Round 4   9/25/05

From Brady 

Tremblay writes:

“To a certain extent, he is correct: if we are talking about daily experience, we are necessarily talking about a certain degree of philosophical assumptions. Most people don’t debate the primacy of existence, or the validity of induction. People just assume these things are valid as a matter of course. Everyone acts as if these things were true, and without these assumptions, we literally could not live. If we had no inductive understanding of eating, for instance, we would starve. No one had to mount a logical argument demonstrating why we should eat, for us to realize how good it is to eat!”

What Mr. Tremblay doesn’t realize is that part of the job of philosophy and science is to rid us of assumptions that are false. Some assumptions are true and some false. At one point in the history of the world, many people assumed that the world was flat. Someone had to mount a logical argument to demonstrate that the world was not flat. At one point in the history of the world, many people assumed that the Sun moved around the stationary earth. Someone had to mount a logical argument to demonstrate that the earth was the one that was doing the moving. Someone might also assume that since those mushrooms we buy at the store are so tasty in salads, that the mushrooms growing in our backyards or in the woods are just as tasty, which might send that someone to the local morgue.

The fact that you have some assumptions that work does not make all your assumptions true. Any true assumption that we make, we have actually arrived at it by accident. After all, isn’t that what we mean by “assume?” We mean we haven’t tested it, we haven’t reasoned it out, we just assume it. If we have reasoned it out or tested it, it wouldn’t be an assumption; it would be the conclusion of an inductive, deductive or transcendental argument. As long as a proposition remains an assumption, we don’t know if it is true or false. Even if assumptions seem to work, doesn’t mean they are true. Take the Iowa farmer who assumed that lighting a candle at dawn would keep any elephant herds from trampling his corn. The Sheriff finally asked the farmer what made him think that works? The Farmer looked out at his acres of land and said, “Do you see any elephants?”

Now, Mr. Tremblay seems to be telling us, with a certain amount of pride in his writing, that much of his philosophy is based on unreasoned, untested assumptions. He also seems to take offence that I called his philosophy, “naïve empiricism” because, as I pointed out in my previous post, he has not worked through the major questions and problems connected to empiricism. Mr. Tremblay readily admits in his above quote that he just assumes, unquestioned and undemonstrated, that his view on empiricism is true. Isn’t that what we mean by “naïve?”

Mr. Tremblay writes:

Mr. Tremblay says that Christianity is “incompatible” with induction. By that he means that there is a contradiction between Christianity and induction. The moment Mr. Tremblay invokes the term “contradiction,” we know he must produce a deductive argument to prove his point. This is because “contradiction” is a deductive term and can only be shown with a deductive argument.

There are two parts to any deductive argument, 1) the form of the argument and 2) the truth of the premises. If the form of the argument is invalid and/or the premises are false, the argument fails, in other words, the conclusion does not follow. So let’s go back and review Mr. Tremblay’s argument from the first round of our debate:

"3. Theistic worldviews (including Christianity) make inductive reasoning impossible.

The kinds of knowledge I examine in this post rely mostly on inductive reasoning applied to our daily experience. Simply defined, induction is the principle that our previous experiences can be used as a guide to our future experiences. If we see the Sun "rise" every single day of our life, we expect that it will "rise" tomorrow. The law of gravity, which itself is based on other observations, confirms this inductive reasoning.

But God could make it so that A is not-A, that gratuitous cruelty is good, or that the Sun stops in its path in the sky (as it does in Joshua 10:12-14) -or change any other future experience. If this is the case, then we must abandon induction altogether, since it is no longer the case that our past experiences can be used as a guide for our future experiences, and we must therefore abandon all necessary knowledge based on induction, such as (C1), (C2), (V1) and (V2).

Induction can only be sustained in a purely self-contained system, which is to say that induction can only be true if materialism is true and theism is false."

The first question we must ask is, “does this passage have a deductive argument in it at all? The answer is, yes, there does appear to be a deductive argument in the passage. Mr. Tremblay attempts to use a conditional (sometimes called a hypothetical) syllogism. It is easily recognized by its “If…., then…” format. So, let’s examine his argument to see if the form is valid and the premises are true.

Let’s put together the whole argument:

Premise 1) If the Christian God exists such that he could make it so that A is not-A, that gratuitous cruelty is good, or that the Sun stops in its path in the sky or change any other future experience, then induction is false.

The implication of this premise is that if the three alleged attributes that Mr. Tremblay ascribes to Christian theology about God were true, then somehow, induction could not also be true. In order to complete his syllogism, his next premise must be

The argument as stated above is a valid argument. In other words the form of the argument is as it should be. Now we must turn to the premises to see if they are true.

For the first premise to be true we must be able to show a necessary connection between the two parts. The first part of the first premise is called the antecedent and the second part is called the consequent. If the two parts have no necessary connection, then the argument may be valid, but the conclusion is meaningless. For instance, take the following conditional syllogism: If it rains, my coffee is sweetened with sugar. It is raining. Therefore, my coffee is sweetened with sugar. This is a perfectly valid syllogism, but since the antecedent and the consequent have no necessary connection, the conclusion is meaningless.

Has Mr. Tremblay shown us any connection between the antecedent (the first part of the premise) and the consequent (the second part of the premise)? He does offer the following:

“If this is the case, then we must abandon induction altogether, since it is no longer the case that our past experiences can be used as a guide for our future experiences, and we must therefore abandon all necessary knowledge based on induction, such as (C1), (C2), (V1) and (V2).”

Can anyone find the necessary connection that binds the antecedent to the consequent in this explanation? I can’t. The reader will remember in the second round of this debate, that it was not a Christian, but Bertrand Russell, coming from the atheist position that stated our past experiences cannot be used as a guide for our future experiences. Allow me to reprint Russell’s argument:

“It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures.  But such an argument really begs the very question at issue.  We have experience of past futures, but not of future futures, and the question is: Will future futures resemble past futures?  This question is not to be answered by an argument, which starts from past futures alone.  We have therefore still to seek for some principle which shall enable us to know that the future will follow the same laws as the past." (“The Problems of Philosophy” p64-65)

You will notice that Russell does give a sound argument here. It is Russell’s position that he as an atheist holds that there is no rational or inductive principle that can link past experiences to future experiences. Has Russell proven from an atheist point of view that induction must be abandoned? From Mr. Tremblay’s declaration we must answer, yes! But of course, Russell found no such conclusion to be the case. Why? Because Mr. Tremblay’s antecedent and consequent are only necessarily connected in his head and nowhere else.

If this is what we know, we must conclude that Mr. Tremblay’s argument is a failure. But the failing of his argument doesn’t stop there. I have already pointed out that in Christianity logic is part of the nature of God and not some “made-up” set of rules that can be changed willy-nilly. The same goes for what constitutes “good.” Mr. Tremblay’s assertions are not the Christian position. As I have said before, Mr. Tremblay simply makes up straw-man arguments based on false assertions about Christian theology. A cursory review of most systematic theologies would put this nonsense to bed in no time. But, Mr. Tremblay is not interested in sound arguments based on correct representations of the Christian position. He had adequate time since our first round to investigate and correct his error. He has not done so, but, rather continues to propagate error, even after it has been brought to light in this debate.

You see, what Mr. Tremblay is attempting to do is to argue that internal in the Christian there is a contradiction with induction. But, since the real positions found in Christianity don’t contradict induction, he feels he must make positions, and call them the Christian position. This of course, defeats the purpose of the argument. If you can’t use the real Christian positions, why even bother coming up with an argument?

So, not only is Mr. Tremblay’s argument an meaningless argument, but it also has false premises when it comes to the Christian position. It is just a bad argument that falls flat on its face! In fact, it is so badly done that no one who has even taken a high school course in logic would ever give it a second look. It is even quite possible that Mr. Tremblay’s three year old advisor would not find it compelling.

Mr. Tremblay continues:

Mr. Lenardos asks a number of questions against what he calls my naive empiricism. Actually, naive empiricism refers to the belief that precepts share all the properties of their corresponding existents (for instance, that when you look at them from a plane, people really are small like ants). No one holds such a view. Secondly, any supposed flaw of my epistemology is only relevant if it prohibits the acquisition or checking of knowledge.

Apparently, Mr. Tremblay is ignorant of the fact that terms may mean different things in different contexts. Perhaps, he should take a look in a dictionary and see that virtually every word has multiple meanings. I already explained what I meant by the term “naïve empiricism” in my previous post. Here we see, again, that Mr. Tremblay has to twist my position rather than deal with it head on. As I have shown in previous posts, Mr. Tremblay can’t deal with the real positions held by Christian theology, and here, neither can he legitimately deal with the positions I propose. Maybe he thinks our readers are too stupid to notice that he has changed the meaning of my terms, I think not!

I also think that having a cosmology that makes it impossible to independently acquire knowledge and independently check knowledge is very relevant. If all you can acquire and check is that which you have necessarily been determined to acquire and check, then your conclusion is also necessarily determined. This kind of conclusion is unfalsifiable and unverifiable in both principle and practice; because the only evidence you can acquire to support or reject the conclusion is what you were determined to acquire. Any other evidence that may exist is necessarily unavailable. It was already determined that you would never have it. Even the terms “support” and “reject” assume an independent evaluation of the evidence; but according to Mr. Tremblay, an independent evaluation is impossible. According to him, all that is possible is a necessarily determined conclusion.

What is going on here is that Mr. Tremblay is using terms like “knowledge,” “acquire” and “check” as if they have individual meanings and as if people have the freedom and independence that those terms require to fulfill there meaning. He then rejects the possibility of those terms to have those meanings.

Given Mr. Tremblay’s materialistic determinism, it is impossible for him to reach any other conclusion, at this point, other than atheism. It is also impossible for me to have reached any other conclusion other that theism. It was antecedent causes that forced him to his position, and me to mine. He could not independently verify or falsify his position and come to a different conclusion, nor could I. From Tremblay’s determinism, the only way there could be any other conclusion is if there were other antecedent causes. It is only from the theist position that an independent mind can reason and lead to independent conclusions.

Here is the irony, Mr. Tremblay has given us and has readily admitted to the elements that do destroy induction! You see, if all conclusions are necessarily determined by antecedent causes, as Tremblay admits, then inductive conclusions are based on determined antecedent causes and not the cogency of the argument. If cogency can’t be independently verified or falsified, even in principle, the conclusion is by definition meaningless. Once again, as I have said so many times in this debate, I am not saying that inductive conclusions are meaningless; I am saying that if Mr. Tremblay’s position is true, then inductive conclusions are meaningless.

Mr. Tremblay thinks that because he can do induction and he hold to atheism, that somehow those two are joined at the hip. But that is not the case. Since, as I have pointed out before, Mr. Tremblay’s position destroys the possibility of all knowledge, it would necessarily destroy the possibility of inductive knowledge.

Tremblay quotes me:

He then replies:

When Mr. Tremblay says, “Yes, I “know” that the oven is still there, because reality does not depend on me perceiving it, and reality does not depend on my perception because reality is objective,” I must ask how does he know any of this? He has told us in past posts that everything he knows is based on induction, but nothing in Mr. Tremblay’s statement can be inductively shown to be the case. These kinds of statements are outside the purview of induction. The question about the oven is also outside the purview of induction; that is the point of the question. For, in order to know, inductively, that this oven is there when Mr. Tremblay does not perceive it, he must perceive it, when he is not perceiving it; kind of tough to do. The point is that his conclusion that the oven is there when it is not being perceived CANNOT be a conclusion based on induction. So, I think this creates a tough problem for a guy who says that ALL his knowledge is based on induction.

Perhaps, he will try a deductive argument instead. But deduction can’t deal with this either. Deduction deals with relationships and principles, not the existence of contingent particulars. Well, if Mr. Tremblay has neither an inductive argument, nor a deductive argument, what kind of method is he going to use to come to his conclusion? I guess his method really is that a three year old told him so!

He continues, “And causality is determined by three criteria: temporal succession, spatial contiguity, and potentiality.” This is another statement that cannot be resolved using induction, so how does he know this? Perhaps the three year old filled him in on this one too!

Tremblay writes:

Because it can’t account for any “knowledge” at all! For you to “know” any of the things listed there is a necessary element of independence required. You deny this independence, and in doing so you deny any knowledge of these things.

Tremblay continues:

First of all, inductive conclusions don’t always hold. They are just probably true, not necessarily true. But let’s put that aside, because Mr. Tremblay is asking a more serious question here.

Mr. Tremblay recognizes that he can’t answer these questions. So, he tries to use the logical fallacy “Tu quoque.” This is the “you too!” fallacy. In other words, Mr. Tremblay is saying, “I can’t answer it, but neither can you. We are in the same boat, so I don’t have to come up with an answer!” Well, he is right when he admits that he has no answer, but he is wrong when he accuses me of the same.

This goes right back to our cosmological positions. One reason that Mr. Tremblay can’t answer these questions with any other than “a three year old believes it,” is because his cosmology is one of accedentalism. This means that everything happens in this universe by accident. There is no reason or intent for any two particles to have a relationship with each other; it is all accidental. Why must this be the case? Because in Mr. Tremblay’s cosmology, there is no reasoner or intender to make it any other way. The antithesis of accedentalism is found in the theistic cosmology, which is intentionalism. In other words, in theism everything exists intentionally. In theism there is an intender. In theism, there is a reason that things are as they are; there was someone who intended to make a universe that could be known and who intended to make creatures with the ability to know that universe. The theist cosmology provides a basis for knowing, for doing induction and deduction, and for the independence of the self. With the theistic cosmology in place terms like “conclusion” and “response” have separate meanings and are not functional synonyms, as I have shown them to be given the atheist cosmology.

The atheist cosmology holds two necessary premises:

1) Everything that happens is necessarily determined.

2) Everything that happens, happens by accident.

I hope the reader can quickly see the problem. The atheistic cosmology holds a direct contradiction.

Mr. Tremblay says that the future will be like the past, but his cosmology demands that every event in the past and every event in the future are as they are accidentally. He thinks he knows that his oven exists when he does not perceive it. But, if his oven exists when he does not perceive it, his cosmology demands it does so by accident, not by intent.

Mr. Tremblay writes:

Well, as you know by now, I don’t concede that both worldviews can account equally for induction or the uniformity of nature. The fact is, the atheistic cosmology makes it impossible for it to account for any knowledge. That is the point of my argument. The phrase “the impossibility of the contrary” is a phrase used by Greg Bahnsen and many of his followers. It seems to me that it is a phrase that he used in a loose sense. I will use a much stronger phrase: Theism is true because of the impossibility of the contradictory. Those with a background in logic will immediately understand the difference, and the implications.

What we have is two contradictory positions:

Theism affirms the existence of God

Atheism denies the existence of God.

In theism, all existence is intentional.

In atheism, all existence is accidental.

In theism, thoughts, reasoning and conclusions contain an element of independence.

In atheism, thoughts, reasoning and conclusions contain no element of independence.

Given these three aspects alone we can see that the two positions are contradictory. In other words, if one is false, then the other is necessarily true. So, it is not an assumption that one of these positions is true because of the impossibility of the contradictory, it is a logical necessity. And since we have seen that the atheist cosmology contains numerous internal contradictions, the only conclusion we can reach is that theism is necessarily true, because of the impossibility of the contradictory.

As I close, there is one other question that I would like to ask Mr. Tremblay:

Tremblay writes, “The third point is meaningless, since logic is material…” I would like to know, how much a pound of Non-Contradiction is going for at the local deli? What is the molecular make up of the Law of Identity? And what happens to stew, if you mix a dash of the Law of Excluded Middle in?

Since logic is material, as he declared, I am sure Mr. Tremblay will be able to give us answers to all of these questions. ROTFL

From Francois 

Well, these are our second-to-last posts, and so we come to the core of Mr. Lenardos’ fallacy : that knowledge is necessarily “independent” from determinism. Once again, this is nothing but a nonsensical circular belief. Nothing is “independent” from determinism because everything is part of causal strands, within this giant causal tapestry that is the universe.

Science, the most successful of all human endeavors, would not exist without the assumption of determinism. As Michael Martin makes it clear in his TANG, to posit divine intervention is to deny the obvious efficacy of science.

But more importantly, to posit that knowledge is “independent” is to add a specificity which is simply not relevant. How is the ontological status of the knower relevant to the truth of his knowledge? In the same way, we can make an analogy with the medium of the information. Whether a proposition is printed on a newspaper, engraved in stone, planted as a configuration of flowers, or as a series of bits, it is still true or false on its own merits, not because of how it’s represented. Why should I think the qualities of the computational system that finds knowledge are relevant to its truth?

If anything, he has it all in reverse: it is an “independent” knower that I wouldn’t trust to find knowledge. It would be dubious that such a knower could understand causality at all without experiencing it. And of course God would be the least competent of all to understand causality, since causal laws simply cannot exist in a divinely-made universe. Anything that a god makes is subjective to itself. So Mr. Lenardos is misled if he thinks using this line of argument will get him anywhere.

Nevertheless, he is correct to point out that I have not given my position on “knowledge”, “understanding” or “thought”. The first point is that, whatever these things are, they exist within a purely determinist context – the causal links of the objects around us, as well as the causal links of our minds, interact in the ways prescribed by our will in order to produce a result we call “knowledge”. Epistemically, we can define knowledge simply as

this: a proposition of which the truth is rationally established beyond reasonable doubt.

The two other terms involve our will more specifically. To understand and think are active processes of will. More specifically, to think is to manipulate conceptual symbols (through reasoning, memory, imagination, intuition), and to understand is the hopeful positive result of such a process : to integrate new symbols into our already-existing network. With understanding, everything clicks into place, as it should. When we get contradictory data, we must unlatch the connections and attempt to build something at least slightly better.

A reader of this debate has told me he would like to see a full justification of my worldview. As it turns out, I have already done so before, on my blog for instance. But I don’t need to, because that’s not the topic of the debate, despite Mr. Lenardos’ insistence. The topic is whether atheism or Christianity contradicts knowledge. And as I pointed out in my opening case, Christianity contradicts the acquisition of knowledge on many different and equally fatal, points.

But the most important of those points is that Christianity, and theism in general, is fundamentally incompatible with a materialist, deterministic, scientific view of reality. Not only because of the beliefs in Creation, the afterlife and the divine avatar, but by the very nature of theism. If there is a being that is immaterial, and we are to make sense of this scientifically, then such an existence must be falsifiable, and therefore break causality in some way. But if this is the case, then it stands against all possibility of knowledge.

You can see it this way: even if the god of the Bible did act on reality, how would we know it? No supernaturalist explanation is possible, because it is a negative term, and thus can only be validated by first rejecting all naturalistic possibilities, which is impossible. We cannot possibly know that we are validated in rejecting all naturalistic possibilities, and therefore can never be validated in positing a hypothetical supernaturalist cause as a viable explanation.

How can a worldview that is founded on breaking uniformity, explain uniformity? That much is impossible. We might as well ask Stalin to take the witness stand for capitalism, or ask Jack Chick to teach a physics class. At least people can change their minds, but contradictions cannot magically become harmonious.

So how can I say my worldview is compatible with knowledge? Because it is materialist, and thus admits no outside assault on the reign of causality. That furthermore, as a part and parcel of material reality, I am able to perceive it, understand it, and value it. Materialism, and thus atheism, is a necessary prerequisite for the validity of induction and uniformity, and as I explained in my opening case, induction and uniformity are necessary in some way for all kinds of knowledge. I don’t need anything beyond that to make my point. I don’t need to show how I derive anything, because the fact that I am a materialist and he is not, and that materialism is a necessary prerequisite, is all I need to win the debate.

My initial challenge still stands: Mr. Lenardos has been unable to give us any proposition that is known on a Christian basis – without induction, without concepts, without valuing knowledge or rationality at all. Can he do this? I really don’t think he can.

But that’s really the point, isn’t it? If he had demonstrated such a proposition, then he would have won the debate very easily, but he hasn’t. To me, this indicates that he very probably cannot do so.