Round 5   10/04/05

From Brady 

Here we are at the last post in our debate.

Tremblay writes:

This is a strange paragraph. First, because Mr. Tremblay does not show a fallacy, he just states part of my definition of knowledge. He calls this “circular,” but, for there to be a circle, you need to present a whole argument. It is obvious that Mr. Tremblay knows little about logic. Another reason to say that he knows little about logic is next he simply begs the question; which IS a logical fallacy. He states dogmatically that the reason there is no independence is that everything is determined. That, my friends, is the question at hand and not an argument.

The real problem that Mr. Tremblay must deal with, and never has, is that his necessary determinism leads to the meaninglessness of words. With his determinism all “knowledge” terms are functional synonyms. For instance, one person comes to a “true conclusion” and another to a “false conclusion,” both are the necessary effects of antecedent causes. Neither person can come to anything other than the conclusion they were determined to come to. Just as Mr. Tremblay was determined to be an atheist and I was determined to be a theist, we could be nothing else; that is, if his determinism is correct. This also means that antecedent causes have determined the vast majority of people in the world to conclude that some sort of God exists. Antecedent causes have also determined that a small, small minority will conclude that no sort of God exists. Neither of these groups could conclude anything other, if Mr. Tremblay is correct. So, it would seem the vast majority of antecedent causes are pro God!

To call a person’s argument “stupid” or “brilliant” in Mr. Tremblay’s worldview is nonsense on one level and a functional synonym on another level. It is nonsense because the argument in question is just the product of antecedent causes and can be no other than it is. There is no independent mind that can take credit or be given credit; there are just antecedent causes that produce the necessary effect. On the other level, the judgment that an argument is “stupid” or “brilliant” is itself the product of antecedent causes, so the person making the judgment can say nothing else. In this way the judgments of “stupid” and “brilliant” are functional synonyms. These judgments say nothing about the actual argument, but are merely effects necessarily determined by antecedent causes.

This is why I say that if Mr. Tremblay’s position is true, there is no knowledge. Like “stupid” and “brilliant,” “knowledge” and “ignorance” are also synonyms, if Mr. Tremblay’s view is correct. Both terms can mean nothing more than effects of antecedent causes. The so-called “ignorant man” is thus because of antecedent causes. In fact, he could be nothing else. The “knowledgeable man” is thus because of antecedent causes. In fact, he could be nothing else. It would also be true that the person judging them as knowledgeable or ignorant could come to no other judgment; which of course makes the judgment also meaningless. Let’s take the example of two people reading Mr. Tremblay’s last post in this debate. One concludes Tremblay is a knowledgeable and brilliant man, the other concludes Tremblay is a moron. In Mr. Tremblay’s view, neither reader has come to an independent conclusion, to Tremblay there is no such thing, Mr. Tremblay has said so on numerous occasions. No, it was antecedent causes which have worked there way down through billions of years that have brought the readers to their conclusions and neither could conclude anything else, they were both necessarily determined to make these conclusions. Their judgments are not true or false, right or wrong, just as Mr. Tremblay’s post is not true or false, right or wrong. Both the post and the conclusions about the post are what they are, the necessarily determined effects of antecedent causes.

For “knowledgeable” and “ignorant” to be antonyms, a level of independence must be present. For terms like “Sound argument” or “invalid argument” to have different meanings, a level of independence must be present within the judge. For the conclusions of opposing arguments to have any real and distinct value, the arguers and the judges must have a level of independence. So, any philosophical position that denies this level of independence, as Mr. Tremblay’s does, necessarily denies the existence of knowledge. In a system, like Mr. Tremblay’s where knowledge and ignorance is functionally the same thing, the term “knowledge” is meaningless.

Tremblay writes:

This is Tremblay’s conclusion about science, but as shown above, Tremblay must admit that his conclusion is necessarily determined by antecedent causes (and could be no other) and not an independent conclusion. If his conclusion is necessarily determined, it is meaningless and valueless in reference to science. He is not telling us anything about science, but is merely telling us about the antecedent causes that have been working their way down through billions of years to this point. Tremblay can’t really know if science is successful. All Tremblay can do is express what the antecedent causes have determined he must express.

And so it is for every conclusion that Mr. Tremblay makes, including those about my papers. If Mr. Tremblay’s position is correct, he is saying nothing about my position, but is merely expressing what the antecedent causes determined he must express. The relationship between truth and conclusions, determined by antecedent causes, is necessarily accidental from Mr. Tremblay’s position. Take one of the above examples; Mr. Tremblay must agree that if all conclusions are necessarily determined by antecedent causes, then the vast majority of all people have concluded that God exists because of the antecedent causes that determine them to do so. But, Mr. Tremblay also says this conclusion is false. From this it must follow that, at least in this case, the vast majority of conclusions, determined by antecedent causes, are false. But if it is this way in this case, what makes us think that it will be any different in any other case? By the way, if you are an atheist reading this and Tremblay is correct, your answer to that question will be determined by antecedent causes and just as irrelevant as all those who concluded that God exists.

Tremblay writes:

The point is that a computational system doesn’t “find” anything and doesn’t “know” if its output is true. It merely gives output based on its program and input. If the program is flawed that system doesn’t “know” it is. If the inputted data is “bad” the system doesn’t “know” it is. If the conclusion is true or false, the system doesn’t know that. The system doesn’t know anything. It just follows the program given the data inputted. Any programmer will tell you: “Garbage in, Garbage out.” And if the programmer is necessarily determined as the computational system is, he too can never “know” if his programming is flawed or if the data is good or bad. He can only tell you what his necessarily determined conclusion is given the antecedent causes. In most cases those necessarily determined conclusions are that God exists; in a few cases they are that God doesn’t exist. In order to tell which program is correct and which data is correct one would have to be able to get outside the computational systems to independently examine the program and the data. This is something that Tremblay asserts is impossible.

So, the ontological status of the so-called “knower” is one of two possibilities:

1) The “knower” is trapped within the system.

2) The “knower” is not trapped (has a level of independence) within the system.

In the first possibility, the “knower” knows nothing. He can not independently evaluate the system or the data. Which means that any evaluation he comes to is determined by the system he is trapped in. This, of course, makes any real knowledge impossible.

The second possibility doesn’t insure real knowledge, but at least makes it possible.

In regards, to Tremblay’s analogy between the knower and the medium: He is right that the medium does not determine the truth or falsity of the information. But the point he misses is that the printed page or engraved stone, etc. doesn’t know if the information is true or false, and it doesn’t know if it has any meaning at all. Indeed, it can’t know. The knower must stand outside of the medium and evaluate what is written. But, in Mr. Tremblay’s analogy, the “knower” is not independent of the medium; he is the medium and cannot evaluate anything, just like the engraved stone cannot evaluate what is carved, if anything, on its surface.

Tremblay writes:

Mr. Tremblay continually declares what reality can and can’t consist of, and what he can and cannot do, but to date he has never been able to show how any of this is possible given the elements of his cosmology. This is what the reader must understand: It is not as if I am asking Mr. Tremblay to complete a jigsaw puzzle, in which he has al the pieces, but he just can’t seem to figure out what the picture looks like. The situation is that he only has 5 pieces and this is a 500 piece puzzle. The point is, there is no way for him to complete the puzzle, it is impossible. In the same way he doesn’t have the elements in his cosmology to get him to knowledge or perception or value or causality, etc… No matter how he tries to arrange the elements in his cosmology, he doesn’t have the elements needed to get him to those attributes. He is always going to fall short. The point of my continual demands for him to show how the elements of his cosmology get him to the attributes he claims is to get him and the reader to think and see how futile this is. But, this appears to go right over Mr. Tremblay’s head.

Tremblay writes:

Here is an excellent example of what I just wrote above. He says that atheism is a “necessary prerequisite” for induction and uniformity, but how does he get to uniformity from a cosmology that insists that everything is the way it is by accident? Can Tremblay show how the elements of his cosmology get him to this point? He never has, even though he was asked to time and time again. He simple declares it is so and ignores the question and the inability of his cosmology to provide an answer. That, of course, is a very poor philosophical position. This should be the first clue to the reader that materialism is not a necessary prerequisite to uniformity, but rather the antithesis to it.

Let me explain this in detail. The positions of intentionalism and accedentalism are antithetical. Every cosmology must hold to one of them. If a cosmological position denies accedentalism, it necessarily holds to intentionalism. If the cosmology denies intentionalism, it necessarily holds to accedentalism.

Intentionalism asserts that everything is the way it is intentionally. In other words, there is a reason for things to be the way they are because there is an “intender” that made them that way. Since atheism denies there is an intender, it denies there is intention; so, it is left with accedentalism. In accedentalism, there is no intender, no intention, and no reason for anything to be the way it is. Everything is the way it is by accident. There is no reason that any two particles should act a certain way in any situation. If any two particles act a certain way at one point, there is no reason they should act that way again at another point. In this position, any so-called uniformity that has appeared in the past is only accidental. Any so-called uniformity that appears in the future is also accidental. To deny the accidental actions and reactions of everything from particles to atoms to molecules to everything on the macro level is to affirm intentionalism. But, intentionalism is anathema to atheism.

So here is the problem for Mr. Tremblay. He must deny an intender to deny the existence of God and he must deny accedentalism to affirm the uniformity of nature. There are no alternatives left. These two positions are contradictory. In other words, if one is false the other is necessarily true. But, he must deny both. Think of it this way, hold a pencil in your hand, you can deny that the pencil exists, but you can’t also deny that the pencil doesn’t exist, in the same breath. It either exists or it doesn’t exist, you can’t deny both. This is what Tremblay has done with intentionalism and accedentalism. The denying the truth of one necessarily asserts the truth of other, but Tremblay has denied both; yet another logical mistake on Tremblay’s part.

Tremblay writes:

I feel I have already pointed out the far-reaching errors both in logic and in evidence that Tremblay has committed in his five points. But since this is the closing paper, I thought I would briefly restate Tremblay’s errors.

If one goes back and rereads his points, it is clear that in each point Tremblay misrepresents the Christian position. The reason he does that is evident; he can’t make his argument using the legitimate Christian positions. If he actually used the positions held by Christians, it would be obvious to all that his arguments fail. So, in turn, he makes up positions that allow him to work out some sort of position. This is called the straw-man fallacy and it is part of each and every one of the five points that Tremblay makes. This alone gives everyone enough to reject his arguments. But it doesn’t stop there. As I have painstakingly shown in past posts, Tremblay’s grasp on logic is less than perfect, to say the least and he is a disaster when it comes to building a logical arguments.

In his main argument Tremblay states that: 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. As stated above, this contains positions that are not found in Christianity, Tremblay simply makes them up. But further more and to the point, Tremblay cannot show a necessary connection between the antecedent and the consequent, thus collapsing the whole argument. I am sure this basic logical principle will continue to go over the head of Mr. Tremblay.

Mr. Tremblay is committed to his position regardless of the logical absurdities and fallacies contained within it. I am sure that any atheists with a background in philosophy and logic who is reading this is just as embarrassed because of him, as I am embarrassed for him. I say this because, since he does not have the background to understand the problems with his arguments, he cannot be embarrassed for himself.

Regards,

G. BRADY LENARDOS

From Francois 

Before I get into the meat of the debate, look at what Mr. Lenardos said in his latest post :

“The atheist cosmology holds two necessary premises:

1) Everything that happens is necessarily determined.

2) Everything that happens, happens by accident.”

Gotta love those presuppositionalist straw men. There is no “atheist cosmology” any more than there is a “redhead cosmology” or a “homosexual cosmology”, and I certainly don’t believe that anything happens “by accident”. If anything, that belongs to Christian subjectivity, not science or materialism.

At any rate, my objective in this debate was to demonstrate that "[g]iven the theistic worldview, knowledge is impossible". In order to do so, I have used four lines of argument :

1. Christianity is a fundamentally incoherent worldview.

2. Christianity preaches belief, not knowledge.

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

4. Theistic worldviews (including Christianity) make conceptualization impossible.

And yet Mr. Lenardos has not even addressed most of these points, and to the few he did address (mostly within the first line), his main objection was “theologians don’t agree with these contradictions”. As an atheist, why exactly should I care about what theologians agree or do not agree with ? Regardless of their beliefs, the fundamental tenets of Christianity are incoherent and thus we cannot trust Christians as knowledge-acquiring agents. Indeed, the fact that theologians disagree with obvious logic makes them extremely suspect as intelligent individuals.

Furthermore, his case against my worldview was restricted to asking question and answering his own questions, of the form :

1. If naturalism is true, then X is true.

2. X entails that knowledge is impossible.

3. Therefore naturalism entails that knowledge is impossible.

And yet there is zero justification on his part to explain why the properties of naturalism – such as determinism, materialism, causality – are incompatible with knowledge. He simply assumes so (or quotes some dead philosopher), because the presuppositionalists he parrots don’t try to justify this either. They simply assume that Christian ignorance about natural law and materialism is a sufficient shield behind which to hide their arguments. Yet you have now seen them exposed on this very debate :  

* Why can’t we, within materialism, trust our past experiences to predict future experiences, as we do all the time in science and our daily lives ? His answer was to quote Russell. Why should I care about what Russell says ? The quotes he gave us present no cogent argument to show that natural law could somehow, magically, suspend itself in the future, an absurd assumption within materialism. How can a natural law even suspend itself ? It is not conscious. This is the kind of absurd reasoning that the cartoon world of Christianity leads presuppositionalists into.

* “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.” – Why cannot our mental causes (that is to say, our will) adhere to cogency of argumentation ? Because he says so.

* “Given Naturism, “thought” can never be independent of the matter in motion; because that is all that exists. But, we have already said that our definition of knowledge has an element of independent thought to it.” – Why does knowledge depend on “independence” from the material, in short, depend on a contradiction ? Because he says so.

“If Naturism is true, there is no independent thought and knowledge. However, if knowledge does exist, then we know with certainty that Naturism is false.” – We “know” naturalism is false (even though it is the foundation of the most successful human endeavour in history) because he defined it that way… which is to say, because he says it is.

* “Inductive reasoning can never get to universals” – Why ? Because he says so. Even though we use inductions to draw universals all the time !

* “He may “assume” his oven is there, he may “believe” his oven is there, but he can never “know” his oven still exists when it is not being perceived.” – Why not ? How does being realist about perception (a position which he wrongly described as “naive empiricism”, which has a specific meaning in epistemology) means one cannot know reality is objective ? Blank. Not to mention that both concepts are not even in the same branch of philosophy.

* “(…) a number of other epistemic issues that Mr. Tremblay will be unable to explain” – How does he know I can’t explain them, even though I have done so in other places ? Obviously he already assumed I couldn’t. Isn’t that one smoking gun !

I could go on, but you get the idea. And this is the belief system they preach rules over all of human knowledge and life itself ? Not only does the presuppositionalist emperor have no clothes, but he is a shriveled, dirty shadow of a man, with the despicable mind of a tyrant.

Christians are offensive because they do everything they possibly can to add the label “God” to everything good done by human beings. But by doing so, they degrade the efforts and values of the people who do that good. To the mountain of knowledge presented to us by the naturalist, scientific study of reality, the presuppositionalist can only bleat : “you need God to say that !”. Does he present actual discoveries ? No, that would actually take effort. Claiming victory for a preposterous and incoherent belief by default is much easier.

The scientist stands on the shoulders of giants – the Bacons, the Newtons , the Galileos, the Darwins, the Einsteins. The Christian is perched on one single book of tribal myths, and can but throw stones and do his best to spit at the peaks of human accomplishment. By doing so, he mostly splashes himself.

The Christian worldview is a bleak worldview. For a belief system supposedly comforting to befuddled human beings, it is singularly nihilistic. Christianity offers the human being a reality where purpose resides in an unchangeable, undecipherable divine will, meaning and value pounded to the ground by absolutism, hope does not exist except as a literal deus ex machina, morality and rationality are subjective to divine fiat, all men are corrupt and evil from the get-go, and man’s ideal states – in both the Adam and Eve myth and the description of Heaven – are those of ignorant, apathetic puppets.

What does Christianity have to offer to any sane individual ? Apart from perhaps assuaging guilt for his crimes, and permitting him to live a dishonest, dissolute life ? The hope of an afterlife as a heavenly puppet, with one’s loved ones roasting below ? Or maybe the assurance of being special and being able to pretend to have all the answers, ignoring all these inconvenient facts ? Probably the latter.

At present, due to the emergence of individual freedom in the Western world and its repercussions around the world, we are caught in a cultural war. Christianity and Islam – two campfire superstitions used to justify war and racism – have achieved world dominance. They both stand squarely against natural and Western values – material gain, romantic love and sexuality, equality, tolerance and respect, the importance of life – as well as our most noble and venerable institutions – the discovery and application of scientific principles, peaceful trading and commercialism, as well as acting and being judged based on one’s values, even if we disagree with each other on what the best values are.

Mr. Lenardos has made his choice to fight for religious collectivism and against the expression of individual values. As an individualist, I concede his freedom to make that choice, and to bear the consequences in his own heart. But those of you who read this debate, saw the arguments, and now go back to your daily lives, should examine whether this is the position you wish to continue to take. The epistemic freedom you take for granted – freedom of thought, moral autonomy, and non-religious knowledge – and the values you hold – honesty, justice, love, peace, purpose, pride, to cherish life and its truths – are not to be found in Mr. Lenardos’ world, or the bleak world of Christianity.

Thank you.