On Double Standards

_{Barry Arrington

June 23, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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In the We Won thread someone who calls themselves rvb8 wrote: “We do not accept the supernatural because we can’t test for that.”

Well. Consider the following two statements:

Supernatural phenomena exist.

Natural phenomena are all that exist.

The two statements are mirror images are of one another. If one is true the other is necessarily false. They are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

And neither can be confirmed by test.

Notice the double standard here. rvb8 rejects statement 1 on the sole ground that it cannot be tested. But he affirms statement 2 (it is necessarily entailed by his statement) even though it cannot be tested either. The incoherence of scientism is obvious. Yet many cling to it in the teeth of its incoherence. Look, I am not even trying to prove the existence of God or the supernatural. That is a discussion for another day. My purpose is modest: Stop with the double standard already.

UPDATE: rvb8 doubles down

In comment 7 to the thread below this post, rvb8 responds with some doozies:

“And neither can be confirmed by test.” No Barry! One of these can be confirmed by testing, I’ll leave you and BA to figure out which.

Do tell. OK rvb8, I’ll bite. Please describe the test in which one would investigate every single phenomenon from the Big Bang to the heat death of the universe to confirm that every one of those phenomena was natural.

“The two statements are miror images of one another.” No Barry! Something that does not exist cannot reflect an image because photons will not bounce off something that is not there.

Umm, the “mirror” was not an actual mirror. Go to your dictionary and look up the word “metaphor.”

Comments

That would be me who is 'a wheezing old conspiracy theorist who uses supplemental oxygen'. And no I do not put large stock in him since I have known him for a really long time and seen him fail miserably at many things. :)bornagain77_{June 23, 2016
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Most atheists are totally oblivious to their own biases and information blindspots.Truth Will Set You Free_{June 23, 2016
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BA77, who is Philip Cunningham and what are his bona fides? He sounds like a wheezing old conspiracy theorist who uses supplemental oxygen. I like what he has to say, but it's very tiresome to plod along that slowly. Why do you place such large stock in him? Thanks!AnimatedDust_{June 23, 2016
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Thus, basically, without God, everything within the atheistic/naturalistic worldview, (i.e. sense of self. observation of reality, even reality itself), collapses into self refuting, unrestrained, flights of fantasies and imagination. Verse, Video and Music:
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from Death as the “Theory of Everything” – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1143437869002478/?type=2&theater Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever - Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UQK-UcRezE
bornagain77_{June 23, 2016
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Moreover, completely contrary to materialistic premises, conscious observation, far from being illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable, than materialism had ever predicted. In the following experiment, it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
Apparently science itself could care less if atheists believe their observations of reality are illusory! Moreover, as Nancy Pearcey alluded to in her ‘Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself’ article, given the materialistic/atheistic premises of Darwinian evolution, not only are our observations of reality itself held to be illusory, but even our sense of self, i.e. the belief that we really exist as real persons, which is the most sure thing we can know about reality, becomes illusory too. Thus, in what I consider to be a shining example of poetic justice, in their claim that God is not really a real person but is merely an illusion, the naturalist also ends up claiming that he himself is not really a real person but is merely an illusion. Here are a few quotes highlighting the 'you are an illusion' position of atheistic materialism:
“that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Francis Crick – “The Astonishing Hypothesis” 1994 “We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. Per NY Times Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – video 37:51 minute mark Quote: “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 At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that: “consciousness is an illusion” A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion… what isn’t?”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s
Thus, given materialistic premises, people become illusions whose observations of reality are illusory. And exactly why in blue blazes should anyone trust what illusions having illusions say about reality? Finally, this unconstrained ‘illusory’ nature inherent to naturalism/materialism becomes even more acute when atheists try to explain the origin and sustaining of the universe, i.e. try to explain the origin, fine-tuning, and quantum wave collapse of the universe. That is to say, every time an atheist postulates a random infinity to try to get around the glaringly obvious Theistic implications of the Big Bang, fine-tuning, and the quantum wave collapse, of the universe, then the math surrounding that random infinity tells us that everything that is possible has a 100% chance of existing somewhere in that random infinity of possibilities that the atheist had postulated. Even an infinite number of Richard Dawkins riding on an infinite number of pink unicorns is assured. Since that absurdity is epistemologically self-defeating, then the atheistic worldview is falsified as a coherent theory of knowledge. Scientific knowledge or otherwise.
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Infinity – Max Tegmark – January 2014 and Feb. 2015 Excerpt: Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this: when we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts that there will be infinitely many copies of you far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome, and despite years of tooth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So strictly speaking, we physicists are no longer able to predict anything at all! http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/02/20/infinity-ruining-physics/#.VOsRyS7cBCA Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns – May 2014 Excerpt: Given an infinite amount of time, anything that is logically possible(11) will eventually happen. So, given an infinite number of universes being created in (presumably) an infinite amount of time, you are not only guaranteed to get your universe but every other possible universe. This means that every conceivable universe exists, from ones that consist of nothing but a giant black hole, to ones that are just like ours and where someone just like you is reading a blog post just like this, except it’s titled: “Why most atheists believe in blue unicorns.” By now I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities. Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist. For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggestive single universe. And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns. In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebra are merely childish fairytales. Postscript While it may be amusing to imagine atheists riding pink unicorns, it should be noted that the belief in them does not logically invalidate atheism. There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns. However, there is a more substantial problem for the atheist if he wants to believe in them and he wants to remain an atheist. Since, as I said, anything can happen in the realm of infinities, one of those possibilities is the production of a being of vast intelligence and power. Such a being would be as a god to those like us, and could perhaps breach the boundaries of the multiverse to, in fact, be a “god” to this universe. This being might even have the means to create its own universe and embody the very description of the God of Christianity (or any other religion that the atheist otherwise rejects). It seems the atheist, in affirming the multiverse in order to avoid the problem of fine-tuning, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The further irony is that somewhere, in the great wide world of infinities, the atheist’s doppelganger is going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.” https://pspruett.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/why-most-atheists-believe-in-pink-unicorns/ Fine Tuning, Pink Unicorns, and The Triune God – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1145151962164402/?type=2&theater Too many worlds – Philip Ball – Feb. 17, 2015 Excerpt:,,, You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More – it requires a parallel you to measure it. Once begun, this process of fabrication has no end: you have to build an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wavefunction collapse, but at the expense of making another universe (and another you).,,, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy/ A Critique of the Many Worlds Interpretation - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42skzOHjtA&list=UU5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g
bornagain77_{June 23, 2016
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The belief that 'Natural phenomena are all that exist' leads to all of reality becoming illusory.
Atheistic Materialism - Where All of Reality Becomes an Illusion - video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1213432255336372/?type=2&theater
Contrary to popular belief, Darwinian evolution, and atheism/naturalism in general, are built entirely upon a foundation of quicksand that quickly engulfs our conception of reality itself into a quagmire of illusions and fantasy. First off, in regards to Darwinian Evolution, atheists hold that the design that we see pervasively throughout life is merely an illusion, i.e. merely an ‘appearance of design’. Richard Dawkins puts the situation this way.
“Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.” Richard Dawkins – “The Blind Watchmaker” – 1986 – page 21 quoted from this video – Michael Behe – Life Reeks Of Design – 2010 – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh-YcNYThY
Richards Dawkins is far from the only prominent atheist who seems to be afflicted with the mental illness of seeing the ‘illusion of design’ pervasively throughout life. The well known atheist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, seems to have been particularly haunted by this illusion of seeing design everywhere he looked in molecular biology:
“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit - p. 138 (1990) “Organisms appear as if they had been designed to perform in an astonishingly efficient way, and the human mind therefore finds it hard to accept that there need be no Designer to achieve this” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit – p. 30
Yet, despite the fact that, according to many leading atheists themselves, life gives the overwhelming ‘appearance’ of having been designed for a purpose, all the purported scientific evidence, that is suppose to demonstrate for us how this overwhelming appearance of design in life came to be in life by unguided material processes, turns out, itself, to be ‘illusory’. Franklin M. Harold, whom I believe is also an atheist, calls Darwinian accounts ‘a variety of wishful speculations’. Specifically he states:
“,,,we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Franklin M. Harold,* 2001. The way of the cell: molecules, organisms and the order of life, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 205. *Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Colorado State University, USA
In fact, one of the main themes of many of Michael Behe’s talks is that all ‘grand Darwinian claims rest on undisciplined imagination’:
“Grand Darwinian claims rest on undisciplined imagination” Dr. Michael Behe – 29:24 mark of this following video Evidence of Design from Biology. A Presentation by Dr. Michael Behe - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=s6XAXjiyRfM#t=1762s
Thus, since atheists themselves are self admittedly seeing the ‘illusion of design’ in life, and yet they have no experimental evidence whatsoever that unguided material processes can produce this ‘illusion of design’ that they are seeing, then of course the ID advocate would be well justified in saying that this ‘illusion of design’ that they are seeing in life not really an illusion after all but the design that they see is indeed real and that these atheists are not really suffering from some sort of a mental illness after all. In fact, I hold that they are ‘naturally detecting design’ because of the inherent ‘image of God’ that they have within themselves. Moreover, this illusory nature inherent to the evidence for atheistic naturalism gets worse for the atheist. Much worse! For instance, although reliable ‘observation’ of reality is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method itself,,,
Steps of the Scientific Method Observation/Research Hypothesis Prediction Experimentation Conclusion http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scientific_method.html
,,, Although reliable ‘observation’ of reality is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method, the reductive materialistic foundation that Darwinian evolution rests upon undermines this cornerstone. That is to say, Given materialistic/atheistic premises, not only are our personal beliefs about reality held to be somewhat flawed, but even our perceptions/observations of reality itself are held to be untrustworthy and thus ‘illusory’ given the materialistic premises of atheism. Richard Dawkins puts the situation like this:
Why Atheism is Nonsense Pt.5 – “Naturalism is a Self-defeating Idea”video Excerpt: “Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.” Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff-5rsrDRGM
In this following video, Donald Hoffman has, through many computer simulations, clearly illustrated the self-defeating nature of the naturalistic worldview in regards to undermining the reliability of our observations of reality.
Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 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/
also see Plantinga’s ‘evolutionary argument against naturalism’ Thus, in what should be needless to say, a worldview that undermines the scientific method itself by holding all our observations of reality are illusory is NOT a worldview that can be firmly grounded within the scientific method!
Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself – Nancy Pearcey – March 8, 2015 Excerpt: Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.,,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar094171.html
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