Dawson's Razor

I think it may be beneficial for readers to have a specific blog post on what I have come to call “Dawson’s razor.” So in this entry I cull together some pointers to help make clear what exactly this principle means, why it is important, and how it can be used.

In philosophy, a “razor” is “a principle or premise that allows one to eliminate unlikely explanations for a phenomenon” (per Wikipedia.org).

The most famous example is Occam’s razor, the principle which states “that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”

Shining a Bright Light into Dave's Dark Cave

Dave McPhillips posted several comments responding to blog A Reply to Dave McPhillips on Bahnsen’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil. Dave is another wannabe presuppositionalist, trying his hand well beyond his skill and well beyond his knowledge of the topics that come up in debate. The darkness of ignorance encouraged by the Christian worldview is strong with Dave McPhillips: it has served to keep him from the light and has effectively reduced him to repeating apologetic slogans liked a well-trained presuppositionalist marionette.

For those who have been following my blog for several years now, do you notice a pattern? Every couple months another apologist comes by, often with some drive-by comment, speaking his nonsense and often not realizing how summarily he and his worldview have been refuted. Many disappear after the first round, but on occasion they return after a brief season only to wedge their feet deeper into their oral cavity. All too often this takes the form of simply asserting dismissive remarks like “that’s arbitrary,” “that’s subjective,” “that begs the question,” etc., without even attempting to explain why the tidbit in question commits the offense so charged. In fact, had my critics bothered to read more of my blog than just the brief passage that made them bristle to begin with, they would find that I have already anticipated their objections and have validated my position, even if they do not approve of it.

 

But after a few short rounds, they disappear for good and never come back, never the wiser, never the more enlightened. This is the effect of Christianity: it corrals the believer’s mind into a cave of ignorance where it seeks to enslave it to its mystical fantasies. Very few seem to find the courage it takes to question Christianity’s subjective premises and recognize them for what they are. To do this requires the choice to be determined in one’s honesty. Without this choice, the believer will be forever ensnared in Christianity’s tangled web of lies and deceits.

So here we go again.

How Bahnsen Gives Away the Farm in His Debate with Gordon Stein

Taking the points I make in my blog entry Presuppositionalist Pseudolosophy as a point of departure, we now turn to a poignant example in the annals of presuppositionalist debating history which shows how easily apologists succumb to the ignorance-riddled view of knowledge on which they base their sophistry.

Presuppositionalists make explicit appeals to products of human psychological activity, such as concepts, laws, propositions, etc., and make claims to the effect that they do not change and are not subject to space and time. Because of these attributes, theists associate such phenomena with the supernatural. They even go so far as to treat products of human psychological activity as though they were entities existing independent of human cognition, perhaps floating in the air or in some other dimension, and somehow they are pressed into our passive consciousnesses by means of supernatural force.

Often Christian apologists will interrogate non-Christians on whether they think everything that exists is “material” or physical. The underlying implication of such questions is that the theist has mind-independent phenomena in mind here. But then they quickly shift focus, perhaps for some apologetic expedience, to things which are mind-dependent. This becomes apparent when theists raise as examples things like truth, universals, mathematics, the laws of logic, etc.

Fumbling at the First Down

In an audio exchange with AronRa, Sye Ten Bruggencate offers some clues as to just how absurd his worldview really is.

For example, at one point he affirms the view that “knowledge is justified true belief” (23:03 – 23:04).

So on this view, knowledge is a species of belief – a belief that is true and has been justified.

But Sye also states “if it’s a belief, it’s not knowledge” (39:11 – 39:12).

Is the Concept of Evidence Itself Evidence that God Exists?

In a podcast hosted by “The Bible-Thumping Wingnut”, professional presuppositionalist grandstander Sye Ten Bruggencate makes the following claim (1:11:38 – 1:11:31):

The very concept of evidence is evidence that God exists.

Even though Sye claims he will explain this (in fact, he just makes additional assertions saying very similar things that eventually terminate in the claim “you can’t account for truth” or something along these lines), he offers no genuine argument for this assertion. Of course, that’s not surprising. Indeed, if one accepts this claim, why would one not accept the claim that “the very concept of evidence is evidence that Blarko the WonderBeing exists”? So often presuppers act as if their own say so were sufficient to establish their claims.

But if Sye is going to make this kind of claim about a concept, then we should ask what his worldview teaches about concepts in general. But as I have pointed out in previous blog entries, the bible says nothing about concepts. For the Christian worldview, the very concept ‘concept’ is a void that can be molded and reshaped to fit any need out of apologetic expedience. In Christianity, concepts as such have no objective identity; they can be made into whatever the believer wants them to be, simply because he wants them to be what he finds convenient under the pressure of the scrutiny of the moment.

Presuppositionalism, Circular Argument, and Oliphant’s Defense

Presuppositionalist apologists frequently complain that their critics have misunderstood their apologetic platform when they charge that their vindication of Christianity employs the fallacy of petitio principia - that their argument for the existence of the Christian god begs the question. Since this objection is raised by both Christians and non-Christians, advocates of presuppositionalism should be concerned. Indeed, from what I have been able to determine, only presuppositionalists themselves hold that their methodology is not fallaciously circular.

Whatever the case may be, since this objection is so frequently encountered, one would think that presuppositionalists would take greater care in locating the source of the problem – whether it is in fact a problem haunting their argument scheme, or the manner in which it has been marketed which misrepresents its product – and correcting it. Instead, presuppositionalists seem to have adopted a more reactionary stance of letting things sit as they are and circling the wagons when the objection is raised yet again, which of course is inevitable.

A Reply to Dave McPhillips on Bahnsen’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil

A visitor to my blog posting under the name Dave McPhillips recently submitted a comment in response to my blog entry titled Greg Bahnsen on the Problem of Evil.

Here is what Dave wrote:

The problem of evil is not a problem for the believer but rather a problem for the unbeliever. what Bahnsen and Van Til were teaching is that if one wishes to hold a moral complaint against anything in this world one must have a standard of morality with which to evaluate between good and evil.Moreover,one must first define what they mean by "evil" given their espoused worldview and how that definition is meaningful. As a Christian I have a standard of morality by which to distinguish good from evil (i.e. the holy character of God) but as an unbeliever who holds that we live in a random chance universe that is material in nature, there would be no objective immaterial invariant moral standard with which to evaluate right and wrong. in the end all unbelieving systems of thought relegate morality to the realm of subjective relativism. if so, then who's to say whats right or wrong? it would simply be different strokes for different folks.

Those who have read my above-linked blog entry will note that Dave does not interact directly with what I have stated there. Nor does Dave make any attempt to defend Bahnsen's proposed solution to the problem of evil.

On the Claim to Have Experienced “the Supernatural”

A frequent visitor to my blog recently posed the following question:

Also Dawson there has been something that i always wanted to ask you, what do you think of people whom always claimed to have experianced the supernatural? how do you explain stuff like that in an objectivist worldivew

So how does Objectivism explain people who claim to have experienced the supernatural?

Incinerating Presuppositionalism: Year Nine

Today is the ninth anniversary of Incinerating Presuppositionalism! Yes, that’s right – on March 26, 2005, I posted my first entry on this blog. So as I do on every birthday my blog has, I am posting the list of entries that I published over the previous year, since the last birthday.

This past year has seen a huge amount of activity. Yes, I’ve been quite busy with my blog, especially over the past six months. Somehow, in spite of my hectic schedule of a full workload, raising my daughter, dodging six-foot long reptiles, etc., I’ve managed to find time to continue arguing for my verdicts and telling the world what I’ve learned.

So without any further ado, here’s this year’s list in continued enumeration:

302. Incinerating Presuppositionalism: Year Eight - March 26, 2013

303. On the Validity of the Senses - April 3, 2013

304. A Lesson on Presuppositional Gimmickry - April 4, 2013

305. Dear Apologist: Can You Demonstrate that You’re the Real McCoy? - April 15, 2013

306. Some Thoughts on Pope Francis’ Recent Condemnation of Capitalism - May 15, 2013

307. Klouda-ing the Issue - June 21, 2013

308. TAG Defeated in One Fell Swoop - June 26, 2013

309. John Frame’s Empty-Handed Epistemology - July 25, 2013

310. Sye Ten Bruggencate vs. the Absolute Laws of Logic - July 27, 2013

311. Presuppositionalist Pseudolosophy - August 21, 2013

312. Hodge’s Hedgings - August 24, 2013

313. STB: Three Years and Counting - August 27, 2013

314. Subjectivism in Hodge’s View of Reality and Knowledge - August 29, 2013

315. My August Comments to B.C. Hodge - September 29, 2013

316. The Primacy of the Inner over the Outer - October 17, 2013

317. Mike Licona Says: “I want it to be true” - October 22, 2013

318. Behold How the Holy Ones Speak - October 24, 2013

319. Reason vs. Faith - October 26, 2013

320. Twerking for Jesus - October 31, 2013

321. An Examination of the Ontological Argument - November 2, 2013

322. The Moral Code of Life - November 6, 2013

323. A Reply to Stefan on Induction and Deduction - November 13, 2013

324. For Jonathan - November 14, 2013

325. Examining Stefan’s Presuppositionalism - November 16, 2013

326. Rick Warden’s Ill-Fated Effort to Refute My Argument from Metaphysical Primacy - November 25, 2013

327. Three Steps Proving that Theism Cannot Be True - December 25, 2013

328. The Vindication of My Argument Against Theism from Rick Warden's Ill-fated Maneuvers - December 29, 2013

329. Warden’s “Addenda” regarding the Nature of Truth - January 2, 2014

330. Spinning Out of Orbit: Rick Warden Lost in the Outer Limits - January 4, 2014

331. Warden’s Persisting Failure to Integrate - January 15, 2014

332. A Reply to Matthias on Imagination and Its Role in Theism - January 19, 2014

333. A Reply to Matthias on Philosophical Starting Points - January 22, 2014

334. A Reply to Matthias on Holy Inference vs. Reason: How Do We Know What’s Inside the Box? - January 23, 2014

335. A Reply to Matthias on Objective Knowledge vs. the Subjectivism of Theism - January 28, 2014

336. A Reply to Matthias on “Analogous Knowledge” - January 30, 2014

337. A Reply to Matthias on Subjectivism and the Believer - February 2, 2014

338. At a Loss for Words: Rick Warden’s Latest Comment - February 14, 2014

339. The Futility of the Apologetic Appeal to “Revelation” - February 18, 2014

340. The Moral Implications of Belief in an Afterlife - February 23, 2014

341. Is Jason Lisle Epistemologically Self-Conscious? - March 2, 2014

342. Vince’s Three Unpublished Comments to Rick Warden’s Blog - March 7, 2014

343. Answering Jason Lisle on the Reliability of the Senses - March 8, 2014

344. Jason Lisle on Logic - March 9, 2014

345. On Romans 1:20-21 - March 10, 2014

346. Jason Lisle on Axioms - March 14, 2014

347. I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part I - March 18, 2014

348. I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part II - March 19, 2014

349. I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part III - March 21, 2014

350. I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part IV - March 23, 2014

351. A Logical God? - March 24, 2014

As you will see, Year Nine covered a lot of ground! As has been in the past, nothing has changed – I still have lots more in store for IP in the coming weeks, months and years.

So stay tuned, but try to be patient as I’m quite busy these days. At this time, I am relocating to a new condo in central Bangkok, so over the next few weeks I will be quite busy. Then I will need to adjust to new surroundings, which will be crowded with people instead of reptiles and other creeping things. I won’t miss the four-, six- and eight-legged critters (at all!), but living in a very densely populated part of an enormous city will take some getting used to. Well, it’s all part of the adventure of life!

by Dawson Bethrick

A Logical God?

Christian apologists are continually telling us that their god is logical, that its own nature is the standard of logic, and that everything that it does is impeccably logical. Now of course we do not learn this from the bible itself; rather, we hear it from Christians who have taken courses at some bible college or seminary, or from other believers who are simply repeating what they’ve heard such Christians say. As such, it represents an attempt by apologists to acquire “rights” to logic, as if there could be no logic if their god did not exist.

But if the actions ascribed to the Christian god as they are characterized throughout the bible are supposed to be “logical,” I can only suppose that Christians mean something other than what I learned about when I took courses on logic back in my college days.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part IV

The following is the fourth and final installment in my little mini-series of blog entries examining reactions by James Anderson to “four common objections” to Christianity, which can be found on the Gospel Coalition’s article titled I Reject Christianity Because _______________.

The previous installments in this series can be found here:

Part I

Part II 

Part III

In the present entry, I will examine Anderson’s reaction to the fourth common objection raised in the Gospel Coalition’s article.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part III

This is the third of four installments that I am posting in response to comments made by James Anderson’s reactions in response to “four common objections” to Christianity that can be found in the Gospel Coalition’s article I Reject Christianity Because _______________. (The two previous installments can be found here: Part I and Part II.)

The third common objection to Christianity found in that article has to do with the resurrection of Jesus and is presented in the form of a question:

On what basis do you believe Jesus actually—physically—rose from the dead (besides blind faith, of course)?

Anderson responds:

I have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, but it isn't a blind faith, because there's good reason to believe he did.

At least Anderson does not say “on the basis of assuming that Jesus really did rise physically from the dead.” But what he does offer is not much better than this. Rather, the impression seems to be that Anderson (like so many Christians) accepts the gospel story first and then seeks for some way to rationalize that acceptance by coming up with “reasons” which are typically not at all persuasive, but which people who have already accepted the belief claim in question would already find acceptable.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part II

I continue now with the second installment of my examination of James Anderson’s responses to “four common objections” to Christianity found in the paper I Reject Christianity Because _______________ which was recently posted on the The Gospel Coalition website. (For the initial installment in this series, see Part I.)

The second objection posed to Anderson is the problem of evil:

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning play J.B., Archibald MacLeish nails it when his character Nickles declares: "If God is God, he is not good; if God is good, he is not God." How can you believe in a God who would allow so much senseless evil and suffering in the world?

In response to this, Anderson writes:

Nickles gets it exactly backwards. God is by nature good; if God isn't good, he isn't really God. Or to be more precise: if there's no good God, there's no God at all.

Of course, it would be quite easy to imagine an evil god just as Anderson wants to imagine an all-good god that is on cozy terms with evil. And of course, the evil god would probably want us to think that it’s all-good, and it would likely call itself all-good. And if it rules by fear (cf. Prov. 1:7 et al.), it would want its believers to resist questioning this on pain of that fear.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part I

Over on The Gospel Coalition site, in a posting titled I Reject Christianity Because _______________, highly-pedigreed champion of Christian apologetics James Anderson recently offered some responses to what are styled as “four popular objections” against Christianity, apparently in an effort to head critics of the Christian worldview off at the pass. This posting comes in the shadows of a book which he recently published called What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, which I have not read (and probably won’t). (The book’s Amazon page can be found here; there are loads of reviews praising the book, but it appears that most if not all of them are coming from folks who are already deeply committed to the Christian confessional investment.)

Unfortunately, as seems to be trending with much of what I’ve seen from Anderson lately, his counterpoints to these objections strike me as quite superficial, as though perhaps he were “dumbing down” his apologetic routine in order to reach a wider audience. It’s like watching Bjork transform herself into Britney Spears – going from something that’s at least somewhat original and fresh to a stale lifelessness packaged for mass consumption by the bubble-gummers. In the past Anderson appeared to be striving to achieve at least somewhat scholarly standards. But his recent offerings of pop pieces suggest that he’s opting for a different route in his apologetic approach. It may be that he’s trying to balance two different roles, but typically once one starts to compromise his standards, everything follows suit.

Now when I saw the title of the article – “I Reject Christianity Because _______________” – and even before I read it, my initial response to this was quite simple: I reject Christianity because it’s not true. And this is consistent for me: as an adult thinker, I do not knowingly accept claims or positions that are not true.

Jason Lisle on Axioms

The topic of axioms was raised in Jason Lisle’s comment exchange with Tony and other visitors over on Lisle’s blog It’s not “Human Reason vs. God’s Word”!. Coming to this discussion from the perspective of a worldview which provides no “epistemologically self-conscious” understanding of axioms, Lisle is clearly unprepared to interact with this area of inquiry with any credibility. Instead of raising important issues that need to be addressed or even showing a willingness to learn from his interlocutors, Lisle can be seen flailing his arms around groping for anything that might stick in the heat of debate. Clearly his only ambition is to protect his god-belief. What does he want to protect it from? That’s obvious, he wants to protect it from reason.

Before getting started, I want to point readers to several posts on the topic of axioms that are available for readers to peruse on my blog:

The Axioms and the Primacy of Existence 

RazorsKiss on the Christian God as the Basis of Knowledge – Part 2: RK’s Axioms 

A Reply to Matthias on Philosophical Starting Points

I have also written about the validity of the senses, another topic that comes up in these exchanges, in the following:

On the Validity of the Senses 

Answering Jason Lisle on the Reliability of the Senses

I will not address everything stated in the comments of Lisle’s blog (there are 1,180 comments!), but will instead focus primarily on some of Lisle’s questions and statements about axioms that can be found on page 3 of his comments pages.

On Romans 1:20-21

In a comment on his blog DR. GREG BAHNSEN: ATHEISTS ARE UNABLE TO ANSWER THE TOUGH QUESTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY, Christian apologist Charles Jackson claims that “God says that all know Him” and cites Romans 1:21, which states: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

By saying that “God” says this, Jackson is mischaracterizing the record that we have in Romans 1. The Epistle to the Romans was written by one or more human beings. (It is commonly assumed that it was written by the apostle Paul, but how can we really know this today?) Thus it is not true that “God says that all know Him,” rather it is the case that the guy who wrote Romans 1:21 is the one making the claim that we all know this god.

Jason Lisle on Logic

One of the visitors commenting on my blog Is Jason Lisle Epistemologically Self-Conscious? provided a link to a section of comments on Jason Lisle’s blog entry titled It’s not “Human Reason vs. God’s Word”!. In the discussion found there Lisle gave an uninformed reaction to the recognition that the validity of the senses is axiomatic, which is what the visitor on my blog wanted to highlight.

I took a look at some of the other comments found on that page and saw an exchange between a commenter named Tony and Lisle on the topic of logic. I have some thoughts of my own on what Lisle has stated there.

Answering Jason Lisle on the Reliability of the Senses

On page two of the comments section of his blog entry Are You Epistemologically Self-Conscious? Christian apologist Jason Lisle has challenged non-Christian visitors to his blog to explain how they know that the senses are reliable. This is a theme which appears in the main entry itself, where Lisle wrote:

Some people might suppose that our sensory organs are reliable because they have survival value. But this does not follow logically. Chlorophyll has survival value in plants; but this does not imply that chlorophyll reliably informs the plant about the outside world.

In response to this, commenter Zilch asked (September 18, 2013):

I don’t know anyone, naturalist or theist, who supposes that our sensory organs have survival value because they provide us with energy from sunlight- do you?

Replying to Zilch, Jason Lisle embedded the following insertion:

You seem to have misunderstood. The question is: "How do we know that our senses are basically reliable[?]"

Apologists for Christianity raise this question in their exchanges with non-Christians quite frequently, and I have previously addressed the matter on my blog: see my entry On the Validity of the Senses in which I answer Dan Marvin’s attempts to make apologetic use of this matter. In that blog, I address the predictable example of a stick dunked in a glass of water appearing to be bent as an attack on the senses, which is actually a testament to their reliability. Doubting the validity of the senses goes back to ancient skeptics such as Pyrrho, who advocated that since we cannot know anything, we should retreat into “noncommittal silence, with respect to all things” (W.L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, sv. ‘Pyrrho’, p. 622).

Vince’s Three Unpublished Comments to Rick Warden’s Blog

On February 26, 2014, I received three messages in my inbox from someone named Vince. The messages were not directed to me. In fact, the author probably has no idea that these messages were delivered to my inbox. The three messages were comments which were submitted to Rick Warden’s blog entry Three Refutations of Objectivism, which is inexcusably filled with mischaracterizations, distortions, context-dropping and other fallacious maneuvers on Warden’s part. These messages represent Vince’s continuation of a comment exchange he was having with Rick Warden. (To see the earlier comments in the exchange between Vince and Rick Warden, click on the above link and scroll down to the comments section.)

But here’s the thing: although these messages were delivered to my inbox, Rick Warden has to date not approved them and allowed them to appear on his blog. And for reasons unknown to me, even Rick Warden has not allowed these messages to appear on his blog, they still nonetheless were passed to my inbox. Since I had previously submitted comments of my own to this blog entry and had clicked the “Notify me” box when submitting my first comment, all subsequent comments submitted to this blog entry would be forwarded to my email inbox. But I always figured that only when comments are approved and posted to the blog proper would they then be allowed to be distributed to any commenters who had clicked the “Notify me” box. Perhaps I’m wrong? Or perhaps there’s a glitch in Blogspot’s comments feed? I have no idea.

Is Jason Lisle Epistemologically Self-Conscious?

Last September, astrophysicist and Christian apologist Jason Lisle posted an entry on his blog titled Are You Epistemologically Self-Conscious? In it he seeks to defend the claim that “Christian epistemology makes knowledge possible.”

Let us take a look at what he says there and see just how “epistemologically self-conscious” Jason Lisle himself is.