THE DISCUSSION continues here on whether atheists can coherently argue for morality or tradition. In the following response to a reader, Kristor makes an excellent point. It is a point that was made by others, but Kristor fully demonstrates its validity. In sum, there is no such thing as an atheist conservative. In fact, there is no such thing as an atheist liberal. Yes, people can call themselves by these labels. But they are employing oxymorons.  The conservative atheist cannot champion moral or political convictions anymore than the atheist liberal can.

Or, let’s say they can champion values, but only by contradicting themselves. As Kristor argues, “You can’t have moral convictions of any kind and be a thoroughgoing atheist. If you have such convictions, you are not really an atheist, in the sense that you are not really carrying your atheism into practice.”

Here are Kristor’s full comments. 

Kristor writes: 

Walenty Lisek states:

Laura said: “The atheist cannot defend moral absolutes.” People only assume this because of a misunderstanding of epistemology. In this world, the material world that is, there can be no absolute knowledge of anything.

As himself a member of this world, how does Mr. Lisek absolutely know that, for beings such as he, there can be no absolute knowledge of anything? The statement “we cannot know any truths absolutely” is self-refuting, and so it is necessarily false. Indeed, because it is necessarily false, its negative is one of the very first things we can know to be absolutely true. And, unless it really is possible for us to know at least some absolute truths, then there is no way to really tell whether we have ever erred, in anything. Indeed, in that case, the erroneous is an empty category. You can’t possibly be said ever to have made a mistake if it was never possible to get anything right in the first place. So we see that even partial, incomplete, or inaccurate knowledge presupposes the possibility of absolute knowledge. The very notions of “right” and “wrong,” “true” and “false” are incoherent unless it is really possible to be perfectly correct. So when Mr. Lisek says that our necessary ignorance is not equivalent to “knowledge nihilism,” he is simply wrong. If it is not possible to be right in our understanding, then necessarily we cannot understand the first iota of anything at all – not in the least degree; so that everything we say is nonsense. 

But to argue that everything we say is nonsense is obviously to talk nonsense. One can string the words together, so that they appear to mean something; but, really, they don’t. 

Mr. Lisek proffers his self-refuting argument to make the point that, because no one can know any absolute truths, so no one can defend moral absolutes, and therefore theists are no better off than atheists in that respect. But if no one, whether theist or not, can defend moral absolutes, then effectually there are no such things. And if there are no moral absolutes, there is no morality whatsoever – for morality just is a set of absolute principles. Rather, there is only an amoral war of all against all, with happenstance the only final arbiter of what shall happen. 

The reality is that moral precepts can be formalized, and conclusions reached about what policies are better than others. Morality is as amenable to mathematical treatment as anything else – the name of the mathematical discipline that formalizes moral questions is game theory. The procedure is simple, at least in principle. For example: is homosexuality as good as heterosexuality, or worse? Take two adjacent cultures, both identical in every respect except for their treatment of homosexuality. In culture A, homosexuality is completely proscribed. In B, it is permitted without let or hindrance. B obviously has more homosexuality than A. All other things being held absolutely equal, which of these two cultures will dwindle, as compared to the other? The question answers itself. So, it is absolutely true that tolerance of homosexuality is bad for any given culture, all other things being held equal. Repeat this thought experiment on almost any social policy you like. So long as you hold all else equal between the two populations subject to your experiment, the badness of what has traditionally been held to be bad will be as plain as the nose on your face. For more complex questions, where the answer may not be so obvious, game theoreticians use computer simulations of competing populations that, while otherwise identical, employ different strategies, and see empirically which population eventually predominates in the virtual space of the game. From there, it is possible to work out the math that proves which strategies work best. Moral knowledge is knowledge of absolute, mathematical truths, or it is not knowledge at all. 

Take then likewise an example from human health, as Mr. Lisek suggests. Take two identical twins, whose life situations are identical. One smokes, the other does not. Which is more likely to outlive the other? Again, the question answers itself. It is absolutely true that smoking is worse than abstaining from tobacco, all other things being held equal. Now, it is true that with human health, we might find that such questions might answer themselves differently, depending on the state of our scientific knowledge. There is an absolute truth about how best to live, but it can be more difficult to discern, primarily because the human body is a society of organisms several orders of magnitude more complex than any human society (making it hard to design computer simulations like those of the game theorists). One hundred years ago, some folks honestly believed that smoking was beneficial to the health. Thus our knowledge of what is good for human health is somewhat murkier than our knowledge of what is good for society. But it is always going to be the case that, no matter what the current state of our scientific knowledge about the physiological effects of a given practice, such questions will answer themselves in one way or another, even if the answer is “we don’t yet know.”

Note that we could not have begun to answer the questions posed in those two thought experiments unless we presupposed that: 

1. There is an absolute good (for human bodies and human societies).

2. We are capable of apprehending, appreciating, and instantiating it, at least to some degree.

3. Since existence is the sine qua non of all other properties, including the good ones, therefore being is better than non-being. 

Only if we agree that all these statements are true can we conclude that it is better for a society or person to live than to die, or therefore that policies that promote survival are better than those that do not. If we disagree with any of those three propositions, then whether a person or a society lives or dies can be neither here nor there; it is just something that happens, and it doesn’t really make sense to care about it one way or the other (even if the body or society in question is one’s own). And this is precisely the moral perspective, not just of radical epistemological skeptics like Mr. Lisek, but also of materialists and atheists, who must if they are to be logically consistent insist that whatever may come to pass, it doesn’t signify; for if it is true that there is nothing but dead matter, or that there is no ultimate standard of value, or that we cannot know anything for sure, then our notions of good and bad, and indeed our physiological feelings of what is good and bad – our pleasures and our pains – are simply illusory. We may really apprehend such things, but those apprehensions don’t signify anything that actually exists. 

The materialist, the atheist, the physicalist – let’s call them “moral nominalists” for short – may reply (as some have effectually done, these last few days, at Thinking Housewife), “Oh, come now; I set as much store by my moral intuitions as any theist. So it can’t be true that moral nominalism contradicts moral realism. If it were, I would not be able to take my own moral intuitions seriously at all.” But this is false: as a matter of logic, nominalism and realism are mutually exclusive. The moral nominalist who takes his moral intuitions seriously is making an exception to his nominalist principles so that he can do what is required to live his daily life: namely, make decisions among divergent options, each of which bears some moral consequences. And to the extent he does so, he is not in practice a nominalist. 

This is why I said, in a prior entry, that the atheist conservative is in a war with himself. As a conservative, he is committed to certain moral principles. As an atheist, he cannot justify that commitment; so that, in the end, it is not a commitment at all, but just a habit, a mere jerk of the knee. “Moral nominalist” is an oxymoron; so is “conservative atheist.” 

But so is “liberal atheist.” If atheists are necessarily moral nominalists, in principle if not in practice, then the thoroughgoing atheist who leans left can’t justify his liberal values, either. You can’t have moral convictions of any kind and be a thoroughgoing atheist. If you have such convictions, you are not really an atheist, in the sense that you are not really carrying your atheism into practice. 

Is “liberal Christian” an oxymoron? If liberal Christians may be defined as those who engage in the outward practice of Christianity, and value it highly, but who say the Nicene Creed with reservations (as to, e.g., the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, Hell, and so forth), then the answer is yes. If you can’t say “Credo” and mean every word of it, then in saying “Credo” at all, you are being dishonest with yourself about whether you are a Christian. Your only possible excuse is that you have not yet taken the trouble to learn what the words of the Credo actually mean – i.e., what the doctrine of the faith really is. Many faithful Christians, perhaps most, fit that description; and almost all atheists do, too. They disbelieve in doctrines that the Church does not actually preach.

 

                                                           — Comments —

Laura writes:

Consider the case of two atheists arguing for and against traditional sex roles.

The atheist conservative, let’s call him Mark, might say that traditional sex roles are good for society and the individual because they promote personal happiness, create a higher birth rate, and make it possible for people to function better, thus leading to economic prosperity. To prove his case, he might marshal statistics on family functioning for today and from the 1960s to show how the breakdown in traditional morality has caused family dysfunction.

Case closed, he would say. Look at how bad things are.

But the atheist liberal, let’s call her Grace, might respond that there may be more family breakdown now but people can eventually adapt to this. This is a transitional phase and society is evolving. We are adjusting to technological changes too. Computers didn’t exist two hundred years ago and neither did radical egalitarianism. If we can adjust to such sweeping technological changes, we can adjust to social ones too.

In the long run, Grace will say, people will be happier. Besides, traditional sex roles are simply unfair. Many people don’t like to be pushed into marriage and having children. It’s not right to disregard their interests.

Mark would respond, traditional sex roles might be unfair but they’re unfair for both men and women. He would produce evidence demonstrating the negatives for each.

But, both Mark and Grace are skirting contradictions. Why should someone give up pleasures today either for the future economic health of society or the future happiness of individuals? Who’s to say the survival of the many is better than the happiness of the few? On what grounds can Mark argue that a higher birth rate is a good thing? At the very least, it has both positive and negative consequences. There’s no question traditional sex roles cause unhappiness for some people.  Both Grace and Mark might say that it is good to care for the future. But what do they mean by “good”? If social health is reduced to competing interests – that of those who want to have healthy and robust families and those who want to live as individualists – what do we do when these interests are in conflict, such as in the case of public promotion of values. How can society promote mutually exclusive ideals? It seems there must be some basic agreement on what is ultimately good. 

Eventually, the conversation devolves into Mark and Grace asserting their opinions, providing mountains of evidence for conflicting claims and pressing the superiority of their own moral instincts. Neither can possibly win this argument.                                                                                   

There is one thing neither Mark nor Grace can argue for and that is the value of the individual, the single human life. Traditional sex roles do not have their foundation in ideas of social health. Statistics of declining social health are helpful in that they prove not what is happening to society at large but what is happening to the individual. Traditional sex roles spring from the ultimate value of the individual. If the individual is sacred, or embodies some essence that is good or virtuous in and of itself, then all of society may justifiably be geared to the latent potential in the individual for realizing this sacredness. There are no competing interests in this scenario. All interests are shared. For self-sacrifice is one way the individual realizes that essence. Sacredness cannot be bestowed on the individual by humanity and makes no sense to the atheist. It must come from something fixed and eternal.

Walenty Lisek writes, in response to comments in the previous thread:

Laura said: “Reason and morality could not arise spontaneously from matter.”

Why not? Why must a supernatural explanation be required? In so many areas of life spontaneous-order is apparent. We see spontaneous-order in free markets, evolution, the formation of languages and social traditions. There is no top-down order to capitalism and for its problems we have seen the free market generate the greatest amount of wealth for the most amount of people. The same should also be obviously true for languages and traditions. These are not top-down systems given to us by a central authority, they changed over time and have come down to us from the forgotten past.

There are also examples of “self-organization” in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. but I’ll let you wikipedia that.

Josh F. said: “I would reiterate that no one has defined for us what the atheist “conservative” actually is.”

I thought it would be obvious that you can put together Sowell’s Tragic Vision, which is the underlying world-view of the right, with a lack of belief in god to get right-wing atheism. Perhaps I have not stated Sowell’s arguments as well as he has himself, so I encourage you to Google Sowell if what I have said seems not clear enough.

Laura writes:

The formation of free markets and traditions is not comparable to the evolution of reason from non-rational matter. Free markets and traditions and much of language would be inconceivable without reason. Reason itself operates partially in independence from physical nature. As C.S. Lewis said in his book Miracles, “Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational.”

You can’t be serious about comparing “self-organization” of matter to the appearance of rationality from non-rationality? In order to even think about this, you must concede something to reason that you seem determined to deny it.

You might conceivably argue that our affections, moods and desires and much of what we think of as consciousness are responses developed over time to physical stimuli but you cannot make the same case for reason. ‘Knowledge’ or ‘truth’ or ‘argument’ are nowhere to be found in the physical universe. The knowledge of a thing is entirely separate from the thing itself. Our minds to the degree they engage in true reasoning are not moved by physical events but prior reason or inborn knowledge. You have written to me because you have thought about what I said. Your reasoning about what I said was moved by mine and concepts you received from elsewhere and came to on your own. If your thinking had its origin at any point along the full course of events, traced back through your distant ancestors, in an act or thing that is non-rational then you are not thinking. The whole series of thoughts is invalidated if that non-rational thing is its cause. As Kristor has already argued, if truth has its origin in non-truth, non-truth in the sense in which a stone or an atom is non-truth, then it cannot conceivably be called truthful. If our habit of making inferences is simply a conditioned response to physical events then we are not capable of making inferences because the necessary independence from the non-rational that is required of thought is not there.

This was all argued by Aristotle long ago. The human mind operates in its reflective capactiy outside nature and must have its ground in something self-existent, rational and eternal. I recommend C.S. Lewis’ Miracles, for a full examination of this issue. As he writes, “The act of knowing has no doubt various conditions, without which it could not occur: attention, states of will and health which this presupposes. But it’s positive character must be determined by the truth it knows. … The relation between respnse and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known.”

Stephanie L. Murgas writes:

I am trying to be a Presbyterian, and as a result I conform to the concept of total depravity. I believe that I am incapable of being saved from my life of sin, and I believe that death and dissolution is the only method by which I can be redeemed. I am unworthy of the mercy of the cross, I am unable to understand God’s grace or build a relationship with him on my own. I exalt science, exploration and discovery as my religion, and I wait faithfully for the answer to the questions I have asked. My destiny is unavoidable, my “prayers” will be answered, and I believe the very atoms of my body will proclaim the nature of my origins. Truly, I must be an atheist and I may in fact be proud of this statement. I may be the antichrist in the flesh, the devil incarnate, but I also believe that the calling of my Spirit is irresistible, and that through my perseverance it is impossible for me to fall away from Faith, no matter my actions, for I claim to have been elected.

Laura writes:

The idea of predestination in the Calvinist sense, which seems so cold and inhuman, is not something I can grasp or accept.  

Bartholomew writes:

You wrote in response to Mrs. Murgas’ unorthodox, “Presbyterian” confession of faith,

“The idea of predestination in the Calvinist sense, which seems so cold and inhuman, is not something I can grasp or accept.”

Saying that the acceptance of truth is a matter of ability is a strange argument for an anti-predestinationist to make.

It reminds me of Luther’s famous statement before the Inquisition, “Here I stand: I can do nothing else.”

I’ve always wondered what he meant by “can” (German: “kann”), and I likewise now wonder what you mean by the same word. Why didn’t you say that predestination is something you do not grasp and will not accept?

When you say that you “can’t” believe predestination is true, haven’t you already conceded the predestinationist’s point? Haven’t you already conceded that belief or nonbelief in a thing depends upon one’s ability (i.e. “can” or “cannot”), rather than on one’s will?

For example, if predestination turns out to be true, but you “could” not accept it, then doesn’t that mean you lacked the ability to believe what was true? And if you lacked the ability to belief what was true, and if that ability were God-given, then wouldn’t that mean that God had created some people–namely you–to live at odds with what is true and good? Wouldn’t that mean that some people had been destined to conflict with the moral order and thereby crash and burn (Romans 9:22)? Isn’t that an argument we should expect from a predestinationist?

What I’m getting at is this: if you are a free-willer, for lack of a better word, then you really should talk about things in terms of one’s will, not one’s ability.

As for your objection that predestination is “cold or inhuman,” I would quote Romans 9:18-20: “¹⁸ Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.  ¹⁹ One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?“

Do these verses sound cold and inhuman to you? But which is true: our feeling on a subject or God’s word on that subject? And if something is true, what does it matter how we “feel” about it? Doesn’t Isaiah 55:9 warn us against comparing our wisdom to God’s?

Bartholomew adds:

I should have re-read my e-mail before I sent it to you; I hope you don’t take offense at the impertinence of its tone. It doesn’t show in the e-mail, but I have the greatest respect for your writings, and it’s only because of that respect that I have spent the last hour deliberating over your words and their implications. So often, I’m in complete agreement, that I seldom end up sending you a response.

Also, when I wrote,

“And if you lacked the ability to belief what was true, and if that ability were God-given, then wouldn’t that mean that God had created some people–namely you–to live at odds with what is true and good.”

I meant that as a purely hypothetical. The “namely you” appositive was only to clarify to whom I was referring in the hypothetical; it in no way was meant as an accusation. In other words, I did not mean to imply anything at all about your actual relationship to the truth. I sincerely apologize if you took any other meaning from that phrase.

Thank you for your blog and all you do.

Laura writes:

Please don’t apologize. When I read your first e-mail, I instantly understood the spirit in which it was written and entirely agree with your objection. I am deeply flattered that you would be disturbed by how I phrased my objection. Again, you are correct. If I do not believe in predestination in the sense in which Stephanie described it, then it is because I will not believe it and reject it. If it’s a question of cannot, or of being psychologically or intellectually unequipped to accept it, then I am either disqualified from addressing the issue at all or find myself in the condition of the damned that Stephanie mentions.

We are talking about predestination in the extreme sense, that some are elected to be saved and others to be damned, and that no matter what we do in life, our actions will not change our position. This is contrary to the doctrine of free will, to our concept of a loving God and to the theology of the New Testament. It’s one thing to say that God knows what our ultimate destiny is and yet paradoxically grants us free will. It’s another to say that he ordains our destiny, whether it be damnation or salvation, in such a way that we cannot resist and that there is no use in our pursuing a loving bond with him. 

You mention this from Romans: Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.  ¹⁹ One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?“

That does not conflict with the notion of free will. Essentially, Paul tells us, we cannot fully understand God’s mercy, his wrath or the bestowal of grace. Only God knows the full conditions of justice. Paul also says:

 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be firstborn amongst many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified. (Rom 8: 28-30)

God had previous knowledge of us. But there is an element of free will in following his call. Nothing can separate those who have faith in Christ from the love of God. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Rom 8:35)

This is entirely different from what Stephanie is saying. In her view, only “death and dissolution” will save her and there is no purpose in faith or in cultivating love for Christ. 

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! (Rom 11:33)

In the sour view of Calvinist predestination, there is none of this joy.

Kristor writes:

If Stephanie L. Murgas is totally depraved, then her power to understand the truth is totally depraved along with the rest of her. How then can she rely upon her apprehension that it is true that she is totally depraved? And, likewise, if her understanding is totally depraved, then is not her Presbyterianism in every last respect, and in every jot and tittle of its doctrine, totally depraved? Does it not follow from the doctrine of total depravity that the doctrine of total depravity is itself totally depraved? Can a doctrine that is totally depraved also be true? It seems unlikely, prima facie.

Kristor responds to Mr. Lisek:

Mr. Lisek asks why reason and morality could not arise spontaneously from matter. They could, but only if they were implicit in that matter to begin with. By analogy, think of water. While a molecule of H2O is not apparently wet in and of itself, the wetness of water is implicit in the electrical structure of such molecules. So, if you adhere a single molecule of water to a surface that is otherwise devoid of such molecules, you have made it a bit wet.

This relation between the wetness of water and the electrical structure of H2O is called supervenience – literally, “coming + upon.” Wetness supervenes upon the electrical structure of H2O. Likewise, the self-organizing systems that complexity theory notices throughout nature supervene upon their constituents. The organization doesn’t come out of nowhere. It is already implicit in the milieu within which it becomes apparent. Free markets, traditions, languages, and other such human organizations are expressions of the rationality and morality of human beings; the order and rationality of the market supervene upon the order and rationality of human beings.

If mind arises from matter the way wetness arises from H2O, then a tiny bit of mind must supervene upon even a tiny bit of matter, in just the same way that a single molecule of water, although not apparently the least bit wet in itself, nevertheless adds a bit of wetness to the world. There is a school of interpretation of quantum mechanics that takes off from this supposition. John Archibald Wheeler, Sir Roger Penrose and Henry Stapp are its most famous adherents. Wheeler famously argues that a quantum event is a bit of mind – is a decision, an act – and that this is the only way it can function physically as a bit of information. Under this interpretation, every fact, whether we would naturally characterize it as physical or not, is the outcome of a decision.

None of this contradicts what Laura or CS Lewis have said about rationality. The key thing to bear in mind, in reconciling what I have just been talking about with what they were talking about, is that they were using “matter” and “nature” as those terms have commonly been used since Descartes. And these Cartesian ideas about matter have been discarded by 20th century physics. It is no longer regarded as mere stuff; rather, it is treated as an activity, or strictly speaking a procedure – for activity may be disordered, while a procedure is ordered activity. What we perceive as stable stuff is a procedure that is reiterated faithfully, millions of times per second. Analyzed closely, that procedure turns out to be evolutions in the energetic potential of an array of dimensionless points in empty space, i.e., it is a mathematical operation. But mathematical operations can be carried out only by intentional agents (even a computer, which has no agency of its own, carries out mathematical operations as the instrument of an operator). So while it might make sense to say that mind supervenes upon matter, it makes even more sense to say that matter supervenes upon the operations of mind. The physical stuff we see around us, then, is under this hypothesis something like the output and artifact of mental procedures.

It is interesting that the 20th century notion of what constitutes an actuality is an unconscious reversion to the pre-Cartesian, Aristotelico-Thomistic ontology – that is to say, the ontology of traditional Christian theology – except that the 20th century version understands mentality and rationality as basic to reality, rather than added in at the top layers. It should not surprise us to think that rationality and mentality are basic to existence. If God exists, he is basic to everything, by definition; and if he is rational, and mental, then so are his rationality and mentality basic to everything.

CS Lewis says, “Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational.” Quite so. Under the scheme I have been discussing, we would not say that matter produces rational thought, but vice versa. Matter is indeed the raw material of thought, and in this sense does modify our thinking; this would have to be the case, on the supposition that the facts of the past have ordered causal effect on the present. The past modifies our thinking as a brute fact, that is not malleable to our ratiocination; the past is what it is, and no amount of thinking will change it. When we think, we consider what to make of the past, what to do with and about it in respect to the values we apprehend as really possible to us, and that we would realize. Rational thought is a creative activity; it appropriates from the infinite realm of the possible those values, never yet exactly realized, that are yet congruent with the past. But the past as given is over and done with. It has already been created, and cannot any longer ratiocinate. All it can do is embody the ordered rationality that created it. It is not active in our thought, except as the passive datum thereof.

Where then does our thought come from? Not from the past; not from matter; not from inactivity. You can’t get activity out of the sheer inactivity that, by definition, is the past as settled fact. Each new moment of thought, each new act, each new bit of information, is a new addition to the world, and must therefore originate elsewhere. That’s why, although it is constrained by the facts of the past, thought is nevertheless free; for each new event is a transcendence of all prior events, and an enlargement of the world.

Mr. Lisek writes:

My claim regarding not being able to possess absolute knowledge is in regards to the world of the senses, which I thought was clear. I can know for certain that I am thinking of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream right now because it is my thought and I can directly experience my own thoughts. But I cannot directly experience the world, rather the world is presented to me through my senses. My senses can be deceived and my reason can be tricked, which is why doubt must always be maintained about the phenomenal world.

Kristor said: “The statement “we cannot know any truths absolutely” is self-refuting, and so it is necessarily false. Indeed, because it is necessarily false, its negative is one of the very first things we can know to be absolutely true.”

Just because you can say the above with the English language doesn’t mean it makes logical real-world sense. The English language is, in part, an artificial representation of reality, it is not the reality itself. Words may be put together in a way that for the words make them false-in-language, but because language is an imperfect representation of reality that doesn’t mean the words we put together aren’t true-in-fact.

When a person goes SCUBA diving they talk about being “underwater” even though they are actually surrounded by water. Saying I am “underwater” when I go SCUBA diving is very illogical and false because of the what the words “under” and “water” mean, but it is true-in-fact. I can hold a glass of water over my head and say “I am underwater!” which would be true-in-language but false-in-fact. During the day a person might say they are “bathed in sunlight” when they are not actually taking a bath inside of a physical thing called “sunlight” rather they are being constantly bombarded by the sun’s rays.

Trying to use the technical structure of language and the literal meaning of words to refute a claim does not make Kristor right. Such focus on the exact words rather then the content of the entire message does not enlighten.

In the same way Kristor can use the artificial representation of reality that is the English language to say things like “You can’t possibly be said ever to have made a mistake if it was never possible to get anything right in the first place. So we see that even partial, incomplete, or inaccurate knowledge presupposes the possibility of absolute knowledge. The very notions of “right” and “wrong,” “true” and “false” are incoherent unless it is really possible to be perfectly correct.” – he can only say these kinds of things because of the limitations and semantics of language and not because they actually make sense of the real world.

Kristor said: “But to argue that everything we say is nonsense is obviously to talk nonsense. One can string the words together, so that they appear to mean something; but, really, they don’t.”

Kristor needs to take his own advice, see above. Human languages and maths are just maps of reality, and the map is not the territory. A map of New Jersey is not New Jersey. A painting of a pipe is not a pipe. Kristor is mistaking the language of things for the things themselves.

Kristor said: “As himself a member of this world, how does Mr. Lisek absolutely know that, for beings such as he, there can be no absolute knowledge of anything?”

Kristor actually means “beings such as us” – unless of course he is denying his own humanity or he his denying mine.

Can anyone honestly deny their senses can be tricked or their reason deceived? Because our senses can be tricked and our reason can be deceived, we must accept that all knowledge about the world outside our skulls is tentative. My statements about human beings not being able to know absolute truth is not a reflection of a lack of objective truth in the world, but rather a reflection of our human frailty. Unless Kristor’s senses cannot be deceived, unless his reason cannot be tricked, unless Kristor is omniscient, then his claims of absolute knowledge are specious.

Kristor said: “And, unless it really is possible for us to know at least some absolute truths, then there is no way to really tell whether we have ever erred, in anything.”

We cannot know for certain that ‘we have ever erred in anything’, but we can look at the weight of the evidence presented to us and draw tentative conclusions from it. This isn’t emotionally satisfying at all, our minds want things like absolute truths – it makes the world easier to understand. But limited creatures such as ourselves must be satisfied with what the weight of the evidence tells us from which we draw our tentative conclusions about reality.

You’ll notice that scientists do not speak of “absolute truths”, but rather they use the language of doubt: hypothesis, theory, and law. This isn’t because they are closet subjectivists, but rather because (intellectually honest) scientists realize that all knowledge is tentative: we can always learn more about the how the world works and will have to change our conclusions as more evidence becomes available. While this may be emotionally satisfying as saying “I possess absolute truth”, it is not intellectually honest.

Kristor said: “But if no one, whether theist or not, can defend moral absolutes, then effectually there are no such things. “

This is simply not the case. In the same way that I cannot defend my claim to the existence of gravity as absolute, that doesn’t mean gravity does not exist; and just because I cannot defend a claim to morality as absolute, that doesn’t mean morality doesn’t exist.

While I cannot prove to you in the mathematical-proof sense that gravity is real, the weight of the evidence for gravity is so overwhelming that it would be ridiculous to be worried about falling on the ceiling.

Kristor said “Morality is as amenable to mathematical treatment as anything else – the name of the mathematical discipline that formalizes moral questions is game theory.”

Mathematics is only a symbolic representation of the world – just like all language – and while it may be possible within the artificial representation of reality that is math to have absolute proofs, this does not represent absolute knowledge about reality.

Laura said: “Free markets and traditions and much of language would be inconceivable without reason”

So then cats and dogs possess reason? They certainly possess language and have a limited understanding of human language as well, especially dogs. Or maybe cats and dogs and other animals do not possess reason, rather they just possess the correct brain structures to understand language.

Laura said: “Our minds to the degree they engage in true reasoning are not moved by physical events but prior reason or inborn knowledge.”

If the mind does not require the physical brain, then why does brain damage change the person? There have been many cases of physical damage to the brain which resulted in radical changes of a person’s behavior, such as Phineas Gage who had a rail road spike driven through his brain. If the mind isn’t dependent upon the mechanical brain, then damaging the brain shouldn’t matter.

Michael S. writes:

Stephanie L. Murgas writes:

“I believe that I am incapable of being saved from my life of sin, and I believe that death and dissolution is the only method by which I can be redeemed. I am unworthy of the mercy of the cross.”

Incapable of being saved from sin? Unworthy of the mercy of the cross? Obviously Christ disagrees. Obviously He thought it was worth it.

Contemplate a crucifix (not simply a cross), and mull it over.

Mr. Lisek writes:

Kristor said: “Mr. Lisek asks why reason and morality could not arise spontaneously from matter. They could, but only if they were implicit in that matter to begin with. By analogy, think of water. While a molecule of H2O is not apparently wet in and of itself, the wetness of water is implicit in the electrical structure of such molecules.”

The idea that “wetness” is a property of water is ego-centric reasoning, wetness is a perception of our senses, not an inherent part of water. If I scooped out the right part of your brain, the feeling of “wetness” would go away. H2O for that matter is not an inherent part of reality, neither is Hydrogen or Oxygen and neither are the atoms it is makes up the Hydrogen and Oxygen. These are all emergent properties – the spontaneous order – of quarks. Perhaps in time we will understand this regresses even further and there are things smaller than quarks.

The spontaneous order of the universe put the quarks together in a way that produced protons, neutrons, and electrons, and in turn spontaneous order produced Hydrogen and Oxygen, etc all the way up to humans and capitalism and language and tradition.

Kristor responds:

My claim regarding not being able to possess absolute knowledge is in regards to the world of the senses, which I thought was clear. I can know for certain that I am thinking of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream right now because it is my thought and I can directly experience my own thoughts. But I cannot directly experience the world, rather the world is presented to me through my senses. My senses can be deceived and my reason can be tricked, which is why doubt must always be maintained about the phenomenal world.

Mr. Lisek has now drawn a useful distinction between phenomenal apprehensions of the outside world mediated sensorially and those that are intuitions of eternal truths, such as those of mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. Because we are fallible, we are of course prone to err in apprehensions of either sort. But we could not make the judgement that we had thus erred, unless we had in mind the possibility that we might avoid such error. To say that it is simply impossible to be correct in our interpretations of sensory phenomena is, precisely, to say that all our interpretations of sensory phenomena are incorrect. But if that is the case, then there is absolutely nothing we can say with confidence about the actual world. And I don’t think that’s what Mr. Lisek means, because it contradicts all his statements about what we can and cannot do: if Mr. Lisek cannot be right about the phenomenal world, then he cannot be right about what Laura or I can or cannot do.

Mr. Lisek would do better to confine himself to a more careful, and less ambitious, statement, such as: “it is impossible for us to attain perfect, exhaustive understanding of the world, or even of any aspects thereof, as they are revealed to us by our senses.” This is trivially true. It leaves open the possibility that we can attain some understanding of the world.  

Kristor said: “The statement “we cannot know any truths absolutely” is self-refuting, and so it is necessarily false. Indeed, because it is necessarily false, its negative is one of the very first things we can know to be absolutely true.”

Just because you can say the above with the English language doesn’t mean it makes logical real-world sense. The English language is, in part, an artificial representation of reality, it is not the reality itself. Words may be put together in a way that for the words make them false-in-language, but because language is an imperfect representation of reality that doesn’t mean the words we put together aren’t true-in-fact.

When a person goes SCUBA diving they talk about being “underwater” even though they are actually surrounded by water. Saying I am “underwater” when I go SCUBA diving is very illogical and false because of the what the words “under” and “water” mean, but it is true-in-fact. I can hold a glass of water over my head and say “I am underwater!” which would be true-in-language but false-in-fact. During the day a person might say they are “bathed in sunlight” when they are not actually taking a bath inside of a physical thing called “sunlight” rather they are being constantly bombarded by the sun’s rays.

Trying to use the technical structure of language and the literal meaning of words to refute a claim does not make Kristor right. Such focus on the exact words rather then the content of the entire message does not enlighten.

In the same way Kristor can use the artificial representation of reality that is the English language to say things like “You can’t possibly be said ever to have made a mistake if it was never possible to get anything right in the first place. So we see that even partial, incomplete, or inaccurate knowledge presupposes the possibility of absolute knowledge. The very notions of “right” and “wrong,” “true” and “false” are incoherent unless it is really possible to be perfectly correct.” – he can only say these kinds of things because of the limitations and semantics of language and not because they actually make sense of the real world.

So does Mr. Lisek really mean to say, “I know absolutely that I can’t know anything absolutely”?  Although this is what he said, I doubt it. The statement makes no sense. It has to be false. It would be better if he said only – as now he seems to be saying – “I know absolutely that it is unwise to rely naïvely upon my apprehensions, and that it is prudent to think about them critically.” But, again, this is trivially true, and no one would dispute it.

Kristor said: “But to argue that everything we say is nonsense is obviously to talk nonsense. One can string the words together, so that they appear to mean something; but, really, they don’t.”

Kristor needs to take his own advice, see above. Human languages and maths are just maps of reality, and the map is not the territory. A map of New Jersey is not New Jersey. A painting of a pipe is not a pipe. Kristor is mistaking the language of things for the things themselves.

No. I’m just trying to be careful in using language. In reading a map, one unfolds it, holds it right side up, and aligns its north to True North. One also, of course, remembers that it might contain some errors, and that one might err in its interpretation, or in relating it to the territory. But that the map is not the territory does not mean that the map bears no relation whatsoever to the territory. If there were no such relations – if there were nothing to the map but errors, or stuff that someone just made up out of whole cloth – there would be no map. There would be only a jumble of useless nonsense. If languages are nothing but errors, are nothing but stuff we make up out of whole cloth that bears no relation to reality, then no one can say anything but nonsense. This is not a fruitful premise for philosophical inquiry.  

Kristor said: “As himself a member of this world, how does Mr. Lisek absolutely know that, for beings such as he, there can be no absolute knowledge of anything?”

Kristor actually means “beings such as us” – unless of course he is denying his own humanity or he his denying mine.

I’m afraid this is wrong. In saying “beings such as Mr. Lisek,” I say nothing at all, one way or the other, about whether I am myself such a being. I leave open the possibility that I am. But if it really is true that Mr. Lisek can’t know anything absolutely, then I think I am not such a being as he, at least in that respect.

Can anyone honestly deny their senses can be tricked or their reason deceived?

I can’t see how. Did someone do that? It was not I. But to admit the obvious truth that we can err is not the same thing as to assert that we can do nothing but err.

Because our senses can be tricked and our reason can be deceived, we must accept that all knowledge about the world outside our skulls is tentative. My statements about human beings not being able to know absolute truth is not a reflection of a lack of objective truth in the world, but rather a reflection of our human frailty. Unless Kristor’s senses cannot be deceived, unless his reason cannot be tricked, unless Kristor is omniscient, then his claims of absolute knowledge are specious.

That we are frail does not mean that we are altogether impotent. It is just not true that one must be God in order to know anything absolutely. “2 + 2 = 4” is true absolutely. And if behavioral policies are amenable to mathematical treatment, then we can know moral truths absolutely.

Kristor said: “And, unless it really is possible for us to know at least some absolute truths, then there is no way to really tell whether we have ever erred, in anything.”

We cannot know for certain that ‘we have ever erred in anything’, but we can look at the weight of the evidence presented to us and draw tentative conclusions from it. This isn’t emotionally satisfying at all, our minds want things like absolute truths – it makes the world easier to understand. But limited creatures such as ourselves must be satisfied with what the weight of the evidence tells us from which we draw our tentative conclusions about reality.

If we can’t know for certain that we have ever erred in anything, how on Earth can we draw conclusions about anything, tentative or not? One can’t know what it is like to be wrong unless one knows also what it is like to be right; one could not otherwise have any basis for comparison of wrongness and rightness, for they would not feel different.

Furthermore, if we can’t tell whether or not we’ve ever been wrong, what would lead us to try and figure out how things work – what would lead us to think critically about our beliefs? If we never had an inkling we were wrong about anything, why wouldn’t we blithely go on our merry way, totally confident, never doubting ourselves for a moment – and never learning anything? If we can’t know we are wrong, what is the purpose of learning, and why has nature endowed us with the capacity to do so?  

You’ll notice that scientists do not speak of “absolute truths”, but rather they use the language of doubt: hypothesis, theory, and law. This isn’t because they are closet subjectivists, but rather because (intellectually honest) scientists realize that all knowledge is tentative: we can always learn more about the how the world works and will have to change our conclusions as more evidence becomes available. While this may be emotionally satisfying as saying “I possess absolute truth”, it is not intellectually honest.

Well, of course! By definition, science does not deal in absolute truths. It investigates contingencies, about which (by virtue of that very contingency) it is unlikely that we will ever attain anything better than extremely reliable opinions. But it does presuppose absolute truths, and use them, all the time. In particular, it uses the absolute truths of math pervasively; and it is founded upon the absolute truth that it must be possible for us to know something or other about the world (since “I cannot know anything about the world” entails “I cannot know anything about whether or not I, a member of that world, can know anything,” making it absolutely false). If we can’t know anything about the world, then science is impossible.

Kristor said: “But if no one, whether theist or not, can defend moral absolutes, then effectually there are no such things. “

This is simply not the case. In the same way that I cannot defend my claim to the existence of gravity as absolute, that doesn’t mean gravity does not exist; and just because I cannot defend a claim to morality as absolute, that doesn’t mean morality doesn’t exist.

Mr. Lisek has misread what I wrote. I did not write, “If no one can defend moral absolutes, then there are no such things.” I wrote, “If no one can defend moral absolutes, then effectually there are no such things.” Absolutely binding moral precepts can exist, whether or not there be anyone to defend them. And, indeed, they must, if they are to be either absolute or moral. But if no one is capable of apprehending them, as Mr. Lisek insists – let alone understanding or defending them – then so far as we can be concerned they might as well not exist; for if we can’t apprehend them, then they cannot anywise factor into our moral calculus. 

While I cannot prove to you in the mathematical-proof sense that gravity is real, the weight of the evidence for gravity is so overwhelming that it would be ridiculous to be worried about falling on the ceiling.

Kristor said “Morality is as amenable to mathematical treatment as anything else – the name of the mathematical discipline that formalizes moral questions is game theory.”

Mathematics is only a symbolic representation of the world – just like all language – and while it may be possible within the artificial representation of reality that is math to have absolute proofs, this does not represent absolute knowledge about reality.

If nothing Mr. Lisek can say in any language represents absolute knowledge – if that is to say, nothing that can be expressed in language can be simply, completely true – then nothing he says can be true. I think Mr. Lisek is being too sweeping with his assertions, and too careless with terms. If math is not about reality, then it is just false. That’s a silly conclusion. Mr. Lisek talks like a reasonable soul, so I conclude that he can’t mean math is false. If math is just all made up, and has nothing to do with reality, as a small minority of philosophers of math do indeed think, then in the first place the logical systems in which such philosophers express their arguments are incapable of deriving any true propositions – including the proposition that formal systems have nothing to do with reality – and in the second, it is then deeply perplexing that so much of physical reality seems to behave according to regularities that are expressible in mathematical terms.  

Laura said: “Free markets and traditions and much of language would be inconceivable without reason”

So then cats and dogs possess reason? They certainly possess language and have a limited understanding of human language as well, especially dogs. Or maybe cats and dogs and other animals do not possess reason, rather they just possess the correct brain structures to understand language.

Laura did not say, “language would be wholly inconceivable without reason.” She said, “much of language would be wholly inconceivable without reason.” This leaves open the possibility of animal language that is pre-rational, or proto-rational. But say that cats and dogs do in fact possess reason, as most people with the slightest familiarity with either species would instantly admit. Indeed, dogs and cats can be downright sneaky; and one cannot sneak unless one intends to deceive; and one cannot deceive except by proposing a counter-factual proposition, which one can do only if one is at least implicitly rational; for entertaining propositions and their contraries is entirely a rational activity. Is not stalking therefore a rational pursuit? But how then would the fact of animal rationality contradict Laura’s statement that, “Free markets and traditions and much of language would be inconceivable without reason”? That such things require reason is totally compatible with the possibility that dogs and cats are somewhat rational. If they were more rational, they could presumably do things like get into the insurance business, or celebrate the vernal equinox with songs and dances, or write sonnets and derive theorems.

Laura said: “Our minds to the degree they engage in true reasoning are not moved by physical events but prior reason or inborn knowledge.”

If the mind does not require the physical brain, then why does brain damage change the person? There have been many cases of physical damage to the brain which resulted in radical changes of a person’s behavior, such as Phineas Gage who had a rail road spike driven through his brain. If the mind isn’t dependent upon the mechanical brain, then damaging the brain shouldn’t matter.

“Minds do not require the physical brain” does not entail “minds are unaffected by the physical brain.” And Laura didn’t say that minds don’t require brains. Nor did she even say that reasoning is not a physical process; indeed, if reasoning takes place in the physical world, it is a physical process by definition; so that if our present physics cannot comprehend it, well that’s just too bad for our present physics. And it wasn’t a railroad spike. It was a crowbar. Not what most people call by that name, the prying tool with a curve at one end; that’s a pinch bar. A crowbar is a straight piece of hexagonal steel, about 4.5′ long and 1″ in diameter, with a narrow blade at one end.

Kristor adds:

Mr. Lisek writes:

The idea that “wetness” is a property of water is ego-centric reasoning, wetness is a perception of our senses, not an inherent part of water. If I scooped out the right part of your brain, the feeling of “wetness” would go away. H2O for that matter is not an inherent part of reality, neither is Hydrogen or Oxygen and neither are the atoms it is makes up the Hydrogen and Oxygen. These are all emergent properties – the spontaneous order – of quarks. Perhaps in time we will understand this regresses even further and there are things smaller than quarks.

If he means that wetness, oxygen and atoms don’t really exist, then they are not emergent from quarks, but rather just are not, period full stop. How would it be any different for quarks, should we decide that M theory is true, and quarks are just frequencies of strings, and that frequencies of strings are just deformations of infinitesimal 11-dimensional spatio-temporal volumes, the storied Calabi-Yau spaces? And how would it be different for the Calabi-Yau spaces? If the whole hierarchy of physical systems doesn’t really exist, what does? If on the other hand quarks, protons, atoms, and so forth do in fact all emerge from whatever the basic level of the hierarchy might be, then they do really exist (albeit that we may not understand them very well). Now, when we say that quarks emerge from strings that emerge from Calabi-Yau spaces, we could by “emerge” mean something like “supervene,” or we could mean something like “arise as a wholly new thing out of a matrix that had never before contained anything like it, even implicitly or eminently.” The latter conception is incoherent. In the first place, if it were true, the math of Calabi-Yau spaces would not map (that word again) at all to the math of strings, or of quarks. The quarks, and indeed the wetness of water, have to be implicit in the Calabi-Yau spaces, if the math of M Theory is going to do us any good at all. In the second place, a void cannot give rise to actuality. You can’t get something from absolutely nothing (NB that the quantum vacuum is not nothing; it has potential (it must, in order for there to be a Casimir Effect)). What did all these things emerge from? At the root level, I mean? Where did Calabi-Yau spaces come from, or for that matter the math of Calabi-Yau spaces? If the answer is “nothing,” then they are all nothing, and nothing exists. But something exists. So Calabi-Yau spaces and their math had to come from something. Mr. Lisek is dangerously close to painting himself into the corner of advancing a Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God.

Mr. Lisek writes:

The spontaneous order of the universe put the quarks together in a way that produced protons, neutrons, and electrons, and in turn spontaneous order produced Hydrogen and Oxygen, etc all the way up to humans and capitalism and language and tradition.

Where did this spontaneous order of the universe come from? If “nothing,” then it does not exist, for nothing can produce only nothing: in that case, there is no such thing as order. And that’s just silly; if our explanation of order ends by telling us there is no such thing, then our investigations have left us stupider than when we began them. Alright then; if “it was always there, and did not come from anything else,” then how did this eternal spontaneous order do all this putting and producing? Put another way, how does an abstraction like Natural Law push anything around? Where does it get its causal oomph, its potential energy? How does it make sense to treat the Natural Law of energy as itself having potential energy (does the Natural Law use up some of its potential energy in the kinesis of creation)? Bit of circularity there, no? Unless, that is, the Natural Law of potential did not ever exist as a mere abstraction, but rather was always some sort of property of some concrete actual thing, so that the concrete actuality of that thing provided the causal oomph to get other actual things like universes going, in a way that expressed its own eternal order. And if the spontaneous order was always there, where was there? What was its mode of being, before there was a universe to concretely express it? If it was “really there” before there was anything to constitute a universe, then, again, must it not always have been somehow expressed in some actuality prior to any universe?

We find ourselves pushed toward the conclusion that Mr. Lisek’s spontaneous order of the universe must be a product of some original, eternal actual thing. Has Mr. Lisek lately reviewed the Prologue to the Gospel of John?

In the beginning was the Spontaneous Order, and the Spontaneous Order was with God, and the Spontaneous Order was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Josh F. writes:

Mr. Lisek, what in the world is a perpetually tentative right-wing  atheist? Is it uncertainty + conservatism + the most radical liberal  assertion? Does this not equal a radically autonomous existential  state? One who’s idea of “free will” is an unrestrained, unimpeded and  non-relatable physical thing?  Did you really reason your way to atheism in the same manner that you reasoned your way to blanket tentativeness and right-wingness? How so? What empirical evidence did  you have the good fortune to experience that cried out, “There is no God?” Is it even plausible for a materialist (are conservatives  materialists?) to suggest that his reason (perception and assimilation of the empirical evidence) led him to his atheism (his “boldest” and infinitely weakest of liberal assertions, that God does not exist)?

Can one really cite empirical evidence for the nonexistence of  something? Is this why you are perpetually tentative? What would trying to prove the nonexistence of something through the use of 
empirical evidence do to a person’s mind over the long run? If, in fact, everything screams out, “God made it all,” do you think you have chosen your desensitized state of radical autonomy, voluntarily? So  radically autonomous is Mr. Lisek that he perceives empirical evidence for the nonexistence of God while having absolutely no sense of God gained from ANY of the empirical evidence that is EVERYWHERE around him.

That’s what a radical autonomist calls “free will.”

Laura writes:

What would trying to prove the nonexistence of something through the use of empirical evidence do to a person’s mind over the long run?

An excellent question. 

Bartholomew writes:

Laura wrote in response to my comment regarding predestination/Calvinism:

“God had previous knowledge of us. But there is an element of free will in following his call. Nothing can separate those who have faith in Christ from the love of God. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Rom 8:35)

This is entirely different from what Stephanie is saying. In her view, only “death and dissolution” will save her and there is no purpose in faith or in cultivating love for Christ.”

That makes sense: thanks for the clarification. As she explained in the later thread dedicated to Calvinism, Mrs. Murgas has rejected the core of Christianity: undeserved grace.