to "scientific" knowledge and I'm NOT claiming ontological naturalism to be true, then I'm being disingenuous, at best. Otherwise, I am saying that God could exist but science cannot (or merely will not) recognize His existence in studying the natural world. But what could be more irrational? If He exists, then there will be evidence of that. To just say any talk of God is unscientific, therefore, we only accept what we sense, regardless of whether or not God may exist, seems utterly foolish to me.

Kurtz, and others basically say this. Methodological naturalism is the only valid way to understand the natural world. Therefore, the natural world is all that exists. There is no logical connection between the two statements and both of them are patently false. I thought I had beaten that horse to death but apparently not. If you will be specific in your objections, if we can agree on first principles, then we will get somewhere and one of us will have to change his mind. I'm game.

On Materialism - again

2009-05-04T23:40:00.002-05:00

I posted this at http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/quote-of-the-day-4/comment-page-2/#comment-316367

tgpeeler

05/04/2009

4:53 pm

There is a reason that it is so difficult to gain traction in an argument of this kind with people of this kind. In a nutshell, one of the problems of dealing with irrational people is that they reject logic and evidence even as they purport to be reliant upon them and claim that “you” do not. This makes it impossible (witness this thread) to reason with them. It is like to trying to grab smoke. But hope springs eternal.

Any hard core proponent of naturalism (all that exists is nature) or materialism (all that exists is material, i.e. matter and energy) or physicalism (the thesis that the physical facts fix all the facts) that has thought about things in any serious (logical) way and yet still holds to his naturalism is irrational, at best.

In my explanation for why this is so, I will lump all of these “isms” together since they all make the same fundamental ontological commitment, that only material, or physical, or natural, (all synonymous) things actually exist. I use the phrase “fundamental commitment” deliberately as it implies that one actually believes what one is claiming. Thus, one is shut off from availing oneself of “non-materialist” or “non-natural” or “non-physical” resources when explanations of any kind for anything are provided. Since it is equally, at least, tiring to read the trinity of “isms” as it is to write them, I will use the term “materialism” to refer to this fundamental commitment from here out.

So what is material? I want to be as generous as I can in order to avoid the straw man fallacy so I propose the following description of “material.”

Material things are either matter or energy. Or if you prefer, sub-atomic particles in energy fields. We can also further define matter as anything that is located in space/time, has mass and inertia, is subject to gravity, (yes, I understand that photons do not have “mass” but are still subject to gravity) can be converted to energy, and is detectable by one of our five senses, i.e. is empirical, and therefore, can be measured. Energy is anything that can heat or move matter.

Given this, it seems obvious to me, but I will say it out loud anyway, just in case a materialist would like to disagree, (please be specific when you do) that given this definition of “material” it looks for all the world to me that now all I have to explain anything and everything is the laws of physics. No? If all that exists is material, and all that is material is explainable by physics, then everything that exists can be explained by physics. I’m pretty sure that works out the way I’m saying it.

I will start with a one word refutation of materialism and then go on from there. The one word destruction of materialism is “mathematics.” But because I am a fair guy, I want to make it easy for any materialist to frame his reply. All you have to do to prove me wrong is do any one of the following things.

- Locate mathematics in space/time. Where is it, exactly? In a closet somewhere, perhaps?
- Tell me what the mass of mathematics is.
- Tell me how mathematics is subject to gravity.
- Tell me how mathematics can be converted to energy.
- Tell me what mathematics smells like, tastes like, feels like, sounds like, or looks like.
- Tell me how long it is or how much it weighs or what color it is. Measure it somehow.
- Tell me how mathematics can move or heat matter.

If you would be so kind as to actually do any one of these things then I will be persuaded to continue to argue with you about your fundamental ontological commitment and the equally irrational conclusions that follow. Or, of course, you can deny the reality of mathematics. That is, if you want to remain committed to your materialism yet keep a shred of intellectual integrity. Your call.

But just to drive the point home, let’s consider some other things. The very laws of physics themselves are immaterial. Do we have to go through the list again? Or how about the laws of reason, or economics, or the moral law, or any language? Can you say that these things are material? No, you cannot. Therefore, materialism fails and any conclusions based upon that faulty premise will also fail.

Just in case this isn’t enough, I would like to drive one last stake through the heart of this vacuous and inane, in other words, empty of any intellectual content, position known as materialism.

Materialists cannot explain information because information always reduces to mind, not to matter. How can I say this? In order for information to exist, language must exist. (Try to imagine information apart from language.) In order for language to exist, symbols must be used. (This applies to all languages. Think about it.) But there is nothing in physics that can explain symbols. That is, the representation of one thing, or things (letters, here) for another thing. Whether material or abstract or real or imaginary, symbols represent other things. Only a mind is capable of creating and manipulating symbols according to agreed upon (abstract) rules in order to communicate information.

Here’s the problem. Nothing in physics says that “act” means to do something, or something done, or a segment of a play, depending upon the context. Nothing in physics explains that “cat” means a certain kind of mammal. I know. I’ve checked. General relativity doesn’t. Thermodynamics doesn’t. Quantum mechanics doesn’t. The Standard Model doesn’t. String Theory doesn’t. Quarks and leptons don’t. Physics has nothing to say about how it is even possible, or even how it could be possible, for one thing to represent, to be a symbol for, another thing. It is impossible for physics to ever say anything about symbols. Therefore, materialism fails. Again.

This is what makes arguing with a materialist so frustrating. If they are forced to adhere to their own ontological commitments, they could not even express an opinion since they have no explanatory resources with which to do so (mind and language). Yet they obviously feel free to avail themselves of the explanatory resources that a dualist (non-materialist???) has. To my mind, this makes them not only irrational but hypocritical. I don’t know which one is worse. In any case, they are intellectually degenerate, that is, they lack intellectual integrity, since they actually reject the very “reason” that they profess to worship. The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God.”

p.s. This means, of course, that neo-Darwinian evolution is also a farce since it relies only upon materialistic explanations and therefore has no hope of accounting for information. In fact, “natural selection” is a linguistic phenomenon with the same ontological status as tooth fairies and unicorns. If “natural selection” was a real force in nature, the physicists would know about it. But they don’t. So it isn’t. It’s a myth. It’s a way to smuggle in Mind and Design without saying Mind and Design. It’s also just as intellectually dishonest as the rest of the materialist enterprise. Why must this be endlessly repeated?? What do “you people” not get?? Really.

Naturalism and Language

2009-04-21T22:39:00.003-05:00

Perhaps this is a little tighter...

My thesis is that any sort of philosophical naturalism that is taken seriously is incapable of explaining language. And since it cannot explain language, it cannot explain information. And since it cannot explain information it cannot explain, or account for, life.

There is no information without language. This is self-evident and undeniable. If you don't think so, try to deny that proposition without using a language.

There is no language without symbols. This is also self-evident and undeniable. Try to communicate information without the use of symbols.

Symbols are characters, or more generally, "things," that represent other things, both material and abstract. The key word here is represent. In any written language, letters are arranged into words, or terms, to represent things in the universe, whether real or imaginary. Different words have different tasks (noun, verb, etc...) and they are arranged into sentences and phrases using the rules of the language (grammar and syntax) in order to communicate a message (the semantic content) for a purpose (why are you speaking in the first place?). Other languages that rely on signs, clicks, scents, or whatever still have symbols that relate one thing to another. Think of the sign language you may see on the freeway on any given day during rush hour traffic. No words are exchanged, but messages are being communicated.

So how do we account for this "representation" thing? How is it that "cat" can mean a certain kind of mammal? The letters "cat" mean, or represent, or refer to an actual instance of a cat, or cats in general. How does that happen?

If one takes seriously the position of naturalism, or something like naturalism, that nature is all that there is and that this includes only material or physical things, or things that can be described by our best physical theories, then since physical things are all that exist, all things must be explainable by physical theories (or physical laws or physics). A philosopher would say that the natural world is "causally closed." This means that all explanations begin and end in physical laws. There is no place for mind, and certainly no place for Mind, in any explanation of anything. So the naturalist must be able to explain the idea of representation, or symbols, by only using the laws of physics if he wants to explain language and thus information.

I'm not sure that we could even imagine how to do this. In fact, I am sure that we cannot. We can't imagine how physics could explain language because nothing in language has anything to do with sub-atomic particles in energy fields. What equations of quantum physics tell us that "cat" represents a certain kind of mammal? What part of general relativity tells us that "act" ("cat" rearranged) means to do something in one context, something done in another context, and a segment of a play in yet another context? What part of the Standard Model describes this "context"? The laws of physics are themselves "written" in the language of mathematics. But there is no law of physics that says "cat" means a certain kind of mammal. I'm certain. I've checked. Thus, naturalism utterly fails to account for language and therefore information.

So what?

If naturalism fails to account for what must be explained if we are going to explain life, i.e. information, then any naturalistic explanation for life, one that eschews Mind, must be false. After all, if Darwinian evolution, or something like it, is true, it could explain language and information within the constraints of naturalism. But it can't explain language and therefore it can't explain information. Therefore, it is not true. This (modus tollens) is a valid form of argument and the premises are true. Therefore, it is sound and the conclusion is necessarily true. Darwinian evolutionary theory, or whatever comes in its naturalistic place, is false. It is false now. It will always be false. In fact, it cannot be anything but false.

Therefore, we are finished. Naturalism as the basis for any explanation of anything fails because it is logically incoherent. It claims that physics can explain everything but physics can't explain language, or anything else that exists in the abstract. Things like economic laws, or the very laws of physics themselves, or the mathematics in which they are written, for that matter. Therefore, the proponent of naturalism is not being intellectually serious (or honest) when he argues against Mind and mind by using language when his own assumptions, strictly adhered to, not only deny the existence of language but have no hope of ever explaining it.

Naturalism and evolution - a preview

2009-04-05T22:09:00.004-05:00

If we are going to be intellectually serious about anything we have to remain consistent in our arguments. For example, on the one hand I cannot claim that there is no evil in the universe and on the other hand claim that the presence of evil "proves" that God does not exist. Well, I can, but I am no longer intellectually "serious," am I? With this in mind, I am going to write an essay, maybe a paper (with footnotes and everything) on the subject in the title of this post. This is just an outline.

The background: I was reading a post on the probability of biological information arising by chance (it's zero, to the tenth decimal point :-) and someone was replying that "yes it is." Now, I have the done the math myself a million times, and "NO" it isn't. But as I thought about it I realized that "we" shouldn't even be having this argument in the first place. Here's why...

If naturalism (or materialism, or physicalism, and all of the variations of these "isms") is true, then what does that mean? It means a couple of things. First off it means that all that exists, all that is real, is nature (thus naturalism). This eventually boils down to materialism (all is matter) or physicalism (all is physical) in their various forms. But, the ultimate commitment is to a matter and energy universe that is causally closed. Causally closed means that when we look for the causes of any effects, we will ALWAYS end up at the laws of physics. For example, if someone wanted to figure out how this post made its way onto my blog, ultimately they would have to explain it in terms of general relativity or quantum physics or the Standard Model or whatever. But they would NEVER say that it is because I have a mind and I decided to write and post it. There are a host of implications for this kind of thinking but my target is evolution so the other stuff can wait.

The next thing that we need to understand about "naturalism" is that there is an epistemological aspect to it as well. What that means is we can only know about reality in certain ways. One way, actually, and that is the scientific method. This follows, after all, if everything is material (matter and energy) that means it is detectable by the (empirical) methods of science. And since anything that is abstract cannot be so detected, it must not exist. That is as fine an example of circular reasoning that you could ever hope to see but just ignore it for now and play along with me. I'm going to assume the truth of the naturalist claims and see if they are up to the heavy lifting they'll have to do with regard to explaining life.

Life is information. Or perhaps we should say that information is what distinguishes life from non-life. In any case, if you are going to explain life, you must explain information. This is generally accepted by everybody so I will spend no time in this outline defending that other than to refer anyone who disagrees to Yockey, and Dawkins, for two. Both of whom are on "the other side" yet we agree on this. Life is information.

If life is information, then there must be a language of life. We all know there can be no information without language (think about it) so given this we would expect there to be a language of life. Lo and behold, there is. It's called the genetic code and more recently the genetic language. "The genetic language is a collection of rules and regularities of genetic information coding for genetic texts. It is defined by alphabet, grammar, collection of punctuation marks and regulatory sites, semantics." This is a quote from the abstract of an article I found on PubMed. So no controversy yet.

So now the task of naturalism is to explain the genetic language (or any language, actually) in terms of the laws of physics and only the laws of physics (we remember that they reject the existence of "minds" or "a Mind" that is outside of nature and thus cannot be empirically detected). Is this even possible to do? No. It is not.

All languages have symbols. In English they are the 26 letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, the numbers and symbols of mathematics, and punctuation marks. To be a symbol is to represent one thing for another. An eagle is the "symbol" of our nation. The bird represents the nation. (It should be a buzzard, these days.) In the same way, the letters a, c, and t, arranged as "cat" represent a certain kind of mammal and arranged like this "act" mean to do something (a verb) or something done (a noun) or a segment of a play, depending upon the context. So letters represent something, depending upon the conventions of the language, grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and so on.

How to explain that "cat" means a certain kind of mammal and "act" means several different things, depending on context, by reference to the laws of physics? It's impossible. The laws of physics are themselves "written" in the universal language of mathematics. But there is no law of physics that says "cat" means a certain kind of mammal. I'm certain. I've checked.

Therefore, we are finished. Naturalism as the basis for any explanation of anything fails because it is logically incoherent. It claims that physics can explain everything but physics can't explain language, or anything else that exists in the abstract, for example, the moral law or economic laws. Therefore, the proponent of naturalism is not being intellectually serious (or honest) when he argues against Mind and mind by using language when his own assumptions, strictly adhered to, not only deny the existence of language but have no hope of explaining language.

Well, this is just a start. But it's everything you need to know in order to trash the intellectual swill known as naturalism, or materialism, or physicalism. Physics cannot account for the representation of symbols for other things and without this there is no language. Without language there is no information. But we have information. Therefore, naturalism fails.

Let's go modus tollens on them. (If P, Q. ~Q. Therefore, ~P.)

If naturalism were true (P), physics could explain the existence of language (Q). But physics cannot explain the existence of language (~Q or not Q). Therefore, naturalism is false (~P or Not P). It cannot be true. It is impossible for it to be true. There is no universe where it could be true. Not even God could make it true. That is, IF the premises are true, and they are. Since, remember, that naturalism claims to explain everything with physics AND we have seen that physics has NOTHING TO SAY about symbols representing other things. We're done here except for the details.

Trying to make sense of Darwin - Part 1

2009-03-22T23:06:00.007-05:00

Just in case you haven't been paying attention, 2009 is the 150th anniversary year of the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The only bigger lie ever foisted upon an unsuspecting and largely ignorant public (do I know my Americans or what) is the one upon which Darwin relied for his theory to make sense in the first place. You know, naturalism, materialism, physicalism, the idea that the only things that are real are, well, physical or material, the things that comprise nature.

So I'm thinking about how to advance this discussion, and by that I mean destroy once and for all any pretense of legitimacy for this pernicious evil that passes for received wisdom in the hallowed halls of academia and in the mainstream media. This debate has been raging for at least a century and a half now and I think it's high time for someone to completely trash the intellectual insanity that we call evolutionary theory. I'm so sick of reading the latest from Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Ernst Mayr (he's been dead for awhile so no nothing new from him) Michael Ruse, Jerry Coyne (his latest book is a real hoot), Victor Stenger (a physicist no less - you'd think of all people they could see through this natural selection bullshit), Barbara Forrest, Eugenie Scott, Ken Brown, Sam Harris, Elliot Sober, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Pinker, and then there is the old stuff from Francis Crick, Jacques Monod, Stephen J. Gould, Theodosius Dobzhansky, etal. I could go on, and on, and on, ALL of these people who can't stop yapping, yapping, yapping about how evolution is true, TRUE, TRUE and just shut up already if you don't think so.

Well, it isn't true. It never has been true and it never will be true. It's nonsense, literally, as in non-sense, i.e. opposed to reason and how it gets such a hearing is almost beyond me. Well look at who we keep electing to run the country and you can believe anything regarding the stupidity of Americans. So at least we have some idea of how this could happen.

So where to begin is the big problem. There are so many holes in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and the new and improved version, natural selection PLUS genetic mutations (mistakes) called the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinian theory. I hate to type out neo-Darwinian because it's a pain so I'll just refer to evolutionary theory from now on as, well, evolution, or for an occasional change, Darwinism. And when I do you'll know that I mean the new kind, natural selection plus genetic mutations.

So before I launch into one of my many rants about how stupid Darwin was and how stupid anyone who listened to him for more than 5 minutes was/is I think I'll take a step back, take a big breath, and pose the following questions:

Is the metaphysical foundation of evolution true?
Does this foundation provide the proponents of evolution with the explanatory tools they need to explain what they need to explain? (Let's say that I'm trying to explain the game of football to you but I keep talking about base hits and outs and innings. In other words, I only have a baseball vocabulary to explain football. So can I EVER explain football like that? No.)
If it's not true (hint: it's not), then how do I know that it's not?

There are so many things to explain and it's so important and I'm trying to write THE damn book about what a crock evolution is and thus forever silence these ignorant people who assault our intellects with this swill called Darwinism so let me sort of ramble a little here and try to assemble my thoughts into some sort of coherent whole.

So I think the following questions need to be on our list of questions to which I will then be obligated to provide crystal clear, rational, iron-clad, water-tight, true, and insightful explanations.

What needs to be explained?
Why does it need to be explained? Maybe you would ask that question this way: SO WHAT?!! What difference does any of this make??? Who cares about metaphysics or philosophy or first principles anyway? Let me propose an easy thought experiment to help you decide that right now. If you jumped off of a very, very, very tall building would it matter if you were flying or falling? And when would it matter?
What makes for a good explanation or a good theory? In other words, how in the hell can I (you) know that you (Me) are correct, being a non-scientist with zero big-shot scientific credentials (and what a lot of nerve you have, too) and not all the big-shot scientists????
And then I think that naturalism or materialism or physicalism needs a little more explanation since if you are like most people you've already forgotten what I wrote about that even if you ever bothered to read it in the first place. We could also say, does your worldview matter? And what is a worldview anyway? Hint: naturalism is a worldview.
And you also need to understand the implications of naturalism. Now, there are a lot of different flavors of these particular "isms" and I won't bore you with all of those because they are really boring (try reading the Oxford Guide Philosophy or the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy late at night and see how long you last) and they are just various ways that ingenious (but ultimately foolish) people have tried to make these various "isms" "work." None of them do. None of them will ever, ever, EVER work, and I will tell you why in words of mostly three syllables or less.
What is natural selection? (This may come as a shock... but natural selection has the same ontological status as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. That's philosophical talk for natural selection is nothing more than a myth. Even a lot of smart Intelligent Design (I.D.) people think natural selection exists but they won't after they read this.)
What are mutations and how could they possibly be a source of biological information? Or, how can TNT both build AND destroy houses??!!!
What are the minimum requirements for information and can evolution explain them?
What is the role of reason in this discussion. You (me) are "just" a Christian after all, so don't you (me) discount reason?

Anyway, you will soon have all of the answers to these and many other interesting and fascinating questions so the next time some smart-ass intellectual tries to tell you that YOU are stupid or unsophisticated or a hick from central Illinois (well that part is actually true) because you don't believe in evolution you can say: "HA, well explain information for me then Mr Big Shot smart guy/gal and do so by only using the laws of physics."

Well, I'm getting ahead of myself and I've already given away the game, but still, maybe you want the details and even if you don't I'm going to give them to you so you don't look like an idiot when you call some other idiot an idiot. So you'll know to say, like House on TV does, you're an idiot! Of course, House is the real idiot and pretender but who ever recognizes that? At any rate, you need to know WHY, step by grueling and painful step, why evolution isn't true and why it is not even possible for it to be true. If I can do that one little, tiny, insignificant thing for even one person then this will have been worth it. To me at least, and that's what counts. (Apologies to Harry Paget Flashman and the Mogambo Guru for stealing their inimitable styles of writing. They say it's the highest form of flattery - maybe they won't sue...)

I'll get to some of the details next time. Soon. Feel free to quibble. Saying that evolution isn't true is the biological equivalent of telling physicists that quantum physics is nonsense. And when the person saying that, ME (and others, too, see I.D., except most of them have scientific academic credentials) doesn't have a Ph.D. behind my name you could be forgiven for thinking, what an arrogant ass this guy must be. And you'd be right! But that is irrelevant to the quality of the arguments so read what I have to say first. It's possible that I am an arrogant ass AND right. :-)

What about God? part 2...

2008-06-26T16:31:00.009-05:00

In previous posts we have seen that certain things are rationally undeniable. From this we have seen that the universe must have begun, and therefore, had a cause of its beginning. This much is often OK for many people, up to a point. That point being when it dawns on them that God is coming in the conclusion. Richard Dawkins, for example, in his latest book, The God Delusion, illustrates this nicely. On the one hand he recognizes, I think, the need for the regress of causes to terminate. On the other hand, he is definitely not ready for that conclusion to be God.

What I've decided to do is present Richard's argument first. Then I will present mine and you can decide which one makes more sense.

From The God Delusion. On page 77 he is arguing against the "proofs" of Thomas Aquinas. He correctly recognizes that three of them (the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, and the cosmological argument) are similar in form (they all rely on the impossibility of an infinite regress) and so he takes these three on in the following paragraph.

"All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts. Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. Karen Owens has captured this witty little paradox in equally engaging verse:
Can omniscient God, who

Knows the future, find

The omnipotence to

Change His future mind?

To return to the infinite regress and the futility of invoking God to terminate it, it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a 'big bang singularity', or some other physical concept as yet unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading."

There you have it. This is pretty much (of course there's more - he wrote a whole book about a being that he really doesn't believe exists...) the guts of his argument. "Well who made God?" That is the point he is making when he says that it is "an unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress." Now, to be fair, I can't tell for sure if he denies that the idea of an infinite regress is problematic or if he is just opposed to the idea of God terminating it. I think the latter because he says that we could "conjure up a 'big bang singularity' or some other physical concept yet unknown." So it's not the termination of the infinite regress that he finds objectionable, it's God. That leads me to believe that he recognizes the logical implications of an infinite regress. That it's impossible and irrational. That said, he also seems willing to toss logic under the bus at the first opportunity. "Conjure up" indeed.

He also says that we arbitrarily end the regress with God because we "need one." As if "we" are desperate to prove God and so stoop to arbitrariness in a futile attempt to do so. For reasons (not conjuring) that I will now discuss, I think his arguments are atrociously bad. I'm not even a competent philosopher or scientist but I can see the massive holes in this line of "reasoning."

Let's talk about the idea of the infinite regress one more time. Claiming that an antecedent sequence of causes is truly infinite is to say that it never began. What could be more irrational? OF COURSE it began else it would have never terminated in an effect. So how do we terminate an infinite regress? We do it by stopping at First Principles. Being, Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded Middle, and sufficient cause. As we recall, First Principles are called "First" because they are, well, FIRST. There is nothing that can be said prior to them. They do not need to be explained. Indeed, they cannot be explained. No prior reasoning need be done, or can be done, to recognize existence and identity. We exist and that's it. We are who we are and that's it. So how does this help us solve the infinite regress problem?

I think it goes like this. Let's say that we have an effect, the universe, that we want to explain. Let's say that we start with today and travel back along the antecedent chain of causes looking for the first one. (Keep in mind there MUST BE a first one.) So let's now cut to the chase and skip over the 13.7 billion years or so and think about the First Cause. Is it possible that the First Cause is just like every other cause in the chain of causes? No. It is not. Why? Because if it was like every other cause in the chain, it would itself need a cause. And if it needed a cause, it could not be First. This seems fairly obvious to me but then I've thought about it for a minute or two. The First Cause, it seems, MUST BE of a different kind than the subsequent causes. Are we tracking? Good.

Therefore, if each of the causes in the chain of causes had an antecedent cause, we could say that each one of those causes was finite. In fact, we would have to say that they are finite. They had a prior cause or, in effect, a beginning. Therefore, they are finite. The First Cause, on the other hand, CANNOT be finite. Why? If it were finite, it would itself need a cause, and thus it could not be FIRST. The First Cause, since it CANNOT be finite, MUST THEREFORE BE INFINITE. There are only two metaphysical categories and they are: infinite and finite. (If you can think of anything, anything at all that is neither finite nor infinite then don't tell me, publish a paper on it in a philosophy journal and you will be famous from now until the end of time.) I call this "doing the math." If 1 + x = 2, then x = 1. If something is either finite or infinite, and it's not finite, then it's ... INFINITE. (This is called a disjunctive syllogism and every logician that Richard knows understands that it is a valid form of argument. Either P or Q. Not P. Therefore, Q. Either finite or infinite. Not finite. Therefore, infinite.

I would be happy to toss this argument over the edge but no one has ever, EVER, been able to explain how a first cause could be like all the other causes in the chain of causes.

Now we get to the good part. If the First Cause is infinite, we also know something else about it. What is that, you ask? Well, we already KNOW that the First Cause is infinite (it has no beginning). But we also know that the First Cause is UNCAUSED. We know this because something either 1. has a cause, or 2. it's uncaused, or 3. it causes itself. Number 1 doesn't work because we know that the First Cause can't have a cause (else it would be just like all the other causes) and number 3 doesn't work because something can't be the cause of itself (if you don't buy that, think about it for a second or two and you'll get it). "Doing the math" leaves us with number 2. The First Cause is uncaused. It HAS TO BE. It's not a "dubious luxury" it is the conclusion that we find ourselves forced to accept from the exercise of REASON. I'm not finished. Since we know the First Cause is infinite, we also know that it is immaterial. Why do we know that? We know that because if the First Cause was material we could count it. But anything we can count is finite. Therefore, once again, we are FORCED to this conclusion. The First Cause is now infinite, uncaused, and immaterial. What else may we infer about this First Cause? It seems that the First Cause is a PERSON. Why do I say that? Because the First Cause ACTED. There wasn't a universe and then there was a universe. An amazingly finely tuned universe, as it turns out. (See any book on the Anthropic Principle for the details. They virtually all (Hugh Ross is a notable exception) come to the wrong conclusion - "it's a really, really lucky thing for us" but the descriptions of the fine tuning are impressive.) So the First Cause is now a PERSON. Don't we know that as sure as we are reading this? Try to imagine a rock, or any non-living thing acting or having a thought or a purpose. Exactly my point. So PERSON also implies living and purposeful. I don't want to push my luck here but a theologian might use different words to describe the First Cause. A theologian would use words like Eternal, Spirit, Transcendent, Sovereign, and so on. I don't know about you but those words sort of sound suspiciously like Biblically God words. My apologies to Richard, but I think my argument is much better. In order to defeat it Richard must show how an infinite regress is possible. Or he must "conjure" some 'big bang singularity' (how to explain that?) or he must show how something that is finite can be infinite. Oh, he has a way to go, I think. An infinitely long way...

Here comes the best part. It's perhaps, possibly, maybe, an original thought. I can't imagine that no one has never thought of this before but I've read a little bit and I've never seen it put like this. So here goes.

It occurred to me as I was thinking about the First Principles of reason that "Being is" is the most concise way to state them. Being means existence, the most fundamental thing we can say about anything. "Is" implies a predicate (Being is Being) but since we know the Law of Identity we don't need to repeat ourselves. We also know by immediate inference that if Being is Being then Being is NOT non-Being. This is the law of non-contradiction. Also we know by immediate inference that Being and non-Being exhaust the ontological possibilities. Something either is or it isn't. All that is summed up in the phrase "Being is."

Then one day I was reading something this ancient Hebrew leader wrote, the one who got the cosmology right thousands of years before the scientists did. It was in the book of Exodus and I was STRUCK, it was almost like a slap in the face, with the phrase that I ran across in chapter 3, verse 14. First, let me set the stage. Moses had been told by God (if you believe in things like that) that he is to go to the nation of Israel and lead them out of (the Exodus) Egypt. Here's how it sounds. Verse 13, "Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" (emphasis mine)

Here it comes. Verse 14. And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you." (emphasis mine)

Wow. God said, I AM. I've been saying "Being is." It's the same thing. I AM WHO I AM. Being is Being. When God was asked His name, He named Himself REASON. Isn't that interesting? But the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. One of the characteristics of God is REASON. It's part of His essence just like righteousness. So it would make sense that REASON (GOD) is the ultimate authority of what is true about the universe. Even God can't violate reason just like He can't sin. He cannot violate His essence. Well, food for thought, anyway. But it seems to me to be correct to say.

There is one last piece of business tonight and I hate to end on a negative note but I must point out one more bit of irrationality in the passage from Richard. Remember that "engaging" little poem? The one that illustrates that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible? Here's the fallacy. If God is omniscient then He would know everything all at once. We can't begin to get our finite intellects around that but if He knows everything all at once then He's not "changing His mind" as the situation unfolds. If Richard wanted to attack the essence of God he'd be better off trying something like: if God is omnipotent then can He make a rock so big He can't lift it? The idea being that we have some sort of fatal dilemma here. Because either way God is not omnipotent. Here's the fallacy. You've seen it already, I'm sure. It's called a category mistake. A rock is finite and God's omnipotence is infinite. It's like asking, "What does blue smell like?" The question is nonsensical because blue is a color and related to the sense of sight and smell is a different sense that is concerned with odors, not colors. We would ask what some things would smell like, but a color would not be one of those things. So the question makes no sense. I'll have more to say on that subject (apparent contradictions) later. In the meantime, please feel free to let me know where I'm wrong.

So what about God?

2008-06-21T21:40:00.012-05:00

Isn't this the real question? IF God does not exist, THEN there can be no Son of God or Word of God or acts of God (miracles). This much seems clear. On the other hand, IF God DOES exist, THEN there can be a Son of God. There can be a Word of God. And there can be acts of God (miracles). Pretty hard to argue with that, I think.

So how do we answer such a question? Philosophers and theologians throughout history have wrestled with this and what you are about to read is not original with me. But I think I can explain it better (we'll see) so here goes.

In order to answer this question we need to do a couple of things. We need to start at the beginning and we need to follow the evidence, interpreted by reason, wherever it goes. It is apparent to me, and surely to you too, that believing in a God that doesn't actually exist is about the most brainless thing a person could do. But it should also be clear that not believing in a God that does exist doesn't seem to be a very shrewd move either. We live in a binary world of true or false. Things are a certain way (God exists) or they are not (God does not exist). There is no hedging this bet. If you have ever seen Texas Hold 'Em on TV you understand that when players go "all in" they are risking every chip, every dollar, that they have. So it is with us. Perhaps this is Pascal's wager updated to the 21st century. Regardless, we, all of us, are going "all in" with the biggest cosmic bet one could ever possibly make. If we have eternal souls, then we do, and we will spend eternity in one of two places (if it turns out that the Bible actually is the Word of God). If we don't, well then, we don't and as soon as we die that's it and who cares. But whether we believe in the "God universe" or the "not God" universe, one of them surely exists. I'm not trying to put a lot of pressure on this choice but it does seem to be significant. That's why I will be very careful with the arguments. Please note that one of my arguments for the "God universe" will not be "to hedge your bets." It's either true or it's not. I think we should figure that out and act like it. Whatever that way is.

The cosmological argument has a long and illustrious history and if you want to read more about it may I suggest you get William Lane Craig's book The Cosmological Argument From Plato to Leibniz. Meanwhile, I will walk through the background to it in my own way.

The key insights are two in number and both of them involve the concept of infinity. If you get this then the rest will make perfect sense. Infinity is the idea that something has no beginning and no ending. For example, the set of all integers has no beginning (what is the smallest negative integer?) and no ending (what is the largest positive integer?) On the other hand, if something is finite (that is, not infinite) then, it has a beginning and is countable. Note that a finite series may not have an ending but it will never be infinite because you can't make something finite into something infinite by adding one more. Why? Because you can always add one more. This may seem trivial or pedantic but bear with me. This is an exercise in pure reason and it will pay off because it will make your brain bigger. Or something like that.

The first thing we notice is that it is impossible to traverse an infinite amount of time or an infinite distance. Let's pretend for a moment (philosophers call this a "thought experiment") that we have a combination space ship and time machine. It is a most powerful vessel. It can leap through time at the rate of a trillion years per second and it can travel through space at a trillion times the speed of light.

Now, here's the question. Can we, in this space ship, cross from point A to point Z if there is an infinite distance between A and Z? (Assume for a moment that an actual infinite is possible in the physical universe, which it isn't, but we'll get to that in a moment. For now, pretend.) Obviously not. For even if we traveled for trillions and trillions of miles, we wouldn't even be started on getting across an infinite distance. Why? Well because for every trillion miles we covered there remains an infinite number of miles to cross. In the same way, if point A is sometime in the past and point Z is some time in the future and an infinite number of seconds lie between A and Z, we can never get from A in the past to Z in the future.

So we know that we cannot traverse an infinite time or distance, because, by definition, an infinite number of seconds or miles is without beginning or end.

The second insight about infinity is that nothing that is material, that is, is part of the physical structure of the universe, can actually be infinite. This includes space/time. We've already seen that an infinite series of miles or seconds cannot be traversed but the fact of the matter is that it is impossible for an actual infinite to exist. Here's why. Just imagine, if you can, an infinite number of seconds (or miles or rocks or atoms or whatever). Now it's not infinite because we can always add one more second or mile rock or atom or whatever. In fact, we can add a trillion more. A trillion plus a trillion more. A trillion times a trillion more. A trillion raised to the trillionth power more. You get the point. It is impossible to have an actual physical infinite. (Space and time, or space/time, is part of the structure of the physical universe - Einstein proved that with General and Special Relativity.) Here is an easier way to understand that nothing "material," including space/time, can be infinite. It's because if something is physical, or measurable, then it can be counted. It might take a long time, but it can be counted. And if it can be counted, it isn't infinite.

This allows us to understand that the universe had a beginning. It HAD TO HAVE A BEGINNING. Why? Because if it did not, if time were infinite in the past, we could never have arrived at today. But we are here, today. Therefore, time had a beginning. Another way to think of this is to imagine that the series of seconds that terminates at this instant had to START sometime. If it never started then how could we arrive at today? If we say that it didn't have to start, then we say that the beginning of our series of seconds had no beginning (is infinite). Which, of course, is nonsense - to say that the beginning had no beginning. As we remember the law of Identity and the law of non-contradiction.

This is pretty "out there" if you've never thought about it before so I'll try to explain it in a slightly different way and perhaps that will help. This time we'll think of it in terms of causes.

Let's conduct another thought experiment. Let's assume that we have a pot of water sitting on a stove and it is boiling. Let's also assume that we want to investigate this scientifically. That is, we are engaged in the investigation of the causal chain that is producing the effect of the boiling water. So we see the water in the pan. We see the bubbles. We see the steam rising. We see the flame from the burner. We see the stove. We see the gas line. We wonder about these things. They must also have explanations. If we keep tracing things back in time we will eventually trace our chain of causes back to the beginning of the universe. But wait, you say, what if the universe, and thus our antecedent chain of causes never began? Then you are saying that the antecedent chain of causes is infinite, which is to say that it never started. But it did start because we are looking at the boiling water. To claim that an infinite regress of causes could actually terminate in an effect is to say that the antecedent chain of causes that resulted in the effect, in this case, the boiling water, never began. But it obviously did begin. Witness the boiling water.

From this, we KNOW beyond all doubt, because it is an exercise in pure reason, that the universe had a beginning. Not surprisingly, science has confirmed this and not so long ago. It started around the time of World War I with Einstein and his theory of General Relativity and continued on to include Hubble's observations in the late 20's about the red shift of star light and the background radiation found by Wilson and Penzias in the mid-60's. (For which they eventually were awarded a Nobel prize. It's a funny story in a way. They were looking for something else, quasars or something, who knows, and they kept getting this interference that they couldn't explain. They even cleaned the pigeon stuff off of the satellite dish but the "noise" wouldn't go away. The "noise" turned out to be the left over radiation (heat) signature of the "Big Bang" creation event.) See? We KNEW that the universe had a beginning from our reasoning exercise and that's exactly what science found. It's what we would expect since nothing can contravene reason. Interestingly enough, science had pretty much settled on an infinite universe for a couple thousand years. It was called the "steady state" theory by Sir Fred Hoyle (Who also "named" the Big Bang. It was a term of derision at first.) It's biggest plus was that it avoided the implication of God. For after all, if the universe was eternal, if the universe "always was," then its existence didn't have to be explained. But since the realization has slowly dawned that it did begin, cosmologists have been desperately, and to no avail, trying to explain the beginning of the universe without recourse to God. (That would be "unscientific" I guess.) Would it be uncharitable of me to mention at this point that an obscure Hebrew leader got it right thousands of years ago when he wrote: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." It took modern science a while but they finally caught up to Moses.

Now here's where things get interesting. If something begins, then something caused it to begin. This is the essential insight of the cosmological argument, which we'll explore in more detail in the next post. But for now, it goes like this. (I believe this is William Lane Craig's formulation of it.)

Major Premise: Every thing that begins has a beginner. (True by definition.)

Minor Premise: The universe began. (True by reason and confirmed empirically.)

Conclusion: The universe has a beginner. (Necessarily true. It can't possibly be false.)

Details next time. Plus a bonus. Deriving God as an exercise in pure reason.

Some thoughts on worldviews

2008-06-20T18:20:00.011-05:00

In case you are not familiar with the word "worldview" (or Weltanschauung if you are Deutsch) I will take a moment or two and tell you what it is.

Simply, a worldview is how we look at the world. It is the sum total of our fundamental assumptions about "how things are." It is usually used in the context of the greater issues in life. Does God exist? Do souls exist? Are humans special or important? Do we have free will? Is there a moral law? Is evil real? Is good real? Are heaven and hell real places? Can I go to either place? Is there life after death? What exists? How do I know? What is truth? Does God "talk" to us? Can I know it? Stuff like that.

Think of your worldview as a pair of glasses. If you are wearing a "Christian" worldview pair of glasses when you look at the universe then you believe that God exists in three persons and one essence. You believe that souls exist. You believe that humans are special in an almost unbelievable way because we are created in the image of God. You believe that there is a moral law. Good and evil are real. You believe that we have free will and that we make moral choices. You also believe that heaven and hell are real places and that you get to freely choose your eternal destiny. You believe that both material and immaterial things exist. You believe that reason applied to empirical evidence is the ultimate truth standard. You believe that truth is that which corresponds to reality. You believe that God speaks to us through nature (reason and evidence) and His Word (revelation) and that they are never in conflict. (How could they be?) You believe that purpose and design are all around us and that we are the objects of His purpose. You see the glory and majesty of God in the intricate design and unimaginable vastness of the universe. You believe that we can know what He says.

From this, certain things necessarily follow. If God exists and He is as we typically think of God, then we had better not ignore Him. If we are created in His image (thinking, intentional, moral, sensing, feeling, rational) then every human being has great value, regardless of skin color, eye color, hair color, nationality, sexual orientation, political preference, religious background, IQ, talent, gender, and every other way that we categorize ourselves. EVERY human being has intrinsic value because every human being is created in the image of God. (If it's actually true, that is.)

It also then follows that every human being, created in the image of God, has the same fundamental value (priceless) and therefore has the same rights and responsibilities as every other human being. It follows that we would want to go to heaven (eternal bliss with our Creator) rather than go to hell (eternal torment away from our Creator). We'd want to know how we could do that and hope that we could actually do it. It seems that we would be inclined, at least, to treat other human beings as if they were intrinsically precious since we know that they are. We would understand that it is wrong to take advantage of those that are weak, or less able to fend for themselves, whether by lesser physical, mental, financial, or other resources. Perhaps, most importantly, we would know that we are ultimately ACCOUNTABLE for our thoughts, words, and deeds. We might feel motivated, on occasion, at least, to do the right thing. We may even feel an obligation to be good stewards of the planet God has given us to live on. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. We might think that God had actually created us for a purpose and that we would want to fulfill that purpose. This is not an exhaustive list, by any means, but I trust it is detailed enough to give you a sense of how a Christian worldview would play out in life. Or should.

On the other hand, if we had a materialist worldview, we would believe different things about the universe we live in. If we had on "materialist glasses" we would see things in other ways. For one thing, we wouldn't believe that God exists. (God is a "spirit" and spirits are not real by a materialist ontology.) Minds or souls do not exist. There is no purpose or design or point to the universe. Everything can be explained by physical laws. (After all, if everything is matter and energy and they are governed by physical laws, then EVERYTHING can be explained in terms of the laws of physics.) Human beings are just another form of life, accidental and meaningless in the vastness of the universe. We are here strictly by chance and we have no more value than any other form of life. Say a cockroach or a lizard or a weed. They are all fundamentally the same. They are merely different outworkings of neo-Darwinian evolution. Mindlessly chugging along it produced everything from human beings to bacteria and everything in between. We believe that survival and perpetuation of the species is all important. We know that there is no such thing as a moral law. Laws are immaterial creations of mind and since minds do not exist neither do laws. Or information. Or design. Or purpose. There is no such thing as free will. How could there be when free will is immaterial and would somehow not be beholden to the laws of physics? How do we explain information in any coherent way? Information requires contingency but the laws of physics provide no contingency. I will spend a fair amount of time on this.

I'll be first in line to say that if the materialist worldview is true then it is and so much the worse for us. Believing something that is NOT TRUE (Christianity, in this instance) is foolish and pathetic if the materialists are correct. No matter how much we might want it to be true, or how much better we think the world would be if it were true, it only matters IF IT IS TRUE. On the other hand, if the materialist worldview is false (I think we've seen that already. Although I will gleefully continue to point out the absurdities, contradictions, and patent falsehoods as long as I draw breath.) what a ridiculous thing to believe. Can you imagine anything more hideous? To reject truth. To spend eternity away from your Creator by your own choice. To spend your whole life thinking that you are no more important than rocks, or dirt, or slugs. To think that there is no meaning or purpose AT ALL. To think that nothing that you do while you are "alive" EVER REALLY MATTERS. How breathtakingly stupid and depressing is that? Well, I hope we'll see in the days to come.

I suspect that you are already beginning to see some of the inherent contradictions in a materialist worldview. How can I say that everything is governed by the laws of physics when my fundamental belief about the nature of the universe denies the existence of those laws? How can I have choices when there is no free will? How can anything be wrong if there is no moral law? How can purpose of any kind exist in a purposeless universe? Why should I pay attention to any social conventions? Why should anything matter to me, including me? Why would reason exist in a purely material universe? Is reason comprised of fermions and bosons? Do the four forces of nature affect reason? These are the kinds of questions that need to be definitively answered.

Meanwhile, let me put in another plug for reason. Just like there are causes and effects in the material world, there are causes and effects in the immaterial world. Ideas matter. Ideas eventually play out in public ways. Remember Nazi Germany if you think ideas don't matter.

It seems fairly obvious to me from the discussion above that above all, what we need to demand from our worldview, is that it give us a true picture of reality. Does God exist? Is Jesus the Son of God? Are we special in any way? Are we merely random collections of sub-atomic particles suspended in really cool bags of water? Does any of this matter? Of course it does. Read on...

The end of materialism

2008-06-18T22:02:00.008-05:00

I do not have the words to express the utter contempt (user friendly mode "off") that I have for the intellect of anyone who espouses the "truth" of materialism. Said another way, you don't have to be stupid to be a fool. OK, so maybe that's a little harsh. Let me dial it back some here. Maybe these people really are able, in some way, to hold opposing positions in their heads simultaneously and believe both of them. It's kind of like believing at the same time that white is black and black is white and not feeling any sense of unease about it. That's what materialists have to do, as we will see, and some of them are quite adept at this game. I will argue that it is really a fool's game since reason forbids such a move. Oh, you can still do it but count on believing nonsense when you do.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much the default position in "Western" (European and American, not closer to the west coast of the U.S.) universities. Oddly enough, "regular" people, in general, have little or no problem understanding the dual nature (immaterial and material) of the universe. And we are roundly mocked for it. But make someone a cosmologist, evolutionary biologist, or a philosopher of mind, for three examples, and they generally run like lemmings to this ridiculous ontological position. (There are notable exceptions, of course.) Although I am usually loathe to ascribe motives to people I don't personally know (and generally not even then), it seems to me that the big draw to materialism is the obvious one. If all that exists is matter and energy, then there is no God. It's an immediate inference, virtually, from the premise. If all that exists is material, and God is immaterial, then God does not exist. And certainly it makes no sense whatsoever to pay attention to a non-existent Being. How ludicrous would that be? Therefore, we see that the materialist program, which includes neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory in biology, the "landscape" theory in cosmology, moral relativism in ethics, mind/brain identity in philosophy of mind, and the intellectual E bola virus of post-modernism which infects everything that it touches, rises or falls on its fundamental premise.

I don't recall if I've said this out loud or not yet, but for an argument to be persuasive (for me, at least) it must be grounded in First Principles and/or physical laws that explain everything "we" currently know about the material universe. If a conclusion cannot be grounded in this way then it is probably not much of a conclusion. On the other hand, I distinctly remember saying that if we don't start with reason and our data and follow it wherever it goes then we are not being intellectually honest. Keeping that in mind, let's take a coldly rational look at materialism.

The fundamental truth claim of materialism (I use the term somewhat loosely to encompass all flavors of "isms" from physicalism to naturalism that essentially claim that nature, or the physical world, is "all that there is.") is that what is physical is all that exists. In other words, all that is real is matter and energy. It's pretty easy to understand. Even a child can understand it. In fact, children are the original materialists. They don't understand abstract thought until around age 7 or 8. Or so I've been told. Be that as it may, materialism, I believe, is probably the most destructive piece of nonsense the world has ever seen. Much evil has been done in the name of materialism. But rather than rant about that now let me get to the point of this which is to render its landscape a nuclear wasteland, uninhabitable by sane, reasonable minds until the end of time.

In order to expose the irrationality of materialism, we need to further define matter and energy. I think it's reasonable (I checked with a theoretical physicist and this is close enough) to define matter and energy as follows. Matter is extended in space/time and/or has mass and/or has inertia and/or is affected by gravity (so is light) and/or can be converted to energy and/or can be empirically detected. Energy can move and/or heat matter and can be empirically detected. Energy can be used to "do work." I think that is sufficiently basic to get at the essence of it. This definition, as best as I can tell, includes all of the particles of the Standard Model and the four forces (nuclear strong, nuclear weak, electromagnetism, and gravity). So we should be covered for anything and everything that is physical in this universe.

With these definitions we can analyze different "things" and see if we can demonstrate that something that exists, something that is real, is not matter or energy. If we can, then materialism fails. It fails forever. I am going to deliberately insult your intelligence here by dragging you through an obvious example but only to make the ultimate contrast more glaring.

Is a lump of uranium material? Is it matter or energy? Let's ask the relevant questions.

Is it extended in space/time? Yes. (We can see it.)

Does it have mass? Yes. (We can weigh it. I understand that mass is not the same thing as weight.)

Does it have inertia? Yes.

Is it affected by gravity? Yes. (Drop it and see.)

Can it be converted to energy? Yes. (Think nuclear power.)

Can it be empirically detected? Yes. It can be seen and felt. It may smell, too, for all I know.

So we have our answer. A lump of uranium is matter.

Is mathematics material? Is it matter or energy?

Is it extended in space/time? No.

Does mathematics have mass? No.

Does mathematics have inertia? No.

Is mathematics affected by gravity? No.

Can mathematics be converted to energy? No.

Can mathematics be empirically detected? No.

Can mathematics be used to move matter? No.

Can mathematics be used to heat matter? No.

Is mathematics, nonetheless, real? Yes. Therefore, materialism fails.

Let's take another example.

Are the laws of physics material? Are they matter or energy?

Are they extended in space/time? No.

Do they have mass? No.

Do they have inertia? No.

Are they affected by gravity? No.

Can they be converted to energy? No.

Can they be empirically detected? Actually, this is an interesting question. But upon further reflection we will realize that the laws of physics are discovered, or identified, by our minds. They cannot be touched, seen, heard, tasted, or smelled.

Can they be used to move matter? No.

Can they be used to heat matter? No.

Are the laws of physics real? Yes. (Jump off a roof if you don't think so. Or hit your thumb with a hammer. Either experiment should do the trick for you.) Therefore, materialism fails.

Here a few other things you can run by these questions. I've made this very user friendly so even a materialist can do it.

Information. Is it matter or energy? No. Is it real? Please.

Love. Minds. The rules of golf. The rules of anything from canasta to economics to weight loss. Reason. Justice. Right. Wrong. Design. Purpose. Gross national products. Statistics. I'll leave it to your imagination to come up with other examples. All of these things are clearly NOT matter or energy. Yet they are clearly real. Materialism fails. It fails spectacularly, obviously, and simply. Anyone with a normal mind can understand this.

So what's a materialist to do? Well, they do what any charlatan does. They lie. They confuse. They deflect. They avoid. They deny. For example, they deny the existence of mind. They say that there is no such thing as a mind apart from the brain. This is true. I've read them. They say that there is no such thing as purpose. They say that there is no such thing as good and evil. (Or a moral law.) They say that there is no such thing as design. They say that all of these things are ILLUSIONS. They aren't real. Just to give one example, Richard Dawkins (of "The God Delusion" fame) says that "biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been designed for a purpose." Thus begins "The Blind Watchmaker." I will devote a full measure of time to Richard but not tonight.

Here's another way of looking at it that's just a bit different but may help. Consider the fact that all things material are governed by the laws of physics. Another way to say this is that all things material can ultimately be explained by recourse to physical law. Material things - laws of physics. Easy enough. But now we can ask if there any real things that the laws of physics cannot explain? If there are, then there are things that are not material, because the laws of physics can explain all things material.

Do the laws of physics have anything to say about 1+1=2? No. They do not. Do the laws of physics have anything to say about the use of nuclear weapons? No. They do not. Do the laws of physics have anything to say about whether a propositional statement is true or not? No. They do not. Do the laws of physics have anything to say about whether I play golf or tennis next weekend? No. They do not. So, you get the drift.

For now, can we agree that the fundamental premise of materialism is false? Utterly and completely FALSE? As you might imagine, this will have serious consequences for other things that they claim to be true.

Interim Summary - axioms

2008-06-18T17:01:00.001-05:00

So maybe it is time for a short review. If you are already attuned to the supremacy of reason as the way to come to a knowledge of the truth then you won't need to read all of the detail in my previous posts.

Axioms, or First Principles, or what cannot be avoided (by a rational person).

1. There is a way that things are. Or, we can say there is a way that the universe is. This is a fundamental ONTOLOGICAL truth and cannot be denied without self-contradiction.

2. Reason is the ultimate authority, the only authority, actually, for determining what is true about the universe. This cannot be denied without self-contradiction.

3. Opposing truth claims cannot both be true. This cannot be denied without self-contradiction. We generalize to say that all self-contradictory statements are FALSE. In English, we can't have it both ways. We can't have our cake and eat it too.

4. Since there is a material world as well as a world of reason (an immaterial world*) we need something besides reason to determine what is true. We need empirical evidence. Or sense experience. This is not a first principle but it should be apparent to even the biggest skeptic. It's certainly undeniable that physical things exist.

5. Therefore, empirical evidence plus reason = the best truth that we can have about the way things are. (This is essentially the scientific method.) This is a combination of axioms 2 and 4.

6. My (and your) best interests are best served by knowing what is true. This isn't axiomatic but it certainly seems true to me. It may be possible to envision a circumstance where I might be better served by a lie but I'd bet not. In any case, in a general way, I think it is safe to claim that our best interests are served by truth rather than falsehood.

There are more axioms but I have not yet given the rationales so I will add to this list later.

*The next post will be a deconstruction, or destruction, of the ontological position of materialism, or physicalism, or naturalism. Or whatever "ism" you want to call it. The fundamental idea is that all that exists, all that is real, in the universe is matter and energy. Or we may say sub-atomic particles in energy fields.

So what is Truth?

2008-06-17T13:50:00.001-05:00

Given the fact, as we have seen, that reason is the ultimate judge of truth and falsehood, a question immediately comes to mind. What is truth? This is a very fine question and it has a very simple answer. This short discussion will save you from wading through boring and confusing philosophical treatises on the subject, which rarely ever get to the correct answer anyway. Here goes...

We remember that "there is a way that things are." I will call this "reality." It's the definition of reality, after all, so no big stretch here. We also remember that this is another way to make the most fundamental claim that can be made about anything, and that is being, or existence, coupled with identity. We also remember that this is UNDENIABLE since to claim that there is not a way that things are is, in fact, to make a claim that there is a way that things are. Given this, and applying the law of identity, we can say that truth claims that correspond to (or match) reality are said to be TRUE. And truth claims that do not correspond to (do not match) reality are said to be FALSE. See how easy that is?

In epistemological circles this is called the correspondence theory of truth. We see, however, that this is no theory. Rather, it is a definition. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Now many philosophers have gone off the rails (Hume and Kant, for two) by making the fundamental mistake of confusing ontology (Being) with epistemology (Knowing). This is called a category mistake. By analogy, it's like saying: That fabric sure feels loud. Feel is a word that we associate with the sense of touch and loud is a word that we associate with the sense of hearing. So we have made a category mistake when we do that. In English we say that we need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. If we are making a category mistake we say that we are comparing apples and oranges and immediately we understand the error.

The confusion in (a lot of) philosophy is a confusion between ontology and epistemology. It's undeniable that truth exists. This is an ontological certainty. The problem comes in our epistemology. How do we know what that truth is? As it turns out, we have two tools for discovering what is true. Those tools are reason and sense experience. Now, ultimately, it doesn't get any better than this. There is NO BETTER WAY to determine what is true. But this need not plunge us into skepticism (all knowledge is uncertain) or agnosticism (reality is unknown or unknowable). In fact, I hope to show that what we call today the scientific method is well and truly the absolute best way to discover the truth about the material world. More on that later.

To say that truth is that which corresponds to reality is an exercise of pure reason. It's merely a definition. But that's not the end of the story. It's not the end of the story because not only is there a mental world of reason but there is also a physical world of sensation. We are directly aware of, or we can say that we directly experience the world of reason, with our minds. We also directly experience the material world, the world of sensation, by the use of our five senses. Those are: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

So in order to know what the material world is like we use what has come to be known as the scientific method. It's pretty simple, actually. It goes like this. (You can find other ways to say this, but essentially, this is it.)

Step 1. Gather, or observe data, or evidence. (This is an empirical [empirical means originating in, or based on, observation or experience] exercise. What qualifies as data is what can be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or felt. In other words, the material world.)

Step 2. Analyze the data. (This is a rational exercise and it is accomplished by the mind.)

Step 3. Make an inference to the best explanation which means to propose a hypothesis that best explains the data. (This is also a rational act.)

Step 4. Gather, or observe more data. (Empirical exercise.)

Step 5. Compare to previous hypothesis. Modify as necessary to account for new (and old) data. (More reason.)

Step 6. Repeat until "all" of the data has been explained.

So we notice a few things about this method. The first is that its data come from the physical world. Science is empirical. It is about the physical world. The second is that the scientific method includes not only empirical observations but it also begins with the use of reason. Data without reason cannot be analyzed or interpreted or rendered meaningful in any way. Logically speaking, REASON MUST PRECEDE DATA. Without reason (mind) the very idea of data is incoherent. The third thing we notice is that reason is reason and data is data. (Law of Identity.) By that I mean to say that facts are facts. They are neither true nor false. They just are, or they are not. They are not subject to reason in their existence because they are a part of the physical world. The interpretation of the facts (or data), on the other hand, is an exercise in reason. And unless that reasoning is done correctly, then wrong answers are likely to result. I say likely because it is possible to reason incorrectly and still get a true answer by luck.

For example:

All cats are mammals.

All snakes are reptiles.

Therefore: All frogs are amphibians.

The conclusion is true but the syllogism is invalid. (For reasons I won't go into here.) So we have reasoned incorrectly with true premises and managed to get a correct answer. This is not the real beauty of deductive reasoning (reasoning from the general to the particular). The real beauty of deductive reasoning is that IF one has true premises AND a valid (structurally correct) form of argument, THEN the truth of the conclusion is CERTAIN. By certain, I mean 100% of the time. Necessarily true. Impossible to be false. This will be so important in so many ways that I must belabor it one more time. If a deductive argument is valid (structurally correct) and the premises are true (the argument is sound), THEN the conclusion HAS TO BE TRUE. It is impossible for the conclusion not to be true. I will demonstrate this later. Meanwhile, back to the scientific method...

To reiterate the most important observation we make about the "scientific method." It starts with reason and data. This is fundamental and probably the most important observation about the scientific method that we can make. It starts with reason and data. This means that we reason from evidence to conclusion. Let me say that again. We reason from evidence to conclusion. If we start with something besides reason and evidence (for example, a metaphysical assumption that is not a first principle, or directly deducible from first principles) THEN WE ARE NOT "DOING" SCIENCE. We are engaged in (poor) philosophy or (poor) religion or (poor) theology or something else but it is NOT SCIENCE. Nor is it intellectually honest in any way, shape, or form. If we want to have intellectual integrity we must start with reason and the evidence and go wherever that takes us. Wherever that may be. Whether you like where that is going or not. Intellectual integrity DEMANDS that we do not reason improperly or lie about, or misrepresent, our evidence. The two major crimes against Truth are reasoning incorrectly and corrupting the evidence. If we do either one of these things, particularly if we do them deliberately, we have forfeited the right to be taken seriously and are deserving of contempt. In my opinion, anyway. I will have much more to say later.

A few more thoughts on reason...

2008-06-16T22:05:00.000-05:00

There is one more thing I think we need to be clear on before we go much further. And that is: Who, or what, is the ultimate authority when it comes to what is true? It's a fair question. Particularly since most (based upon my admittedly unscientific sampling techniques) people don't really even grasp the nature of the question. Usually the answer is something like, "Huh? What do you mean by that?"

Well, what I mean by that is, when we are forced to evaluate opposing truth claims, what is the final authority? Is it force of some kind or another? There are many examples of this. They range from parental authority to peer pressure to physical intimidation to lethal violence. Believe this or I'll kill you. Believe this or we won't accept you into the group. Believe this or you can't have the car keys. Or is it something else that really tells us what is true? I trust that you see that however compelling these "arguments" may be from a social point of view, they are completely irrelevant in determining what is true. No, for that, we need reason. Reason is the ultimate authority for what is true in and of the universe.

That's a bold claim, perhaps, but I think I can back it up pretty easily with a simple example. Let's say that you deny my claim that reason is the ultimate arbiter of truth claims in this or any universe that could possibly exist. Fair enough. Now what I will ask you to do is to justify your claim. Why is it that reason is NOT the ultimate arbiter of truth?

Now if you want to be taken seriously, this is when you have to make an argument for your assertion. But the problem is (for you), that as soon as you begin to give me reasons why reason doesn't rule, you are, guess what, reasoning. Yes, reason is another one of those "first principle" kind of things. It is inescapable. It is part of our nature. It is part of the fabric of the universe. It is a universally effective method for arriving at truth. It is universally effective today. It was universally effective yesterday. It was universally effective 14.7 billion years ago and will still be universally effective 300 billion years from now. It is just as effective on the moon, or on some distant star in a galaxy far, far, away. So, we see that reason is pretty powerful. In fact, I will again say that even God, if He exists, cannot defy reason. One of the things we will consider later on is why this might be so. Why is it that reason, or we might say "the law of thinking," is universally valid at all times and everywhere?

So the bottom line is that to deny reason is to use reason. Therefore, it is self-contradictory to deny that reason is the ultimate arbiter of truth. And since we cannot deny it, we must accept it. Well, we must accept it if we want to retain any sort of intellectual credibility or integrity. After all, how can one be expected to be taken seriously if one denies what is obvious to everyone? Or if one denies what literally cannot be rationally denied? I belabor this point only for the reason that eventually I will point out example after example of "intellectuals" who, on the one hand, claim that they are disciples of reason. They claim the intellectual high ground because of their unshakeable commitment to reason. Yet, as we will see, they could not possibly be more irrational. For time and time again, they will deny the very things that they profess when it suits them. They will violate the law of non-contradiction. They will violate the laws of being and identity. They will deny the rules for making valid inferences. They will commit all kinds of logical fallacies. It's really an interesting thing to see this. And they get away with it, by and large. But not here.

In the beginning...

2008-06-09T05:45:00.003-05:00

Before I launch into all that I have to say about things, I think it only fair to let you know how I think. How I determine what is true. My epistemology, if you will. It's pretty simple, in the end, so you be the judge if it makes sense or not.

If you read any philosophy at all you will quickly see that different philosophers throughout history have started in various places in their search for truth. I have read a lot of philosophy (but still only a tiny fraction of what's out there) and frankly, I find most of it wanting. So rather than try to critique different philosophers like Descartes, Hume, Kant, and so on, I will present my point of view and just take cheap shots at the "dead white guys" when it suits me. I need to do this because these men (Descartes not so much) still have influence today even though their thinking is deeply flawed. You may be wondering "who are you to be critiquing famous philosophers that are still read centuries after they died?" Well, that's a good and fair question. My answer is that in the end you will just have to judge for yourself if I make my case or not.

After much thinking about it, I have decided that the place to start is at the beginning. That is more profound than you might think at first blush. Unfortunately, I'm not the first guy to figure that out (see Aristotle), but rather than try to explain him, I'll just explain me. There is no claim to originality here. Perhaps some synthesis at most. I think I have had two original ideas in my whole life so far and I will let you know, with great fanfare, no doubt, what they are when the time comes.

(As an aside, if you read a lot and think a lot about what you read, then you will have many "a ha" moments. Moments of discovery when you, well, maybe not you, but I, think, I just had an original idea. No one has ever thought of that before. It's exciting but unfortunately, almost every time I subsequently read something else soon after where the author not only has thought of what I thought but explained it much better than I ever could. Damn them. Except for those two times.)

I think the place to start in our quest for knowledge is with what we cannot deny. In other words, I think it best if we build our foundation of knowledge on rock solid truths that are literally undeniable. (Everyone knows them even if they are ignored or suppressed.) So if we start with undeniable principles, and reason correctly from there, we should have a pretty good shot at arriving at the truth. But, you say, reason isn't enough, we need data, or facts, or empirical evidence, too. That is correct. There have been people in the past who said that reason is the only way to knowledge (I'm grossly oversimplifying here) and there have been people who say that the only way to knowledge is by sense experience. The former are called rationalists and the latter are called empiricists. They both have a point, but coming to the truth requires BOTH reason AND empirical (sense experience) evidence.

So what are these truths? Again, with apologies to Aristotle, I think we start with what we cannot deny. So what can we not deny? The first thing is that we exist. If you exist, then the most fundamental thing you can say about yourself is that you exist. It's undeniable because in order to deny your existence you would have to exist. I hope at this point, we are all still in agreement. So we exist. Let us abstract from the fact of our existence that "existence is." Or we may say "Being is." This is the fundamental ontological claim that can be made. So what else do we know that is undeniable?

We know that we are who we are. We have identity. I am I and you are you. This may seem ridiculously simple minded to you but please, please bear with me because you will see later on that many people today who loudly proclaim "truth" routinely deny these fundamental principles. We may also describe Identity by saying that "Being is Being." A thing is what it is, in the common tongue.

So we know that we exist (Being) and we know who we are (Identity). These are called First Principles of reasoning. Being and Identity. They are undeniable. They are known by everyone (with a normal mind). They also are not material. (This will be HUGE later on.) They also are therefore not explainable by physics or chemistry or biology. (This will also be HUGE later on.)

Now, if these first two principles are true, and they are, we can state them in a little different way which will be more useful to us. I like to say: "There is a way that things are." "There is a way" is another way of saying Being and "that things are" is another way of saying Identity. We can see immediately that this is an acceptable way to express Being and Identity because it is impossible to deny that "there is a way that things are." It's impossible because if I deny that there is a way that things are, I am, in fact, claiming that there is a way that things are. Perhaps this is a bit too abstract so let me illustrate with a concrete example. If I claim that the way things are is that God exists and you say that is not so, then you are claiming that there is a way that things are that God does not exist. In either case, THERE IS A WAY THAT THINGS ARE. I hope I have made this crystal clear because it is so important. It is important because it is, as far as I can tell, the fundamental ontological truth upon which all other truth is based.

Now, you may be thinking, well so what. What have you really said so far? After all, I don't know a thing about HOW THINGS ARE. Granted, but we are just getting started so again I beg for patience. There is a distinction that needs to be made here and perhaps now is the time. Ontology (the study of what exists, or being, if you will) is different from epistemology (the study of knowledge, what we can know and how we can know it). Unfortunately, this fundamental difference is often ignored and as a result, contemporary "intellectuals" (an intellectual being someone who writes a book about philosophical or scientific things - in other words, not me) often say some really, really stupid things. Let me give you an example. In the field of ethics, which is notorious for this kind of thing, and I will argue strenuously for my example later, people often say something like: "well in this situation I do not know what the right thing to do is, so... (here it comes) there must not be a right thing to do." NO. NO. NO. The fact of the matter is that THERE IS a right thing to do but maybe we just don't know what it is. That is the difference between ontology and epistemology. There is a right (and wrong) because there is a way that things are (ontology).

Just because we may not know what that is in some, or many, circumstances, just means that we don't know (epistemology). It doesn't mean that right and wrong, for example, don't exist. This confusion is profound, as we will see, and it is also pervasive in some circles where people should know better. You don't have to accept, at this point, that right and wrong exist, I haven't made that case yet. I merely used it as an example to illustrate the confusion that often exists between ontology and epistemology. I could have used a different example, in fact, let's do that. Let's say that just because physicists have not yet discovered a way to unify quantum field theory and gravity that there is no unification to be had. But this seems clearly false to me because there is a way that things are and they can't be different in the same universe. So this is an epistemological issue and not an ontological one.

Now if you are observant, you will have noticed that I just made an assertion for which I gave no arguments, or reasons, for its truth. I said that there is a way that things are and they can't be different in the same universe. What I mean by that, and I hope this is a good way to get back to First Principles because we are not finished with them yet, is that if there is a way that things are, then, we know, by immediate inference, that is, no further reasoning is required, that there is a way that things are not.

How do I say that? If Being is Being, and it undeniably is, then we must immediately know that Being is not also non-Being. I hesitate to get too pedantic here but this is the crucial and most fundamental rule of logic (or reason, if you prefer) so if I insult your intelligence in the next few sentences it is only out of necessity. Let me say it again in a slightly different way. Being cannot be non-being. Something cannot BE, and NOT BE, at the same time and in the same way. This should not require a lot of reflection. Let me say it with a couple of examples just to make sure we are clear on this. A "1" cannot be a "2." Because a "1" is a "1" and a "2" is a "2" (or to follow the syntax of my claim, a "2" is a specific instance of a "not 1.") So it is impossible for a "1" to be a "1" and a "not 1." It is impossible for me to both exist and not exist. You can't have a million dollars in the bank AND not have a million dollars in the bank. It is impossible for God to exist AND not exist. I use the word impossible in a literal sense. It is not possible for opposing truth claims to both be true.

Okay. This is called the law, or principle, of non-contradiction and it is absolutely critical and necessary that we are all on the same page with this. Because this is part of the foundation. We have to start in a place where we agree and we must agree on first principles because they cannot be denied. That's the thing about first principles, they are FIRST in the chain of reasoning. There is nothing prior to them. We all know them because we all experience them directly with our minds. They are apparently built in to the structure of our minds because every normally mentally functioning human being knows them regardless of language, sex, culture, race, or whatever. At the risk of offending you one more time let me explain one more time in a little different way why the law of non-contradiction is undeniable. Here is perhaps an easier way to say that Being cannot equal non-Being. Let's say that "opposing truth claims cannot both be true." That's another way of expressing the law of non-contradiction. Opposing truth claims cannot both be true.

So how is that undeniable? Here's how. If I say that opposing truth claims can be true AND not true, what am I saying? First I am saying that they can be true and not true, but I am also saying that they cannot be true and not true. Thus my statement is self-contradictory and therefore false. I'll tell you how powerful these laws of Reason are. Even God, should He exist, can not do something logically impossible. Even God cannot make 1 = 2. Or, for the empiricists (scientists), an electron cannot be an electron and a photon at the same time and in the same way. The speed of light in a vacuum cannot be (approximately) 186,000 miles per second and not be 186,000 miles per second. The laws of thermodynamics cannot be true and not true. Well, I trust that we are all on the same page so far.

The law of non-contradiction is closely connected to our next bit of immediate inference which is that something either exists or it doesn't exist. There is no middle ground. Either being or non-being. Either 1 or not 1. Either true or not true. Either, well, you get the point. This point is called the law, or principle, of the excluded middle and it goes hand in hand with the law of non-contradiction. Opposing truth claims cannot both be true and a truth claim cannot be both true and false. In fact, it is either true or false. Concerning all truth claims, true and false are the only two possible answers in an ontological sense. We may not KNOW which is true and which is false but in all truth claims, the answer is either true or false. I hope this makes sense. I will have more to say about First Principles later but for now let's summarize.

Principle 1. Being is. This is called the law or principle of Being.
Principle 2. Being is Being. This is called the law or principle of Identity.
Principle 3. Being cannot be non-Being. This is called the law or principle of non-contradiction and it can also be expressed as "opposing truth claims cannot both be true."
Principle 4. Either Being or non-Being. This is called the law or principle of the excluded middle. It means that EVERY truth claim is either True or it's not.

If we can agree on these, and I don't see how we cannot, then I can continue with the remainder of my epistemological stance. Or, said plainly, how we can know what is true. But not tonight.

So what?

2008-06-09T05:10:00.001-05:00

It seems to me that we live in one of two possible universes. We either live in a universe where Jesus Christ is who He says He is, or we do not. So why would that matter? If we live in a Jesus Universe, then several things are true. First of all, we are created in the image of God. (I'll have more to say about that later but for now try to grab hold of that phrase. And ponder that if it is true, then no human has to look very far to find his intrinsic worth. In a Darwinian universe, we compete, not always successfully, with cockroaches for value.)

The next thing that is true is that we are all imperfect. The Bible puts it to us like this: "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Well, that's pretty blunt, isn't it? But unless you are a sociopath, or have some other major personality disorder, you know that is true as surely as you know that you exist.

The next thing that is true is that since we have fallen short we are in a big mess. One might say a "hell" of a mess. As John says: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” So far so bad.

Now for the really good news. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Of course, this is only true IF we live in a Jesus Universe. So it seems to me that answering that question - What kind of universe do we live in? - takes on significance of shall we say, Biblical proportions.

On the other hand, we may not live in a Jesus Universe. It's logically possible. The statement that "we live in a purposeless, meaningless universe and we are the result of mindless, random processes" is not self-contradictory. So we need to examine the evidence for both types of universes and see which one makes the most sense of ALL of the data of human existence and human experience.

I suppose I should mention up front that I am not always very "user friendly" but I'm working on it. Should some sarcasm leak through try to look beyond that to the arguments. Thanks in advance for that. As Montaigne said: "All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed."