Sometimes materialists say things that are just so draw-droppingly stupid, I can’t look away. Here is one such: the concept of free will is rubbish, but the concept of moral responsibility is not. Kantian Naturalist
As I noted in my last post, sometimes it is necessary to rub materialists’ noses in the morally odious implications of their ethical views. They really hate that, and when one does it, some materialists – grasping the monstrous implications of taking materialist premises to their conclusion – will flop around like a fish on the bank, trying desperately to hold onto their materialist premises while avoiding the conclusions to which those premises ineluctably lead. Over the last few days Bob O’H has given us an especially amusing demonstration of this. Here are his various positions collected. First, we get several standard materialist statements about how views on the Holocaust are entirely subjective: 1 I’m a moral subjectivist and I’m being Read More ›
Dear readers, We have just added the following to our “Frequently raised but weak arguments against Intelligent Design” in the “Resources” section linked on our home page: 41] What About the Canaanites? Whataboutism is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. A frequent example of whataboutism employed by materialists: ID Proponent: “The Holocaust was objectively evil. Therefore, objective moral standards exist.” Materialist: “What about God’s command to kill the Canaanites? If the Holocaust was evil, wasn’t that evil too?” Notice what the materialist did not do: He did not even address the ID proponent’s argument, far less refute it. Instead, Read More ›
How is arguing with a materialist like housebreaking a puppy? Materialist arguments about ethics are the rhetorical equivalent of piles of steaming dog poo. And they drop those piles all over the place. Dealing with the aftermath is very unpleasant. But if you are going to make any progress, it is necessary to rub their noses in it. And they don’t like that. People like Bob O’H living their comfortable little bourgeois lives, coasting on Christian moral capital built up over centuries, dabble in philosophy and make half-educated pronouncements about ethics. And they come up with gems like “it would be arrogant for me to say Himmler was necessarily wrong.” And a part of that moral capital is flushed down Read More ›
For nearly 75 years the Holocaust has been used as an example of evil so clear as to be beyond reasonable dispute. It was useful as a counter to arguments for moral nihilism such as we get on these pages so often, because very few people were willing to stand up and say, “I personally don’t agree with Holocausts, but of course that’s just my opinion; I can’t say a contrary opinion is necessarily wrong.” That is not the case anymore as the following exchange between me and Bob O’H demonstrates: Bob O’H: But doesn’t [Becky’s Lesson] actually support the materialists’ assertion? The story shows a situation where an act that the reader regards as grossly immoral is shown as Read More ›
Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. How did CR employ it here? Let’s examine it step-by-step. For example, the vignette Becky’s Lesson is set in an alternate history in which the Nazis won World War II, conquered the world, and completed their Final Solution by completely eradicating all 13 million Jews. In the story, the Nazis control all media and education. They control society with an iron fist and have indoctrinated the society they control to celebrate The Final Solution as a great good, instead of an unspeakable evil. The obvious purpose of Read More ›
The rather obvious point of my story Becky’s Lesson is that the typical A-Mat spewings about morality coming from societal consensus are irrational, because the “everyone thinks its OK” theory of morality can be used to justify all manner of evil. I am always trying to get A-Mats to follow the logic of their argument to where it leads, and they almost always steadfastly refuse. Because, by and large, A-Mats are Simpering Cowards. But in the spirit of giving the Devil his due, I must recognize and give credit to an A-Mat who does, finally, follow his logic out to the end. RodW is one such. In response to my story he wrote, “Well if I lived in a world Read More ›
Here.
Friday, May 12, 2017 Hermann Göring High School Brooklyn, New York Wilhelm Johnson was at the top of his game. He held a master’s degree in history from NYU and had spent over 35 years working hard to become a master teacher. In all his decades in the classroom he had never stopped honing his skills. Even now, at a time in his career when many of his colleagues had begun to coast toward retirement, Johnson worked into the evening every day, personally grading essays and polishing his lesson plans for the next day. He loved his job and considered it a great honor and privilege that the Reich had bestowed on him the responsibility of molding young minds in Read More ›
As I have often written in these pages, happy-faced New Atheists are simpering cowards. They say you are a cosmic accident with no more intrinsic value than a grub worm. There is no meaning. There is no foundation for ethics. Everything you do is utterly determined by impersonal natural forces, so free will cannot exist. Indeed, even “you” cannot exist, because the most primordial of your experiences – your subjective self-awareness – is an illusion. But, hey, be happy. Barf. There is a glaring disconnect between their premises and the conclusions that must follow from those premises, and their unwarranted optimism. Cowards that they are – they steadfastly avert their gaze from their conclusions so they can retain their optimism. I Read More ›
Justice Scalia believed the old Soviet Constitution was, in a sense, far superior to the United States’ Constitution. No really. He once said: Our Constitution isn’t the best, if you judge it by its guarantees. Frankly, the old Soviet constitution was better, and it was full of all kinds of grand guarantees . . . For example, ‘Citizens are guaranteed inviolability of the person . . . Citizens are guaranteed inviolability of the home’ . . . But this Soviet constitution was just a piece of paper . . . A bill of rights has value only if the main articles of the constitution truly constitute the organs of government – establish a structure that will preserve liberties against the Read More ›
In the film The Matrix, the character known as Cypher or “Mr. Reagan,” has grown weary of the endless war with the machines and his dreary living conditions. In this scene we see Cypher contemplating a deal with Agent Smith. In return for betraying his comrades, the Agents will return him to the Matrix as a rich and famous person (within that imaginary construct) with no recollection of the true nature of the world: Here is the dialoge from the scence: Smith: Do we have a deal, Mr. Reagan? Reagan: You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. Read More ›
“Everybody knows there’s something wrong with them.” Rust Cohle, True Detective, Season 1. True or False: Powerful evidence that materialism is false. Explain your answer.
At ENV Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor exposes how materialist metaphysics flounders on logical grounds in its theory of mind: As an example, let us suppose that a certain pattern of neuronal activation in my cortex were shown to represent my thought about justice. Obviously that pattern is not my thought about justice itself — justice is a concept, not a bunch of neurons. And if that pattern of neuronal activation represented my thought about justice, it must map to my thought of justice, which presupposes my thought about justice and thus cannot explain it. Succinctly, mental representation of abstract thought presupposes abstract thought, and cannot explain it. It is on abstract thought that materialism, as a theory of mind, flounders. Abstract thought, Read More ›
It has been often noted that Darwin is so important for Atheist-Materialists because it (supposedly) accounts for the appearance of design in living things without a designer. It occurred to me that the multiverse is gaining headway in spite of the fact that it has not been (and in principle cannot be) tested empirically. It (again, supposedly) accounts for the existence of the universe, including its finely tuned parameters for the existence of life, without a creator (accounting for why there is something instead of nothing) or a fine tuning designer. So there you have it — A-Mat designer substitutes at both the micro and macro levels.