Theism-Powered Science

Actually, being a theist *is* an advantage in scientific inquiry. Fully developed, it is the realization of ultimate personhood assumed necessarily to be a logically referred-to mind-related system which necessarily influences all finite minds regardless of their views or the subject or nature of their inquiry, including the assumptions of science generally as well as empirical research specifically.

Cognitive propriety depends on an already-existing mind structure as guiding backdrop of conscious awareness, not just some independent or asietic cognitive ether of supervisory assumptions. Assumptions don't exist in the absence of mind. And an operating mind structure is a mind, by the very fact of its operations.

Theism produces a far greater purpose, and therefore motivation, since it's universal, necessary, and assumes a God-mind that guarantees an ultimate enduring significance and reliability to all inquiry, science-related or not. Ethics and morality take on a greater meaning and significance because of the existence of God. Reality is not just the universality of causal law and matter in motion, although universal causality is a prior condition for the possibility of finite moral activity.

The incentive of thought and life is limitless with theism, because everlasting significance and meaning are possible only if God exists. Oh, and by the way, they're also necessary.

That doesn't mean that an atheist's commitment or integrity etc. cannot equal the theist. It can and sometimes exceeds that of many theists (as in the case of some personal longtime friends who are atheist). But theism has certain motivational, ennobling, and visionary features that an atheist perspective simply does not have, although for many atheists it either does not need them or else already has them in somewhat analogous---although still not strictly equivalent---senses.

Mondo Gnu Atheists

If I were asked to narrow down what characterizes the New Atheists to a single trait, it would have to be immaturity. In tone, in argument style, in philosophical sophistication, in grasp of social workings, in ability to assess consequences to behavior, and in emotional development, they just come off as incredibly juvenile.

--The Deuce over at Phaser's blog

I notice this too. They're not exhibiting rational and scientific precision or logical exactitude in their *own* tirades against belief in God. Yet that's what they accuse believers in God of being lax about.

And in the case of most believers---they're right. However, that doesn't get them a pass on their own views and arguments.

But not living up to their own standards *does* get them noticed as having blinked.

They really shouldn't make it so easy.

Borrowed Splendor

A commenter on Ed's blog recently claimed that intellect is completely originated from the brain.

Here's the latest of my response. I'll edit significantly in the next day or so.

How do you get true from "comes from the brain"? By "true" are you meaning anything additional to origination in the brain? Another way of putting it is: Is ascribing truth to a claim *anything* beyond a repeat of "comes from the brain"? If not, then "X is true" simply means "X comes from the brain". If it *does* mean anything beyond "comes from the brain", then materialism is thereby contravened.

But more fundamentally, how could origination in the brain be *known*---as anything *beyond* mere brain origination---since that state or activity of intellect would *itself* be merely another brain-originated event, and in that case, its status as "knowledge" is superfluous to brain events. But that would fly in the face of the original claim against intellect being distinct from brain matter or events thereof.

A lot of the garbage by a handful of commenters over at Feser's (phaser's) blog is either self-referentially inconsistent (I *am* going to turbo Kordig's article on this, by the way) or in the case of anti-transcendentalism, made up of unargued universal claims/denials and with apparently no need to qualify the truth value of those claims themselves---shock---with regard to either space or time.  We must all accept the good news of the negation any transcendental method (maybe even the possibility if we're lucky), and spread the gospel of this timeless and even spaceless truth by restricting the possibility of methods of truth. Plus---an added bonus---this claim is itself part of the method of obtaining truth (which means it is it's *own* reason for its *own* truth) that, well, frankly, *transcends* (amazing, just amazing), in the universality of its predications, any claims about there being some transcendental method for attaining truth.

No argument needed. (Call now, and we'll ship a bonus Keyword Rotation System for making *any* view true---and *universally* true at that---which is yours to keep even if you decide not to accept our proprietary universal truth products) And any challenge to this is just another claim to an illusory transcendental method by definition, since the claim limits methods of truth to non-transcendental only. Which, "may then seem to require an eternal glorification in the motto: 'Damn you Jack; I'm fireproof!'"*

Flew, Antony. God: A Critical Inquiry, first page of Chapter 3, page 52. The remark was about interpretive slights of hand attempted by Christian theologians with regard to evil (which, curiously enough, Flew was a groundless thumper about, as I've pointed out several times on this blog) and God's assumed goodness. Go figure.

The Operating System That Won't Go Away

To merely *approach* the question of the existence of God, I'm already using an intellectual perfection standard to guide the inquiry.

But you can't just have some abstract standard on its own without a system of mind already in place and already referenced as a separate ideality to manage the analysis, including that of itself. This system that self-assumes mind and the ideality of mind through which one's own mind is identified (and therefore self-regarding), is not referenced in the same way as our limited, flawed, forgetful selves are, especially given their tendency toward willed self-contradiction, but is already there as the ultimate prior evaluative truth-deciding system, invariant, beneficial, and already necessary to even function as a mind in the first place. And a mind must function, to be a mind at all.

But criteria don't evaluate or decide what is true. Only minds do. Standards and criteria make no sense and are strictly irrelevant except to an already existing mind that has preferential regard for such intellectual factors by referring to a separate system of cognitive propriety that is treated as an ideal mind. An ultimate of mind is thereby necessarily an integral aspect of an assumed ultimate mind. It doesn't exist all on its own as some kind of ethereal pervasive abstraction, because by itself---and without mind---it has no meaning, significance, or even existence. Only a mind can evaluate and decide what is true, including what is true about the evaluation of that decision's evaluative criteria itself.

The Presumption of Theism

I do believe the burden of proof is on the theist, otherwise you end up trying to prove why it's not for theism but is for, say, The Great Pumpkin. You're assuming you have the burden of proof to show why you don't have the burden of proof. But that argument too, is not needed if there's no burden to prove the original burden in the first place.

But any atheist claims about the total reality carry the same burden---and it's just as heavy and question-begging as the claim that God exists was ever conceived of being.

In fact, thought criteria and universal assumptions generally are themselves the *real* adjudicative God of both atheists and theists: divine commandment status, epistemic free ride, sort of an unstated agreement to ignore the common-held and irreducibly basic set of predications assumed in the debate itself. What's not to like?

I'll cover this *exhaustively* in the book, and resolve the issue. I side with the philosophical atheists on this one, however. You theists better logic up, or I'm going to help the atheists take you down. And they *do* need help, that much is obvious.

I've said it before: you just can't get good theists *or* atheists anymore. But most theists' epistemology and philosophy of logic and reason are far more damaging to theism than atheist philosophy ever could be.

Thoroughly rationalist-objectivist atheistic assumptions imply that God exists. God's existence is not presupposed by those assumptions. But those assumptions do imply God's existence.

Inferential Values

The theist must at some point simply define goodness in terms of God's will.

But, first, that breaks with all ordinary standards of meaning and morality, for there is no implicit reference to God in any ordinary use of moral terms.

And second, in this sense of goodness, obligation refers *only* to God's will. Therefore, spirituality is nothing more than the worship of infinite power.

Decent appeals to what creatures owe to God become covert statements of the brute facts of God's desire, along with perhaps some built-in expression of the speaker's prudent intention to stay in line, and suggestion that others would benefit from doing the same.

But what were thought to be expressions of grounded praise become mere repetition of similar facts. God being good means that God does whatever God wants to do.

--Heavily redacted. My version of Antony Flew, God: A Critical Inquiry, page 44-45, Section 2.46.

Shifting Gears

Believers in God unwilling to engage atheistic claims and arguments---or are merely against the whole idea---appear to be deliberately deluding themselves.

Don't you know their kids are really proud of them.