The Christian definition of "atheist" is this sort of vague "doesn't believe in God," or "claims there is no God." Notice how this puts the focus on God. It assures the theist that God really exists, but there are a few oddballs out there who for some crazy reason want to be different. It is an inherently theistic, Yahweh-centered definition.
I don't often engage in long debates in the comments section of this blog because I like people to feel free to say what they like without me interfering. But yesterday I made an exception. A reader name Isaac wrote, "i [sic] really don't like how your over all theme shows that there is no way God could exist, but whatever man, its your blog." Here's how I responded:
There is a huge difference between "shows that there is no way God could exist" and what I actually claim. I've studied chemistry, physics, biology, geology sociology and anthropology. I understand the universe well enough to be confident that there is no need for magic. The Yahweh/Allah of the Abrahamic religions is no more interesting to me than any other myth. I don't believe in Thor, Baal, Pele, or Yahweh/Allah.Suppose atheists made up 95% of the population (it can happen!) and religious people were just 5%. How would we define an atheist? We wouldn't. We would instead be arguing about how to define "theist," and the definition would sound a lot like the way Christians define Wiccans or Druids ("They believe in witchcraft and worship trees ... what foolishness!").
Why should we introduce magical explanations into an orderly universe? Sure, there are some questions science hasn't answered yet. But that's not surprising. Given that modern science is only a few hundred years old, and given that we've gone from nothing to an incredible understanding of so much of science in those few hundred years, it's entirely reasonable to predict that the things we don't understand yet will be solved in the next few hundred years. Why fall back to magical explanations like Yahweh/Allah? Those are just superstitions that we're rapidly leaving behind.
I would never say there's no way God could exist. But there is overwhelming evidence that science is correct, and there has never been a single example of a miracle or magic that wasn't either fraudulent or else lost in history and thus unprovable.
Religion has ... no evidence. The Abrahamic God is no more real than any of the other 16,000 gods that other cultures have invented down through history.
One of the most important things that atheists can do is to turn this around. We need to work constantly to reshape the meaning of the word "atheist." Not the actual definition (literally "without god"), but rather the implications and attitudes surrounding the word.
Instead of being on the defensive, we need to turn the tables so that theists are expected to defend their beliefs in the magical origins of the universe. Instead of being defined as the outliers, the strange ones, we need to be seen as the mainstream. Incredible claims require incredible proof. We don't need to defend atheism; it is the most logical conclusion. It is the theists who need to start defending their startling claims.
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Let me start this off by saying that I am not a theist. My views are probably similar to most people who would define themselves as "weak atheists", except that I recognize the existence of a smart theistic movement in philosophy that most popular-level atheist books seem to be blissfully unaware of.
ReplyDeleteWe can start with the kalam cosmological argument:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
Conceptual analysis of the cause:
- The cause, being the cause of all time, space, matter, and the laws of physics, had to be external to them, and thus is timeless, spaceless, non-physical, and "supranatural."
- The cause also must be personal, because an impersonal timeless cause would lead to an ever present effect, but the universe began to exist a finite time ago.
We can then move on to contingency:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of it's own nature, or in an external cause
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is theism
3. The universe exists
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1)
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is theism (from 2)
"But premise 2 is a bare assertion!" I can already hear you saying. Premise 2 is the logical contrapositive of one of the more typical atheist answers to the origin of the universe: it's just a brute fact; it has no explanation.
I.e., if theism is false, then the universe has no explanation of its existence. If ~P, then ~Q, which can be contraposed to If Q, then P: if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is theism.
That's two to start.
:)
You've made a glaring assumption that has no basis. Why does the universe require an explantion?
ReplyDeleteI assume you are disputing premise 1 of the contingency argument. ????
ReplyDelete"Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of it's own nature, or in an external cause."
If so, then it comes from the Principle of Sufficient Reason: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/
To paraphrase Richard Taylor: if you came across a 6-foot diameter translucent sphere in the woods, you would reason that it has an explanation of its existence (not necessarily that it has a purpose, mind you); that it has explanation of why it is the way it is and not some other way, and why it exists at all; removing the forest doesn't alleviate the need for an explanation, removing the earth doesn't alleviate the need, and indeed removing the entire universe so that only the ball exists does nothing to alleviate the need for an explanation of its existence.
That's such a human way to assess the Universe. What ever exists has to have a cause? Really? I don't think so. I think that the Universe works in ways still beyond our understanding. That means no logic we have will make us understand how the Universe "is".
ReplyDeleteI absolutely cannot understand this need people have to believe in a creator. I also don't see much reason in believe there absolutely 'isn't'. Why is it something we even need to try to figure out now? We've got our whole lives, generations upon generations of people that will exist after us, and will be a lot smarter as time goes on... and we start our lives by receiving a title representing whether we believe the Universe is designed on purpose by something, or it absolutely wasn't?
It's so arrogant, in my opinion, to even think that we can know one way or another. It's even worse that we waste time "believing" in anything, when we could be out there figuring things out. With SCIENCE. It's the only system we really have to find any damn truth.
That is why I dislike religion. Anyone can claim that "I feel God's existence, and it's more real than anything I have ever felt." The exact same feeling can be had by someone who believes in the Easter Bunny, or Thor, or a bug they made friends with as a child, or ghosts, or leprechauns etc.
We know people's strongest feelings can be, and usually are, wrong, therefore they hold NO MERIT whatsoever in argument or debate.
Also, if God really exists, I doubt so immensely that there would be limits on 'how' to live to be accepted into some afterlife. There would be no belief necessary to be accepted, nor would there be any particular way to live (i.e. good vs. evil).
ReplyDeleteWe invented good and evil, especially considering no other life form seems to make any attempt at good or evil.
Also, if I created a life form (I imagine some people could think similarly about this), like ants. I create an ant colony, within an ant farm. I create them and the world in which they live, and give them what they need to survive.
I know damn well that I wouldn't create them and their world with the main goal in mind for them to love and worship me. I wouldn't cast out any ants that refused to believe in me. I would let them live, as they are. You don't create life to live free, to take away some of that freedom by making them believe something.
I would not be selfish enough to demand anything of a life I put into existence; I would simply just watch them, to see what a free species does. If I am not that selfish to demand anything, I can't imagine a supreme being of any kind being that selfish.
Here is a relevant blog: The Scandal of Atheism. I realize its not exactly the same topic, but I think the arguments are parallel.
ReplyDeleteI will note that so far, many red herrings have been thrown around but not a SINGLE one of the five premises of the two deductive arguments presented have been refuted.
ReplyDeleteHere is another one:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
2. Objective moral values exist
3. Therefore, God exists
Personally, I feel one major flaw with the argument for a Prime Mover is the assumption that things that occur outside our known universe require a cause. Things in our own universe are observed to require a cause, and most people take that observation and apply it to whatever 'exists' outside of our universe. But things within this universe only require a cause because the laws of physics say so. Something not bound by the physical laws of our universe may not need an initial cause. Therefore, the origins of the universe itself may not be bound by those same laws.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with my argument here is it also supports the idea that a god would not require a maker, as anything outside the known universe would not be subject to the natural laws of that universe. So it seems to also poke holes in the 'what made god?" argument. It also lends credence to the concept that a being that exists outside of our space-time would not be bound by its laws and is therefore supernatural by definition.
However, as the argument provides for the de novo creation of a universe without a cause, whether or not a god has a maker or even exists is somewhat irrelevant
Objective moral values do not exist. Any moral values that do exist are subjective, relative to the society in which they are used. Morality is little but human consensus.
ReplyDeleteThose few ideas of morality/ethics which may be considered universal are still not objective by definition. Objectivity in this sense requires something above humanity to define our morals.
To assume that objective morality exists in the first place is to assume that a being capable of asserting such an objective reality over us exists.
> 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
ReplyDelete> 2. Objective moral values exist
> 3. Therefore, God exists
#1 and #2 are both assertions with no basis, so the whole argument requires no refuting. In fact, I'll say flat-out that it's false. There are no objective morals, nor is there any reason to think there should be. It's related to my link above about "The Scandal of Atheism."
Generally speaking all of these arguments are thoroughly debunked in a variety of places. Iron Chariots is a great resource. Here is their Arguments for the existence of god page which is fairly encyclopedic.
Martin,
ReplyDeleteMoral values are determined by society not by god, that is why they are constantly changing that is why animal rights now exit and why we no longer accept slavery, why women are now equal and why homosexuals can marry.
Also your argument about how the Universe exists therefore it must have been created makes know sense, if that was the case the 'creator' would also need to be created. Queue never ending circular reasoning.
Due to time and space and my-own-knowledge-of-the-arguments constraints, I am presenting very limited and superficial versions of these arguments.
ReplyDeleteSupport for premise 1 of the moral argument:
If materialism is true, then there doesn't seem to be a way for morality to be objective. How could particles and energy bring about an objective "ought"? Taking account of the full extent of the physical facts of a situation will not tell you what you "ought" to do.
Therefore, if materialism is true, objective moral values do not exist.
Support for premise 2 of the moral argument:
If morality is subjective, then you can't condemn war, or justify invading Nazi Germany, or condemn a rapist, and so on. If morality is just an opinion, then your opinion that the child rapist is wrong is just as valid as his opinion that he is right. Saying "the child rapist is morally wrong" is equivalent to saying "boo on child rape!"
This does not jive with moral experience. In moral experience, we say that the child rapist is morally wrong. We say that the Nazis were evil. We are justified in stopping the Holocaust because it is a moral wrong. Slavery would still be morally wrong even if everyone on earth thought it was right.
That is the (brief) support for both premises of the moral argument.
Your response:
>There are no objective morals
Is a bare assertion unless you can justify it.
Anonymous,
ReplyDelete"that is why they are constantly changing that is why animal rights now exit and why we no longer accept slavery, why women are now equal and why homosexuals can marry."
Exactly! Moral progress! The slow "discovery" of a moral "world" just like we are slowly discovering the physical world. This bespeaks to an objective moral "world" rather than a subjective one.
If morality were subjective, there would be no sense of improvement. Think of fashion: there is a sense of change, but not a sense of improvement; some styles might come back in the future, and they often do. This is because fashion is entirely subjective.
"Also your argument about how the Universe exists therefore it must have been created makes know sense, if that was the case the 'creator' would also need to be created. Queue never ending circular reasoning. "
Which premise are you disputing?
"The problem with my argument here is it also supports the idea that a god would not require a maker, as anything outside the known universe would not be subject to the natural laws of that universe. So it seems to also poke holes in the 'what made god?" argument."
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of the "what made god?" argument is not to show that a god would itself need a cause. Rather, it is to show that the very logic which allows an uncaused god (the inapplicability of cause and effect outside of the natural universe) allows an uncaused universe.
Moral values?
ReplyDeleteIt is baffling to me that this phrase even enters into the modern philosophical discussion.
As has been demonstrated countless times, "morality" is a concept with loses all meaning without a human input. The usefulness of "morals" as a basis of argument for almost anything, let alone the incomprehensible, is long past.
"Rather, it is to show that the very logic which allows an uncaused god (the inapplicability of cause and effect outside of the natural universe) allows an uncaused universe. "
ReplyDeleteWhich is a naive objection, for two reasons:
1.The principle of sufficient reason says that some propositions are true necessarily, and some contingently. It would be difficult to defend the claim that the universe exists necessarily. This would be to claim that OUR universe is logically necessary. But you can easily imagine a different universe in place of this one. The universe will die some day. Etc. Necessary things don't die. In other words, it fits the characteristics of a contingent item, not a necessary one.
2. Even if the first cause DID itself require a cause, this wouldn't do anything to damage it's usefulness (or not) as an explanation. Cosmologists use dark matter to explain the discrepancies in the expansion of the universe, without know what it is or where it came from. If you need an explanation of an explanation for it to be a good explanation, science would never get done.
"As has been demonstrated countless times, 'morality' is a concept with loses all meaning without a human input."
ReplyDeleteWhich premise are you disputing?
Martin/Issac are using the same apologetic crap as William Lane Craig. It's all mental gymnastics.
ReplyDelete"Martin/Issac are using the same apologetic crap as William Lane Craig. It's all mental gymnastics. "
ReplyDeleteWhich premise are you disputing?
Martin - You keep demanding that people address your premises and/or arguments. But they've all been addressed in detail - see the link I posted above to Iron Chariots. Your examples (and many more) are all presented and refuted there in considerable detail.
ReplyDeleteI suggest you read Iron Chariots in detail. If you find flaws in the Iron Chariots arguments, then you have the material for a book or your own blog.
You wrote, "If morality were subjective, there would be no sense of improvement." You keep doing this, asserting that something is fact when it's actually your opinion. Let's turn it around: "If music were subjective, there would be no sense of improvement." Just because I say it's true doesn't make it so ('tho I believe it). You're repeatedly confusing opinion and fact.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteI thought you wanted to see the case for theism. If you keep shuffling people away to ironchariots, then what is the point of this blog post?
BTW, ironchariots does not address the moral argument or the argument from contingency. And their address of the ontological argument is woefully out of date.
Martin, the arguments you cite have been around for a long time, and have been conclusively refuted by many people. You don't have to believe it, but it's a fact.
ReplyDeleteIt seems you suffer from the same shortcoming that many faithful have when confronting belief in logical terms ... refusal to acknowledge established fact.
Good luck! I am hopeful that your interest in this topic will set your mind free someday.
Martin ... if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is theism.?!
ReplyDeleteThere's no room for argument here heh? No other possible way the universe could come into existence apart from how it has been explained by theism?
What arrogance ... how can you really believe this with such certainty?
Your [contingency] cosmological argument is perhaps the oldest argument for the existence of God, and should be placed in files next to: the Earth is the center of the universe, and the sun revolves around it.
Are you skeptical of the conclusions born out of the science that debunked that age-old worldview? There are so many logical refutations to the argument that I don't even think mainstream theologians will touch it anymore.
Think man, think!
"have been conclusively refuted by many people."
ReplyDeleteNo they haven't. They have controversial premises at worst but no conclusive refutations. I've listened to about 20 debates so far with theists using these arguments, and they've mopped the floor with atheists almost every time. Atheists seem to get cocky because of the lunacy of creationism and biblical literalism, and assume that therefore all theists must be idiots.
"I am hopeful that your interest in this topic will set your mind free someday. "
I am a weak atheist, as you would know if you had read my first comment. My mind is free-er than yours, because I'm willing to consider all points of view rationally.
"There's no room for argument here heh? No other possible way the universe could come into existence apart from how it has been explained by theism? "
ReplyDeleteIt's a logical contrapositive of a common atheist position. This is all explained in my first comment.
For the purposes of this blog, there is no God. Although it is an interesting question, it's not what this blog is about. There are plenty of philosophers more qualified than me who are debating this point very nicely. If you want to debate God's existence, that's great. But it's not what I do.
ReplyDeleteMy goal is to further the idea of religion-as-memes and how a Darwinistic understanding of culture can give us new insights into why people still believe in ancient religions. In this blog I mainly discuss the sociological / cultural aspects of religion, atheism and evolution. My hope is to help spread and foster the ideas that are embodied in my book (and naturally to thereby increase sales). I stray into other areas, but I have plenty to do with my main thesis and try to keep to that.
Craig, my purpose was to show you that smart theists can and do support their position. I would even go so far as to say that right now, theistic philosophy is highly innovative, and atheistic philosophy is in the doldrums. Listen to debates with William Lane Craig, who uses the arguments I've presented here: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392
ReplyDeleteI've listened to about 30 so far, and he mops the floor with his opponents almost every time. And has been doing so for decades. With the SAME five arguments!
Ultimately, the topic you explore, religion as a virus, applies to practiced organized religion, a clear invention of humanity, but not so much to metaphysical theories about what's REALLY going on in the universe. Whether that be something or nothing.
But it would be a mistake to infer that, because religion has a clear sociological origin, then therefore there is no design or creator. There might be, there might not, but noting that religion is silly will not answer that question...
"Martin/Issac are using the same apologetic crap as William Lane Craig. It's all mental gymnastics."
ReplyDeletedont put words in my mouth.
i just expressed a simple opinion that "i don't like" and craig had to make it into a personal attack. it seems that a good amount of craig's posts are nothing more then attacks on character, rather then a real argument. any half brained idiot can attack character. and your title "Make Christians Defend THEIR Claims", makes me assume that just like dawkins, you dont even know our arguments; did you ever talk to anyone who knows there faith, i dont mean random people on the internet or people who only go to mass on x-mas, i mean a real religious scholars. or are you going to be like dawkins and say it is a waist of time? Martin clearly shows that he understands the religious side of the argument. atheist are on the offensive all of the time, granted i only met the stupidly militant type who made all atheist look bad to me for years and this is the only intelligent argument i ever seen on the subject.
These "philisophical" arguments are boring. They take something that is already true (us existing), and put extra conditions on how they came to be, and then assert that it's necessary to believe the conditions because we exist.
ReplyDeleteIt's a simple rebuttal - if we didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to ask such stupid questions. But we do exist, and trying to make assertions based on that is stupid. As Craig has pointed out, atheism is the default position - just saying "I don't know" to all these contrived arguments, and not trying to make a "proof" for a vaguely outlined deity somehow be sufficient motivation to pour your life savings into a society loosely tied to one (out of thousands) god who by definition is inconsistent not only with itself but with the theological definition of god.
As pointed out in the religion virus (and slightly more kindly in "breaking the spell"), if you want to infer a cause for anything, the causes behind religion are worth studying, since thousands have come and gone and so patterns can be observed. And Martin here is continuing the pattern - attempting to propagate his inherited religion by fear and uncertainty.
Sam,
ReplyDelete"And Martin here is continuing the pattern - attempting to propagate his inherited religion by fear and uncertainty. "
Which premise of the arguments are you attacking, here?
didn't martin already say that he is an atheist?
ReplyDeleteThis thread is reading to me like Richard Dawkins interview with Wendy Wright. She just keeps saying "but where is the evidence" to which Dawkins responds with a description of the fossil record or molecular biology and she just looks at him with a blank stare and says "but where is the evidence" again.
ReplyDeleteThese premises you posit have been struck down over and over and you claim they continue to stand. You seem to claim that no one has even responded to them. I don't understand.
"These premises you posit have been struck down over and over and you claim they continue to stand."
ReplyDeleteNot really. All anyone does is throw out irrelevant red herrings or attack me personally or attack the arguments as not being philosophical.
It's pretty interesting to observe, actually...
"Which premise of the arguments are you attacking, here?"
ReplyDeleteIt would seem Martin's posts are fairly redundant here, and could be easily replaced with a single reference to Reasonable Faith, the intro to which is quite interesting. I like the part where he says that even if his arguments get proven wrong then he's still right because he "knows" the holy spirit is real. Seems like an unfair playing field, don't you think?
"I like the part where he says that even if his arguments get proven wrong then he's still right because he "knows" the holy spirit is real. Seems like an unfair playing field, don't you think? "
ReplyDeleteSee here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FbSPXC4btU&feature=related
So your movie clip proves the existence of god? I suppose movies aren't any worse than philosophy when compared to science
ReplyDeleteWould you rather investigate the important questions of life as we know it with science, reason and exploration or would you rather follow what others tell you are the answers?
ReplyDelete"So your movie clip proves the existence of god? "
ReplyDeleteAre you being obtuse deliberately? I was responding to your criticism that internal knowledge can't trump external evidence, which is clearly false. Also consider the case of a man innocent of a crime but can't prove it.
Kalam fails for the following reasons and the theists know it. It asserts, without reason, that there's any such thing that didn't begin to exist. In fact, in the earliest versions of the argument, the words "begins to exist" were not present. We are unaware of anything, including this mythical god concept, that didn't begin to exist, therefore inventing an ad hoc exception for this god-concept is absurd. Everything begins to exist at some point, at least everything involved with our particular universe and it's physical laws. Theists simply invent an exception for God which is not logically justifiable. If God can have an exception, why not the universe itself?
ReplyDeleteContingency is likewise just as absurd. As has already been pointed out, it rests on a single claim which cannot be logically justified. Purpose is irrelevant to existence. A rock exists. What's it's purpose? Asserting that something has an inherent purpose when one cannot be rationally determined is absurd. Purpose from where? Prove that source actually exists.
These are the most ridiculous theist arguments, it's pathetic that anyone actually falls for them.
"We are unaware of anything, including this mythical god concept, that didn't begin to exist"
ReplyDeleteSorry, but you're wrong. There are propositions that are contingent, and propositions that are necessary. The former would be "a rock exists." The latter would be "2+2=4."
So mathematical and logical truths are examples of truths that did not begin to exist, but instead exist by the necessity of their own nature.
This concept comes from the Principle of Sufficient Reason: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/
Kalam supports its premises with much more detailed argumentation than is presented here.
"would you rather follow what others tell you are the answers?"
ReplyDeletetell me, how do you know anything about science. is it because someone told you, or you read a book that gave you answers that you have accepted. to study science, one must still have a degree of faith to believe the words of other. The big bang theory (of which i know little about) seems to be a pretty bold theory as it seems to ask more questions then answers. but then again, the person who can up with that theory was a Catholic priest.
W L Craig butchers philosophy to attempt to look like he speaks from authority. Craig is a fallacy all by himself. Many people have gone through his arguments and dissected what is wrong. The only person Craig fools are theist fools.
ReplyDeleteAny number of chemical interactions can happen without an independent being causing those chemicals to come into contact with one another.
ReplyDeleteFor every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, but there is absolutely no evidence to support a third party either initiating or taking pleasure (or any other sort of interest) in this conflict.
Martin, you can keep linking to all the websites you want, you still can't produce a single thing that we can demonstrate actually exists that didn't, at some point, begin to exist. You are proposing something contrary to experience, therefore you need to demonstrate that your claim is actually valid.
ReplyDeleteLet us all know when you manage to do so.
Cephus,
ReplyDeleteMathematical and logical truths are examples of propositions that exist necessarily and thus did not begin to exist.
Mathematical and logical truths are human inventions. Before humans existed, they didn't exist. The the definition of "truth" to a mathematician is completely separate from the definition of "truth" in regular life. A mathematician defines a set of symbolic manipulations and says and equation is "true" if it can be derived from the system's axioms using the allowed symbolic manipulations. They use the word "true" because it's convenient, just as a physicist uses the word "attract" (which originally had more to do with love) to describe how planets interact via gravitation. Nobody would mistake planetary attraction for romantic attraction. Just so, we shouldn't mistake logical truth for physical truth.
ReplyDeleteJust because an alien civilization might happen to stumble on the same set of symbolic manipulations doesn't mean they "existed." Logical systems and mathematics aren't discovered. They're invented. Without humans (or aliens) with brains, math and logic would have never come into existence.
It's a common mistake to confuse our intellectual models of reality for reality itself. Humans have invented all sorts of mental tricks for modeling the behavior of our world. We anthropomorphize things to help us understand animals and weather, and we invent algebra, calculus and formal logic to help us understand the planets, oceans, and computers. But these are human inventions. If humans cease to exist, so will our mathematics and logic.
They are things that man came up with and defined, they have no inherent existence outside of human conception (or perhaps alien conception if they came up with the same ideas).
ReplyDeleteTry coming up with something that has objective existence outside of the minds of a third party and you might have a point, but I'm sure we all know that you can't do it.
This really looks like yet another example of someone who took an introductory philosophy course and now thinks they know everything.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteSo before humans existed, 2+2 did not equal 4? What did it equal? 5? 6? I'm not talking about writing it down, or the squiggles that represent it, but the actual proposition itself. Regardless of whether humans exist, or even whether the universe exists, the proposition "2+2=4" has always and will always be true.
Necessary/contingent is not some religious thing, but a concept in philosophy. Atheism.about.com says exactly the same thing I just said: http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_contingenttruths.htm
No philosopher I know of, atheist or theist, says that logic would not exist without humans. So you seriously think that if humans were not around then the law of identity would be false?
Martin – I don't see that Atheism.about.com supports your argument. They're talking about formal logic only.
ReplyDeleteI go back to my original point: There are two different types of truth: Things we all agree on about the physical world ("this tree we are touching exists"), and things that can be proven within a formal logic system. Do two parallel lines never intersect? When geometry was first proposed it seemed obvious that the answer was "no." But then non-Euclidian geometries came along. Why was Euclidian geometry invented first? Because it's the one that best models the world in which we live. But both Euclidian and spherical geometry are nothing more than abstract models that happen to be useful in making calculations about the real world.
Atheism.about.com is only talking about formal logic.
As René Descartes said: "Don't confuse the map and the terrain."
It is highly probably that any sufficiently advanced civilization will reinvent the same formal mathematical systems that we employ, simply because they are useful. In formal logic we say "if A implies B, then not B implies not A". That happens to be useful in real life: "if it's raining, there must be a cloud" implies that "if there is no cloud, then it is not raining." But the formal logic is the map, not the terrain. The rain doesn't care. We invented it the logic because it is useful. 2+2 didn't equal 4 until we created those symbols and created the logical operators "+" and "=". If you had two apples and I had two apples, and we put them together, we would have four apples. It wasn't until we assigned the symbols "2" and "4" to these quantities, and the symbols "+" and "=" to the idea of combining and equivalence, that the idea of summation and equality even existed.
It's a subtle but important distinction. Yes, it's true that almost any civilization will invent a formal logic system in which 2+2=4 and "A implies B" means that "not B implies not A." But to say "no philosopher ... would say that logic would not exist without humans" is missing the point. Imagine a universe with no intelligence (it's hard, because the act of imagining puts your intelligence into that universe). There would not even be a concept of formal logic. It wouldn't even exist.
If I launched a chair into space and it landed on a planet of ocean-dwelling intelligent jellyfish, would it be a chair when it landed, or would it just be an unusual collection of carbon-based chemicals? It's only a chair because we find that particular arrangement of carbon-based chemicals to be useful. Without us to give it a name, there is no such thing as a chair.
It is equally wrong to say that particular symbolic manipulations would exist even when there is no intelligent agent anywhere in the universe.
I admit this is a fairly irrelevant topic, but I find it interesting because the idea of model-versus-reality is one of the biggest problems in my "day job," modeling chemistry in a computer. Chemists have adopted the "valence model" of chemistry and often forget that it has serious flaws. They get into all sorts of protracted arguments about things like the "true" definition of aromaticity, and forget that the concept of aromaticity is a human invention to begin with. The electrons in some molecular ring system just happen to share large, distributed orbitals, and that results in certain geometries, and we've classified molecules that exhibit these features as "aromatic." But there is no "aromaticity" in nature, just atoms and electrons and the forces between them. Much time is wasted because chemists have mistaken the map (the valence model of chemistry) for the terrain (the stuff in the test tube).
A chair would be a collection of carbon atoms on another planet, because it is contingent. 2+2=4 would still be true on another planet. Even if nobody is around to express it, even if nobody is around to count, even if nobody is around to invent squiggly lines, even if nobody is around to invent numerical systems, "2+2=4" is a proposition, which means that it is capable of being true or false, and it would still be true on another planet. You seem to be getting the numerical expression of the underlying proposition mixed up with the proposition itself.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that propositions are divided into those that are necessary and those that are contingent, and "things that begin to exist" refers to contingent propositions, and "things that do not begin to exist" refer to necessary propositions. The proposition to which the symbols "2+2=4" refers to is a necessary proposition. It is logically absurd for it to be anything else. We invent the symbols and give them meaning, but we do not invent the underlying mathematical propositions. This is why math is a good universal language to communicate with ETs, should they exist, because it exists "out there", objectively, independently of whether anyone is aware of it or not.
There are good objections to Kalam, but disputing basic philosophy is not one of them. In doing this you would be at odds with most philosophers, atheists included.