Monday, March 03, 2008

• Haiglaw strikes! OH NOOESS!!

  Currently Listening Live Frogs: Set 1 By Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade see related

  This entry is basically a bunch of snippets from Haiglaw's entry concerning his dialog with me, ARU, HLC, and Atheistthoughts. ARU and myself went onto his blog and had a wee little chat with him. Man, this guy really pisses me off to absolutely no end. Why? Oh, it's not because of his intellectual argumentation. It's because of his shitty arguments and his completely blind confidence in them. I don't know who he's trying to fool, but his arguments have very little to no force whatsoever. And his rebuttals? Talk about shifting the burden of proof, stating your conclusions, playing dumb, misinterpreting what's been said, etc. THAT is why I'm sick of him and why I'm blocking him. He's completely ignored the fact that I've stated what he calls "Atheist presuppositions," (i.e: the universe operates under unchanging laws and human beings rely on their senses) and asserts that I haven't stated my own presuppositions in one of his recent entries. Just who does this old fart thinks he's fooling?! *Sigh* I don't get this guy. I really don't. Anyway, here's some snippets with a few explanations and a quick rebuttal to his last couple posts. If you feel like reading, go right ahead. If you just feel like skimming, that's fine and dandy too. I've cut the unnecessary parts, at least some of them. See here if you want to know how these arguments were made in context. And do note that I've used a lot of sources:
  
  Oh, and look especially at the bottom. I think that is where Haiglaw really shows his st00pidity.
  
  [I said I was sick of debating Haiglaw to ARU]
  
  Haiglaw: Sick of it, EGM?  I thought you were enjoying yourself.  You can call presuppositionalism "circular reasoning" all you want to, but you never have answered my challenge to admit your own presuppositions. Whatsamatter, afraid your presuppositions would appear less reasonable to the lurkers than mine?
  
  [I'm referring to his brand of presuppositionalism in this post]
  

  EGM: Are you referring to me on your edit portion? How exactly am I taking advantage of your "G" rating on your blog? I do not recall saying anything utterly blasphemous; all I said was that I'm getting very tired and weary of the fact that our debate just doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. You kept asserting that I cannot be the judge of Christianity or whatever, and you didn't assert why I couldn't. Is Christianity completely immune to scrutiny? Why? Do I not have a right to be skeptical of its claims? Even in some of your posts all you do is quote a bunch of arbitrary and random Bible verses and then declare that you've made a point and refuted me somehow. And you give a cute little anecdote concerning your conversion to Christianity instead of responding to my points made in one of my posts. I'll admit that you did respond later, however, which if I even have time I'll address later (or perhaps now).

  You claim that you've been very careful not to be rude or arrogant, but in one particular comment you stated sarcastically, "It's really amazing to see how smart you guys are!" If that's not arrogant, then I'm really not sure what is.

  In our overly long and drawn out debate, ARU gave his own criticisms of Van Tillian Presuppositionalism, but rather than responding to his points or showing him why he was wrong, all you did was appeal to the fact that you've been a Van Tillian for over thirty friggin' years! You did that instead of actually responding coherently.

  You can call presuppositionalism "circular reasoning" all you want to, but you never have answered my challenge to admit your own presuppositions.
  
  Actually, when I asked you to give me a reason or two as to why you think I hold my own particular presuppositions, you never answered me. To be fair, you must show how my Atheism requires presuppositions of its own in order to work. What if I said that Jesus claimed that he has three legs? You would certainly require proof for my assertion, right? Well, it's the very same standard that I hold for you. If you say anything regarding my belief system (or lack of belief or whatever you want to call it), then I have every reason to ask that you back up your assertion(s) regarding it. In any case, when I asked that you give a source or two concerning "my givens," you didn't provide a thing.

  However, if you want me to admit what my "presuppositions" or as I prefer to call them, "assumptions," I'll be happy to.

  1. The universe essentially obeys a set of rules that do not change, for example the laws of gravity, inertia, thermodynamics, etc. Scientists assume that these laws are unchanging and that they will not change in the future, since we have no evidence of them ever being changed in the past. What is true today will be true tomorrow.

  2. We rely on our senses to determine all the information around us. I'm really not sure that we can truly trust anything else and I don't think that there is much else to rely on. It's the foundation of how we acquire data, how we acquire knowledge, and how we determine much of the course of our very lives.

  I'm sure that in some way, you rely on these very same assumptions. It's just that you have one more (and I would say VASTLY more extraordinary) assumption than I do: the Christian God. Remember: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If that's not the case, then we have every reason to believe in anything that we want to, and I mean ANYTHING.  The so-called "proof" that you've given to Christianity is highly questionable:

  To the contrary, Christianity, approached presuppositionally, contains a self-authenticating set of propositions derived from the Lord God adopting a rag-tag wandering tribe of people, leading them through several geographic moves, giving them victory over their enemies when they followed and obeyed Him, and letting them lose when they didn't...[rambles on about rules, the fact that the sacrificial system was a symbol for Jesus, etc.] He led his church leaders to write down His revelations, and those church leaders spent several hundred years hammering out which writings would be recognized as from God and which ones not.  These writings did not, as you imply, spring out of nowhere.  The fact that presuppositionalism starts with God and the Scriptures, does not mean that there is no self-authenticating foundation to them.  You may not be aware of, or respect that self-authenticating foundation, but your lacks do not negate them.
  
  Now THIS is circular reasoning at its very finest.You useunproven assumptions to try to prove his belief system, i.e: God used the sacrificial system as a symbol for Jesus, and how He was the ultimate redeemer for their sins, etc. The "fact" that God led his church leaders to write down whatever He told them to in order to validate Christianity is an unproven assumption. That is apparently how it's "self-authenticating." That is essentially the overall problem with presuppositionalism... it's built upon circular reasoning.

  You may reply, as you have already, that I start with my OWN presuppositions. Well, you've essentially committed a false analogy. This link explains it perfectly and I'll take a clip from it that explains it much better than I could:

  Van Tillian presuppositionalist John Frame, who wrote: "But are we not still forced to say, 'God exists (presupposition), therefore God exists (conclusion),' and isn't that argument clearly circular? Yes, in a way. But that is unavoidable for any system, any worldview. One cannot argue for an ultimate standard by appealing to a different standard. That would be inconsistent."

  Five Views on Apologetics, ed., Steven B. Coven [(Zondervan, 2000), p. 217].
  

  
  Then later:

  "Here Frame commits the informal logical fallacy of false analogy. He argues that rationalists must accept reason as an ultimate starting point, just as empiricists assume sense experience, and so on. So the Christian may begin with Scripture as a legitimate starting point. But these are not analogous bases. While the rationalist uses reason and the empiricist uses sense experience as tools from which to construct their systems, Frame assumes both the tool of special revelation and the system of Scripture, from which he develops his Christian theism. In other words, he assumes the reality of God's existence, his personal interaction with humans, plus a specific product: Scripture. Does Frame not realize that, in the name of everyone needing a presupposition, he has imported an entire worldview when others have only asked for tools?"
  

  
  Thus the two "presuppositions" are ENTIRELY different from each other.

  Even the ardent Christian apologist William Lane Craig admits,

  "Presuppositionalism commits the informal fallacy of begging the question, for it advocates presupposing the truth of Christian theism in order to prove Christian theism. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could with a straight face think to show theism to be true by reasoning, 'God exists, therefore God exists.' A Christian theist himself will deny that question-begging arguments prove anything." Five Views on Apologetics

  (p. 233).
  
  Also, Haiglaw, bear in mind that I said in our debate that this particular brand of apologetics can be plugged into any other theistic belief system like Islam, for example. You replied, "Islam does not even claim a redeemer, so what else need I say?" I forsee two options. One, that it is a false analogy because Christianity claims a redeemer and Islam does not. Technically, you're wrong because Islam DOES indeed claim a redeemer named the Mahdi. Secondly, even if that wasn't the case, it is not a false comparison because Christianity and Islam are a LOT alike. They're both monotheistic systems that rely upon holy books (the Bible and the Koran) and they make very similar claims upon humanity in general. Two, that since Christianity claims a redeemer, it is therefore true. I do not see how this alone would prove Christianity, since almost all major world religions have aspects to each one of them that is unique in and of itself. Is Scientology unique because it claims that DC-8's fly into space? Is it therefore true? Is Atheism true because it is so unique in that no other "belief system" (I hesitate to call it a belief system since it is merely skepticism) dictates that there is no God? I doubt that you would come to such a conclusion.

  Whatsamatter, afraid your presuppositions would appear less reasonable to the lurkers than mine?
  
  Nope, not really, since your presuppositions are by definition extraordinary and mine are not. They are not analogous bases at all. Plus, you basically conclude that I have lost somehow because I haven't replied yet. This is the same thing that you accused me of doing, and it suggests a hypocritical attitude on your part, buddy.

  I think that's enough for now. Lata.
  
  [He then asks a series of questions without replying to what I've said above at all. Geez this guy is real convincing isn't he?]
  
  Haiglaw: Do you think the question of the existence of God is a factual question, and should be answered in the same way as any other factual questions?

  Do you think that every claim that someone makes must be treated as a hypothesis which must be tested by evidence, such as logical coherence and empirical observation, before accepting it?

  Do you think that the use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsity of any statement which claims to be factual?

  [I answered "yes" to all of them, except I went back and said, "EVERY claim? Not necessarily. My mom could claim that she drove to work and came home at 5:00pm. That's not all that extraordinary at all, and I don't think that I need to test such a claim."]

  Haiglaw:...are we to infer that information from your mom, EGM, is in some special category of what is knowable, or could it possibly be that information from her comes within the broader catebory of what I called "evidence, such as logical coherence and empirical observation"?
  
  EGM: My original point concerning my mother was that many of her claims, i.e: I drove to work today, I fed the cats today, etc., are not by definition extraordinary because they're everyday events that I've seen her do time and time again. I have seen for myself those very same events time and time again. Whereas if she claimed that she got abducted by aliens, then I would require extraordinary evidence for that extraordinary event. See the difference? Likewise, if you claim that a man from Israel resurrected from the dead after 3 days of being dead and he is the Savior of all mankind, I would also require extraordinary evidence for that extraordinary claim. Make sense?
  
  Haiglaw: How do you define extraordinary evidence?
  
  EGM:
  

  From here:

  "I then suggest that the evidence required to support [extraordinary claims] should be sufficient to falsify those conventional beliefs [that resurrections do not happen, for example]. Such evidence would be a set of incontrovertible facts that are logically inconsistent with our conventional beliefs and therefore compel the inference that those beliefs are untrue. If it can be demonstrated by a cogent argument that the facts in evidence are inexplicable except by supposing that the conventional beliefs are wrong, then we have our extraordinary evidence. But if the conventional beliefs can explain the evidence, then the evidence is not sufficiently extraordinary to support the claim...Extraordinary evidence although it might be intrinsically ordinary, must be extraordinarily in its implications. If it is offered as proof that a natural law has been violated, then the violation of a natural law — and nothing else — must be the only way to account for it."
  
  The conventional belief here is that resurrections do not happen.
  
  Some things that would convince me that there are aliens among us: A piece of material from a number of different UFOs that could be shown by scientific means to be made out of something that is not of this earth, proof that the UFO in question is something that was, indeed, from space, abductees that have implanted devices in their heads that can also be shown to not be of this earth; testimonies from trustworthy people that do not have any evidence of mental problems, hidden agendas, bad interpretations of the abduction event due to childhood trauma, or hypnosis; compelling evidence that the government has captured flying saucers (for example, a place where they're stored for everyone to see), perhaps evidence of mutated animals of which these mutations have no earthly origin/explanation; perhaps aliens coming in public contact on the news on television meeting with the president of the U.S., world leaders, everyday people, newscasters, and aliens living with us in everyday life just like dogs or cats live among human beings. These things would CERTAINLY convince me that aliens exist.

  Some things that would convince me that the resurrection occured: Thousands of preserved letters of correspondence between the apparent 500 witnesses of Jesus' Resurrection, all with different takes on the matter with different perspectives, no evidence that they ever copied each other or had any hidden agendas, a couple (the more the better) good, trustworthy, and neutrally objective historians who happened to witness the event firsthand and wrote it down and whose writings are very-well preserved and well documented, evidence and documentation that die-hard skeptics saw Jesus resurrect DIRECTLY from the grave and rolled away the stone himself, and some documents and evidence among the 500 apparent witnesses that Paul conveniently mentions that some people disbelieved it, others didn't know what to think, people who went away from the event due to confusion, etc. I would probably be convinced that the resurrection happened if many of these documents that were written between the 500 witnesses, from respectable and completely trustworthy historians, from trustworthy skeptics, from those who were confused by the whole ordeal, etc. See ARU's take on extraordinary evidence for a more thorough explanation. I had to admit I had a bit of help from that link and I expanded on it a bit .

  Hope that helps.
  
  [He then cites a miracle claim, which I'm still skeptical about]
  
  EGM:
  

  Well, there are problems with miracles in general, and since I am too lazy to find the words to type out my own personal explanation myself, I quote from here:

  Purtill defines a miracle as "an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history" (72). The primary problem with his definition is that it makes recognizing an actual miracle as a miracle almost impossible. As an empirical hypothesis, using Purtill's definition, the statement "x is a miracle" requires that we establish, with empirical evidence, a causal connection between the event x and this God, which in turn requires that we establish, with empirical evidence, that this God exists. That is a tough task. Moreover, we must establish, again with empirical evidence, that God caused x for a specific purpose, which in turn requires us to be able to examine and demonstrate the intentions of God in that specific case. That can sometimes be done without interviewing the agent--we can infer intent from the nature and context of an action, and we often engage in such reasoning in law courts, but it often isn't easy. Finally, we must be able to establish that x could not have happened in "the ordinary course of nature." In other words, we must show that God is a necessary, not just a sufficient, cause of x. So Purtill has set the bar almost too high for anyone, in the present world as we know it, to ever recognize a miracle. Even if a miracle happened right in front of us, we would almost never be able to establish that it was a miracle, and this difficulty only becomes exponentially greater when the miracle happened to someone else a long time ago.
  

  
  Some questions to consider:
  1. It is (almost) impossible to rule out naturalistic explanations for a miracle and miracles in general. How do you know, assuming that there isn't already a naturalistic explanation at the moment, that this event won't be explained away by naturalistic means later? I do not think that it is truly possible to identify a miracle if one would occur, for there could very well be a scientific explanation for a proported (sp) miracle even if we don't have one yet.

  2. Even if we DO grant that this event is indeed a miracle, how do you know that it was the Christian God that did it and not, say, Allah, Zeus, Satan, etc.? How do you know that he wasn't resurrected by aliens or by some superhuman power?

  3. How do you know that God is a necessary explanation for this event and not just, say, a plausible one?
  
  [He then accuses me of looking for absolute proof]
  
  EGM: I'm not looking for "absolute proof." The fact of the matter is that miracles have problems as I've mentioned above. I don't see how that is any indication that I want 100% proof. All I want is proof that this proported (sp) event (which I'm very skeptical about, by the way) is supernatural in origin and that the Christian God is responsible for it as opposed to some other supernatural force or some other extraordinary source. So far, you've done nothing to solve these problems and asserted that I'm looking for 100% proof. Even if you do solve these problems somehow, I think that there would exist a small amount of doubt. I see no reason to assume that "Goddidit" even if we can't explain away the event. It is simply an argument from ignorance as far as I see.
  
  [In my last entry concerning extraordinary claims, Haiglaw asks if I believe in Shakespeare. He basically compares the miraculous claims of Jesus Christ with Shakespeare's works and I (rightly) thought that this was a really stupid comparison. More on that in a bit]
  
  

  Haiglaw: You say you're not looking for "absolute proof," but you've also said you require "overwhelming evidence."  You define neither.  I've summarized the types of evidentiary standards the law recognizes, yet you keep arbitrarily making up different terms and never define any of them.

  There is also a great body of law recognizing the evidentiary value of "ancient documents."  You dismiss "a bunch of Bible verses" as though they have no such evidentiary value, yet you smugly accept on faith the idea that Shakespeare existed and did extraordinary things, despite the fact that the weight of ancient documents supporting the Bible is a lot heavier than that supporting Shakespeare.

  Seems like you've hoisted yourself on your own petard, my young friend.  Good try, but no cigar.

  [By the way, I never responded to Haiglaw because I don't think he'd listen to me anyway. I'm starting to think that he's a denialist to tell you guys the truth. But here's my rebuttal anyway]
  
  Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Haiglaw basically offers a non-answer to my question of why I am looking for absolute proof regarding miracle claims. He never answers me and instead asks me to define what "absolute proof" is vs. "overwhelming evidence." Now is it me or is he shifting the burden of proof onto me?! It sure seems like it. He asks me how my arguments against miracles are not questions of absolute proof and he never explains why my arguments are asking for absolute proof. I know, I'm repeating myself a bit.
  
  He says that I've made up a bunch of terms and never define any of them. Excuse me? What the hell is he referring to? I thought that he knew what "absolute proof" was and what "overwhelming evidence" was. Guess not! Other than that, I have no idea what the hell he's referring to.
  
  He compared Jesus and Shakespeare as if both of them were similar. Basically, according to him, Shakespeare and his work are to be taken as extraordinary, and Haiglaw tries to hoodwink me and ARU by pointing out our apparent hypocrisy. Well, as I said, this is a bad comparison. A poet and a play-writer who wrote a bunch of poems and plays that were considered great for his time and now he's perceived as one of the greatest writers of all time? Well, that's not all THAT extraordinary in my opinion. We have clear evidence of play-writers and poets doing great things all the time, so I don't see how Shakespeare's existence and works are all that extraordinary. I've defined what extraordinary means in my last entry, so look that little bastard up if you don't know what I mean by "extraordinary." I suppose one could argue that Shakespeare did extraordinary things, but that is almost entirely subjective. Shakespeare never claimed to walk on water, heal the sick, feed 5,000 people, be the Son of God, or resurrect. I would suppose that any sane person would treat Jesus a wee bit differently than Shakespeare.
  
  I gained my knowledge of Shakespeare and his existence because no critical historian that I know of questions the existence of him or questions the fact that he wrote a bunch of plays and poems. That's why I believe he exists. It is an appeal to authority, but as far as I see (and the Wikipedia link explains it), it is NOT a fallacy to take a critical historian's word for it and believe it that way. It doesn't necessarily prove that Shakespeare existed, but it's not a fallacy to simply take his word for it. Basically, if somebody claimed that X is true because there is a scientific consensus concerning claim X, then I am at the very least justified in believing that X is true. It doesn't prove X, but it's at least reasonable to believe it. I suppose that it is possible that Shakespeare never lived, but I see no reason to think that this is possible at the moment.
  
  In contrast, I would imagine that plenty of critical historians doubt the claims of Jesus Christ based on lack of external evidence, for one. This is an entirely different issue that I don't really want to get into at the moment; just keep in mind that not all critical historians believe in Jesus' claims and don't believe that they carry any evidential weight. I'm sure a lot of historians believe in Jesus, but I'm sure that a good number of them simply believe in him because they were brought up that way.
  
  Does Haiglaw give any evidence that Jesus is backed up by tons of historical evidence? Not really, but then again I never gave him the chance to. I really don't want to seeing as how it would probably turn into another STUPID debate that won't really go anywhere, lol. But there are plenty of reasons to doubt the Gospels. See Richard Carrier's essay here for a thorough beat-down.
  
  Haiglaw then has the NERVE and the STUPIDITY to claim this little gem after ARU pretty much says that he never claimed to believe that Shakespeare existed (honestly, I disagree with his approach and I like mine a bit better ^_^. HAH!):
  
  Juxtaposing these two, totally-inconsistent answers from two atheist-agnostics demonstrates the utter vacuity and intellectual bankruptcy of the atheist-agnostic position.
  
  LOL! Oh does it now? Since two atheists disagree with each other, God so obviously exists? Does anybody know how fucking ridiculous that sounds? If two Christians disagreed with the issue of, say, Shakespeare's existence, does that mean that Christianity is wrong? I doubt that Haiglaw would go for such an argument. This just shows that atheists disagree with each other. Does that prove that God exists? Hell no! Since (almost all) atheists stand for reason, intellectual honesty, and good ol' skepticism concerning extraordinary claims, it may very well be that two different atheists arrive at two completely different conclusions concerning an issue. Does that mean that we, as atheists or even reasonable people in general, should abandon our reasoning and the fact that we hold skepticism to unproven extraordinary claims? Not at all; the two disagreeing atheists in question just need to go through why they feel the way they feel about issue X. One atheist may be totally right and the other may be totally wrong because of bad standards of evidence. And the latter atheist must be corrected on partially abandoning reason. That's all.
  

  And I think the juxtaposition of these two totally-inconsistent answers illustrates the difficulty for a Christian having a debate with atheists-agnostics, or even a cohesive discussion, because it shows that instead of intellectual honesty and following the implications of ideas, you change position willy-nilly, when you see where a discussion is leading that will demonstrate the weakness of your position, like the proverbial chamellion who changes color with the background and blends in with it.
  

  And I think that you're just plain wrong, dumbass. First of all I don't think he gives any evidence that ARU "changed positions" at all and gives no evidence that ARU even believed in Shakespeare's existence beforehand. It may be that he did and changed positions, but that does NOT mean that Haig's argument has any force. Secondly, it sure as hell doesn't mean that being skeptical of the claims of Jesus Christ isn't logical or being skeptical of the existence of aliens isn't logical. And changing positions "willy-nilly" can actually be a GOOD THING in certain situations. I've changed my position on issues plenty of times, but it doesn't mean that atheism isn't true. It just means that I was wrong. When you as a person (and not just as an atheist mind you) apply standards of reasoning (like not committing logical fallacies for instance) to your life, you inevitably see that a belief that you've long held dear is wrong. Even during my Christian days, I applied reason to my way of thinking and lifestyle, and I eventually saw that homosexuality wasn't wrong after all, just for instance. I began to see that "non-Christians" weren't evil and vile people after all. Even now I am still learning, still growing, still changing positions "willy-nilly." Not changing your position in the face of good evidence is FAR worse than realizing that you are wrong and rightly correcting yourself.
  

  That's really about it, folks. Now y'all can see why I can't stand this guy. On one of his latest entries he outright denies the fact that I asked him to prove to me why I hold certain "presuppositions" as an atheist and he hasn't bothered to explain why. Rather, he calls my assertion "silly" rather than proving his assertion. I've already given him my "presuppositions" (man I hate that word) above and he STILL denies it. Maybe he has bad eyesight. Or maybe he's just in total denial and wants to smear me.
  

  He then tells his wife that we're a bunch of angry bastards. Well, atheists in general have very good reasons to be angry: lack of separation of church and state, conservative assholes who want to shove their narrow point of view onto people, homosexual marriage isn't legal (and it's just as bad as putting black people into second-class citizenry), atheists can't run for office because too many are ignorant of what we stand for and believe stupid little stereotypes about us, Christians have privileges in American society, etc etc. Now you can see why atheists in general are just a bunch of grumpy little gremlins. We have good reason to be outraged at the injustices in our society. We just can't stand people like Haiglaw trying to shove their faith down our throats with their idiotic arguments. Sheesh.
  
  ::EDIT:: I've reformatted the post a little bit so that my readers can read it a little easier. Haiglaw's quotes are in red highlight and italics.
  

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