Goodness, Heather, you do stir ’em up, don’t you? Look at that comment thread!
Perhaps it all hinges on belief in the Afterlife. If you can swallow that, the rest of the God business goes down pretty easily.
Thinking about those two planes makes it clear that so far as the natural world is concerned — the one we live our lives in — even if there is a God, there might as well not be. Presumably believers in the plane that crashed were praying just as hard as believers in the other one. They might as well have done mental arithmetic.
All the responses from believers boil down to saying: “No, it didn’t do them much good in this world. But this world is not the whole of reality. There’s more; and in that more, your naturalistic standards don’t capture much of the truth.”
I’m not unsympathetic to that. The instinct to believe in another place is very strong and very human — I feel it in myself, sometimes with great force. Trouble is, there is no evidence for the other place but that instinct; and the instinct itself is susceptible to naturalistic explanations (see Atran, Boyer, & the rest of Mr. Hume’s reading list).
Once all that’s sunk in, the only reason to think there’s another place is biological humility: acknowledging the fact that all our concepts, all we know, is contained in a crinkly one-eighth-inch-thick rind wrapped over a 40-ounce lump of meat. As Prof. Joad said: “The human brain is a food-seeking mechanism, with no more access to Ultimate Reality than a pig’s snout.”
That is the Mysterian position. Epistemologically, though, it is an entirely negative stance. It agrees with the believer’s position that the natural world accessible to our senses is not likely the whole story; but unlike the believer’s position, it makes no claims to have revealed knowledge about the other place. We’ve looked at those claims — any educated person is familiar with them — and found them unconvincing, in fact usually preposterous, and rooted in human weaknesses we’re aware of in ourselves, mostly tendencies to wishful or magical thinking.
The Mysterian has a number of options. He could, for example, take up Pascal’s Wager without logical inconsistency. I think most of us, though, are temperamentally more inclined to just shrug and turn away. Naturalism has boundless pleasures for anyone with an inquiring mind and a sense of wonder (i.e. around five percent of the U.S. population). We’re content to marvel at the truths that science uncovers, hope to understand more this year than we did last year, and — those of us not actively involved in the uncovering — cheer on the uncoverers … perhaps even writing books about them, if we can find a publisher willing to take us on.
The natural world’s enough to keep my mind fully engaged; and I find I can live decently, honorably, and contentedly without any dependence on stories about improbable historical events — miraculous impregnations and the like. My actual individual personality, which issues from my brain, of course will not survive when that organ ceases functioning; and if there is some other state of being post mortem, a thing I wouldn’t rule out, I have seen no convincing description of it. I don’t even see how there could be a description. What is it you are apprehending, when ordinary cognition has ceased? And since “language is the dress of thought,” how could there be a description of a reality beyond thought?
Just putting down a marker.
“The human brain is a food-seeking mechanism, with no more access to Ultimate Reality than a pig’s snout.”
Yes, precisely. But what do these Mysterians think they’re expressing their opinions with? Their actions of speech come from the brain. So do their actions of writing.
Where’s the interface between the ‘natural world’ and the spirit plane? Why can’t science detect this interface and study the matter of the spirit?
Oh, Derb. I hope you’re not hoping to cash in on the remnants of Heather’s swarm. They came, they shat and they left. Half of them couldn’t understand this post if they tried and half of the remainder don’t care to try. Maybe a few holdouts who haven’t gotten the memo about greener pastures anywhere. The atheistic pickins here are slim, the souls to be saved seem starved and there’s way too much education thrown into the mix. The swarm is headin’ out. We loyal footsoldiers however enjoy it. (Especially we few who were fuming at the drivel that you wrote a few years back in explaining your vague religious beliefs – and furthermore in denouncing anyone who had the temerity to question your reasons for them! – with some well-worded nonsense about the world being but a mask for obvious deeper truths, yadda yadda yadda. But now we smile in pride at the precocious disciple who has exceeded the teacher.)
Cheers ~ mnuez
Derb,
I’m a big fan and dedicated Radio Derb listener, and appreciate your accurate descriptions of the decline of Western civilization. I know you are being honest when you describe our civilization as doomed, doomed, doomed. Hasn’t this decline exactly paralleled the decline of religion in the West? And hasn’t robust Islamic faith fueled the recent rise of Islamic civilization? It certainly makes a difference to Islamists that there is a God, and it used to make a difference to the West – back when we had the fortitude to resist Muslims approaching the gates of Vienna. We don’t believe in God, and we are in decline. The Islamists believe in God, and they are on the rise… so God seems to be doing the Muslims a lot of good, if us very little.
Unless you are a hermit, living decently, honorably and contentedly can only happen in a society that protects decency, honor and the virtues that lead to contentedness. This requires the virtues of prudence, courage and wisdom, all of which, I think you will agree, are in decline in the West and certainly in the higher reaches of government. Historically those virtues were supported by the religion that depended on certain “stories about improbable historical events”; now that that religion is declining, the virtues are declining, and your ability to live decently, honorably and contentedly is in danger, much more so in your native England (which, coincidentally, is less religious than the U.S.) Another case of God apparently making a difference here on Earth, not just in the hereafter.
It may be that the West can resist the Islamists and restore an honorable, decent and free civilization from purely secular premisses. Well, that will be the historical test of the Secular Right, won’t it? If I read you right, you hold very little hope of this happening – we are doomed, doomed. I don’t see you can say that, then also say that God just doesn’t make any difference.
Cheers and keep up the good fight… against the Chicoms, eco-nuts and wealth-eaters, I mean.
“And hasn’t robust Islamic faith fueled the recent rise of Islamic civilization? ”
What Islamic ‘civilization’? You seem to be confusing political influence with the health of society. The Golden Age of the Islamic world came when the principles of the faith that supposedly defined that culture were de facto ignored, and it ended when fundamentalists gained the upper hand.
When barbarians sacked Rome, it had less to do with the value of the barbarian’s culture and more to do with the failure of Rome’s. The Islamic world is a malignant cancer that spreads quickly precisely because it’s so grossly maladaptive.
If your only defense of your religion is that it’s a potent memetic weapon to mobilize the unwashed hordes against other memetic weapons, perhaps you should rethink your position.
I’m not defending religion, just pointing out facts. Western Europe is becoming increasingly Muslim, as are many other parts of the world. Read Mark Steyn. Religion may be good, bad or indifferent, true or false, and you may or may not like the societies it inspires but it surely is true that it is effective in THIS world. That’s the irony… whether religion works in the next world is a matter of faith. That it is effective in this world is a manifest fact. We are supposed to be empirical here, aren’t we?
If you want to dismiss religion as just a “potent memetic weapon”, fine, I won’t argue. All you are doing is making my point that religion makes a real difference in this world, not the next.
the recent rise of Islamic civilization
There ain’t no more “Islamic civilization” since 1258.
The Mongols exterminated the (nominally faithful) intellectual elites sparing only the rabble we are left with today.
“Western Europe is becoming increasingly Muslim, as are many other parts of the world.”
Smallpox. AIDS. Syphilis. Genital warts. Lice. Chickenpox. Lyme disease. The Black Death.
If we can’t beat a plague, you seem to be reasoning, perhaps we should join it.
I say we should call it what it is and treat it accordingly, even if we cannot ultimately destroy it. If we don’t, it will destroy us.
Excellent summary of the skeptic’s position.
I, too, am one of the 5% who are ok with it. In a sense, there’s probably something “wrong” with our 5%, just like there’s something “wrong” with people who are asexual.
But the skeptical stance is incomprehensible to the majority who believe. They imagine it must be much more than a shrug.
David T.: I agree with you. This is the “survival of the fittest” test for secular society. Can it produce a culture that is honorable, decent free and determined enough to resist the challenge posed by the Islamist virus seeking to take over the machinery of multicultural Western civilization and twist it to serve its own purposes.
Derb: I looked up Pascal’s wager and it reminded me of something similar I decided about “free will”. I believe in it. If I am right, I win. If I am wrong, I didn’t have any choice in the matter anyway!
I’m sorry I’m not being clear. I am not arguing that religion is good. Only that it makes a difference in this world. Smallpox, AIDS, etc…. these are all bad things that make a difference.
“Even if there is a God, there might as well not be.”
“Even if there is AIDS, there might as well not be.”
Well, no, AIDS makes a difference in this world, whatever it is. Denouncing AIDS as bad isn’t the same thing as finding a cure for it.
Allah seems to be making a big difference in this world, even if Allah is a fantasy (a meme, if you like), and the difference he is making is for the worse. Repeating how terrible Islam is may be satisfying, but its no more useful in combatting Islam than denouncing AIDS is in combatting AIDS.
Derb’s solution – the Mysterian/Naturalist one – seems to be to retire to his den with his books and scientific articles, living a life of honor and decency. Basically Epicurean. That’s all well and good, but it’s not going to do much about resisting Allah is it? It wouldn’t do much to stop the spread of AIDS either.
God makes a big difference in this world, even if God is merely a fantasy. That’s a fact. Shooting the messenger won’t change it.
As for one who came to my faith looking very stupid I can only type evidence of my faith and my brain.
thank Uall.
I’m just finishing Anthony Flew’s book: There is a God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind. Of course, he wouldn’t have if the simple argument here would have been his only criteria. If you want to really answer the question that your comment rests on, try philosophy and logic, not biology. You’ll get a lot further. In fact, you’ll get the unexpected answer Flew did. There is a God. Does that make a difference to life and how it is lived? Of course, unless you are a simplistic biologist with no curiosity about “the” questions.
Well, the Muslims are winning because they believe strongly in their faith and are willing to sacrifice and even die for the faith if necessary. The issue is the need for power and control over others. This is what drives all political movements, especially tyrannical and thuggish groups. From Hitler to communism and now drives Islam, man’s desire to control others has led to wars, genocide, and other atrocities from the beginning of time. What is needed to resist Islam is a value system (formerly Christianity) stronger than Islam to motivate people to resist this movement. Unfortunately, the culture of western civilization has changed over time to a more secular culture. Only 6 or so percent of the people in America are evangelical Christians, so the power to resist is significantly restrained and limited. Christianity provides a value system that gives individuals a belief in something good and greater than themselves. It is a belief system that causes people to sacrifice for the good of others, a belief and culture that is completely void in Islam. With Christianity waning in Europe, it is not surprising Europe is accepting or compromising to Islam. They do not a value system in their present culture to resist and their only alternative is to submit. The long term future of western civilization is bleak given the nature of Islam.
Now, I will argue as strongly as I can that Christianity has and will forever be the greatest movement for good in the world. I do not apologize for what people say are the atrocities or negatives of Christianity because the true believer will always be led in the direction of good not evil. I know the truth from the Bible, and I know without a doubt that in its correct form, Christianity is the only hope for the world. After almost 2000 years, the belief in Christ and his teachings have been challenged by secularists, atheists, and others. Secular scientists have attacked the tenants of Christianity and many people are now not led to even consider the teachings of the Bible and God’s revelation to mankind as recorded in this collection of books and writings. Listen to me……no true Christ following person or group under the guidance of the true God, would advocate evil. Many have hijacked faith in God and used it to do control people and do terrible things in the world. This is NOT Christianity. When a Christian does something wrong or commits evil, it is because of his spiritual weakness, not from the teachings from the Bible. When a Christian does evil, he is the first to know it, will not be an advocate of it, and will desire to depart and change the behavior. When we collectively follow the teachings of Christ, God will send goodness into our lives and evil will be restrained. If we refuse the truth of God and go our own way, we and the world will suffer for it and our lives will sink into confusion and we will believe anything. Seek the truth of God in Jesus Christ and find your rest and hope in His power and goodness. Man is a serious disappointment.
Rodger: Yes, Christianity was indeed a great force for good in the world. Likewise, Isaac Newton was 99.9% right about the law of gravitation. I am one of those secular humanists who wish to build upon this firm base inherited from Christianity, Judaism, Greek philosophy, the European (especially Scottish) enlightenment and Anglo-American ideas of governance.
When you were a child you thought that Santa Clause brought you the toys. When you grow up you realize that it was the love of your parents that was really responsible. To continue to believe in the fantasy (sorry Virginia) of Santa Claus would be a disservice to your parents and a failure to grasp reality. To everything there is a season, and now it is time for humanity to seek the truth, and cast of the fantasies of youth.
“The instinct to believe in another place is very strong and very human — I feel it in myself, sometimes with great force. Trouble is, there is no evidence for the other place but that instinct”
The evidence supporting the existence of this place is pretty shaky too. Einstein said “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
See –
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html
Have a nice fake day.
JB
Very well. God does not exist. But it still seems like you’re trying to have it both ways. In the natural world, the stability you need to confirm that such-and-such a thing is certain or even probable simply doesn’t exist, whether cognitively or empirically. A biochemically driven agent, if it has any freedom at all, must hold out for the fact that it’s own freedom and perceived ideals are illusions projected by its biochemistry to allow biochemistry to go on doing what it is that biochemistry does–which may have nothing to do (from our point of view) with what we think is real. Thus, any and every naturalist position must smuggle in an unchecked belief in the absolute validity of “truth” or “reality” even in trying to take away their absolute character. Your readers know that you don’t really believe in the naturalist position, for the simple reason that you’re trying to convey it as “true” (whatever the word can mean in a purely natural world). Is it not possible that your impulse to believe in a metaphysical absolute is not rooted so much in naturalist explanations but in the fact that you habitually rely on it even in denying its existence?
In the end, the problem with ditching the idea of God–or, more accurately, *the* Absolute–is that one can no longer positively affirm any absolute, non-empirical reality at all, even and perhaps most especially that there is no Absolute. It is often said, as you said, that given the state of natural reality there need be no God. But surely it must also be true that in such a state, there need be no more of this confirming and denying realities (such as “truth”) simultaneously. The cognitive result of the naturalist position is an intensified, un-self-disclosed ambiguity.
A lack of cognitive consistency is no answer to a lack of cognitive consistency (a point which may stand in for the simple rational response to Heather’s question and your essay). Again, say that God doesn’t exist. It still remains for atheists to put forth an integral alternative to believing in a lie. The believers believe in something that they don’t, and the non-believers pretend they don’t believe in something that they do. If God doesn’t exist, the believers really are fooled. But at least they have dialectical grounds for conveying things as “true.” If it didn’t result in yet another logical contradiction, they are the only ones who would have the logical right to say that the Absolute does not exist. As it is, consistent and rational believers hold a monopoly on saying when and where it is more veiled-in-appearances than not–an act that differs radically, I’ll admit, from the peek-a-boo version of the Absolute that adheres so obstinately in the minds of some believers (but, I can assure you, not all). Pascal’s wager is “deeper” than presented here: the wager is as much on the grounds for rational thought as it is on the grounds for belief in a God, a point not lost on him and most rationalist believers.
“Only 6 or so percent of the people in America are evangelical Christians, so the power to resist is significantly restrained and limited.”
Why do you think only evangelical Christians can resist?
Why do you think you can only oppose the plague by becoming like it?
@Rodger
Secular scientists have attacked the tenants of Christianity
yes, they have. For non-payment of intellectual rent.
“tenets,” my boy, tenets.
Now, please go away.
I am always fascinated when naturalists ask where God is is times like these. What is there answer? Don’t look now but ‘everyone’ must answer the question of suffering and pain, not just the theist. The atheist can’t ask the question. There is no one to ask. In fact Dawkins has said, ‘There is no evil or good, DNA just is and we dance to it’s music.’ Is that what you tell the victims of rape? “Well you know the guy has no responsibility he was just dancing to him DNA!’ Interestingly enough when disaster strikes the atheist asks the theist, ‘where is God?’ but when we view a sunset or sunrise (in color by the way) smell the aroma of an apple pie baking, and then actually are able to taste it, hear the music of Bach or P Diddy, enjoy the pleasures of sex. Who do you address then??!! God always gets the blame for pain and suffering but when it comes to the pleasures of life and the universe well that’s just…….the genius of ‘evolutionary wisdom.’
The atheist asks for a world where nothing of consequence or suffering happens as though God should make us only choose what He wants. The problem with that is the atheist would be the first one complaining to God to let him choose what he wants to do. ‘Leave me alone I don’t care if I mess up!’ God created us in His image and we have been trying to return the favor. He is not our benevolent grandfather out to make us happy. He’s given us freedom which is what we want in order to have the ability to…yes makes mistakes and have things go wrong. I would ask the atheist this. Lets play pretend and tell me seriously (not in a wise way) what kind of world would you create if you were God. I know I know but give it a shot. It’s just a hypothetical.
you wrote: “Trouble is, there is no evidence for the other place but that instinct”
I would respectfully disagree. In my personal opinion, the Book of Mormon is evidence of God’s existence. I do NOT believe it was, or even could have been, written by Joseph Smith, or by anyone else who lived in the 1820s. My religion still requires that I have faith, but it’s a lot easier to believe in God when there is another Testament of Jesus Christ out there, in addition to just the Bible.
In my opinion, Islam floats on oil. When the oil phase of human society passes, in a few decades, so will the Islamic revival.
Without Saudi funding for Salafist madrasses and mosques worldwide, and the high prestige this gives rise to, what would be driving it?
China is the only future power worth worrying about in this coming century. In fact for the next thousand years possibly. Though India may become important later this century.
The West’s 500-year “day in the sun” is passing because 10% of humanity can’t dominate the world for ever. And because half of mankind is in Asia and they are catching up.
@Tobias
I don’t see that your problem is really a problem at all. All empirical systems have to start somewhere: there are simply going to be base axioms and assumptions. The question is which ones are worth picking, and which are extravagant. The point of secular people is that we might as well start with the one reality we all seem to be collectively a part of: the one we can cross-confirm to each other. Yes, for all we know we might be brains in a jar, but so what? We can explore the world we are currently perceiving, its regularities and distinctions, and if that’s really the best we can do, then at least we aren’t trying to invent or assume too much beyond that.
And then there’s this: “But at least they have dialectical grounds for conveying things as “true.”
But they don’t. Believers don’t stand on any firmer ground than anyone else: in fact all they are EXTRA caveats and principles on top of what is otherwise necessary. Getting to the idea of a God requires all the basic assumptions one needs to agree to reality at all… but once you make those assumptions, it’s not clear how the additional assumption of God is anything but arbitrary and unecessary.
Put it another way: the assumption of God does, what, precisely, for our philosophical wonderings? What does it actually explain? All I see in God concepts are a name given to a LACK of explanation: there are moral absolutes… but no explanation as to what these really are or how they came to be. “God did it” really conveys no further information over “it seems so, but I don’t know how or why.”
That’s because “God” is a sort of black hole: it’s a being that can do ANYTHING in ANY way, including completely unintelligible ways, which is as good as saying nothing much at all about what particular capacity is necessary to get something done. Where did the universe come from? God made it. How? What specific capacities are necessary to make a universe and by what means? Theology seems to offer an extended “uhhhhh…” which I’ve never seen rise to the level of simply admitting that we don’t know (we don’t even know IF the universe came to be at all, or even if the question makes any sense).
Mysterian thought generally is a side-effect of dualistic systems of thought.
Science tends to push against that, because it totally focuses on the natural, and many science-influenced people start to see how they can make sense of reality in non-dualistic ways.
“Perhaps it all hinges on belief in the Afterlife. If you can swallow that, the rest of the God business goes down pretty easily.”
It really doesn’t all hinge on the afterlife but instead it hinges on Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. There is more historical proof of Jesus than there is Julius Ceasar, There is even secular proof of his life, death and resurrection. Hundreds of people saw the risen Christ and his enemies could not produce a corpse to disprove the resurrection. His closest followers, who cowered in a room together in abject fear immediately following his crucifiction went on to defy the authorities with boldness even to the death after seeing the risen Christ. Jesus affirmed the “afterlife” while he was here with his words and affirmed it in his death and resurrection. Jesus claimed to be God and backed up that claim with his resurrection. I challange you to do an intellectually honest investigation into the historical records of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ because if you do you will become a believer in the Son of God, Jesus the Christ.
I was going to comment something along the lines of my appreciation for the fact that some commentors here are looking at matters pertaining to religion in objective sociological terms and can appreciate some positive results of modern Christianity even if it’s overwhelmingly bunk. I was going to go a bit further and remind people that the introduction to Idiocracy better states the workings of Survival of the “Fittest” than do most of our innate “feelings” on the subject that “fit” ought to be tied to intelligence or humanliness or believing in things that are true or in being individualistic or open-minded or whatever, but I really can’t do that right now. I’m still smiling and TOTALLY distracted by Robert’s comment above. I love it!
“In my personal opinion, the Book of Mormon is evidence of God’s existence.”
Can it get any better than that? Yes it can!
“I do NOT believe it was, or even could have been, written by Joseph Smith, or by anyone else who lived in the 1820s. My religion still requires that I have faith, but it’s a lot easier to believe in God when there is another Testament of Jesus Christ out there, in addition to just the Bible.”
Please don’t think that I’m making fun of poor Robert, I’m doing no such thing. I mean to agree with him regarding the divine origins of the Book of Mormon, a text I’ve considered divine since reading Mark Twain’s account of the thing in “Roughing It”. Twain was no fool and if he considered the evidence for the book’s divinity to be almost beyond question then who am I to argue?
Having been exposed to the book at a time when it had not yet reached the wider world in all of its 8,963 translated languages Twain commented (in part, I’m quoting short selections):
“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle–keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.”
Having been convinced that its soporific effect would have made it impossible for a conscious human being to create Twain went on to investigate the matter further in the course of which he quotes the books first (of two) title-page claims of authenticity through “The Testimony of Three Witnesses”, after which he says:
“Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a man tells me that he has “seen the engravings which are upon the plates,” and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either.
Next is this:
And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen the plates too; and not only seen those plates but “hefted” them, I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified.”
And this is just the beginning.
Together with Robert and Mark, I intend to form a Holy Trinity to take up residence in the vicinity of Kolob where my wives and I shall run a few worlds.
We will not allow blogs.
@Richard arnone
So do you simply type out this same nonsense vaguely from memory, or copy and paste it from some apologetics book?
“There is more historical proof of Jesus than there is Julius Ceasar,”
Nonsense. While both are likely to have existed in some form or other, the Caesar we know comes from all manner of historical records, artifacts, and contemporaneous discussions of his actions as major historical figure. The Jesus we know comes only from mentions of a small group of followers, with most accounts that tell any sort of historical or biographical details emerging decades after his death. The best we can do is assume that there was a real person who was the source of the original sect, but beyond that there is no “historical” Jesus we can speak of with any confidence or reliability. The only source we have that comes from the right time period is Paul, who not only never met Jesus as a historical figure (he had a vision of someone he thought was Jesus), but doesn’t even seem to know or at least recall any of the stories about his life that would later supposedly be so central to his ministry and the Gospel accounts.
“There is even secular proof of his life, death and resurrection.”
For his life and death, again, all we have are accounts from believers, not contemporary historical sources or artifacts. Most historians would still agree based on this that there was a real person who, like countless visionary preachers in the period, was executed and became a martyr figure to his followers.
There’s most certainly no reliable proof of his “resurrection” outside of religious texts. How would historians even begin to provide proof of a miraculous event in the first place? If you want to accept those as certain proof, then why not all the accounts of all religious texts everywhere?
“Hundreds of people saw the risen Christ and his enemies could not produce a corpse to disprove the resurrection.”
A story claiming hundreds of witnesses is not the same things as hundreds of witnesses. I can claim that millions of people saw me turn lead into gold: that still doesn’t make it any more compelling that just me claiming both.
And there’s no evidence that anyone really cared about “producing his body” or would have tried to do so until long after he would have died, and by that point no one even knew where he was buried in the first place (not to mention that stealing a body is not exactly rocket science anyway). It’s not even clear that the stories involving an empty tomb and so forth had even begun until decades after his death.
“His closest followers, who cowered in a room together in abject fear immediately following his crucifiction went on to defy the authorities with boldness even to the death after seeing the risen Christ.”
Which is also true of countless of other religious sects: including those that Christians persecuted and put to death (including other Christians!).
“Jesus claimed to be God and backed up that claim with his resurrection.”
We don’t know what Jesus claimed. We barely even know what his original followers claimed. And even the Gospels make the idea that he claimed to be “God” somewhat murky and ambiguous.
“I challange you to do an intellectually honest investigation into the historical records of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ because if you do you will become a believer in the Son of God, Jesus the Christ.”
Funny, because lots of evangelical Christians have become zealous Bible scholars and had exactly the opposite happen: realized that such strong and certain claims make little sense in light of the actual practice of history, and thus that the historical record on Jesus is murky at best: certainly not anywhere near reliable enough to seriously speak of proof of more than that someone by his name lived, founded a cult, was probably killed for it (as was common) and that his followers dealt with this by trying to make sense of the seeming failure by recasting it in new theology.
Just as an example: the Gospels tell that when Jesus was killed, all sorts of tombs broke open and dead holy people wandered around talking to people. Now if that sort of thing had actually happened, don’t you think it would have been a pretty darn big deal, worthy of comment by historians of the time, Jewish leaders, etc? And yet the only place this astonishing event is recounted is in what is basically a throwaway mention in one of the Gospels, never followed up on. (Did the saints eventually call it a day, walk back into their tombs and close them up again? Did they go back to their families and loved ones and have supper and resume their lives? What?)
That’s nothing. We’ve had dead people voting in elections.
Just interested to see Derb still describing himself as a Mysterian; I’d been thinking that he was beginning to sound more and more like an outright atheist. Not that it’s important. It’s just intriguing to follow a person’s intellectual journey as reflected in his writings. I think when I started reading Derb’s stuff on NRO he was still a churchgoer. Then he came up with this FAQ on his beliefs, http://tinyurl.com/bfrcte. I recommend it to anybody who hasn’t read it.
I screwed up that last post: the whole first paragraph is Bad’s, the rest is my response.
BAD SAID: Put it another way: the assumption of God does, what, precisely, for our philosophical wonderings? What does it actually explain?
TOBIAS RESPONDS: If you tally up all the problems that the existence of God brings into play, you won’t find on that list that the existence of God directly contradicts the human capacity to know the truth. The very first item on the list of empiricism’s problems is that it directly contradicts the human capacity to affirm anything, including empiricism. In comparing them, there’s no contest: believing in empiricism eliminates our ability to know or say anything with certainty. Belief in God does not.
Second, let me say that I am positing metaphysics, not religion or theology, against your physics. Rational thought when constricted by empiricism eventually undermines rational thought. Metaphysics as such has no such problem, except when empiricism or science or positivism or some other such thing is pretending to be metaphysics (which they do rather often, I’m afraid).
Third, the shortest two answers to your question are: 1) that the metaphysical Absolute is the thing that we assume exists every time we say or think something that we think is absolutely true – which we do literally all the time. By admitting its existence, we are simply admitting the necessary prerequisite for what we are already treating as a given. If you don’t believe that the transcendent/immanent Absolute exists, then it remains for you to explain how the things you think are absolutely true or good or what have you got their absolute quality. The universe is not particularly anxious to help you on this point, slammed full as it is with things that are hardly absolute.
2) The universe is made up of laws and events. The laws don’t cause the events, they merely describe the way the events behave. What caused the events? Events causing events? We are faced with two possibilities: either all of the events had an origin or they had not. If they had an origin, then you have something that is suspiciously like a creation. Scientists will go on forever trying to supplant that creation with another event, but it’s the same old game. Each event calls for an answer to the question of its own origin. The probability field that preceded the singularity is no more a final solution to the problem of origins than is the singularity itself. The probability field, the 10 strings, Lisi’s E8 model and every entity in it — all beg the question of their own origins. If, on the other hand, the universe had no origin, then you have an infinite regression backwards that is unintelligible to scientific thought. Even if science went infinitely backwards and explained every link in the chain, it would reach an ultimate origin — an Absolute limit — and it would still have to explain the existence of the chain itself. God, in this case, simply supplants the inevitable. And if he is suspiciously implied at the beginning, we may be healthily suspicious that he abides along and throughout the process.
BAD SAID: That’s because “God” is a sort of black hole: it’s a being that can do ANYTHING in ANY way, including completely unintelligible ways, which is as good as saying nothing much at all about what particular capacity is necessary to get something done. Where did the universe come from? God made it. How? What specific capacities are necessary to make a universe and by what means? Theology seems to offer an extended “uhhhhh…” which I’ve never seen rise to the level of simply admitting that we don’t know (we don’t even know IF the universe came to be at all, or even if the question makes any sense).
TOBIAS RESPONDS: Well, it depends on which sorts of capacities you are willing to allow. God, by definition, would not be *bound* by empirical capacities, though it seems pretty clear he would be free to use them. But in order to answer this question I will assume that you see the universe as empiricists tend to see it. Most empiricists believe (last time I checked) that the universe is the result of a so-called singularity — that is, that an infinite probability field, lacking any actual energy and therefore without any causal capacity, was able to thrust into existence an expanding singularity so powerful that it was able to displace the infinitely larger surrounding void (whoa!) and reduce the infinite probability field to a finite one (impossible again), thus giving the singularity an omnipotent character, in spite of the fact that empiricists also claim the singularity and the resulting universe are uniformly limited. If empiricism can posit this, then surely you can see how, at least in theory, God can act in an omnipotence that transcends all known physical laws, in much the same way that the probability field can. It would be six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other if it weren’t for the fact that the singularity results in a universe where capacity to rationally understand ultimate origins (or anything else) is quite literally impossible. God comes out a winner yet again, because God-as-origin doesn’t contradict, by its existence, the very reality of rational validity.
If your belief in origins is other than the singularity/probability field, let me know.
No Tobias you are seriously out of date.
There is an abundance of models that go beyond the initial singularity. The two most popular and best supported ones are probably:
The Eternal Inflation Model
The Ekpyrotic Model
But really you can’t imagine how deep this subject is now.
All I can retain from all this is that there is not a God as defined by any of the dominant faiths existing today. I am not sure that means there is not a God.
There is just not enough evidence for me to believe in a God, yet.
That does not mean I do not have sufficient evidence to NOT believe in a Jewish, Christian, or Islamic God. To me, it is obvious that those Gods are a social construct. What is interesting is that the oldest (Jewish) God is the most comprehensible.
“And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” (Genesis 3:22)”
This verse, along with Jonathan Livingston Seagull and an education in Mormonism have conspired to make me a non-believer.
I do not believe that humankind can attain perfection. That is my stumbling block. If I do not believe that, I can’t quite believe in any religious story of humanity.
I will try to be as good as I can be, understanding that “good” is a subjective ideal. Christianity, in its transformation from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, has done a decent job of describing the “good” that man can be. I have no desire to negate that, yet I cannot bring myself to believe in a God.
@Tobias
“With regard to empiricism as such, all you’re trying to do here is smuggle in the validity of “perceptions” and what you call “exploring” them in spite of the fact that you just admitted they may have no validity and that validity itself is questionable.”
I haven’t tried to smuggle in anything. You don’t seem to understand what an axiom is if you’re going to accuse me of this.
“You say that “we” can agree on perceptions, but how would that be possible if we didn’t also agree that there was something really, objectively “there,” so to speak, to which our minds could really correlate?”
But we can simply agree to this. It’s not hard. You just did it implicitly by even sitting down on a computer and typing a response to me in the context of the physical world.
“How could we possibly have agreement without both objectivity and belief in the mind’s power to attain it? Empiricism allows you neither of these.”
But this is utterly irrelevant. We already put forth the basic grounds for this as our basic axioms. And those axioms, as it happens, are pretty much unavoidable in any case. If they are wrong, then there’s no point in discussion anyway, so what do we have to lose?
“The self-contradiction of empiricism is very simple, and it need have nothing to do with whether God exists or not.”
You invented a self-contradiction by simply not understanding what empiricism is.
“Call it what you will, but affirming some axiom or methodology that disproves the capacity for affirmation is a self-contradiction.”
This sentence makes no sense. The methodology states, right up front, what sort of affirmation it deals in.
“My point in my first post is that no matter what we do, we are not going to jettison the assumption that there is such a thing as “truth” and that it has an absolute, objective quality, and that it is real, and that we can know it.”
You accused me a smuggling things, but as far as I can tell, you’re the one employing concepts like truth and so forth prior to establishing any meaningful context for them (i.e. the context is smuggled in the back door without the sort of honest upfront acknowledgment empiricists respectfully give)
“The assumption that objective truth is real is here to stay, regardless of circumstances.”
Ok, so add that idea to our list of axioms. I don’t mind. What exactly does it do? How does it help us understand or demonstrate anything at all?
“And assuming that God doesn’t exist, the foolishness of other people’s beliefs doesn’t justify the flat-out incapable-of-rising-to-even-the-dignity-of-error weirdness of empiricism.”
Now having failed to make your case, you’re suddenly going to declare that it should take time and energy to assume that God DOESN’T exist? You really are operating from a mixed up, backwards paradigm here.
“The very first item on the list of empiricism’s problems is that it directly contradicts the human capacity to affirm anything, including empiricism.”
Did you somehow miss the last century of metaphysical philosophy and logic? Name ANY logical system that can “affirm” itself in the way you are talking about. Again, there’s no contradiction here: just your misunderstanding of what people mean by axioms/assumptions/etc. and why they are inevitable and unavoidable for discussing anything whatsoever.
“that the metaphysical Absolute is the thing that we assume exists every time we say or think something that we think is absolutely true – which we do literally all the time. By admitting its existence, we are simply admitting the necessary prerequisite for what we are already treating as a given. If you don’t believe that the transcendent/immanent Absolute exists, then it remains for you to explain how the things you think are absolutely true or good or what have you got their absolute quality. The universe is not particularly anxious to help you on this point, slammed full as it is with things that are hardly absolute.”
I’m not a fan of the logical positivists, but they at least had some insight when they noted that paragraphs like the above are little more than word salad. Things like “the absolute” don’t seem to have any real operational meaning in your argument: they are simply dumping grounds for all the concepts and assumptions you apparently have no intention of ever explaining.
“If they had an origin, then you have something that is suspiciously like a creation.”
I suppose in your wonderful metaphysics, petty things like the logical fallacy are of little consequence, right? No: origins are not in any sense the same thing as “creation.” “Creation” is a term that adds all sorts of other connotations, including a mind and intent. None of which you’ve justified here in the slightest so far. Remember that complaint about smuggling again? Here’s another example of you setting it up.
“The probability field that preceded the singularity is no more a final solution to the problem of origins than is the singularity itself. The probability field, the 10 strings, Lisi’s E8 model and every entity in it — all beg the question of their own origins. If, on the other hand, the universe had no origin, then you have an infinite regression backwards that is unintelligible to scientific thought.”
Heavens, it would be terrible if we ever had to simply admit that we don’t know something, instead of making it up on the spot, wouldn’t it!
“Even if science went infinitely backwards and explained every link in the chain, it would reach an ultimate origin — an Absolute limit — and it would still have to explain the existence of the chain itself. God, in this case, simply supplants the inevitable. And if he is suspiciously implied at the beginning, we may be healthily suspicious that he abides along and throughout the process.”
None of this follows I’m afraid. You’re basically just recasting the long failed idea of a first cause in slightly dressier language. But calling something the “absolute” and “ultimate” origin is again just more word games, more smuggling via equivocation (i.e. something is the ultimate (final) cause, but then you a different meaning of the term to imply ultimate in the sense of biggest most powerful awesome dude).
If you are going to posit an uncaused cause as an explanation, then you have no grounds from that at present to additionally imply that it’s anything particularly special BEYOND merely being an uncaused cause. God is uncaused and created the universe isn’t any more intelligible than the universe simply existing uncaused, and it adds a useless, non-explanatory entity for no reason to boot.
And thus you seem to have missed the point of my objection. You haven’t shown what this “absolute” as you call it actually does or explains specifically. It merely, in your description has magical, unseen power, the nature of which and specific operative capacity of which is still unspecified.
What the universe is, how and if it came to be, is real and interesting matter. Saying “a thing that can just do whatever it is that needs to be done to make it be the way it is” is really just a highly creative way of saying “I have no idea either.”
@
Bad
Bad: Let’s break it down.
1) The fundamental axiom on which all thought is based is that the truth exists and that it can be apprehended.
2) Empiricism concludes unequivocally that the truth, as such, does not exist, and no biochemical agent can ever apprehend it.
3) You believe that we can agree on some things, and you say that what is being agreed upon is not make-believe (as opposed as you say you are to make-believe), so I’m assuming you think that this agreement is not merely make-believe, but is based on something actually real.
As I thin is plain, step two contradicts step one, and step three contradicts step two. But you want to maintain all of them simultaneously as all being equally true.
The inevitable points follow:
A) If you believe agreement is legitimately based on the human capacity to know objective facts, then you’re not really an empiricist, a la Prof. Joad. (My point earlier being that no empiricist is really an empiricist, since empiricism thinks itself true even as it thinks truth impossible.)
B) If you’re an empiricist, and you believe that agreement is not really based on objective truth, then the things that we agree about (being devoid of objective truth) are as much make-believe as believing in God or Pink Unicorns.
Now, seems to me it’s time to make a choice – other, that is, than that of unmitigated self-contradiction. If you are seriously suggesting that I or anybody should embrace this imploding daisy chain of contradiction, I’m afraid I have to pass. I believe that truth exists and that the human agent can know it. Call me crazy. Even those human agents who believe they’re undermining objective reality tell the lie when they say that their undermining is “true.”
“Heavens, it would be terrible if we ever had to simply admit that we don’t know something, instead of making it up on the spot, wouldn’t it!”
That was awesome. Never thought I’d hear an empiricist make the claim that one must know when to stop. For my own part, I don’t know of a single quality or reality that science hasn’t at some point tried to reduce to a mere quantity. According to empirical science, the mind is nothing more than the brain; the difference between justice and revenge is a convention; the idea of the “good” is a projection of neurons; love is nothing more than lust; biological life is a temporary contortion on the face of logarithmic necessity; and ultimate origins are irrelevant. Such self-restraint just takes your breath away.
@
Bad
As far as the Absolute is concerned, I’m not merely putting him “there,” so to speak, a little bit more powerful than the universe, and saying “Deal with it.” I’m saying that all thought necessarily posits the idea of the “absolute” in every formulation. But for the sake of argument, if you can’t see that metaphysics is itself necessary even to try to disprove it, then surely the absolute’s going to fall dead between us. So, for the time being let’s just deal with the nature of origins itself. (Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the Absolute.) You say that it would be rude, or presumptuous, or whatever to inquire into the nature of the origin of everything. Why? Is it not because even you can see that the origins of physics – there necessarily being an origin, whatever it is – must of necessity be metaphysical (that is, “beyond the physical”)?
@Tobias
“1) The fundamental axiom on which all thought is based is that the truth exists and that it can be apprehended.”
This statement is meaningless without an operational definition of truth, which is simply impossible without further context provided. Empiricism, by the way, provides such context: and openly, instead of simply by handwaving.
“2) Empiricism concludes unequivocally that the truth, as such, does not exist, and no biochemical agent can ever apprehend it.”
No, this is what you claim it concludes. Hardly the same thing. Empiricism’s attitude towards the truth is that our apprehension of it is always provisional: the best we can conclude, but always subject to further evidence. That’s simply not the same thing as “no truth.”
“3) You believe that we can agree on some things, and you say that what is being agreed upon is not make-believe (as opposed as you say you are to make-believe), so I’m assuming you think that this agreement is not merely make-believe, but is based on something actually real.”
I believe that you don’t have the slightest idea what empiricism is or says. I’d be happy to discuss this further when you demonstrate some basic understanding of the subject.
I don’t agree that you’ve identified any contradictions here. You’ve made up a lot of stuff that is barely recognizable as what empiricism is or says, and claimed its contradictory, apparently in ignorance of the difference between assumptions and the systems built out of them. You also seem to be laboring under the delusion that there is some alternate method of developing a metaphysic that doesn’t rely on any assumptions.
And yet here you are, basically conceding my point over and over by taking the world around us seriously, as if it actually exists, which is precisely all that empiricism asks or requires to function.
“According to empirical science, the mind is nothing more than the brain”
Oh, geez, I forgot: because the wisdom of Galen, that it was an alembic for distilling animal spirits, was so much more sensible!
Empiricism looks at the brain and asks how it works. It asks that we provide some actual evidence for our explanations based on an actual examination of the brain. You on the other hand, seem to prefer that we sling a lot of unintelligible terminology around that explains absolutely nothing about how brains operate, what thoughts are, or anything else.
No wonder your sort doesn’t get any grants to study the brain any more.
“I’m saying that all thought necessarily posits the idea of the “absolute” in every formulation.”
An idea of an absolute is not the same thing as there being one in the sense you seem to intend… which you still don’t seem to be ready to define anyway. You can’t simply use words like “absolute” in ways obviously meant to go beyond their actual meaning, but without having any intelligible description of what sort of thing this “Absolute” even is.
“You say that it would be rude, or presumptuous, or whatever to inquire into the nature of the origin of everything.”
Nonsense. What I said was that what you are doing is not in any sense an “inquiry” into the issue whatsoever. It answers nothing, explains nothing, and doesn’t even bother to address the question of whether or not there was or had to be any origin in the first place. Empirical science can simply look at these questions and say “geez, we don’t seem to know or even begin to understand this phenomenon: we can speculate a little based on what knowledge we do have, but let’s not get carried away.” You, on the other hand, seem utterly convinced that you’ve grasped it entirely simply by uttering some magic phrases that you don’t seem able to define, much less that actually reveal any new information about the origin of anything.
“Is it not because even you can see that the origins of physics – there necessarily being an origin, whatever it is – must of necessity be metaphysical (that is, “beyond the physical”)?”
No, I don’t see that we can sensibly speak of such things in any definitive manner. We don’t know IF there was an origin of physics. Secondly, you’re equivocating yet again: trying to jump from the possibility of varying physical laws to the idea of something beyond “the physical” (of course, I very much doubt you can provide any cognitively meaningful description of what a “non-physical” thing is, aside from just telling us what it isn’t)
Tobias: To perhaps clear things up, a large part of what Bad is saying is that what you’re saying is nonsense. Not that it’s stupid or wrong, necessarily, but just that he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.
I assume he’s proceeding from something like a phenomenological view of what the world is. We don’t perceive things as ‘existing’; we perceive things as ‘blue’ or as ‘sharp’ or as ‘sweet’ (this includes perceptions of conscious states, as well) – that is, we don’t directly experience ‘things’, even, but just bundles of sensations that we group as perceptions of ‘things’. ‘Existence’ is a very complicated non-basic idea, but what we mean when we say that something ‘exists’ has to be explicable in terms of the basic ideas that we have access to. I imagine that he’d suggest that our idea of existence is something to do with agreement among the senses and/or the predictive usefulness of an observation. One of his points is that you’ve detached your notions of reality and existence, among other things, from these basic ideas that we have direct access to, and that you’ve made them more or less meaningless by doing so. You rely on the meaningful sense of the terms in places, but you slide in and out of the domain of stuff that we can have meaningful concepts of.
At least half of your discussion could be summarized as follows:
Tobias: We presuppose an absolute in order to do lots of stuff.
Bad: What’s an absolute?
Tobias: It’s the thing we presuppose in order to do lots of stuff.
Bad: So why do we have to presuppose one, whatever it is?
Tobias: In order to do lots of stuff.
That holds for an ‘absolute’, for an ‘origin of physics’, and for a ‘grounding of truth’, and perhaps even for ‘God’.
The rest seems to me to be him pointing out that any system has to have axioms that aren’t justifiable within the system, and so what you’re claiming as the fundamental problem of empiricism isn’t unique to empiricism.
Uh, Mr. Derbyshire, doesn’t the Wikipedia article you cite in support of your materialist conception of personality actually undermine your position? I’m thinking particularly of the last paragraph of the entry.
Cheers.
““1) The fundamental axiom on which all thought is based is that the truth exists and that it can be apprehended.”
This statement is meaningless without an operational definition of truth, which is simply impossible without further context provided. Empiricism, by the way, provides such context: and openly, instead of simply by handwaving.”
Ah, now we come to the real difficulty. The universal, “operational” definition of truth: affirmation of what is, regardless of context. You believe that truth is dependent upon context – which is to say, that truth changes definition with each context. I have been arguing all this time thinking that you would not go so far as to deny the universal meaning of truth. But if you go that far, then obviously there’s not much that we could agree on. If truth (the affirmation of what is) is not the over-riding standard or principle among us, then clearly you and I wouldn’t even know it if we did happen to agree, there being no consistent standard by which to judge.
But just out of curiosity, answer me this one question. You said that context must be determined first and then truth is given an “operational” definition to fit that context. Without truth as an unchanging standard prior to context, how do you determine whether a given context is real? How is your context “true” or “real” if the definition of “true” and “real” comes after the context is determined? Doesn’t this make context “beyond real”? And isn’t that the very definition of “make-believe”?
“We don’t know IF there was an origin of physics.”
It’s not that hard to see. If there was no origin, of a purely physical kind, then that means that the perpetuation of physics is an everlasting impulse, reaching back in the cause-and-effect chain for eternity. The last time I checked, according to the laws of physics nothing compounded of matter can last eternally. Of course the physical universe had an origin. Or are you claiming that the physics as a whole acts in non-physical ways? If so, aren’t you implying mysterious, non-physical ways that are (gulp) essentially metaphysical?
“Secondly, you’re equivocating yet again: trying to jump from the possibility of varying physical laws to the idea of something beyond “the physical” (of course, I very much doubt you can provide any cognitively meaningful description of what a “non-physical” thing is, aside from just telling us what it isn’t)”
Oh, man. But that’s the easy part. I’ll refer to the definition above: truth is the affirmation of what is. Truth, as we both know, is a non-physical thing because there is no physical thing or event you can point to and say, “That’s truth! It weighs such and such and emits light on the ultraviolet scale and moves at such and such a speed and orbits such and such a black hole and hangs out with hadrons and quasars on its lunch break.” And as you can see for yourself, my definition is positive in the sense that it says what truth *is,* not what it is *not.* There. That’s a non-physical reality positively described in a “cognitively meaningful” way. But obviously you’re not going to buy that description. You believe in some nebulous something – which you call “context” and which somehow *is* more than everything else that *is.*
I await answers to the questions posed above regarding how you choose context without using the truth to do so; and with that I give you the last word. I hope that reality turns out to be something more for you than a shifting flux that has the power to re-shape even such things as truth, and I sincerely hope that all things work out well for you.
That’s a positive definition of ‘truth’, I guess, but it’s also hopelessly circular, at least on face. Amusingly (to me), it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. What do you mean by ‘is’? If you just mean ‘has truth’, or even if you just mean ‘exists’, then your definition isn’t at all helpful. You haven’t explained your idea of truth in terms of more basic ideas. How do we distinguish ‘the affirmation of what is’ from ‘the affirmation of what is not’? In short, what is? And what does it mean for something to be (‘is’ being the third person singular form of ‘to be’)? I don’t see what your definition of truth meaningfully applies to.
@
Gotchaye
“The rest seems to me to be him pointing out that any system has to have axioms that aren’t justifiable within the system, and so what you’re claiming as the fundamental problem of empiricism isn’t unique to empiricism.”
Good summary, but with need of one very important correction. He and I would *both* agree that every system has to have axioms that are not justifiable within the system. The use of such axioms, in itself, is not the problem with empiricism or any other system. Unprovable-but-apparent axioms are necessary. As has often been said, “If nothing can be assumed, nothing can be proven.” Where we disagree is when the system ends up, sooner or later, contradicting the axioms or assumptions.
In this case, the axiom, universally recognized as a necessary starting point for any system of knowledge, is that there must be an objective order of knowledge. I.e., there must be a knowable thing and there must be a knower capable of knowing that thing. This can’t be proven; it simply must be if knowledge is possible at all. Empiricism starts with this axiom (again, no problem at all there) but, by the method of looking at and inducing from only the physical plane, it ends up concluding that even if there is such a thing as objective reality (which is doubtful), a biochemical agent (such as a human being) cannot possibly know it with any certainty, because his knowledge is entirely at the whim of his biochemistry. Thus, a fundamental axiom of knowledge is contradicted. Empiricism starts by believing that knowable reality is empirical, and concludes that there is no such thing as knowable reality.
Bad’s argument, as I understand it, is that the axiom should stay (even though empiricism says it must go), while the method of empiricism stays. My argument is that the axiom (reality exists and is objectively knowable) should stay while the means (empiricism) should go, seeing as it contradicts its the axiom. There is nothing wrong with the axiom: we are going to assume it no matter what system we start up. Empiricism itself assumes it even in contradicting it. There therefore must be something wrong with the system known as empiricism, not the axiom, since it is so at odds with one of its own assumptions and with itself.
Further, regarding the self-contradiction, empiricism contradicts not only one of its axioms but also its own conclusions. When empiricism says, as if stating a certain, apprehended reality, that reality is objectively uncertain and inapprehensible, the total sum value of this conclusion is equivalent to the sentence “This sentence is not true.” I.e., there’s no consistent value. All that empiricism states, at the end of the day, is that it puts ultimate value and no value at all in our ability to know the truth. For that reason, I say ditch it and keep the axiom. It’s not like we have a real choice about keeping the axiom. And there’s no need to maintain a system that contradicts itself.
One thing I should say to everyone in general is that I am not cynical towards empiricism as a means of sometimes (though not always) finding some helpful tools for living in the world. Empiricism (like most limited means) can sometimes be every helpful. What I am arguing against is empiricism-as-an-explanation-for-the-totality-of-reality. A saw that helps me buid a house shouldn’t be used on all trees and everything else.
The last time I checked, according to the laws of physics nothing compounded of matter can last eternally.
Physics is not “compounded of matter”
It is spacetime and quantum fields, which may well be geometric in origin themselves if string theory and its derivatives are true. You should check the literature.
Here are the General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology papers submitted to Arxiv in January 2009
Someone with your deep understanding of physics should have no trouble reading them.
“What I am arguing against is empiricism-as-an-explanation-for-the-totality-of-reality.”
Empiricism is a method, not an explanation. It generates explanations.
That’s not what you’re arguing against. What you’re actually arguing against is the idea that people don’t have to take you seriously because your beliefs are incompatible with even rudimentary rational thought, and so you try to tear down rationality as a standard.
Here’s a nice Canadian review paper from that Arxiv list, Tobias. It illustrates exactly my point in my original comment to you #35.
This is from the final summary to the paper Transcending Big Bang in Loop Quantum Cosmology: Recent Advances:
Loop quantum cosmology via the incorporation of non-perturbative quantum gravity effects has given useful insights on the quantum nature of the big bang. Its success lies in overcoming the limitations of the Wheeler-DeWitt quantum cosmology.From the studies of simplest models the emerging picture resolves the big bang singularity. The quantum geometric effects lead to significant departures from classical GR at Planck scale leading to a quantum bounce. The spacetime does not end at the big bang singularity, as in classical GR, but extends in to a pre-big bang branch joined with the post big-bang branch through a quantum gravitational bridge.
This mysterian stuff appears to be an attempt to revive “vitalism”. Vitalism, based on dualism, in an meaningful sense has been falsified for over a century.