The Euthyphro Dilemma, God as the greatest possible being and the atheistic (finite and contingent) concept of God as a contingent being

The purpose of this post is to show that many of the objections formulated by atheists against arguments for God's existence, are based on a wrong concept of God (or more exactly, a concept of God that the classical theist rejects).

The main objection used by atheists against the notion that objective moral values can be only plausibly grounded in God is the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma, posed by philosopher Plato against an ethics based on (the finite) gods of Greece (note that these finite gods have nothing to do with the infinite God of classical theism, which is defined as the greatest possible being, i.e. a being with superlative-maximal attributes like necessary existence, eternity, all-knowing, all-powerful,. the ground of reality and so forth).

The way to understand what "the greastest possible being" means is simple: If you can think coherently in a greater being than God, then THAT being would be God!. By "greatest" we're talking about qualitative aspects, not quantitative ones. For example, which is greastest, to be the creator of everything or just of a part of it? Obviously the former, because it entails a greatest and ilimited creative power.

Keep in mind this concept of the greatest possible being, because it is essential to the arguments of this post.

The atheistic objection against moral values dependent on God is often formulated in the form of a question: Is the good good because God wills it, or does God will it because it’s good? If the former, then the good is arbitrary; if the latter, then the "good" is independent of God. And both options are supposed to be problematic for the theist (hence, the "dilemma").

I'm astonished by the constant use of this objection by atheists (as if it were a powerful objection, similar to the "What caused God?" objection), because it reveals their deep misunderstanding of the moral argument for God's existence and is telling of their superficiality and wrong concept of God. They have in their minds a strawman.

Note that the first horn of the dilemma (The good is good because God "wills" it) misconstrues the moral argument. This argument doesn't say that "the good" depends on God's "will", it simply says that it depends ultimately on God. In fact, most contemporary theists hold that "the good" is part of God himself, it is, the "good" is a essential property of God as the greatest possible being. It has nothing to do with God's "will" (hence, the charge of arbitrarity is based on a misunderstanding of the argument and the concept of God). Since God cannot change his nature, he cannot change "the good", and hence what is good or bad is not a matter of God's will even if it depends ontologically on God. Atheists, in their hostility to theism and intellectual superficiality, simply cannot get it.

Note that Plato was justified in formulating this argument against the finite gods of Greece, because these gods were voluntaristic finite gods (the Greeks didn't handled the notion of God as the greatest possible being, creator of all the reality. This is why after Plato, the neo-Platonic thinkers, influenced by classical theism, identified Plato's "Good" with God himself).

Note that the second horn of the dilemma (God wills something because it is good) doesn't imply that the good is independent of God: after all, God can will something because it conforms to God's nature (which is the source of the good). For example, God can will that you love other people or be rational, because it conforms with God's loving and rational nature.

But let that pass and let assume that this horn entails that the good is ontologically independent of God. In this case, the existence of the "good" itself (which is a person-relative property) becomes inexplicable. Person-relative properties are called like that precisely because they're connected or attached or dependent or referred to PERSONS. But the if the "good" itself exists objectively and independently of the most essential, necessary and fundamental person in the universe (God) and hence also independent of finite, contingent, non-necessary, less essential and fundamental persons (us), then it is hard to see exactly how such a property is essentially "person-relative". In fact, it would still exists in the absence of any person whatsoever.

On the other hand, it is not clear why God himself has to be submitted to an external standard that He has not created. It would entail that God is ontologically inferior to the "good" itself (in the sense that God created everything, except the good itself and more importantly God has to be submitted to the that standard of goodness in order to be himself qualify as "good", which is absurd).

Note that in this case, God's goodness is not the source of value, and hence not the creator of value. God's creative powers are limited in a matter so essential as the moral properties of existence, which seem clearly absurd for the greatest possible being which is supposed to be the GROUND OF REALITY.

It is not hard to see why atheists don't understand the above argument: they have a crude concept of God as a finite, contingent, created being (not of God as the greatest possible being) and this is why they keep repeating the Euthyphro Dilemma objection against the moral argument (or the more ridiculous "What caused God?" as an objection against the comsological argument).

Spiritually and intellecually, they are impaired to have a proper understanding of God (which, in passing, provide more evidence for Jime's Iron Law).

Atheists' concept of a finite God is evident in their caricatures and silly questions about God:

- "What caused God?" (which implies that God is a caused or created being or object)

-Dawkins' question "Who designed the designer?" (which implies that God is a designed object similar to my shoes or computer or cell phone)

-Silly comparisons of God with Pink Elephants or Spaguetti Monsters (which obviously are finite entities, unwhorty of being called the greatest possible being).

-Michael Shermer's inept definition of God as a being "relatively superior" than us (what would make any alien civilization more advanced than us to become a DEITY... which if discoveried by SETI or any other scientific means, would destroy Shermer's atheism since in Shermer's definition such aliens would be God and atheism is incompatible with the existence of any god = Shermer's advanced alien beings!).

In classical theism, these questions and caricatures of God make no sense, because God is not in the same category of created, finite, contingent, objects. Atheists simply cannot understand this due to spiritual and intellectual factors.

In classical and philosophical theism, God is the greatest possible being in the sense that he's ontologically above all created reality (including moral reality, if it exists) and whatever exists (moral reality, consciousness, spiritual dimensions, universes, spirits, etc.) is dependent ontologically on God. If something exists which doesn't depend on God, then God wouldn't be the greatest possible being and his creative power would be limted (hence, he would be a finite god).

A fine (and embarrassing) example of this typical misconception about God as a finite being is seen in Victor Stenger's parody of the ontological argument, appealing to a "ontological pizza", which he used in his debate with William Lane Craig. Since Stenger is clearly affected by Jime's Iron Law, he cannot see that he's showing publicly his stupidity, irrationality and misunderstanding of the ontologically argument in that parody:

Stenger's silly parody is actually rooted in his intellectual incapacity for understading what a "greatest possible being" means.

In summary, atheists cannot understand the moral argument because they have a wrong concept of God as a finite, created, designed, contingent, ontologically secondary, purely voluntaristic being. This explains their silly comparisons with Pink Elephants, their "what created God" questions, their "If God arbitrarly commands..." (as if God, who is supposed to be the ultimate rational being, would simply command something "arbitrarily" without connection with other aspects of reality, or with God's ultimate purposes) and so forth.

The Euthyphro Dilemma is an egregious expression of this misconcept of God (which, again, in Plato was justified because he used such dilemma against the Greek gods who were finite and contingent, not against the ultimate God of classical theism. I'm sure that if Plato had been familiar with the concept of God as the greatest possible being, he would have identify his notion of "The Good" with such being as its ontological foundation, as done by neo-Platonic thinkers).

If you understand the concept of God as the greatest possible being, then you have to ask yourself: What God is greatest, a God who is essentially by his own nature the source of all moral value, the ontological ground of all reality, including moral and spiritual realities, the sustainer of everything what exists and the creator of all, or a God who cannot create a moral reality, who is not the source of value, who is not the source of objective purposes or meanings in the universe, and who is subjected and submitted to a mysteriously uncreated external standard of value (not created by God nor by anyone else) that God has to respect in order to qualify himself as "good"?

These are deeper questions that theists have to reflect hard, because it determines which kind of supreme being they have in mind.

Thomas Nagel on rationality and the location problem for scientific naturalism

I've been discussing the different aspects of the so-called "Location Problem" for scientific naturalism. In this post I'll comment about one aspect: rationality.

Many atheists consider themselves "rationalists", and defenders of rationality. But it is evidence of their irrationality the fact that they don't understand that the basic premises of the impersonalistic naturalistic worldview makes "rationality" almost impossible, since rarionality requires at least two conditions:

1-Consciousness

2-Free will (in order to respect the laws of logic and evidence, and freely choose what's rational over what's irrational)

Both person-relative features are in variance with the impersonalistic fabric of reality essential to naturalism, and in fact provide good evidence for theism.

Moreover, contemporary naturalists are committed to evolutionary theory and this theory itself (independently of the two features mentioned above) support skepticism regarding our rationality and cognitive faculties. As Charles Darwin himself realized: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" (Darwin's letter to William Graham, July 3rd, 1881,)

As philosopher Alvin Plantinga, has argued in this article: "Now what evolution tells us (supposing it tells us the truth) is that our behavior, (per-haps more exactly the behavior of our ancestors) is adaptive; since the members of our species have survived and reproduced, the behavior of our ancestors was conducive, in their environment, to survival and reproduction. Therefore the neurophysiology that caused that behavior was also adaptive; we can sensibly suppose that it is still adaptive. What evolution tells us, therefore, is that our kind of neurophysiology promotes or causes adaptive behavior, the kind of behavior that issues in survival and reproduction.

Now this same neurophysiology, according to the materialist, also causes belief. But while natural selection rewards adaptive behavior (rewards it with survival and repro-duction) and penalizes maladaptive behavior, it doesn’t, as such, care a fig about true belief. As Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, writes in The Astonishing Hypothesis, “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truth, but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive and leave descendents.

Since natural selection favors useful beliefs (for survival and reproduction) and not true beliefs per se (specially not true beliefs about sophisticated and highly abstract and theoretical topics not directly or indirectly related to survival and reproduction, like mathematics or quantum mechanics), there is not reason to think our cognitive faculties are aimed to the truth (instead of simply being pragmatically useful for crude survival purposes).

Serious and first-rate naturalistic thinkers have realized the problem of rationality in a naturalistic worldview. Leading naturalistic-atheistic philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book The Last Word, wrote: "The problem then will be not how, if we engage in it, reason can be valid, but how, if it is universally valid, we can engage in it... Probably the most popular nonsubjectivistic answer nowadays is an evolutionary naturalism: We can reason in these ways because it is a consequence of a more primitive capacity of beliefs formation that had survival value during the period when the human brain was evolving. This explanation has always seemed to me to be laughably inadequate... The other well-known answer is the religious one. The universe is intelligible to us because it and our minds were made for each other" (p.75)

What Nagel calls the "religious" option, is more properly called the "theistic" option. In theism, the universe is intelligible because, both the universe and human beings, were created by a rational God. Therefore, it is not surprising that our limited and imperfect cognitive faculties (reason, logic, memories, etc.) FIT the real world in more or less accurate ways. In fact, the latter is precisely what we would expect IF theism were true, because in theism we're created in God's image (i.e. sharing, in a limited form, some of God's superlative personalistic attributes, like rationality, capability to knowledge, moral agency, free will, etc.).

But in naturalism, there is not reason to think that our beliefs fit the real world, instead of being only useful for survival and reproduction, specially if the Darwinian evolutionary theory about the mind is true. As naturalistic philosopher of science and biology, and hard-core defender of Darwinism, Alex Rosenberg recognizes "there is lots of evidence that natural selection is not very good at picking out true beliefs, especially scientific ones. Natural selection shaped our brain to seek stories with plots. The result was, as we have been arguing since Chapter 1, the greatest impediment to finding the truth about reality. The difficulty that even atheists have understanding and accepting the right answers to the persistent questions shows how pervasively natural selection has obstructed true beliefs about reality" (The Atheist's Guide to Reality . p.110)

Note carefully, the argument is NOT that natural selection favors only false beliefs. Rather, the argument (at least as developed by Plantinga) is that natural selection is INDIFFERENT to the truth-value of beliefs, provided these beliefs are useful for survival and reproduction (In Rosenberg's view, the problem is even worst because for him natural selection promotes false beliefs and tends to prevent reaching true beliefs. If Rosenberg is right, then it is very likely that most of the beliefs favored by natural selection be false. But let us be more charitable to naturalism).

And since the number of false beliefs which are pragmatically useful is greater than the number of true beliefs, is obvious that natural selection cannot be very good to choose the truth over falsehood.

This implies skepticism regarding our rationality and cognitive faculties. Philosopher Willliam Lane Craig has summarized this argument here:

And note that in this argument, we have assumed that the person-relative features of "consciousness" and "free will" are compatible with (and fit well in) impersonalistic naturalism. This concession is only for the argument's sake (in order to be charitable with the naturalistic project). But this concession is not justified in a large evaluation of naturalism: If naturalism is true, free will doesn't exist and determinism rules.

As naturalist Richard Dawkins strongly argues: "But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car? Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution."

Dawkins clearly perceives the problem of "responsability" and freedom of will (and other "mental constructs" like the "good" or the "evil"), which don't exist in reality, only in our brains. In Dawkins' naturalistic, impersonalistic worldview, we're mere automata governed by physical laws operating on our "physiology, heredity and enviroment".

As consequence, Dawkins' choice of accepting naturalism over theism is ALSO the product of deterministic physical laws, not of Dawkins' free decision to be rational. (Note the irrationalistic implication of Dawkins' own position to favor "reason").

Scientific naturalism is, ultimately, destructive of rationality. It appeals to "reason", "science" and "logic", but its basic impersonalistic premises undercut the possibility that such things do exist.

As consequence, scientific naturalism is essentially and intrinsically irrational.

John Searle on the location problem for scientific naturalism regarding person-relative properties and entities

In other posts, I've discussed the so-called "location problem" faced by scientific naturalists. As mentioned, first-rate naturalists have recognized the problem and, since they find theism wholly impalatable, they try hard to find a solution for the problem inside the naturalist framework.

Commenting on this, world-renown naturalist philosopher John Searle (one of the most important and influential analytic philosophers in the world) has written:

There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy...How do we fit in it?... How can we square this self-conception of ourselfves as mindful, meaning creating, free, rational, etc. agents with an universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles?(Freedom and Neurobiology, pp. 4-5)

The key word in Searle's argument is "entirely". According to scientific naturalism (metaphysical naturalism), the natural world is ENTIRELY physical. And by "physical" we have to understand what physical science (the most basic of all the sciences) tells about matter: Physical matter is mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, mechanical, non-moral, non-ethical, non-conscious, etc.

But if it is what physical things are, and we're physical things, then we're necessarily mindless, meaningless, etc. But our self-perception is different: We are conscious (at least, it seems to be the case), rational, free, moral, etc. Therefore, scientific naturalism is and HAVE TO BE, false.

In order to remain consistent, naturalists have to deny the objective existence of these things (e.g. arguing that we "seem" to be free, but ultimately we're not; or moral values "seem to exist", but actually they don't, they're illusions of our minds projected into the objective world).

This is why scientific naturalists (and atheists who believe in this worldview, if are consistent) have to deny the objective existence of consciousness, free will, objective moral values, objective purposes or meaning and so forth.

Many people don't understand that, because their analysis is too superficial. They simply assume that given that they have strong moral beliefs, or a strong sense of their own rationality, then somehow these things have to be compatible with naturalism. They don't understand that the basic impersonalistic postulates and premises of naturalism implies the non-existence of these person-relative properties.

This is why many atheists don't understand, for example, the moral argument for God's existence. They misrepresent the argument as saying that God arbitrarily commands this or that, or that a moral statement like "Torturing little children is bad" is true, regardless of whether God exists or not.

They don't understand that in their naturalistic worldview, which is essentially impersonalistic, "bad" is a moral, and hence a person-relative property which cannot exist objectively in a world " that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles", and "little children" are conceived in non-personalistic ways as special configurations of matter (biological matter which essentially is not different than other physical things). So, arguing that torturing little children is "bad" or "wrong" (in any actual, ontological sense of the word) is clearly in variance with impersonalistic worldviews, and certainly the existence or non-existence of God is relevant to this problem, because if God exists, then the fabric of reality is ultimately personalistic and the person-relative properties like moral ones makes sense. If God doesn't exist, then is not clear that the fabric of reality is personalistic (even if contingent and accidental "persons", evolved randomly from brute matter, like you or me happens to exist) and in this case moral and other person-relative properties become inexplicable and the suspicion of naturalists regarding the existence of consciuousness, minds, free of the will, etc. become more plausible and justified.

For example, in her debate with William Lane Craig, prominent atheist moral philosopher Louise Anthony said "The universe has no purpose, but I do… I have lots of purposes…. It makes a lot of difference to a lot of people and to me what I do. That gives my life significance… The only thing that would make it [sacrificing her own life] insignificant would be if my children’s lives were insignificant. And, boy you better not say that!"

In reply to her, Craig responded, “But Louise, on atheism, their lives are insignificant.” Anthony interjected, “Not to me!”

Many people predictably misinterprets this exchange, because they're too superficial. They misunderstand Craig's reply as saying that "Atheists cannot consider their children's lives significant". This is NOT Craig's point. (In fact, I'm sure that mosts atheists, even the irrationalistic ones affected by Jime's Iron Law, consider their children's lives as significant, and probably Craig would agree with this).

Craig's point is NOT about the moral beliefs of atheists, but about the ontological foundation (in the fabric of reality) of those beliefs. If as Searle says, the world is entirely and essentially meaningless, then the belief that something is meaningful (e.g. the lives of Anthony's children) is FALSE. The fact that theists and atheists stick to this false belief won't change this objective fact, if naturalism is true.

This is why Craig's reply to Anthony has to be understood properly as saying: "In atheism (more specifically, in the most plausible and scientific form of atheism known as naturalism), given its essentially impersonalistic conception of everyhting what exists, the concept of "significant" or "meaningful" make no sense in any objective sense".

If Anthony were consistent, she would agree with Craig's point, because her worldview has exactly these implications.

In fact, note Anthony's inept objection. She concedes that there is not objective purpose or meaning in the universe (which is Craig's entire point!): "The universe has no purpose", but then she asserts her subjective purposes as if they're relevant to Craig's point: " but I do… I have lots of purposes"

Note the reference to personal subjects "I", "me", etc.

Note carefully that her reply doesn't refute the point made by Craig, since he is not arguing that atheists don't have subjective purposes. What he's arguing (in full consistence with the features of naturalism recognized by contemporary naturalists like Searle and Anthony) is that if naturalism is true there is not OBJECTIVE purposes or meanings. And this is perfectly compatible with Louise's subjective purposes regarding her children, with Marcus Borg's subjective purposes of destroying the exclusivistic view of Jesus on behalf of religious pluralism, with Kobe Bryant's subjective purposes of being the NBA MVP this year, with Jime Sayaka's subjective purposes of making clear my arguments for my readers, with the atheistic readers' subjective purposes of reading uncharitably and disagreeing with whatever I write here, or with William Lane Craig's subjective purposes of defending traditional Christianity.

The existence of a bunch of subjective purposes in people's minds don't imply the existence of objective purposes in the fabric of reality.

I'm astonished by the replies of first-rate atheistic moral philosophers when faced with a sophisticated defense of the moral argument for God's existence. They simply don't understand the argument, or they affect to misunderstand it (I'm sure some of them understand it, because in their books they themselves sometimes highlights the problems of objective moral values in a physicalist world... they simply affect to misunderstand the argument in order to make naturalism to appear stronger when debating with theists in front of audiences ignorant of their own academic work).

Their weak replies, which are incompatible with their own actual philosophical views, is evidence for the soundness of contemporary versions of the moral argument, as properly understood in its broad metaphysical context.

Shopping list metaphysics vs serious metaphysics, the location problem for naturalism and the metaphysical superiority of theism

Some naturalistic thinkers assume what we could call a "shopping list" way to do metaphysics (remember that metaphysics studies the nature and constitution of reality). This means that they assume metaphysical naturalism (roughly, the view that the physical world, and only the physical world, exists) and from this they begin his metaphysical "shopping". (In the above picture, you can imagine a list including "evolution", "planets", "intelligent design", "near-death experiences", and the naturalist marking only evolution and planets, but ignoring near-death experiences and intelligent design)

From the assumption of naturalism, they try to explain the facts of the world, selecting carefully only the facts that fit their worldview. Physical facts fit perfectly and easily in this naturalistic worldview, but other facts or putative facts like consciousness, intelligence, moral values, mathematical objects, paranormal phenomena, etc. don't fit well or easily in this worldview. As consequence, shopping list naturalistic thinkers are forced either to DENY the existence of these phenomena, or alternatively, accept them as BRUTE (unexplained) facts. (Note that in both cases, the naturalistic position cannot be refuted, whatever the facts. The facts are twisted, renamed, modified, redefined or altered in any way as to fit the naturalistic-atheistic worldview. This kind of naturalists are intellectual cowards).

This is the position of many online atheists, some writers for infidels.org website, popular atheist writers and, generally, unsophisticated thinkers. A fine example of this egregious intellectual unsophistication by a naturalist is Michael Shermer and his Shermer's Last Law (see my post about it here).

In contrast, serious and sophisticated metaphysical naturalistic thinkers, even if beginning also from naturalism, realize the shopping list approach makes their position largely unfalsifiable, and in order to avoid such self-delusion, they explicitly DRAWS the implications of naturalism and confront these implications with the facts. If the facts fit the implications, naturalism survives; if not, naturalism is refuted. These naturalists are honest enough as to put their worldview under empirical and philosophical test. They're intellectually honest.

These naturalists have used the concept "The Location Problem" precisely as a name for the problem of placing certain facts or phenomena in the naturalistic framework.

First-rate naturalistic philosopher and metaphysician Crispin Wright comments on this problem in this way:

"A central dilemma in contemporary metaphysics is to find a place for certain anthropocentric subject-matters—for instance, semantic, moral, and psychological—in a world as conceived by modern naturalism: a stance which inflates the concepts and categories deployed by (finished) physical science into a metaphysics of the kind of thing the real world essentially and exhaustively is. On one horn, if we embrace this naturalism, it seems we are committed either to reductionism: that is, to a construal of the reference of, for example, semantic, moral and psychological vocabulary as somehow being within the physical domain—or to disputing that the discourses in question involve reference to what is real at all. On the other horn, if we reject this naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology—and so take on a commitment, it can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism". (Wright's brilliant contribution to the book Conceivability and Possibility. p. 401. Emphasis in blue added)

Please, read slowly and carefully again Wright's argument, because it contains a very powerful insight and goes straight to the core of the problem.

Let's comment it in more detail:

1-Wright realizes the problem of placing certain phenomena or facts (which he calls anthropocentric subject-matters, like semantic, moral and psychological facts) in a naturalistic worldview which, ultimately and essentially, is NOT anthropocentric. In a different terminology, I've discussed the same problem in a previous post about worldviews which are "person-relative" (like theism) and "impersonal" (like naturalism).

You can formulate the problem like this: in a world conceived by scientific naturalism, the world is essentially insentient, impersonal, mechanistic and hence NOT anthorpocentric (= non-personal). So, where are you to place in that worldview, person-relative (anthropocentric) facts and phenomena like consciousness, semantic properties, moral values, mathematical objects only known through rational minds, free will, the causal efficacy of intention, etc.?

Can you understand the problem? If not, please read again all the section above, because it is essential to the following argumentation.

2-Confronted with these problematic facts, the consistent naturalists have only two plausible choices (while remaining fully consistent naturalists), which put them in a dilemma:

a)Reduction: To identity the facts in question with physical facts (e.g. psychological facts with certain physical behaviours, or semantic properties with brain processes).

b)Denialism: To deny that those facts exist.

Note that the option "reduction" is very unlikely. Consider moral values like "honesty" or "impartiality". These values are not physical entities nor properties (even though they can be instantiated in persons and in personal situations). By themselves, they have not matter, energy, not location in space or time. If they exist, they certainly are not physical objects.

Or consider semantic properties that include "propositional content" and intentionality (=the property to refer to things outside themselves). The statement "Jime's blog is great" refers to Jime's blog (note that the statament is in your mind, but my blog is outside your mind, so your mind is referring to something outside the mind itself).

Physical objects don't "refer" to anything. They're connected simply in virtue of physical laws and causality, not by semantic relations of "reference" (reference being a property of concepts and propositions, which exist in people's minds; and causality and physical laws being properties of physical-mechanical objects).

Note that "reduction" of semantic properties to neurophysiological processes won't work, because these cerebral processes (like any other physical process) is governed by physical laws of causality, not by "reference" or intentionality. So, instead of explaining reference, it is actually explained AWAY by the reductive naturalistic method.

As naturalistic philosopher Alex Rosenberg concedes: "It is of course obvious that introspection strongly suggests that the brain does store information propositionally, and that therefore it has beliefs and desire with “aboutness” or intentionality. A thoroughgoing naturalism must deny this, I allege. If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires"

A configuration of matter, just in virtue of its physical properties, cannot "refer" to anything. They can only be "connected" with something in virtue of physical laws. Hence, the actual relation of "reference" (in the samantic sense) cannot be accounted for by scientific naturalism.

The option of "denialism" is simply to say that such objects or entities like moral values, mathematical entities, etc. don't exist. We'd have a bunch of beliefs (e.g. moral beliefs) about a non-existent and purely illusory reality (e.g. a moral reality). This is the option taken, for example, by Keith Augustine, Richard Dawkins, Michael Ruse, and other naturalists about moral values.

But note that, at the end, the method of "reduction" and the method of "denialism" have the same consequence: namely, they don't provide an explanation for the facts. Reduction only is a trick to appear to explain something, without explaining it really.

3-Finally, Wright considers the possibility that, confronted with these person-relative facts and having been unsuccesful with the methods of redution and denialism, we have to accept that naturalism is false and hence, some version of supernaturalism has to be true. (The word "supernaturalism" is disliked by many people, including many supernaturalists. If you don't like the word, you can substitute it by a "spiritualistic" or "personalistic" worldview, i.e. a worldview based on persons, not on mechanical matter).

The supernaturalism is implied by the existence of person-relative properties, because these properties prove that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist (naturalistic) worldview.

Theism as an alternative worldview:

Theism (the worldview based on God's existence) is a personalistic worldview which, if true, implies and predicts the existence of person-relative properties in the world:

1.It predicts the existence of consciousness (because God, the creator, is itself a conscious being)

2-It predicts the existence of intelligence and rationality (because God, the creator, is itself an infinitely intelligent and rational being).

3- (As consequence of point 2) It predicts the existence of semantic properties, because in order to be rational you have to think logically, and logic connects propositions which in turn have semantic content.

4.It predicts the existence of an universe which is rationally intelligible (because God, the creator of the universe, is rational)

5-It predicts the existence of spirits (because God, the creator, is essentially a spirit and his whole creation was intented to allow the spiritual evolution of the spirits created by God). So, spiritual phenomena fit perfectly in this framework.

6-It predicts the existence of objective moral values (because God, being the creator of all reality, is also the creator of the moral reality, and being greatest possible being, is also the greatest possible moral being and hence the locus and source of value, the paradigm of the "good", and his creation has an objective, mind-independent moral dimension for morally sensible, rational and free entities created in it by God).

7-It predicts the causal efficacy of consciousness and intention (because God, being the spiritual creator, actually created the world using his own intentions. It implies that in theism, the causal efficacy of intention and consciousness is a basic property of them. So we would expect that finite, imperfect creatures like us, sharing in a limited form some of God's properties, also enjoy of a limited portion of his causal powers). The placebo effect, bio-feedback and our common experience (e.g. lifting an arm at will) is evidence for this. Psychokinesis would be a more dramatic and less common example of this.

Note that naturalists could try to explain one problematic fact appealing to the other, but it wont' help them (because the explanatory fact appealed to is itself a fact implied by theism and at variance with naturalism).

For example, naturalists could explain morality appealing to rationality (e.g. morality is what a rational agent would do), but rationality itself is a person-relative property implied by theism, not by naturalism.

Naturalists could try to explain objective moral values appealing to sentience or consciousness, but sentience and consciousness are person-relative properties implied by theism, not by naturalism.

So, this strategy actually pushes the problem a step back and doesn't help the naturalist, because the explanatory entity used as explanation-(rationality, sentience, consciousness) are themselves evidences for theism and in tension with naturalism.

Clearly, theism seem to be a far better overall explanation for ALL the facts of our experience.

Challenging Dogmatism In Science: David Lorimer in conversation with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and Dr. Peter Fenwick

After years reflecting upon the controversy between "skeptics" and psi researchers, and given the insights of people like Chris Carter, I've concluded that the debate is ultimately philosophical and even (implicitly) theological: "Skeptics" are explicitly defending a materialistic-atheistic-impersonal worldview and "psi researchers" are defending (consciously or unconsciously) scientific evidence which entails a worldview centered in persons (spirits).

In atheistic materialism, "persons" are the pure by product of blind matter (which has evolved without purpose or direction), and questions like consciousness, psi phenomena, the afterlife, spirituality, intelligent design, objective purposes or values, souls, spirits and whatever other person-relative phenomenon is seen with hostility or at least with skepticism, since the fabric the reality (the ultimate elements of the universe) are impersonal or non-personal (i.e. purely mechanical).

In spiritualistic wordlviews (e.g. in theism), the fabric of reality is ultimately person-relative, namely, the material world is secondary to persons (e.g. to God's creation). The fabric of reality is a person or a bunch of persons (e.g. spirits, a spiritual realm, etc.) and the physical world is, at most, a place to learn and evolve spiritually.

It's essential to understand the above key features, because they explain the posture of "skeptics" and critics of "skeptics".

The "dogmatism in science" shown by skeptics is NOT dogmatism about science itself, but about the materialistic understanding of science which in turns support naturalism (which "skeptics" conflate with science itself). Skeptics see "science" as validating metaphysical naturalism and materialistic atheism, and this is why they hold firmly and agressively to "science". But when science is at variance with atheism, then "skeptics" reject science and adopt dogmatic anti-scientific positions (for example, when the evidence for the beginning of the universe points out to a cause external to the universe, "skeptics" become critics of the big bang model and argue that "science can change in the future", a position that they never would defend in biology regarding Neo-Darwinism, for example).

The ultimate motivation of contemporary "skeptics" is theological: they want to avoid a theistic worldview, and the evidence for person-relative properties (consciousness, causal efficacy of the mind, NDEs, afterlife evidence, intelligent design, spiritual phenomena, etc.) in this universe are too much like theism as to be accepted or countenanced by a metaphysical naturalistic (purely mechanistic and non-personal) understanding of the world.

It's the fear and hostility to theism which motive "skeptics" to attack the evidence provided by parapsychology and other disciplines at variance with atheistic naturalism.

First-rate atheist-naturalistic philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book The Last Word, has noted this problem and he calls it the Cosmic Authority Problem: " I believe that this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and wellinformed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world"

Note carefully that Nagel is not referring to organized religion (religions doctrines, practiques, etc.), but to THEISM (the worldview based on God's existence).

Most parapsychologists and psi researchers have not fully understood the point made by Nagel, because they're not trained philosophers. They believe (naively) that the scientific evidence for psi alone will destroy the skeptical case and will make the scholarly community convinced that psi is real. As seen in contemporary academy, it is not the case. Most scholars and intellectuals are skeptics of psi, despite the evidence. The reason is that most scholars are metaphysical naturalists, and this worldview (if true) makes antecedently very improbable the existence of person-relative phenomena as part of the fabric of reality (or, as Nagel says, the existence of "purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world").

Most naturalist scholars would agree with Richard Wiseman when he said that the parapsychologist's claims for the existence of ESP "meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim".

Since naturalism makes claims about the existence of psi and the afterlife "extraordinary", the positive evidence in favor of these phenomena is considered insufficient by the naturalist and he will stick to his skeptical position. Failing to understand this is failing to understand the atheistic-naturalistic mindset and Jime's Iron Law.

The key to destroy organized skepticism is to attack, with evidence and sound arguments, the metaphysical naturalistic and materialistic worldview.

Controversy about the Gracie Diet: Armando Wridt claims that the Gracie Diet was created by Juan Esteve Dulin not by Carlos Gracie

World-renown jiu-jitsu master Rorion Gracie has written a book about the Gracie Diet, which is the diet used sucessfully by several generations of members of the Gracie Family.

According to the usual story, Carlos Gracie (co-founder with Helio Gracie of the martial art known as Gracie Jiu-Jitsu or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) studied nutrition and health for several decades, and based on his studies he developed the Gracie Diet, as described in Rorion's book.

However, according to (9th degree red belt and one of Helio's best students) Armando Wridt (in an interview published in the issue Nº 48 of the martial arts magazine Budo International, which you can read here), the usual story is false. Wridt says that Oscar Santa Maria "convinced Carlos that he needed to have a special diet to spend the whole day on the mat, and gave him the book of Dulin, who was the true creator of what they would call the Gracie Diet" (p.51)

When asked explicitly by interviewer if the Gracie Diet wasn't invented by Carlos Gracie, Wridt reply is straightforward: "No, it wasn't. In fact, that diet was developed by the Argentine author of the book Dr.Juan Esteve Dulin. He said the body is nourished by what it assimilates, not by what you eat, that is the reason why the Gracie spent fortunes in the diet. As Carlos liked to read a lot, he took the diet based on the combination of foods"

It has to be said that the Gracie Diet (regardless of whether it created by Carlos Gracie or not) seems to be a very useful diet. Carlos Gracie died of 92 years old (and attributed his longevity to the diet). Also, Grandmaster Helio Gracie died of 95 years old, being still very lucid and active (and he attributed also his old age to the diet). It is not only the long age that these people reach, but also the high quality of life that they enjoy.

So, I highly recommend the reading of the Gracie Diet book by Rorion Gracie.

A further comment on the history of Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

As a long time practitioner of martial arts, and hard-nosed fan and student of the history of martial arts in general, I've long admired the Gracie Family, specially Rorion Gracie (who changed the world of martial arts forever with the creation of the UFC), Royce Gracie (who beat all of his opponents in no-rules matches against practitioners of virtually each martial art) and, of course, Grandmaster Helio Gracie, who refined the Japanese version of Judo and Jiu-Jitsu that was taught to his family. The contemporary world of martial arts have to give a lot of credit to the influence of the Gracie Family. They deserve the highest degree of admiration and respect by each practitioner of martial art in the world.

Having said that, and in a more scholarly level, I have to say that the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has been constantly misrepresented in martial arts books, articles and magazines.

Let's summarize some of the problems:

1-Mitsuyo Maeda, the Japanese master who taught Carlos Gracie, was a high level practioner of Kodokan Judo, not of traditional forms of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. As consequence, the art he taught to the Gracies was mostly a modified version of Judo ("modified", because Maeda also fought in Catch Wrestling matches and probably incorporated some of the holds into his personal fighting Judo method). So, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu should be properly called "Brazilian Judo".

Some perhaps will think that it is a pure semantic question. But it doesn't, it is also a technical one. If you compare Judo with traditional forms of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find that Judo lacks the lethal techniques typical of traditional Jiu-Jitsu.

Techniques like pressure points, finger locks and other small-joint manipulations, neck breakers, scissors holds, strikes to vital points, throws in which the opponent cannot break the fall, etc. were all left out of Judo (for sporting purposes).

Interestingly, all of these holds and techniques are not emphasized (or just in a very watered down version, or in the "self-defense" category) in BJJ. The standard reply by BJJ students is that these techniques "don't work" and hence they are not trained or used in BJJ.

But this objection is false and unconvincing because some of these techniques (like finger locks or wrist locks to escape chokes) are taught in the self-defense portion of the BJJ curriculum (and "self-defense" is supposed to be the original and main purpose of BJJ, at least in the Helio's branch of it). If these techniques "don't work", then why the hell are they taught in the self-defense standing up techniques of BJJ stressed by Grandmaster Helio Gracie and his sons?

Even some pressure points are taught in the Gracie self-defense program, as seen in the technique Nº 91 of the book by Royce and Charles Gracie entitled "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Self-Defense Techniques" (p.200), in which a pressure point in the hand is used to release from a handshake grab.

Again, if these techniques don't work, then the Gracies teaching these techniques as effective self-defense against street attacks becomes inexplicable and self-defeating.

2-Point 1 (about BJJ more similarity to Judo than Jiu-Jitsu) is also made evident when you compare self-defense techniques of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu with the Self-Defense repertory of BJJ. In the latter, there is a preference for medium and large joint manipulations (shoulder, elbow, knee) instead of small joint manipulations (finger locks, toe locks, etc.). This is the case also of Judo.

For example, take a look at Gracie self-defense techniques (in which most holds are applied to medium and large joints):

Compare the above video with the following one by experts in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu (like Michael Depasquale Jr., master of the Yoshitsune Ju-Jitsu system, and the late Grandmaster Wally Jay, founder of Small Circle Jujitsu system) in which the manipulations of small joints, like fingers and wrists, are emphasized:

3-The above points are purely descriptive and factual and have nothing to do with effectiveness. I'm not claiming that BJJ is superior or inferior to Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, I'm simply pointing out facts relative to these arts.

4-BJJ is divided into 1)Self-defense; 2)Vale Tudo and 3)Sport grappling.

It is not clear from the current literature available about BJJ exactly what aspect of Maeda's modified Judo was taught by him to the Gracies. Did he teach the self-defense portion of it? Or, since Maeda was a fighter, did he teach the techniques which he used in Vale Tudo? Or both?

Any scholarly history of BJJ should include details about these technical aspects, which are very interesting to practioners and fans of BJJ. It is astonishing that no martial arts scholar has been interested in these technical question and details about the history of BJJ.

5-Exactly what techniques were modified by Carlos and Helio Gracie? As far I've studied the matter and trained the techniques, the main contribution of Brazilians have been in the transitions of a position to another one, but I don't know of ANY technique in the BJJ curriculum which doesn't exist either in Kosen Judo or in traditional forms of Jiu-Jitsu.

Even leg locks and knee on the stomach were used by the ancient masters and experts of Kosen Judo in the Kodokan, as you can watch in some videos:

I'm fortunate to have all the training tapes and videos of Kosen Judo which have been published, and some of them are already available online or in stores. I suggest to martial arts fans and practitioners to take a look at these tapes and compare the techniques with BJJ. You'll be surprised of what you will find.

The historical Jesus of Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar is at variance with the fact of Jesus' crucifixion

Jesus' crucifixion is considered by scholars as the most indusputable fact about the historical Jesus. Even a revisionist and radical skeptical, religious pluralist and atheist scholar like John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar has conceded "That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be" (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 145).

When reading carefully and sympathetically (but critically too) the version of the historical Jesus created by the leading members of the Jesus Seminar (specially of religious pluralist Marcus Borg), one topic always appeared in my mind: If Jesus was like that, how the hell are we going to make sense of his crucifixion?

Just for the record and summarizing: As I've explained and documented in other posts, the version of the historical Jesus of people like Borg is of a non-exclusivistic Jesus, a Jesus compatible with religious pluralism, i.e. a Jesus who (in regards to other spiritual leaders and religious traditions) is essentially nothing special. This "nothing special" version of Jesus is part of the large secularistic agenda of the Jesus Seminar: namely, to undermine and destroy traditional Christianity.

In Borg's own words, his version of Jesus (misleadingly and falsely presented as the version accepted by contemporary mainstream Jesus scholarship) is a version which "undermines a widespread Christian belief that Jesus is unique, which is commonly linked to the notion that Christianity is exclusively true and that ‘Jesus is the only way." ( Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 37. Emphasis in blue added)"

In summary, Borg's version of Jesus is straightforwardly a religious pluralist version of Jesus.

In order to make his pluralistic case, Borg has to evade or misrepresent (with misleading considerations about "metaphors" and "meanings", a tactic used as red-herrings) the clear evidence for the historical sayings of Jesus implying his exclusivistic self-perception and the evidence for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. Borg is forced to deny the radical sayings of Jesus implying his exclusivistic position regarding God and specially the sayings in which Jesus stood and spoke with divine authority (i.e. in matters in which only God has authority, which again implies his exclusivism and divinity).

It is absolutely crucial to understand why Borg's pluralistic position requires, as necessary condition, to avoid these exclusivistic sayings of Jesus or any fact or saying implying Jesus' divinity or his bodily resurrection. If you understand this point, your understanding of the Jesus Seminar project, and particularly Borg's, become evident and understable. (In future posts, I'll discuss some of these sayings in detail and document how Borg and other pluralists misrepresent them in order to undermine their historicity or the exclusivistic interpretation/reading of them).

Borg's Jesus amounts to a kind of teacher of wisdom, a mere teller of stories and a speaker of great one-liners whose purpose was the transformation of people's perception. At the center of his message was an invitation to see things differently.

Now, if it is essentially what Jesus did and taught, how the hell can we explain his crucifixion?

In the traditional portrait of Jesus, his crucifixion was due to Jesus' radical claims implying his divinity and exclusivism (as the only Son of God, as a divine man who stood and spoke authoritatively in matters which belong only to God, etc.) and therefore his claims were considered blasphemous (= irreverent and offensive to God). In this traditional understanding, Jesus was clearly a threat, specially when he spoke with the authority of God (e.g. changing the Old Testament laws given by God). In this understanding, the crucifixion is the kind of punishment that you would expect to a person who uttered radical blasphemous claims implying divinity and exclusivity.

For any objective researcher, I think, the historical evidence clearly indicates that Jesus' crucifixion was instigated by his blasphemous claims, not by imaginary "invitations" to see differently through a bunch of nice stories and great on-liners.

In Borg's pluralistic and undermined version of Jesus as a nice teacher whose main message was simply to "invite people to see differently", the crucifixion of such a person becomes largely inexplicable. How could such a nice person to be an actual threat deserving so a severe punishment?

The explanations of the crucifixion given by Crossan, Borg and other religious pluralists and atheists in the Jesus Seminar are very weak and implausible, and it is testimony of the extreme weakness of their revisionist case for the historical Jesus. It actually makes me more sure and confident that their portrait of the historical Jesus is largely false (and note that we are not including here the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. If the latter is considered, Borg's pluralistic case is essentially destroyed).

Initially, I thought that I was exaggerating too much the apparent tension of the strongly undermined pluralistic version of Jesus of people like Borg and the fact of the crucifixion. But soon I discoveried that many leading Jesus scholars who don't buy the pluralistic version of Jesus created by Borg (and others) have noted the same problem.

For example, John Meier comments "such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one" (A Marginal Jew, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, p.177)

In conclusion, the undermined and religious pluralistic version of the historical Jesus created by people like Marcus Borg is unlikely to be true given:

1-Jesus' crucifixion

2-Jesus's true historical sayings implying his exclusivity in divine matters (which fits perfectly with and explains point 1).

3-The fact that the early Church considered that Jesus was God (a fact inexplicable given that Jews were hard-core monotheistic believers, i.e. believers in just one God, and it was considered strongly blasphemous to consider that a mere man was God. Contrary to the Jesus Seminar's anti-Christian prejudices and assumptions, it is very unlikely that this divine view of Jesus was a pure invention. Jews had every religious predisposition against Jesus, or any other man, to be God. This fact is best explained by Jesus' actual sayings implying his divinity, and hence its exclusivity regarding God, which in turns explains why his claims were considered blasphemous and in turns explains the fact of his crucifixion).

3-Jesus' resurrection (provided it happened... if it happened, then the arguments of point 2 become stronger and Borg's religious pluralistic case is destroyed).

Borg's religious pluralist understanding of Jesus cannot explain well the 3 points mentioned above, except in a very ad hoc, idiosyncraitc and contrived way. Borg only can evade them or force idiosyncratic interpretations of the evidence (interpretations which only atheists, religious pluralists and people hostile to traditional Christianity would buy. Reseachers or students outside these 3 biased groups would very easily recognize the strongly biased anti-Christian approach of the Jesus seminar and Marcus Borg to the historical Jesus).

David Hume The Theist: A believer in God championed by contemporary atheists and secularists

David Hume is a kind of "hero" for many atheists and secularists, mostly because Hume was a critic of religion, miracles and the classical arguments for God's existence.

But what is not well known is the fact that some of writings of Hume suggests he was actually a theist. (Note that being a theist is perfectly compatible with being critic of religion or of classical arguments for God's existence).

Many of Hume's atheistic fans are wholly ignorant of Hume's theism.

Consider:

In his book The Natural History of Religion, Hume wrote: "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquierer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion... Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .All the things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughtout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author" (pp. 21, 26, emphasis in blue added).

Philosopher Nicholas Capaldi, a world-renown Hume scholar (and founder of the Hume Society) explaining Hume's position, writes: "Hume believed in the existence of God. He rejected the ontological argument. He accepted in one form the argument from design. God exists, but his properties are unknown and unknowable by us" (David Hume, ch 9)

Hume scholar Kenneth R. Merrill comments "Hume does not reject the design argument out of hand. Indeed, he seems (at least) to accept a scaled-down version of the argument, but he points out weaknesses that significantly diminish its force... At the end of the Dialogues, Hume has Philo (one of the principals) endorse what has been described as an “attenuated deism” (or, sometimes, as an “attenuated theism”); namely, “that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence” (Dialogues, 227; italics are in Hume’s text). Whether this represents Hume’s own view is a point of contention." (Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy, pp 91-92)

So, Hume wasn't even agnostic about God's existence, but a theist. Certainly, his theism conceives a God without all the attributes which classical theism consider essential to God, but the point is that Hume was convinced by the evidence, and despite his skepticism, that the most reasonable position for a rational man is theism (over atheism and agnosticism). And he was convinced by the evidence of design in nature.

Interestingly, a version of the same argument from design was what convinced another Hume scholar (and champion of atheism for 5 decades), Antony Flew.

On his change of mind, Flew comments: "There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."

Compare Flew's reference to "intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical universe" with Hume's comments that "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author".

Recent discoveries in cosmology have made the argument from design a lot of stronger than in Hume's times. So, perhaps if Hume were alive today, his theism would be more solid.

In the following videos, you can watch contemporary formulations and defenses of the argument from design:

William Lane Craig on UFOs, Ufology, Extraterrestial Intelligencies and Christianity

Some Christians that I've known and discussed with the topic of UFOs are unsympathetic and even hostile to the whole matter. They seem to assume that human beings are the "locus" of creation and hence, not other beings could exist outside the Earth, what is just dogmatic and unwarranted. (By the way they use the same arguments of atheists and materialistic pseudoskeptics against ufology).

However, in this interesting podcast, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has commented sympathetically about the possibility of the existence of advanced extraterrestial intelligences, and how it is perfectly compatible with Christianity.

Moreover, I've found very useful Craig's insight that the existence of alien beings is more likely given theism than given naturalistic atheism (so, I think, we have a new but undeveloped argument for God's existence based on alien beings... this argument cannot be developed yet because the existence of aliens is too controversial as to be part of a persuasive argument for God's existence).

But clearly, in a naturalistic worldview, the existence of intelligent beings is just a cosmic accident (and an extremely improbable one). But in theism, the existence of intelligence and spirit is basic and essential to the fabric of reality (since God is supposed to be an intelligent spiritual being) and hence it wouldn't be a great surprise that intelligent (spiritual) beings can be found in other parts of the universe.

Moreover, the conditions necessary for the emergence of intelligent life (including intelligent alien life, if it exists) in the universe are, itself, evidence for theism:



Even though hard-core atheists and pseudoskeptics are enemies of ufology too, they have appealed to the existence of putative alien beings in order to avoid the evidence for theism. A crushing example of this is Michael Shermer's Last Law, which I've discussed here.

Also, it has been reported that atheist Richard Dawkins is sympathetic to the "alien hypothesis" as a substitute for God in order to explain the origin of life, saying that he "was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet.

The best book on Ufology that I've read is Leslie Keen's book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

Absolutely a must read!

A further commnent on the implications of Jesus' self-perception as the "Son of God".

In a previous post, we discussed briefly some of the evidence suggesting the historicity of the "Son of God" sayings related to the historical Jesus. Jesus' self-perception was that he was the unique and absolute Son of God.

Implications of this view:

1)If Jesus saw himself as the only son of God, it implies that no other person (teacher, philosopher, spiritual leader, etc.) is the son of God in the exclusivistic sense in which Jesus is using the word. Therefore, all the pluralistic reconstructions of Jesus have to be false (and the question would be which are the motivations of the pluralistic "scholars").

2)Hence, Christians should be exclusivistic, non-pluralists (So-called Christian "pluralists" like Marcus Borg are not Christians at all, and his pluralistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus is largely based upon personal anti-Christian prejudices against the traditional view of Jesus, which cast doubts on the reliability and honesty of their research. After a careful reading the literature of these people, I've lost all intellectual respect for them and consider that their works are extremely misleading, spiritually dangerous, intellectually dishonest and I think they deserve to receive proper evidence-based debunking. This blog will be a space employed to this end).

3)Jesus' exclusivity as the only Son of God implies he saw himself as divine:

-Being the only "son" of God, he saw himself as participating of the ontological nature of the Father. If Jesus saw himself as merely (and uniquely) an human like any other, then his self-perception and condition as the exclusive son of God would be unjustified and purely arbitrary (Why Jesus alone and not other human beings?). Obviously, something in Jesus' specific nature makes him special regarding God (if his self-perception is veridical).

-A further indication of this self-perception of divinity is seen in Jesus modifying some of the laws given by God in the Old Testament. In the Jewish context, no human being has the authority to change God' laws, only God himself. Again, this shows Jesus' self-perception as a divine man. (This point will be discussed in more detail in future posts)

-A further indication of this would be Jesus' resurrection. All major Jesus scholars (of whatever theological persuasion) seems to agree openly that if Jesus' resurrection occured, then this event had some connection essential connection with God's intervention. And this is what we would expect if Jesus was actually the only son of God (i.e. we would expect a special, unique, dramatic vindication of Jesus' authority, nature, condition and teachings with an event without any precedent in human history).

But if Jesus didn't claimed to be God's unique son, and not special or particular divine condition (above all the other spiritual leaders) is particular of Jesus, then the resurrection, if occured, is essentially ambiguous, totally unexpected and even antecedently very improbable. It comes without a proper context for understading or explanation. Why exactly the resurrection would happen to Jesus, and not to the bunch of spiritual leaders of other religions and spiritual movements?

By the way, this clearly shows the superficiality, desperation (and hidden anti-Christian prejudices) of the attempts to explain the resurrection appealing yoga teachings, Buddhist methods, Chi Kung and so forth. Not only there is not solid evidence that these method allows their practitioners to reach the resurrection (in the sense in which it is applied to Jesus), but that no evidence exists that Jesus was a practitioner (let alone, an advanced one) of these methods.

And it would be massively misleading and dishonest of Jesus to preach about the Kingdom of God and his own exclusivistic status, if at the end his amazing deeds and miracles were consequence of a long and hard training in Chi Kung, Yoga, Tai Chi or (the largely atheistic) Buddhistic philosophies and methods (leaving, in addtion, no trace or evidence that these methods were instrumental to his miracles, specially when they were done appealing to the "Father").

The extreme implausibility of this position is obvious, and is the reason why no major Jesus scholar defends it. It only exists in the imagination of anti-Christian non-professionals in Jesus research.

Moreover and more telling, here we see another anti-Christian double standard. The same people who appeal to these (non-evidence based) speculations about Jesus, are the same who denies Jesus' self-perception as "divine" or the "Son of God" appealing to the supposed lack of evidence for these claims (which is false, as we have seen, since the evidence for some of the claims is pretty good).

The putative lack of evidence is used negatively to deny Jesus' divinity (in order to deny the traditional understanding of Jesus), but the same lack of evidence is used positively to make at least plausible or reasonable that God wasn't the cause of Jesus' resurrection (in order to deny the traditional concept of the resurrection as an event caused by God). Note that what determines the negative or positive use of the "lack of evidence" criterion is the way in which such a criterion is useful to undermine the traditional understanding of Jesus.

When the lack of evidence can be interpreted against Christianity, then wild speculations about Yoga, Buddhism, Chi Kung, etc. are sympathetically allowed as "plausible" alternatives to explain the resurrection. But the same criterion is not sympathetically allowed to defend the plausibility of Jesus' divinity or his resurrection caused by God. Clearly, the doble standard is obviously anti-Christain as any objective observer would easily recognize.

Religious pluralistic scholars are more consistent here. This is why they, consistent with their denial of Jesus' claims of exclusivity, also reject the factuality of Jesus' resurrection. Marcus Borg, for example, who has made a pluralistic version of the historical Jesus, denies the historicity of any claim by Jesus implying his divinity (and his exclusive divine connection with God). But in order to fancy himself as a "Christian", he uses the language of the resurrection in a misleading and idiosyncratic way (as an experiencied reality by the disciples and the Christians in general) while denies, evades (with red-herrings about "meanings" and "metaphors") or undermines the importance of, for example, the empty tomb for the historical assessment of the bodily resurrection.

I consider the approach to the Historical Jesus of people like Borg and other pluralists as fraudulent, dishonest and misleading.

Demostrably (and I haven't found any exception yet), the people who are sympathetic to the work of the Jesus Seminar are people who have a very strong animosity and hostility against traditional Christianity. This animosity predisposes them to read the evidence in a way contrary to the traditional concept of Jesus. They have a double standard to judge the evidence, which antecedently favours the liberal position.

But when you read the evidence with objectivity, without prejudices for or against a certain view of Jesus (and not letting that your own opinion about what Jesus is or have to be determine your conclusions), you can eaasily realize that the liberal case of the Jesus Seminar for the historical Jesus is full of anti-Christian assumptions (which in this context is question-begging), atheistic-naturalistic pressupositions and pluralistic prejudices which are contrary to the evidence (The evidence suggests supernatural elements or contexts, like the teaching about God's Kingdom or the resurrection; exclusivistic elements, like Jesus being the only son of God, and claims implying Jesus' divinity like his claims of being the only son of God, which suggests an unique divine nature above mere human nature, and more importantly Jesus' claims of authority in matters which only belong to God).

In future posts, I'll show with concrete examples and solid evidence how the Jesus Seminar favours certain sources (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas) misusing the criteria of authenticity (the criteria used by scholars to determine which sayings by Jesus are likely to be historical) in a way which favours its anti-Christian and pluralistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus.

What part of nothing you don't understand, STUPID? Reflections on 2+2=5 atheist genius Lawrence M. Krauss and evidence for Jime's Iron Law

My personal librery is composed mostly of books written by atheists (just since some recent years, it has become increasingly filled with books by theists, specially Christian theists). As consequence, I'm pretty familiar with atheistic thinking, the main arguments for atheism and the overall atheist minset (which includes a wide spectrum but that you can discern into types when analyzed carefully).

My reading of the atheist literature plus my interaction with online hard-core atheists have lead me to postulate what I've named (inspired by Michael Shermer) Jime's Iron Law, according to which (roughly) hard-core atheists are irrational, in the sense that their thinking is positively illogical, strongly limited and their cognitive faculties are seriously damaged and impaired to track the truth or understand deep questions. I'm seriously convinced that, more or less accurately, this law holds for hard-core atheists in general (I'm sure there are a few exceptions). Note that this law doesn't exclude the irrationality of some non-atheists (my law doesn't say that "only" atheists are irrational; it simply states that, as a rule, hard core atheists are irrational and positively stupid in the literal sense of this word).

A dramatic, irrefutable and devastating confirmation of my law comes from the recent atheistic tendency to conflate "nothing" (=not anything = the absense of existence), with "something which is basic or fundamental" (e.g natural laws, quantum vacuum, quantum particles, entropy, gravity, or any other basic something).

Derek Parfit, a prominent atheist philosopher, wrote:

"No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing" (Derek Parfit, "Why Anything? Why This?" London Review of Books 20/2 (January 22, 1998), p.24.)

Parfit is posing a philosophical question which has been dabated by thousand of years, namely, the question why something exists (instead of not existing at all). Why does being (something) exist instead of non-being (sheer non-existence)?

Do you understand the above question? I've explained this question for children of 10 years old and they grasp it. I must assume that most of my readers understand the question too. So, let's continue.

Philosophers have replied to this question saying that something necessary has to exist (either God or the universe) which contains in its essence the reason of its existence, because it makes no sense saying that something came from absolute non-being (i.e. out of nothing). Some atheists have claimed that the universe has necessary existence (i.e. it cannot not to exist) and hence it is eternal too. But the cosmological evidence has shown that the universe began to exist and hence is not eternal (therefore, it is not necessary either). Hence, the universe is contingent and therefore cries out for an explanation outside itself.

But replying to this question is not my interest in this post. My interest is to reflect in the level of intelligence needed to understand the question (regardless of the answer that we could provide to it).

I submit that any sane, rational, normal intelligent person would understand the question. And I submit too that, in general, hard-core atheists are intellectually unable to fully understand the question, because their minds don't work properly (Jime's Iron Law).

Consider Lawrence M. Krauss's following short video (in which he says that "nothing is unstable"):

Since "unstable" is a property (=a characteristic), it can be only predicated of something. But nothing (in the philosophical sense that Parfit is asking the question) is the DENIAL of something, namely, not anything (=non-being). Now, how the hell can you say that "non-being" is stable or unstable, blue or red, big or small, expensive or unexpensive (adds any property that you want) if, by definition, non-being DOES NOT EXIST? How could you predicate something of absolutely nothing (total non-existence)?

It's very obvious that Krauss has not (and, if Jime's Iron Law is correct, CANNOT) understand the question. The question is simply beyond Krauss' intellectual powers. He BELIEVES he's understanding the question, but actually he doesn't get it at all. This provides a dramatic and painful confirmation of Jime's Iron Law.

But perhaps some of you are thinking that using just one example is not confirmatory at all. But it is not the case. Consider atheist John Loftus' position that "Nothing = Balance of Energy":

Not convinced yet of Jime's Iron Law? Consider leading atheist propagandist Peter Atkins's positive claim "the universe is in fact a big confidence trick. There's truly nothing here":

Still skeptical of Jime's Iron Law? Consider atheist Stephen Hawking (who's considered an intellectual genius, just because most people don't understand quantum mechanics and think Hawking is able to understand profound things that they don't) assertion "Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing" (The Grand Design’, p. 25)

Still unconvinced of Jime's Iron Law? Consider atheist Victor Stenger's claim "Since “nothing” is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter." (Cosmic Evidence’ from "God: The Failed Hypothesis")

I could to continue with tons of further examples, but I think it suffices to prove my point.

Hard-core atheists like Krauss, Stenger, Dawkins, Harris, Hawking, Wolpert, Atkins and many others are fine examples of the solid veracity of my Jime's Law. They're positively stupid, mentally incapable of understanding profound questions and demostrably illogical and irrational. Moreover, their intellectual impairment implies that they CANNOT realize their own limitations and this is why they write entire books defending positions which are obviously absurd, irrational and ridiculous.

Hard-core atheists subjected to Jime's Iron Law will praise these popular books as first-rate scientific contributions and masterpieces by towering intellects, while the rest of the world (rational atheists included) will laugh in their imbecility and the persistent stupidity of "thinkers" like the ones mentioned.

In this recent podcast that I've just heard, philosopher William Lane Craig explains the obvious confusions and fallacies of Krauss's use of "nothing". Craig sympathetically attributes Krauss' use of "nothing" as a product of Krauss' ignorance of philosophy. I think Craig is partially wrong here.

While I agree that Krauss is solidly ignorant of philosophy, I think his use of "nothing" (common among atheists) is not simply a product of ignorance, but that it is a symptom of a deeper phenomenon described by my law: Atheists like Krauss simply cannot (in an intellectual level) understand the actual and philosophically relevant meaning of "nothing".

So, even though Craig is basically correct in his critique of Krauss, he fails to realize the actual cause of Krauss' misleading use of "nothing". This cause has nothing to do with ignorance (even though could be increased by it) but with the hard-core atheist's psychological, intellectual and spiritual structure and limitations.

Only a person armed with Jime's Iron Law will understand what's happening here.