Defeating Atheism's "Difficult Questions"

[Mal12345]

Yes, exactly. This is pretty much what they are talking about in a lot more words.

Unfalsifiable doesn't mean false. There very well could be such a god. What they are saying is that if you claim to know, and you stop looking, you close the door on further knowledge.

It's basically saying "I've got it right and I don't have to seek anymore" when you can't actually know if you've got it right. Nowhere does this say that it's actually false. It might still be true. Then again it might not.

Edit: also note that if one claims esoteric knowledge, that's a whole other story entirely, and is up to an individual to deal with on their own.

They're just using two different models of truth. The caller has not made his choice on the basis of empirical evidence, but on what makes him happy. So it constitutes a personal truth, like delicious cake. Nobody except a child would argue that everybody should like chocolate cake or whatever.

 

[Mal12345]

Aye! and does he ever give a rational reason for why black people do what they do, or what other racial groups do wrong?

Well, I would think so. According to the video I just viewed previously to this one, D'Souza has three hypothetical explanations for modern blacks, and dismisses two of them: genetics, and victimhood. He then pins the blame on black culture itself. He states that victimhood is a worn out theme that leads blacks to find their salvation in the federal government (the march on Washington, for example). This sort of thing has been going on for, how long?, almost 40 years. And no social progress has been made, only regress. Pro-black legislation has done nothing but create an excuse for more victimhood. Socialism requires victims in order to survive, so it works out for both sides. The idea of social progress is a myth used to sustain the system. But nobody who wants the government hand-outs to continue can possibly be in favor of progress without engaging in a deeply rooted contradiction, because it's so obvious that social progress requires the inevitable end of hand-outs.

Doesn't look like it. Ever since The End of Racism, his "rational" views have been very lopsided. (Blacks use "victim rhetoric" to get special treatment; while conservatives had been the loudest "victims" in the very act of pointing at others using victim rhetoric, to take something from them!) But people buy it up; and he's become a "darling" of conservativism.

If the conservatives are not using victimhood to get continued government hand-outs, and thus sustain a system based on the myth of social progress made impossible by those same hand-outs because they encourage more victimhood, more hand-outs, and more single-parent black families, then one must ask about the conservatives' goals in pursuing their own victimhood.

He basically fuses Western jingoism with Christianity, and it looks so good for this dark skinned foreigner to be advancing the "truth" of capitalistic and Western cultural superiority, but if you search the blogosphere on him, you can see him likely accurately portrayed as just an upper caste member in his country's own discriminatory system; so of course he will favor the powerful in the West.

So as the second quote shows, even his arguments for religion are basically shallow and inaccurate. Since it's all about cultural superiority, it doesn't matter; you just have the "bad guys" on one side (the atheists and communists), and the "good guys" on the other (Westerns and Christians, even if only culturally Christian, because it's the culture that determines "truth"), so you can say anything you want about the other side.

Oh yes indeed, he believes that the culture which "delivers the goods," not the hand-outs, has the superior system. But you should ask whether or not deconstructing the man himself truly reveals his alleged motives. Or if he is just reaping the benefits of the American melting-pot and wishes to spread his good fortune to others.

 

[reason]

In the context of determining an objective truth value, they are not wrong.

In the context of determining and objective truth-value?

First, please stop talking about truth-values; they're not what you think. Second, how does one 'determine an objective truth value'? I suspect you mean to say 'in the context of confirming whether a proposition is true (or false) by observation'.

It is true that being unfalsifiable does not determine truth or validity

What does validity have to do with anything? I think you're just throwing around clever-sounding words.

and she even says that claiming to know that God is unfalsifiable is a knowledge claim.

Right, claiming to know something is a knowledge claim ... duh? I think you meant to say something else, right?

However, they are not talking about unfalsifiable in the sense of "This cake is delicious." or even "I saw some guy cross the street." They are talking to a man who admits that he essentially does not know but believes anyway because it can't be proven wrong and it makes him happy.

Which is different from most atheists, how exactly? Need anyone be reminded that atheism is not scientifically falsifiable. Yes, there are logically possible observations that would falsify atheism, but this is a very weak kind of falsifiability. Why? Because atheism doesn't make any precise predictions that we can test. For example, it predicts that God will never descend from heaven and bring judgement upon non-believers, but the prediction is unbounded: the experiment, so to speak, can never be completed. Perhaps this falsifiability is better than nothing, but it's not much to brag about either. In any case, atheists typically make all kinds of metaphysical assumptions, such as materialism, reductionism, empiricism, realism, and so on, that all exemplify unfalsifiable theories about the fundamental nature of the universe.

In his context it can't be given a truth value. At least not in that point in time. That is not to say that no unfalsifiable thing can be given a truth value.

If we wait for "knowledge" before giving something a 'truth value', then we'll never get anywhere. The caller on the show might have been hopelessly confused, willfully irrational, and probably quite stupid, but the hosts just responded with their own bad arguments and atheists shibboleths. Heck, I'm an atheist. I've always been an atheist. However, atheists like this are more likely to convert me to Christianity than any theist I know.

 

[sprinkles]

They're just using two different models of truth. The caller has not made his choice on the basis of empirical evidence, but on what makes him happy. So it constitutes a personal truth, like delicious cake. Nobody except a child would argue that everybody should like chocolate cake or whatever.

It's not a 'personal truth' and it's in no way comparable to liking cake.

What you're talking about is close to solipsism. (i.e. it's a bad thing)

Everything that makes you happy is some kind of true!
Not.

You're lucky that you don't have 10 INTP logicians in here yelling at you for this. Because there most certainly could have been and they would be right.

 

[sprinkles]

Which is different from most atheists, how exactly? Need anyone be reminded that atheism is not scientifically falsifiable. Yes, there are logically possible observations that would falsify atheism, but this is a very weak kind of falsifiability. Why? Because atheism doesn't make any precise predictions that we can test.

Aside from your insufferable nitpicking - I would say it makes NO predictions.

For example, it predicts that God will never descend from heaven and bring judgement upon non-believers,

Bullshit. It does no such thing.

In any case, atheists typically make all kinds of metaphysical assumptions, such as materialism, reductionism, empiricism, realism, and so on, that all exemplify unfalsifiable theories about the fundamental nature of the universe.

Yes. Problem?

If we wait for "knowledge" before giving something a 'truth value', then we'll never get anywhere.

Do we need to get somewhere? Why?

The caller on the show might have been hopelessly confused, willfully irrational, and probably quite stupid, but the hosts just responded with their own bad arguments and atheists shibboleths. Heck, I'm an atheist. I've always been an atheist. However, atheists like this are more likely to convert me to Christianity than any theist I know.

Oh, so it's personal. I see.

 

[reason]

They're just using two different models of truth.

No, they're not. The caller admitted, right near the beginning of the conversation, that whether the God of Christianity actually exists--whether the statement 'the God of Christianity' corresponds to the facts--is not irrelevant. He believes it because he thinks it's true in the classical sense.

In any case: 'models of truth' and 'personal truth', seriously? You're just playing wordgames. Sure, we can use the word 'truth' to mean different things in different contexts, but you're just casually equivocating.

The caller was confused. What I think he was trying to say was that atheists can no more verify that God does not exist than he can that God does exist, so the decision cannot be made by rational-empirical criteria. So what to do? Well, maybe our happiness of satisfaction in life is a criteria indicating truth. Pretty stupid, right? I'm inclined to think so, but the idea that usefulnes--or instrumental value--is a proxy for truth, or that it might replace truth altogether as the purpose of our investigations, is associated with philosophies that generally fall under the category of 'pragmatism'.

 

[Mal12345]

It's not a 'personal truth' and it's in no way comparable to liking cake.

What you're talking about is close to solipsism. (i.e. it's a bad thing)

Everything that makes you happy is some kind of true!
Not.

You're lucky that you don't have 10 INTP logicians in here yelling at you for this. Because there most certainly could have been and they would be right.

Nah.

The caller said that belief in God makes him happy. Did he say that there was anything comparable to God, like chocolate cake? I think not. But I stand by my "personal truth" idea, in the sense of having a personal relationship with God, or that one's faith in God is a personal matter that goes beyond mere Bible study and church attendance. That one person's faith is another's fantasy is obvious throughout this entire social debate.

This isn't solipsism, and I never implied that only subjective truth exists. But it's also obvious that there are as many "truths" as there are religions and philosophies. I'm not saying there are literally 6 billion truths, one for every man, woman, and child.

 

[Mal12345]

No, they're not. The caller admitted, right near the beginning of the conversation, that whether the God of Christianity actually exists--whether the statement 'the God of Christianity' corresponds to the facts--is not irrelevant. He believes it because he thinks it's true in the classical sense.

In any case: 'models of truth' and 'personal truth', seriously? You're just playing wordgames. Sure, we can use the word 'truth' to mean different things in different contexts, but you're just casually equivocating.

The caller was confused. What I think he was trying to say was that atheists can no more verify that God does not exist than he can that God does exist, so the decision cannot be made by rational-empirical criteria. So what to do? Well, maybe our happiness of satisfaction in life is a criteria indicating truth. Pretty stupid, right? I'm inclined to think so, but the idea that usefulnes--or instrumental value--is a proxy for truth, or that it might replace truth altogether as the purpose of our investigations, is associated with philosophies that generally fall under the category of 'pragmatism'.

First you say I am equivocating something; then at the end you point out the very thing I was talking about. The only difference is that you distinguished a rational-empirical model from a pragmatic one, whereas I didn't take it far enough to give them labels.

 

[sprinkles]

The caller said that God makes him happy. Did he say that there was anything comparable to God, like chocolate cake? I think not. But I stand by my "personal truth" idea, in the sense of having a personal relationship with God, or that one's faith in God is a personal matter that goes beyond mere Bible study and church attendance. That one person's faith is another's fantasy is obvious throughout this entire social debate.

I only brought up the taste of cake as an example of something that can be unfalsifiable.

If it was a personal matter then he didn't have to call into the show. You're getting into esoteric knowledge. If he wanted to go that route he didn't have to specify unfalsifiablility. The fact that he did is important.

This isn't solipsism, and I never implied that only subjective truth exists. But it's also obvious that there are as many "truths" as there are religions and philosophies. I'm not saying there are literally 6 billion truths, one for every man, woman, and child.

So all gods exist then? Every claim is just fine?

 

[reason]

Aside from your insufferable nitpicking - I would say it makes NO predictions.

It's called the law of excluded middle. If P is inconsistent with Q, then P entails not-Q. That is to say, if atheism is inconsistent with God descending from the sky to bring judgement upon non-believers, then atheism entails that it will not happen. Since this is something we could observe, it is something atheism predicts will never happen. Such an observation would falsify atheism--it's just not a scientific prediction.

Yes. Problem?

Yes, precisely. Atheists are normally hypocrites. They'll use unfalsifiability like a club to bash theists with, but then not apply that same standard to their own views. I mean, that lady literally said she wouldn't believe anything that is not falsifiable. That is, falsifiability is being used as a criterion of acceptability. However, consistently applied, this is devastating to almost everything atheists typically believe (including, ironically, the notion of falsifiability itself).

Do we need to get somewhere? Why?

If we are to get to the truth, and because we want to.

 

[reason]

First you say I am equivocating something; then at the end you point out the very thing I was talking about. The only difference is that you distinguished a rational-empirical model from a pragmatic one, whereas I didn't take it far enough to give them labels.

I mention it but only as an aside. It's pretty clear the caller did care about whether his beliefs were true in a classical sense (he said as much right near the beginning of the conversation), so he was not just using a different 'model of truth'. So far as I can tell, he really was just being inconsistent--after all his comments were a vague mish-mash of different philosophical positions.

 

[Mal12345]

I only brought up the taste of cake as an example of something that can be unfalsifiable.

If it was a personal matter then he didn't have to call into the show. You're getting into esoteric knowledge. If he wanted to go that route he didn't have to specify unfalsifiablility. The fact that he did is important.


So all gods exist then? Every claim is just fine?

1. How did you get the idea that I wrote something about esoteric knowledge? It's simply about objective proof vs. personal faith, it doesn't have to get more involved.
2. The question for the atheist side involves objective, empirical proof of God's existence; but throughout I have been talking about personal, subjective proof (happiness or whatever). That's not solipsism, and the opposite of solipsism is not the idea that all gods exist, which is an empirical and not a subjective claim. You're crossing categories on me.

 

[Mal12345]

I mention it but only as an aside. It's pretty clear the caller did care about whether his beliefs were true in a classical sense (he said as much right near the beginning of the conversation), so he was not just using a different 'model of truth'. So far as I can tell, he really was just being inconsistent--his comments were a vague mish-mash of different philosophical positions.

I would not expect consistency from an average caller to a local show. So then it becomes necessary to puzzle out exactly what he's trying to say. I don't know why I allow this discussion to get side-tracked into some vague mish-mash, when D'Souza was perfectly clear. Or clear enough to root out any of his mistakes.

The caller said at the very beginning that he believes in an unfalsifiable God - i.e., that "can't be demonstrated." Now in my experience, unfalsifiable means "cannot be falsified." There is a huge difference. So the caller is clearly talking over his head from the word "go." So one is forced to ask if he is talking about a God that can't be falsified, or one that can't be demonstrated.

The entire video is full of such crap that I am forced to interpret everything in it. But the caller cannot even properly categorize his own beliefs so I can't decide whether he was in favor of classical, empirical modes of truth. His stated thesis, however, was that his faith in God makes him happy therefore God is real.

 

[sprinkles]

It's called the law of excluded middle. If P is inconsistent with Q, then P entails not-Q. That is to say, if atheism is inconsistent with God descending from the sky to bring judgement upon non-believers, then atheism entails that it will not happen. Since this is something we could observe, it is something atheism predicts will never happen. Such an observation would falsify atheism--it's just not a scientific prediction.

That depends on what kind of atheist one is. I for example do not believe, but I'm not going to go so far as to say that I'm right.

I say I have no reason to believe but I wouldn't dare do something such as predict that this will never ever happen.

Yes, precisely. Atheists are normally hypocrites. They'll use unfalsifiability like a club to bash theists with, but then not apply that same standard to their own views. I mean, that lady literally said she wouldn't believe anything that is not falsifiable. That is, falsifiability is being used as a criterion of acceptability. However, consistently applied, this is devastating to almost everything atheists typically believe (including, ironically, the notion of falsifiability itself).

I think these are some overarching generalizations that are irrelevant.
Also, at what point does she say this? I missed it. Can you give me the time when she explicitly says this?

If we are to get to the truth, and because we want to.

So then you agree?
Bald guy challenges the caller directly: "How do you know that the truth value is unobtainable?"

 

[sprinkles]

1. How did you get the idea that I wrote something about esoteric knowledge? It's simply about objective proof vs. personal faith, it doesn't have to get more involved.

Personal faith is esoteric.

2. The question for the atheist side involves objective, empirical proof of God's existence; but throughout I have been talking about personal, subjective proof (happiness or whatever). That's not solipsism, and the opposite of solipsism is not the idea that all gods exist, which is an empirical and not a subjective claim. You're crossing categories on me.

It's not about proof. It's about justification.
'Personal proof' is a dangerous thing, by the way. I was pointing out that if you accept personal proof, you pretty much accept all gods.

You'd even accept my own argument because I could say that I have personal proof that it is true and it's what makes me happy.

 

[Mal12345]

That depends on what kind of atheist one is. I for example do not believe, but I'm not going to go so far as to say that I'm right.

Ha! Yes, I had almost forgotten about the distinction between "hard" and "soft" atheism and "hard" and "soft" agnosticism. I'm not exactly sure how to categorize your belief, but agnosticism is based on the limits of knowledge, whereas atheism makes a definite knowledge claim by declaring God's non-existence. So I would say you're an agnostic of some kind.

 

[Mal12345]

Personal faith is esoteric.

No, but I'll let you do the work of looking up "esoteric" because bashing you over the head with a dictionary is not my style.

It's not about proof. It's about justification.
'Personal proof' is a dangerous thing, by the way. I was pointing out that if you accept personal proof, you pretty much accept all gods.

You'd even accept my own argument because I could say that I have personal proof that it is true and it's what makes me happy.

In YOUR view, it's about justification and not proof. However, proof is a form of justification. A personal form of justification, or proof, doesn't have to apply to all gods, that's why it's personal and not intersubjective. I've not said one thing about personal truth leading to the acceptance of anything beyond my own truths. Nor does this view logically imply any such thing. What it implies is that everybody has a right to the truth within his or her own being, and atheists have no right to deny this.

 

[sprinkles]

Ha! Yes, I had almost forgotten about the distinction between "hard" and "soft" atheism and "hard" and "soft" agnosticism. I'm not exactly how to categorize your belief, but agnosticism is based on the limits of knowledge, whereas atheism makes a definite knowledge claim by declaring God's non-existence. So I would say you're an agnostic of some kind.

Agnostic atheist.

I follow the cosmic teapot argument. If I argue that there's a teapot orbiting the sun and it can't be detected by any of our instruments or experiments, I would be wrong to expect you to believe me.

 

[sprinkles]

No, but I'll let you do the work of looking up "esoteric" because bashing you over the head with a dictionary is not my style.

I already did. If you're claiming to know something that cannot be demonstrated to me, and others claim to share this knowledge and have their own internal practices and inner language (and idioms and buzzwords and an entire culture) then I say it fits the definition.

In YOUR view, it's about justification and not proof. However, proof is a form of justification. A personal form of justification, or proof, doesn't have to apply to all gods, that's why it's personal and not intersubjective. I've not said one thing about personal truth leading to the acceptance of anything beyond my own truths. Nor does this view logically imply any such thing. What it implies is that everybody has a right to the truth within his or her own being, and atheists have no right to deny this.

Yes that's fine. I'm just looking for consistent reasoning.

 

[reason]

That depends on what kind of atheist one is. I for example do not believe, but I'm not going to go so far as to say that I'm right.

So you don't think that atheism is true but you believe it anyway? Is it not possible to claim that you're right without committing yourself to atheism come what may?

I say I have no reason to believe but I wouldn't dare do something such as predict that this will never ever happen.

It's not about what you predict, but what atheism predicts. You are not atheism. Atheism is a proposition with definite logical consequences. When those consequences constrain the content of empirical observation, we call them 'predictions'.

I think these are some overarching generalizations that are irrelevant.

I don't think they're irrelevant.

Also, at what point does she say this? I missed it. Can you give me the time when she explicitly says this?

Right at the beginning. Maybe she misspoke, but it would be far from the first time I've heard atheists make such claims. Many subsequent comments appeared to lean on the same assumption.

So then you agree? Bald guy challenges the caller directly: "How do you know that the truth value is unobtainable?"

I agree, but the atheist is being inconsistent.