Unbelievable! It's Max Andrews!

In his Unbelievable discussion, Max Andrews stated that he has noted in himself, when shaping apologetic arguments, the tendency to beg the question of god.  You may recall that begging the question is, at base, a fallacy of circular reasoning, even though the circularity might be subtle.  It appears that he and I might have some alignment here in that I have noticed, on the part of apologists, the exact same tendency.  That said, while I agree that many arguments for god presume god, or something attributed to god, I would not, however, have necessarily included fine-tuning based arguments in the list.

These are the apologetic arguments that, off the top of my head, include some element of begging the question:

Moral Argument

Ontological Argument

Argument from First Cause

Argument from Resurrection

Argument from Revelation

Argument via Inference to Best Explanation

A good example of the sort of apologetic question begging involved appears in this video by Dave S at theglobalatheism, which concludes that the ontological argument proves no more than that if god exists, then god exists (which is the law of identity: if X, then X, or X=X).

Another video by Dave S, on the argument from resurrection, also hints at begging the question, pointing out that to get a high-ish likelihood that god exists (Pr≈0.5) you need to assume that claims that god raised people from the dead were true.  Think about this for a moment.  If you assume, up front, that claims that your god raised people from the dead are true, this necessitates the assumption that your god actually exists.  You should find this a little odd, because it would mean that, rather than adding support to the notion that the apologist's god exists, the resurrection argument reduces the likelihood of that god's existence.  This seems odd to me.

Anyway, what about the fine-tuning argument.  Does this include an element of begging the question?

Perhaps there is.  The fine-tuning argument first suggests that the universe is fine-tuned (arguing the reality of fine-tuning is a speciality of Andrews' partner in the discussion, Luke Barnes).  But that's insufficient to show god.  To show god, the apologist has to go one step further and argue that nothing else explains fine-tuning other than their god.

This is where a question can be comprehensively begged, on two levels.

Firstly, there is the definition of "god".  As indicated above, it can be argued that the ontological argument can fail based on the fact that it tries to define a god into existence.  The fine-tuning argument fails on the same grounds, because of begging the question.  The apologist pressing this argument is effectively trying to define their god into existence via the claim that their god can do anything that is necessary to prove that existence.  Their god can make a universe that looks like ours and seems incredibly unlikely, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if it ever starts to look like the universe is incredibly likely, the same apologist will argue that their god can make an incredibly likely universe as well.  Or an eternally inflating multiverse.  Or a quantum multiverse.  Therefore, their argument collapses into "if our universe were created by the sort of being that can make universes of the sort that we live in, then our universe was created by the sort of being that can make universes of the sort that we live in, let's call it god".

Secondly, there is the sheer unlikeliness of our universe versus typicality.  In this argument, there is no assumption of a god followed by a conclusion of a god, it's more an assumption of atypicality followed by a conclusion of atypicality which feeds into a "this is so surprising, therefore god" argument.  Ignoring for a moment the fact that multiverse theory arises totally independently of counter-apologetics, if we were to posit a multiverse to solve the unlikeliness of our universe, the counter-counter-apologists then rush in to say that, if there were many different kinds of universes in this multiverse, then our type of universe would be atypical - and, therefore, we have an obligation to explain why we are in this atypical universe.

This atypicality is often expressed in terms of a Boltzmann multiverse, the sort that fails on the basis of Boltzmann brains.  In a Boltzmann multiverse, each universe is a fluctuation of order in a vast, enduring region of comprehensive disorder.  In such a regime, small regions of order would be far more likely than regions like our observable universe and we would indeed be unusual.  However, all this does is put a kibosh on a Boltzmann multiverse.  But no-one is seriously positing a Boltzmann multiverse (I will do so semi-seriously in a later article though).

Nevertheless, when people regurgitate WLC's argument against the multiverse (including people like Barnes) they assume a Boltzmann multiverse and conclude that a multiverse is impossible.  Thus they are arguing that an impossible form of multiverse is impossible, which is trivially true.

The other element of the argument is based on the assumption that we must be typical.  This seems similar to the argument that leads to (counter-apologetically derived) multiverses, but there is a subtle but important difference between very highly unlikely and very highly atypical.  When you bring the multiverse to bear on the problem, the likelihood of a very highly unlikely universe existing increases, towards 100% as N (the number of universes) approaches infinity.  At the same time, as N approaches infinity, the number of atypical universes increases, the number of distinct chances of being atypical increases.

Think of it in terms of jellybeans with the probabilities being indicative, rather than rigorous.  If one in every 100 jellybeans was atypical, then with a sample of 100 jellybeans, you would expect on average that one would be atypical and there would be only chance to be atypical.  If there were 10,000 jellybeans, then we'd expect there to be 100 chances to be atypical.  Agreed, there would still be a lot more typical jellybeans than atypical ones, but the increased number of atypical jellybeans would increase commensurate with sample size.  If we introduced a filter that only permits a certain shape of atypical jellybean to pass through, and used a very large, approaching infinite sample size, then so long as the shape is possible, then we should not be surprised to see one.

This is the situation that we find ourselves in.  We are in a universe which, although atypical, must be the way it is for us to find ourselves in it - because it's precisely the sort of universe in which we could develop as persistent intelligent life (rather than Boltzmann brains).

In other words, our atypicality is very much the point, rather than being a failure of the multiverse to explain our fortuitous existence.

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Curiously enough, Dave S includes, as further reading for the resurrection video, which was posted a year ago, both my Sweet Probability and Max Andrews' dissertation on Bayes Theorem and the resurrection.  Some nice recognition there for both of us, even though I at least hadn't noticed it.

Pimping the Well

The recent comments by Scott Church and Anonymous on "poisoning the well" may reveal an interesting strategy on their part, one that I call "pimping the well".

Their argument is that some people, such as myself, employ a strategy in which the intentions of their opponents are maligned rather than addressing their arguments.  An inherent assumption here is that such efforts will work (or would work if there wasn't a shrill chorus of "poisoning the well" accusations).  This might be the case if the arguments did not stand by themselves and they absolutely needed some authority on the part of the person making the argument.

Scott Church was quick to point out the credentials of Luke Barnes and even went so far as to say that Barnes' "home page (linked from this blog) lists his CV, his research, his popular and refereed publications … everything one needs to vet his claims".  This, I think, is a clear case of "pimping the well".  Look how well (ha ha) credentialed this person is, his arguments must therefore be true.

That's not how it works.  Barnes' arguments would be correct if they are correct, even if he were a complete nobody with no history.   And they'll be incorrect, if they are incorrect, despite having ticked all the boxes.

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While I am at it, I would like to point out another little peculiarity.  Scott first, but then Anonymous, wanted to paint me as guilty of poisoning the well.  Anonymous even wants me to "to withdraw the objections rather than keep defending the indefensible".

It seems to have escaped their notice that, at least in recent times, I have posted two different comments on Barnes' blog: one addressing his paper with Geraint Lewis (reproduced with links intact here) and another addressing his diproton disaster.  These are quite different comments.

The former, which I wrote first but which appeared on his blog later, attacks his stance as a cloaked theist in general and his association with the Templeton Foundation specifically.  I made absolutely no comment on the content of the document that he was referring to, the paper co-authored with Geraint Lewis.  I have no idea what arguments they have deployed, so how could I?

In the latter, I made comments about the arguments in his diproton disaster paper, but I made no comment whatsoever about his theism.

The accusation of "poisoning the well" only stands if you read these comments together and ignore the fact that they are completely different comments addressing different issues, written at different times.  Effectively, what these people (Scott Church and his anonymous admirer) are implying is that since I have questioned Barnes' impartiality in a comment (and a number of my own blog posts), then any comments I make about his arguments, no matter how hygienically (ie without making any attempt to poison the well in my comments on his arguments by acknowledging his theism, be it cloaked or otherwise), then I have fallaciously poisoned my own well, making my objections invalid.  In other words, they are saying it's a fallacy when they (erroneously) claim that I have committed it, but it's not a fallacy when they imply that I am the victim of it (apparently as an "own goal").

One has to admire the chutzpah of these people.  I'd be ashamed to be involved in such duplicity, but they have an extraordinary level of self-confidence and self-righteousness that the rest of us can only aspire to.  And their efforts to be cast in the role of victim are worthy of an Oscar.

Argument from, well, the lack of evidence

In 1905, Albert Einstein published a few papers.  One of them was the basis of Special Relativity (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies).  He had an idea and he argued for it, providing a thought experiment and some equations (Lorentz transformations).  At the end of the paper, he provided a prediction which could be experimentally tested, thus providing evidence in support of his theory if successful and falsification otherwise.  Other experiments were also possible, such as testing for time dilation.

Scientists performed these experiments, confirmed results consistent with Einstein's theory and Einstein moved on to General Relativity.

What they didn't do is provide endless variations on "Philosophical Argument for Special Relativity from ...".  This is because they didn't need to.  They had evidence.

It seems to me that the never-ending stream of arguments of the form "argument from …" merely highlight the fact that theists don't have any actual evidence.  The same applies with pseudo-clever pseudo-logical manipulations that masquerade as arguments (and are sometimes called for within "argument from …" arguments).

In a way, it's almost like the avid ghost-hunters and those people who try to track down the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot, may well be less crazy than some of our theist friends – they are at least trying to obtain evidence for their obsession.  Imagine someone trying to run an ontological argument for the existence of Bigfoot, completely crazy!  Going out into the forests and mountains to obtain evidence for the existence of Bigfoot is merely going to be unsuccessful (at least on the balance of probabilities).

Those arguing for the existence of god, however, seem to have no embarrassment about running these sorts of crazy arguments and then claiming that these arguments are in themselves "evidence"!  (Warning for uninitiated, apologists don't like being called crazy, I've tried it a few times and they tend not to respond well.)

I think this is one of my major reasons (at least now) for being such a strong atheist, bordering on being an anti-theist (that is I have a negative attitude towards certain types of theists, I'm not anti-god – that would be incoherent, I'm no more anti-god than I am anti-Santa or anti-satan, come to think of it – they're all imaginary).

Every time someone raises a new "argument from …" style argument for their god, I become that little bit more convinced that they are grasping at non-existent straws.

It's also interesting to note that many fallacies, which apologists love to bandy around, also are referred by apologists and other theists to as "argument from …" – a bit of a Freudian slip, perhaps?  That there might be bordering on an argument from ridicule, according to the site linked, an apologetic site, one that is arguing that the following is a logical fallacy:

"The definition of Christianity: the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

To me this doesn't sound like an argument at all, it just sounds like ridicule.  An argument from ridicule might take this form:

If christianity is ridiculous, then it is false

If christianity is false, then god does not exist

Christianity is, by definition, the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree

This is ridiculous

Therefore christianity is false

Therefore god does not exist

I think we can all agree that this argument has more problems than an appeal to ridicule, oops, I mean "argument from ridicule".  For example, a magic sky-fairy could possibly exist even if christianity were false.

Poisoning the Well and Other Crimes

There is little else that a christian apologist likes more than a poor understood and woefully misapplied fallacy.  The case in point is the "poisoning the well fallacy".

What, I hear you ask, is the "poisoning the well fallacy"?  We'll get to that, but the question itself is interesting.  I've seen mention of this fallacy a few times recently, but only within a very limited range.  In other words, if you go to specific web-sites or forums and hang around for any amount of time, you will hear poisoning the well mentioned, but in the rest of your life, you may not hear it mentioned at all – unless you are an historian or you're a right-wing nut-job and/or christian apologist.

Most recently, I've been accused of the committing the fallacy myself.  Here's that accusation:

neopolitan,

“I’m astounded to see that this grant has, as its source, Templeton World Charity Foundation/Research Support…”

I’m astounded to see you questioning Luke’s objectivity when you can’t even recognize a poisoning the well fallacy in your own comments. Any mediocre high school student studying philosophy would’ve known to avoid this… you didn’t. If there are issues with Luke’s objectivity or funding they will reveal themselves in flawed datasets and/or faulty analysis. This is what you need to demonstrate if you want to make a credible case. So far you have not, here or at your own blog. In any event you certainly aren’t going to do so by questioning his motives, especially when they haven’t kept him from avoiding basic logical blunders you’ve fallen for or led to his published research failing peer-review.

If I were you I’d steer clear of poisoning the well not only because it’s fallacious, but because it can be turned against you with a great deal of force.

Luke is operating from “a covert position as a theist” you say…? Well he’s clearly stated that he’s a theist in this forum and elsewhere. His home page (linked from this blog) lists his CV, his research, his popular and refereed publications… everything one needs to vet his claims. If there’s anything “covert” in all that I’m not seeing it. Your blog on the other hand tells us… nothing. You show an email, an empty “About Me” section, an icon, and a note that says you’ve been on blogger.com since June 2012. No CV, no publications refereed or otherwise… nothing whatsoever that might tell us whether you’re qualified to speak on this or any other topic. As for the “objectivity” of atheism (yours or anyone else’s)… countless examples can be documented of where an atheist agenda led to all sorts of reckless scholarship, including (but not restricted to) ignorance of science, ignorance of philosophy and history, cherry picking, math errors, citing gossip spoof sites as legitimate sources, and even deliberately falsifying information, the latter of which is outright negligence.

You need to up your game Sir… ;-)

Well, thank you for your interest, Scott Church, of scottchurchdirect.com (apparently a gossip spoof site, but perhaps I am misunderstanding the intent of his link).  I was going to protest loudly about the list of crimes tacked onto the end of this comment, but it appears that Scott has protected himself by being vague as to who has committed these crimes.  At least the links he provides, when he provides them, indicate that there were other suspects (Richard Dawkins in one cherry picked example – the arguments in the God Delusion do not hinge on the specifics regarding the ravings of Pat Robinson – and Lawrence Krauss in another).

I find it interesting that, according to Scott Church, Luke Barnes is a theist and he (Barnes) has admitted as much somewhere on his blog.  Luke hasn't (so far) complained about that characterisation.  But then again, I've not seen him complain about being labelled as an atheist either, Richard Carrier has Barnes listed as an atheist.  But perhaps Barnes has complained privately.  J.W.Wartick mentions Barnes (now) as a "cosmologist blogger", but initially referred to him as an "atheistic blogger" (there's a link back service active on Letters to Nature).  It sort of makes sense for a theist like Barnes to go out of his way to correct his theist allies, but leave his atheist opponent's errors untouched.

I'd be interested to see where Barnes fully decloaks as a theist, if he actually has anywhere.  Perhaps Scott can be more forthcoming.

And then there's the question of covertness.  Scott accuses me of being covert, and by extension of hypocrisy because I have accused Barnes of being "a covert theist" (and here) – I have also accused him of being "a cloaked theist" – while maintaining anonymity on my part.

True, I am anonymous, but as a consequence I am not a public figure, I don't have a platform and less can be reasonably demanded of me.  Any arguments I make have to stand or fall on their own merits, I cannot point to my academic papers, or degrees, or the adulation of fawning wannabe apologists (if there were some sort of atheist equivalent to the fervent followers of people like WLC and those who support him in his apologetic mission, like Luke Barnes).  In any event, I am accusing Barnes of being coy about his theism and his theism is relevant because of his fixation with Fine Tuning.  He knows as well as I do that for anyone to be at all credible as a proponent of Fine Tuning they have to be working from a purely scientific background.  For this reason, I suspect, Barnes has wanted to keep his theistic leanings quiet.  If Barnes is a raving theist with apologetic aspirations, then his interest in Fine Tuning is tainted.  He knows it.  I know it.  But Scott Church either doesn't know it, or doesn't quite understand it.

And, thus, we come to poisoning the well.

Scott's complaint, as far as I can work out, relates to either my accusation that Barnes is a theist (thus pointing out that his work on Fine Tuning is tainted by his theistic partisanship) or my pointing out that Barnes is compromised by his association with Templeton.  Is either of these a case of poisoning the well?

I don't think so.  Let's look at Scott's link to the Wikipedia entry on what he calls the "poisoning the well fallacy".  We are told that:

Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a rhetorical device where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864). The origin of the term lies in well poisoning, an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army, to diminish the attacking army's strength.

It's not strictly speaking a fallacy after all, but a rhetorical device.  However, it can be a special case of ad hominem, so perhaps we can let this slide.

There are other problems though.  Poisoning the well is supposed to be pre-emptive.  Nothing I've provided about Barnes has been pre-emptive.  Also, going from the example provided by Wikipedia, the poisoning has to be irrelevant to issue at hand – and Barnes' theism is not irrelevant to the issue at hand.  So, your Honour, I plead "not guilty".

I'd also like to point out that, in pointing out my anonymity the way Scott did, he may well have been attempting a bit of well-poisoning himself – perhaps as a demonstration of how they could be turned against me "with a great deal of force": You shouldn't listen to this guy, he's hasn't got a detailed history of himself on his blog and he hasn't told everyone his name!

My arguments don't rest on my personal history or my name, Mr Church, so your attempts fail.  Please try again.

Planting a Special Plea for Warrant

Putting out a Warrant for Plantinga

If William Lane Craig were the Crown Prince of Christian Apologists then Alvin Plantinga would be one of his key advisors.  A couple of times now I have found that arguments coming out of WLC’s mouth had actually originated in the brain of Plantinga.  Given the damage that could be wrought by an apologist with some intelligence and formal training, I thought that Plantinga might be worth a closer look.

This led directly to me listening to a couple of longer presentations by Plantinga, for example an Unbelievable interview hosted by Justin Brierly in which Stephen Law also took part and a “debate” between Plantinga and Daniel Dennett.   This article draws quite heavily on the latter.

The engagement between Plantinga and Dennett was titled “Debate: Science and Religion: Are they compatible?” but it was not really a debate.  It was structured like this:

·         Plantinga (43 minutes) – defence of the proposal that science and religion are compatible, consisting in the main of a basic sketch of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism together with a reference to the Irreducible Complexity argument of Michael Behe.

·         Dennett (35 minutes) – attack on the proposal that science and religion are compatible, basically by indicating that religion can only be considered compatible with science if one accepts gratuitous claims and that any compatibility that religion has with science exists only to the extent that the claims of religion are not testable

·         Plantinga (10 minutes) – response to Dennett

·         Question and Answer session (17 minutes)

Plantinga spent a lot of time going over his probability theory, a version of which I have already addressed elsewhere, but I want to focus on two things he said.  The first is this little chunk of Christian goodness:

…if theistic belief is true then it probably doesn’t require propositional evidence for its rational acceptability.  As I argued in this book, Warranted Christian Belief, if theistic belief is true, then very likely it has both rationality and warrant in the basic way; that is not on the basis of propositional evidence.  If theistic belief is true then very likely there is a cognitive structure something like John Calvin’s sensus divinitatus, an original warranted source of theistic belief.  This way, belief in God, like belief in other minds, has its own source of rationality and warrant and doesn’t rely on arguments from other sources for these estimable qualities.  The demise of the theological argument, if indeed evolution has compromised it, is perhaps little more of a threat to rational belief in God than the demise of the argument from analogy for other minds is to rational belief in other minds.

To put this in context, you might want to know what Plantinga means by “warrant”:

According to Plantinga, warrant involves four factors:

·         the mechanisms producing the belief must be functioning properly;

·         they must be operating in a cognitive environment for which they are suited;

·         they must be operating according to a design plan or aspects of a design plan aimed at arriving at the truth; and

·         the objective probability must be high that operating in this manner will reach the truth.

(James B. Freeman in Acceptable Premises: An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem p44)

Plantinga has argued for a new definition of knowledge, being warranted true belief as opposed to justified true belief (although it could be argued that Plantinga is merely arguing that “warrant” is a better form of justification to those in traditional theories of justification).  I touched on “justified true belief” when discussing my world view (when I did so, I was describing an empirical variant of coherentism, not that I would necessarily consider myself an “empirical coherentist”).  Because Plantinga wants to replace standard forms of justification with warrant, we might be justified in looking more closely at what both mean.

KNOWLEDGE
Warranted True Belief	Justified True Belief
That which is known is believed	That which is known is believed
That which is known is true	That which is known is true
The belief in that which is known is warranted	The belief in that which is known is justified

Comparing warrant and justification:

Warrant	Justification
Belief is generated correctly	The believer is not deluded
Belief is generated in a suitable environment	The believer is using suitably collated data
Belief generation must be operating according to a “design plan” aimed at arriving at the truth	The believer is using an appropriate method for processing available data to reach a conclusion
Objective probability that the truth will be arrived at via the belief generation mechanism is high	If the believer is not deluded, is using suitably collated data and is using an appropriate method to process available data, then the probability of the believer arriving at the truth will be high

 Plantinga doesn’t really seem to be adding anything to justification, unless his use of the term “design plan” is meant to be literal (which he denies) or if his fourth point is intended to be more than a summation of the previous three.  He does, however, seem to be taking two things away.

It’s difficult to take Plantinga at his word when he writes:

it is perhaps possible that evolution (undirected by God or anyone else) has somehow furnished us with our design plans

and also refers to “belief-forming and belief-maintaining apparatus of powers … working the way it ought to work”.  He could mean this usage to be figurative, in the sense that a materialist atheist with cancer might say “my body isn’t dealing with this problem the way it ought to” meaning “certain cells in my body are reproducing without limitation, leading to the growth of tumors which are not recognised as alien and thus not removed by my body’s defences and this state of affairs will lead to my dying earlier than otherwise would be the case – an outcome which I consider to be suboptimal”.  However, I don’t think so.  I think Plantinga means for the four factors underlying warrant to be understood (by the right audience) approximately as follows:

·         Warranted true belief is generated using a design plan which is intended to arrive at the truth, if

·         the design plan was well crafted so as to lead to a high probability that truth will be arrived at, when

·         the belief is generated according to that design plan, and

·         the belief is generated in an environment which is appropriate for the design plan

If I am correct, Plantinga’s warrant can be summed up as “Warranted true belief is a belief that God expressly designed humans to have”.  Now, iff knowledge (which is defined as warranted true belief) is defined as God given, then the existence of God is a fundamental fact, a basic truth, because without God there is no knowledge.

Note that I used “iff” deliberately, rather than “if”.  The term “iff” means “if and only if”.

This is what we atheists call a theological argument.  Plantinga, on the other hand, calls this a “philosophical” argument.

Try reading through the extract from Plantinga’s presentation again.  I’ll help by converting the phrase “if theistic belief is true” to “if God exists” (see Plantinga’s definition of naturalism as discussed in Planting a Tiger for a justification).  The word “it” becomes “belief in God” in two instances.

…if God exists then belief in God probably doesn’t require propositional evidence for its rational acceptability.  As I argued in this book, Warranted Christian Belief, if God exists, then very likely belief in God has both rationality and warrant the basic way; that is not on the basis of propositional evidence.  If God exists then very likely there is a cognitive structure something like John Calvin’s sensus divinitatus, an original warranted source of belief in God.  This way, belief in God, like belief in other minds, has its own source of rationality and warrant and doesn’t rely on arguments from other sources for these estimable qualities.  The demise of the ontological argument, if indeed evolution has compromised it, is perhaps little more of a threat to rational belief in God than the demise of the argument from analogy for other minds is to rational belief in other minds.

Now some readers might divine from this that Plantinga is saying that you don’t need evidence to believe in God and that believing in God, even in the absence of evidence, would be “very likely” rational.  Some might just read it as saying that logical arguments (resulting in propositional evidence) don’t affect the existence or non-existence of God.  The latter is of course true.

I might have a very good argument that Kim Kardashian does not exist, for example, no-one I know has ever met her.  The brilliance of this argument, however, has no effect whatsoever on the existence or otherwise of Kim (or indeed any other possible form of Kardashian).

However, I suggest that Plantinga really means the former – the very weak claim that iff God exists, then believing in such a God would be rational even in the absence of evidence.  But he goes further.  Time for the second chunk of Christian goodness from that “debate”:

And even if contrary to fact, there were scientific evidence for unguided evolution and hence for atheism, that would by no means settle the issue.  Suppose there is scientific evidence against theism, it doesn’t follow that theism is false or that theists have a defeater for their beliefs, or that theistic belief is irrational, or in some other way problematic.  Perhaps there is also scientific evidence or otherwise for theism.  But second and more important, as I mentioned, if theism is true, it is likely that it has its own intrinsic and basic source of warrant …

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Plantinga said, in a “debate” in which he was arguing that religion and science are compatible, that if there is scientific evidence against theism (noting that evidence against a hypothesis is the only scientific evidence worth having, since hypotheses only survive in their original form as long as there is no evidence against them), then the theist can just ignore that inconvenient scientific evidence and instead rely on the possibility that there might possibly be some evidence for theism or, alternatively, rely on a completely hypothetical sense (sensus divinitatis), for which there is absolutely no scientific evidence at all, as your basic source of “warrant”.  Remembering of course that a warranted true belief looks like this:

“I believe that God made me in such a way that I will believe that God exists, therefore God exists”.

This is, in context, an admission that religion is fully compatible with pseudoscience, but not actual science.

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Just in case anyone is in any doubt, in science if you have evidence against your hypothesis (and by that I mean proper evidence, not false evidence), then your hypothesis is false.  End of story.

You can have evidence which does not support your hypothesis which might not necessarily be a hypothesis killer, but this is usually due to poor framing of the hypothesis or difficulty with obtaining experimental data.  Years of not finding evidence for the Higgs Boson did not disprove the hypothesis that it exists because no evidence against existence of the boson was obtained either.

If you only accept evidence which supports your hypothesis and you ignore any other sort of evidence, then you have pseudoscience.  That approach puts you in the same category as the 9/11 Truthers, Alien Abduction enthusiasts, Loch Ness Monster spotters, astrologers, mediums, water dowsers, shamans, homeopathy practitioners, homotoxicologists, quantum healers, moon landing hoaxers, Holocaust deniers, millenarianists, flat earthers, Nibiru cataclysmists, rumpologists and theists.

Many of the claims of a pseudoscience are not strictly testable but sometimes theists, like the Intelligent Design crowd, make outlandish claims and these can be shown to be false:

God must exist because the eye cannot have evolved naturally – shown to be false

God must exist because irreducible complexity is impossible via evolution – shown to be false

God must exist because evolution is false since it’s ridiculous to imagine that humans evolved from monkeys – shown to be false (the subordinate claim about human descent from monkeys being ridiculous is agreed but it’s irrelevant to the evolution argument since monkeys and humans have a common ancestor – the link isn’t actually proof, per se, but an explanation)

What science can do, and does, is chip away at all the “God must exist because ...” arguments.  Eventually, the theist is left with no undefeated claim for the necessity of God.

What the average theist can then do, and obviously does, is retreat into a form of special pleading (“my hypothesis is special and has God in it, therefore it doesn’t need evidence”).

Explaining Evidence

In On Evidence, I mentioned an exchange between Humble Don and the Shaved Chimp:

Humble Don (HD): It’s theoretically possible that you could be presented with enough evidence to argue you to a different position …

The Shaved Chimp (SC): Oh, sure.

(HD): At which point, you would begin to intellectually doubt Christianity …

(SC): Well, yes, what, wh-what, what those arguments would have to do is explain the evidence better …

(HD): Right.

(SC): … than the Christian claim.

I only briefly touched on it, but this “explain the evidence” seems to be a recurring theme, so I thought I might look more closely at it.

Note closely the shift in focus away from evidence to argument and then to explanation of the evidence.

What the Shaved Chimp seems to be alluding to is a comparison between one claim (the Christian claim) and an opposing claim.  This is fair enough given that they were talking about a newspaper piece by an atheist.  So Humble Don was suggesting that it is theoretically possible to be presented with enough evidence to argue the Shaved Chimp into assuming an atheist position.

Imagine that archaeologists open a cave to find a treasure trove of documentation including early versions of the gospel according to Mark that deviate significantly from the published version, with copious notes indicating that the story is based not only on the “messiah phenomenon” that is common in Judea but also elements of the mythology of India, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Assyria together with some Greek storytelling techniques.  The documentation, dated to before 50CE (via a comprehensively documented event that led to the sealing of the cave), makes absolutely clear that the author considered the story to be fiction and there is no scientific reason to doubt the validity of the documentation.

Can this evidence be explained by the “atheist claim”?

Well, not really.  Why were the documents written?  Unless there’s a documented explanation we simply don’t know why the author wrote them.  We do know that various authors throughout history have written fiction for entertainment or to make some point.  Someone with an atheist inclination might posit that the author had wondered what would happen if the child of a god were to be born into the world of the day (there are plenty of people who believe that if a Jesus like figure was around today, he’d be eliminated rather swiftly).  Such a theory, however, is not an explanation rooted in the “atheist claim”.

Can this evidence be explained by the Christian claim?

Sure, no problem.  The Holy Spirit moved in the world then as it does now.  While the author known as Mark might not have thought that the story was true, the fact that the Holy Spirit selected someone who did not believe the story is immaterial.  The intent of the Holy Spirit in selecting Mark was to ensure the best possible rendition of the Gospel, to express a higher truth than that perceived by Mark himself.

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If your focus is entirely on explaining evidence as it arises, then the Christian claim can always suffice.

The sorts of people who actively seek out evidence (atheists, legitimate scientists and materialists) aren’t looking to explain evidence.  They also have a higher standard when it comes to what constitutes evidence.

The idea that the scientifically inclined don’t try to explain evidence might have Christian apologists snorting into their beards so I had better explain.

In the scientific method, one tries to explain observations, not evidence.  Science, as a method, attempts to integrate our knowledge into a seamless whole.  What science does not do is simply list the observations and then attempt to explain them individually.  As Sean Carroll says in The Great Debate – Has Science Refuted Religion? – “the dumbest, but most accurate, scientific theory would just be a list of everything that ever happened, everywhere in the universe”.  Science sacrifices this level of stupid accuracy in favour of a theoretical framework that is testable and that has predictive power.

(Science is not alone in this.  Not even humans are alone in this.  Any creature that can learn to use tools will use a variation of the scientific method to develop an understanding of a tool in order to use it successfully.)

The steps of the scientific method, put roughly, are:

·         Informal observation

o   An apple falls to the ground

·         Systematic observation

o   Various fruit in the garden fall to the ground, as do leaves and twigs

·         Formulation of a generalised, falsifiable hypothesis

o   “Unless otherwise supported, an object will when released always approach the ground” – if we drop an object and it hangs in the air or rises, then this will prove the hypothesis to be incorrect

·         Testing of hypothesis

o   Systematic release of a variety of items

o   Each test constitutes evidence for or against the hypothesis

·         Falsification of hypothesis

o   A helium balloon when released floats up

o   If a falsifiable hypothesis cannot be shown to be false, it will eventually become a Theory

·         Modification of hypothesis

o   Based on the results of experimentation (evidence) the hypothesis may be either rejected as false or, if appropriate, modified

o   “Unless otherwise supported, an object that is heavier than air will when released always approach the ground”

Theories can serve as the basis for new hypotheses, with the example above, we could posit that objects with mass will accelerate towards each other in proportion to their combined mass divided by their separation.  This new hypothesis would be tested and refined until a Theory remains which is not falsified.  Any new Theory which has more predictive power and which explains a greater range of phenomena will replace lower level theories – as neopolitan’s basic theory of stuff dropping is replaced by Newton’s theory of gravitation which is then replaced by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

This explanation of phenomena and the predictive power of a hypothesis are what are meant when scientists refer to “explanatory power”.

William Lane Craig continually refers to the explanatory power of the God Hypothesis – his whole “Cosmological Argument from Contingency” is predicated on the idea.  Here’s the argument again (from his debate with Lawrence Krauss):

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in its own nature or in an external cause).
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is God.

Later in the debate, while summarising, Craig says:

… I explained that contingent beings are more probable given God’s existence than on atheism. Dr. Krauss will have to say that the existence of contingent beings is just as probable on atheism as it is on theism. But that seems incorrect because atheism has no explanation for the existence of contingent beings.

Note that by “contingent beings” here Craig means things that did not have to exist, but do.

Take a moment for Craig’s words to sink in.  If his words don’t seem silly to you, try reading them again.  Usually, a summarisation papers over the gaping holes in an argument but in this case, the summarisation make absolutely clear that Craig’s argument is incoherent.

First we need to decode the term “probable on” in reference to hypotheses.  If you do a Google search on this term, you will reach two types of uses:

·         a statement is evidence for an hypothesis if and only if the hypothesis is more probable on the statement than before (Florida Philosophical Review)

·         What about the first point of evidence that the existence of contingent beings is more probable on God’s existence than on atheism? (William Lane Craig)

The first usage here is the form you’ll be more likely to see, unless you restrict your search to apologetics sites (and sites critiquing apologetics sites).  It refers to the probability of a hypothesis being affected by the presentation of evidence.  Presumably, a statement is evidence against a hypothesis if and only if the hypothesis is less probable on (the basis of) the statement than before.

The second usage is the sort of misuse of logic that we’ve come to expect from Craig.  Let me rephrase him a little to take out the deceptions:

·         What about the first (point of evidence) argument that the evidence (existence of contingent beings) is more probable on the hypothesis H (God’s existence) than on the hypothesis H’ (atheism)

Can you see it?

I’ll tidy them both up and let you compare them on more even footing:

·         the hypothesis is more probable on the evidence (than another hypothesis) (FPR)

·         the evidence is more probable on the hypothesis (than another hypothesis) (WLC)

Okay, so Craig has it back to front.  No surprise there because he’s trying to defend a hypothesis rather than find a truth.

Looking at his statement again:

… I explained that contingent beings are more probable given God’s existence than on atheism. Dr. Krauss will have to say that the existence of contingent beings is just as probable on atheism as it is on theism. But that seems incorrect because atheism has no explanation for the existence of contingent beings.

and rewording:

·         X argued that:

o   the evidence is more probable on hypothesis H than on hypothesis H’

·         X states that Y must argue that:

o   the evidence is just as probable on hypothesis H’ as on hypothesis H

·         X believes that the argument that (according to X) Y must present is incorrect because

o    hypothesis H’ provides no explanation for the evidence

In other words, Craig is arguing that the probability of evidence is affected by the ability of a hypothesis to explain that evidence.

If you have ever been amazed by the way some theists simply dismiss good evidence against their position and unquestioningly accept any evidence in support, no matter how flimsy it may be, this might give you some clue as to why. 

I cannot explain this good evidence in light of my hypothesis that God exists, therefore I reject this good evidence. (There are no fossils!  Have you looked in a museum? … There are no fossils and no museums!) 

In the light of my hypothesis that God exists, this flimsy evidence is probable because even an idiot can explain it in terms of God, therefore I accept this flimsy evidence. (The Earth is perfectly designed for human habitation - so long as we ignore storms, earthquakes, droughts, solar radiation, disease, large infertile regions, depleted fish stocks, etc etc)