Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

[Uber Genius]

Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

In 2001 or 2002 I was invited by a Christian friend to see a presentation by an Aussie named Ken Ham. It was not just eye-opening, but a jaw-dropping experience.

I listened for an hour to claims about scripture which were not supported historically or from scripture. But more disturbing was the misrepresentation about scientific claims, scientific knowledge, and how one should approach these discussions with "skeptics."

Now have no intention of being drawn into debates about young-earth vs. old-earth theories, or detailed entailment so of "How God created." My primary concern is to highlight bad arguments coming from Ham and his ministry. My hope is that I can dissuade theists from using such constructions in favor of sound and compelling rational arguments.

Now Ham has changed some of his approach in the last 15 years so my notes may no longer be representative of his views.

1 - Evolution and the Big Bang Model of cosmology are just "Theories!"

Now if you have read some of my other, "Tricks," treads you will be familiar with this informal fallacy...equivocation.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word "Equivocation," as, "The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

This equivocation is always meant to deceive. But it only deceives the uneducated and those to lazy to do the research.

"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge.

In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis. That is a inference that explains data.

The trick Ham wants you to miss is he is substituting common usage for scientific usage. Just the way new atheists often want to misrepresent atheism as lack of belief or faith as a way of knowing. If we doesn't pay attention to the fact that "atheism" and "faith" have specific meanings in the fields of philosophy and theology respectively, we can be dragged into equivocations meant to misguide and conflate, with statements like, "common usage is ..."

2 - "We're you there?"

Here we find the most damning argument against Ham and his methodology. After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

His point was to create skepticism about scientific findings unless we had first-hand knowledge of the events.

I decided not to embarrass the fellow. But I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?" Puzzled, he hesitated and then kept giving me evidence as if he had deleted the cognitively dissonant revelation altogether.

Point is Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge. In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony.

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

Please share other theistic tricks you have run into.

However, beware not to regurgitate internet infidel propaganda mindlessly. They create straw men of theistic arguments and attack those as "fallacious."

Straw arguments always make poor substitutes for real ones.

 

[Jack of Spades]

Theists have a tendency of trying to turn legitimate questions about the nature of reality into moral questions.

For a classic example "You're an atheist because you don't want to submit to God". In marketing this is called "Thinking past the sale", meaning that you're guided to think as if you have already bought the product and are now thinking about what to do with it.

It's simply a manipulation technique, a quite obvious one too.

 

[com7fy8]

I suspect there are theists who are just wishing for some argument or claim of fact which will show they are right. And their prejudice can effect how well they evaluate things. And if someone has a minister who is an idol, then someone can put whatever that idol says above question.

It looks to me like a number of theists and atheists are putting out what is not true, or which has been handed down to them by say-so even from ones they don't even know; but because the passer-onners say what they believe, they trust what they say. But in fact it can be an act of blind faith, to accept what they have been told, since they even do not personally know the sources.

And I am not an expert as an eye witness to things which theists and atheists are reporting; so as an eye witness, how can I know . . . about things being told me by people I don't even know. And if they got their stuff from people they don't even know . . . my faith in them is blind, isn't it??

God can simply prove Himself to me, in me

 

[Uber Genius]

because the passer-onners say what they believe, they trust what they say. But in fact it can be an act of blind faith, to accept what they have been told, since they even do not personally know the sources.

Strange. You have just eliminate a large portion historical, legal, and scientific knowledge. In fact all knowledge at the university level is based on "passer-owners that say what they believe, they trust what they say."

You have also impugned the majority of the Gospel writers as well as the author of Acts, Paul, and Peter.

Was that your aim.

about things being told me by people I don't even know. And if they got their stuff from people they don't even know . .

So if we are going to be skeptics of everything we don't learn first hand then we just limit our knowledge to our own experience data, eliminating needlessly over 99.99% of the data other operate by everyday.

How can you work with other if you can't trust anything they say?

How can you possible ask directions in a place you have never been to a place you have never been. Or do you trust google maps knowledge because it has a machin interface in front of the human passers on?

What makes you trust the English language you are writing with? Who taught you, just some passer-onner like your parents or teacher!

God can simply prove Himself to me, in me

Your solipsism is complete. Why ask that question since your epistemology can't possibly prove the existence of an external world, the reality of the past, the consistence of nature over time, the existence of other minds (persons)?

It is just you, wait, what if you are God? How would you know?

 

[Uber Genius]

Theists have a tendency of trying to turn legitimate questions about the nature of reality into moral questions.

For a classic example "You're an atheist because you don't want to submit to God". In marketing this is called "Thinking past the sale", meaning that you're guided to think as if you have already bought the product and are now thinking about what to do with it.

It's simply a manipulation technique, a quite obvious one too.

i have more lined up and plan to do exactly as many "tricks" threads for bad arguments on both sides of this debate.

Since historically I skip over bad theistic arguments in a few milliseconds I find it harder for me to recall the worst offenders.

Ken Ham and Ray Comfort are easy but I imagine you might have some others in mind. Thx in advance.

 

[com7fy8]

because the passer-onners say what they believe, they trust what they say.

You have just eliminate a large portion historical, legal, and scientific knowledge. In fact all knowledge at the university level is based on "passer-owners that say what they believe, they trust what they say."

I offer that I understand what you are saying.

But my emphasis is not mainly or only on the truth that I am not an eye-witness to things which are passed on to me. But what I am emphasizing is how people can tend to accept what matches with what they want to be true. Our character can have us doing this.

This is not an academic example, but we see how people can select companions based on what they want, instead of really making sure about who they get involved with.

in fact it can be an act of blind faith, to accept what they have been told,

You have also impugned the majority of the Gospel writers as well as the author of Acts, Paul, and Peter.

I can actually experience that there is God, and I can discover how He and what He does with me is a match with what I read in the Bible.

And I can trust God to guide me about what He knows is true or not, of what people try to pass on to me. He does know

Can I prove it really is God? No, but I keep discovering how He does better with me, than how I have understood the Bible to mean and how others have presented it to me. And how I and others become is better. The love meaning is better than a lot of theoretical ideas and explanations.

A theistic trick, then, can be how ones make a major project of using logic and material stuff to prove historical things the Bible says, but they do not give ever more attention to how the Bible says God wants us to become like Jesus and learn how to love any and all people while we are mainly about pleasing Him.

 

[ExodusMe]

Strange. You have just eliminate a large portion historical, legal, and scientific knowledge. In fact all knowledge at the university level is based on "passer-owners that say what they believe, they trust what they say."

You have also impugned the majority of the Gospel writers as well as the author of Acts, Paul, and Peter.

Was that your aim.

So if we are going to be skeptics of everything we don't learn first hand then we just limit our knowledge to our own experience data, eliminating needlessly over 99.99% of the data other operate by everyday.

How can you work with other if you can't trust anything they say?

How can you possible ask directions in a place you have never been to a place you have never been. Or do you trust google maps knowledge because it has a machin interface in front of the human passers on?

What makes you trust the English language you are writing with? Who taught you, just some passer-onner like your parents or teacher!

Your solipsism is complete. Why ask that question since your epistemology can't possibly prove the existence of an external world, the reality of the past, the consistence of nature over time, the existence of other minds (persons)?

It is just you, wait, what if you are God? How would you know?

I think comfy is attempting to show the epistemological source of faith and how it differs from other knowledge. If there is anything certain in the scope of a Christian's knowledge it is what is provided to us by the Holy Spirit. I don't think we would want to deny the rest of our knowledge, but there is a differentiation between our knowledge of God provided by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and our knowledge of the external world. See Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga.

 

[variant]

I don't think we would want to deny the rest of our knowledge, but there is a differentiation between our knowledge of God provided by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and our knowledge of the external world. See Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga.

The difference is called special pleading.

Plantinga's work is also viciously circular in that it depends like Calvin on the "holy spirit" to reveal truths to you via the revealed truth of scripture, which reveals to you the "holy spirit"...

He basically argued that knowledge of God is innate, and that we could realistically sense the divine itself.

According to the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model, theistic belief (belief in God) has warrant, indeed, sufficient warrant for knowledge. The central feature of this model is the stipulation that God has created us human beings with a belief-producing process or source of belief, the sensus divinitatis

this source works under various conditions to produce beliefs about God, including, of course, beliefs that immediately entail his existence. Belief produced in this way, I said, can easily meet the conditions for warrant; given that it is true (and held sufficiently strongly), it would constitute knowledge

Why should anyone stipulate that we can properly sense the divine when dealing with the question about wither or not belief in God is warranted?

If that's enough for you to call something "knowledge" have at it, but it's nothing like having knowledge of other things. I doubt the same word is appropriate.

Plantigna in that book actually seems to me to be arguing that the basic human psychology that creates religion (and we know it does this because there have been multiple man made religions) tells us that we really know there is a God.

How you can get from A to B in under 500 pages without realizing how hollow that is, is beyond me.

 

[ExodusMe]

The difference is called special pleading.

Plantinga's work is also viciously circular in that it depends like Calvin on the "holy spirit" to reveal truths to you via the revealed truth of scripture, which reveals to you the "holy spirit"...

He provides a private model to the christian community. For me to argue this with a non-believer is like trying to convince you of the doctrine of original sin. It is pointless.

He basically argued that knowledge of God is innate, and that we could realistically sense the divine itself.

He argued that the perception of God is innate (sensus divinitatus), but it has been damaged by original sin. Hence, why there are so many different beliefs in regard to God.

Why should anyone stipulate that we can properly sense the divine when dealing with the question about wither or not belief in God is warranted?

Because it provides an explanation to the basicality of belief in God and deals with objections related to "well, why are there so many different beliefs?" in regard to God, etc...

If that's enough for you to call something "knowledge" have at it, but it's nothing like having knowledge of other things. I doubt the same word is appropriate.

I'm not surprised an agnostic would doubt that.

Plantigna in that book actually seems to me to be arguing that the basic human psychology that creates religion (and we know it does this because there have been multiple man made religions) tells us that we really know there is a God.

How you can get from A to B in under 500 pages without realizing how hollow that is, is beyond me.

His objective is clear as he lays it out in the book. 1) He wants to deal with the de jure objection to Christian and 2) provide a model to the Christian community for how we come to know God exists and the specific doctrines of Christianity.

 

[Uber Genius]

But my emphasis is not mainly or only on the truth that I am not an eye-witness to things which are passed on to me.

Neither were any of Paul's converts eye-witnesses in Acts 13-19. Or most of the Gospel writer's audiences.

people can tend to accept what matches with what they want to be true

Yes. But again, the fact that we learn new things every day in school, things that we think were true before we learned them, goes to my point that knowledge can be attained about historical events such as Jesus' death and resurrection.

I don't need to introduce a new way of knowing as the new atheists misrepresent Christianity as doing.

I can actually experience that there is God, and I can discover how He and what He does with me is a match with what I read in the Bible.

Here we radically agree.

No belief -> evidence sufficient to overcome non-belief -> knowledge (academic) -> experience of truth of claims related to new knowledge -> Trust

Now some were so young when the first two stages occurred they are unaware of them. But the point of my post is to not allow new atheists tricks like redefining the justification process by providing evidences (including experiential ones like being supernaturally healed). All three, philosophical arguments, historical arguments, and experiential data, were used in the early church to warrant Christian claims.

A theistic trick, then, can be how ones make a major project of using logic and material stuff to prove historical things the Bible says, but they do not give ever more attention to how the Bible says God wants us to become like Jesus and learn how to love any and all people while we are mainly about pleasing Him.

Probably not a trick as much as immaturity.

We are all called as Christ-followers to represent him as ambassadors. He was an intellectual giant who dismantled hundreds-year-old traditions such as the Sadducees belief that there was no resurrection from the dead, in less than a minute.

We are focused here on how one authenticates the Biblical claims. Discipleship is focused on a different set of beliefs and practices altogether. But you can't be one without first accomplishing the other it seems.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Because it provides an explanation to the basicality of belief in God and deals with objections related to "well, why are there so many different beliefs?" in regard to God, etc...

How do we test that this explanation is correct?

 

[Uber Genius]

I think comfy is attempting to show the epistemological source of faith and how it differs from other knowledge. If there is anything certain in the scope of a Christian's knowledge it is what is provided to us by the Holy Spirit.

A very generous read indeed.

The point of the "tricks" posts is to put some guardrails up against rhetorical tricks on both sides. Ignorance of historic Christianities underpinnings on evidence in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles plays into the new atheists (see Beghossian Manual for Creating Atheists), anachronistic definitions.

While Reformed Epistemology makes the case that belief in certain things can be properly basic, and qua Christian belief, warranted by the witness of the HS, it is not the context of the discussion.

If that poster wanted to convey that he could have said that.

Faith is an entailment of evidence that accumulates to the point of changing ones belief. Faith is not a substitute or a cause as new atheists and the poster seems to suggest.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

In 2001 or 2002 I was invited by a Christian friend to see a presentation by an Aussie named Ken Ham. It was not just eye-opening, but a jaw-dropping experience.

I listened for an hour to claims about scripture which were not supported historically or from scripture. But more disturbing was the misrepresentation about scientific claims, scientific knowledge, and how one should approach these discussions with "skeptics."

Now have no intention of being drawn into debates about young-earth vs. old-earth theories, or detailed entailment so of "How God created." My primary concern is to highlight bad arguments coming from Ham and his ministry. My hope is that I can dissuade theists from using such constructions in favor of sound and compelling rational arguments.

Now Ham has changed some of his approach in the last 15 years so my notes may no longer be representative of his views.

1 - Evolution and the Big Bang Model of cosmology are just "Theories!"

Now if you have read some of my other, "Tricks," treads you will be familiar with this informal fallacy...equivocation.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word "Equivocation," as, "The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

This equivocation is always meant to deceive. But it only deceives the uneducated and those to lazy to do the research.

"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge.

In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis. That is a inference that explains data.

The trick Ham wants you to miss is he is substituting common usage for scientific usage. Just the way new atheists often want to misrepresent atheism as lack of belief or faith as a way of knowing. If we doesn't pay attention to the fact that "atheism" and "faith" have specific meanings in the fields of philosophy and theology respectively, we can be dragged into equivocations meant to misguide and conflate, with statements like, "common usage is ..."

2 - "We're you there?"

Here we find the most damning argument against Ham and his methodology. After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

His point was to create skepticism about scientific findings unless we had first-hand knowledge of the events.

I decided not to embarrass the fellow. But I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?" Puzzled, he hesitated and then kept giving me evidence as if he had deleted the cognitively dissonant revelation altogether.

Point is Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge. In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony.

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

Please share other theistic tricks you have run into.

However, beware not to regurgitate internet infidel propaganda mindlessly. They create straw men of theistic arguments and attack those as "fallacious."

Straw arguments always make poor substitutes for real ones.

The funniest thing to me about Ken Ham is that, according to him, I'm actually a part of the Anti-Christ movement...........................................................if that isn't charity, I don't know what is.

2PhiloVoid

 

[Uber Genius]

The difference is called special pleading.

Hmm. Would all properly basic beliefs be "special pleading?"

How do you trust science knowledge if we can't demonstrate the reality of the external world, other minds, reality of the past, uniformity of nature across time and space, problem of induction (HUME), or the ability of beings to rationally understand the external world (given that evolutionary theory suggests organisms optimize around survival fitness not recognition of truth)

How do you get past "The Problem of the Criterion?"

This may warrant a new thread.

 

[Uber Genius]

How do we test that this explanation is correct?

I've suggest to "variant" to start a different thread regarding proper basic epistemology and specifically Plantinga. And the first place to start would be understanding what "proper-basicality" means. It has a specific meaning philosophically that makes your question quite entertaining.

That said, I would welcome additional examples of Theistic Tricks that you run into regularly.

 

[Uber Genius]

The funniest thing to me about Ken Ham is that, according to him, I'm actually a part of the Anti-Christ movement...........................................................if that isn't charity, I don't know what is.

2PhiloVoid

Me too.

I have been blinded by science. Not to mention philosophy. And other huuuuuman knowledge.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

I've suggest to "variant" to start a different thread regarding proper basic epistemology and specifically Plantinga. And the first place to start would be understanding what "proper-basicality" means. It has a specific meaning philosophically that makes your question quite entertaining.

That said, I would welcome additional examples of Theistic Tricks that you run into regularly.

Funny, I always thought that reformed epistemology was "entertaining", in the same snide way you used the term. I mean seriously... "sensus divinatatus"?

But it doesn't eliminate my question, as much as those who espouse reformed epistemology think it does...

 

[variant]

He provides a private model to the christian community. For me to argue this with a non-believer is like trying to convince you of the doctrine of original sin. It is pointless.

If it is pointless why did you bring it up?

He argued that the perception of God is innate (sensus divinitatus), but it has been damaged by original sin. Hence, why there are so many different beliefs in regard to God.

To argue that there is a "sensus divinitatus" one must first think there is a "divinitatus" to sense.

Because it provides an explanation to the basicality of belief in God and deals with objections related to "well, why are there so many different beliefs?" in regard to God, etc...
I'm not surprised an agnostic would doubt that.
His objective is clear as he lays it out in the book. 1) He wants to deal with the de jure objection to Christian and 2) provide a model to the Christian community for how we come to know God exists and the specific doctrines of Christianity.

I object to the use of the word "know", and yes it is a proper objection to the idea that you need to accept christian doctrine before "knowledge" of the most basic fact of christian doctrine becomes possible.

 

[variant]

Hmm. Would all properly basic beliefs be "special pleading?"

How do you trust science knowledge if we can't demonstrate the reality of the external world, other minds, reality of the past, uniformity of nature across time and space, problem of induction (HUME), or the ability of beings to rationally understand the external world (given that evolutionary theory suggests organisms optimize around survival fitness not recognition of truth)

How do you get past "The Problem of the Criterion?"

This may warrant a new thread.

Special pleading isn't problematic if you can can successfully make the plea.

Plantinga argues that we usher God (a overarching metaphysical claim about the universe) into a catagory of belief that requires no evidence.

The only properly basic beliefs are those that deserve to be taken on spec because to do otherwise makes things like "thinking" or "interacting with the world" difficult or impossible.

Otherwise you want to avoid asserting your beliefs in this way.

 

[variant]

Funny, I always thought that reformed epistemology was "entertaining", in the same snide way you used the term. I mean seriously... "sensus divinatatus"?

But it doesn't eliminate my question, as much as those who espouse reformed epistemology think it does...

I think it belongs in a thread labeled "the tricks that theists play" more so than Ken Ham, an obvious charlatan.

Alvin Plantinga is serious and taken seriously by believers. Even though they might say it is a "a private model to the christian community".

A private model for knoledge, hmm.

Which it is pointless to argue with a non-believer...

So, I have to believe in order to have knoledge of what I believe...

Nice trick.