No, Orthodoxy cannot be reconciled with reality

Shilton Hasechel recently made a post about this in where he discusses various fundamentalist "bat aways" at arguments against TMS via science.

A classic "bat away" is the so called "God is above science". Well if that is true then there is no point in me arguing with you, and this is for you more than me. You are making a claim, the burden of proof is on you. If you wish to use such a cop-out, then fuck off. Sorry for the language, but I am just pissed that this ignorant, stupid, and baseless argument is even taken seriously by the most ignorant and stupid people who should see through this easily. By this logic, I can easily "disprove" Hashem by saying I believe in an uber-God, and he is beyond all comprehension that God does not even know he is there! This argument fails for other reasons, but you get the point.

For one to reconcile reality with Torah you would need to accept this statement: Your God lied to you. He lied to you about the origin of species, he lied to you about the flood, and he lied to you about Egypt. Of course the apologists can find excuses for this epic fibbing, but whether it is a benevolent lie or a malevolent lie, it is a lie.

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Who is your favorite philosopher and why?

Should we even have favorite philosophers? Well that is an interesting question, but it is of my nature to do so, so here goes. My favorite philosopher is David Hume. Hume, born in 1711 to farm parents experienced life too early. His father died when he was a boy, and at the age of 13 he enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, which is still a renowned university to this day in the humanities and philosophy. At first, Hume was a Law student. However, he soon became fascinated by the works of many philosophers, especially the empiricist George Berkley. While Hume and Berkley did not see eye-to-eye on everything, especially on metaphysics, Hume was influenced by him. After dropping Law, Hume left the university without a degree, and soon published his Treatise of Human Nature in three volumes: Of the Understanding, Of the Passions, and Of Morals. I believe this is the best book to read if you wish to understand Hume's philosophy as a whole. I do not advise going this route though. His essays are not "light bathroom reading" and I don't believe he organized it in the best fashion by separating the sections, which gives you the illusion that he does not 'drag' from section to section, when he does. But his essay on the self is independent of most of the book and should be read (Penguin edition, Page 299) After, as Hume put it, "It [the Treatise] fell dead born from the printing press" he chose to write a shorter version of his philosophy in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This has known to be a philosophical tour de force, especially his essay on miracles and on academic skepticism, however, it was not received much better than the Treatise.

Hume went on to write numerous works on history and philosophy. However, his next major work would be published posthumously by his nephew, after his friend Adam Smith failed to do so, most likely out of fear. It was his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In it, characters Cleanthes, Demea, and my namesake, Philo. Cleanthes takes the role of a theist who is arguing in favor of the commonly known "Argument from design". Demea argues for a more a priori argument: the cosmological argument. And Philo is the skeptic. I don't wish to ruin the 'drama' in this book, I will just say it is safe to assume that Hume plays the part of Philo, and that many arguments for the existence of God put forward by people like William Paley, were refutiated (I have been waiting to use this non-word all week) in this book. Regardless of the conclusion (I was not happy by it, but it was not the point of the work!), this is by far the greatest attack on the reasoning behind believing in God in centuries.

So who is your favorite philosopher and why?

Maybe There Just Is No Point: In Defense of 'New Atheism'

Alan Brill recently discussed Marilynne Robinson's new book "Absence of Mind". I find Robinson's philosophy is what Daniel Dennett describes as "belief in belief" taken to the ridiculous extreme.

I think the "belief in belief" believers are causing more damage to reason and science then actual fundamentalists. How? They are showing in a way that "faith is OK" and that one can reconcile reality with religion. People who "believe in belief" don't necessarily believe in an omnipotent deity themselves. As a learned scholar in philosophy, I doubt Robinson accepts the metaphysical claims of religion can be true. (I also have this view toward Brill, but we are entering uncharted waters). However, many people say, "Hell. If I can reconcile them, I might as well stay in the religion I enjoy". This can be disastrous. Science and truth does not give any transcendental meaning in one's life, while religion can give the illusion of that (though Dan Dennett says different in his book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"). One who likes his place in religion, may reject reason and science in hope that maybe an omnipotent deity is testing him.

So while he may enter or remain in a religion accepting reason and science, they may not remains so. My message to people like Robinson and Karen Armstrong: Don't say something is OK without trying it yourself.

'New Atheism' is described as the movement brought about by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Viktor Stenger, and many others. The philosophy of New Atheism is that atheists should be more open about their disbelief, and challenge religion. I find this to be very good. Now I am not comparing these two examples in terms of evil, but in terms of their very low truth-value: why do people protest President Mahmoud Amadenejhad of Iran when he comes to NYC for the UN General Assembly? Well, for many reasons. One of them is his Holocaust Denial. Why are they being so open about it? Don't they know he may be offended that you are challenging his position? Same for religion. It needs to be challenged, and not left alone because of venerability.

I think the apologists need to accept that maybe everyone can live with knowing the reality that there life probably has no a priori meaning (as these "belief in belief" apologists already accept). Maybe there is no point.

The Need for a Distinction between Synthetic and Analytic Omnipotence

I was studying Hume's Fork this weekend, when a brainstorm hit me. If God exists, is he omnipotent? Most would say yes. However, I will argue omnipotence has its limits.

Synthetic statements are statements that are proven to be true via means of observation. Examples of this can be "the cat is on the mat" or "the fridge is open". However, Analytic statements are proven true via means of definition. Examples of these include, "2+2=4", "all bachelors are unmarried" and "A-squared + B-squared = c-squared in a right triangle".

Can an omnipotent deity control anything analytic? I say no. If God can make a right triangle in where the hypotenuse squared is not equal to the sum of the two legs squared, then it is no longer a right triangle, because a right triangle depends on definition, and by not having Pythagoras's theorem hold true in this triangle, it is not a right triangle!

David Hume, My Hero and arguments in favor of God

Photo Credit: Wikipedia (search: "David Hume")

I was already pretty much an empirical agnostic by the time I was even introduced to the works of Hume (I will describe on how I became a skeptic later. I thought this would be a better first-post than an 'about me' one), but I must credit him for, "sealing the deal". Call me closed minded, but after reading both Hume and Russell's critiques of metaphysics, I will not even listen to an argument for the existence of a god, because I simply don't know what evidence would qualify as to prove the existence of anything metaphysical. Well I may listen, but I will refute it with this. However there are many arguments for the probability of such a metaphysical being. While having no solid mathematical backing, these "proofs" deserve some response from the skeptics.

The Argument from Design: In my opinion, this is overused and has been refuted countless times, but I believe it needs the royal flush my namesake gave in Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion." What Philo, the skeptic in "The Dialogues" basically does is this: Let's cut to the chase. Let's say it does proof God exists (which, by the way, it does not), how does this prove a unity of design? How does it prove monotheism? The easier way to refute this argument is to say, "Either way you will have to start off with something coming from nothing: from the theists standpoint, it is God. From the skeptics, it is energy needed to allow for the expansion of the universe to occur.

The Ontological Argument: Should not even be worth discussing, but what the hell. Basically if you can think of the greatest possible being conceived, he must exist. (I know that is a very crude definition, but the logic behind it isn't much better.) But let's take a look at the excellent refutation that Immanuel Kant gave:

Now [the argument proceeds] 'all reality' includes existence; existence is therefore contained in the concept of a thing that is possible. If, then, this thing is rejected, the internal possibility of the thing is rejected -- which is self-contradictory. My answer is as follows. There is already a contradiction in introducing the concept of existence -- no matter under what title it may be disguised -- into the concept of a thing which we profess to be thinking solely in reference to its possibility. If that be allowed as legitimate, a seeming victory has been won, . . . but in actual fact nothing at all is said: the assertion is a mere tautology. We must ask: Is the proposition that this or that thing (which, whatever it may be, is allowed as possible) exists, an analytic or a synthetic proposition? If it is analytic, the assertion of the existence of the thing adds nothing to the thought of the thing; but in that case either the thought, which is in us, is the thing itself, or we have presupposed an existence as belonging to the realm of the possible, and have then, on that pretext, inferred its existence from its internal possibility -- which is nothing but a miserable tautology. The word 'reality', which in the concept of the thing sounds other than the word 'existence' in the concept of the predicate, is of no avail in meeting this objection. For if all positing (no matter what it may be that is posited) is entitled reality, the thing with all its predicates is already posited in the concept of the subject, and is assumed as actual; and in the predicate this is merely repeated. But if, on the other hand, we admit, as every reasonable person must, that all existential propositions are synthetic, how can we profess to maintain that the predicate of existence cannot be rejected without contradiction? This is a feature which is found only in analytic propositions, and is indeed precisely what constitutes their analytic character.

I should have hoped to put an end to these idle and fruitless disputations in a direct manner, by an accurate determination of the concept of existence, had I not found that the illusion which is caused by the confusion of a logical with a real predicate (that is, with a predicate which determines a thing) is almost beyond correction. Anything we please can be made to serve as a logical predicate; the subject can even be predicated of itself; for logic abstracts from all content. But a determining predicate is a predicate which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it. Consequently, it must not be already contained in the concept.

'Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, 'God is omnipotent', contains two concepts, each of which has its object -- God and omnipotence. The small word 'is' adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. If, now, we take the subject (God) with all its predicates (among which is omnipotence), and say 'God is', or 'There is a God', we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit it as being an object that stands in relation to my concept. The content of both must be one and the same; nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses merely what is possible, by my thinking its object (through the expression 'it is') as given absolutely. Otherwise stated, the real contains no more than the merely possible. A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it. My financial position is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real thalers than it is by the mere concept of them (that is, of their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept. . . .

(Source)

In short, Kant explains that existence is not just an idea and/or predicate. It must correspond with something in the real world. Existence is not a property.

The Cosmological Argument: I refute this in almost the same way as the argument from design. If there is a cause for every finite action, then each cause must have a cause, and that means the first cause must have had a cause! However, I think this person on YouTube explains it well.

If I missed any arguments (and I know I have) please place it in the comment section and I will attempt refutation at some other time. To explain what I said before, I do have an open mind, however I think it would be foolish for anyone to say "I know so" in the situation of God. However, it is also foolish to assume that the atheists don't have the other upper hand, because...well...they do. As Christopher Hitchens says, "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."

I hope we can make this blog our journey where we can debate what is good philosophy, bad philosophy, good science, bad science, good theology, bad theology etc. etc.