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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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Jimmy Akin has defended the efficacy of prayer. He does defend the supernatural and paranatural.

I had never heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali before her conversion, meanwhile Bishop Robert Barron's Word on Fire Institute has a global audience, streaming service, publishing company, etc. What qualifies someone to be a major public intellectual?

What qualifies someone to be a major public intellectual?

People from outside their religion regularly taking their arguments seriously would be a good start. Modern Christian apologetics don't seem to be having much headway with people who aren't already looking to be sold on Christianity.

Bishop Barron has been on the Ben Shapiro Show, delivered lectures for the Heritage Foundation, been interviewed by Lex Freidman, and many more. If you look in the comments on his Youtube channel it does seem like many atheists, protestants, and members of other faith traditions watch him regularly.

On a whim I decided to watch a bit of the Ben Shapiro interview, and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. When Ben asked him what his favorite argument is for the proof of God, he says what essentially boils down to the First Cause argument, something that's been trounced in the internet atheist debates for decades. When pressed with a follow up of what caused God then, he responded with special pleading. He dressed it up with fancy words like "that which is properly unconditioned on this reality", and his presentation is polished, but he's just regurgitating arguments from a debate that was largely settled over a decade ago. After watching a bit more and hearing nothing but a few "God of the Gaps" arguments I closed the tab.

I am very disheartened to hear that you have deemed the Cosmological argument 'trounced... for decades." I have seen atheists like Dawkins completely misunderstand the Cosmological argument and refute caricatures of it. I have seen some philosophers provide interesting propositions that make supporters of the Cosmological argument need to add details and rebuttals. This is not a stagnant field, and no side has won (though there are several theist arguments that have no good rebuttals yet.)

In your link, rebuttal 1 shows that the author does not understand what is meant by "Cause," because radioactive decay absolutely has a cause. I don't like Craig's argument because the premise "The Universe Had a Beginning" is harder to defend than other premises, and I will not defend WLC's Cosmological argument. A flaw with Rebuttal 2 is that not every event needs to be separated from its cause in time, there are many causes that occur concurrently with the event it causes, like all Essentially Ordered Causes. My ire for Rebuttal 3 increases every time I see it. Just going to quote Feser on this one:

“What caused God?” is not a serious objection to the argument.

Part of the reason this is not a serious objection is that it usually rests on the assumption that the cosmological argument is committed to the premise that “Everything has a cause,” and as I’ve just said, this is simply not the case. But there is another and perhaps deeper reason.

The cosmological argument in its historically most influential versions is not concerned to show that there is a cause of things which just happens not to have a cause. It is not interested in “brute facts” – if it were, then yes, positing the world as the ultimate brute fact might arguably be as defensible as taking God to be. On the contrary, the cosmological argument – again, at least as its most prominent defenders (Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al.) present it – is concerned with trying to show that not everything can be a “brute fact.” What it seeks to show is that if there is to be an ultimate explanation of things, then there must be a cause of everything else which not only happens to exist, but which could not even in principle have failed to exist. And that is why it is said to be uncaused – not because it is an arbitrary exception to a general rule, not because it merely happens to be uncaused, but rather because it is not the sort of thing that can even in principle be said to have had a cause, precisely because it could not even in principle have failed to exist in the first place. And the argument doesn’t merely assume or stipulate that the first cause is like this; on the contrary, the whole point of the argument is to try to show that there must be something like this.

It is not special pleading, it's basic logic. The Causal Principle is defined as "whatever begins to exist has a cause." This is a good defense of the Causal Principle. If someone can give a very good argument that A)There exists a series of causes and effects and changes, B) It is not the case that the series has an infinite regress, and C) It is not the case that its members are joined together like a closed loop, then they have given a very good argument that D) Therefore, the series has a First Cause and a first change. And many people have indeed made very good arguments on this, here is one of the latest

If there is a first, uncaused-Cause, and whatever begins to exist has a cause, then the first uncaused-Cause did not begin to exist. If the First Cause did not begin to exist it is not some sort of special pleading to say that it has no cause.

If you then go on to say, "The Universe didn't begin to exist, therefore it does not need a cause," the universe is a set of things that change, and this provides a good defense of "It is not the case that the series has an infinite regress."

When I open your links, and the first thing I see is stuff like this:

Ekyroptic universe, and Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology

It's indicative of someone trying to do what Scott described here. I'm not touching that stuff for the same reason I wouldn't try to go toe-to-toe with a Holocaust denier on the precise chemical compounds in Auschwitz gas chambers. I'd probably lose, and not necessarily because I'm wrong. Make your point legibly if you want to continue on this particular axis.

Instead, I'd zoom out and say the entire argument is the classic motte and bailey of God of the Gaps. Pointing out a gap in scientific knowledge does not mean the alternative is Christian theology. At best it simply muddies the waters, but why should one believe your specific God is the logical alternative, when there are many other gods that people believe in, or perhaps that science just hasn't had the capabilities of studying the ultimate cause yet?

A huge problem is that you are wading into a discussion that has a lot of back and forth. It's not the same as a Holocaust denier that is talking only to Holocaust deniers. Loke is formulating a response, referencing well-known models and terms, to atheistic philosophers of religion (there are many, such as Linford who is referenced throughout Loke's argument.) Unlike the disdain that people who argue with Holocaust deniers might express, atheistic philosophers of religion find the whole topic of great enough importance to devote a lifetime to, and support the position that "it is possible to rationally believe in God."

The Ekyroptic universe is a physics theory you might have heard popularized as "The Big Bounce." It was proposed by some pretty important theoretical physicists, Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok. Using the accurate scientific term to refer to a theory is not a knock against the argument.

The cosmological argument is explicitly not a God of the Gaps argument. It is not pointing out a gap in scientific knowledge. It is not:

  1. We don't know what started the universe
  2. Therefore God.

The above would be a God of the Gaps argument. Instead, the Cosmological argument is a logical argument based on the same metaphysical assumptions required to conduct scientific inquiry in the first place.

Edit: I don't really want to argue for the First Cause here. I realize I end up presenting a lot of arguments for the first cause in order to support my point, but I am not going to "make my point legibly" because my point is not that God exists.

The point that I am arguing for is that your arguments are incredibly outdated, and were wrong even back when you formed them. But despite this, you are completely, irrationally, confident in your belief that the cosmological argues for something it does not.

It would be like if I said, "I closed the tab once your scientist started talking about evolution. Don't you know that was debunked a century ago?" and then I link to an old web page that asks where the missing link is. Then I say, "If your scientist believes in evolution as the origin of living species, explain how non-living viruses can cross between species?"

It's fine to not follow this debate in detail, everyone has their own bandwith. But you never understood what theists ever meant by the cosmological argument. That is my point I am trying to make legibly.

Metaphysics is incoherent to anyone who isn't totally immersed in it. It takes the worst aspects of formal philosophy, mainly the mountain of jargon and the lack of applicability to the real world, and dials it up to 11. I have enough problems with normal ivory tower philosophy already, and metaphysics is where the ivory tower ends and philosophers build castles in the sky.

Implying it's not possible to debate the veracity of religion without diving into metaphysics is like saying it's not possible to debate the reality of the Holocaust without discussing the intricacies of chemical compounds on the walls of Auschwitz gas chambers. "There's lots of back and forth on these points, and your arguments are incredibly outdated if you don't discuss these particular chemical compounds". Nah, I'm almost certain there's nonsense somewhere if you're using it to prove this, but I'm not willing to devote dozens of hours to identifying where it is.

Unlike the disdain that people who argue with Holocaust deniers might express

The point of the Holocaust example isn't whether disdain is involved or not, but rather that they're leveraging information asymmetry to "prove" their point via jargon dumping, effectively setting up a no-win scenario for people who aren't utterly immersed in the niche topic. If they bite, they'll get demolished. If they don't bite, the denier can smugly claim victory by default. The only winning move is to not play that game, but rather to zoom out and focus on the bigger picture where information asymmetry is less severe.

It's fine to not follow this debate in detail, everyone has their own bandwith.

You're right, I really don't want to discuss metaphysics. I'm perfectly fine debating the veracity of religion in non-metaphysical ways, but if metaphysics is the only thing you want to discuss then there's not much to be gained from either side by continuing this.

I don't want to discuss metaphysics, you are the one who started this conversation. You are the one who made the bold claim that the Cosmological Argument was debunked decades ago and then linked to a source that clearly doesn't understand what the word 'cause' even is. It's not a hard word to understand!

Then after I demonstrated that I knew more on the topic than you, you still linked to the Wikipedia article on God of the Gaps, like I wouldn't have ever encountered that phrase before. You keep setting yourself up as an expert, but when I get in the weeds with you, you back out. Stop setting yourself up as an expert in the Cosmological Argument.

All I was doing before you started this topic was demonstrating that Bishop Robert Barron was a public intellectual given the criteria provided.

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