XFiles Friday: Tackling polytheism

(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 8 )

At this point in Chapter 8, Geisler and Turek think they’ve proven that the universe must have a theistic cause, and that this deity must be infinite, omnipotent, personal, intelligent, purposeful and moral. Having ostensibly eliminated atheism (as they suppose), the next step is to rule out polytheism so that they can restrict the field to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Unfortunately, Trinitarianism is just polytheism with incoherent definitions, so they can’t disprove polytheism without shooting down traditional Christianity as well. Geisler and Turek don’t notice this, of course, but we certainly shall.

Testing “naturalism”

No, we’re not talking about naturalism as in the scientific study of nature. We’re back to reviewing schooloffish’s post “DOES YOUR WORLD VIEW PASS THE TEST,” and we’re ready to have a look at his critique of the naturalistic (presumably as opposed to supernaturalistic) world view. First, let’s look at the three tests he uses to evaluate a world view.

When testing a world view, you need to take into account three things. Even if you are not familiar with all the aspects of a world view, if any one of these three test proves to be false, then the entire world view must - necessarily - be false. These tests are:

1. Is the world view contradictory within it’s own view?
2. Does the world view actually align with reality?
3. What do expects and eye witness have to say about the world view?

As we mentioned before, the relativistic world view (aka postmodernism) fails the first test, so we’ll skip over that analysis and go straight to the part about naturalism.

TIA Tuesday: Passing the buck

Over the centuries, believers have evolved a number of techniques for coping with God’s continuous and universal failure to show up in real life. One of the most common ploys is to try and deflect blame from God by blaming people instead. Here’s Vox Day, from Chapter 8 of TIA, to give us an example.

While Dawkins incessantly complains about the lack of evidence for God, he never quite gets around to explaining precisely what proof, presumably scientific, would be sufficient for him. He poses no potentially falsifiable experiment that would suffice to prove or disprove God’s existence nor does he even consider the question of whether any such experiment would conceivably be possible.

Notice the subtle shift from Dawkins’s request for evidence of God, to Vox’s insinuation that Dawkins is insisting on an arbitrary, unspecified, and unreasonably stringent proof of God. God consistently and universally fails to behave as though He believed the things men say about Him, but instead of blaming God’s behavior on God, Vox wants to claim that it is men who are behaving badly, by making impossible demands.

Testing worldviews: defining relativism

Continuing our series on schooloffish’s post, DOES YOUR WORLD VIEW PASS THE TEST, we come now to his definition of the relativistic world view.

The last category to be discussed is a relativistic world view. This has become a very popular world view as of late. In general this world view believes that all world views are true for the individual and therefore all are right as long as it right for YOU. In a relativistic world view, the word truth, right and wrong are subjective as opposed to objective truth as the world would be used by the other two categories.

I don’t expect to have too much difficulty agreeing with schooloffish here, since the relativistic view is indeed rather silly and self-defeating. As Geisler and Turek point out, you can’t claim to have an absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. To make such claims is to exalt the human mind above the real world around us, to the point of merely deceiving yourself.

I will point out, though, that in my own personal experience, I’ve encountered far more Christians advocating a relativistic (or “postmodern”) worldview than I have secularists with similar views. Not that the secular relativists don’t exist, of course, but I personally have not met so many of them. Christians, though—lots, particularly once they realize that God actually doesn’t show up in real life, the way He ought to if the Gospel were true.

Testing worldviews: the religious worldview defined

Continuing our look at schooloffish’s post DOES YOUR WORLD VIEW PASS THE TEST, we come now to the definition for the religious worldview.

In general a religious world view embraces that there is something greater than man. That a GOD in some form is responsible for creation, morals & an afterlife (in some form). This world views is much more broad than the naturalistic world view as there are many different religious positions.

To be nit-picky again, the religious view is certainly not the only worldview that tells us there is something greater than man. Indeed, naturalists are often criticized by religionists for failing to rank man as highly as they do. But I think it’s clear that this is not what schooloffish is thinking of here; he’s actually referring to the idea that there is something (or somethings) greater than the whole physical cosmos, namely God (or gods).

I’ve already talked at some length on the topic of the source of morality, so I want to take this post to focus on the last statement in the quote above: that the religious worldview is much more broad than the naturalistic world view. This is not a good thing for religion, as I would like to show using the parable of Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush.

Chuck Colson on losing rights

Chuck Colson has a column at townhall.com in which he explains why, in his opinion, the religious right is losing the right to speak out against the things they don’t believe in. It’s more honest than he intends.

David Woodward is a political science professor at Clemson University—one who has first-hand experience on how dangerous it can be to speak out in favor of traditional values: He almost lost his job over it.

In 1993, Woodward was asked to testify about the political power of homosexual groups in American life. He agreed to serve as an expert witness for the state of Colorado, which was fighting to defend the recently passed Amendment Two, which made it illegal to give protected status based on sexual orientation.

There, in a nutshell, is the heart of the problem: Christians are not just speaking their minds, they’re using their voice to try and pass legislation that goes beyond mere speech to actual, legalized oppression of those they disagree with.

XFiles Friday: Design and morality

(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 8 )

Last time, we only made it as far as the first page of Chapter 8, in which Geisler and Turek congratulate themselves for having contrived a “discovery” of God’s existence based on the mistaken assumption that the universe must have a cause. Turning the page, we find that the authors continue in the same vein.

From the Teleological Argument we know that God is:

1. Supremely intelligent, since he designed life and the universe with such incredible complexity and precision.
2. Purposeful, since he designed the many forms of life to live in this specific and ordered environment

Let’s stop there and have a look at these arguments in a real-world context.

Testing worldviews: the definition of the “naturalistic” world view

A Christian commenter who goes by the handle “schooloffish” has invited us to review a recent blog entry of his on the subject “DOES YOUR WORLD VIEW PASS THE TEST?.” He seems nice enough, so let’s drop by, shall we?

Everyone has a world view, which is best described as the way you see the world. There are as many world views as there are people, but in general, there are three specific world views that I will be analysing with this article. These three world view categories are religious, naturalistic, andrelativistic world views. Of course there are many subcategories within these three categories that we will cover as well.

TIA Tuesday: Ageism and own goals

Having finished (as he supposes) with Sam Harris, Vox is ready in TIA Chapter 8 to move on to atheist number 2 in his erstwhile hit list: Richard Dawkins. As is typical with Vox, he spends the first few pages psyching himself up with a rambling, undocumented rant about how nasty and disgusting his adversary is, and as is even more typical, he does not fail to accuse the atheist of “sins” which he himself is no stranger to. He begins, however, with a canard that is as peculiar as it is mean-spirited:

A California researcher has estimated that the mean age of a biologist’s first noteworthy contribution to science takes place when he is 29.4 years old. So, at sixty-six, three decades after publishing the controversial bestseller The Selfish Gene, it’s clear that Richard Dawkins is well past his scientific expiry, and his latest book, The God Delusion, offers copious evidence that Dawkins has become as careless as he is crotchety in his old age.

You read that right: Vox Day, ad hominem virtuoso, is seriously suggesting that Dawkins’s work has gone downhill because he’s over 30!

(Mis)understanding science

One of the problems with defending science in modern society is that a lot of people just don’t get it. For example, in referring to a recent article in New Scientist, conservapundit Vox Day complains:

This is just absurdly pathetic. The entire article is nothing but a list of excuses for why the model simply can’t do what New Scientist disingenuously insists that it can. Suggesting that something that already took place might perhaps maybe possibly have happened a certain way is not a prediction.

This kind of objection betrays a fundamental ignorance about how science works, and what it means for a particular theory or hypothesis to make “predictions”. In genuine science, it’s not only possible, but often necessary, to make predictions about things that have already happened.