Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater

[Rise]

There is only justification for one of your self-evident truths, and that is that our personal existence is self-evident to ourselves. After this fact, everything else is what we perceive and what we can reason from that perception. What we think we know is simply reasoned expectation based on experience. We confirm what we perceive and what we reason about what we perceive through intersubjective corroboration. Since human beings are not perfect, we are fallible, we cannot rely solely on intuition or unverified belief. The mere fact that we can believe things that are not true demonstrates the weakness of the concept of Proper Basic Belief.

Your argument is invalid because it is not relevant to the points that were being argued.

Your desire to dispute whether or not we can say self evident truths are real doesn't change the fact that they are things we take for granted as being real without being able to prove them.

I could dispute your claims about how true some of those self evident truths are, but doing so would not be necessary for my original argument to be valid.

Almost all atheists take for granted that they have free will that logic and math are true, that time exists, and that they exist in a physical reality - even though they can't prove using the scientific method that any of those beliefs are true.

Thus, we come back to the original point I made which you tied to dispute.

I made the point that it's absurd behavior to try to deny that which is self evidently obviously true.
I made that point using an analogy of denying the existence of the effects of gravity even though all your plainly observable common experience shows it is there.

The only reason we don't call gravity a self evident truth is it happens to be something which can be proven by our current scientific method to exist.
But if you were in a primitive culture that had no way of mathematically and logically proving it existed, you would still know it existed as a self evident fact.

The point being, as I originally was arguing, that atheists are engaging in absurd behavior when they try to deny certain self evident truths by rigidly adhering to an a prior belief in materialism.

You deny the self evident existence of free will that you yourself probably believe you have.

Therefore you are holding two contradictory beliefs and not realizing the logical absurdity of doing so.

You might be one of the intellectual honest atheists who is willing to concede that free will is just an illusion and can't actually exist - but that doesn't solve the problem you have of how you convince people to believe atheism is true when it violates what they know to be self evidentially true about the existence of their ability to make choices based on free will

That would be like trying to get someone to believe in a worldview that claims we don't actually exist and that everything they believe about space and time and reality is just an illusion. Ie. If you were to claim everything they think is actually just taking place over a nanosecond of duration as art of a random fluctuation of energy which creates an illusionary sense of consciousness and a fake history of events and reality, and that when that nanosecond is over your consciousness will disappear and so will the fake history you believed.

Why should someone believe your model of reality is true when you have no evidence proving it must be true and it violates what they know to be self evidentially true?

That's the issue atheism runs into, and why they are so unwilling to abandon self evident truths. Because they have no evidence proving materialism is the true way of viewing the world so they have no basis for trying to tell people their self evident truths aren't actually true.

And, in fact, most atheists in my experience don't want to believe those self evident truths aren't real either. Even figureheads like hitchens want to continue to believe they have free will. Showing how deeply ingrained and necessary these self evident truths are for us.

Christian theism, on the other hand, is consistent with what people self evidentially know to be true.

So it is ironic that materialistic atheism tries to lay claim to the scientific high ground when they are trying to advance a belief in a speculative model of the universe that requires people to deny many of our must fundamental and important self evident truths like free will and objective morality.

Many atheists also still want to believe that truly objective right and wrong actually do exist, and that it's not just their subjective opinion. This belief in objective right and wrong is so pervasive, and people are so unwilling to let go of it, that it has all the markings of a self evident truth to people.

Proof that a sense of objective morality is self evident to people is found by observing that most atheists feel the need to come up with an explanation for this common shared objective sense of morality by inventing speculations about how this could happen under a materialistic system. So they try to come up with evolutionary models to justify what we observe is a self evident experience common to all normal people.

It is not good enough for the atheist to merely handwave it away as a subjective illusion because that so deeply violates what people self evidently know to be true inwardly that the few people would ever accept the materialistic atheist's premise - and as a result they would have fewer converts to their worldview.

Materialistic atheism feels the need to give people the comfort of claiming they can still believe in objective morality while rejecting belief in God, but what atheists are offering is lie because it's not true objective morality by definition. It's just subjective morality packaged in a way that explains why we all have the same shared senses of morality in common.

This might fool people who aren't as sophisticated in their ability to think logically, but when you get down to it the same problem of the atheist worldview remains unchanged: You have no objective way of telling someone what they are doing is right or wrong, and people intuitively know this would not only be a disaster for us as societies but they self evidentially experience to be true this inner sense that they just know right and wrong as concepts are reality.

The Christian worldview has an explanation for why we have this shared sense of knowing that objective right and wrong is a reality that exists, even if we can't agree always on what it is, the concept that it does exist is still there. The Bible says God has written His moral law in our being and that our conscious is a witness to this, so we are all without excuse for not following God's moral law.

Proper Basic Belief cannot be used to support your arguments.

You are committing the logical fallacy of argument by assertion.
Merely asserting my argument was invalid doesn't prove it is just because you assert it.

To prove your claim you must quote specific arguments I have made and then give specific logical reasons why you think my arguments are invalid.

You cannot quote a specific argument I made in relation to proper basic beliefs that is not sufficiently argued using proper basic belief

You haven't shown any error in any of my arguments yet, let alone shown that error comes from an insufficiency of proper basic beliefs as a concept.

To be clear, you did not ask for “self-evident truths”, but rather, you asked for “obvious observed reality.”

Those two phrases are not in conflict with each other.
You are reading a meaning into the words"obvious observed reality" that was not what I was intending to communicate.

Although I can see how I could have used more precise language to avoid confusion.

I thought it was apparent what I was referring to based on the context of what you were disputing. You were disputing an example I gave that involved something self evident.

"Obvious" in this case refers to a self evident experience. Because these truths are obvious to everyone as something they are born knowing. That is what makes it the most obvious of all observations by definition. You can't get anymore "obvious" than that.

The things you cite as "empirical evidence' are not obvious to everyone as a self evident reality. You aren't born knowing those things. It requires devices, lots of time in research and study, prior knowledge and training, etc, and combined with logical deduction to arrive at such conclusions. And those conclusions may be in doubt based on errors in logic used to interpret the data.
And, in fact, your conclusions about the data we observe are disputed by Creation scientists and Bible scholars, so you can't even call your conclusions about the data we observe are obvious truth.

 

[Rise]

In your original request, you at least acknowledge the important role of empirical observation and evidence. And there are no self-evident truths outside of the reality of our own existence. We only have reasoned analysis of empirical evidence that we corroborate through intersubjective agreement.

You are contradicting yourself.

You are saying we can only know things are true by using the scientific method, but your ability to use the scientific method depends on assuming certain self evident things are true.

You assume logic is true.
You assume math is true.
You assume you live in a physical reality.
You assume time exists.

The scientific method depends on assuming logic and math are true. But you can't prove they are true without using circular reasoning,like using logic to prove logic is real. You are violating the laws of logic in that case by assuming in your premise what you are trying to prove in our conclusion.

You assume it because it is self evident to you that it is true.

You can't prove any of those are true using the scientific method, yet you affirm them as self evident truths and operate accordingly.

Without them you can't say anything is true using the scientific method because the scientific method is really is nothing more than applying logic and math to our observations of time and space.
Not only can you not use logic and math to apply to those observations of time and space, but you can't even make observations about time and space if you can't prove they are real to begin with. So you take for granted your self evident belief and just assume they are true.

So truth is ultimately not determined by our ability to apply the scientific method to something because that would be a contradiction. Because assuming the scientific method is true would depend on assuming things are true which cannot be established to be true by the scientific method.

Scientific truth is therefore not the definition of truth - but is merely a subtype definition of the types of truth which can be proved using the scientific method.

Therefore we cannot logically say that things are less true or less known to be true just because they can't have the scientific method applied to them. Logically you cannot take that stance because it would require saying the scientific method is proven to be true. But you can't prove it's true . Therefore your position that the only truth is scientific truth is a self refuting position that concludes no truth can be known.

As a result, you have no logical basis to claim that self evident truths have less claim to being known to be true than scientifically established truths.

In fact, since scientific truth is merely a subtype of truth, we would be more correct in saying that self evident truths should logically be trusted to be more true than scientific truth because scientific truth depends on self evident truth to even exist.
This is because a scientific conclusion about an observation, based on logic an math, can be subject to logical or mathematical errors on the part of the observer. A logical conclusion is only as good as the assumptions you plug into the formula.
But their self evident experience requires no math and logic to know what is true so it is not subject to those errors.

These are not undisputed truths, rather they are reasoned conclusions based on the empirical evidence, empirical evidence being required for observed reality.

No reasoned conclusion is self evident by definition. Because reason is the use of logic. So your examples didn't fit the definition of self evident.

You are also wrong in claiming that reasoned conclusions use empirical evidence but implying that self evident truths don't.

Empirical definition:
originating in or based on observation or experience

All self evident truth is based on something which you have experienced or observed to be true. Therefore it is also based on empirical evidence.

Your experience of existence and free will testifies of itself to you that it is true. Your experience tells you that you are not just a robot acting out a program. You can't prove it, and you probably don't even know how to describe how you know this to be true, but you know that your experience of free will existence/consciousness is not the experience of an material object acting out a program or a computer program in the matrix giving you the illusion of a free will existence. It's a known truth you are born with and generally every healthy person attests to this being true of them universally, both now and historically.

That is empirical evidence by definition. It involves both experience and observation. It's just not scientific evidence because you can't prove it's existence using logic and math. You can only point to the fact that it's most likely true because we have no reason to believe otherwise (because materialistic atheism is not a proven fact but merely a speculative model), and we are all collectively generally attesting to the exact same experience of what is true.

So purely from a scientific perspective of modeling, we would have to reject materialistic atheism as failing to explain the empirical evidence of free will and objective morality. Why would you continue to hold to a model that can not explain something as important and fundamental as the empirical evidence of various self evident truths?

Indeed, materialistic atheists recognize this problem as a very real and significant barrier to the adoption of their worldview, which is why they either just ignore the problem and choose to believe they have free will regardless of what their worldview would force them to logically conclude (like Hitchens) or you have those like Harris who admit we have no free will but try to offer people a false hope of objective morality in the form of evolutionary preference. It is a false hope because you logically end up right back at the same place of no objective morality - you just push the conclusion back a couple steps by delaying it with appeals to evolution mimicking the illusion of morals. But he has to try something because he knows people have a self evident sense of objective morality being real just like they know objective truth is a self evident reality. You can't get past that unless you can deceive people into thinking they can have their self evident objective morality without having a creator to explain it. His efforts don't logically work but I think he hopes to obfuscate and confuse the issue enough that those who aren't as logically thorough in their thinking will be satisfied enough to not consider the implications of his argument more deeply.

Yet the atheist clings to materialism regardless. Not because the evidence says they must but because they know there is no alternative to a creator and they have an a priori commitment to assuming there can't be a creator. Why they insist on holding to their a priori comitment when the evidence is against it cannot be explained on the basis of logic, but can only be explained with spiritual/psychological reasoning. ie. not wanting to be subject to the implications of living in a world where they were created and have moral obligations imposed on them by that creator, and just looking for a way to deceive themselves into believing otherwise, not realizing that self deception doesn't change what is true nor the consequences of that truth.

 

[Rise]

Outside of the scriptural documents, there is no corroborated empirical evidence to support the scriptural assertions.

Your claim is demonstrably false. I suspect you don't realize your claim is false because you are ignorant of what is actually argued on these matters.
None of these scientists who believe in any aspect of Biblical creation is merely offering scripture as their evidence. And your claims of lacking corroboration are false because in most cases they are using the same exact evidence that mainstream science has acknowledged exists they are just interpreting that evidence's conclusions differently based on other evidence and better presuppositions. I could pull any random creation scientist's name out of a hat, go to what they have written/talked on the subject, and extract at last one piece of evidence they use to justify their conclusions which the mainstream recognize as a real existing fact. The mainstream just puts a different spin on how they interpret those facts and therefore what conclusions they draw from those facts.
The fact that you think creation scientists don't do that says more about your ignorance of their arguments than it does about the quality of their arguments.

But the validity of creation science arguments on a range of other topics is besides the point of the topic of this thread and not directly relevant to the issue being discussed here.
Furthermore, as I already pointed out, your appeal to disputes over things like the date of the earth in creation science vs mainstream science have no bearing on any argument I have made in this thread because I was referring to self evident truths and not scientific truths.
So there would be no need to go down the rabbit trail of arguing over these various topics individuallly when they have no demonstrated relevance to the four arguments Craig put forth to demonstrate theistic creation.

As we can see, you do call on scripture as a source of true and factual information

You are committing the logical fallacy of false equivalence.
Me stating that I believe scripture is true is not the same as basing the validity of my logical arguments on the presumption of scripture being true.

None of the four arguments Craig made depend on appealing to a single piece of scripture to logically and scientifically demonstrate that they are true.

And none of my arguments in support of those have depended on appealing to a single piece of scripture for my arguments to be true either.

You can not quote a single example to show that my arguments based on the cosmological, teleological, moral, or self evident basis for believing in a creator depend on a single piece of scripture for those arguments to be valid.

you have made an argument that there are real and true things that cannot be proven (or refuted in your mind) by science.

I didn't need to make an argument. You admitted its true.

You admit it's true by saying you believe in the scientific method which depends on logic and math.

But you can't prove logic is true.
You can't prove math is true.
To try to do so would be circular reasoning. You would have to presume in your premise what you are trying to prove in your conclusion.

You merely accept as self evident that they are true.

Proving you do believe self evident truth as a concept exists and that you live as though it does exist.

Science, by the way, which you have misrepresented as being only logic and math. Science is empirical evidence from which we can draw reasoned conclusions using both logic and math, all of which requires intersubjective corroboration to have any value.

Your claim is false. For two reasons:

1. Further up I disproved your claim that empirical evidence is the exclusive domain of science and that self evident truth is not based on empirical evidence. Therefore you have no basis for claiming empirical evidence is the scientific method when empirical evidence exists outside of the scientific method to establish truth.

2. You are making a category error with your claim. The scientific method is a process of measuring observations(math) and logical interpretation of the data to come to conclusions. The observations are not the scientific method. The scientific method is what you apply to interpret and draw conclusions about the observations. And the scientific method breaks down to being simply logic and math at it's most basic level.

You cannot disqualify out-of-hand empirical evidence as a source of valid information, especially that evidence that has been vetted through intersubjective corroboration.

You are committing the logical fallacy of a strawman. You cannot quote any place where I "disqualify out-of-hand empirical evidence as a valid source of information" because it never happened.

Your accusation is ironic considering you are the only one here who is actually denying empirical evidence out of hand as a valid source of information.
You are the one who dismisses the empirical evidence of self evident realities out of hand as not valid sources of information. Even though you hypocritically live your life according to the assumption that such self evident truths are real.

To claim that there are areas of knowledge shielded from the scrutiny of science

It's not merely a claim, but a proven logical fact that you can't dispute and haven't tried to dispute.

You cannot prove everything is true using the scientific method. We know this because there are things which are self evident truths that you know and believe are true, but which science is not capable of proving is true.

Examples of things you can't prove using the scientific method:
That logic is true.
That math is true.
That time is real and you live within it.
That your existence in a physical world is real.
That your conscious sense of being is real.
That you have free will.

simply allows you to create an artificial construct of reality in which your biblical narrative works.

You are committing the logical fallacy of strawman and argument by assertion.

You have not offered any arguments to demonstrate why you think any specific arguments about the nature of reality I made is invalid or false. You are merely asserting it is, and you tie your unsupported assertion in with a strawman fallacy accusing me of doing something I haven't done. You can't quote anything I actually said to prove your claim is true bcause it never happened.

 

[Rise]

Craig? Logic? Craig got demolished when arguing his silly cosmological argument with an actual cosmologist (Sean Carroll). He only impresses those that don't understand or care about the concept of evidence.

If what you claim were true, then it would be easy for you to extract information from that debate in order to refute Craig's arguments.

But you can't.

Because I watched the debate and Craig actually acquitted himself quite well. Far better than I would have expected.

I give credit to Carroll for actually trying to argue against the arguments themselves as opposed to hitchens who just ignored them.

But the problem with Carroll's arguments is that ultimately he doesn't prove or disprove anything. Basically the only take away you can get out of his argument is that there are competing theories about how the universe came into being. But, as Craig points out, eternity models aren't sufficient to logically explain what we know.

We ultimately still have to logically come away with the conclusion that a beginning point for the universe is the most plausible and likely explanation for what we see.

 

[MikeF]

Your argument is invalid because it is not relevant to the points that were being argued.
...
And, in fact, your conclusions about the data we observe are disputed by Creation scientists and Bible scholars, so you can't even call your conclusions about the data we observe are obvious truth.

You are contradicting yourself.
...
not realizing that self deception doesn't change what is true nor the consequences of that truth.

Your claim is demonstrably false.
...
You can't quote anything I actually said to prove your claim is true bcause it never happened.

Wow, three long responses to the same post. I think I’m making progress!

In response, I will simply ask, “Do we have the capacity to believe things that are not true?”

 

[Rise]

In response, I will simply ask, “Do we have the capacity to believe things that are not true?”

You question cannot constitute a valid response to all my arguments as my answer to your question wouldn't even be relevant to you attempting to refute all my arguments.

You would be ceding those points to me which you don’t attempt to refute by being unable or unwilling to offer a valid counter argument.

Having said that, the answer to your question is generally yes.

I say generally yes only because it’s philosophically debatable that we truly have the ability to disbelieve self evident truth. Someone might consciously convince themselves they don’t believe something, but deep down they know the truth - they are just suppressing it out of rebellion to it.

For instance, you might concoct an elaborate mental system of presuppositions to conclude you have reason to believe you don’t really exist, but deep down you’ll probably always know you do actually exist because your experience self evidences that fact and no amount of mental gymnastics can ever change that which you self evidentially know to be true.

We know this is theologically true according to the Bible because it says people know self evidentially that God exists and what is right from wrong, which leaves them no excuse in the day of judgement claiming they were simply in ignorance. The Bible also says that people choose to actively suppress the truth that they self evidentially know.



It is, however, perfectly possible to believe wrong things about that which is not self evident to you.

Although the question becomes less cut and dry again if you are dealing with someone who is not making an honest mistake due to incorrect data or unknowingly incorrect reasoning.

When you start talking about someone who has every reason from the data and logic to conclude something which does not violate self evident truth, but they simply make a choice to not believe it, then we could be talking again about someone who is willfully suppressing what they probably know (or at least believe they know) is true in order to hold to some other belief.

I suppose you could say motives plays a key role in the question. Not everything someone says they disbelieve may be something they truly disbelieve deep down. So you can’t say they truly believe in that false thing.

True wrong belief in that case would require innocent ignorance without wrong motives that would cause someone to willfully suppress the truth.

 

[MikeF]

You question cannot constitute a valid response to all my arguments as my answer to your question wouldn't even be relevant to you attempting to refute all my arguments.
You would be ceding those points to me which you don’t attempt to refute by being unable or unwilling to offer a valid counter argument.
Having said that, the answer to your question is generally yes.
I say generally yes only because it’s philosophically debatable that we truly have the ability to disbelieve self evident truth. Someone might consciously convince themselves they don’t believe something, but deep down they know the truth - they are just suppressing it out of rebellion to it.
For instance, you might concoct an elaborate mental system of presuppositions to conclude you have reason to believe you don’t really exist, but deep down you’ll probably always know you do actually exist because your experience self evidences that fact and no amount of mental gymnastics can ever change that which you self evidentially know to be true.
We know this is theologically true according to the Bible because it says people know self evidentially that God exists and what is right from wrong, which leaves them no excuse in the day of judgement claiming they were simply in ignorance. The Bible also says that people choose to actively suppress the truth that they self evidentially know.
It is, however, perfectly possible to believe wrong things about that which is not self evident to you.
Although the question becomes less cut and dry again if you are dealing with someone who is not making an honest mistake due to incorrect data or unknowingly incorrect reasoning.
When you start talking about someone who has every reason from the data and logic to conclude something which does not violate self evident truth, but they simply make a choice to not believe it, then we could be talking again about someone who is willfully suppressing what they probably know (or wt least believe they know) is true in order to hold to some other belief.
I suppose you could say motives plays a key role in the question. Not everything someone says they disbelieve may be something they truly disbelieve deep down. So you can’t say they truly believe in that false thing.
True wrong belief in that case would require innocent ignorance without wrong motives that would cause someone to willfully suppress the truth.

Let me begin by saying it has not been my intent to debate, but rather to explain and enlighten.
I find it much more productive to have a collaborative discussion.

Thank you for answering my query. It lets us know where we both stand. I thought your detailed answer was very good and touched on a lot of the ways one can hold a mistaken or false belief.

The issue I see is this persistent notion of self-evident truths. You give, as an example of self-evident truth, the effects of gravity (in a previous post). The effects of gravity, however, are something that we learn through experience. From the moment we are born, we use our senses to gather information about the world. As we gain information and experience we begin to develop understanding and confidence in our ability to make predictive assessments. So, in terms of gravity, from our infancy, we catalogue all the ways we and other objects behave in gravity, and it is through that experience that we form a basic understanding. But even after a lifetime, we can draw an incomplete understanding, especially if we have not experienced every possible condition or aspect of a phenomena, or accounted for all variables that may affect conditions.

Let me give you a historical example related to gravity, which you claim to be self-evidently understood. Aristotle believed in the four basic elements of earth, water, air, and fire. And for Aristotle, each element was attracted to its natural realm, with Earth the lowest, then Water, then Air, and finally fire. So Earth sinks through water to its realm, water sinks through air to its realm, and fire rises through air to its realm.

Additionally, it was obvious and self-evident to Aristotle that objects fall at speeds proportional to their weight. Therefore, the heavier an object, the faster it will fall.

As we know, Aristotle’s ideas about gravity held sway for nearly two thousand years. And today it is quite clear that what Aristotle took to be a self-evident truth was not true at all.

This is the mistake that you are making. To declare familiar experiences (or worse, unevidenced intuition) as complete truth without accounting for all the variables leads to erroneous conclusions. There are no self-evident truths. Everything we know is through our experience or the experience of others. We human beings are fallible, and can make errors for countless reasons, be it how we develop or are raised, socialized and indoctrinated, medical impairment or injury, and other psychological and behavior effects. We can never rely solely on our own perception to be confident in what we know. We increase our confidence in knowledge through intersubjective corroboration. The more observations that agree and the more observers that agree, the greater the confidence we have in what we know.

I strongly encourage you to set this notion of self-evident truths aside.

 

[Rise]

Let me begin by saying it has not been my intent to debate, but rather to explain and enlighten.

You are not in a position to do either of those things when I have logically demonstrated your claims are false or based on invalid logic.

It sounds like you need to be more humble and open to learning, instead of assuming you already have all the answers.

The issue I see is this persistent notion of self-evident truths. You give, as an example of self-evident truth, the effects of gravity (in a previous post). The effects of gravity, however, are something that we learn through experience. From the moment we are born, we use our senses to gather information about the world. As we gain information and experience we begin to develop understanding and confidence in our ability to make predictive assessments. So, in terms of gravity, from our infancy, we catalogue all the ways we and other objects behave in gravity, and it is through that experience that we form a basic understanding. But even after a lifetime, we can draw an incomplete understanding, especially if we have not experienced every possible condition or aspect of a phenomena, or accounted for all variables that may affect conditions.

You're not even making an argument for anything.

Nothing you just said refutes any argument I have made.

Nor does any of it support the arguments you made which I refuted.

Let me give you a historical example related to gravity, which you claim to be self-evidently understood. Aristotle believed in the four basic elements of earth, water, air, and fire. And for Aristotle, each element was attracted to its natural realm, with Earth the lowest, then Water, then Air, and finally fire. So Earth sinks through water to its realm, water sinks through air to its realm, and fire rises through air to its realm.

You are committing the logical fallacy of false equivalence.

Trying to explain with reason how gravity works is not the same as saying you know the effects of gravity are a self evident fact of your existence.

Likewise, the self evident fact that you have free will is not the same as trying to construct a reasoned theory about what your free will is and why you have it.

This is the mistake that you are making. To declare familiar experiences (or worse, unevidenced intuition) as complete truth without accounting for all the variables leads to erroneous conclusions.

Your wrong conclusion is based on a false assumption.

You appear to be wrongly assuming that a self evident truth is proven or declared to be true by virtue of it's shared experience.
That is false and a misunderstanding of what self evident means.

Self evident means the evidence of the truth of something is contained within your self experience and causes you to know something is true by your own experience of it.

You don't need to ask other people if they also experience the concept of free will and only then reason that what you are experiencing must be true. You already know this to be evidentially true by your own self experience.

Shared common experience is something we notice to be true about self evident truths - but it is not what proves something to be self evident.
You are confusing the two concepts.

There are no self-evident truths.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.
I already disproved your claim by showing that you already believe self evident truths exist.

You cannot merely repeat your original refuted claim without offering a counter argument as to why we should believe your refuted claim is true and then expect us to accept your refuted claim as true.


I will repeat and sum up an example of what I said that refutes your claim:

You believe logic and math are true.
We know this because you believe the scientific method can be used to arrive at truth. And the scientific method requires logic and math.

But you can't prove logic and math are true.

You take it as a self evident truth that you know they are true without being able to prove they are.

What you really believe is therefore in contradiction with what you claim to be true. You believe in self evident truth and live your life according to that belief.

Furthermore, your belief that only the scientific method can declare something to be true is an illogical self refuting position. Because you can't prove the basis of the scientific method (logic and math) is a true by using the scientific method. Therefore by your own standard the scientific method can't be true. And therefore nothing can be said to be true at all because you have no other way of establishing what is true without the scientific method.

I strongly encourage you to set this notion of self-evident truths aside.

You need to be able to formulate a logically valid counter-argument without contradicting yourself before you are in a position to claim anyone needs to set aside any belief about anything.

 

[MikeF]

Trying to explain with reason how gravity works is not the same as saying you know the effects of gravity are a self evident fact of your existence.

To Aristotle, it was a self-evident fact that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. For ~2,000 years, humanity accepted this erroneous self-evident fact.

How do you reconcile this? Just because something seems obviously true does not mean it is necessarily true.

 

[Rise]

To Aristotle, it was a self-evident fact that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. For ~2,000 years, humanity accepted this erroneous self-evident fact.

How do you reconcile this? Just because something seems obviously true does not mean it is necessarily true.

There are several critical errors with your response.

1. It's not actually relevant because the entire basis of your argument is already refuted.

I've already demonstrated you believe in self evident truth and live according to it being true (Ie. Taking for granted that logic and math are true).

I have already demonstrated that it is logically impossible for you to reject self evident truth on the basis that you think truth can only be proven by the scientific method. Ie. It's a self refuting argument because you can't say the scientific method itself is true without turning to self evident belief in the idea that math and logic are true.

Given that state of circumstances for your original argument, the outcome of the question you posed doesn't do anything to salvage your original claim that self evident truth doesn't exist or isn't viable as a method of knowing what is true.


2. You aren't actually talking about self evident truth in your example.

Self evident definition:
evident without proof or reasoning

Saying heavier objects fall faster is an act of reasoning a conclusion about what you observe based on what you observe.

Self evident truths don't involve reasoning to come to a conclusion - you simply know them to be true.

3. Gravity is something I originally brought up as an analogy of self evident truth, and not as the best example to illustrate actual self evident truth.
Therefore, any quibbling over the details of gravity doesn't dispute the reality of self evident truth because no analogy is a perfect representation of what is is trying to analogize.
You could perhaps argue that drawing conclusions about the behavior of objects falling is not actually self evident because you have to reason a conclusion about what you observe to decide what is happening and why. But part of it could still said to be self evident to you based on how you interact with the earth, just knowing that you experience the effects of gravity upon you as you move without ever having to reason what happens to you and why.

Purely self evident truths are arrived at without any reasoning needed:

Such as:
That you exist.
That you have consciousness.
The fact that you experience time.
The fact that there is a physical reality.
The fact that logic is true.
That you have free will.
That truth exists.
That objective morality exists.

By trying to quibble over the details of the gravity analogy you completely missed the point of the analogy: which is to point out how absurd it is for someone claiming to be a person of evidence and facts to dismiss what is self evidentially true merely because it conflicts with their speculative unproven worldview (ie. materialistic atheism).
Especially when you have no evidentiary or reasoned basis for rejecting what is self evidently true.

The point being: it is absurd to reject self evident truths just because you are required to by an a priori commitment to materialistic atheism - a worldview you can't even prove is true. So why are you denying self evident truth in the service of an unproven worldview?

It would be analogous to disbelieving that things fall down to earth because you believe in a speculative worldview that claims such a phenomenon can't happen.

If your unproven worldview conflicts with what is self evidentially real then you obviously need a better worldview.

 

[Rise]

1) Singularities are approximations; limitations of the models. For instance the Raychaudhuri/Sach's/Newman-Penrose equations, relating to the bundling of null geodesics to the Ricci tensor (this is how we arrive to "singularities" with, say, a black hole, and ostensibly the earliest universe). It comes from the math that you get a singularity if there is a trapped surface, which is a closed, spacelike 2-surface whose ingoing and outgoing null congruences are converging. But this is only a result of the choice of metric. Physicists don't really assert there is such a thing as infinite mass and density in a point of zero dimensions, that would be absurd.

2) The evidence does not suggest the universe was created "from nothing." This is where Craig starts throwing around Vilenkin et al (Craig does not understand Vilenkin's work). As mentioned above, Vilenkin's work makes some assumptions about the metric of early-universe spacetime, which imposes boundary conditions that are classical (read: not quantum). Guth, one of his co-authors, has pointed this out countless times, and Vilenkin himself has said so when people have specifically brought up Craig's claims about this paper.

(Edit: I should clarify this. The problem with classical physics is that they often lead to infinities where there are actually none; consider the ultraviolet catastrophe [Ultraviolet catastrophe - Wikipedia])

The most that can be said about the early universe is that its present state had a beginning, not that there was an ontological beginning.

It seems to me that your end conclusion is sufficient as a logical basis for what Craig argues.

"The most that can be said about the early universe is that its present state had a beginning, not that there was an ontological beginning."

There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about what Craig argues.
Craig's argument is not trying to prove a there must be a prior beginning point that preceded the beginning of the space-time universe.
He is only arguing for a beginning of the space-time universe and then makes arguments from that fact being established.
In fact, from a Biblical theology standpoint we have no reason to assume there was an ontological beginning that precedes the beginning of the space-time universe (because God is timeless and causeless so he has no beginning point). So Craig would have no need to argue for such a thing.

Here is why your final conclusion seems to be sufficient for Craig's argument to be valid and his conclusion to be true:

We can say that the observable material universe as we know it had a beginning point, yes?

We agree that an infinite regress of time into eternity past is logically absurd, do we not?

So we can say that time had to come into existence as a phenomenon at some point. Presumably the same point at which space had it's beginning existence.

So how do we go from a state of the space-time universe not existing to existing? Must we not logically assume there must be a cause that precipitated this change of events? That as far as we have observed something does not change from one state to another state without a cause?

It is from this basis that we are forced to logically conclude that whatever caused the space/time universe to come into existence must itself not be bound by time and must not itself have a beginning rooted in a cause. Otherwise you end up with a logically absurd infinite regress of infinite causality into the infinite past.

The cosmological argument by itself is merely intended to establish that the universe had a beginning and that the cause of that beginning had to be both timeless and causeless - and to point out the fact that those attributes are consistent with Biblical theology.

You only start talking about a creator being when you bring in the teleological argument to establish there appears to be design in the universe. Design by definition requires will and intent which requires a consciousness and free will. On top of that, this being needs to have the power to manifest his intention into existence so it does not remain only an idea.

So what is the dispute with what Craig has said? It seems to me that the dispute is not that Craig's proposition can't be true, or is even not the most likely truth, but merely the argument that we can't know for sure it is true.

But Craig doesn't argue that his argument is proven as true - merely that is the most likely of the options given the evidence. And that this conclusion happens to be consistent with Biblical theology.

So what are the alternatives for a creator?

You can’t create a model where an eternal quantum state goes from non existence to existence without a cause to account for the state change, unless that cause is an external being with both the free will and power to make a choice to change the state of reality from one existence to another.

And are not theories like the multiverse merely speculation without any evidence that would lead us to believe they are true? What reason is there to believe the multiverse explains what we see other than having an a priori commitment to the belief there can’t be a creator which requires us to assume it happened because there is no alternative left?

It would be fair then to say that if one is formulating a model for explaining what we know to be true by evidence (both the cosmological and the teleological) that the best explanation is a creator being.
Alternative models seem to rely on pure speculation that we don't have evidence for. But these models are taken on faith that they think we will one day find evidence for them.
But what causes one to think you are required to find a creator-less model? It is a conclusion that does not come out of the evidence but merely comes out of an a priori commitment to a belief in atheism that assumes a creator is impossible. Even though that assumption has not been proven to be true.

If interested, I wrote a series titled "Understanding Cosmology" in the Science & Religion section that covers how the universe is dated and aged.

Thanks, I have started reading it.

 

[Rise]

You cannot get to objective morality even with a God. In this case it will only be God's subjective desires about what ought to be that will be imposed on the universe. We simply have a case where "the mightiest has decreed by force what is right". Still it's entirely subjective even if everyone is forced to act according to it.

Your conclusion is not true because you are starting from faulty assumptions. Which is that you are misdefining the concept of “objective”.
And I can also show that you know that is not the right way to define objective because how you define objective with regards to truth is inconsistent with how you define objective with regards to morality.

I will explain why:

Your argument about god creating morality presumes god exists and is our creator. So let’s go from there:

What makes something objectively true in that case? Objective truth is defined as something which continues to be true regardless of what a person believes to be true.

Now you affirm that such a concept exists. Ok. But now you have to ask what makes it true in the first place?

Truth is defined by the the one who created reality. You can say something is true about reality only because the creator determined reality is that way. There is no other context in which to define what is true about reality other than what the creator has created to be true about reality.

So if you apply your original standard of objective morality to objective truth then you are forced to conclude that there is no objective truth because God was the one who defined what is true by creating reality. By your original logic you would be forced to conclude that god’s truth isn’t objective truth but is just his opinion about what should be true.

But even that argument by you would be logically wrong - because you can’t claim God’s defined truth is not the standard by which truth is judged unless you can say either there are other gods equal to him also creating in the same way or unless you can say that there exists something above god which created him and subjected him to a higher truth.

To think of it another way; Is God subject to a truth that is not Himself? If the answer is no then logically there can be no other standard for objective truth other than that which comes from God.

If God is uncreated and uncaused, and there are no others equal to him, then by definition there is no other standard by which to judge his truth of reality against. His truth becomes the very definition of truth by virtue if being the source of everything. You have no basis for claiming there exists any other truth but God’s truth when nothing above or equal to Him exists.

That is why the Bible says that God is not merely true but that God is the very embodiment of Truth itself. It says that something is not merely true because God decided it is true but that God created creation as a reflection of who He is and He IS Truth.

If there did exist something above or equal to god then he wouldn’t be God as revealed in the Bible. So you would cease to be describing God by Biblical definition as the unique and sole creator above all else.

At that point you don’t have a debate over the nature of objective truth but you have a debate over which idea of God is true.

But if you believe objective truth exists then you are logically forced to believe in a singular creator who has no equal and who was himself not created. Because that is logically the only way objective truth can exist. Does your current belief system even make room for such a being to exist? If not then you need to re-evaluate what you believe about creation to be consistent with you belief about objective truth. Because otherwise you are currently holding two contradictory beliefs.

Objective morality is no different.

So what is the true definiton of objective morality?
Morality is really just a statement of how things are suppose to be.
Therefore objective morality means that something is suppose to be a certain way and that doesn’t change based on what any person thinks about it.

That is why the existence of morality requires a creator being with will to declare what the purpose of creation is. Because you cannot say how things are suppose to be unless you designed and created things with the intent that they should be a certain way.
You cannot by definition have morality without purpose/intent behind your creation. And you can’t by definition have a purpose without a designer/creator to assign a purpose based on what their intent for you was.

So if God says this is how things are suppose to be, and there is no other above him to override him, and no other equal to disagree with him, then you have no basis for claiming God cannot be called the objective source of morality anymore than you would try to claim he can’t be called the objective source of truth.

By virtue of the fact that He is responsible for creating reality as it is and assigning it’s purpose He has through the act of creation applied the very concept of truth and morality to our reality. There is no one else to apply anything different. He is the source. And if that doesn’t make it objective by definition then nothing would.

By definition the only way it can be subjective is if there is someone else with equal or greater authority to disagree with god about how things are suppose to be.

You as a created being, created by God, aren’t in a position to objectively dispute the purpose God intended for you. You might not like it, you might not agree with it, but you have no logical basis for claiming your opinion about God’s purpose for you overrides the purpose you objectively have because that is the purpose your creator gave you when be created you.

Since your purpose was logically decided at creation your purpose is an objective fact about your creation and inherent to your creation.
So your opinion about the purpose of your creation can no more change the objective purpose behind your creation than your opinion of the laws of physics can objectively change the truth of them.

It reminds me of Romans 9:
Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?”

A creator by definition gets to define what the purpose of their creation is. He actually has to. Because you can’t create without first having an intention. And with an intention carries with it the implication of a purpose.

You by definition have an objective purpose because God gave you one as part of your creation act.

Your opinion of that purpose doesn’t change the objective fact of what purpose God gave you at the act of creation.

You as a created being never had the ability to create yourself and the universe you live in. Therefore you never had the ability to intend a purpose behind your creation. So your opinion of your purpose can’t change the objective fact of your purpose because you have no ability to recreate yourself according to your own intentions and create a new purpose.

Purpose by definition is only assigned by a creator based on the intent of the creator.

And since morality is merely a description of purpose, we can say morality by definition can only be assigned to a creation by the creator as part of intending what their purpose was when they created them.

So it’s actually wrong to think of morality as some kind of standard imposed upon creation post creation. It is more accurate to understand morality as an inherent aspect of the creation itself, intrinsic to the purpose given to the creation by the intent of the creator.

It is therefore logically impossible to have a universe and beings created by a creator without having an objective morality to go along with it. Because the very act of creation carries with it an intrinsic intent and purpose which we then call objective morality. It is impossible to have an act of creation without intent and purpose so it is impossible to have creation without morality.

It is the same principle behind the fact that truth is not a post creation invention, but truth is intrinsic to the act of creation itself as a description of what creation is and how it works.

We can sum this also up with a question: Is God subject to a moral standard that is not Himself? If the answer is no then logically by definition God is the only standard of objective morality.

I should also point out that Biblically we know God does not invent morality as something separate from himself but morality is an expression of who He already is. Much as the truth of our reality is an expression and reflection of God’s nature as Truth - so too the sense of morality we have is a reflection of God’s nature. We define what is good based on what is like God. And we define what is evil based on that which is not like God.

 

[Earthtank]

Hitchens is an absolute idiot only followed and "worshipped" by other idiots

 

[Rise]

Except that the cosmological argument doesn't get us to God(s). WLC simply inserts god into his conclusion. And not just any god - the specific god he believes in.
.

You are engaging in a strawman fallacy because Craig's conclusion never depends on the cosmological argument by itself.

The cosmological argument is merely to establish that there was a beginning of the universe and the cause of that beginning had to be both timeless and causeless.

It is the teleological argument which establishes that there must be a creator by showing design and intention behind design in the universe.

So far this gets us to the conclusion of an eternal uncaused free will being of unfathomable power who by his power and will of intention created the universe and all in it.

Right there you've already narrowed down the potential deities this can describe to a considerable degree as they don't fit these attributes. Its pretty much going to come down to Abrahamic religions at that point.

But then you get to the moral arguments and self evident arguments which establish the moral character of this creator being and what his intention was for his creation.
That further narrows down the compatibility with various religious beliefs.

All that without any actual demonstration whatsoever. That doesn't make for a sound argument.

You are committing the logical fallacy of argument by assertion.
Merely claiming that he has not demonstrated his conclusion is logically true, or that his argument is unsound, doesn't make it true just because you assert it is.

You need to provide reasons why you think your claim is true.

You cannot quote a specific argument Craig has made and then expose any logical fault with it.

You can't quote any argument he has made and then give any reason why it is insufficient for his conclusion.

Not to mention all the science he gets wrong

You are committing the logic fallacy of argument by assertion.

Merely claiming Craig got the science wrong doesn't make it true just because you assert it is so. You need to provide specific examples and provide reasons or evidence why you think he gets any science wrong.

 

[Rise]

Not logical from your perspective you mean?

You don't know how logic works if you think it's a matter of perspective.

Logic is by definition not subjective. It is objectively either invalid or invalid.

If logic were subjective then the scientific method couldn't be used to produce objective conclusions - as it depends on logic to work.

Assessment of debate performance is always subjective and based on which side you support in my view.

Your claim is irrelevant to what I said about this particular debate because you cannot cite any example of how my conclusions are merely subjective and not objective statements of logical fact.

Hitchens objectively failed to refute Craig's arguments and didn't even try to for the most part.
That is objectively a failure of debate for Hitchens.

I have not watched Hitchens at all, so do not know what he says or does not.

Proving you have no basis for claiming anything I said about Hitchens' performance is subjective rather than objective.

In my view every argument made by WLC can be easily countered and has been multiple times in many debates.

You just admitted you didn't even watch the debate - so stop pretending you know what you're talking about with regards to things you haven't even watched.

Even if you had watched it: Your opinion of Craig's arguments is irrelevant - all that matters is what you can logically argue and prove.

You can't refute the four arguments I mentioned Craig used. If you try you will fail - like everyone else in this thread has done so far when trying to debate the specific points with me.

If it were as easy to do as you claim it were then it would have already happened - but it hasn't.

If what you claimed were true then it should be very easy for you to go find where it's done, extract their arguments, and repeat them here - but you can't find that which doesn't exist.

 

[Rise]

Watch this and let us know what you think. Maybe you will change your mind about how well WLC has been rebutted.
Sean Carrol is a naturalist and a Cosmologist at CalTech.

I watched it and it did not live up to your claims at all.

Carrol does not disprove Craig's conclusion nor refute the logical argumentation he uses to arrived at that conclusion.

I can prove this by asking you to quote any specific argument or fact from that which you think refutes Craig's arguments, and specifically why you think it refutes Craig's arguments, and I will show you why your belief is in error.

This shouldn't be difficult for you to do if what you claim is true about this debate. It should be a simple matter for you to find that bit of information an retell it to us.

Afterall, since you are the one making the claim that this debate refutes Craigs arguments, the onus is on you as the one making that claim to prove your claim is true by presenting the evidence and reasons.

 

[Rise]

You beat me to it, WLC completely out of his depth debating Carol

I refer you to my response to that just above and invite you also to try to extract any argument Carrol made and then retell it to us and explain specifically why you think it refutes any of Craig's arguments or disproves Craig's conclusion.

You will not be able to do that.

 

[Rise]

How have you proved that all the other religious books and claims made by other religions are not true?

The argument you are responding to does not require disproving all other religions in order for my argument to be valid and for my conclusion to be true.

You would not be able to demonstrate a logical requirement for me to do so for my argument to stand.

My conclusion was that you cannot take for granted that your assumption is true. Ie. You cannot assume your rejection of God is just a neutral activity on your behalf with no wrong behavior involved on your part.

My argument in support of that was the fact that there exist other alternative explanations for what you are doing, therefore you can't assume your belief about why you are doing what you are doing is the only possible conclusion.

My argument does not require proving the Bible is true because I never assert the Bible is true as the basis for my argument. It is sufficient merely to demonstrate that alternative explanations exist to show why you cannot assume your belief about what is happening can automatically be assumed to be the correct belief.

The only way you could dismiss the Bible as a possible explanation for what you are doing is if you were to be able to prove the Bible's explanation is false or prove your explanation is true. But you can't do that. Which is why you can't assume your alternative viewpoint is true.

 

[Rise]

If you'd like to discuss one of Craig's arguments, I'd be happy to rebut one for you. No "watch this video" from my end, just arguments in my own words doing as you ask (dismantling the argument and reasoning, not taking potshots at God's character). With the caveat that if a given argument involves the PoE, God's character becomes mildly relevant.

What are you referring to when you say "PoE"?

I am most interested in seeing an attempt at refuting Craig's cosmological argument.
In a previous post I respond to you offering an argument against it, but I believe I showed why that argument is based on a misunderstanding of what Craig has argued and a misunderstanding of what he logically needs to establish for the purposes of his conclusion.

If you have other arguments you think can refute his cosmological argument I would like to see them.

If not, attempting to refute the teleological argument could be interesting.

 

[sayak83]

I watched it and it did not live up to your claims at all.

Carrol does not disprove Craig's conclusion nor refute the logical argumentation he uses to arrived at that conclusion.

I can prove this by asking you to quote any specific argument or fact from that which you think refutes Craig's arguments, and specifically why you think it refutes Craig's arguments, and I will show you why your belief is in error.

This shouldn't be difficult for you to do if what you claim is true about this debate. It should be a simple matter for you to find that bit of information an retell it to us.

Afterall, since you are the one making the claim that this debate refutes Craigs arguments, the onus is on you as the one making that claim to prove your claim is true by presenting the evidence and reasons.

Just an example.
Carrol correctly pointed out that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem only applies to cosmoligies that are classical i. e do not take quantum effects into account. So the only thing it does is to point out where quantum effects become dominant and needs to be accounted for. He also points out that singularities cannot exist in any theory that includes quantum mechanics, as quantum mechanics bars singularities in wavefunctions. Hence singularities are simply artifacts caused by not taking the fundamental quantum theory into account and is not considered physical in any sense.
Most current cosmological models include nonclassical effects in some way and hence do not have singularities. These models, both eternal and non-eternal, are perfectly consistent and do not run into the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin objections. WLC is simply wrong or lying when he says that the Borde Guth theorem implies that the universe must have had a beginning.