Randal Rauser Implores Christians and Atheist to Engage in Civil Discourse, Cannot Seem to Follow His Own Advice

Admittedly, I thought I was done talking about Randal Rauser. In all honestly, I tried really hard to wash my hands of Randal's nonsense. But sometimes a person just does something so shocking, so unbelievable, that you have no choice but to comment on it.

For those that haven't heard, he's released a new book imploring Christian and Atheist alike to engage in civil discussion and express a more charitable behavior toward one another.

Those familiar with Randal Rauser and his blog might find this ironic, if not highly amusing, since Randal has a very poor track record when it comes to civil and charitable discourse. Mike D., aka The A-Unicornist, now writing exclusively at his new blog the Mind of Mike D, has written a nice summary (click HERE) of Randal's condescending attitude and his general dismissal of other people's intelligent responses, often calling them ignorant, or implying they are, in the most condescending fashion imaginable.

In Randal's new book, Is the Atheist My Neighbor?, he recounts anecdotal stories regarding atheists as told by Christians in various fields, from the layman to the apologists and the preachers, of which Randal analyses and claims that there is a tendency for Christians to be uncivil and uncharitable toward atheists.

Indeed, in the so-called "Great Debate" and the passion driven discourse regarding personal conviction strong emotions fueled by conviction often cuts both ways, and atheists can be found being acerbic, uncivil, and uncharitable to believers as well. In the realm of ideas, where people's convictions run strong, it is often difficult to divorce ourselves from our feelings of what we strongly believe or disbelieve. I think Randal's call to better civility and charitable behavior is a good one, but it also rings hypocritical.

You see, Randal has a poor track record when it comes to being civil or charitable himself, especially toward atheists who might strongly disagree with him.

I've written about my own encounters with Randal before, documenting the times when Randal has called me names, such as "nasty," "puerile," "vindictive," and said that I wasn't a "charitable" person, even though there is nothing to indicate that I had ever been less than charitable to him (albeit the one time I was less than cordial, I apologized for it. I documented parts of the discussion which can be read HERE).

Looking back, I find it strange that the comment that actually got me banned had nothing to do with the so-called insult Randal said I had lobbed at him, and which, upon closer inspection, could barely be considered an insult at all. 

At the time, Randal had thrown a small tantrum because a critic of his book about Heaven had claimed he made some stuff up. After Randal blew a gasket and called his critic "ignorant" and a "troll" (you can read the details HERE) I jumped in to point out that Randal was acting overly defensive for what seemed a non-issue, and I said it seemed as though he was acting butt-hurt for no good reason. Randal took offense by this and said I was attacking him personally. I wasn't.

You see, I wasn't commenting on Randal's personality but rather, his behavior. There is a difference, after all. For example, saying that a person is acting as though they might be drunk, and wondering why, is not the same as calling them a drunkard in an attempt to belittle them in anyway. Likewise, saying a person is acting in a hypocritical way, and wondering why, doesn't mean you are calling them a hypocrite simply to belittle them. So when I said Randal was acting butt-hurt, and wondering why, he thought I was attacking him personally just to be mean. And even though I expressed that my intent was never to merely belittle him but point out an inconsistency found in his behavior, Randal seems to have completely ignored this.

Consequently, despite my best efforts to lay the issue to rest, Randal went on to claim my character was "vindictive," "puerile," and said that I'm generally a "mean" person. After which, I called Randal "the consummate unprofessional" because I've never met a professional scholar, serious about educating those who genuinely might be ignorant, or who is serious about pressing philosophical issues, turn right around to neglect to consistently adhere to a civil and charitable discourse.  

The comment that actually got me banned was when I sarcastically pointed out that Randal claimed a fellow PhD was "just a troll" (Randal's exact words, mind you), and I pointed out how this way of marginalizing someone trying to engage in a serious philosophical discourse wasn't charitable behavior coming from Randal. Yup. That's the comment what got me banned. I documented it and you can see the screen-caps of the comments HERE.

That's right. I got banned because I pointed out that Randal was being uncharitable, and as a consequence not adding any to the conversation, and so he claimed that I wasn't adding to the conversation, by going off topic, and this was his reason for why he banned me. Do you see why that might just be a tad bit hypocritical?

Of course, it goes without saying that you can't ask others to have a meaningful conversation then shut down the discourse every time they might disagree with you. That is clearly hypocritical. Calling them "ignorant" or "just a troll" or "vindictive and puerile" without any evidence to back these claims up, thereby marginalizing their point of view by talking down to them and demeaning them, by treating them as less intelligent than you (regardless of whether this may be the case), is simply bigoted.

Personally, I have no time for people who act like this and treat others this way. Marginalizing others when you disagree with them is just poor sport, and although I have often disagreed with Christians and atheists alike, I have tried my best not to belittle them or call them "just a troll," "ignorant," "vindictive and puerile," simply because I disagreed with them. If I ever called anybody anything less than flattering, such as "butt-hurt," then I had a very good reason for doing so. But it appears the only reason Randal requires is if he doesn't like you. 

After all was said and done, I realized Randal didn't actually care about having a civil or charitable discourse with anyone who had a different point of view than his. Not really.

Furthermore, Randal didn't do himself any favors by flame baiting his interlocutors with condescension and insults only to use their defensiveness as an excuse to ban them for, in his opinion, not adding to the conversation. 

Personally, I don't find this type of abusive behavior acceptable, not in the real world and certainly not online in forums where we are trying to engage in serious philosophical and theological discourse. When I was the moderator of an art forumn, flame baiting people into a heated argument was the quickest way to get you banned. Yet it is a tactic Randal employs regularly so he can ban people he disagrees with.

So, I said to hell with Randal Rauser. He's not worth my time. In fact, I have spent more than enough time debating with him and putting up with his overall rudeness, and I was happy to wash my hands of him.

But now...well, now it appears Randal has written a book calling Christians and atheists to be more charitable to one another.

No lie.

After I laughed long and hard about the irony of that, I decided to write one last comment on Randal Rauser and his hypocritical tendencies. You see, I can't just idly sit by and let Randal lecture others on what it means to be civil and charitable to one another when he has proved, time and again, that he cannot seem to follow his own advice.

In the end, I think Randal's behavior and words speak for themselves. And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Moral Landscape: Peaks and Valleys -- Using Cost Benefit Analysis to Objectively Identify Good and Bad Moral Value Judgments

Whatever you may think of Sam Harris, good or bad, he once made an excellent point regarding moral value judgement and morality.

Although I don't remember his wording precisely, Sam once asked the question to the effect that "Can we objectively say that Western Christian husbands treat their wives on average better than Middle Easter Muslim men?"

He went on to say because of certainly cultural and religious norms which exist in each society, it is fairly easy to weigh the costs and benefits to the woman and say, yes, that generally speaking -- we can find objective reasons to say that Western Christian husbands treat their wives better than Middle Easter Muslim men (again, this is a broad generalization based on a basic, even simplistic, understanding of the two culture norms given in this example).

Sam takes this thought experiment further and then asks us, and I'm paraphrasing here, to consider that fact that "Having weighed the pros and cons to the woman in each particular marriage, can we say, with any certainty, that there may be objective reasons to believe Western Christian husbands love their wives more than Middle Eastern Muslim men?"

Although Sam leaves it up to us decide, I think his point is well taken.

I too have come to the conclusion that -- yes, there are objective reasons to believe that Western Christian men, for example, do love their wives more than Middle Easter men, all things being equal (i.e., this means equal income, societal status, education, etc.).

This, of course, doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the generalization (which is why when basing a value judgment on a general and broad observation / information that isn't overtly specific we tend to call it a general rule of thumb rather than an absolute one, because we have to make room for the possible exceptions to the rule. Our conclusions could only ever be tentative at best).

Simply put, given the overall sum of married couples, if such a survey was ever conducted, I'm sure we could find good Muslim husbands who love their wives just as much as any Christian husband, if not more, and bad Christian husbands who mistreat and abuse their wives in an unloving fashion on the same level as an abusive Muslim husband.

Naturally, it really does come down to how we as a society define love. But, then, when looking at various societies, we may be able to make specific observations of the similarities and differences, and accounting for these, we could talk about what it means to love as a human being.

In the broad sense of the term, as I am familiar with it, to love someone means to treat them as you would want to be treated yourself, to never hold them back, to always support them as individuals and support whatever it is they want to do, because you want to share in the burden with them, not place them under any unnecessary strain by shifting an unfair share of the burdens onto them.

All this on top of admiring them, even their quirks and faults, to the point where you practically venerate them as the ideal person -- and never wish them to be any less than that -- and would sacrifice anything in your own life to help them achieve their best, then I would say this is a good indicator that you genuinely love that person.

Now if the opposite seems to be the case. If you treat them unfairly, or allow others to, if you hold them back, do not support them when they want to strive toward their own individual goals, if you force them to adhere to some kind of social, cultural, or religious norm, if you place an unfair amount of your everyday burdens on them and expect them to pick up the slack and then turn around and berate or punish them if they fail to do so, then it is not love you have for that person. There is no kind of love we know of on the planet that looks like that.

Love isn't without responsibility. In essence, you are taking the responsibility to care for another person more than you care for others, including yourself (at least to a degree) and this selflessness is one part of our expression of love.

The irresponsible person takes love for granted, and thinks they can act, say, or treat their partner in anyway they deem fit, and that because they love them -- well -- that person should love them in return. But this isn't love. This is the lust for power over someone you are infatuated with, so you say it is love and then take up the role of an abuser. This is how we know a man who habitually abuses his wife doesn't love her, and vise versa. In other words, if the person has taken zero responsibility for their partner's well being and flourishing, then they don't know the first thing about love.

But all this is just to say, it does appear that when we place love on a scale, and then map that scale onto the terrain of everyday life, then we can and do make various value judgments on what we, as human beings, consider good and bad examples of love to be.

And the good examples of love will be found on the peaks, and the bad examples will be found in the valleys. And the moral judgments we make can be objectively had by simply doing a cost benefit analysis between these various examples of love.

This way, we can objectively say, that when man beats his wife according to some cultural/social/religious prescription or dictate, or, likewise, because she failed to abide by some cultural/social/religious prescription or dictate, then this man loves his wife LESS than the man who does not harm her for these same reasons by simply weighing the costs and benefits of each kind of love.

This kind of cost benefit analysis of all moral considerations creates a very complex moral landscape which we must traverse and navigate like interpreted explorers. One reason, is simply because such exploration has typically been limited to the valley of whatever cultural/religious/ or social norm has dominated the moral discussion.

But it does not mean because one model is the most ubiquitous, prevalent, popular, or even most liked that it is any good. It could very well be the worst kind of example, but we simply would not know it because we weren't aware of any other examples.

What this means is that more data will always improve our understanding of the terrain. Less data shrinks the map to the point where, if you only have enough data to adjudicate two competing models, then you still will end up with a limited view.

As with the above example given by Sam Harris, although it illustrates quite well that we can pass moral value judgments on two competing moral claims, it does not necessarily mean that either of those examples represent the best possible moral outcome.

In the case of asking ourselves whether a typical Western Christian husband loves his wife more than a stereotypical Middle Eastern Muslim man, given more data and an improved understanding of the moral landscape, we might conclude that, actually, neither are very good examples of love. We might find, for example, that your average secular husband loves his wife more than either of the previous examples. And this we could argue is a superior kind of love.

This is why I say there are objectively examples to be discovered, even if there is no absolute or ideal example.

Yet we can never know every detail about love and the various kinds of love absolutely unless we had all of the data in the known universe, and that doesn't seem very likely. So, we can only have a limited sort of view. Sort of like how the person who stands on the mountain peak can only see as far as the horizon. But that doesn't mean the horizon is the end, or because you see no other mountains taller than the one you are perched on that there aren't taller ones just beyond your scope.

In fact, I would go as far to say that the mountain climber and explorer analogy is an apt one, because we cannot simply expect to settle for one point on the moral landscape until we have at least explored as many possible areas and mapped out that moral landscape to our best ability, and even then we still must to be willing to change our minds and amend our reasoning when we find our current moral beliefs inadequate. Because there may always be another Everest to climb just beyond the horizon.

Peter Boghossian on Changing Minds (Video)

"We (as atheists) have too often gone down the road of incivility, and that's helped no one."

"The average church goer has never even heard of William Lane Craig. William Lane Craig is irrelevant. The people who are relevant are the people in the pews."

Some great quotes and thoughts by American philosopher Peter Boghossian.

Street Epistemology...What is it?

There is a video by Christian apologists Tom Gilson and Timothy McGrew going around that claims that Peter Boghossian's concept of Street Epistemology, is a way to manipulate unphilosophical minded Christians by creating a fog of confusion to derail their faith.

Now, for those that might not be familiar with Boghossian's concept, which he details in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists, he basically applies the non-confrontational method of asking questions in the Socratic style (known as the Socratic method of dialog) to carry the conversation via having their conversation partner answer very basic questions themselves.

In so doing, the point is to get them to think about the questions and express, in their own words, what they believe. It is a way to unravel the mysteries of their faith and reveal the types of thoughts and thought processes that go into making up a persons faith. It has proved to be very effective.

But Gilsona dn McGrew seem to not fully grasp it, and they go out of there way to misrepresent Street Epistemology and Peter Boghossian.

 Of course, this being the 21st century with YouTube and the Internet and what not, there is a video floating around that takes Gilson and McGrew's wildly inaccurate portrayal of Boghossian's methods by contrasting their comments and criticisms against actually video of a person doing real Street Epistemology according to how it was outlined in Boghossian's book A Mannual for Creating Atheists.

Needless to say, the video is quite revealing.

It shows how much Christian apologists are willing to distort and smear a genuine philosophy they disagree with because they perceive it to be a danger to their faith.

It seems they might want to take notes from another one of Bogghosian's methods, however, the one where he calls for people to attempt to be more authentic, not only with others, but with themselves as well. By being more authentic, and genuine, such distortion and smear tactics as employed by Gilson and McGrew simply wouldn't be necessary. And so a person of faith could move past such apologetic tricks and grapple with the real important questions regarding their faith head on.

Of course, being a skeptic, a freethinker, and an atheist (among other things), I can honestly say that I think Street Epistemology is a good idea. But I'll let you decide for yourselves.

Amnesty Report and Laci Green on Decriminalizing Sex Work / Prostitution

I think Laci Green is right on the money here. I agree. We must work to decriminalize sex work around the world! 

That Amnesty statistic cited in the video is insane. Decriminalizing sex work would actually *decrease HIV and AID by 43%!!! 

New Zealand's model of unionizing sex work seems the best chance to make it a safe business and not push it underground, where abuses usually occur. Laci's point about not confusing sex work and sex trade hits the nail on the head. Well worth a watch.

 

In Defense of Ignosticism (Part 2): And Reflections on the Philosophical Discourse

Philosophical discussions can be daunting. This is because there are so many areas of philosophy, so many competing ideas, and so many concepts that really push one to think deeply about issues, sometimes trivial and sometimes important, that makes philosophy challenging.

There was a time when I thought philosophy amounted to little more than sophistry, arguing over nothing, thinking deep philosophical thoughts about irrelevant questions, that it was all semantic word games and esoteric nonsense. I felt that anytime a philosopher gave their opinion they were obviously just full of it.

About six years ago I began re-reading the works of Immanuel Kant at the behest of my friend John J. who recently became an ordained priest and is a theologian. At that time I was getting back into linguistics as well, so I picked up Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

I don't know what it was, but over the years my taste in literature matured and I developed a love for reading non-fiction, and I grew to appreciate philosophy.

What I learned helped me re-evaluate the importance of philosophy. Philosophy literally means the 'love of wisdom', and who couldn't afford to grow a little bit wiser?

It seems I may have been wrong about philosophers. They weren't deliberately trying to be sophists, they weren't trying to bamboozle or hoodwink me, it was just that the language philosopher's employed was foreign to me and, furthermore, it wasn't that they were unintelligible to me because they were all quacks, but they were unintelligible to me because I simply couldn't speak their language.

Now a days, whenever I engage with anybody in a philosophical discussion, I try to keep this in mind. Many people find philosophy confusing or difficult to grasp as I once did because, like I was back then, they simply don't speak the language.

Even so, I try to go out of my way to explain things as simply as I can in a manner which will relay the same concepts and ideas but without resorting to exclusively esoteric language. Instead of just speaking about properly basic beliefs, for example, I will first relay what a properly basic belief is and what it means and why it matters for the discussion we're having.

I do this because I think that when we are confused we tend to talk past one another, and it's hard to find common ground when you keep missing each other at the halfway point. Philosophical misunderstandings are rather like formation skydivers whipping around uncontrollably, never quite getting in sync. It can be a dizzying affair.

Recently, a theist reader, whom we'll simply refer to as "Rocky," had some trouble with what I was saying and accused me of having a "vacuous blog."

I'm sorry he feels that way.

It seems Rocky had several problems with the way I worded some things, and the fact that I dismissed one of his questions outright (I mean, I wasn't deliberately trying to be mean, I dismissed it because it was irrelevant to the conversation. But now I see that in retrospect how it might have seemed like I was dismissing him as not worth bothering about). He went on to say that

"You operate on a basis of contempt for those who disagree with your (limited) assessment that God does not exist. You operate under the misassumption [sic] that your limited intellect can finally decide the question."

Clearly, we were talking past each other, and like the analogy of the formation skydivers spiraling out of control, so too the conversation went.

I wasn't dismissing Rocky's belief that God exists because it's not a valid philosophical topic, I was dismissing it because it wasn't valid to the topic of the conversation, which was the logical validity of ignosticism. 

At any rate, I amended my language to better reflect the fact that I wasn't trying to be mean to him (or other theists) by not taking his beliefs seriously but that, in this case, his presuppositions and heart felt convictions simply had no baring on the conversation at hand.

That said, his long response to my response raised some interesting tangential philosophical concerns that I would like to address here in the spirit of the philosophical discourse. After all, the only way we can ever make sense of philosophy is to keep having these kinds of conversations.

  

Forgiving the tone of the language (since I obviously had inadvertently upset him), he went on to say:

"You have provided no substantive response to fundamental questions yet you still hold to your intellectually arrogant position: First: you have utterly failed to provide a logical foundation for the ultimate and singular efficacy of empiricism as the only basis for logical argument while using rationalism (logical argumentation) as the basis to simply STATE that empiricism is the only viable means. That ignores hundreds of years of rationalist thinking, and a subject with which Kant strove mightily in his attempt to wed rationalism and empiricism. I must have missed your treatise that trumped Mr. Kant."

A couple of things are worth mentioning here.

First, anyone who is familiar with my writing on this blog knows that I am a staunch defender of Kant and that when it comes to discussing metaphysics I take the Kantian view more often than not.

So Rocky's assumption that I am somehow anti-Kant is simply mistaken. 

Presumably, this misconception that I reject Kant arose because he thought I was dismissing his religious beliefs on the basis that I reject supernaturalism. But this doesn't in any way mean I dismiss metaphysics. The two are different, after all. As such, I disregard supernatural suppositions that do not carry with them an demonstration for their validity, and I just happen to reject certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions because I don't find them convincing, especially when they have no relevance to the conversation at hand. And so that's what I did.

The second thing I want to say is that I never said that empiricism was the only viable means of attaining knowledge. I actually can't know this, nobody can. In fact, this was Kant's very objection to Hume! The truth is, I remain open to the possibility of an underlying metaphysical reality (in the Kantian sense), but it wasn't my intent to open up a discussion about metaphysics since, once again, it wasn't related to the topic I was discussing. But I am more than happy to discuss it with anyone who asks me about what I think and why.

One thing I think we should try and keep in mind is that the dialectic of one person taking a side and arguing for it can often create a sense of tension between those who take an opposing side or point of view. 

Just to clarify, I don't view the other side as an enemy, which it seems Rocky may have mistook for my official stance. Rather, I think of them as a partner in the greater philosophical discourse. Their opposing views actually help me to consider the objections to my own philosophical views so I can better defend them or else reject them in light of a better understanding.

Rocky went on to add:

"Sorry, but I find Aquinas far more satisfying in his deliberations than your simple excising of God from the human concern because God can't be described as a "noun." This could only make sense to an English major such as yourself. You refuse to manfully wrestle with a question that has interested all thinking peoples since thought arose: that of the existence of a possible transcendent."

I too find Aquinas highly satisfying. Not only as a theologian but as a philosopher in the truest sense of the word.

That said, I hope everyone can see that the rest of this comment represents the very point of contention where the confusion lies. I wasn't talking about other deliberations or questions regarding the topic of God's existance, such as transcendence, which is an entirely different discussion altogether. I was talking about a semantic argument which, in my estimation, acts as a defeater to the very claim that it is meaningful to talk about God at all!

What I mean by defeater is that, it seems to me, ignosticism nulifies the idea of God as a meaningful subject to talk about. Although I've talked at length on ignosticism as I've tried to develop it more thoroughly as a semantic argument, it's worth repeating the main premise of the argument here. Ignosticism, in a nutshell, states that people assume too much about God (evidenced by the numerous and competing definitions of God which exist), and then states that because everyone makes their own assumptions about God that the term "God" becomes incomprehensible to us because it can come to mean anything and everything.

So, Rocky had claimed that I failed to logically defend ignosticism by not engaging with other arguments for God, and then became angered when I dismissed these other deliberations. The reason, though, I think becomes obvious given the fact that ignosticism defeats any and all arguments for God by its premise that it's impossible to talk about God in any meaningful way.

Until this objection is overcome, I really do think ignosticism is a very strong argument against the theological position. It may not disprove the possibility of God's existence, but it shows there is an underlying semantics problem that plagues discussions about God which needs to be overcome before such discussions can be deemed valid topics of discussion.

Our disgruntled theist however seemed to miss this point and said,

"And forgive me, I do not speak insultingly here, but the arrogance of your position is breathtaking. And to think that all of us missed it because we have trouble understanding something that necessarily transcends that which it has created."

That's not the case at all.

I think I have sufficiently explained above, and in the previous post as well, why I dismissed the other deliberations. Nor to I feel I am being arrogant by sticking to the argument as presented. I am perfectly fine talking about other theological points of view when that is the topic I am engaged in, but this was specifically a challenge to ignosticism and I was treating it as such.

 "Well, lets just throw the whole thing away since it doesn't fit within the human definitional capability."

That's actually the consequence of ignosticism, yes. Which is why I think it is such a hard hitting argument against the validity of theism.

"Lawyerly semantical nonsense."

Well, I could see why one would think this. But it's untrue. Semantics is literally the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.

There are two main areas of semantics: 1) Logical semantics, which concerns itself with matters such as sense and reference and presupposition and implication; and 2) lexical semantics, which concerns itself with the analysis of word meanings and relations between them.

What I view ignosticism to be is a type of semantic argument that makes use of both logical and lexical semantics and shows that there isn't any real meaning to the idea of God as commonly talked about. It then discusses the implications of this and shows that all presuppositions regarding belief in God are nullified, or defeated, by theism's failure to make God into a substantive "noun" (or more generally a substantive entity) worth talking about even though this is how believers are using the idea of God as expressed by the language they invoke.

Really, at its most basic, ignosticism is defeater to the theist position that it is in anyway meaningful to talk about God.

I suppose from the perspective of a believer who takes for granted their presuppositions, this might look like arrogance to them. They often site the biblical passage Psalm 14:1 that "The fool in his heart says there is no God."

But this isn't the case. There is no arrogance here. It's simply a logical argument that raises very real, very devastating objections to theism (and more broadly speaking to god belief in general).

"Your argument sounds as though you gave birth to an intellectual child you simply can't give up."

That's merely because nobody has had a good answer which addresses ignosticism's objections to theism. You don't give up a successful argument and solid logic simply due to the fact that others have failed to come up with an adequate defense against it.

 Another question our theist friend asked was:

"If God does not exist, what do you, through empiricism, propose as an alternative to explain the birth of the universe from nothing?"

I consider such questions a red herring. It also makes incorrect assumptions about my position, which means it's also a bit of a strawman.

After all, I never stated ignosticism is disproof for the existence of God. It is proof of the unintelligibility of God. As such, it invalidates theism on the basis of a semantic argument, which can be empirically justified.

I have called ignosticism a justification for atheism in the past because, it stems to reason, we have to know precisely what it is we are talking about in order to talk about that thing in any meaningful way. It if is incomprehensible to us, we simply could not talk about it, and so it might as well not exist in the first place.

Additionally, for a thing to be substantive, that is having a firm basis in reality and so important, meaningful, or considerable, it needs to be verified as such. Ignosticism is the attempt to verify the theistic position that God is substantive and finds that theism fails.

It fails because, when put to the task to show that there is a direct link between any given description of God and the meaning people imbue this God with, they cannot do it. The implication is, God is not a substantive entity. Now, God may be a conceptual entity, or a conceptualization. Yes, I know, it's a fancy way of saying God is imaginary. But that's the consequence of theisms failure to justify a basic substantive noun, which makes ignosticism a truly devastating semantic argument.

It's the same as saying the theist cannot substantiate their belief in God because the thing they say they believe in is rendered incomprehensible when asked to do one simply task--provide a referent for the thing itself so that a third party (someone other than the believer) can come along and describe it in such a way that the two descriptions align and thus allow us to empirically check our descriptions against one another to see whether or not they relate back to the same thing. This would be the easiest way to falsify ignosticism. But nobody has been able to do it!

Ignosticism proves God is not a substantive entity, thus justifies the atheist's skepticism of theism. In other words, because ignosticism shows there is no substantive entity, the atheistic assumption that there is no God is rationally warranted.

What I have detailed above is how atheism relates to ignsoticism. So my dismissal of God, in this case, isn't because of my consideration of the strengths or weaknesses of other theological considerations. Although I have considered many and find them lacking for various reasons seperate from this issue.

As for my idea of what caused the universe, and how something could come from nothing, I think Lawrence Krauss said it best when he noted that nothing is unstable.

But this would require a long discussion of the underlying physics, and although I am familiar with the theories and could relay them, I would actually recommend consulting with a real physicist, maybe even reading Krauss's book, A Universe from Nothing.

"Of course, you'll just retreat into a science of the gaps response indicating that, given enough time and knowledge, the (adequate) human intellect will finally be In a position to decide. (as though something finite could ultimately grapple with something that transcends it.)"

Actually, to address this concern, I find the opposite is true. Theists hold that God transcends the universe and is needed to explain the universes existence. But a scientist cannot say this as there is no evidence that God created the universe because there is no empirically valid evidence for God. Science only seeks to explain the forces, called physical laws, the govern the universe we live in. As such, it's not an argument from ignorance. The opposite is true. Not knowing how the universe came to be, theists posit God -- precisely because they don't know. This is a true argument from ignorance.

"I'd like to see a defense of the contention that just because something is too difficult for or ultimately unavailable to human reason, that thing is of no concern to us since we cannot process it. That sounds just like cavemen denying that bacteria causes disease."

I don't think anyone is making such a claim here. Besides, cavemen didn't have science and didn't understand cause and effect, certainly didn't know about the importance of hygeine, and didn't know how to evaluate evidence because they didn't have the tools of science. We do. So it's really not a question of dismissing the unknown, it's whether or not the claims of the theist can meet the burden of proof. All our theist friend has done is simply shift the burden of proof, I'm afraid.

"If you claim that the universe was not birthed from nothing, then you must come to grips with the logical absurdities generated from the presupposition that the universe has existed in some form (multiversal or otherwise) for eternity. Note that any response you might make here to arrive at a comprehensive and satisfying answer must presume the fitness of a finite human intellect generated from chaotic and random inputs to adjudicate an eternal truth."

Sometimes in philosophy there is a point where you want to continue engaging in a philosophical conversation, but you run up against the limits of your philosophical understanding. I think our friend found his wall.

I don't mean this disparagingly, but the above paragraph illustrates another problem with we can run into when dealing with big philosophical concepts, inevitably we are going to run against the limits of our understanding. Although our friend tries to make use of the philosophical language that he wants to discuss, it is clear he doesn't quite know how. Either the ideas are unfamiliar to him or too esoteric to adequately express, and this leads to a kind of word salad that has no clear meaning. He jumps around from the topic of the universe's origins, to the limitations of human intellect, to multiverses, back to eternal truths, and so on. All these things are interesting topics of discussion, but here they are seemingly thrown together at random.

In all fairness, everyone is prone to making this mistake. I've done it too. It happens to the best of us!

"Third: your arguments smack of special pleading. Ignosticism, by definition, denies the efficacy of the undefineable. At its root, it does. One could replace the word "God" with any other ill defined word, and ignosticism would be laughed out of existence for its juvenile insistence on the human desire for categorization and preoccupation with forcing any other aspect of reality through such a narrowly defined filter."

Actually, I would say he is on the verge of grasping it.

In my book title Ignosticism, which is about ignosticism, I use an analogy that if we replace God with any other substantive noun, in my example I use suggest using an apple, we can empirically verify the referent thereby validate, or rather substantiate, that noun as a real thing that exists in reality and is important, meaningful, and therefore significant.

"It is very unclear to me how materialism can explain just those things that ARE available to supplemented human senses."

I don't think that is in the scope of materialism. Materialism is just a consequence that falls out of naturalism, if naturalism is true. It certainly seems that metaphysical naturalism is true. So, what we can explain must be capable of being explained within this purview, at least until otherwise hitherto hidden purviews are opened up to us.

 "Are you honestly going to claim that you never doubt your doubt (or certainty) that something transcendent very possibly brought this universe into being?"

Yes, I am going to strongly doubt that. Not because I don't find it an interesting consideration, but it is one I must remain highly skeptical of because I see no possible way to substantiate let alone justify such an assumption. It's interesting, but finding it interesting doesn't make it true. And unable to prove it true, I have no recourse but to remain skeptical.

"The privilege of the theist is that we don't have to feel guilty about acknowledging said doubt. Just wondering if you ignostics ply the same waters. Just hoping here that your intellectual arrogance can be restrained enough to answer honestly."

I don't actually think doubting is the problem here. If theists doubted enough to be skeptical of the theistic claim they'd become agnostics. I think the problem is certitude one places in their convictions. Contrary to the accusations made against me, I am not making such arrogant claims that I know with any certainty that God does not exist. I believe this, which is why I am an atheist.

But if I were tasked to prove it either way I know that I can't. As such, I am also an agnostic. I cannot prove God exists, nor can I prove he doesn't exist. The existence of a God is possible, but given the world we observe it just doesn't seem very plausible.

I remain an agnostic atheist precisely because I recognize there is a difference between what I choose to believe and what really is. Since I can't know what really is, I take the skeptical view because I find that believing in something which cannot be demonstrated is an irrational position to take. If you cannot prove something, then uncertainty is the natural conclusion. Not knowing. Yet it seems to me that the privilege of the theist is pretending to know everything while not being able to substantiate any of their claims. I mean, there's not a nicer way to say it because that's exactly what all theists do.

Or, think of it another way, if the theist could demonstrate God's existence, then the question of God's existence would be a moot point. It would be like having a serious philosophical debate over the existence of bananas, which we do not do. We know bananas exist. We do not doubt their existence. Yet when it comes to God, well, doubt it seems is all we really have. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

In Defense of Ignosticism

A theist by the handle of rockhound570 theist has raised several objections to ignosticism. 

About a month ago he raised a litany of issues he felt rebutted ignosticism or else felt showed where I failed to logically defend ignosticism. I would have responded sooner, but the truth is I've simply been too busy as of late to find time to respond (writing for a living takes up all my spare time reserved for writing!). 

But, low and behold, I found a few moments to respond. So what follows will be my best attempt to reply as clearly and concisely to his long email comments as possible and to do my best to answer his criticisms and concerns. 

Hopefully this exchange, taken in the spirit of a cordial discourse, will help clear up any confusion regarding ignosticism and, more importantly, may be of use to those who continue to grapple with the big questions. 

(Just for convenience, I shall refer to our theist has "Rocky" while I will just be "Me".)

Rocky: What you are really claiming as foundational postulates are 1: empirical knowledge is the only valid form of knowledge that an ignostic will accept; 

Me: True. An ignostic need not accept any metaphysical assumptions as valid as ignosticism deals with real world grammar of common nouns. It is a linguistics (semantics) argument.

I am not saying that I, as an ignostic, deny other forms of knowledge. I am merely saying than when making an argument from the position of an ignostic no other forms of knowledge are required for the argument to be logically valid.

As an atheist and a skeptic, I leave room for the possibility of other forms of knowledge.

Rocky: 2: that the human intellect IS the final arbiter of the intelligibility of the universe (that our minds can come to ultimate conclusions about things that may transcend them and are possibly not fully available to said minds, and if they are not, such things then acquire inherent meaninglessness because our limited intellects, which were very probably never fully capable of describing them, simply cannot include those things within its subsets of rationality); 

Me: What other intellects did you have in mind? And can you prove they exist?

As for the limits of the human intellect, what would that be exactly? I'm not sure that line has been clearly drawn. 

I acknowledge the human intellect is not unlimited, that there are conditions which do limit it, and biological factors we must consider that may hinder our intellectual potential. But we also have valuable tools, such as science and technology, to help aid us in overcoming many of these limitations. 

So what the exact limitations are on humanity's intellectual capacity (or potential) isn't necessarily all that clear, except that we can always find them out and list them. It would be a massive undertaking to define, list, and catalog all our intellectual limitations. 

That said, the semantic argument I offer here is only concerned with understanding basic terms in relationship to the common noun in which these terms are invoked. The etymology of "noun" after all comes from the late Middle English stemming from the Latin nomen or 'name'. It literally means to name the thing itself. This is why when dealing with nouns, especially nouns said to be substantive (meaning: having a firm basis in reality and so important, meaningful, or considerable) I stress the importance of describing the referent, i.e. the thing itself.

There is no abundance of intellect required to verify whether or not the description of the noun as given matches the person, place, or thing it is assigned to. This is why I point out that the easiest way to check for the validity of any given description of a person, place, or thing is to find that thing and simply have someone else describe it too. 

If our descriptions match to an overwhelming degree, then odds are we have described the same thing! If not, and our descriptions diverge, then there is a semantic problem. 

In my explication of ignosticism, I point out that ignosticism offers two solutions which address why our descriptions (in this case descriptions of God) might not align themselves. They are as follows:

1. God is a conceptualization, or rather a series of concepts applied to a theological template. This being the case, ignosticism holds that people assume too much about God otherwise the descriptions of God would align more often than they do.
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2. Descriptions of God are dependent on the prior presuppositions of the believer, thus any description of God will grow more convoluted over time since believers usually change their descriptions of God to fit better with their presuppositions, thus necessitating a tendency for descriptions of God to grow more discrepant over time as well.

These two considerations are explanations for why people's definitions of God do not match, because they are, in essence, describing their own ideas and concepts of what they think God should be, not what God actually is should such a being exist.

If God was a substantive noun, and there was a referent to derive an adequate description from, then our descriptions would match. With matching descriptions we would know what it meant to speak of "God" any time we invoked God language. This not being the case however, we can be fairly certain God is not a substantive entity. Rather, by all appearances God seems to be exactly as we would expect if God were a conceptualization that gets convoluted the more theists try to force him to fit into their ideal image of what God should be.

That is about all the intellectual complexity required to validate ignosticism and its objections.

Nothing more is needed for ignosticism to be accepted as a logically valid argument.

Rocky: 3: the verisimilitude of the scientific approach can ultimately adjudicate all of reality, including those things very probably beyond the scope of its methodology, whether or not it can ever offer full, nonnebulous descriptions of that reality

Me: No. That's scientism. Scientism isn't foundational. But I'd be remiss if I didn't at least add that the scientific method is necessary for us to ultimately make sense of reality. That is, we cannot just throw science out of the window and hope to make sense of it all. It is a requisite tool, and a highly useful tool, in helping us to understand the world. 

Rocky: 4: nothing that is unavailable to the human senses can ultimately find any traction within ignosticism.  If possible, can you supply me with short, direct answers to these questions?  Just acceptance or rejection of said postulates?

Me: I think this is correct (note: substitute anything for nothing to avoid the double negative, and then your meaning becomes clear). I would add that if something is unavailable to our human senses, however, we would not know it except, perhaps, indirectly. Like dark matter, for example. But then again, even dark matter is indirectly observed via our sense of vision when we look for gravitational lensing effects it has on light. I suppose if something was completely unavailable to our senses then we would not know it exists, and therefore it might as well not exist.

Granted, this doesn't mean that something which is unavailable to our senses couldn't possibly exist. Anything is possible, but not everything is plausible. Since it would seem to not exist, being unable to perceive it, and we would have no way to prove it did exist, not even indirectly, then to talk about it as something which exists would be illogical. It would also, as a consequence of its imperceptibility, be rendered completely irrelevant thus a moot topic ergo meaningless.

As far as ignosticism is concerned, we need not worry about things unavailable to our senses. Ignosticism deals only with things we can generate valid descriptions of, whether substantive or conceptual.

As such, we could say that substantive descriptions, being substantive, wouldn't diverge from one another (at least not enough to cause any concerns) whereas conceptual descriptions will diverge since every conceptualization is created differently, thus contains differing features, which thus explains any dissimilarities we might find between competing conceptualizations of the same thing.

If "God" was a substantive noun, we'd be able to all describe God in the same way. But this doesn't seem to be the case. Most descriptions of God diverge. And this divergence can be great or miniscule, but the trend of the descriptions assigned seem to be conceptions derived not from the observation of the thing itself but as a means to create a conceptualization in lieu of the things absence.

Wherever the conceptualizations seem to overlap we can safely assume they do so because the conceptualization itself shares features, called templates, but not because they have derived these features from what they purport to describe. They have simply made up a template which they find appealing, and others might generate similar templates, and this describes the overlap. But the templates themselves are still divergent -- that is, instead of moving toward any agreement they continue to grow dissimilar. 

Rocky: Next, if God exists and is foundationally exterior to the universe (its root cause), why would you expect that our understanding of God to somehow become more illumined by processes of understanding that have to be limited by finite minds that must necessarily operate at a lower level of complexity or awareness? 

Me: In the hypothetical you propose, you make the following assumptions: 1) God exists; 2) God is foundational to the existence of the universe; 3) God is the cause of said universe; 4) God is beyond human understanding.

I don't think I need to explain why we should not waste our time on addressing these particular presuppositions in a discussion about ignosticism. After all, ignosticism's position is that you cannot know what it is the term "God" even means! So we cannot even begin to talk about these until this issue is resolved. That's the argument at hand.

(Note: I am not being dismissive here simply to be mean to believers. I am dismissing these topics because they are defeated by ignosticism's premise. Separately, apart from a discussion on ignosticism, they may be fine theological and philosophical topics of discussion. These topics have their place and time to be discussed, certainly, but here I am mainly concerned with defending ignosticism and laying the foundation for a logical argument from semantics against the comprehensibility of God.)

Rocky: Are you asserting that God, if it exists, must avail itself of full human comprehension? Explain why that should be a criteria of assessing whether or not the concept of God should be discarded.

Me: The reason that God's comprehensibility is a requisite of whether or not the concept should be discarded is precisely that if God did exist yet was completely incomprehensible then there would be no way to make sense of God's existence or talk about God in any meaningful way.

One might argue that it's not a black and white case. That it may simply be a case of the elephant in the room. We merely dimly perceive God, and because we can only vaguely piece together constituent parts of a greater whole, it's not that God's incomprehensibility is due to any trait of his existence but due to our limited knowledge of the bigger picture.

I understand the objection here, but it's not valid. It's not valid because if God were to exist, then our experience we have of God is the only way to make sense of God, thus the only way to talk about God, and if all we can talk about devolves into a meaningless, incomprehensible, jumble of fragmented ideas without a means to ever improve our understanding of him then you have a big problem. You are saying you are perceiving something but you can't quite make it out through the fog of imperceptibility, but yet you choose to call it God. Why? And then you're back to square one. 

As far as the ignostic is concerned, in such a case, this itself provides a valid description of God. In fact, it may be the only logically consistent description of God which believers can agree on. Mainly that God is beyond our limited understanding. 

If this is true, then what use is it to talk about God? Everything you mentioned in your list of presuppositions about the nature of God would be rendered erroneous based on your assumption that God is too complex to comprehend or is, somehow, beyond human understanding. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Rocky: You are making some very large postulational assertions. 

Me: I don't think that I am. I would argue that I am making very reasonable objections here. 

First of all, they are logically consistent and sound objections. What about the premise that theists likely assume more than they can know about God sounds illogical to you? What about the premise that descriptions of God should be consistent and match when two believers are describing the same God sounds problematic to you? As far as postulates go, it seems these are valid.

Secondly, ignosticism is a very simple and straight forward argument. But it is not a well known one, which might explain some of the confusion people have when they first encounter it. Third, to make matters worse semantics and linguistics are confusing to those who are not accustomed to them, just as mathematics looks indistinguishable from Greek (i.e., it's all Greek to me) to those unfamiliar with it. But in the end, it's why I choose to write on the topics of ignosticism, semantics, and linguistics as they relate to God as commonly talked about in our language that uses semantics and linguistics to express these kinds of ideas.

That said, my assertions are straight forward and to the point. Two descriptions of the same thing should match. If they don't match there is a problem. There are two reasons we can point to for why this dissimilarity might arise. Accounting for these, we have to re-evaluate the question of how we use and talk about "God" in our language.

This seems to me to be a very reasonable position.

Rocky: I'd like to see defense of those in a rigorous logical sense instead of just more descriptions of ignosticism.

Me: I have provided just that. But when someone misconstrues ignosticism and ignores its objections, I think you'll find it is necessary to restate its premises, which does include describing it all over again.

Rocky: Finally, are you claiming that we can make any intellectual progress without some form of faith?  

Me: No. And I never said that.

Rocky: Every decision that we make involves an article of faith on some level or another. 

Me: It must, after all, you have to have faith in your own claims in order for you (yourself) to take those claims at face value!

Rocky: You cannot intellectually survive without faith. 

Me: It depends on what you mean by "faith." If you mean religious or spiritual faith, then I would argue this is a category error. If you simply mean confidence in our belief assumptions, in the philosophical sense, then I'd be more inclined to agree.

Rocky: Faith in the reliability of the efficacy of logic, faith in the ever predictable intelligibility of the physical universe; faith that your sense perceptions are valid enough to support your intellectual investigations, faith that every single postulate that cannot be absolutely proven in your logic train can still be universally agreed upon as valid

Me: The way you use faith here, in the philosophical sense of having confidence in our belief propositions, I would agree with you as to its fundamental importance in all of the above.

Rocky: Why should faith in God be the only suspect category?

Me: Because this isn't the same sort of faith. Belief in God is religious faith, or the belief in something based on insufficient evidence (i.e., conviction not proof -- which is the dictionary definition of faith, FYI).

Now, you might object and say, no, faith in God is an intellectual endeavor as well as a spiritual or religious experience. Well, I guess you'll have to have faith in that claim as well. But, perhaps, instead of merely expressing your strongly held faith in God, you can use the above tools of logic, knowledge of the physical universe, your sense and awareness, and your intellect, to substantiate your faith thereby take it to the point of being a veritable truth, so that instead of having faith you have understanding.