"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterward. These are games . . ."
--Albert Camus, An Absurd Reasoning
Drastically different from nihilism, absurdism, a philosophy formally articulated by Albert Camus, teaches not that existence and life possess no meaning, or that there is no god to imbue them with meaning, but that current limitations on human knowledge will inevitably prevent us from deciphering any meaning of life. Whereas nihilism denies all purpose whatsoever, absurdism merely acknowledges the difficulty of realizing that objective meaning possibly exists while concluding we cannot currently learn what it is. To some extent, even the most dedicated Christian--if intellectually and emotionally honest--will be forced to admit the absurdity of life. Every being with my limitations that searches for meaning will eventually have to confront the fact that life is absurd and that no human effort can alter this.
Albert Camus understood that an individual cannot legitimately invent meaning for himself or herself. This is not only logically impossible, as something is either objectively and intrinsically meaningful or it is not independent of human preferences, but it also completely avoids the problem which absurdism embraces. The question that absurdism leads to, of course, is one of suicide: why not kill oneself? Even if meaning exists, how can one justify existing when that meaning cannot be discovered, proven, and accepted?
Camus, intriguingly, condemned suicide. He did not label it a legitimate response to the uncertainty and absurdity of human existence. However, the question of whether or not meaning exists and the question of whether or not the present life is worth ending in order to discover ultimate truths are two highly different questions. The former is an epistemological and metaphysical issue; the latter is a more personal one.
Allow me to emphasize a point again--absurdism does not teach nihilism, moral relativism, atheism, anti-theism, or any other such positions. Depending on the type of absurdism in question, it does not contradict theism, moral objectivism, or even Christianity. Life does not have to be meaningless. It is not impossible for objective meaning to exist, but many aspects of life are difficult or impossible to decipher--most attempts to find meaning fail quite blatantly. Certainly every attempt to create meaning or live for an unverified meaning leads to contradiction, the illusions of relativism, or to despair, if one truly wants to find fulfillment in something that is inherently significant.
People cannot justify responding to the elusive nature of meaning by inventing their own subjective significance. One cannot create what cannot exist, and one's feelings will not reorient the nature of any values that do exist. This can only prove a futile effort that avoids the problem of existential epistemology through fallacious, superficial, and artificial comfort constructed on emotion. Living for a subjective or nonexistent purpose equates to living for a fantasy, not a remedy to the absurdity of life.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
A Defense of Exodus 22:18
One undeniable dark stain on the history of Christianity is the proximity of Christians to the despised witch hunts of earlier centuries. Opponents of Christianity can simply cite the legendary Exodus 22:18 after recounting the evils of these hunts, seeming to have an impenetrable case that the Bible, with its condemnation of witchcraft and how it assigns it capital punishment to it, teaches a depraved position on the subject. After all, the verse does say "Do not allow a sorceress to live" (NIV). But I will show that these critics have either misunderstood or ignored what the Bible does and does not command with regard to treatment of sorceresses. I must address several points to prove that Exodus 22:18 does not stoop down to some heinous evil. In doing so I will clarify and defend Mosaic Law's position on witchcraft.
First of all, Mosaic Law never commands or uses the infamous "water trial" or "trial by ordeal". This refers to the asinine practice of hurling a woman (or a man in some cases) into a river to discern if she was a sorceress. If she floated she was convicted as a witch, but if she sank to the bottom (and thus likely drowned) she was declared innocent. Fascinating procedure, right? So very ethical and rational. Actually, this serves as a great example of the unjust lunacy Mosaic Law repeatedly legislated against.
--Deuteronomy 17:6--"On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 19:15--"One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."
In contrast to the moral and rational errors of other nations which resorted to superstitious rituals like the water ordeal to establish supposed guilt or tortured people until they confessed to witchcraft, the due process principle in Deuteronomy makes it clear more than once that it does not allow for these abominations (see also Numbers 35:30).
Secondly, now that the water trial point has been addressed, I will focus on the wild hunts for witches that Christians are accused of condoning or carrying out in the past. It is clear that the Bible never calls for mass witch hunts led by crazed, delusional individuals willing to interpret every event as a possible or definite indicator of sorcery, nor does it defend such practices. Some justifications for actively searching for witches do seem far more unlikely than others. A medieval volume titled Malleus Maleficarum written by a church figure apparently recorded that witches kidnapped penises by using magic to separate them from their bodies, though they retained some sort of life and somehow developed consciousness . . . and were fed oats while held captive within nests by the witches. I swear I'm not contriving this; I've actually read that this belief was cited as a valid reason for active witch hunts! But Biblical law did not instruct anyone to coercively and disruptively search for people to label criminals, but instead it conveyed an appropriate penalty enforced only upon the testimony of two or more honest eyewitnesses. Witch hunts are a foreign concept to the Bible and are never mandated or excused.
Now I will move on to examining the actual punishment for a convicted sorceress in Scripture.
--Exodus 22:18--"Do not allow a sorceress to live."
--Leviticus 20:27--"A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads."
Other verses explicitly prohibit sorcery or necromancy of any kind.
--Leviticus 19:26--"Do not practice divination or sorcery."
--Leviticus 19:31--"Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God."
--Leviticus 20:6--"I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from my people."
--Deuteronomy 18:9-11--"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you."
Obviously the penalty was death; however, there was never to be any flogging, racking, or any other tortures prior to the death of a sorceress, or any other capital criminal for that matter. I have heard of ancient and modern treatment of alleged sorceresses where the accused were subjected to abuse prior to their deaths, and this never occurred under the ancient Jewish legal code. Mosaic Law only rarely implements torture of any kind [1], and even then it is very mild and quick (even by comparison to some modern punishments) with strict limitations on its extent, though it is never used in addition to capital punishment. The Bible never advocated the torture of even convicted witches but merely ordered their death.
So no one can claim the Bible supports hysteria-motivated witch hunts, the concept of trial by ordeal [2], pre-execution torture, or any of the atrocities people have engaged in as they investigate or punish those they believe are witches. Christians or "Christians" who endorsed or participated in the witch hunts in question here committed the same error as the "Christians" in history that took benevolent laws in Scripture concerning slavery and corporal punishment and twisted them into justifying the slave trade or vicious tortures. They perverted truth by distorting it entirely. But true acts of malevolent sorcery certainly deserve the death penalty as enforced in Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:27. Women (and men) who have used spells to kill, injure, torment, and terrify others deserve to die, as Exodus clearly states. In addition to the obvious malicious uses of sorcery, to engage in such activity relies on a supernatural force contrary to God and thus constitutes an act of grave idolatry as well. Two great horror films this year, The Witch and Blair Witch, each presented the terrors of what a powerful witch (or witches) might inflict on other humans, and the results would be quite frightening. After all, witches in legends often commit acts of terror, murder, kidnapping, and malevolent magic, causing sicknesses and agony, inciting great fear, and communing with evil spirits. If someone like this was demonstrated to exist, we would indeed have a moral obligation to kill her.
Last but not least, the Bible did not selectively oppose sorcery by targeting female witches but not male sorcerers. Though some critics of the Bible have argued that Exodus 22:18 is sexist, the reference to killing sorceresses in the verse does not at all mean that male witches escaped punishment, as Leviticus 20:27 proves otherwise. So civil government should not "allow a sorceress to live", but should also not commit the same horrifying errors as past generations regarding this area.
Of course, if God does not exist then there is no point to morally objecting to this law regardless of what it actually means, because in the absence of God there can be no such thing as right or wrong. No one can consistently condemn Exodus 22:18 unless he or she is some sort of theist. Christians themselves need to remember that there is no such thing as ethics apart from God; there is no other standard to appeal to outside of God by which to call him evil.
[1]. See:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-2.html
C. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/eye-for-eye-part-1.html
D. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/you-shall-cut-off-her-hand.html
[2]. There is a somewhat related idea codified in Numbers 5 having to do with a woman suspected of adultery, but there is no ordeal by river water or fire authorized in the Bible, as the Old Testament instead demands that no one be punished for "any crime or offense" without two or three honest and unbiased witnesses.
First of all, Mosaic Law never commands or uses the infamous "water trial" or "trial by ordeal". This refers to the asinine practice of hurling a woman (or a man in some cases) into a river to discern if she was a sorceress. If she floated she was convicted as a witch, but if she sank to the bottom (and thus likely drowned) she was declared innocent. Fascinating procedure, right? So very ethical and rational. Actually, this serves as a great example of the unjust lunacy Mosaic Law repeatedly legislated against.
--Deuteronomy 17:6--"On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 19:15--"One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."
In contrast to the moral and rational errors of other nations which resorted to superstitious rituals like the water ordeal to establish supposed guilt or tortured people until they confessed to witchcraft, the due process principle in Deuteronomy makes it clear more than once that it does not allow for these abominations (see also Numbers 35:30).
 |
| Stories of sorceresses emphasize their often grotesque malevolent and deceptive nature. In tales and historical events they have been charged with murder, seduction, kidnapping, deceit, and causing disease. |
Secondly, now that the water trial point has been addressed, I will focus on the wild hunts for witches that Christians are accused of condoning or carrying out in the past. It is clear that the Bible never calls for mass witch hunts led by crazed, delusional individuals willing to interpret every event as a possible or definite indicator of sorcery, nor does it defend such practices. Some justifications for actively searching for witches do seem far more unlikely than others. A medieval volume titled Malleus Maleficarum written by a church figure apparently recorded that witches kidnapped penises by using magic to separate them from their bodies, though they retained some sort of life and somehow developed consciousness . . . and were fed oats while held captive within nests by the witches. I swear I'm not contriving this; I've actually read that this belief was cited as a valid reason for active witch hunts! But Biblical law did not instruct anyone to coercively and disruptively search for people to label criminals, but instead it conveyed an appropriate penalty enforced only upon the testimony of two or more honest eyewitnesses. Witch hunts are a foreign concept to the Bible and are never mandated or excused.
Now I will move on to examining the actual punishment for a convicted sorceress in Scripture.
--Exodus 22:18--"Do not allow a sorceress to live."
--Leviticus 20:27--"A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads."
Other verses explicitly prohibit sorcery or necromancy of any kind.
--Leviticus 19:26--"Do not practice divination or sorcery."
--Leviticus 19:31--"Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God."
--Leviticus 20:6--"I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from my people."
--Deuteronomy 18:9-11--"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you."
Obviously the penalty was death; however, there was never to be any flogging, racking, or any other tortures prior to the death of a sorceress, or any other capital criminal for that matter. I have heard of ancient and modern treatment of alleged sorceresses where the accused were subjected to abuse prior to their deaths, and this never occurred under the ancient Jewish legal code. Mosaic Law only rarely implements torture of any kind [1], and even then it is very mild and quick (even by comparison to some modern punishments) with strict limitations on its extent, though it is never used in addition to capital punishment. The Bible never advocated the torture of even convicted witches but merely ordered their death.
 |
| Sorceresses have appeared in many places in literature: Circe in The Odyssey, the witch of Endor in the Bible (1 Samuel 28), Morgan le Fay in tales of King Arthur, the three witches in Macbeth. |
Last but not least, the Bible did not selectively oppose sorcery by targeting female witches but not male sorcerers. Though some critics of the Bible have argued that Exodus 22:18 is sexist, the reference to killing sorceresses in the verse does not at all mean that male witches escaped punishment, as Leviticus 20:27 proves otherwise. So civil government should not "allow a sorceress to live", but should also not commit the same horrifying errors as past generations regarding this area.
Of course, if God does not exist then there is no point to morally objecting to this law regardless of what it actually means, because in the absence of God there can be no such thing as right or wrong. No one can consistently condemn Exodus 22:18 unless he or she is some sort of theist. Christians themselves need to remember that there is no such thing as ethics apart from God; there is no other standard to appeal to outside of God by which to call him evil.
[1]. See:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-2.html
C. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/eye-for-eye-part-1.html
D. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/you-shall-cut-off-her-hand.html
[2]. There is a somewhat related idea codified in Numbers 5 having to do with a woman suspected of adultery, but there is no ordeal by river water or fire authorized in the Bible, as the Old Testament instead demands that no one be punished for "any crime or offense" without two or three honest and unbiased witnesses.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Opposite Gender Friendships (Part 2)
My first post on opposite gender friendships [1], dedicated to my opposite gender BFF, aimed at little but proving that the Bible does not condemn intimate friendships between people of the opposite gender and explaining why I actually wish for my future wife to have these friendships. Shocking, I know. Anyone who has trouble accepting the last part of the first sentence should read part one of this mini-series--and should also learn to expand their minds. Here I just want to further denounce the deplorable idea in Christian circles that opposite gender friendships are threatening to marital or spiritual health.
The generic Christian attitude towards cross-gender relationships usually fixates on placing members of the opposite gender in one of three useless cliche categories. They are either a spouse, a possible husband or wife, or a sexual distraction (I sense a false trilemma!). But this mindset contains serious flaws. Someone of the opposite gender is not either a spouse or a temptation, a potential spouse or a danger--this is a false dilemma, a despicable logical fallacy. There are more possibilities than these, yet the general American church has yet to discover and explore them due to irrationality, fear, ignorance, and pathetic traditions. Many of these traditions are rooted in American culture as a whole and not just the Christian community, as most Christians usually absorb beliefs from their surrounding society despite their insistence otherwise. The idea that men and women cannot share deep, passionate, lifelong friendship of the best kind without romantic or sexual feelings interfering is nothing but a destructive, hurtful, unbiblical lie, but it has deeply infiltrated the church, the body that should recognize its errors the quickest. A rational and Biblical person will not succumb to these damn fallacies.
There is nothing enlightened, spiritual, rational, moral, beneficial, or Christ-like about the way that Christians often view the opposite gender. Many Christians seem to have a phobia of the opposite gender even as they claim to represent the greatest force of love because they still don't understand that there are different kinds of love. This reality has become so pathetic that when some people hear the message I am defending here they react as if they had just learned they are inside the Matrix. "Whoah". Even people who don't actively oppose such friendships may jokingly reference how two opposite gender friends should date or get married, and this only serves to perpetuate myths about gender relations that ignorant people remain so fond of. They need to cease making these comments that seem to reinforce common stereotypical bullshit instead of making no assumptions about the nature or purpose of a cross-gender relationship.
One objection people raise to my position on this matter is that having a close friend from the other gender may cause them to compare their friend to their husband or wife. Well, first it must be said once again (as I have written multiple times) that nothing can cause someone to do or think anything. Free will, people. It is always present even if you don't acknowledge it. However, there are other reasons this objection fails. First of all, it does not logically follow just because one person might compare opposite gender friends to his or her spouse that all people will. People often extrapolate small things in a pitiful effort to prove nonsense positions. Second, comparisons here are not evil. Why? Well, if grateful people compare a spouse to a friend, they will be thankful they have chosen to marry their particular spouses. Most people will inevitably compare things by nature, but their motives determine the morality of this.
As with MANY other issues, I have long since abandoned the absurd, laughable evangelical ideas that have motivated so many ignorant Christians in America, and this topic is no different. People can personally dislike the types of friendships in question, but they cannot involve any accusations that these beautiful friendships violate some universal objective moral obligation. The words of Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park film excellently summarize the truth about the position that cross-gender friendships are unnatural or immoral: "That is one big pile of shit."
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/opposite-gender-friendships-part-1.html
The generic Christian attitude towards cross-gender relationships usually fixates on placing members of the opposite gender in one of three useless cliche categories. They are either a spouse, a possible husband or wife, or a sexual distraction (I sense a false trilemma!). But this mindset contains serious flaws. Someone of the opposite gender is not either a spouse or a temptation, a potential spouse or a danger--this is a false dilemma, a despicable logical fallacy. There are more possibilities than these, yet the general American church has yet to discover and explore them due to irrationality, fear, ignorance, and pathetic traditions. Many of these traditions are rooted in American culture as a whole and not just the Christian community, as most Christians usually absorb beliefs from their surrounding society despite their insistence otherwise. The idea that men and women cannot share deep, passionate, lifelong friendship of the best kind without romantic or sexual feelings interfering is nothing but a destructive, hurtful, unbiblical lie, but it has deeply infiltrated the church, the body that should recognize its errors the quickest. A rational and Biblical person will not succumb to these damn fallacies.
There is nothing enlightened, spiritual, rational, moral, beneficial, or Christ-like about the way that Christians often view the opposite gender. Many Christians seem to have a phobia of the opposite gender even as they claim to represent the greatest force of love because they still don't understand that there are different kinds of love. This reality has become so pathetic that when some people hear the message I am defending here they react as if they had just learned they are inside the Matrix. "Whoah". Even people who don't actively oppose such friendships may jokingly reference how two opposite gender friends should date or get married, and this only serves to perpetuate myths about gender relations that ignorant people remain so fond of. They need to cease making these comments that seem to reinforce common stereotypical bullshit instead of making no assumptions about the nature or purpose of a cross-gender relationship.
One objection people raise to my position on this matter is that having a close friend from the other gender may cause them to compare their friend to their husband or wife. Well, first it must be said once again (as I have written multiple times) that nothing can cause someone to do or think anything. Free will, people. It is always present even if you don't acknowledge it. However, there are other reasons this objection fails. First of all, it does not logically follow just because one person might compare opposite gender friends to his or her spouse that all people will. People often extrapolate small things in a pitiful effort to prove nonsense positions. Second, comparisons here are not evil. Why? Well, if grateful people compare a spouse to a friend, they will be thankful they have chosen to marry their particular spouses. Most people will inevitably compare things by nature, but their motives determine the morality of this.
As with MANY other issues, I have long since abandoned the absurd, laughable evangelical ideas that have motivated so many ignorant Christians in America, and this topic is no different. People can personally dislike the types of friendships in question, but they cannot involve any accusations that these beautiful friendships violate some universal objective moral obligation. The words of Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park film excellently summarize the truth about the position that cross-gender friendships are unnatural or immoral: "That is one big pile of shit."
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/opposite-gender-friendships-part-1.html
Are Superhero Movies Sexist?
I feel compelled to address a disturbing problem I have noticed in recent Marvel superhero movies--a dark trend that has not abated.
Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, and Antman all have scenes that feature the male protagonists shirtless--and in front of female characters! This disgusting and immoral objectification of men must end. The fact that multiple Marvel movies have consistently included scenes of this nature reveals a great disregard for men and disrespects them deeply. I am personally offended as a male that any movie would incorporate such blatant evil and sexism.
When you read the title for this post, I suspect you didn't anticipate this.
Hold on--I'm not serious at all. I'm actually very amused by my mock rage in the preceding paragraph. Few people, if anyone, would take me seriously if I honestly meant what I said above, and with good reason. But at the same time, some people act and speak as if involving a female character wearing minimal clothing in a movie automatically degrades her and all women by extension, as evidenced by " wonderful philosophers" like whoever wrote this [1], yet I have not heard of anyone criticizing Marvel films for "objectifying" men by displaying them without shirts, though I have noticed more than one website implying or stating that Enchantress' costume in the recent Suicide Squad movie as shown on the cover of an Empire magazine is sexist and wrong. Sexism is the belief that women possess lesser intrinsic value than males (or vice versa) or that they have no value and thus discriminating against one gender according to those beliefs. This has absolutely nothing to do with how much clothing someone wears or chooses to shirk from.
For those wondering, here you can find the picture of the magazine cover referred to on this site [1]. There is nothing "sexist" about this image, but I need to mention that the title of the article is highly alarming--it falsely labels Enchantress's costume sexist but then proceeds to say it is "worse" that it is inaccurate to the comics. Really? There is nothing inappropriate or inherently degrading about a metallic bikini. Get over it Americans. Your logic is untrained at best and a disrespect to ethical philosophy and theology at worst. However, to call it sexist but then include in the title the indefensible statement that the inaccuracy of deviating from the comics is worse than sexism? People never cease to stupefy me. Obviously, I am being entirely facetious with my objection to Marvel films and felt like highlighting an absurd double-standard and the criticisms of Enchantress that rest on idiotic assumptions [2].
Complaining about revealing female comic book character clothes while not even mentioning the shirtless males in superhero movies is utterly inconsistent and perhaps even sexist (apparently to these people women should never be depicted like this but men can be), but it's just intellectually unsupportable and logically wrong to condemn any of it. Objectification exists and is a very depraved thing, but very few people truly understand what it is and what it is not. Arguing that the Enchantress costume in Suicide Squad does not conform to the comics is a valid point, yet an irrelevant one (as superheroes often look at least slightly different in their film debuts than they do in their respective comics). But labeling it sexist or objectifying is laughably incorrect.
In other posts, I have proven that:
Lack of or absence of clothing does not inherently have anything to do with sexuality.
There is no such thing as clothing that doesn't "cover enough".
The human body is not sinful or evil and should not be shunned or feared.
Finding someone physically or sexually attractive does not objectify them; objectification is something else.
Clothing has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone is sexist or not.
See the footnotes for links to previous posts where I deconstruct and refute common beliefs about "modesty" in clothing and the definition of sexual objectification. And yes, I saw Suicide Squad. The viewing experience made me wish the script for the film had committed suicide before its release and spared us from it.
[1]. http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/the-enchantress-costume-from-suicide-squad-is-sexistand-worse-inaccurate
[2]. The "idiotic assumptions" are that any lack of clothing objectifies someone, that viewing someone in such a state could possibly objectify someone, and that females are endangering themselves to sexism when they decide to wear or abstain from wearing certain clothing. To read about why such beliefs embody nonsense of a very amusing kind, see here:
1. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
2. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/can-clothing-objectify.html
Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, and Antman all have scenes that feature the male protagonists shirtless--and in front of female characters! This disgusting and immoral objectification of men must end. The fact that multiple Marvel movies have consistently included scenes of this nature reveals a great disregard for men and disrespects them deeply. I am personally offended as a male that any movie would incorporate such blatant evil and sexism.
When you read the title for this post, I suspect you didn't anticipate this.
 |
| Why do some people seem to think the bottom image objectifies the person shown but the top image doesn't? What if objectification has nothing to do with poses or clothing but the heart of the one objectifying another person? |
Hold on--I'm not serious at all. I'm actually very amused by my mock rage in the preceding paragraph. Few people, if anyone, would take me seriously if I honestly meant what I said above, and with good reason. But at the same time, some people act and speak as if involving a female character wearing minimal clothing in a movie automatically degrades her and all women by extension, as evidenced by " wonderful philosophers" like whoever wrote this [1], yet I have not heard of anyone criticizing Marvel films for "objectifying" men by displaying them without shirts, though I have noticed more than one website implying or stating that Enchantress' costume in the recent Suicide Squad movie as shown on the cover of an Empire magazine is sexist and wrong. Sexism is the belief that women possess lesser intrinsic value than males (or vice versa) or that they have no value and thus discriminating against one gender according to those beliefs. This has absolutely nothing to do with how much clothing someone wears or chooses to shirk from.
For those wondering, here you can find the picture of the magazine cover referred to on this site [1]. There is nothing "sexist" about this image, but I need to mention that the title of the article is highly alarming--it falsely labels Enchantress's costume sexist but then proceeds to say it is "worse" that it is inaccurate to the comics. Really? There is nothing inappropriate or inherently degrading about a metallic bikini. Get over it Americans. Your logic is untrained at best and a disrespect to ethical philosophy and theology at worst. However, to call it sexist but then include in the title the indefensible statement that the inaccuracy of deviating from the comics is worse than sexism? People never cease to stupefy me. Obviously, I am being entirely facetious with my objection to Marvel films and felt like highlighting an absurd double-standard and the criticisms of Enchantress that rest on idiotic assumptions [2].
Complaining about revealing female comic book character clothes while not even mentioning the shirtless males in superhero movies is utterly inconsistent and perhaps even sexist (apparently to these people women should never be depicted like this but men can be), but it's just intellectually unsupportable and logically wrong to condemn any of it. Objectification exists and is a very depraved thing, but very few people truly understand what it is and what it is not. Arguing that the Enchantress costume in Suicide Squad does not conform to the comics is a valid point, yet an irrelevant one (as superheroes often look at least slightly different in their film debuts than they do in their respective comics). But labeling it sexist or objectifying is laughably incorrect.
In other posts, I have proven that:
Lack of or absence of clothing does not inherently have anything to do with sexuality.
There is no such thing as clothing that doesn't "cover enough".
The human body is not sinful or evil and should not be shunned or feared.
Finding someone physically or sexually attractive does not objectify them; objectification is something else.
Clothing has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone is sexist or not.
See the footnotes for links to previous posts where I deconstruct and refute common beliefs about "modesty" in clothing and the definition of sexual objectification. And yes, I saw Suicide Squad. The viewing experience made me wish the script for the film had committed suicide before its release and spared us from it.
[1]. http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/the-enchantress-costume-from-suicide-squad-is-sexistand-worse-inaccurate
[2]. The "idiotic assumptions" are that any lack of clothing objectifies someone, that viewing someone in such a state could possibly objectify someone, and that females are endangering themselves to sexism when they decide to wear or abstain from wearing certain clothing. To read about why such beliefs embody nonsense of a very amusing kind, see here:
1. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
2. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/can-clothing-objectify.html
Thursday, September 8, 2016
The Burden Of Proof
A common tactic employed by the intellectually-deficient and amusing new atheists is the statement that theism, the belief that God exists, makes a claim that has a burden of proof but the atheist does not have a burden of proof because he or she is just expressing absence of belief in something.
The burden of proof means exactly what it sounds like--it is the standard necessary to either justify or prove a belief. New atheists enjoy asking theists to establish the burden of proof, which is appropriate and necessary. But when an opponent shifts the burden of proof back to them they try to escape offering any proof for their position on the asinine grounds that theism needs proof because it makes a claim that God exists while atheism does not require this because it is merely the absence of belief and claims that God does not exist.
This is bullshit, as I will demonstrate.
Atheism and theism both make a dramatic claim about reality and both demand proof for belief in either to be justified. Yes, I said proof, not merely strong evidence. Agnosticism about God's existence is the neutral position towards God, not atheism, contrary to what new atheists sometimes teach. Even then, agnosticism can only be justified if it can be proven that the conclusion of every single argument for or against God's existence does not follow from the premises. Every single one.
Besides, not a single argument for atheism could ever succeed. For instance, if I said that "there are no extraterrestrial species in our entire universe", I would not be able to prove my claim, much less support it at all. I would need to prove (not just assume or conclude) that every alleged encounter with aliens was a hallucination, fabrication, misunderstanding, or an illusion; that no aliens reside anywhere in or have hidden themselves in the known or unknown areas of the cosmos; that there is no possible way I could be wrong, etc. I could never prove this and thus I am an agnostic with regards to the existence of extraterrestrial aliens, as I explain here [1].
Atheism resembles this in that it by its own nature could never be verified. At best one can prove that a certain type of deity cannot exist due to a logical contradiction, like how a god or goddess who is simultaneously all-just and all-forgiving cannot exist in the same way that a married bachelor is absolutely impossible due to the mutual and inescapable exclusivity of the attributes ascribed to it. However, the example I provided only proves that a deity both all-forgiving and all-just is an absurd impossibility [2], not that there is not a god with different attributes or even modified versions of the ones I listed. At best an argument against theism might succeed in establishing agnosticism as the only justified theological view, but only if all possible arguments or proofs for God were first either refuted or it was demonstrated that they still lead to skepticism on the issue.
To prove atheism, one would have to prove that the universe or multiverse never had a beginning, that if it did it did not need a cause, that objective morality, beauty, and purpose do not exist, that the appearance of design in the universe is just an appearance that does not reflect any higher reality, that all reported and unreported religious experiences from all time are false, and that there is no deity of any kind anywhere. Some of these things are impossible to prove and others among them could not be true due to impossibility, like denying cause and effect. There is no possible world where cause and effect of some sort does not apply, and mathematics proves irrefutably that any possible universe must have a beginning.
Atheism does not have some exemption and to argue otherwise commits the logical fallacy of special pleading. New atheists have hilariously attempted to sidestep away from this in numerous debates and thus have betrayed the reason they claim to revere. Despite their pitiful insistence otherwise, the burden of proof does not rest only in the lap of the theist, but in the lap of every person who makes any claim whatsoever.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-threat-of-alien-life.html
[2]. I suspect that Christians may read the sentences refuting the concept of an all-forgiving and all-just God and recoil due to the potential belief that the Christian God is all-forgiving. Yes, God does promise to forgive all of a person's moral failures if they truly repent and believe in Jesus Christ, but that does not make God all-forgiving, for he does not forgive people unconditionally (they must request forgiveness first). He does not and will not forgive all people unless they all repent, which the a Bible itself admits will never occur. However, the Bible always teaches that God is all-just and thus if the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), anyone who repents could not evade justice unless justice was inflicted on someone else. The only way to resolve this dilemma is with the gospel, where Christ dies on behalf of sinners so that they can be reconciled to God. So while God's nature cannot allow for him to avoid justice, his very nature requires that he not forgive all people unless they first have a change of heart towards him.
The burden of proof means exactly what it sounds like--it is the standard necessary to either justify or prove a belief. New atheists enjoy asking theists to establish the burden of proof, which is appropriate and necessary. But when an opponent shifts the burden of proof back to them they try to escape offering any proof for their position on the asinine grounds that theism needs proof because it makes a claim that God exists while atheism does not require this because it is merely the absence of belief and claims that God does not exist.
This is bullshit, as I will demonstrate.
Atheism and theism both make a dramatic claim about reality and both demand proof for belief in either to be justified. Yes, I said proof, not merely strong evidence. Agnosticism about God's existence is the neutral position towards God, not atheism, contrary to what new atheists sometimes teach. Even then, agnosticism can only be justified if it can be proven that the conclusion of every single argument for or against God's existence does not follow from the premises. Every single one.
Besides, not a single argument for atheism could ever succeed. For instance, if I said that "there are no extraterrestrial species in our entire universe", I would not be able to prove my claim, much less support it at all. I would need to prove (not just assume or conclude) that every alleged encounter with aliens was a hallucination, fabrication, misunderstanding, or an illusion; that no aliens reside anywhere in or have hidden themselves in the known or unknown areas of the cosmos; that there is no possible way I could be wrong, etc. I could never prove this and thus I am an agnostic with regards to the existence of extraterrestrial aliens, as I explain here [1].
Atheism resembles this in that it by its own nature could never be verified. At best one can prove that a certain type of deity cannot exist due to a logical contradiction, like how a god or goddess who is simultaneously all-just and all-forgiving cannot exist in the same way that a married bachelor is absolutely impossible due to the mutual and inescapable exclusivity of the attributes ascribed to it. However, the example I provided only proves that a deity both all-forgiving and all-just is an absurd impossibility [2], not that there is not a god with different attributes or even modified versions of the ones I listed. At best an argument against theism might succeed in establishing agnosticism as the only justified theological view, but only if all possible arguments or proofs for God were first either refuted or it was demonstrated that they still lead to skepticism on the issue.
To prove atheism, one would have to prove that the universe or multiverse never had a beginning, that if it did it did not need a cause, that objective morality, beauty, and purpose do not exist, that the appearance of design in the universe is just an appearance that does not reflect any higher reality, that all reported and unreported religious experiences from all time are false, and that there is no deity of any kind anywhere. Some of these things are impossible to prove and others among them could not be true due to impossibility, like denying cause and effect. There is no possible world where cause and effect of some sort does not apply, and mathematics proves irrefutably that any possible universe must have a beginning.
Atheism does not have some exemption and to argue otherwise commits the logical fallacy of special pleading. New atheists have hilariously attempted to sidestep away from this in numerous debates and thus have betrayed the reason they claim to revere. Despite their pitiful insistence otherwise, the burden of proof does not rest only in the lap of the theist, but in the lap of every person who makes any claim whatsoever.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-threat-of-alien-life.html
[2]. I suspect that Christians may read the sentences refuting the concept of an all-forgiving and all-just God and recoil due to the potential belief that the Christian God is all-forgiving. Yes, God does promise to forgive all of a person's moral failures if they truly repent and believe in Jesus Christ, but that does not make God all-forgiving, for he does not forgive people unconditionally (they must request forgiveness first). He does not and will not forgive all people unless they all repent, which the a Bible itself admits will never occur. However, the Bible always teaches that God is all-just and thus if the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), anyone who repents could not evade justice unless justice was inflicted on someone else. The only way to resolve this dilemma is with the gospel, where Christ dies on behalf of sinners so that they can be reconciled to God. So while God's nature cannot allow for him to avoid justice, his very nature requires that he not forgive all people unless they first have a change of heart towards him.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Assumptions and Knowledge: Mutually Exclusive
Assuming something and knowing it to be true are mutually exclusive things which a person cannot engage in at the same time. Someone cannot assume a premise or proposition to be true while knowing with the intellect that it is truly so, for to assume something one must allow an unverified logical leap.
Allow me to demonstrate the inconsistency of many who pursue assumptions. If one is justified in assuming the Bible as true, then someone who assumes the Quran or Book of Mormon to be God's special revelation is also justified. If someone is justified in assuming that Biblical morality (with its condemnation of racism and the slave trade in Exodus 21-22) reflects the truth, then those who assume the validity of Islamic morality (with its instructions to amputate the hands of thieves [Surah 5:38] and allowances for striking one's wife [Surah 4:34]) are equally justified in their assumptions. No one can legitimately have it both ways, believing in a moral position or theological statement on a basis other than reason and then condemning others who do the same thing but in regards to a different belief. Yet I encounter many who attempt to defend or justify their erroneous and fantastic personal beliefs with nothing but assumptions who then attack others for the exact same fallacies. People who believe in Christianity because they were born into a Christian family and have never challenged their family's practices may object to or ridicule those of another religion content to blindly believe in the theological persuasion they themselves were taught as a child.
It is highly important that I admit that someone can only make so many assumptions before at least one of the assumptions is indeed ultimately correct. Some assumptions will by necessity be revealed as true--a great multitude of them, in fact. However, the only pathway to actual certainty and true knowledge is reason. As I have stated elsewhere, I have grown to despise this fact despite my love of knowledge and reason itself, for it leads to great uncertainty and can seem to ironically produce a lack of intellectual fulfillment in the sense that it only exposes the limitations of our present knowledge. The only way to arrive at a conclusion without reason is to accept assumptive belief--but this is the one thing that can never be epistemologically justified. Though many mistakenly assume they do, no one has the intellectual right to believe something on blind faith and treat it as true and binding in their interactions with other people.
Assumptions, my great nemeses, must be purged from the public intellect as people learn to accept only what can be known. The world of knowledge may terrify and immerse us in the great enigmas and uncertainties of reality, but we must offer these sacrifices if we wish to know how things really are. Terror and difficulty are sacrifices I am willing to acknowledge and make.
Allow me to demonstrate the inconsistency of many who pursue assumptions. If one is justified in assuming the Bible as true, then someone who assumes the Quran or Book of Mormon to be God's special revelation is also justified. If someone is justified in assuming that Biblical morality (with its condemnation of racism and the slave trade in Exodus 21-22) reflects the truth, then those who assume the validity of Islamic morality (with its instructions to amputate the hands of thieves [Surah 5:38] and allowances for striking one's wife [Surah 4:34]) are equally justified in their assumptions. No one can legitimately have it both ways, believing in a moral position or theological statement on a basis other than reason and then condemning others who do the same thing but in regards to a different belief. Yet I encounter many who attempt to defend or justify their erroneous and fantastic personal beliefs with nothing but assumptions who then attack others for the exact same fallacies. People who believe in Christianity because they were born into a Christian family and have never challenged their family's practices may object to or ridicule those of another religion content to blindly believe in the theological persuasion they themselves were taught as a child.
It is highly important that I admit that someone can only make so many assumptions before at least one of the assumptions is indeed ultimately correct. Some assumptions will by necessity be revealed as true--a great multitude of them, in fact. However, the only pathway to actual certainty and true knowledge is reason. As I have stated elsewhere, I have grown to despise this fact despite my love of knowledge and reason itself, for it leads to great uncertainty and can seem to ironically produce a lack of intellectual fulfillment in the sense that it only exposes the limitations of our present knowledge. The only way to arrive at a conclusion without reason is to accept assumptive belief--but this is the one thing that can never be epistemologically justified. Though many mistakenly assume they do, no one has the intellectual right to believe something on blind faith and treat it as true and binding in their interactions with other people.
Assumptions, my great nemeses, must be purged from the public intellect as people learn to accept only what can be known. The world of knowledge may terrify and immerse us in the great enigmas and uncertainties of reality, but we must offer these sacrifices if we wish to know how things really are. Terror and difficulty are sacrifices I am willing to acknowledge and make.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Is Conscience Valid?
Just as I know for sure that my mind exists [1], I know for sure that I have deep moral intuitions. At multiple points in my 19 years of life (20 years in slightly over a month) I have experienced immediate and jolting moral reactions towards events, behaviors, attitudes, and even my own motives and actions. The conscience is the inner moral sense that activates when people do or observe something they think is wrong.
Deep down, I do have strong moral intuitions that things like racism, sexism, hypocrisy, perjury, torture [2], and intentionally violating my conscience are wrong, and that helping the poor, pursuing the truth, combating injustice, compassion for others, and acknowledging human rights really are intrinsically good. The question is not whether or not I carry forceful and innate moral ideas within me, for I know for sure that I do actually have them. If these intuitions conform to some higher moral reality or if they simply reflect my own personal moral preferences--that is the right question.
I have experienced guilt over things that in the Christian worldview are not sinful or evil, though I viewed them contrarily at one time. My conscience has at times conformed itself to false moral beliefs--but my conscience exists regardless of its accuracy. Even when other people contradict my moral compass, it persists. So independent of the accuracy of my conscience at any precise time, I have confronted such vehement and intense moral reactions that I have erupted into rather volatile anger upon merely hearing someone suggest that something evil is good or amoral. There are people who seem to truly live without conscience or ethical regret, and although they could be in constant internal and emotional agony from guilt I could never verify their inner state. But the existence of morals, which my conscience seems to hint at, does not hinge on the consensus of humans or whether or not people violate or adhere to them. Ultimately, the human conscience only possess objective validity if God exists, for without theism there could be nothing transcendent to ground morality. In God's absence the moral impulse within humans could at most only amount to personal preferences that do not align with any transcendent or binding obligations; without God there can be no right or moral way that things should be, only a way things are or a way humans socially or personally prefer them to be.
In this post I am not addressing whether or not my individual conscience is reliable or if the consciences of most people actually correspond to what is truly right and wrong; I am instead proving that the conscience could never possess any authority to begin with unless there is a god. I know for sure that it seems as if there are genuine moral obligations--but such a position is impossibly mistaken if God does not exist. No conscience could be valid in God's absence because there could be no moral authority or standard to validate it. So, does God exist? The correct answer to this question drastically alters the nature of reality, for the existence of ethical truths is entirely contingent upon the truth of the matter.
[1]. "It is true that my mind exists. Now, I could be a disembodied mind stimulated by a malevolent and deceitful scientist into imagining all of my sensory experiences even though they do not correspond to the real world where the scientist resides . . . However, whether I am in the Matrix being drained of my energy by sentient robots or a disembodied mind in a vat being deceived by a scientist or the world I perceive is the true external world, my mind exists and I know this for sure. There is no possible way I could be wrong about this."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/truth-how-things-are.html
[2]. Yes, as a Christian I must admit that corporal punishment consisting of 1-40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), possible removal of a limb for removal of a limb (Leviticus 24:19-21), and possible amputation of a woman's hand for a certain crime (Deuteronomy 25:11-12) are morally permissible. However, any intentional infliction of pain other than these exceptions is morally abominable, and there could be no evil greater than the worst of tortures.
Deep down, I do have strong moral intuitions that things like racism, sexism, hypocrisy, perjury, torture [2], and intentionally violating my conscience are wrong, and that helping the poor, pursuing the truth, combating injustice, compassion for others, and acknowledging human rights really are intrinsically good. The question is not whether or not I carry forceful and innate moral ideas within me, for I know for sure that I do actually have them. If these intuitions conform to some higher moral reality or if they simply reflect my own personal moral preferences--that is the right question.
I have experienced guilt over things that in the Christian worldview are not sinful or evil, though I viewed them contrarily at one time. My conscience has at times conformed itself to false moral beliefs--but my conscience exists regardless of its accuracy. Even when other people contradict my moral compass, it persists. So independent of the accuracy of my conscience at any precise time, I have confronted such vehement and intense moral reactions that I have erupted into rather volatile anger upon merely hearing someone suggest that something evil is good or amoral. There are people who seem to truly live without conscience or ethical regret, and although they could be in constant internal and emotional agony from guilt I could never verify their inner state. But the existence of morals, which my conscience seems to hint at, does not hinge on the consensus of humans or whether or not people violate or adhere to them. Ultimately, the human conscience only possess objective validity if God exists, for without theism there could be nothing transcendent to ground morality. In God's absence the moral impulse within humans could at most only amount to personal preferences that do not align with any transcendent or binding obligations; without God there can be no right or moral way that things should be, only a way things are or a way humans socially or personally prefer them to be.
In this post I am not addressing whether or not my individual conscience is reliable or if the consciences of most people actually correspond to what is truly right and wrong; I am instead proving that the conscience could never possess any authority to begin with unless there is a god. I know for sure that it seems as if there are genuine moral obligations--but such a position is impossibly mistaken if God does not exist. No conscience could be valid in God's absence because there could be no moral authority or standard to validate it. So, does God exist? The correct answer to this question drastically alters the nature of reality, for the existence of ethical truths is entirely contingent upon the truth of the matter.
[1]. "It is true that my mind exists. Now, I could be a disembodied mind stimulated by a malevolent and deceitful scientist into imagining all of my sensory experiences even though they do not correspond to the real world where the scientist resides . . . However, whether I am in the Matrix being drained of my energy by sentient robots or a disembodied mind in a vat being deceived by a scientist or the world I perceive is the true external world, my mind exists and I know this for sure. There is no possible way I could be wrong about this."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/truth-how-things-are.html
[2]. Yes, as a Christian I must admit that corporal punishment consisting of 1-40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), possible removal of a limb for removal of a limb (Leviticus 24:19-21), and possible amputation of a woman's hand for a certain crime (Deuteronomy 25:11-12) are morally permissible. However, any intentional infliction of pain other than these exceptions is morally abominable, and there could be no evil greater than the worst of tortures.
Definitions (Part 3)
This is my third list of definitions relevant to this blog. For the first two, see here [1] and here [2].
Logic
Axiom--self-evident and self-verifying statement that cannot be attacked without being proven in the process ("Truth exists"; "Words can convey truth")
Theorem--a statement that follows logically from axioms but is not self-evident or self-verifying on its own
Premise--statement in an argument used to reach a conclusion
Conclusion--end result of a premised argument
Syllogism--argument with both premises and a conclusion ("If A, then B. A. Therefore B.")
Antecedent--the phrase preceding the consequent in a hypothetical premise ("If A, then B")
Consequent--the phrase following the antecedent in a hypothetical premise ("If A, then B")
Logical fallacy--logical error in an argument that invalidates either the premises or the conclusion
Deductive reasoning--reasoning abstractly by using premises to form a conclusion
A priori--something evident or knowable by simple rational reflection instead of experience
A posteriori--something evident or knowable by experience
Gaming
D-pad--cross-shaped four-way directional pad on a controller or handheld
Respawn--materializing in-game after dying or being killed
Spawn trap (also called spawn raping)--act of killing players who have just respawned by holding crosshairs over the respawn positions and killing them as soon as they appear
Port--game that is translated or brought from one system to another
DLC--abbreviation for downloadable content; additional game content like levels, skins, and characters that can be purchased online and obtained digitally
FPS--abbreviation for first-person shooter; a game where the player views the environment through the eyes of the playable character just as someone views the external world in real life
Multiplayer--playing a game with other players instead of solo play either locally or online
Co-op play--multiplayer where players do not compete but assist each other in a campaign or additional mode
Deathmatch--multiplayer mode where players kill other players for a set amount of time or until a point threshold is met
Open world--game structure where a player can explore a large environment like a city or desert without having to switch from level to level
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/defininitions-part-1.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/definitions-part-2.html
Logic
Axiom--self-evident and self-verifying statement that cannot be attacked without being proven in the process ("Truth exists"; "Words can convey truth")
Theorem--a statement that follows logically from axioms but is not self-evident or self-verifying on its own
Premise--statement in an argument used to reach a conclusion
Conclusion--end result of a premised argument
Syllogism--argument with both premises and a conclusion ("If A, then B. A. Therefore B.")
Antecedent--the phrase preceding the consequent in a hypothetical premise ("If A, then B")
Consequent--the phrase following the antecedent in a hypothetical premise ("If A, then B")
Logical fallacy--logical error in an argument that invalidates either the premises or the conclusion
Deductive reasoning--reasoning abstractly by using premises to form a conclusion
A priori--something evident or knowable by simple rational reflection instead of experience
A posteriori--something evident or knowable by experience
Gaming
D-pad--cross-shaped four-way directional pad on a controller or handheld
Respawn--materializing in-game after dying or being killed
Spawn trap (also called spawn raping)--act of killing players who have just respawned by holding crosshairs over the respawn positions and killing them as soon as they appear
Port--game that is translated or brought from one system to another
DLC--abbreviation for downloadable content; additional game content like levels, skins, and characters that can be purchased online and obtained digitally
FPS--abbreviation for first-person shooter; a game where the player views the environment through the eyes of the playable character just as someone views the external world in real life
Multiplayer--playing a game with other players instead of solo play either locally or online
Co-op play--multiplayer where players do not compete but assist each other in a campaign or additional mode
Deathmatch--multiplayer mode where players kill other players for a set amount of time or until a point threshold is met
Open world--game structure where a player can explore a large environment like a city or desert without having to switch from level to level
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/defininitions-part-1.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/definitions-part-2.html
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Truth: How Things Are
1. If truth exists, there is a way things are.
2. If truth does not exist, there is a way things are (that truth does not exist).
3. Therefore, there is a way things are (truth) by necessity.
A minority of people occasionally claims that truth itself does not exist, a mere social construct or comforting idea instead of immutable reality. But the very act of denying truth only proves that it exists by logical necessity--for to say there is no truth is to say that it is true that no truth exists. Only the most foolish of persons would even consider this position to be correct. Truth is how things are; no one can rationally dispute this definition without lapsing into contradiction (e.g. "The way things are is that truth is not the way things are").
For instance, it is true that my mind exists. Now, I could be a mind whose only body is a brain stimulated by a malevolent and deceitful scientist into imagining all of my sensory experiences even though they do not correspond to the real external world where the scientist resides [1]. I may have a body quite anatomically and physiologically different than the one I can look down at and see right now. However, whether I am in the Matrix being drained of my energy by sentient robots or a disembodied mind in a vat being deceived by a scientist or the world I perceive is the true external world, my mind exists and I know this for sure. There is no possible way I could be wrong about this. To doubt this fact is one of the greatest irrationalities I could engage in, one of the greatest of follies. Another error of equal irrationality would be to deny that truth exists, for I would be arguing that in reality there is no such thing as reality. People can rationally doubt if they know certain facts about how things ultimately are, just as people can doubt if the information received by their senses is accurate, but to claim that there is no way things ultimately are is like doubting that one even possesses the senses feeding one information--it is an incoherent, impossible absurdity.
Even if very little about reality can be presently known, reality objectively exists independent of our awareness of it or how we wish it to be. This represents one of the most rationally undeniable of fact, one that no one can attack without contradicting their own argument at the deepest possible level, dissolving away the very foundations of any possible ideological opposition. Truth and knowledge of it stand as the only things that can deliver us from ignorance and falsity; they alone can secure this enlightenment. But truth may often prove far more terrifying to our hearts and more foreign to our expectations than we are willing to grant. I myself have discovered after three years of the most skeptical and rationalistic investigations that there are truths unavoidable, undeniable, and irrefutable. My own existence and the impossibility for me to exist and not exist at the same time in the same universe (law of non-contradiction) rank among these. But I have been forced by my reflections to confront my own inability to learn the answers to many questions ("Am I in a simulation?"; "Does God have a specific plan for my individual life?"; "What are God's reasons for withholding moral or theological information in the Bible?"; "Is there a multiverse?"; "Are there lost books which are divinely-inspired and also belong in the Bible?"; "Does extraterrestrial life exist?", etc) due to epistemological limitations which, hopefully, are temporary, and this can sporadically bring me to more despair over what I do not know more than to joy at what I do know for sure.
I will join Descartes, Plato, Saint Augustine, and all of those in human history who have resigned their hopes to the realm of truth even if that truth will ultimately defy many or all of their expectations. Whether I will find myself shocked, vindicated, terrified, or astonished at how aspects of reality turn out, I would rather pursue and attach myself to truth and what I can and do know for sure than satisfy myself with pleasant or personally-comforting delusions and assumptions. The truth may result in either my excitement or my condemnation, but it is inescapably futile and pointless to attempt to live for anything other than it.
Truth will force itself on me and any other sentient being in the end; no one can escape the very fabric of reality. A theist may die and find in the afterlife a very different deity than he or she expected; an atheist may realize after death that a deity exists with revulsion and horror; a Christian may discover that there is no such thing as meaning despite the existence of an uncaused cause, or that God does not actually love the human species; a person may see his or her entire worldview collapse due to epistemological faults and catapult that person into a terrifying existential crisis. There is no such thing as a total, perpetual escape from truth. It will in the end inevitably, incontrovertibly force itself on me. My response to this awareness has been to orient the entirety of my conscious life around the pursuit of truth and reason as best I can. Although this may prove meaningless in the end, any other approach to living is futile already.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/brain-in-vat.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/brain-in-vat-reality-remains-unchanged.html
2. If truth does not exist, there is a way things are (that truth does not exist).
3. Therefore, there is a way things are (truth) by necessity.
A minority of people occasionally claims that truth itself does not exist, a mere social construct or comforting idea instead of immutable reality. But the very act of denying truth only proves that it exists by logical necessity--for to say there is no truth is to say that it is true that no truth exists. Only the most foolish of persons would even consider this position to be correct. Truth is how things are; no one can rationally dispute this definition without lapsing into contradiction (e.g. "The way things are is that truth is not the way things are").
For instance, it is true that my mind exists. Now, I could be a mind whose only body is a brain stimulated by a malevolent and deceitful scientist into imagining all of my sensory experiences even though they do not correspond to the real external world where the scientist resides [1]. I may have a body quite anatomically and physiologically different than the one I can look down at and see right now. However, whether I am in the Matrix being drained of my energy by sentient robots or a disembodied mind in a vat being deceived by a scientist or the world I perceive is the true external world, my mind exists and I know this for sure. There is no possible way I could be wrong about this. To doubt this fact is one of the greatest irrationalities I could engage in, one of the greatest of follies. Another error of equal irrationality would be to deny that truth exists, for I would be arguing that in reality there is no such thing as reality. People can rationally doubt if they know certain facts about how things ultimately are, just as people can doubt if the information received by their senses is accurate, but to claim that there is no way things ultimately are is like doubting that one even possesses the senses feeding one information--it is an incoherent, impossible absurdity.
Even if very little about reality can be presently known, reality objectively exists independent of our awareness of it or how we wish it to be. This represents one of the most rationally undeniable of fact, one that no one can attack without contradicting their own argument at the deepest possible level, dissolving away the very foundations of any possible ideological opposition. Truth and knowledge of it stand as the only things that can deliver us from ignorance and falsity; they alone can secure this enlightenment. But truth may often prove far more terrifying to our hearts and more foreign to our expectations than we are willing to grant. I myself have discovered after three years of the most skeptical and rationalistic investigations that there are truths unavoidable, undeniable, and irrefutable. My own existence and the impossibility for me to exist and not exist at the same time in the same universe (law of non-contradiction) rank among these. But I have been forced by my reflections to confront my own inability to learn the answers to many questions ("Am I in a simulation?"; "Does God have a specific plan for my individual life?"; "What are God's reasons for withholding moral or theological information in the Bible?"; "Is there a multiverse?"; "Are there lost books which are divinely-inspired and also belong in the Bible?"; "Does extraterrestrial life exist?", etc) due to epistemological limitations which, hopefully, are temporary, and this can sporadically bring me to more despair over what I do not know more than to joy at what I do know for sure.
I will join Descartes, Plato, Saint Augustine, and all of those in human history who have resigned their hopes to the realm of truth even if that truth will ultimately defy many or all of their expectations. Whether I will find myself shocked, vindicated, terrified, or astonished at how aspects of reality turn out, I would rather pursue and attach myself to truth and what I can and do know for sure than satisfy myself with pleasant or personally-comforting delusions and assumptions. The truth may result in either my excitement or my condemnation, but it is inescapably futile and pointless to attempt to live for anything other than it.
Truth will force itself on me and any other sentient being in the end; no one can escape the very fabric of reality. A theist may die and find in the afterlife a very different deity than he or she expected; an atheist may realize after death that a deity exists with revulsion and horror; a Christian may discover that there is no such thing as meaning despite the existence of an uncaused cause, or that God does not actually love the human species; a person may see his or her entire worldview collapse due to epistemological faults and catapult that person into a terrifying existential crisis. There is no such thing as a total, perpetual escape from truth. It will in the end inevitably, incontrovertibly force itself on me. My response to this awareness has been to orient the entirety of my conscious life around the pursuit of truth and reason as best I can. Although this may prove meaningless in the end, any other approach to living is futile already.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/brain-in-vat.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/brain-in-vat-reality-remains-unchanged.html
Friday, September 2, 2016
Refutation Of Experiential Apologetics
Experiential apologetics seeks to persuade a listener of the truth of Christianity by means of relating one or multiple personal experiences. This form of evangelism is dangerous, faulty, and cannot survive an intellectual examination.
Before I proceed, allow me to remind my readers that people claim they have had experiences which prove the existence of alien life, the simulation hypothesis, and other unverifiable beliefs. I am not saying that extraterrestrial life does not exist or that the simulation hypothesis is false, I am merely showing that the experiences of a person, even if true, cannot prove either the experience or the conclusion to the hearer.
Experiential apologetics is the ultimate copout and can undeniably be used to argue for whatever religion or theological beliefs the one appealing to his or her experience is defending. Almost every religious group in existence can appeal to subjective mystical experiences as justification for belief in their particular organized or informal theological position. Actually, the Mormon book Doctrines and Covenants directly confesses that subjective feelings will verify Mormonism if someone investigating its truth prays about the matter.
--Doctrines and Covenants 9:8--"But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right [1]."
No one can justify believing in God for this reason. Anyone who cites this or anything resembling it as proof of God's existence commits a major use of the anecdotal fallacy. And people who think they have encountered an emotional religious experience with God must question if they can trust anything they felt, while assuming absolutely nothing about the nature, origins, or meaning of the experience. No one can justify believing in God's existence on such pathetic grounds. From a rational perspective it becomes apparent that experiences of this type can never be verified, for they are by definition subjective events that honestly might have only occurred in the mind of the claimant.
Christians must avoid experiential apologetics not only because it is rationally unjustifiable and because God commands us to honor and employ reason, but because it will (and rightly so) have no effect whatsoever on many skeptics and unbelievers except to perhaps lead to a bout of appropriate laughter from them. Do not expect to make significant progress with true pursuers of truth when you rely on evidences as weak as this. Theistic rationalism does not merely discourage such argumentation but is by definition intrinsically hostile towards it.
Obviously, I'm no empiricist. I'm a rationalist, clearly, hence the title of my blog, and I did not assume rationalism to be true because I find it appealing or because I arbitrarily decided to or because I felt like believing in it. I'm a rationalist simply because it is true, nothing more.
Final note: I never argued that God cannot provide people with experiential encounters with himself or that everyone who claims to have such experiences is delusional or lying. I myself can relate to these experiences [2] but I will never use them in my evangelism or apologetics and I could never use them as a foundation or rational proof for my worldview. Instead, all I proved here was that experiential apologetics does not prove anything, is intellectually unjustifiable, and offers no epistemological value. As an epistemic theory it stands refuted and useless.
[1]. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/9.8?lang=eng
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/my-personal-story-part-1-start-of.html
Before I proceed, allow me to remind my readers that people claim they have had experiences which prove the existence of alien life, the simulation hypothesis, and other unverifiable beliefs. I am not saying that extraterrestrial life does not exist or that the simulation hypothesis is false, I am merely showing that the experiences of a person, even if true, cannot prove either the experience or the conclusion to the hearer.
Experiential apologetics is the ultimate copout and can undeniably be used to argue for whatever religion or theological beliefs the one appealing to his or her experience is defending. Almost every religious group in existence can appeal to subjective mystical experiences as justification for belief in their particular organized or informal theological position. Actually, the Mormon book Doctrines and Covenants directly confesses that subjective feelings will verify Mormonism if someone investigating its truth prays about the matter.
--Doctrines and Covenants 9:8--"But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right [1]."
No one can justify believing in God for this reason. Anyone who cites this or anything resembling it as proof of God's existence commits a major use of the anecdotal fallacy. And people who think they have encountered an emotional religious experience with God must question if they can trust anything they felt, while assuming absolutely nothing about the nature, origins, or meaning of the experience. No one can justify believing in God's existence on such pathetic grounds. From a rational perspective it becomes apparent that experiences of this type can never be verified, for they are by definition subjective events that honestly might have only occurred in the mind of the claimant.
Christians must avoid experiential apologetics not only because it is rationally unjustifiable and because God commands us to honor and employ reason, but because it will (and rightly so) have no effect whatsoever on many skeptics and unbelievers except to perhaps lead to a bout of appropriate laughter from them. Do not expect to make significant progress with true pursuers of truth when you rely on evidences as weak as this. Theistic rationalism does not merely discourage such argumentation but is by definition intrinsically hostile towards it.
Obviously, I'm no empiricist. I'm a rationalist, clearly, hence the title of my blog, and I did not assume rationalism to be true because I find it appealing or because I arbitrarily decided to or because I felt like believing in it. I'm a rationalist simply because it is true, nothing more.
Final note: I never argued that God cannot provide people with experiential encounters with himself or that everyone who claims to have such experiences is delusional or lying. I myself can relate to these experiences [2] but I will never use them in my evangelism or apologetics and I could never use them as a foundation or rational proof for my worldview. Instead, all I proved here was that experiential apologetics does not prove anything, is intellectually unjustifiable, and offers no epistemological value. As an epistemic theory it stands refuted and useless.
[1]. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/9.8?lang=eng
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/my-personal-story-part-1-start-of.html
An Unapplied Truth
Tonight I came across a short essay from April of last semester on Augustine's City of God, and I believe I need to personally apply my points to my life better, as even though I can defend them beautifully I do not always live as if they are true. Here is the essay below.
"City of God
Reflection Essay
What does it mean that
God expects us to be both intellectually and emotionally responsible in how we
formulate a coherent and verifiable worldview?
More specifically, in this essay I want to consider how our God-given
rationality and emotions can coexist. This
question is one that is very important to me personally, for while I am someone
who possesses deep feelings I greatly prefer to focus on facts to the exclusion
of emotion when making decisions. I
would rather think about a statement like '. . . those who say this wish to
suggest that the world is eternal and without any beginning . . . rave in the
deadly madness of ungodliness' (452-453) than think about how I should love God
with all of my heart.
A crucial part of
intellectual responsibility that can be neglected by theistic rationalists is
the role of emotions in human life. The
fact that we are emotional and relational creatures testifies to the reality
that our Creator is also an emotional and relational being, for properties like
emotionality cannot emerge from non-emotion.
Rationalists deal in facts, and it is a fact that we are emotional
beings by nature. I, as a rationalistic
person, have made the mistake at various points in my life of ignoring my
emotional side due to the possibility of potential
interference with my reason. It is
undeniable that feelings can drastically distort our rational
comprehension. They can create a desire
for something to be true or real that isn’t, can erupt and subside rather
quickly and unpredictably, and can create an emotional attachment to something
we know is false. Augustine supplies an
example of how emotions can arise so spontaneously: '. . . we sometimes weep
even when we do not wish to do so' (599).
The dilemma becomes apparent. Reason leads to God; God created us to be
emotional creatures; emotions often hinder most people from objectively
pursuing or understanding truth. But is
this an inescapable dilemma?
God does not demand
that our reason and our feelings nullify each other and cancel each other
out. Augustine articulated this quite
well. 'Yet if we felt no such emotions
at all while subject to the infirmity of this life, we should then certainly
not be living righteously. For the
apostle condemned and denounced certain persons who, he said, were "without
natural affection"' (599-600). God
imbued us with both reason and feelings.
Neither one must lead to abandonment of the other, as both reveal the
glorious nature of the one who fashioned them.
Work
Cited
Saint
Augustine. The City of God against the Pagans.
Trans. Dyson, R.W. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print."
The "Threat" Of Alien Life
If humans discovered evidence or proof of life forms foreign to this planet in the universe or if an advanced alien species visited us, what would the philosophical and theological ramifications be? Would such a discovery threaten the notion that God exists or would it undermine Christianity in particular? No, as I will prove, it would not threaten theism or Christianity. Actually, it would be impossible for it to do so.
I want to quickly state that there is absolutely no evidence, much less proof, for the existence of extraterrestrial life. There is presently no way to verify alleged alien sightings or to explore the entire universe and thus find the answer to this question for sure. Because of this I, like any person responding rationally to this fact, am an agnostic on the issue of alien life. Still, it is important for me to say that there very well may exist an alien race, perhaps even one more intelligent and knowledgable than humans.
Now, time for an explanation on the relationship between possible alien life and theism. Theism is the position that there is one god or multiple deities, and alien life refers to biological life forms which inhabit planets other than our own. Nothing about these two concepts is contradictory or mutually exclusive. Regardless of whether an alien species is similar to humanity, comparatively simple (alien plant life or small animals, for instance), or intellectually and morally superior, learning they exist would simply add to the wonder and complexity of the universe, not detract from them. The discovery of sophisticated and sentient alien life would indeed obliterate the idea of the anthropic principle [1], but while many people view the anthropic principle as having theistic leanings (in that they claim God created the earth for life), theism does not hinge on it at all and would still be irrefutably true even if the principle were abolished and refuted entirely. However, it is possible were any aliens eventually found that they would be very simple or unsophisticated life forms instead of the intelligent or bipedal species often featured in entertainment such as the Star Wars films.
Theism's truth would definitely survive the identification of extraterrestrial beings. For instance, the Kalam cosmological argument remains an absolute proof of a god-like entity regardless of whether or not alien life exists. Since any possible material world that exists depends on what we would call God in order to exist, the presence of alien life--however intelligent or developed--cannot disprove God. It would only prove that aliens exist and that other species which are perhaps comparable to us also populate the universe and that the universe houses creatures more exotic and elusive than we are accustomed to thinking.
Christian doctrine in the Bible never comments on whether or not God created life on the other celestial bodies formed at the beginning of time, but nothing about Christianity would be compromised or contradicted were it one day demonstrated that he did create such entities. In reality, it would only serve as a further illustration of God's abundant creativity and splendor, not as a counter-argument to his existence. But if they do turn out to visit us and establish that they exist, this would prompt more questions. If they are sentient and intellectual beings, would they also have consciences? If so, would God have provided divine revelation to them as well? Would they have received Christ in a different form if they sinned or would the effects of Christ's terrestrial death extend to them?
Christians need not feel anxiety when unbelievers search for extraterrestrial life, but should instead encourage their questions about the possibility of aliens while reminding them that the knowledge a representative of an advanced alien civilization could bring does not surpass or negate the need for knowledge revealed from the Being who created the aliens themselves. Either way, Christians can know that God deeply cares for all humans even if they are not the exclusive race with a great intellectual and spiritual nature.
Summary of observations:
1. There is currently no reason whatsoever to believe in alien life.
2. Alien life could exist in our universe.
3. Even if alien life exists, it quite possibly would not be of the sentient or humanoid kind.
4. The existence of alien life would not and could not threaten the existence of God or Christianity.
[1]. The anthropic principle refers to the idea that the universe as a whole and earth in specific are fine-tuned with conditions just right to sustain life, and human life in particular.
I want to quickly state that there is absolutely no evidence, much less proof, for the existence of extraterrestrial life. There is presently no way to verify alleged alien sightings or to explore the entire universe and thus find the answer to this question for sure. Because of this I, like any person responding rationally to this fact, am an agnostic on the issue of alien life. Still, it is important for me to say that there very well may exist an alien race, perhaps even one more intelligent and knowledgable than humans.
Now, time for an explanation on the relationship between possible alien life and theism. Theism is the position that there is one god or multiple deities, and alien life refers to biological life forms which inhabit planets other than our own. Nothing about these two concepts is contradictory or mutually exclusive. Regardless of whether an alien species is similar to humanity, comparatively simple (alien plant life or small animals, for instance), or intellectually and morally superior, learning they exist would simply add to the wonder and complexity of the universe, not detract from them. The discovery of sophisticated and sentient alien life would indeed obliterate the idea of the anthropic principle [1], but while many people view the anthropic principle as having theistic leanings (in that they claim God created the earth for life), theism does not hinge on it at all and would still be irrefutably true even if the principle were abolished and refuted entirely. However, it is possible were any aliens eventually found that they would be very simple or unsophisticated life forms instead of the intelligent or bipedal species often featured in entertainment such as the Star Wars films.
Theism's truth would definitely survive the identification of extraterrestrial beings. For instance, the Kalam cosmological argument remains an absolute proof of a god-like entity regardless of whether or not alien life exists. Since any possible material world that exists depends on what we would call God in order to exist, the presence of alien life--however intelligent or developed--cannot disprove God. It would only prove that aliens exist and that other species which are perhaps comparable to us also populate the universe and that the universe houses creatures more exotic and elusive than we are accustomed to thinking.
Christian doctrine in the Bible never comments on whether or not God created life on the other celestial bodies formed at the beginning of time, but nothing about Christianity would be compromised or contradicted were it one day demonstrated that he did create such entities. In reality, it would only serve as a further illustration of God's abundant creativity and splendor, not as a counter-argument to his existence. But if they do turn out to visit us and establish that they exist, this would prompt more questions. If they are sentient and intellectual beings, would they also have consciences? If so, would God have provided divine revelation to them as well? Would they have received Christ in a different form if they sinned or would the effects of Christ's terrestrial death extend to them?
Christians need not feel anxiety when unbelievers search for extraterrestrial life, but should instead encourage their questions about the possibility of aliens while reminding them that the knowledge a representative of an advanced alien civilization could bring does not surpass or negate the need for knowledge revealed from the Being who created the aliens themselves. Either way, Christians can know that God deeply cares for all humans even if they are not the exclusive race with a great intellectual and spiritual nature.
Summary of observations:
1. There is currently no reason whatsoever to believe in alien life.
2. Alien life could exist in our universe.
3. Even if alien life exists, it quite possibly would not be of the sentient or humanoid kind.
4. The existence of alien life would not and could not threaten the existence of God or Christianity.
[1]. The anthropic principle refers to the idea that the universe as a whole and earth in specific are fine-tuned with conditions just right to sustain life, and human life in particular.
A Great Frustration
"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."
--Blaise Pascal
The great frustration of one who pursues truth is that few will join alongside him or her. Few care about understanding and conforming to reality; but many are those who avoid shattering their beliefs in order to discover actual truth or to stare into the terrors and cautions of uncertainty. Seeing people continually do this after correction only compounds my fury.
To truly aim for truth and truth alone, one must disregard assumptions, traditions, emotional persuasions, and anything that cannot be established on the basis of intellectual certainty. It is indeed a difficult pursuit, but one necessary to find true knowledge. I find myself deeply frustrated quite often with how people generally do not intend to surrender their beliefs when they are proven false or unjustified, yet I am instructed to love them as fellow recipients of revelation and bearers of reason and God's image. Still, I experience deep irritation and even indignation towards most people for their lack of understanding and their indifference towards the acts of shedding beliefs and exchanging them for knowledge.
As much as I admire Pascal for his wonderful insights and devotion to Christianity, he was not a rationalist and believed that God's existence cannot be proven, though he did engage in Christian apologetics and proposed his famous "wager". The belief that God's existence cannot be proven is indeed false, though many arguments cited in order to prove a deity's existence often do fail or contain overt or subtle logical fallacies. But he was absolutely accurate in his diagnosis of humanity--many people do not seek proof but appeal or attractiveness when considering a belief.
--Blaise Pascal
The great frustration of one who pursues truth is that few will join alongside him or her. Few care about understanding and conforming to reality; but many are those who avoid shattering their beliefs in order to discover actual truth or to stare into the terrors and cautions of uncertainty. Seeing people continually do this after correction only compounds my fury.
To truly aim for truth and truth alone, one must disregard assumptions, traditions, emotional persuasions, and anything that cannot be established on the basis of intellectual certainty. It is indeed a difficult pursuit, but one necessary to find true knowledge. I find myself deeply frustrated quite often with how people generally do not intend to surrender their beliefs when they are proven false or unjustified, yet I am instructed to love them as fellow recipients of revelation and bearers of reason and God's image. Still, I experience deep irritation and even indignation towards most people for their lack of understanding and their indifference towards the acts of shedding beliefs and exchanging them for knowledge.
As much as I admire Pascal for his wonderful insights and devotion to Christianity, he was not a rationalist and believed that God's existence cannot be proven, though he did engage in Christian apologetics and proposed his famous "wager". The belief that God's existence cannot be proven is indeed false, though many arguments cited in order to prove a deity's existence often do fail or contain overt or subtle logical fallacies. But he was absolutely accurate in his diagnosis of humanity--many people do not seek proof but appeal or attractiveness when considering a belief.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Examples Of Fallacies (Part 1)
Here is a short partial list of logical fallacies with one current example of each. I hope this might enable people studying logical fallacies to understand them better.
Straw Man
A straw man fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts the argument of an opponent, therefore both addressing a false position and potentially making the argument easier to refute.
"The Bible is evil because it condones slavery. What kind of benevolent deity would not only permit but REGULATE an activity as abominable and dehumanizing as one human owning another??"
This example of the fallacy I provided strongly implied that the slavery in the Bible is abusive, degrading, and involuntary along with the slavery practiced by other groups throughout history. But anyone who objectively studies the Old Testament legal texts knows this view is false and actually represents the antithesis of Biblical slavery [1]. Of course, this doesn't prevent the new atheists from relentlessly accusing the Bible of evil. Another instance of a straw man would be if I told someone that we cannot know if the external world our senses currently perceive is the real objective external world and the other person said to a third party that I had argued that the world around me isn't real. Of course, I had never said that what my sense perceive isn't real, only that it may not represent the true external world, and I never claimed there is no external world.
Begging the Question
Begging the question is when someone simply assumes a premise of an argument to be true without any justification for this belief.
"It is obvious that listening to metal music is sinful. Why? It just is! It's obvious!"
"Do you really need proof that wearing a bikini in public is just wrong? It's like wearing your underwear in front of other people!"
"I'll tell you what happens when we die. We cease to exist entirely. There is no afterlife; the concept is another lie invented by religion."
Positing a point or premise as true without any proof or defense does not mean the point is obvious, it means the one in favor of the premise cannot intellectually justify their belief. People, Christian or not, seem to particularly resort to this fallacy in an attempt to verify their moral preferences. For instance, if I ask pro-"modesty" people why wearing a bikini in public is wrong and the they reply that it is like wearing underwear in public, they have not answered my question but have merely rephrased their conclusion. They have shown that the two sets of clothing are similar but not that they are immoral. I could then ask why wearing underwear in public is wrong, and they could either keep producing analogies that don't actually demonstrate that they are right or they could admit that they can't identify a valid reason why wearing underwear/bikinis publicly is objectively wrong. A similar conversation would occur if someone said abortion is wrong because it is equivalent to murder but they couldn't show that murder is wrong. As for the third example, no atheist can prove anything about the afterlife, so making an epistemic and ontological claim about what happens after death is ludicrous. Anyone who makes similar statements is entirely begging the question. It is very easy to ignore or fail to detect this fallacy unless one has conditioned himself or herself to become a strict rationalist.
Ad Hominem
Someone uses an ad hominem when they oppose an argument out of dislike for the one offering it.
"No, of course we shouldn't follow any economic policy recommended by Hitler. I mean, Hitler was a horrific monster."
While it is true that Hitler was an evil individual, his malicious moral beliefs have nothing to do with whether or not his economic ideas are pragmatically successful or rational. For instance, I have many reasons to intellectually dislike Richard Dawkins, especially when it comes to his philosophy, but I must evaluate every individual point he asserts instead of dismissing them just because he is incorrect the vast majority of the time.
Appeal to Tradition
This fallacy capitalizes on the tendency of some people to cling to a belief because it is a tradition of their family, country, neighborhood, or personal life.
"America has always defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and since that's how our law has always defined it we should not change the definition now!"
This example uses a frustratingly inadequate logical argument to support a correct conclusion. People like to rely on this sort of argument when they have exhausted their other "evidences". Interestingly, people will selectively and therefore inconsistently argue like this--a modern conservative American might use this logic to attack homosexual marriage but probably won't use it to endorse misogyny and other cruel historical practices.
Appeal to Emotion
Emotional appeals seek to persuade the target audience on an emotional level by manipulating the feelings of audience members instead of proving something through logical reasoning.
"Everyone has the right to believe in whatever comforts them. Why would you not believe in God? Faith provides people with something to stave off depression and to give them hope."
I don't care if people derive hope from something. As a rationalist I can no longer respond to assumptions and irrationality with anything besides either indifference or hostility. I want people to have hope solely in knowledge of the truth and nothing else, no matter how emotionally attached they are to inferior alternatives. If God doesn't exist, people have no intellectual right to believe in him no matter what comfort their belief offers and in such a world without God there can be nothing morally good about helping others avoid despair because in an atheistic universe there is no good or evil. Defending a premise because of emotional attachment is dangerous, because we can allow ourselves to bond to an idea that may be false. Emotions can celebrate discovered truths, but no one can justify belief in anything at all based on malleable, fluctuating, and subjective feelings.
Appeal to Popularity
This fallacy refers to citing majority agreement as evidence or proof for a statement or concept.
"Murder is clearly wrong because every society has legislated against it. This proves that murder is morally wrong."
Now, this again takes a true conclusion ("Murder is . . . wrong") and uses a terrible argument in an effort to establish this. Murder is not wrong because of any alleged consistency in social laws or customs throughout history, it is objectively wrong because it illicitly extinguishes a human life. To demonstrate that human life must not be illicitly destroyed, one must prove that human life can have value, and to prove this one must show that a God exists. Human consensus or political legislation has nothing to do with whether or not murder is morally wrong--besides, people almost never agree about moral propositions, and if so the agreement usually doesn't last very long.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/slavery.html
Straw Man
A straw man fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts the argument of an opponent, therefore both addressing a false position and potentially making the argument easier to refute.
"The Bible is evil because it condones slavery. What kind of benevolent deity would not only permit but REGULATE an activity as abominable and dehumanizing as one human owning another??"
This example of the fallacy I provided strongly implied that the slavery in the Bible is abusive, degrading, and involuntary along with the slavery practiced by other groups throughout history. But anyone who objectively studies the Old Testament legal texts knows this view is false and actually represents the antithesis of Biblical slavery [1]. Of course, this doesn't prevent the new atheists from relentlessly accusing the Bible of evil. Another instance of a straw man would be if I told someone that we cannot know if the external world our senses currently perceive is the real objective external world and the other person said to a third party that I had argued that the world around me isn't real. Of course, I had never said that what my sense perceive isn't real, only that it may not represent the true external world, and I never claimed there is no external world.
Begging the Question
Begging the question is when someone simply assumes a premise of an argument to be true without any justification for this belief.
"It is obvious that listening to metal music is sinful. Why? It just is! It's obvious!"
"Do you really need proof that wearing a bikini in public is just wrong? It's like wearing your underwear in front of other people!"
"I'll tell you what happens when we die. We cease to exist entirely. There is no afterlife; the concept is another lie invented by religion."
Positing a point or premise as true without any proof or defense does not mean the point is obvious, it means the one in favor of the premise cannot intellectually justify their belief. People, Christian or not, seem to particularly resort to this fallacy in an attempt to verify their moral preferences. For instance, if I ask pro-"modesty" people why wearing a bikini in public is wrong and the they reply that it is like wearing underwear in public, they have not answered my question but have merely rephrased their conclusion. They have shown that the two sets of clothing are similar but not that they are immoral. I could then ask why wearing underwear in public is wrong, and they could either keep producing analogies that don't actually demonstrate that they are right or they could admit that they can't identify a valid reason why wearing underwear/bikinis publicly is objectively wrong. A similar conversation would occur if someone said abortion is wrong because it is equivalent to murder but they couldn't show that murder is wrong. As for the third example, no atheist can prove anything about the afterlife, so making an epistemic and ontological claim about what happens after death is ludicrous. Anyone who makes similar statements is entirely begging the question. It is very easy to ignore or fail to detect this fallacy unless one has conditioned himself or herself to become a strict rationalist.
Ad Hominem
Someone uses an ad hominem when they oppose an argument out of dislike for the one offering it.
"No, of course we shouldn't follow any economic policy recommended by Hitler. I mean, Hitler was a horrific monster."
While it is true that Hitler was an evil individual, his malicious moral beliefs have nothing to do with whether or not his economic ideas are pragmatically successful or rational. For instance, I have many reasons to intellectually dislike Richard Dawkins, especially when it comes to his philosophy, but I must evaluate every individual point he asserts instead of dismissing them just because he is incorrect the vast majority of the time.
Appeal to Tradition
This fallacy capitalizes on the tendency of some people to cling to a belief because it is a tradition of their family, country, neighborhood, or personal life.
"America has always defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and since that's how our law has always defined it we should not change the definition now!"
This example uses a frustratingly inadequate logical argument to support a correct conclusion. People like to rely on this sort of argument when they have exhausted their other "evidences". Interestingly, people will selectively and therefore inconsistently argue like this--a modern conservative American might use this logic to attack homosexual marriage but probably won't use it to endorse misogyny and other cruel historical practices.
Appeal to Emotion
Emotional appeals seek to persuade the target audience on an emotional level by manipulating the feelings of audience members instead of proving something through logical reasoning.
"Everyone has the right to believe in whatever comforts them. Why would you not believe in God? Faith provides people with something to stave off depression and to give them hope."
I don't care if people derive hope from something. As a rationalist I can no longer respond to assumptions and irrationality with anything besides either indifference or hostility. I want people to have hope solely in knowledge of the truth and nothing else, no matter how emotionally attached they are to inferior alternatives. If God doesn't exist, people have no intellectual right to believe in him no matter what comfort their belief offers and in such a world without God there can be nothing morally good about helping others avoid despair because in an atheistic universe there is no good or evil. Defending a premise because of emotional attachment is dangerous, because we can allow ourselves to bond to an idea that may be false. Emotions can celebrate discovered truths, but no one can justify belief in anything at all based on malleable, fluctuating, and subjective feelings.
Appeal to Popularity
This fallacy refers to citing majority agreement as evidence or proof for a statement or concept.
"Murder is clearly wrong because every society has legislated against it. This proves that murder is morally wrong."
Now, this again takes a true conclusion ("Murder is . . . wrong") and uses a terrible argument in an effort to establish this. Murder is not wrong because of any alleged consistency in social laws or customs throughout history, it is objectively wrong because it illicitly extinguishes a human life. To demonstrate that human life must not be illicitly destroyed, one must prove that human life can have value, and to prove this one must show that a God exists. Human consensus or political legislation has nothing to do with whether or not murder is morally wrong--besides, people almost never agree about moral propositions, and if so the agreement usually doesn't last very long.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/slavery.html
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