The following is the logical conclusion of the atheistic worldview showing its utter bankruptcy. We cannot be good without God, and without God, anything goes. If God does not exist, there are no “oughts”, “shoulds”, or “musts.” Without God, everything is permissible resulting in total moral anarchy. The serial killer debates an atheistic professor on whether or not to kill the professor.
From http://www.godawa.com/cruellogic.htm:
Story
A brilliant serial killer videotapes his debates with college faculty victims. The topic: His moral right to kill them.
Herman Mudgett thinks he is God bringing in the apocalypse, which is why he is called “The Millennium Killer.” When Mudgett escapes from a hospital for the criminally insane, Dr. Joseph Kallinger, the psychiatrist who testified on behalf of Mudgett’s insanity, is called in to help profile him with Detective Van Til, the cop who originally caught Mudgett. Their bitter pairing intensifies when Kallinger exploits Mudgett’s case for his book on criminal behavior. The stakes increase when one of Kallinger’s female students, with whom he is having a secret affair, is drawn into the danger.
And then the videotapes start to show up. Mudgett is capturing distinguished college professors and debates with them. His proposition: “Give me one valid reason why I should not kill you, and I will let you go.” As Mudgett dismantles their reasoning, he proceeds to dismember his victims, recording it all on video. The method to his madness is soon revealed: Mudgett’s murders are a forensic argument, proving himself to be guiltless to the cop and sane to the psychiatrist. Catching the killer is not enough to win this debate. Both heroes will have to face their inner demons.
But then it’s revealed that Mudgett has an accomplice, and all the evidence points to Kallinger, but all the reality points to Van Til. Who is predator and who is prey in this cat and mouse debate where ideas have consequences?
Cruel Logic is a story about human nature, the problem of evil, and one man’s attempt to regain his sanity in a world without absolutes.
Danny, a very well done and powerful video. Wow!
[...] You MUST click here. [...]
WOW! And I like the new look by the way!
So how do you explain the fact that most atheists don’t, in fact, torture others, and don’t behave significantly worse than anyone else?
It seems very unlikely that people like Dennett, Dawkins, or Hitchens haven’t thought their ideas through, to say nothing of any number of other people who deconverted. So there must be another reason why they don’t run around doing bad things.
Hey, thanks for the interaction. I also saw that you had linked to my previous post on the so-called “double miracle.” Here are a couple of thoughts to your questions and comments:
So how do you explain the fact that most atheists don’t, in fact, torture others, and don’t behave significantly worse than anyone else?
The point of the film is not to show that atheists are lousy and immoral people (Christians and people from other religions tend to be pretty lousy and immoral as well at times), the whole point of the film is that if you follow the logical conclusion of the atheistic worldview, anything goes because there is no standard for determining right and wrong. If we’re all just a bunch of bacteria, why does it really matter in the end what we do? Once we’re all dead, who really cares.
Secondly, even if an atheist does not torture people and doesn’t behave significantly worse, he still does not have an objective reason by which he can justify his behavior and even determine whether or not he is behaving worse or better than others. For example, what is the standard of determining better or worse from an atheistic worldview? Who determines that standard?
It seems very unlikely that people like Dennett, Dawkins, or Hitchens haven’t thought their ideas through, to say nothing of any number of other people who deconverted.
I am currently reading Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation and he makes plenty of moral “oughts” and assertions, but the one small problem is that he can’t first account for why I should listen to his “oughts” in the first place.
Did you ask any atheists before posting that video? Or did you simply assume there’s no way to tell right from wrong unless one believes in a god? If so, that’s an argument from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy (not to mention presumptuous).
Also, you haven’t answered my question: how do you explain the fact that most atheists don’t behave as in the video you posted?
No fallacy here. My question was not a question from ignorance. If you would like to answer what standard you appeal to and why that standard is objective, then by all means, feel free to answer. Some atheists claim to be absolutely relative and others claim that there are absolutes. Either way, whether you claim objective absolutes or not, you will still be unable to account for them.
Also, you haven’t answered my question: how do you explain the fact that most atheists don’t behave as in the video you posted?
I believe you are misunderstanding the entire premise of the film. The torturer is a serial killer and the atheist is the professor. The professor cannot give a reason why he shouldn’t be killed. From http://www.godawa.com/cruellogic.htm :
Story
A brilliant serial killer videotapes his debates with college faculty victims. The topic: His moral right to kill them.
Herman Mudgett thinks he is God bringing in the apocalypse, which is why he is called “The Millennium Killer.” When Mudgett escapes from a hospital for the criminally insane, Dr. Joseph Kallinger, the psychiatrist who testified on behalf of Mudgett’s insanity, is called in to help profile him with Detective Van Til, the cop who originally caught Mudgett. Their bitter pairing intensifies when Kallinger exploits Mudgett’s case for his book on criminal behavior. The stakes increase when one of Kallinger’s female students, with whom he is having a secret affair, is drawn into the danger.
And then the videotapes start to show up. Mudgett is capturing distinguished college professors and debates with them. His proposition: “Give me one valid reason why I should not kill you, and I will let you go.” As Mudgett dismantles their reasoning, he proceeds to dismember his victims, recording it all on video. The method to his madness is soon revealed: Mudgett’s murders are a forensic argument, proving himself to be guiltless to the cop and sane to the psychiatrist. Catching the killer is not enough to win this debate. Both heroes will have to face their inner demons.
But then it’s revealed that Mudgett has an accomplice, and all the evidence points to Kallinger, but all the reality points to Van Til. Who is predator and who is prey in this cat and mouse debate where ideas have consequences?
Cruel Logic is a story about human nature, the problem of evil, and one man’s attempt to regain his sanity in a world without absolutes.
arensb, what is the reason most atheists don’t run around killing and torturing people?
Ah. Thanks for the correction.
I confess that I didn’t watch the whole thing: in the first few minutes, it seemed to set up the old “atheists have no reason to be moral” canard, and I had no desire to watch someone being tortured, since that’s where it seemed to be leading.
Don’t worry, it’s a short film and it doesn’t display any graphic violence, aside from the professor being briefly tazer’d in the leg (I have a hard time stomaching film violence myself).
I appreciate your honesty (if honesty does exist in your worldview and is considered a “good” quality) but I do find it a bit disingenous for you to make all of these comments without first watching the clip, though I can understand your desire to not watch someone be tortured.
However, you said that you had no desire to watch someone be tortured. Is that a desire moral or simply chemical? If it is chemical, why does it bother you?
I do find it interesting that torturing people bothers you (as it does myself). Would you mind telling me:
1) Why torturing bothers you
2) Why we shouldn’t torture other people
Thanks,
Danny
I have to admit I didn’t watch the entire video myself for the same reason as Arensb and so I would like to answer the 2 questions Danny posed in the comments here.
1) Why torturing bothers you
As far as the video is concerned I think I have the capacity to imagine myself in the position of the person being tortured and am able to imagine the psychological and physical pain involved. As for torture generally, it bothers me because it is not something I would wish to have happen to me…Which leads quite well into the second question.
2) Why we shouldn’t torture other people
We should not torture other people because we should not commit any act unless we were happy for that act to be taken up as a general rule by the rest of society. Naturally, a society in which everyone went around torturing one another would be an horrendous and extremely dangerous place to live.
I therefore don’t feel everything becomes permissable without a God – We have a responsibility to one another to make our societies work.
Anyway, hope you didn’t mind me answering for you Arensb
Les Prouty asked:
In all likelihood, the same reasons most theists don’t run around doing bad things, minus the religious justifications.
At some point in kindergarten (or before), we learn that “If I take Suzy’s Duplos, mom or the teacher will scold me”. At some point later on, we figure out that “if I let Suzy use my crayons now, she’ll let me use her finger paints later”. The more general lesson is that getting along with others is more enjoyable than pissing them off to get what we want. Eventually, we can ask ourselves questions like, “If people used me as an example, what would the world be like? Do I want to live in that kind of world?”
See also Secular Morality at Iron Chariots, for a start.
danny says:
1) Empathy, and
2) Empathy.
Would you like to be tortured? I didn’t think so. Now, you’re a human being, and so am I, so the odds are that if you don’t like something, then I don’t like it either. So how about if we get together and agree not to torture each other, and maybe even get together with some other people and form a coalition of people who agree to protect each other from torture.
Throw in theft, murder, rape, assault, etc. in there as well if you like.
You make it sound as though it’s an either-or thing. Why? That’s like asking whether my bank’s computer sends me a monthly statement as a matter of programming, or as a matter of policy. They’re not mutually exclusive; it’s just a matter of which level of explanation is more convenient for a given discussion.
Kidneys produce urine. Hearts pump blood. Brains produce the mind. It’s all chemistry, if you go down deep enough.
Also, if you take a step back, you’ll see that it doesn’t matter why it bothers me to see someone tortured. For one thing, you don’t need to know how the sensation of hunger arises to know that everyone you’ve met feels it, and therefore that if you withhold food from a stranger, that person will almost certainly become hungry and unhappy. You can make similar informed decisions as to whether or not another person would like to be kneed in the groin, given chocolate, raped, complimented, and so forth.
For another thing, I think it’s been established in the video that the serial killer is crazy, and doesn’t have the minimum amount of empathy necessary to avoid killing and torturing people. So the question the victim really has to answer isn’t “why is it wrong to murder”, but rather “what can I say to this lunatic to get out of my predicament?”
“We should not torture other people because we should not commit any act unless we were happy for that act to be taken up as a general rule by the rest of society.
Lucy, I happen to agree that we should not torture others. But, your statement might not be in agreement with a gang leader or someone like the now deceased and former head of Iraq Saddam Hussain. They would argue, I suspect, that your opinion and my opinion are just that–our opinions. Therefore they can torture and.or murder because their opinion is what matters to them.
So, why should your opinion (or mine) matter to a dictator or anyone else for that matter?
Who says we “have a responsibility to one another to make our societies work?
arensb, but are your “rules” of getting along and not “pissing off” others just your rules? My question is trying to get to the basis of why I should go by your rules. I suspect that a schoolyard bully would ask the same question, as would the store clerk who is stealing money from her employer. Why should she go by her/his empployer’s rule against stealing?
Lucy, thanks for joining the discussion! You said,
Do you believe there are moral absolutes? And my other question is, are you a materialist? That is, do you believe that the only things that exist in this world are material?
Lucy, you also mentioned,
However, the statistical majority in Nazi Germany said it was a terriffic thing to exterminate Jews. And by your logic, what the Nazi’s did was absolutely correct and morally justified because the statistical majority was happy to do this.
Further, what is your standard to appeal to by saying that we should have rules that makes the majority happy? What about the happiness of the rapists and torturers? What is your standard for determining that your happiness is more important than theirs?
Further, if you believe the Holocaust was wrong, as do I, and the U.S. says it was wrong, which society is right and which society is wrong? Wouldn’t that make one society morally superior to another?
If Society A says marital infidelity is wrong, but Society B says marital infidelity is right, and a man from Society A sleeps with a woman from Society B in a hotel in Society C, who determines whether the action is wrong or right? Society A, B, or C? And why?
Thanks!
Danny
arensb, you mentioned,
But this is simply begging the question because you are appealing to a particular Society to determine your morals.
What if Society B encourages taking “Suzy’s Duplos” but discourages “let[ting] Suzy use my crayons now” for fear that Suzy will use the crayons only to stab me and kill me?
Les Prouty:
Yes, well, people who don’t play nice with others may eventually have to deal with other people’s opinion that it’d be a good idea to send in the cops, or invade their country, that sort of thing.
Let’s say they are just my opinions. So what?
And obviously, you should agree with me if you’ve been presented with a convincing argument to do so (either by me or by someone else). What would you consider a convincing argument?
More importantly, do you have a better way of figuring out how people ought to behave, than considering every option and throwing out the bad ideas through vigorous debate?
Consider a hypothetical scenario: Joe has just found out about a certain album. He thinks he might want to buy it, but isn’t sure. The only place that sells the album doesn’t allow you to listen to it, but there’s an unauthorized copy floating around on the Internet.
Assume that:
1) Joe will definitely buy the album if he likes it
2) Joe will definitely not buy the album if he doesn’t listen to it first
3) The odds of Joe getting caught downloading the album are negligible
4) If Joe downloads the album and doesn’t like it, he’ll delete his copy
Is it okay for Joe to download the album for the sole purpose of deciding whether to buy the CD?
I’m not interested in a yes or no answer, as much as the thought processes behind your decision. And also the timing: did you start with the reasoning, and conclude that the download would be OK/not OK, or did you first realize that it was OK/not OK, and then try to figure out why?
Lucy and arensb, I am assuming that since you are both atheists, you espouse Darwinian evolution and natural selection?
If so, why do you hold mankind as more important and valuable than a piece of broccoli? Why should we arrest and sentence torturers and rapists for harming other individuals, but we fail to lock up bears for all the harm and torture they do to fish?
If we all come from the same stuff, and I love eating a good piece of broccoli with my dinner, why do you find it morally permissable to let me eat broccoli, but morally impermissable to eat a human? Isn’t the only difference that one belongs to the meat group and the other belongs to the veggie group?
I’m not trying to be cute, but I would like to better understand why you place such a high emphasis on valuing human beings. I know why I value human beings so highly, but I am failing to understand what your justification is for doing so yourselves.
arensb, you commented,
If they are just your opinions, then that’s all that they are. But the moment you starting making “oughts” you are turning your opinions into absolutes.
I should agree with you? Says who? Is this another opinion or is this another “ought?” If this is another opinion, then I can just sweep it aside and tell you that it’s my opinion that I should ignore your opinions. BUT, if you are telling me I ought to agree with you if you give me a convincing argument, please tell me why I ought? What standard are you appealing to?
By the way, I really do appreciate the warm interaction instead of someone just using ad hominem’s!
arensb, Danny stole my thunder, and he did a fine job.
“Yes, well, people who don’t play nice with others may eventually have to deal with other people’s opinion that it’d be a good idea to send in the cops, or invade their country, that sort of thing.”
Who decides what playing nice is? This is where all our varying “opinions” of what is permissible and acceptable behavior run all over each other. You have not yet provided a standard whereby we can establish what is right and what is wrong. As I said earlier, your “right” thing is another persons “wrong” thing, in your eyes and vice versa.
“More importantly, do you have a better way of figuring out how people ought to behave, than considering every option and throwing out the bad ideas through vigorous debate?”
That leads only to circles–who decides which ideas are bad to be thrown out? Seems to me that the strongest man (or woman) wins that debate.
As to Joe and the album, my first question is: Is it legal or illegal to download the album? Now one might wonder whether the law against downloading is just or unjust. That is another matter. Nevertheless, if downloading the album, even for just the purpose of deciding to buy it or not, is illegal, Joe should not. That is stealing.
But I might put Joe in another situation. Should Joe break into your house and steal your CD copy of the album so he can take it home and listen and then decide whether to buy it or not? Why or why not?
Fundamentally, we must back up and ask why stealing is wrong for everyone, not just in certain situations. Do you have an answer for that?
Hi Danny,
The statement I made, (that we should not commit any act unless we were happy for that act to be taken up as a general rule by the rest of society) certainly doesn’t condone the Holocaust. It matters not if the majority of Germans supported the execution of the Jews, the point is that an individual would not wish to live in a society where the execution of individuals was the norm.
Similarly, if everyone were a rapist and a torturer Society would very quickly collapse. Forming a community would be completely impossible if every individual tortured, raped and murdered. Therefore, it is not the majority’s opinion that matters, but that which allows the Community to flourish.
In regards to Evolution and natural selection these are simple facts of life, and attacking the process of Evolution for it’s “immorality” would be like accusing Earthquakes of being evil. Evolution makes no comment on “should” or “ought” but is merely a process.
You have perhaps become confused with the idea of Social Darwinism which crudely distorts natural selection in order to support it’s aims and bears as close a similarity to Darwin’s Theory as the Sermon on the Mount relate to the Spanish Inquision.
Finally (I think, I may have missed a question!), Am I a materialist, you ask. I would answer that I only believe in those things which are supported by evidence. Where there is no evidence I have no choice but to not believe – while remaining open-minded to the possibility of evidence being uncovered in the future. I’m afraid the concept of faith – believing in something despite the lack of evidence – is something I reject.
Anyway, thanks for the friendly debate
Hi Les,
Sorry, I missed your post initially – a lot of postings on this topic! In regards to Saddam Hussain – it doesn’t matter what his opinion is, nor mine or yours. The question is, how would things work out if everyone behaved like Saddam Hussain? The answer I assume we both agree on would be – pretty terrible.
I am an atheist and reject the notion of faith but I do think the Bible has it’s moments of excellence. In particular: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Have a lovely day
danny:
Okay, why do you value human beings more highly than broccoli? I wonder if it’s the same reason I do.
You still haven’t answered this question. Is there a better way to decide what to do than to debate all the options?
Are you sure that’s how it plays out in reality? You might argue that slavery ended in the US because the Union was militarily stronger than the Confederacy, so the north imposed its values on the south. But who was the strongman who imposed abolitionist values on the north?
Or take divorce. As recently as fifty years ago, it was shameful to get a divorce. Now it’s not. Did someone strong-arm society into changing?
Or did enough divorcees convince their friends that they were better off without that worthless waste of space, enough people knew enough divorcees to know that they’re just ordinary people and not cesspits of moral turpitude, etc., that there was a sea change in how people view divorce?
Wait a sec. You’re describing a situation in which I proposed doing X, giving reasons A, B, and C. You agreed (if only to yourself) that all things considered, that A, B, C are good reasons to do X (otherwise, it wouldn’t be a convincing argument, would it?). But you don’t do X anyway. Why?
Actually, I don’t think the “why” matters much, since I don’t think this sort of thing happens very often. If someone presents you with what you think are good reasons for doing something, don’t you usually do that thing?
PS: I don’t know whether the maintainer of this site is aware, but the font used in the comment form is about the size as that used for headings. If you could fix it, it would be easier to see more than one paragraph at a time.
PPS: Lucy: this is in no way a private conversation, so as far as I’m concerned, you can jump in any time you like.
Oops. Upon rereading, I see that I mistook Les for danny in part of my last comment. Hopefully y’all can disentangle the misattributions.
Les Prouty:
Actually, since we’re talking about morals, I was asking whether it’s morally acceptable to download the album, not whether it’s legal. For the sake of argument, you can assume that this takes place in a country where the law is silent on whether such a download would be a crime or not.
Furthermore, as I asked before, did you watch your thought processes to see whether the realization that Joe’s action would be OK/not OK came before you knew why it would be OK/not OK?
No. If he takes my CD, then I won’t be able to listen to it, and I want to be able to listen to it (that’s why I made it a download: when you copy data, you’re not depriving the other person of the original). I also don’t want him breaking in because that makes me feel violated and insecure, and I don’t like feeling that way. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet that a lot of people feel the same way, and it wouldn’t take much to convince a whole lot of folks that people should be prevented from breaking into homes and stealing things.
I think your premise is wrong: the classic example is, if you’re broke, and your children are starving, is it okay to steal food to feed them? I think most people would agree that in that situation, it’s okay. So the question becomes, “Under which circumstances is theft okay?”
We could go on for days, arguing where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable theft. And hopefully, we’d reach some sort of agreement, either me convincing you, or you convincing me. And as far as I can tell, that’s the best way we’ve found so far of determining how people ought to behave. Do you know of a better way? If so, please share it.
arensb, sorry about the comment font size. It looks like its just how the template was designed and I can’t change it, otherwise I would.
Lucy:
I also find it interesting that the Holocaust was preceded by a propaganda campaign that made Jews look less than human. This suggest that most people naturally don’t want to hurt their peers; so if I want you to hurt someone, it’s necessary to first convince you that that person isn’t like you. (I suspect this also qualifies as a partial answer to the broccoli-vs-people question.)
One idea I’m rather fond of is the veil of ignorance: when you’re designing a society, or contemplating what an ideal society ought to be like, pretend that once you’ve designed it, you’ll be incarnated as someone living in that society, but you don’t know who. You might be a man or a woman, rich or poor, a Brahman or an untouchable. If your society has slaves, you might be a slave. If there’s a king, you might be the king (though the odds are against it). You might be a thief, or the one being stolen from (or both, at different times).
It’s related to the idea of “I’ll cut the cake, and you decide which part I get”. It helps you come up with a society where no one’s lot is intolerable to you.
Lots of comments, so I hope I didn’t overlook any. Lucy, you said,
I’m not sure what you mean by this statement.
You then said,
But why is it right and good to have a flourishing community. I still want to know what standard you are using that says communities should flourish.
Exactly. And if we evolved from the same stuff, then what difference does it make what we do to each other? After all, it’s just the process of natural selection being worked out, even though it may be a gruesome and ugly process.
May I ask what evidence you used to determine that you should only believe in things supported by evidence? I assume you believe in the laws of logic, morality, and mathematics. If so, can you tell me the color and weight of the law of identity, or how much the number 3 weighs? If you can’t use your senses to determine that mathematics exist, do you then not believe in them?
Is being open-minded to the possibility of future evidence a form of faith? You are believing in current non-evidence that there will be future evidence. What evidence do you currently have for the possible future of evidence?
Thanks for the comments,
Danny
danny: (Yeah, I know you were talking to Lucy; I hope you don’t mind if I toss in my two cents’ worth)
Same here. If I missed a point that someone cares about, remind me.
Would you want to live in a society where people just go around killing other people? I’m willing to bet that none of us would, if for no other reason than that if Joe Schmo down the street can be killed, then so can you.
It’s not a matter of “should” or “ought”. Societies that have what it takes to flourish, flourish; those that don’t, collapse.
The question of what kind of society one would want to live in, is a separate matter.
And so what if Lucy or I don’t appeal to any “higher standard” than our opinion? The fact of the matter is that most people want the same things: food, shelter, love, friendship, security, and so forth. It’s pointless to ask why we should want friendship, because we don’t really have a choice in the matter. (We can talk about that once we get close to being able to genetically engineer people who don’t care what happens to them, or who don’t want the approval of their peers, that sort of thing.)
Depends on your scale. If you look at the universe as a whole, the whole Earth could be wiped out by a gamma ray burst, and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to the universe. You probably wouldn’t even see it happened, unless you were positioned just so and looking carefully.
However, if you zoom in, people do matter to other people. Again, it’s not a matter of whether we ought to care about other people or not; we do. If your brother died, could you choose not to feel sad? I know I couldn’t. I might be able to keep my actions in check, but not my feelings.
And if I feel this way, then probably most people do, too. So given the premise that most people care about each other, how do we proceed?
<shrug> They seem to work.
This may seem glib, but it’s true. Put two 1-lb weights on one side of a set of scales, and a 2-lb weight on the other. Notice that the scales are balanced. This is prima facie evidence (not proof, but evidence) that 1+1 = 2.
Or consider Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune. A craft like that doesn’t have enough fuel to make significant course corrections. So the fact that it made it to Neptune after being, in effect, thrown in a particular direction at a particular time with a particular velocity, is good evidence that yes, we have a good handle on how physics (and the underlying math) work.
That’s not how I read what she said. As I understand Lucy, all she’s saying is “I believe certain things because of what I’ve seen so far. But I could turn out to be wrong.” Think of the story of doubting Thomas: he was skeptical because, come on, people don’t just come back from the dead. Jesus presented him with evidence (his wounds), and Thomas changed his mind.
Good for Thomas, I say.
arensb, you asked earlier:
I value humans so highly and respect and treat each one with dignity because every human being bears the image of God though it has all been terribly marred by sin.
What I’m getting it is that you said we should agree with you if you present us with convincing arguments, but you need to first explain why we should agree with your standard of moral judgment.
I think this has become off topic. I have asked the moral reason why it is good for communities to flourish and how a society can make moral judgments for the good of the majority. All I have heard is that no one would want to live in a society where there is torture and killing everywhere. And it’s not so much that societies ought to flourish, they just do. This doesn’t answer why, it just says that successful societies flourish. This is nothing but a tautology.
And this is another matter not related to the discussion.
If you cannot appeal to something object and transcendental outside of yourself, you are left in a pool of your own opinions. At the end of the day, I can punch you in the face and steal your brand new cd player and you may tell me I shouldn’t do that, but that would just be asserting your opinion. I can then respond that it is my opinion I should and walk away.
Again, this is like saying, “We care about people because we care about people”
What is your moral reason for doing so instead of simply begging the question?
Finally,
Even though you used an example of a logical law, that still doesn’t answer the question. How do you know that 1+1=2 and that will happen every time no matter where you are?
I don’t think you have begun to grapple with the weightier issues of epistemology. I want to know if you believe the laws of logic exist. If you are a materialist and empiricist like Lucy is:
1) Which of the 5 senses did you use to determine that they exist
2) Are the laws of logic universal and unchanging? If so, how do you account for this in your worldview.
3) Without begging the question, how do you know that tomorrow will be like the past? That the sun will rise from the East and not the West? That when you squeeze toothpaste onto your toothbrush this morning, the toothpaste will come out instead of shooting straight up into the air?
To respond with, “they seem to work” is making yet another tautology and meaningless statement.
I invite you and encourage you to grapple with some of these issues instead of brushing them aside and saying, I don’t care how I know things or what my justification is for making moral judgments, I just do. That itself is a gigantic, blind leap of faith.
If you want a better understanding of what I am getting at, please go to, http://www.proofthatgodexists.com
Blessings,
Danny
That just raises further questions, like how do you know that humans “bear[] the image of God”? What does that even mean? Since chimps have all of the same organs and genes that humans do, do they also bear the image of God?
All social animals exhibit feelings toward each other. Does that mean that they all bear the image of their respective gods?
But more importantly, it’s a non sequitur. Destroying the twin towers was mass murder; should tearing up a photo of the twin towers be a misdemeanor?
I’m not sure why you don’t understand this. If I present you with an argument that you find convincing, why wouldn’t you agree with me? Just to be contrarian?
Different people are convinced by different types of arguments. What persuades me might not persuade you, and vice-versa. So as I asked above, what sorts of argument persuade you? I’m sure you’ve changed your mind in the past; what made you reconsider your ideas? Tell me, and I’ll argue accordingly.
At any rate, you still haven’t provided a better way of figuring out what constitutes good and bad behavior. If you have one, then please provide it.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that it’s automatically good for a society to flourish. I, for one, am glad that Nazi Germany and the USSR collapsed.
And besides, “society” is just a bunch of people, really. All with different opinions and pulling the collective entity known as “society” in different directions.
You misunderstood what I said above: “Societies that have what it takes to flourish, flourish; those that don’t, collapse.”
This is the same mistake creationists make when they say that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology. The USSR didn’t just collapse for no reason. It collapsed because it was spending too much, and not producing enough, among other reasons.
Low production, in turn, was because they had an economic system that didn’t reward people for producing more: whether you produced 200% over quota or just slacked off all month, you got paid the same, so there was no incentive to work harder. So that society didn’t have what it takes to flourish.
Who knows? If the USSR had switched to private enterprise but called it “Decentralized Communism” to make it more palatable, maybe it would still be around today.
That’s true, but that’s not the whole picture: if you beat me up and steal my stuff, it’s not just my opinion you’ll have to deal with: you’ll have to deal with me defending myself, you’ll have to live with the guilt of what you’ve done, the disapproval of your family and friends once I tell them what you’ve done, not to mention the cops, the judge, and the prison guards. You’ll also have to deal with the kid down the street to whom you’ve just shown that it’s okay to punch people in the face and steal their stuff, and who might decide that it might be fun to assault you and steal your stuff.
Even if it’s only my opinion that assault and theft are bad, it’s a widely-held opinion: after all, none of us want it to happen to us. So if you do something that’s widely perceived as bad or antisocial, it shouldn’t be hard to get together a coalition to punish you.
No, we care about people because we’re wired that way. Most likely by evolution.
Do you solve crossword puzzles? When I do, I’m often very uncertain whether any given answer is correct (that’s why I do them in pencil). But when I’ve completed a puzzle, I’m much more certain that I’ve gotten the answers right, because they all fit together.
Life is like a crossword puzzle that way. Nothing can be known with absolute, 100% certainty. But lots of facts fit together and mutually reinforce each other. My sense of sight may be deceptive, so the pencil I see may not really be there. But if I try to pick it up, my sense of touch confirms what I perceived through sight. Now, maybe both my senses of sight and touch are lying. But if so, they’re telling me the same lie. I can also sniff and lick the pencil, and tap it on the table (which may or may not be there), so now I have five senses confirming each other. So either they’re all telling the truth, or they’re all somehow conspiring to tell the same lie. The more parsimonious explanation is that the pencil is really there.
Heck, I’ll even concede that I know (as well as anything can be known, anyway) that my senses are unreliable. Google “optical illusion” and you’ll find any number of examples of your eyes showing you things that aren’t there.
If you’re going to start asking questions like, how do I know I’m not in the Matrix, or the victim of a mad neuroscientist poking my brain to produce false sensations, thoughts, and memories, then I can turn that around and ask how you know anything either. And “divine revelation” doesn’t count, because how do you know that what you perceived as, say, the touch of the holy spirit, wasn’t just implanted by the mad scientist by messing with your brain?
Oh, and the one other thing that stuck out in your list was:
Which laws of logic are you referring to? Things like A ∧ B → A or A → A ∨ B? How can those possibly not be true?
That’s just an ad farm. And I hope you didn’t mean proofthatgodexists.org, because I’d be disappointed if you couldn’t see the glaring errors at that trainwreck of a site (argument from biblical authority? Puh-leeze. And it seems as though every other page commits the fallacy of the excluded middle. To say nothing of the fact that the author keeps trying to tell me what I believe, and usually getting it wrong).
I tried to leave a comment yesterday, but it hasn’t shown up. Did I mess up, or did it get caught by the spam filter, or something?
Weird…it did show up as spam. I’ve unmarked it as spam and it is now showing above.
I’m not sure why it showed up as spam. That’s weird, but I am glad you commented again, otherwise, I wouldn’t have known because I never check the spam box. Anyway….
First, you need to account for logical laws in your worldview before I can answer this.
Opinion or absolute statement?
Does guilt exist? If so, what do you do with your guilt?
Most likely? So you are taking a leap of faith here into the realm of uncertainty. By the way, I haven’t found the theory of evolution and the process of nature selection to be too concerned about caring for one’s neighbor.
Do you know with 100% absolute certainty that “Nothing can be known with absolute, 100% certainty”?
If so, you are contradicting yourself, and at some point, in order to be consistent, you’ll need to start being uncertain about your uncertainty.
In your materialistic worldview it doesn’t but in mine it does. You are just asserting that it doesn’t count. You’ll first need to prove why it doesn’t. But even then, you won’t allow it because of your presuppositions.
I’m asking how you account for them. I’m glad to see that you believe they exist and are universal, but how do you account for these?
My mistake. I meant .org and not .com.
I find your comment to be a string of assertions. Please tell me what your standard is for discerning truth from error. Next, you appeal to the logical law of excluded middle, but you must first tell me how you can account for universal, invariant, and immaterial laws in your worldview.
Otherwise, your whole comment has been unjustified opinions at best.
Are you running Spam Karma, by any chance? I’ve seen it mark comments as spam when someone leaves too many comments, or on a thread that it considers too old, or based on criteria beyond my ken.
No. I’m tired of being the only one answering questions in this thread. I’ve laid out my views as clearly and honestly as I can, and I want you to hold up your end of the conversation and answer some questions.
You keep delving into epistemological sophistry, while ignoring the fact that you apparently believe that a magic spell can turn a piece of bread into a magic man who somehow is also his own father.
It isn’t. But natural selection can produce beings that care for each other. Adam Smith’s invisible hand doesn’t give a rat’s [filtered] about workers’ conditions either, but it can result in companies that offer decent salaries and health insurance plans.
Whether a statement matches reality.
Okay, your turn.
arensb, you have not even begun to scratch the surface with justifying your epistemology. I don’t think you will be able to without begging the question. You came to this site with your comments (opinions) and you have yet to justify any of them.
Once again, you are making a sweeping and unwarranted accusation against me. I believe you are referring to the so-called “miracle of the mass” which I wrote a post about a week or so ago (which you linked to). If you would have actually read the post, you would have seen that the purpose of the post was to present the RCC’s belief and then Scripturally refute it. But I guess you stopped after the first few sentences and assumed that I held to this belief.
This is making another assertion.
More begging the question. Is it your perceived reality? Because facts are mute. They are interpreted through one’s worldview.
I have already told you what I believe. Again:
Christ is the source of all wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3) and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7).
Therefore, only the Christian worldview can account for and provide the necessary preconditions of intelligible experience, logic, mathematics, science, and the uniformity of nature. God exists because of the impossibility of the contrary and for you to even argue against God, you have to first presuppose Him.
I have asked you to account for such things as immaterial laws in your worldview and you haven’t been able to aside from just saying that they just work.
You left some steps out. Here, let me highlight them:
So I guess the obvious question is, why should a random third party take your opinions more seriously than mine? Especially when one of your fundamental principles appears to be that the best (or only) way to learn is to be afraid. This strikes me as abhorrent, and I suspect a lot of teachers would agree.
Oh, I didn’t leave anything out, but are you trying to attribute something to me for the 3rd time now that I did not say? Yikes.
I don’t need to spend time trying to show you that your worldview is inconsistent, you have already done the bulk of the work for me yourself when you said:
So either you are contradicting yourself by saying that you know with absolute certainty that nothing can be known with 100% certainty or you are just a global skeptic, which includes being skeptical about your own skepticism. You are taking a giant leap into the dark on this one, arensb.
I have accounted for the preconditions of intellegible experience, and you have yet to yourself, aside from begging the question that things, such as logic, just work.
The word fear means to reverence. Either a person will bow the knee to Christ in submission or they will try to think and reason autonomously for themselves which leads to irrationalism in the end.