Retro-gaming is fun, but it does have one drawback. Graphically, games tend to look dated very quickly. So while the gameplay stays great, one can't help but notice that what was shiny and new a few years ago is now bordering on the unpalatable.
Enter Serious Sam HD
For those unfamiliar to the gaming world, Serious Sam was one kickass game back in 2001. While Duke Nukem Forever was still delayed and everything had suddenly become about multiplayer deathmatch, Serious Sam was a reminder that mindless violence can be done so well. And it wasn't some big budget enterprise, but a team from some obscure country. And it kicked arse. Serious Sam and its quasi-sequel Serious Sam: The Second Encounter meant hours of fun and some great visuals and technology all rolled into one. Could a sniper rifle work in a fast-paced action shooter? Evidentially yes.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago, after a disappointing real sequel I had moved away from such games and into the darkside of online multiplayer or into an RPG hybrid - depending on the day. So imagine my surprise when browsing Steam one day I come across the following trailer.
I was sold, well not then and there on the spot. I waited until Steam's holiday special and took advantage of the low low price. After all, it's an 8 year old game... Gah, I'm distracted. Anyways, back to what I was saying. I finally got a chance to sit down and give it a spin today. And what was it? Exactly the same game I remember playing 8 years ago, only it looked better. Looked much better. Not photo-realistic, not some weird hybrid , but still Serious Sam only in HD!
And this got me thinking, there are so many more games I'd love to play again if not for the off-putting graphics. I'd be all over System Shock 2 if it looked like its spiritual successor. Just glad that Blizzard is doing this next year, hopefully deviating as little from the original as possible.
Overall I applaud this effort, and look forward to playing the HD version of the superior Serious Sam: The Second Encounter due out next year.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
The Argument From Existence
This morning while doing my checking of blogs, I came across a debate between Victor Stenger and William Lane Craig. Now after a few minutes of Craig talking, my baloney detection kit went off. And it was not for the initial pandering to the audience, but for the first of his six lines of evidence. What he calls: the argument from existence. Or to put it in a way that would be more familiar - why is there something rather than nothing?
The argument goes as follows:
And there you have it. Something exists, so it has to be God. At the start of part 2 in the linked playlist, he gives an explanation of why it has to be God. Abstract elements such as triangles can exist on their own nature(1), while planets and galaxies need an external cause(1). So since the universe cannot exist by its own nature, it needs an external cause. And while a triangle cannot create a universe, an intelligent mind fits the description of something that exists by its own nature. Therefore one needs God to create the universe.
Now obviously there are some concerns with such an argument. The first concern I have is with the nature of the examples following to the conclusion. Mountains, planets, and galaxies do have external causes, but these external causes are neither personal nor greater than the effect. Take mountains for example. Now while one could argue that the forces of plate tectonics are greater than the mountains themselves, but the cause is not personal by any means.
Stars would be another example. The collapse of hydrogen clouds is external to the star itself, but the process that allows for the formation of stars is by no means greater than the star itself. And again, it's by no means personal. Only 300 years ago, Newton's laws posited the motion of the stars and planets, but the creation of planets and stars was the work of an almighty creator.
So to me there is no grounds to justify such a bold statement. The only personal structures made by personal beings are humans. Galaxies, stars, planets, mountains, and mountain dwellers have all been shown to organise without needing an external, transcendent and personal cause. So why would the universe itself need one?
The next concern I have is the notion of an intelligent mind being an abstract. The problem with such statements is that such a notion is completely alien to us. An intelligent mind such as the one we have doesn't exist from its own nature, rather it has an external cause. A few billion years of evolution has built the intelligent minds we have today. We have big brains housed in solid bone that can barely fit through the birth canal.
And an intelligent mind doesn't exist of its own sake either. By all evidential accounts, intelligence is a product of physical brain activity. In other words, intelligence the way we know it has a physical foundation. What does it mean to have an intelligent mind that doesn't have a body? How can such a mind just exist for its own sake? It might be possible that one does, but we have no reason to suspect that it can - let alone does.
The next concern I have with such an argument is of what caused the universe. Why can't the universe just exist necessarily? Or at the very least, why can't whatever build the universe exist necessarily? Maybe it's more than just abstracts that exist by their own nature. Quantum fluctuations happen all the time where particles pop into then out of existence. Could the quantum nature of reality exist necessarily?
This argument really pushes credulity. Somehow the universe needs a creator but the creator can necessarily be? As per (2), the universe exists. We can all agree on that. So why complicate matters further by positing an extra entity to explain explanation? All it does is push the logic one step further out. Agnostics / atheists don't ask "who created the creator?" to sounds quasi-philosophical, it's because positing the necessary existence of such a being as being self-evidence is nothing more than special pleading. A universe can't exist by itself, but an intelligent mind can?
The last concern is one I can merely echo from physicists, the universe as it is understood is a universe that can exist from nothing. As Victor Stenger argues, something and nothing can be defined in terms of physics with nothing being much more unstable than something. Lawrence Krauss argues that a flat universe is a universe where the total energy is zero. The negative energy of gravity balances out the positive energy of matter. According to Krauss, zero total energy and quantum fluctuations can produce a universe. We don't need to posit a creator.
For those concerns above, I reject that a personal deity is necessary for my existence. It may be that there is a god behind it all, I don't know. As it stands I have no idea of where universes come from and what lies behind the observational reality. It might even be impossible from our vantage point to have a theory of everything.
So when the question is put to me of why there is something rather than nothing, I don't respond by asking "why there is God rather than nothing" or any other concerns listed above. Instead my reaction is, if there weren't something then we wouldn't be here to ask why there is something rather than nothing. From our own existence we can infer that there's something, that something is necessary. But why? Well that seems to be asking the wrong question, only valid in the same fuzzy metaphorical sense of asking why do birds have wings. It's promiscuous teleology, and we really should know better than that by now!
The argument goes as follows:
- Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence: either its own nature or an external cause.
- The universe exists
- If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is an external, transcendent, personal cause.
- Therefore, the explanation of the explanation of the universe is an external, transcendent, and personal cause.
And there you have it. Something exists, so it has to be God. At the start of part 2 in the linked playlist, he gives an explanation of why it has to be God. Abstract elements such as triangles can exist on their own nature(1), while planets and galaxies need an external cause(1). So since the universe cannot exist by its own nature, it needs an external cause. And while a triangle cannot create a universe, an intelligent mind fits the description of something that exists by its own nature. Therefore one needs God to create the universe.
Now obviously there are some concerns with such an argument. The first concern I have is with the nature of the examples following to the conclusion. Mountains, planets, and galaxies do have external causes, but these external causes are neither personal nor greater than the effect. Take mountains for example. Now while one could argue that the forces of plate tectonics are greater than the mountains themselves, but the cause is not personal by any means.
Stars would be another example. The collapse of hydrogen clouds is external to the star itself, but the process that allows for the formation of stars is by no means greater than the star itself. And again, it's by no means personal. Only 300 years ago, Newton's laws posited the motion of the stars and planets, but the creation of planets and stars was the work of an almighty creator.
So to me there is no grounds to justify such a bold statement. The only personal structures made by personal beings are humans. Galaxies, stars, planets, mountains, and mountain dwellers have all been shown to organise without needing an external, transcendent and personal cause. So why would the universe itself need one?
The next concern I have is the notion of an intelligent mind being an abstract. The problem with such statements is that such a notion is completely alien to us. An intelligent mind such as the one we have doesn't exist from its own nature, rather it has an external cause. A few billion years of evolution has built the intelligent minds we have today. We have big brains housed in solid bone that can barely fit through the birth canal.
And an intelligent mind doesn't exist of its own sake either. By all evidential accounts, intelligence is a product of physical brain activity. In other words, intelligence the way we know it has a physical foundation. What does it mean to have an intelligent mind that doesn't have a body? How can such a mind just exist for its own sake? It might be possible that one does, but we have no reason to suspect that it can - let alone does.
The next concern I have with such an argument is of what caused the universe. Why can't the universe just exist necessarily? Or at the very least, why can't whatever build the universe exist necessarily? Maybe it's more than just abstracts that exist by their own nature. Quantum fluctuations happen all the time where particles pop into then out of existence. Could the quantum nature of reality exist necessarily?
This argument really pushes credulity. Somehow the universe needs a creator but the creator can necessarily be? As per (2), the universe exists. We can all agree on that. So why complicate matters further by positing an extra entity to explain explanation? All it does is push the logic one step further out. Agnostics / atheists don't ask "who created the creator?" to sounds quasi-philosophical, it's because positing the necessary existence of such a being as being self-evidence is nothing more than special pleading. A universe can't exist by itself, but an intelligent mind can?
The last concern is one I can merely echo from physicists, the universe as it is understood is a universe that can exist from nothing. As Victor Stenger argues, something and nothing can be defined in terms of physics with nothing being much more unstable than something. Lawrence Krauss argues that a flat universe is a universe where the total energy is zero. The negative energy of gravity balances out the positive energy of matter. According to Krauss, zero total energy and quantum fluctuations can produce a universe. We don't need to posit a creator.
For those concerns above, I reject that a personal deity is necessary for my existence. It may be that there is a god behind it all, I don't know. As it stands I have no idea of where universes come from and what lies behind the observational reality. It might even be impossible from our vantage point to have a theory of everything.
So when the question is put to me of why there is something rather than nothing, I don't respond by asking "why there is God rather than nothing" or any other concerns listed above. Instead my reaction is, if there weren't something then we wouldn't be here to ask why there is something rather than nothing. From our own existence we can infer that there's something, that something is necessary. But why? Well that seems to be asking the wrong question, only valid in the same fuzzy metaphorical sense of asking why do birds have wings. It's promiscuous teleology, and we really should know better than that by now!
Part 7: Summary
From the series: 6 Ultimate Reasons Not To Be An Atheist?
In summary
The most surprising element is at the end of the video, where the authors tie these six "fallacies" to every word written in every book by the new atheists. Now of these six points, only one really stands out as a necessity: point 4. Maybe point 5 if one was to be generous. But as much as I try, it might be undesirable but irrelevant for the other four points. The problem with making appeals to consequences based on desire is that one is at best making the case for it being undesirable as opposed to wrong.
In The God Delusion for example, Dawkins spends a good portion of the book discussing morality. Not in terms of what ought to be, but a discussion of the evidence. Some philosophical hand-waving is not going to take away the points Dawkins makes about the origins of morality or the problems associated with claiming morality comes from God?
The problem as I highlighted in the first post is that they see atheism as an alternative world-view, which it is not. Atheism is the implicit or explicit rejection of the notion of interventionist deities. It's the not-belief, non-belief, it doesn't actually define anything. It doesn't make any positive claims about the nature of anything, yet it is being treated as if it should.
I tried in these refutations to get past such semantic distinction and move onto practical discussion. I'm not sure if I've succeeded in this, for some it might appear as if I'm shifting the goalposts. And I did in a way, but I think I did it in such a manner that made it relevant. Like the point on absolute truth, the makers of the video made an incredibly weak argument, but instead I chose to pursue an explanation befitting of the question asked. I feel this is a more intellectually honest way of going about it, because just countering their arguments is hardly going to counter their objections. A bad argument for a real problem doesn't go away with destroying the bad argument.
What I saw in this video was a couple of teenagers who are looking for an ultimate defeater argument of atheism, yet all it did was highlight that they haven't seriously considered what it actually means to be an atheist. They haven't read the books (a good place to start would be John W. Loftus' Why I Became An Atheist) nor are they very familiar with the concept. Given they link to a Conservapedia article on atheism, they aren't going to really understand.
And that's the problem, they just don't understand what they are arguing against. Because they don't understand, they can't develop effective arguments against it. Instead what is concocted is an elaborate straw-man that sounds good but will only resonate with others who also don't understand.
In summary
The most surprising element is at the end of the video, where the authors tie these six "fallacies" to every word written in every book by the new atheists. Now of these six points, only one really stands out as a necessity: point 4. Maybe point 5 if one was to be generous. But as much as I try, it might be undesirable but irrelevant for the other four points. The problem with making appeals to consequences based on desire is that one is at best making the case for it being undesirable as opposed to wrong.
In The God Delusion for example, Dawkins spends a good portion of the book discussing morality. Not in terms of what ought to be, but a discussion of the evidence. Some philosophical hand-waving is not going to take away the points Dawkins makes about the origins of morality or the problems associated with claiming morality comes from God?
The problem as I highlighted in the first post is that they see atheism as an alternative world-view, which it is not. Atheism is the implicit or explicit rejection of the notion of interventionist deities. It's the not-belief, non-belief, it doesn't actually define anything. It doesn't make any positive claims about the nature of anything, yet it is being treated as if it should.
I tried in these refutations to get past such semantic distinction and move onto practical discussion. I'm not sure if I've succeeded in this, for some it might appear as if I'm shifting the goalposts. And I did in a way, but I think I did it in such a manner that made it relevant. Like the point on absolute truth, the makers of the video made an incredibly weak argument, but instead I chose to pursue an explanation befitting of the question asked. I feel this is a more intellectually honest way of going about it, because just countering their arguments is hardly going to counter their objections. A bad argument for a real problem doesn't go away with destroying the bad argument.
What I saw in this video was a couple of teenagers who are looking for an ultimate defeater argument of atheism, yet all it did was highlight that they haven't seriously considered what it actually means to be an atheist. They haven't read the books (a good place to start would be John W. Loftus' Why I Became An Atheist) nor are they very familiar with the concept. Given they link to a Conservapedia article on atheism, they aren't going to really understand.
And that's the problem, they just don't understand what they are arguing against. Because they don't understand, they can't develop effective arguments against it. Instead what is concocted is an elaborate straw-man that sounds good but will only resonate with others who also don't understand.
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Part 6: Truth
From the series: 6 Ultimate Reasons Not To Be An Atheist?
#6 Atheism cannot account for absolute truth
The rationality on the video doesn't really grasp the full implications for the problem of absolute truth. It's answer doesn't actually give an answer, it just pushes the problem back to beyond our grasp to a mind outside of time. To have rationality presupposes a rational mind, apparently.
Consider a moth. Now we can see that a moth would spiral into a candle and get consumed in the flame. Yet that mechanism has served the moth quite well in the millions of years before there were candles. A moth can navigate by light with no knowledge whatsoever. The implication being that the structure of the world is itself a limiter, and life by natural selection can build means to operate within the world.
The argument itself is somewhat bemusing in that it uses the qualifier absolute then all it does is try to argue what argued back in point four. And since that is covered, it should be that nothing needs to be explained. Though it would be a missed opportunity to talk about the nature of absolute truth.
I'm not going to make a case for absolute truth, rather I want to make a case against absolute truth. Beyond logic, mathematics and the cogito - there is no absolute truth. And on this there are two limiting factors. First is the vantage point we have in viewing the universe, the fallibility of the senses and mind. Second is the indeterminacy that seems to be built into nature itself.
It's one thing to make statements such as 2+2=4, all triangles have 3 sides, or all bachelors are unmarried. Such statements are true by definition. As argued previously, one doesn't need to see the addition of two and two bananas to know that there would be four bananas there, just as one wouldn't need to survey very bachelor to see whether they are unmarried (or any for that matter). But for statements of particulars such as all cars are red, one cannot use the same inductive logic for all it would take is one non-red car to make such a statement false.
Take a ruler, one with a straight edge. At least to us it would look straight. But how would it go on the microscopic level, or for that matter on an atomic level? On the level of magnification that visible light is still active, even the straightest structures aren't deadly straight. For our purposes here in what Richard Dawkins calls middle world, it's good enough for what we need.
In the very small, it is a world alien to us. Quantum physics it seems is beyond anyone's grasp. Yet such a system of physics has one advantage, it has demonstrated resilience. One of the triumphs of 20th century science was a theory of quantum electrodynamics where Richard Feynman puts the accuracy akin to measuring the width of North America to the width of a human hair. Yet it is not absolute.
Laplace in the 19th century made the boast that if he had all the knowledge of the current state of the world that he could predict the future to infinity. In the 20th century however it was shown that one could not do such a thing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle prevents absolute knowledge in such a manner, that as observers there is a limit to observation. If modern physics is indeed correct, then it is impossible to expect absolute truth.
But all is not lost. It's important to remember just what you are sitting in front of now. The computer that is allowing you to see this message is a device whereby the flow of electrons through semi-conducting material allows for logic gates. An average device sitting in any given home in the western world these days is capable of mathematical power that rivals the whole human species. The success of the scientific endeavour can adequately be captured in the pervasiveness of applications of knowledge in civilisation. Skyscrapers, rockets, global satellite networks, global communications network, supercomputers, eradication of diseases, vaccinations, antibiotics, turkeys, etc. The list goes on and on.
Long story short, science works. It's endeavour is far from perfect, it has the problems associated with human observation and inference, and it's limited by our place and time in association with observation. Say tomorrow a lab through mimicking natural processes is able to get from inorganic chemicals to replicating protocells - that scientists are able to achieve abiogenesis in the lab. This wouldn't solve how life arose on this planet, we don't have the ability to see exactly what happened. Rather it gives us a model for how it could.
Science doesn't deal in TruthTM. It's a means of modelling reality, working out how reality works. Our desire for a God's eye view is something unobtainable, and a dangerous endeavour. Science is what we can know despite being fallible, the wise words of Jacob Bronowski in his wonderful series The Ascent Of Man. Even better is the wise words of Obi-Wan Kenobe "Only a Sith talks in absolutes". It seems that those who aspire to absolute knowledge are pushing themselves down a dangerous path. It leads to intolerance, a rigidity of dogmatism that any person should wish to avoid. To err is human, instead we find those trying to control others by making absolute moral proclamations unfettered by consequences or rightness.
Unlike other rebuttals, I want to finished with the aforementioned Bronowski from an episode of The Ascent Of Man called Knowledge or Certainty. Early in the episode he made the profound pronouncement "There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy." The following video sums up the notion of absolute knowledge for me.
#6 Atheism cannot account for absolute truth
The rationality on the video doesn't really grasp the full implications for the problem of absolute truth. It's answer doesn't actually give an answer, it just pushes the problem back to beyond our grasp to a mind outside of time. To have rationality presupposes a rational mind, apparently.
Consider a moth. Now we can see that a moth would spiral into a candle and get consumed in the flame. Yet that mechanism has served the moth quite well in the millions of years before there were candles. A moth can navigate by light with no knowledge whatsoever. The implication being that the structure of the world is itself a limiter, and life by natural selection can build means to operate within the world.
The argument itself is somewhat bemusing in that it uses the qualifier absolute then all it does is try to argue what argued back in point four. And since that is covered, it should be that nothing needs to be explained. Though it would be a missed opportunity to talk about the nature of absolute truth.
I'm not going to make a case for absolute truth, rather I want to make a case against absolute truth. Beyond logic, mathematics and the cogito - there is no absolute truth. And on this there are two limiting factors. First is the vantage point we have in viewing the universe, the fallibility of the senses and mind. Second is the indeterminacy that seems to be built into nature itself.
It's one thing to make statements such as 2+2=4, all triangles have 3 sides, or all bachelors are unmarried. Such statements are true by definition. As argued previously, one doesn't need to see the addition of two and two bananas to know that there would be four bananas there, just as one wouldn't need to survey very bachelor to see whether they are unmarried (or any for that matter). But for statements of particulars such as all cars are red, one cannot use the same inductive logic for all it would take is one non-red car to make such a statement false.
Take a ruler, one with a straight edge. At least to us it would look straight. But how would it go on the microscopic level, or for that matter on an atomic level? On the level of magnification that visible light is still active, even the straightest structures aren't deadly straight. For our purposes here in what Richard Dawkins calls middle world, it's good enough for what we need.
In the very small, it is a world alien to us. Quantum physics it seems is beyond anyone's grasp. Yet such a system of physics has one advantage, it has demonstrated resilience. One of the triumphs of 20th century science was a theory of quantum electrodynamics where Richard Feynman puts the accuracy akin to measuring the width of North America to the width of a human hair. Yet it is not absolute.
Laplace in the 19th century made the boast that if he had all the knowledge of the current state of the world that he could predict the future to infinity. In the 20th century however it was shown that one could not do such a thing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle prevents absolute knowledge in such a manner, that as observers there is a limit to observation. If modern physics is indeed correct, then it is impossible to expect absolute truth.
But all is not lost. It's important to remember just what you are sitting in front of now. The computer that is allowing you to see this message is a device whereby the flow of electrons through semi-conducting material allows for logic gates. An average device sitting in any given home in the western world these days is capable of mathematical power that rivals the whole human species. The success of the scientific endeavour can adequately be captured in the pervasiveness of applications of knowledge in civilisation. Skyscrapers, rockets, global satellite networks, global communications network, supercomputers, eradication of diseases, vaccinations, antibiotics, turkeys, etc. The list goes on and on.
Long story short, science works. It's endeavour is far from perfect, it has the problems associated with human observation and inference, and it's limited by our place and time in association with observation. Say tomorrow a lab through mimicking natural processes is able to get from inorganic chemicals to replicating protocells - that scientists are able to achieve abiogenesis in the lab. This wouldn't solve how life arose on this planet, we don't have the ability to see exactly what happened. Rather it gives us a model for how it could.
Science doesn't deal in TruthTM. It's a means of modelling reality, working out how reality works. Our desire for a God's eye view is something unobtainable, and a dangerous endeavour. Science is what we can know despite being fallible, the wise words of Jacob Bronowski in his wonderful series The Ascent Of Man. Even better is the wise words of Obi-Wan Kenobe "Only a Sith talks in absolutes". It seems that those who aspire to absolute knowledge are pushing themselves down a dangerous path. It leads to intolerance, a rigidity of dogmatism that any person should wish to avoid. To err is human, instead we find those trying to control others by making absolute moral proclamations unfettered by consequences or rightness.
Unlike other rebuttals, I want to finished with the aforementioned Bronowski from an episode of The Ascent Of Man called Knowledge or Certainty. Early in the episode he made the profound pronouncement "There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy." The following video sums up the notion of absolute knowledge for me.
Friday, 25 December 2009
Part 5: Logic
From the series: 6 Ultimate Reasons Not To Be An Atheist?
#5 Atheists cannot believe in the absolute laws of logic
It seems like the ultimate defeater argument and destructive to any empiricist. As it is laid out, logic indeed cannot be empirically measured, nor can it be proven by example. Take two blocks and two more blocks and one has four blocks. If one were to measure this empirically, then the problem of induction would apply. We couldn't take two apples and two apples and be certain that there would be four apples, or that if we repeated the experiment that it would give the same result.
So there are in effect universals, and it's these universals that are means to understand the empirical data. So the universals aren't empirically-derivable in the same sense as forces. We empirically measure the force of gravity, but while we can measure the the sum of angles on a drawn triangle, the drawn triangle is only a representation of the idea of a triangle. No amount of drawn triangles will be sufficient to draw the conclusion that a triangle must add up to 180 degrees.
The problem being is that if these abstract forms aren't measurable in nature, then how can it come to be that they are universals? While gravity almost certainly exists and is measurable, the same cannot be said for the law of identity or the law of non contradiction or the law of excluded middle. Even 2 + 2 = 4 cannot be understood to be a universal unless there is a form by which it could be universal.
So again it's pertinent to ask whether it is necessary. It would seem like it is necessary if logic is the basis of all thought, but to explore the concept some more. Say logic is a human-derived system, that the law of identity is something that the human mind has created in order to understand the world. Does it make it any less wrong to build an argument on the basis of logic without it being universal?
To put it another way, does being able to add 2 and 2 to get 4 rest on the ability to account for the abstract itself? Here I could contend otherwise, it's not contingent to put mathematics as anything other than a human construct to be able to use it. Do I need to account for the existence of a shovel in order to use one? No. But the fact that a shovel exists needs some explanation. So in there I will concede that yes the laws of logic do require explanation.
So how would positing a god help with this? I don't think it will for the same reason as I don't think that positing a god helps with morality. It comes back to a question of God's omnipotence, the old classic of whether God can make a four-sided triangle. Now one might say "that's absurd" by very definition a triangle has to have three sides so if it had 4 sides it's not a triangle. And thus the absurdity of the proposition is shown.
Are the laws of logic dictated by God? In other words, could the laws of logic be anything other than they are? Is the law of identity true only because God says it is, or is the truth of the law of identity external to the truth of God? If it's external to the truth of God, then how does theism solve this problem?
It could be that the law of identity is only true because God says so. But consider the implications for this position. Take the abstract of 2 + 2 = 4. If it were that theism solves this problem, then 2 + 2 = 4 is only true while God holds it to be true. It could be on a whim that 2 + 2 = 5, or 2 + 2 = pi. This clearly is absurd, the absolute nature of 2+2=4 is undermined by the fact that it couldn't be any other way.
So to that objection, it might be that the laws of logic are absolute and external to any notion of a deity. However, as an atheist you don't have the ability to recognise absolutes. So on that...
We ask the third question, how can an atheist account for the absolute nature of the laws of logic? They are self-evident. If they can't be any other way then what more needs to be said? Bertrand Russell in The Problems Of Philosophy gives a good account of universals and out they can be distinguished from matters of observation. That there are some probable truths and some universal truths.
Look at the text typed here. Immediately to the left of the word "typed" was the word "text". Regardless of the meaning of the words themselves the relationship in position is absolute. "text" is left of "typed" thus a universal relationship is established. Just as the relationship between two apples and two more apples being put together makes four apples. The general principle of relationships is based on universals.
Apples (the particular) is contingent on our observations, but the general principle underneath is not. We don't need to see that two phones and two more phones makes four phones, and two tissues and two more tissues makes four tissues. The relationship is self-evidently true.
This doesn't address the question of how we come to know these absolutes. Take something like a circle. Now when we see something circular, it's never an exact circle - only the appearance of a circle. One could draw a circle, take measurements and use that observation to reason about the circle, but the idea of the circle cannot be derived empirically. How would one measure pi for example? Now pi can be worked out mathematically from the idea of a perfect circle.
So to cut a long story short, to think of logic in the same way as boiling water is misleading. Although experience may be at the core of both, there is a means to distinguish between the abstract and the actual. The abstract holds absolute because it is not a measurement of reality, but of relationships that are universal. The laws of logic are not arbitrary concepts cooked up by the mind, but self-evident truths about reality. As for knowing probabilistic truths...
#5 Atheists cannot believe in the absolute laws of logic
It seems like the ultimate defeater argument and destructive to any empiricist. As it is laid out, logic indeed cannot be empirically measured, nor can it be proven by example. Take two blocks and two more blocks and one has four blocks. If one were to measure this empirically, then the problem of induction would apply. We couldn't take two apples and two apples and be certain that there would be four apples, or that if we repeated the experiment that it would give the same result.
So there are in effect universals, and it's these universals that are means to understand the empirical data. So the universals aren't empirically-derivable in the same sense as forces. We empirically measure the force of gravity, but while we can measure the the sum of angles on a drawn triangle, the drawn triangle is only a representation of the idea of a triangle. No amount of drawn triangles will be sufficient to draw the conclusion that a triangle must add up to 180 degrees.
The problem being is that if these abstract forms aren't measurable in nature, then how can it come to be that they are universals? While gravity almost certainly exists and is measurable, the same cannot be said for the law of identity or the law of non contradiction or the law of excluded middle. Even 2 + 2 = 4 cannot be understood to be a universal unless there is a form by which it could be universal.
So again it's pertinent to ask whether it is necessary. It would seem like it is necessary if logic is the basis of all thought, but to explore the concept some more. Say logic is a human-derived system, that the law of identity is something that the human mind has created in order to understand the world. Does it make it any less wrong to build an argument on the basis of logic without it being universal?
To put it another way, does being able to add 2 and 2 to get 4 rest on the ability to account for the abstract itself? Here I could contend otherwise, it's not contingent to put mathematics as anything other than a human construct to be able to use it. Do I need to account for the existence of a shovel in order to use one? No. But the fact that a shovel exists needs some explanation. So in there I will concede that yes the laws of logic do require explanation.
So how would positing a god help with this? I don't think it will for the same reason as I don't think that positing a god helps with morality. It comes back to a question of God's omnipotence, the old classic of whether God can make a four-sided triangle. Now one might say "that's absurd" by very definition a triangle has to have three sides so if it had 4 sides it's not a triangle. And thus the absurdity of the proposition is shown.
Are the laws of logic dictated by God? In other words, could the laws of logic be anything other than they are? Is the law of identity true only because God says it is, or is the truth of the law of identity external to the truth of God? If it's external to the truth of God, then how does theism solve this problem?
It could be that the law of identity is only true because God says so. But consider the implications for this position. Take the abstract of 2 + 2 = 4. If it were that theism solves this problem, then 2 + 2 = 4 is only true while God holds it to be true. It could be on a whim that 2 + 2 = 5, or 2 + 2 = pi. This clearly is absurd, the absolute nature of 2+2=4 is undermined by the fact that it couldn't be any other way.
So to that objection, it might be that the laws of logic are absolute and external to any notion of a deity. However, as an atheist you don't have the ability to recognise absolutes. So on that...
We ask the third question, how can an atheist account for the absolute nature of the laws of logic? They are self-evident. If they can't be any other way then what more needs to be said? Bertrand Russell in The Problems Of Philosophy gives a good account of universals and out they can be distinguished from matters of observation. That there are some probable truths and some universal truths.
Look at the text typed here. Immediately to the left of the word "typed" was the word "text". Regardless of the meaning of the words themselves the relationship in position is absolute. "text" is left of "typed" thus a universal relationship is established. Just as the relationship between two apples and two more apples being put together makes four apples. The general principle of relationships is based on universals.
Apples (the particular) is contingent on our observations, but the general principle underneath is not. We don't need to see that two phones and two more phones makes four phones, and two tissues and two more tissues makes four tissues. The relationship is self-evidently true.
This doesn't address the question of how we come to know these absolutes. Take something like a circle. Now when we see something circular, it's never an exact circle - only the appearance of a circle. One could draw a circle, take measurements and use that observation to reason about the circle, but the idea of the circle cannot be derived empirically. How would one measure pi for example? Now pi can be worked out mathematically from the idea of a perfect circle.
So to cut a long story short, to think of logic in the same way as boiling water is misleading. Although experience may be at the core of both, there is a means to distinguish between the abstract and the actual. The abstract holds absolute because it is not a measurement of reality, but of relationships that are universal. The laws of logic are not arbitrary concepts cooked up by the mind, but self-evident truths about reality. As for knowing probabilistic truths...
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