Violating The First Rule Of Critical Discussion
Recurrent claim from Christians in comments:
According to Van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Walton, the first rule of a critical discussion is that
1. Parties must not prevent each other from advancing or casting doubt on each others viewpoints.
[Rules for Critical Discussion by Frans Van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst, taken from "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" by Douglas Walton,Cambridge University Press, 2006.]
But what we see here is that some christians don't have a problem with trying to shut down critical questioning of biblical principles. When Biblical principles don't accurately reflect reality, then one of two things are happening. Biblical principles are flawed or reality is flawed. Pick your poison.
"you seem to be questioning God. Why didn't God do this? why did God do that? The short answer is, because God does what he pleases and since he is infinite in knowledge, then God knows best, not us."
10:41 PM, August 23, 2008
According to Van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Walton, the first rule of a critical discussion is that
1. Parties must not prevent each other from advancing or casting doubt on each others viewpoints.
[Rules for Critical Discussion by Frans Van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst, taken from "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" by Douglas Walton,Cambridge University Press, 2006.]
But what we see here is that some christians don't have a problem with trying to shut down critical questioning of biblical principles. When Biblical principles don't accurately reflect reality, then one of two things are happening. Biblical principles are flawed or reality is flawed. Pick your poison.
22 comments:
Okay. This just a fancy way of saying this:
Chrisitian say your not allowed to question their god's motives or reasons.
Christians are allowed to ridicule your "lack" of faifth.
Or did I miss the point of that?
Hi bahram,
you got it for the most part but you seem to have added the "ridicule your lack of faith" part.
the point was, as I am fond of doing, is to show that christians have no problem violating sound principles to carry out the 'great commission".
The irony is that they apparently don't realize what they are doing. Its an example to illustrate cognitive dissonance. When multiple values conflict in their head, they will rationalize however they can to reconcile it to themselves.
I'm working on another article now which is another example, but the one in this article violates principles of efficiency. Perfection is efficient and economical, but God is not.
Yes gods plan is a mystery because we are to puny to understand gods plan. But why did the innocent boy/girl child have to die, oh "it's gods plan."
Can't have it both ways, err but you can try.
If Christians really believe that, it should also follow that there should also be no such thing as a "reason" for why they think what they believe makes sense.
God says it does, they robotically repeat it, and that's that.
But I see them offer "reasons" anyway (why - doesn't that constitute a sinful "judging" of God also?) until they run out of reasons, and then they use this as a fall-back.
If they're going to offer reasons, they should also then be open to all questions.
It looks as if they try to have it both ways.
Okay, so this is the kind of tactics that the posters of this blog practice, taking quotes out of context. If that is indeed the case, I will no longer be a part of this blog.
Richard, I have no idea what you're talking about. You need to spell it out here. We try very hard not to take quotes out of context. Tell us where we have. And whom are you directing your comment to, anyway?
Explain yourself or I don't care whether you stop visiting DC, okay?
Richard it's hard to see how any context could change the plain meaning of this statement. I agree with John that you need to show how this is taken out of context before your complaint can be taken seriously.
Thinking about it, this is exactly the dodge that Wm. Lane Craig makes frequently. God can be scrutable when he wants him to be, but when a debating opponent tries to show what God would logically need to be given the postulates regarding his nature, Craig will then retreat to the inscrutability of God.
The short version is that the believer affirms that God is personally knowable, is named Yahweh, had a vigorous role in the promotion of a culture in the ancient near east, made animals talk, sent bears to rend children, burnt rocks and water, allowed boys in Persia to survive in a lion's den, inseminated a virgin, incarnated himself, lived on earth, died, resurrected himself, went back up into space in a transformed body, struck down people who didn't pay money, appeared to an apostle, inspired a vision of the apocalypse, manages the lives of his believers here on earth from minute to minute and can perform miraculous healings to this day: yet we know literally nothing about him and can't presume to say much about what he would or wouldn't do.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Sorry Richard, but Sunday school Christianity is not practiced here at DC. The posters here love logical reason based on reality and not Jesus, God or the Bible.
Unlike the majority of Christian apologist / preachers, we are not professional mercenaries who make a living out of religion.
Christianity functions much like a hornet’s / bee’s nest or an ant colony where the average worker hornet or ant is programmed to fight to the death for the queen and the colony with out any logical regards for itself.
Richard, its sad to say that most Christian apologist trying to defend their faith here at DC ARE NOT the queens (professionally paid preachers), but the workers (just like youself) guarding their doctrinal nest.
This is truly a sad testimony for the queens of the nest; but then should the queens die, the nests will itself die too.
Skeptical theism is self-refuting in a way that Plantinga *wishes* that evolutionary naturalism is self-refuting. *Shrugs*
Rayndeon, I've been working on some material about Plantinga's critique of evolutionary theory for a future post. Do you have any specific features of his theory that you would highlight for criticism?
Richard,
What i do is try to facilitate discussion about things that I think matter.
I left the names out to avoid blindsiding anyone, but I left the date and time in there so anyone wishing to go refer to the quote and see it in context could.
phrase you complaint like this:
"Lee took that quote out of context because of reason one, reason two and reason three" and then lets discuss it.
other than that it looks to me like you've realized what a bad move that is, which is exactly what the article was supposed to do.
Christianity is basically Fascism.
Blind obedience to the Fuhrer is the greatest virtue.
The Fuhrer can kill whoever he wants, at any time, without giving reasons.
The Fuhrer is not to be questioned at any time.
Any jokes or insults about the Fuhrer are punishable by death.
Heil God!
Evan: Do you have any specific features of his theory that you would highlight for criticism?
Hi Evan! Actually, there's a lot of things wrong with Plantinga's argument. First, here's a list of important resources for Plantinga's argument:
Draper, Paul. "In Defense of Sensible Naturalism." Internet Infidels. 31 Aug 2008. 2007.
Fitelson, Brandon and Elliot Sober. "Plantinga’s Probability Arguments Against Evolutionary Naturalism." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79, 1998. pp. 115-29.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford University Press, New York: 1993. pp. 216-239.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford University Press, New York: 2000.
Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Ed. James Beilby. Cornell University Press, New York: 2002.
Plantinga, Alvin. "Naturalism Defeated." 1994. Unpublished.
Plantinga, Alvin. "Naturalism vs. Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?" Internet Infidels. 31 Aug 2008. 2007.
Plantinga, Alvin. "Against 'Sensible' Naturalism." Internet Infidels. 31 Aug 2008. 2007.
Plantinga, Alvin and Michael Tooley. Knowledge of God. Blackwell Publishing: Massachusetts, 2008.
There's quite a bit to say. You would be well advised to check out the Fitelson and Sober paper for excellent criticisms of Plantinga's probabilistic arguments. Probably the best presentation of more telling problems in Plantinga's argument - his insistence on semantic epiphenomenalism and the belief that 0 < P(R|N&E) << 1/2 - can be found in the IIDB forums here. bd-from-kg's criticisms are the same ones I have made in the past - namely that under physicalism, the content of a belief just *is* the particular neurophysical structure (as can be seen in the activation of particular NP-structures during particular mental activities), that Plantinga mistakenly holds that beliefs are selected for by evolution, which they are not (there are no genes for particular beliefs), that beliefs are highly dependent not as naively independent as Plantinga calculates them to be, and that cognitive faculties are enormously unlikely to produce and tend towards false beliefs that are nevertheless adaptive (that is to say, Plantinga gets the *science* wrong - forget the philosophy in the first place!). Nevermind whatever philosophical problems there may be from Plantinga's argument (namely, his mistaken construal of physicalism in general), he simply gets the science and the related mathematics wrong. There is no problem - just a Christian philosopher pontificating on subjects (biology and probability) he clearly shows, at best, a schoolboy understanding of.
Oops!
Actually, reading your comments earlier, Evan, I might have been talking about something entirely different. When you say "[Plantinga's] critique of evolutionary theory" are you talking about his argument against evolutionary naturalism, or his defense of creationism elsewhere?
I saw a lovely line recently:
"When a model and reality disagree, it is rarely reality that is wrong".
Rayndeon you had it right the first time. You gave me some material that I had not yet reviewed that has been very helpful.
Without giving too much away, I think that some portions of Plantinga's critique may be valid, yet I fear that if we accept the validity of those parts of his critique it certainly does not push one in the direction of theism.
Thanks for the heavy lifting you did to put this much material out there for people to review.
Evan: Without giving too much away, I think that some portions of Plantinga's critique may be valid, yet I fear that if we accept the validity of those parts of his critique it certainly does not push one in the direction of theism.
Right, it doesn't. One could very well accept a different sort of naturalism for instance or accept atheistic non-naturalistic views as well.
However, to be fair to Plantinga, his discussion doesn't directly argue for theism as such. However, he's appropriated the argument to argue abductively for theism in Knowledge of God, just as Victor Reppert did in his C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Basically, he construes theism and evolutionary naturalism to be the most plausible metaphysical positions and then argues that R is better confirmed under theism rather than other evolutionary naturalism. There are some problems with this of course. Fitelson and Sober pointed out Plantinga's schoolboy understanding of Bayesian probability in this regard. Basically, as I said at IIDB:
"Plantinga seems to think that theism and naturalism have comparable prior probabilities, yet P(R|N&E) << 1 according to Plantinga and P(R|TT) ≈ 1. Moreover, according to Plantinga, R ≈ 1. Yet, Plantinga takes evolutionary naturalism and theism are the only significant positions in that they are the only positions (according to Plantinga) that do not have negligible prior probabilities. This is a contradiction. Given mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive hypotheses, the sum of their likelihoods must be unity. Hence, 1 ≈ [P(R|E&N)*P(E&N) + P(R|T)*P(T)]/P(R). Moreover, if E&N and TT have comparable prior probabilities, then presumably, P(E&N) ≈ 0.5 and P(T) ≈ 0.5. Hence, we have 1 ≈ [P(R|E&N)*0.5 + P(R|T)*0.5]/1 Therefore, 1 ≈ P(R|E&N)*0.5 + P(R|T)*0.5. Hence, 1 ≈ [P(R|E&N) + P(R|T)]/2. Therefore, 2 ≈ P(R|E&N) + P(R|T). This is impossible, since the highest probability possible is 1, not 2. The only way for this thesis to be consistent is if P(N&E) ≈ 0 and P(T) ≈ 1. But, this makes Plantinga’s argument irrelevant since it relies on the presumption that the prior probability of P(N&E) is absurdly low, something no naturalist concedes and something that would mean that evolutionary naturalism would be improbable a priori to begin."
This doesn't even begin to get into the point that the problem doesn't even arise since Plantinga screws up the science and the mathematics so thoroughly.
Anyway, the theist faces a skeptical problem in the same vein too - one that works in a way that Plantinga *wishes* it would work for evolutionary naturalism - namely, the problem of skeptical theism. Most theists are skeptical theists and hence believe that our cognitive faculties are incompetent in analyzing and finding God-purposed goods in evil, that God is utterly wise and beyond us, that we lack the proper epistemic abilities to evaluate these sorts of things, etc, etc. Defenders of this position include Plantinga, William Alston, Michael Bergmann, Michael Rea, Daniel-Howard Snyder, Stephen Wykstra, and others. Skeptical theism is highly plausible under theism (much in the same way that evolutionary naturalism is highly plausible under naturalism) in that God's purposes for this world seem rather mysterious and esoteric - hence, there is a morally deep universe, as Wykstra would say. Anyway - here's the problem: ST skepticism is presumably a *reasonable* skepticism about God's purposes and evil in the world. That is, it is not a global, overarching skepticism in the sense, the sort of skepticism we all avoid and reject and is unreasonable (and what Plantinga thinks evolutionary naturalism entails), but that we should honestly withhold judgment about this. It is truly inscrutable and we cannot conclude or believe, on this basis at least, either way. Okay. Well, the problem is that skeptical theism very naturally *entails* global skepticism. How?
Because presuming that we might be so radically wrong about what God's purposes do not resemble human purposes, why suppose that God would be interested in creating humans with rational capabilities? Why suppose that a rational world exists? Why suppose an external world exists? Because God would never lie? But, why suppose that God cannot lie? Why suppose that the words you are reading mean "God cannot lie?" Why suppose you are reading words at all? If God's purposes are unknown to us, they are not only unknown regarding *evil*, but they are also unknown regarding *everything else*. Likewise, how do we know that the being one calls "God" really possesses the qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, etc in their entirety? In sum, all of these things become *reasonable skepticism* under ST, because we lack the cognitive capabilities to evaluate God's purposes - but that straightforwardly entails that we lack the cognition God's purposes on *anything at all*, including our very rationality and His own existence. In sum, skeptical theism entails global skepticism. But, this means that the skeptical theist must not hold his own position either - hence, skeptical theism is self-refuting, in a way that Plantinga *wishes* that evolutionary naturalism was.
Yes, well, that's pretty much where I was going with it as well.
Nice explication of what I was thinking there :).
In my opinion if Plantinga accepts the basic facts of the world as elucidated by science, his argument falls also for the reason that he eliminates several extremely well-known and respected options that lie between TT and E&N, namely Polytheism (PT) and Deism (D+E&N), not to mention Panentheism (PNT).
Therefore his probability calculus is based on faulty differential diagnoses.
In addition, it is highly likely that the greater the abstraction of a belief, the greater its likelihood of error. If I suggest that the table is brown, that is much more likely to be true than to suggest that God wants all tables to be brown.
Therefore to say that Paul has a warranted belief is far more likely than to say that Paul has a warranted belief because God made him through natural selection to have warranted beliefs.
Plantinga's theory also fails to deal with the possibility of imaginary beliefs that are plainly false being maladaptive yet persisting for reasons that are primarily sociological.
For example if we assume E&N it does not mean we assume that all human activities are maximally adaptive, it merely assumes they are more adaptive than the traits that they have out-competed through natural selection. Therefore it is highly probable that the imaginable cognitive faculties that an artificial intelligence could be capable of would dwarf that of humans.
Therefore, I wonder if an AI were constructed that outperformed human cognition regularly in all areas (a Deep Blue that did more than play chess but could also design clothing, write novels, give inspiring speeches, diagram winning strategies in basketball or cricket and comfort an upset child), would this fact then lead Plantinga to abandon his belief in God?
His argument seems to rest on the idea that the human perception of R is near maximal, while if we assume E&N the value of R may be anywhere along a curve as long as it is greater than the R of those maladaptive individuals who reproduced less than those who contributed to the current gene pool.
I think it's a great discussion but I find his set of beliefs seems clearly cobbled together to justify his preconceptions in much the same way as more conservative apologist/philosophers such as Dr. Craig's beliefs are.
Hi Rayndeon,
nice comment. This isn't really directed at you, I just got carried away, but it sounds good to me so I left it.
you just confirmed what I already believed. That when they gave god the properties of infinity, they mucked it up. He became beyond comprehension, therefore unapproachable, and shot themselves in the foot because at that point, everybody's safe (read that saved).
If god is a mystery, it becomes unsolvable, unknowable. turns everyone into an agnostic.
and from a more pragmatic point of view, its all about evidence and cognition. Some people will believe anything, others won't. That shouldn't be a bad thing, that should be called "prudent".
Am I out to lunch here when I say that if the only evidence to gods existence is through math, and mental gymnastics then he's not serious about a relationship? I'd be happy if he would've just done the decent thing and answered me in my last prayer some years ago. Thats consistent with non-existence. 1 + 0 = 1.
I'm not familiar with plantiga or anyone else you talked about, but I do find it funny that it seems that someone has tried to assign a value to non-evidence and non-precedent other than zero.
Rayndeon Wrote: Plantinga mistakenly holds that beliefs are selected for by evolution, which they are not (there are no genes for particular beliefs), that beliefs are highly dependent not as naively independent as Plantinga calculates them to be, and that cognitive faculties are enormously unlikely to produce and tend towards false beliefs that are nevertheless adaptive (that is to say, Plantinga gets the *science* wrong - forget the philosophy in the first place!).
What I find particularly interesting is the idea that genes can give the perception of a particular configuration of reality. This could lead people to form specific beliefs.
For example, we know that there are a rare cases where people are born without the ability to feel pain. This indicates that experiencing pain is indeed dependent on genetic factors. We also know by the perception of feeling pain in a particular location is an illusion created by our brain. So, in the case of pain, we have a genetic factor that creates an illusion of perceived origin of sensory input.
The same could be said for the perception of dualism (mental states cannot be reduced to brain states), which can be a strong factor in one believing that God exists. If a book exists, we all potentially have equal access to observe or modify said book because it is material object. Assuming we have the right equipment, the same can be said for an single atom. But if I am to perceive myself as having identity, then my thoughts cannot appear to be material things subject to such examination or manipulation because they would no longer be "my thoughts." The opposite must also be true regarding the thoughts of others. Their minds must appear inaccessible to me. The lack of a perceived difference in "kind" (mind vs. matter) would undermine our very perception of having identity. Therefore, exclusively material beings that also exhibit a sense of identity would, by necessity, also exhibit a false perception that our mental states cannot be reduced to brain states.
If human beings evolved to exhibit a sense of self, this sense of self is dependent on the illusion that our thoughts are not made of atoms, and this perception becomes a major factor in one's belief that God exists, then our genetics can be a significant factor in influencing beliefs.
Lee wrote: ...and from a more pragmatic point of view, its all about evidence and cognition. Some people will believe anything, others won't. That shouldn't be a bad thing, that should be called "prudent".
Right. Not everyone who perceives themselves as having identity believes that God exists. I attribute my own lack of belief to the knowledge that what we perceive as being reality might be an illusion created by our brains. Instead, the field of neuroscience is finding that our thoughts are a democracy of a billions of neurons and their electro-chemical states, which we can use to physically predict thoughts several seconds before we're even conscious of their existence. This conflicts with our experience of being non-material, but so does our experience of pain, the perception that the sun orbits the earth (not vice versa), etc.
You are passing judgment on perfection without seeying the complete process(Begining and middle and end of universe) onli then could you asertain whether Gods plan is perfect. I would like to discuss the Bible and God with anyone. Just do a step and complete it before going on to another point. I know it takes time but there is no better way to reach the accurate conclusion.
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