Materialist MatSpirit Tucks Tail and Runs When Confronted With Incoherence of His Position

_{Barry Arrington

June 21, 2018

Intelligent Design}

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Let’s review my recent exchange with MatSpirit:

MatSpirit quotes Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins is not just flapping his gums when he says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction . . .

I point out that is the same Dawkins who wrote:

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

MatSpirit ignores the incoherence of his position and says:

but the most important [question to Barry] was, “What in the world makes you think God has good morals?

No, Mat. There is an even more basic and important question that absolutely must be answered before that question even makes sense to ask. Is your boy Dawkins correct when he says that on the materialist view, there is “no evil, no good”? After all, you are the one who brought Dawkins into the mix. Are you going to abandon him now?

You have to answer this question Mat, before I can answer yours. Because if Dawkins is correct, and there is “no good” asking if God has “good” morals is literally meaningless. The ball is in your court.

BTW, your dodge that Dawkins is referring to a fictional character won’t work. Even if that were so, the acts attributed to fictional characters can be good or bad, as your very question demonstrates.

Prediction: MatSpirit will continue to dodge and weave. I have yet to see a materialist change their position when confronted with the obvious fact that their assertions are internally incoherent.

Comments

Seversky@ 20, Ought implies can. Therefore, it is simply irrational to talk about morality, ethics or moral obligation without free will. Indeed, it is irrational to engage in any kind of logical argument if people lack free will… How could you ever change somebody else’s mind? The argument I am making is not based on the Bible. It is drawn from philosophy and natural theology. It is a natural law argument. Here is a version of the moral argument which I think is pretty rigorous in its logic:
Premise 1: Morality is a rational enterprise. Premise 2: Moral Realism is true, meaning moral facts and duties exist. Premise 3: The moral problems and disagreements among humans are too much for us to assume moral facts and duties are grounded in a human source of rationality. Premise 4: Moral facts and duties are grounded in a necessary, rational source (from 1,2,3). Premise 5: This source is what we call God. Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9Nl6OUEJ0 You need to refute that argument if you are going to change my mind. (Again, what’s the point if humans don’t have free-will?) Pretension and posturing about your personal beliefs and opinions are not arguments.john_a_designer_{June 23, 2018
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Seversky:
In various Old Testament accounts, God is reported to have committed or instigated or endorsed or permitted acts that today people would describe as evil.
Ignorant people and who cares what they think? And only ignorant people say that according to the Bible we do not have free will. Enter Seversky...ET_{June 23, 2018
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"Human beings are not property." Oh, really?Truth Will Set You Free_{June 23, 2018
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Florabama @ 17
So when MatSpirit accuses God of evil, without knowing it, he has borrowed a moral system that doesn’t exist in his worldview to question the very foundation of all moral systems. In other words, he’s hopelessly inconsistent. He is using a moral standard that only exists if God exists to say that God does not exist because of the moral standard. All A-mats suffer from this problem and most do not recognize it. It was the basis of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.”
In various Old Testament accounts, God is reported to have committed or instigated or endorsed or permitted acts that today people would describe as evil. That is true whether you believe in objective or subjective morality. If morality is an objective phenomenon then where is it recorded so that we can all access it? If there is one objective standard or morality then it is presumably accessible to all, so why do we not see all societies converging on that standard? What reason do we have to assume that this objective morality coincides with Christian doctrine? For that is what people here assuredly believe. Why not Islamic or Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh or Native American moralities? Why not a mixture of all of them? If morality is only what the God of Christianity decrees then how did He decide it? Was it by a metaphorical toss of the coin? I doubt that anyone believes that. If, rather, it was by a rational process then what is to prevent us as rational creatures, allegedly made in His image, from doing the same? Or is all this just a bid to annex the moral high ground in the name of your preferred brand of Christianity?
As far as my own thinking on the topic, it boils down to the moral difference between God and man. God, just like man, can do whatever He pleases with His own creation.
Human beings are not property. People should have been disabused of that notion with the abolition of slavery. Yes, a human artist can dispose of a painting, say, in any way that he, she or they see fit, including destroying it. But that is a false and pernicious analogy. A painting is not a living human being. A better analogy is that of human parents who can be said to have created their children yet we hold them responsible for their well-being and they are not allowed to kill them under virtually any circumstances and certainly not just because they are displeased with them. And either God is bound by the morality He dispenses to us or He is not. If He is, then He has broken at least the Sixth and Ninth Commandments according to the Old Testament. If He is not, then He is saying in effect "do as I say, not as I do" and what would you call that?Seversky_{June 22, 2018
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Mung @ 15
His response can’t possibly be a good one, so why bother?
By the same argument, it can't be bad either. So what do we have to lose by giving it a hearing?Seversky_{June 22, 2018
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john_a_designer @ 11
Does MatSpirit have free will? According to atheistic naturalism/materialism he doesn’t.
According to the Bible, he doesn't either. Looks like he - and we - can't win either way.Seversky_{June 22, 2018
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...and MatSpirit will return in a week or two seemingly not remembering a thing about any of these discussions. Andrewasauber_{June 22, 2018
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Bizarre how these a/mats continue to act as if their chosen faith supports objective moral standards. It clearly doesn't.Truth Will Set You Free_{June 22, 2018
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vmahuna @ 4, you are missing the point. All moral systems are nothing more than opinions if there is no transcendent (i.e. outside of ourselves) moral rule which can be used as a standard, and if they are all opinions, none are better than others. The question is not, are there moral systems -- the question is "by what standard," do you judge moral questions. It doesn't matter if morals are wrapped in a religion. They are still judged against a transcendent standard, so when Muslims or Christians or whomever, kills in the name of (fill in the blank) we judge that "immoral" based on a standard that exists outside of ourselves and outside of whatever standard is pointed to to justify it. So when MatSpirit accuses God of evil, without knowing it, he has borrowed a moral system that doesn't exist in his worldview to question the very foundation of all moral systems. In other words, he's hopelessly inconsistent. He is using a moral standard that only exists if God exists to say that God does not exist because of the moral standard. All A-mats suffer from this problem and most do not recognize it. It was the basis of C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity." https://youtu.be/l_VYCqCexow It's fair game, I think, to question some of the things we read in the OT. I believe that's why they're there -- precisely so we will question them. There are mounds of books written on the subject and I have spent a lot of time thinking about those questions as well. How could God kill "innocent" people? It's a fair question I think, but it does require us to adopt God's own moral standard to question God's actions and to do so without believing God exists, reveals a huge blind spot in one's thinking. As far as my own thinking on the topic, it boils down to the moral difference between God and man. God, just like man, can do whatever He pleases with His own creation. People don't ask themselves if they're being immoral when they put the trash out or flush the toilet (please don't hear what I'm not saying -- I'm not comparing people to trash. I'm simply saying that in terms of "property," we don't question what we do with our own property). If EVERYTHING was made by God, then He has every right to do with it what He pleases. He has not violated any moral law by disposing of His own property, and in that sense, people are more "His property" than the trash is ours. We didn't make the atoms that makeup our trash -- God did. Our trash belongs to God more than it belongs to us, and yet we throw it out with no moral compunction. There are far more ways to think of this subject than the above, but I think that is where you have to start. Every atom of every molecule of everything that exists, not only belongs to God, but it exists at the pleasure of God, and He may do with it as he pleases without being immoral, and the very fact that we can question God using a moral standard, is evidence that God in fact exists.Florabama_{June 22, 2018
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StephenB
First, you say that evil doesn’t exist. Then you accuse God of evil behavior.
What's wrong with that?Mung_{June 22, 2018
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Seversky
Is MatSpirit still allowed to reply if he chooses?
His response can't possibly be a good one, so why bother?Mung_{June 22, 2018
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Mat Spirit (from the other thread)
You claim that God is intelligent. That means He is capable of all the above. Do you think God was good or evil when He murdered those Egyptian children?
SB: I already answered that question @58. You promptly ignored it.
I think that was a rotten thing to do, thoroughly evil, and I don’t see any extenuating circumstances.
You just contradicted yourself again, even more clearly than with Barry. First, you say that evil doesn’t exist. Then you accuse God of evil behavior.StephenB_{June 22, 2018
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Bob O'H:
is the strength of your belief really stronger than the strength of belief of religious fanatics, such as members of al-Qaida, ISIS or the LRA?
Or materialists? :razz:ET_{June 22, 2018
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vmahuna:
Moslems are REQUIRED, not simply encouraged, to kill EVERYONE who denies The Prophet.
Nonsense- total nonsense.ET_{June 22, 2018
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Does MatSpirit have free will? According to atheistic naturalism/materialism he doesn't.john_a_designer_{June 22, 2018
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Is MatSpirit still allowed to reply if he chooses?Seversky_{June 22, 2018
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Bob, you state:
"'I’m' not sure that “proof by certainty” is a good argument to make."
Please note that the first word in your sentence is "I'm". You are referring to the existence of yourself as a person as the ultimate 'certainty' upon which to judge whether anything else can be certain about reality. And indeed there is a long tradition in philosophy of holding that the MOST certain thing we can know about reality is the fact that we really exist as real persons. Indeed, every time you yourself begin a sentence with the word "I" or "I'm" you yourself are relying on the fact that we take it as a given that you really do exist as a real person and that your perceptions about reality are reliable. But herein lies your insurmountable difficulty as a person who believes the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be true. Reductive materialism simply has no place to ground the 'certainty' of the reality of the abstract, immaterial, concept of personhood that you yourself are taking for granted.
Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – video 37:51 minute mark Quote: "It turns out that if every part of you, down to sub-atomic parts, are still what they were when they weren't in you, in other words every ion,,, every single atom that was in the universe,, that has now become part of your living body, is still what is was originally. It hasn't undergone what metaphysicians call a 'substantial change'. So you aren't Richard Dawkins. You are just carbon and neon and sulfur and oxygen and all these individual atoms still. You can spout a philosophy that says scientific materialism, but there aren't any scientific materialists to pronounce it.,,, That's why I think they find it kind of embarrassing to talk that way. Nobody wants to stand up there and say, "You know, I'm not really here". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg&t=37m51s
Moreover, if Darwinian evolution were actually true, your perceptions about reality would also be unreliable.
The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
Thus, if Darwinian evolution were true, nobody could ever be certain about anything he thought, much less be certain about what anyone else thought. Yet, since certainty does indeed exist,, i.e. I am 'certain' that I am sitting here writing this at this very moment, then the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution must necessarily be false. Bob, I also know that you hold yourself as being fairly proficient in mathematics, particularly in statistics. And indeed many mathematicians hold that the ultimate 'certainty' we can possibly have about reality is to be found in mathematics. But even here, in the supposedly unquestionably 'certain' world of mathematics, the reductive materialism of your Darwinian worldview undermines any certainty that 'you' think you can have in mathematics.
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? - M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume,,, reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that 'you' do not exist. For 'you' are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just 'you', but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
Thus Bob, not that you have ever been inclined to take advice from me or anyone else on UD, but if you ever were so inclined, I would advice you to first honestly admit that any reasonable level of 'certainty' can never be achieved within your own Darwinian worldview and that you must, therefore, seek some type of 'immaterial' worldview that can reasonably ground 'certainty'. This would seem to a extremely judicious first step for you to take before you seek to ascertain whether any other worldview might be able to provide you a solid foundation for the 'certainty' that it is true:
Matthew 7:24-27 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. Hebrews 11:1-3 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
bornagain77_{June 22, 2018
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blip @ 6 - I'm not sure that "proof by certainty" is a good argument to make. is the strength of your belief really stronger than the strength of belief of religious fanatics, such as members of al-Qaida, ISIS or the LRA?Bob O'H_{June 22, 2018
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The a/mats lose this argument every time. It's checkmate... and they know it.Truth Will Set You Free_{June 21, 2018
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Vmahuma, so are you trying to convince me that your belief in relativism must outweigh my certainty in Christ? Yours is like the void promise of communism: make everyone equal! Then take the reigns Myself! I'm glad you are at least awake when it comes to Islam. It's bad religion. But don't conflate good with evil and discard Jesus as a result. But if you want to insist mine is a personal preference then know this: so is yours. And I will take proven Jesus's personal preference over your personal preference any day. Warning: dead end up ahead for you.blip_{June 21, 2018
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vmahuna, one BIG difference, Moses and Mohammed are dead and buried. Yet, Jesus uniquely rose from the dead. In fact, you can go to the graves of all the other founders of all the other major religions of the world and find the remains of a body (caveat, the exact location of Moses's grave is unknown),
Burial places of founders of world religions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_places_of_founders_of_world_religions
,,, yet, as the Shroud of Turin stubbornly testifies, and despite many attempts to refute the Shroud’s authenticity, if you go to the tomb of Jesus you will not find the remains of a body because Jesus has risen from the dead.
The Shroud of Turin - Evidence it is authentic Below is a summary of scientific and historical evidence supporting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as the ancient burial cloth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. https://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram https://youtu.be/F-TL4QOCiis Matthew 28:5-6 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
Given the authenticity of the Shroud, and seeing as Jesus defeated death, I would certainly think that gives Christian morality a tremendous leg up on all the other moral claims of other religions:
Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
bornagain77_{June 21, 2018
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Anyone can create a system of morals that is internally consistent and then claim that this system is "good". People who deviate from this system are then "bad". The basic problem you (i.e., the folks who are arguing in favor of some specific moral system that aligns with some specific Christian sect) have is that it's really just a personal preference. Moslems are REQUIRED, not simply encouraged, to kill EVERYONE who denies The Prophet. Jews were/are required to kill "witches" (suffer ye not a witch to live). So these killings are clearly "moral". Christians get kinda wishy-washy on which specific bits of the Bible they choose to form their morality in any specific century (for a man to lie down with another man is an abomination before God). So things slide from "evil" over to "good" and vice versa. So, one can get on a high horse and declare, in very vague terms, that some system of morality is better than another. And then of course quickly demonstrate that when it comes to specifics, each case gets handled differently. A decent AI legal system would fix that, but who gets to tell the AI what is "right" and "wrong"?vmahuna_{June 21, 2018
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but the most important [question to Barry] was, “What in the world makes you think God has good morals?
What in the world would make anyone think that MatSpirit has good morals?john_a_designer_{June 21, 2018
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Why not just admit that MatSpirit has a good point? ;)Mung_{June 21, 2018
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Barry, I share your grief but take heart, occasionally an a/mat sees the light. I was one. Anthony Flew was another. We certainly want to see it more often, but it does happen. And the joy it brings, especially to the one who turns from the death trap of materialism to the real Lord! I know it all so well! Keep up the great and important work of shining the light, along with KF, BA77, and so many more. Those of us who come to know the liberating truth are eternally greatful to those who help us along the way. Those are not just words. They express reality. ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!blip_{June 21, 2018
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