Religion and Revelation: What if We're Wrong?

Why are People Driven to Ask Atheists About Revelations?

After taking three holi-days of breaks from blogging, (I don't blog on Sunday,) and working exclusively on my brickfront retail operation Meta Candles and Gifts*, I would like to say that I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving weekend. Even the smallest turkey was too large for the two people in my home; I'm going to freeze one of the breasts, but we managed without too much difficulty to finish off the pumpkin pie! I know at Christmas I will be forced to eat what ever pie we decide on, and freeze half the Honeybaked Ham.

[*Click on one of the pretty images if you want to order online America's best-made candles or fabulous gift baskets! Hint: Join the Candle of the Month for a near-50% discount! Or contact me through that online site if you have questions about the products and services. Blatant capitalistic promotion is naturalistic, don't you think?]

I had a casual, workplace conversation with the owner of the brickfront, who deals in rare, unusual and expensive antiques. He is religious, and has talked about his work in the church as organist; he keeps a piano (for sale) in the antiques store and sometimes sits down to play it. But until yesterday he never brought up the subject of religion in any way that required an answer or reaction from me, except to listen.

Yesterday he asked if I "believed." I told him I did not. What came next is not unusual in such a situation; it has happened to me many times, so many over the course of four decades of discussing it that I try never to discuss it, because what I hear, and what I am forced to repeat, is simply too pedestrian, and lame at that, to allow myself to be forced into discussing my beliefs--because no one ever lets it go at what I answer.

I cannot recall one incident in all those many years when someone simply said, "Wow. I never would have guessed!" or "Each to his own," or anything that resembled the conversational equivalent of "I have no intention of impressing on you what I think is wrong in your way of thinking." That would be a blessing to hear.

Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to show what he/she thinks is the error of my logic. Or it goes the direction it went yesterday, when the antiques dealer brought up the subject we can call, "What if you're wrong?"

The "what if you're wrong" debate takes two forms. The first is about the idea that when we die we discover we were wrong, by discovering ourselves in the "afterworld." What will we do, then? we are asked.

The second form of the debate takes the position of, "What if something happens while you're fully alive to change your mind?" The implication here is that if we atheists were faced with some sort of revelation, either a revealed revelation, or one of observation and logic resulting in a possible change of mind, would I be able and/or willing to change my mind? see Horvath and Revelation and On Revelations; Thomas Paine

Why do people need to know this? Why are they driven to inquire? Are they convinced we may say we would be "forced by the circumstances" to believe? Are they convinced, perhaps, that some argument on their part could makes us see the "error" of having a "closed mind"? Are they looking for an opportunity to make the case that "no one can be certain that no god exists"?

It seems my friend was of the mind that he could get me to admit that I could not be certain. I've been drawn in to this argument before, and I knew that it was he who did not have the "open" mind to listen objectively to me, and to objectively ask about my logic. People like him, who are otherwise fine as friends, would rather impress upon us the logic they believe will show we are the ones with "closed" minds.

And by the way, this is behavior in which I never engage, that is, trying to convince someone who doesn't want to listen to the logic of naturalism. It is improper etiquette--and rude.

I did not take the bait. I merely got up from my chair, walked to my computer, pulled up the Academy's "Strong" Position on Naturalism--which I then read to him. I thought that if I presented my argument in its written form, rather than trying to speak from the mind and heart--a situation where I knew he would not be able to resist interrupting me, repeatedly, to argue this point or that--that he would understand I had given the subject considerable scrutiny to publish it in a blog that is readable world-wide.

Instead of being objective, or at the least considerate of my well-thought out argument, his reaction surprised me.

"Do all those big words impress you?" he asked? Believe me when I tell you there was no sarcasm ringing in his words. He wasn't trying to be rude either, though of course it was one of the rudest things he could have thought to ask.

No, he wanted an objective answer: Was I impressed by the words?

I said no, of course not. I said I understood each and every word, that to me each of the words were not "big" words; they were the properly definitive words for the concept expressed by the word in that context. "Do not use two words when one will do," said Thomas Jefferson, though I must admit you must also take into account who will be doing the reading, and choose your words carefully for the purpose.

He was not someone who understood the words of the Academy's Position.

He told me about his cousin, his best friend, who for one of his university degrees was forced to read some difficult books with similarly "big," difficult-to-understand words, and how his cousin had read some of it out loud to him and tried to impress on him the meaning of what he was being forced to read. He had no more understood what his cousin was explaining than what I was explaining.

My friend had successfully changed the subject from my concrete, written logic (and his beliefs, for that matter,) to something else entirely: how he was not impressed by big words that meant nothing to him.

What it came down to for my friend was that he was not prepared to overcome my concrete logic with his faith. Faith, in the end, has no words, and that is the meaning of faith: that it is a matter of faulty epistemology that results in a metaphysical world-view that the supernatural must exist.

When confronted by logic that declares all things to be natural and that nothing is supernatural, this faulty epistemology is frustrated. It cannot make the leap from faith-based beliefs to objective, i.e., non-faith-based, arguments. It must stick to what it knows and that is implicit, unconscious knowlege that if a believer enters into the area of objective language, he will be forced to admit that his belief is not objective. That must be a very difficult thing to be forced to accept.

And attempting to accept, to argue, the position that naturalism and not supernaturalism is the "default position," [see The Big Question of Existence] of objective discurse, it may open a door to the other side of faith that he is not prepared to face. That door is precisely the fact that supernaturalism was the skeptical position for two thousand years, until the faulty Platonic epistemology of St. Augustine reversed the logic, making naturalism the skeptical position against supernaturalism.

But what, the frustrated believer would ask by taking Augustine's position, about the door that opens to faith, the door he would say we naturalists are keeping closed?

The answer is that Reason permanently closes that door, and the only way it can be opened is if Reason fails--if a person of Reason has what is defined as a "revelation" and his Reason cannot overcome the neuropathological or psychological causes.

The epistemology, the logic, of naturalism challenges the seemingly-convincing appeal of the cosmological, mechanical, and moral arguments for the existence of existence itself, and holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government. If someone who maintains this logic suddenly has a neuropathological or a psychological experience that causes him to abandon Reason for faith, or at the very least question his Reason in an episode of skeptical vulnerablility to faith, then he as abandonded what makes Man sui generis from all other creatures, and that is the faculty of Reason.

Faith is understandable. Our animal brains are succeptible to latching on to any argument that seems reasonable. When Man gained enough brain neuropathy to be able to add philosophy to his mental tools, it quickly became apparent--within a few hundreds of years--through the Atomists and others, that the universe was natural and that it had natural laws.

Natural laws do not admit of the existence of things which are not natural; it would be contradictory, and supernaturalism is by definition not natural. Supernaturalism is what man clung to before he discovered the discipline and science of philosophy.

There is no longer any Reason to continue thinking, as I'm certain many of our other animal relatives do, that a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightening, or the shaking of the earth, is anything beyond our understanding.

But the religiously faithful still ask "what if we naturalists are wrong, what if the supernatural exists and what if we find reason to regret our earthly logic when we die and meet our maker"?

If God exists, He will not ask us to regret using the Reason He blessed Mankind with; but He will pity the fool who believed that faith and the abandonment of Reason was what He blessed them with.

He would say that the pre-philosophical belief in the supernatural is not the default position, and therefore supernaturalism is contradictory to naturalism.

Of course, that being so, He would never exist in the first place, to tell us such a thing.



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Horvath and Revelation, Part X;Obama and Muslim Money;Ayn Rand Center

A Response to Anthony "stjohnny" Horvath

On "Road-to-Damascus" type Revelations

To read the original blog by Horvast,click on Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Note: I have been mistaken in the title to use for "sntjohnny." Here is what he wrote to me recently: "For quick reference- I am not a pastor or a reverend. I did finish the pastoral ministry degree in college which in many denominations is sufficient to receive ordination but in my denomination an additional four years on top of the bachelors degree is required- and I didn't do that. (and no complaints about it, either!)"

Introduction by Tony Horvath:

"Recently an atheist [Clark] stumbled upon my site and put [there]

a post responding to a post on my own blog on

the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation.

The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.

"In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:"

Part Two, (or is it Three?)

Atheists don’t believe such revelations as "revealed" or "natural" are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. A revealed revelation, as Horvath points out, "concerns that which is known and can only be known because God himself reveals it." A "natural" revelation is one which comes through contemplation about the nature of existence.

Any "atheist" who could possibly be looking for a revelation, revealed or natural, would be a contradiction, in terms of what his beliefs were, as concerning the lack of a god who could give such revelations versus what he expected as either an epistemic or metaphysical quality of knowledge. In other words, he either believes no god exists, in which case no quality of knowledge can be called "revelation" in the religious sense; or he believes religious-type revelations are possible, in which case he is wrong about being atheist.

By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument that there are only two choices: naturalism and supernaturalism; and from the soundeness of the proposition that faith is the negation of reason.

Theists, on the other hand, 'know,' by the same standard, that God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation, or even to expect that perhaps such a supernatural quality of knowledge will be imparted to him, implies that he knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

You say I am engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an atheist, that there are different kinds of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as weak and strong atheists. You say your problem as a Christian Apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling you what atheism absolutely is! "Atheism," you say, "reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism."

My contention is that just as there cannot be such a thing as a strong chair vs. a weak chair--which would be what: anything not manufactured as a chair but which works as a chair anyway?--and just as there cannot be a thing such as a strong apple versus a weak apple......The point is, "chair", "apple", "naturalist," numismatist," and "atheist" are concepts. What is a weak concept versus a strong concept?

It is true that "naturalist" and "atheist" are concepts indicating epistemic determinations. But a definition is still a definition, and the only one that can be argued is the one that takes the idea to its logical extreme. Anything less than the extreme is less than the essence of the concept. Why debate things which are not the essence of the debate?

You say you recently had one instance where you asked an atheist if he agreed that revelations were possible if one happened to him. He answered, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes."

Tony, I myself will tell you the same thing: If God came to me it would be less than rational to ascribe his identity to him. But I will also tell you that since the concept of "atheist" means denial of the supernatural realm, asking your question is like asking whether one would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. Of course I would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. It isn't going to happen. MORE

Check out http://sntjohnny.com/front/ and discover the wonderful world of rational Christianity. Now THAT is a "breath of fresh air." CEC

Compiled from "Act! for America"

"The article below was written by Kenneth Timmerman, President and director of the Middle East Data Project. He has authored a number of books including Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown in Iran. For his work in exposing the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons program, he was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Timmerman is also a member of the Board of Advisors of our sister organization, American Congress for Truth.

"Timmerman's article reveals that [because of] foreign nationals from the Muslim world [making] illegal contributions to the Barack Obama campaign, the Federal Election Commission has compiled a list of questionable foreign contributions totaling nearly $34,000,000!"

Read Timmerman's article here.

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html

Strong American Schools, We Hardly Knew Ye

From Cato @ Liberty; The blog of the Cato Institute.

"It was recently announced that Strong American Schools, the group founded by magnates Bill Gates and Eli Broad to put education high on the presidential-election docket, will die in March. It will, in all likelihood, expire in relative anonymity.
"The initiative’s biggest problem has been having to compete against behemoths like war and Wall Street for headlines–a struggle education couldn’t possibly win–but as I wrote back in May, the group also hasn’t offered anything new or noteworthy, a sure way to go unnoticed. Top-down, “government should do more of x” reforms just don’t fire anyone’s imagination because, well, that’s what we’ve been doing for decades and things just haven’t gotten much better.
"And so, Strong American Schools, you will be missed…but not for very long.
posted by Neal McCluskey on 10.02.08 @ 7:23 pm
Filed Under: Education and Child Policy "

The Ayn Rand Center Responds to the Financial Crisis

"Americans are now facing an historic economic crisis. What was the cause? What is the cure? How do we prevent it from happening again? While pundits and politicians blame the current housing and financialcrisis on "greedy" businessmen and lax regulators, and are frantically urging the government to expand its control over our economic lives, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched a new Web pageto defend a different view--that the actual cause of the crisisis government intervention, and the only cure, laissez-faire capitalism. http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=rL8idB-SoNNA8lMh3mz0Ig..

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause." http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ CEC

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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM, The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Guest Author Responds in His Blog to This Blog

Response to Curtis Clark on Naturalism- A Breath of Fresh Air

September 18, 2008 – 11:29 am by sntjohnny. Filed under Blog, General.

Recently an atheist stumbled upon my site and in the course of corresponding with him I have discovered that our different points of view aside, he is a gentleman that I can have a conversation with. His site is called The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism and he recently put up a post responding to a post on my own blog on the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation. Normally I try to direct correspondents to my discussion forum but in this case, an atheist who has actually announced that I am a rational thinker, I must make an exception!

The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.
In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:

"I should say not. Atheists don’t believe such revelations are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. Any person who could possibly be looking for a 'revealed' revelation would be a fence-sitting agnostic. By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument.

"Theists 'know' God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation implies that one knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other."

I think Mr. Clark is here engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an ‘atheist.’ As he most certainly knows, there are different ‘kinds’ of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as ‘weak’ and ’strong’ atheists. I am aware that ’strong’ atheists often think of ‘weak’ atheists as actually being agnostics. Other atheists are ‘negative’ atheists, asserting that they don’t have a belief that there isn’t a God, but rather simply a lack of belief. My problem as an apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling me what atheism absolutely is! It is hard to see how this internicene conflict will end: unlike Christianity which in theory at least has a static set of documents to limit how the term can be stretched, ‘atheism’ reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism.

Anyway, I recently had one instance that refutes the general claim. A certain atheism on my forum, when I asked if he agreed that revelation would be a useful tool for compensating for ignorance regarding a putative objective moral code, said, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes.

Perhaps the hang up is my phrase ‘looking for.’ I freely admit that many atheists are not ‘looking for revelation’ which I think is actually the problem. Mr. Clark is resting his disbelief on the ’soundness of the argument’ but I maintain that a single contrary fact is enough to put an argument to bed. Quantum indeterminancy has undermined many of the deterministic arguments of the previous centuries, for example. This would require a long conversation with Mr. Clark to flesh out but let me just say that its difficult to imagine how God could possibly meet the burden of demonstration many atheists expect him to fulfill if they would immediately discount the evidence if it was actually provided.

I have now laid out a lot of assertions that would require several nights over several beers to defend but if this is already getting long.

Moving on:
"One thing I’m beginning to admire about sntjohnny is that he seems to have an understanding of naturalism that is better than that of many naturalists. But his understanding of naturalists themselves isn’t as discerning. No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation. The naturalist who believes in 'natural' revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in 'revealed' revelations is not a naturalist."

Well, obviously the naturalist wouldn’t see the natural order as revelation about God. This is not the language that I would use if my only audience were philosophical naturalists, but my audience is wider than that. The phrase ‘revelation’ can still be rehabilitated, though, because if one wants to get to the bottom of just what reality is all about, than they are going to have to rely on more than just introspection. They’ll have to open their eyes and let the universe around them ‘tell’ them about itself. You cannot deduce the law of gravity. For that you must drop an object and allow it to ‘reveal’ its speed as it rushes to the earth.

So, when we ‘open our eyes’ to let reality speak for itself, what conclusions do we draw? I maintain that we rely on the conclusions that others have drawn for most of the conclusions that we ourselves draw. In other words, most of what we think we know we only know because others have revealed it to us. Sifting through ‘revelation’ is not foreign to our experience. Now, what if the question at hand is whether or not there is more to physical reality? Here, I maintain that logical argumentation, one way or another, has limited value. Ideally, whatever is the ‘more’ would have to reveal itself to us to learn anything truly interesting.

Atheists may not be looking for evidence of revelation but my contention is that they ought to be, and that they ought to do so without prejudging the issue, because that would be circular reasoning.

It is really not a very controversial position. The most efficient way of finding out if I like coffee or not is for me to tell you (I do). It is no good presuming before the investigation that I can’t possibly like coffee, so revelation to the contrary must be summarily dismissed. Similarly, if the question is whether or not there are extraterrestial entities out there, then clearly our best chance of finding out is if they’ve made efforts to reveal their presense to us (or Sagan’s “Contact” and the SETI project are ridiculous). They understand that the only good way to find out is in fact to go looking for revelation. If they believed already, on argument alone, that extraterrestial entities didn’t exist, and then set up SETI, any data they received would be discounted because of their prior conclusion. Of course, if SETI knew that there were not extraterrestial entities one supposes they wouldn’t even bother looking.

Those examples are not that much different than the question of God. The differences would be where and how we’d look for the revelation, just as one looks for extraterrestial revelation differently than one looks for revelation about one’s drinking preferences. As long as one has a plausible reason for looking in the first place then it is perfectly reasonable to ‘look.’ The presence of a billion and a half people who believe that God actually came to earth at one time is certainly a plausible reason to examine the claim. Decide that the claim is false, if you like, but I insist that concluding it is false because you already know such things can’t happen because you already know there isn’t a God is just not reasonable.

Thank you, Rev. Anthony Horvath, "sntjohnny," for the "back-and-forth" nature of our discussion. This is what human discussion is supposed to be. You, and I, and our readers, know that there are those out there in the world who could not have a dialectic.

sntjohnny and I have agreed to keep this discussion going until we reach what each of us considers a good ending. It may happen every 10 days to two week, more or less, give or take, as we see fit. I will always be certain to link the threads together for you, as he did at the top of his piece.

Check out http://sntjohnny.com/front/ and discover the wonderful world of rational Christianity. Now THAT is a "breath of fresh air." CEC

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"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian; Taxing for Green; Web Deceits

"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian
With Whom I Can Have Dialogue

Anthony Horvath is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries. Horvath, who calls himself sntjohnny though his name isn't John, calls his website St.Johnny.com, perhaps to differentiate himself: "Will the real St. John please stand up?"

"[B]y the very definition of God according to Christian theists, there is a great deal that could only be known if God told us." Horvath was describing "special revelation."

"Special" is contrasted with "natural revelation" whereby "natural revelation" means arguments for the existence of God, Horvath says. "Simply put, ‘natural’ revelation, or ‘natural theology,’ is what one can learn about God running exclusively on your own steam without any assistance from God. Aristotle’s Prime Mover arguments and Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’ are such efforts." http://sntjohnny.com/front/natural-versus-revealed-religion-how-atheists-drop-the-ball/349.html

"One of the confusions here is the treatment of the Bible as revelation. It certainly is revelation. However, when it concerns God, it is, strictly speaking, revelation about revelation. So, the ’special revelation’ would be what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. He then reveals what was revealed to him. In other words, the accounts of this incident are Paul’s revelation. Also, all that we know about Jesus is revealed to us through his disciples. [italics added]

"Atheists at this point are probably scratching their heads because from their perspective I will not have made the situation any better. What many of them are specifically looking for is their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience."

I should say not. Atheists don't believe such revelations are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. Any person who could possibly be looking for a "revealed" revelation would be a fence-sitting agnostic. By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one's mind is what he "knows." This is sometimes called "justified true belief," as opposed to "unjustified." The justification comes from the soundness of the argument.

Theists "know" God exists. Atheists "know" he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation implies that one knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

Horvath begins his blog asserting "that atheists fail to distinguish between ‘natural revelation’ and ’special revelation’ but they are not entirely to blame. Arguments for the existence of God tend to be in the realm of ‘natural’ theology."

Yes, they do "tend to be considered theology," and therein lies the differences between theists and atheists. One thing I'm beginning to admire about sntjohnny is that he seems to have an understanding of naturalism that is better than that of many naturalists. But his understanding of naturalists themselves isn't as discerning. No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation. The naturalist who believes in "natural" revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in "revealed" revelations is not a naturalist.

Horvath is familiar with my very public differences with Austin Cline, the Deity of Atheism over at About.com. [See the Academy Blogger http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/threaded-with-austin-cline-saturday.html ]

I have thus publicly disagreed with Cline about the definition of atheism. I maintain that not only do atheists justifiably believe there are no gods, but also that atheists don't have the faith required to see within the "naturally revealed" world the existence of any god. Cline says an atheist merely has no belief in god, and may consider it to be true that gods exist, and have faith in other forms of supernaturalism!

Far from being skeptical, the atheist who believes there are no gods finds no reason to be skeptical since he/she finds no reason to argue with him/herself about whether he/she is correct in his/her belief.

On the other hand, the believer is the skeptic and the more devout the belief the more skeptical he/she is. That is because in order to believe in the "revealed revelations" of the Bible, the Christian must "suspend his disbelief" http://www.mediacollege.com/glossary/s/suspension-of-disbelief.html , overcoming it with reason. It was the theologian Boethius, after all, who told Christians, "Insofar as is possible, join faith to reason."

It is not in my constitution to suspend my reason only to replace it with faith, which must then be rationalized by overcoming my disbelief with sound justifications that overcome them. The theist who cannot find the sound justification to overcome his/her disbelief is a Christian with a crisis.

sntjohnny does a credible and understandable job of overcoming disbelief--for the agnostic, or the Christian with a crisis of belief. I do not believe, and he states unequivocally that he also does not believe, anything less than a "revealed" revelation would be enough to convince an atheist.

If he is right, and I agree that he is, Cline's definition of "atheist" has been knocked out of the ballpark.

I have provided my readers with a link to Horvath,aka stjohnny, in the sidebar under the heading "Interesting Reading." Horvath is a very rational Christian who comprehends that preaching to an atheist doesn't work, even if he thinks we are all waiting for our own personal revelation from a god. What he does understand is that in reason, there can be dialogue between theists and atheists, which is the only way for the two camps to talk, aside from just leaving each other alone altogether.

Are You That Certain of Yourself
That You Can Tax the Rest of Us for Your Beliefs?
"Cool Look at the Future, by Richard Rahn. How much in additional taxes are you willing to pay now in order to ensure that the Earth would not be 3 degrees warmer 100 years from now (assuming the science is even possible) - $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 or more? Should the government prevent us from selling some of our body parts to allow others to live or have better lives? The above questions and many others were the subject of learned discussion at the 60th anniversary meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) that just concluded here in Tokyo." Cato Today http://www.cato.org/recent_opeds.php

Internet Lies and Deceits
"I was intrigued to discover recently that I am a secret services mouthpiece designed to undermine the left by publishing neo-conservative views and apologies for racism. You'll not be surprised to learn that these ludicrous allegations were made on the internet. The web has become a clearing house for all sorts of nonsense ideas.

"Many of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the internet have now become seriously worried about its capacity to promulgate lies and distortions. Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, became so disillusioned that he started Citizendium as an attempt to bring more quality control to online, collaborative encyclopaedias. Just last week, the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, also said that we need to find ways to control the spread of falsehoods on the web."I share their concerns, but I wonder if blaming the web is just shooting the messenger for radically upping his productivity."

Julian Baggini http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2446993.0.Can_we_untangle_this_web_of_deceit.php

Mr. Baggini also has a link provided by the Academy Blogger under the heading "Interesting Reading."

Publishing Note Re: Reader Comments
I have made the attempt several times to allow the posting of reader comments to this blog. I have followed all the directions set by Google (yes, I've read the directions, several times,) but as of yet it isn't working. If you wish to comment, please email them to the address below. If you know how I can fix this, please email the Academy Blogger. Please use the Email Link at the top of the Sidebar (when I get that fixed!)

or send comments to:

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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, the educational arm of the Assemblage.
© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

CogSci's "Frame Problem"; Cato Releases Major Work; Revelations

"The Frame Problem."
Where is the tolerance, not to mention the "creator's" credentials?
December 18, 2007 "Over the past few months and for the foreseeable future, significant attention has and will continue to be focused on the Cult of Scientology." L. Ron Brown http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/about/

Brown wrote this in reference to "The Frame Problem," (TPF) where the focus "is on the intersections of religion with politics, culture, science, ethics, and cognition." This does not explain, exactly or inexactly, its relationship to the "cult" of Scientology. But not calling it by its name of "Church" shows a distinct prejudice. How does Brown get to that "intersection" where Scientology is included in the scope of TPF?

"Major areas of interest," he writes, "include unsecularism, human rights, Intelligent Design/Creationism, evolution, religious apologetics, the secularist movement, religious cognition, secular approaches to ethics, meaning and wisdom, and Scientology."

Ok, so now a lot of things are thrown into the "frame problem" basket, including ID/Creationism; but Scientology is the only "cult," let alone religion, of which there are none others included. Why is "significant attention" under the heading of TPF focused on Scientology?

Brown never does say, not on this webpage, but he does say, "The issue of framing is highly relevant to considerations of politics, prudence, ethics, rationality, and wisdom."

Am I detecting a super-bias against this "cult"? Does he consider Scientologists to be impolitic, imprudent, unethical, irrational, and unwise? Under the linked sub-title of "Who is the Frame Problem?", where I was expecting to see a perspicacious detailing of perhaps the leadership of the Church of Scientology, we see this:

"L. Ron Brown (Creator). I am a 25 year old graduate of the University of Toronto (Hon B.Sc in Psychology Research and Cognitive Science) living in the Toronto area." After which he goes on to illuminate his interests, and to tell us that the "L" in his name "stands for luscious." In other words, Luscious Ron Brown is the Frame Problem.

"Lucious" Brown gives us a very broad overview of "what" TPF is, in language that could be read one way or the other, such as, "'the frame problem' refers to a problem that cognitive agents like us [I guess he means we humans, because he doesn't ever say what he means] solve all the time. In a given instance we face an infinite supply of potentially relevant and irrelevant information. If one were to consider every possible contingency behind an act, they would never do a thing."

True enough. I cannot disagree. What does this have to do with this creation of his? "TFP gets its name from Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence." Hmmmm, I see no resemblance at all in those, so "Lucious" must mean that within the science of CSAI there is something called TPF.

The U. of Toronto "CogSci" website does not list him as "Core Faculty" or as "Cognitive Scientist." There is only one "staffer." And there are only five alumni. He isn't one of them. But getting an Honorary isn't easy.

"The number of credits required [ ] are as follows for CogSci-AI Specialist: 13 full course equivalents, 2.5 of these will be the core cognitive science courses. The rest are to be taken from the cognate deparments of Cognitive Science." There are five enrollment combinations that give the student plenty of options in the areas they wish to study." This was published by the CogSci department, not by Brown.

Well, I must admit, that "honorary" with those credentials is more of a degree than I have at this moment, but what does his knowledge-base actually entail? He tells us nothing. Which of the five enrollment combinations did he finish?

So I looked up " CogSci @ U of T," http://www.utoronto.ca/cognitivesci/ , where I discovered that, "CASA, or the U of T CogSci AI Students' Association, includes all students currently in the program as well as U of T undergraduate students who are on the CASA mailing list, " and "Joining CASA is as simple as subscribing to the CASA mailing list. " [italics added]

Well, that sounds like something I'd join myself, if I was a student at the U. of Toronto. I don't blame "Luscious" for joining. I think as an obvious subscriber to their mailing list he's building himself up with generalized descriptions of his "creation" such as, "The task for a functional and adaptive cognitive system is to process relevant information exclusively, intelligently ignoring the rest. The problem of zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered is the frame problem."

Coming from a young person who grew up from the very beginning of what turned into The Information Age (127,000,000 references to it on Google,) and given that we now live in a time when statistics are everything--"Don't bring me your suggestion for improving performance without some numbers or studies to back it up!"--it's not surprising that anyone would want to turn such a "problem" into an exact science, which sounds like Brown's purpose.

But what ever happened to formal syllogistic logic, or symbolic logic if Brown has the background for it? In formal logic there are a limited number of methods to put a problem together in words--256 methods, to be exact, called "moods" and "figures." Out of the 256 only 15 are "valid," unless you use one of Aristotle's old categories, and then you get 24. And out of these 15 or 24, not all valid forms are even "sound." They are valid only because they fit the form without any contradictions. I can "validly" say that my Uncle Harry who married a girl named Maureen, is a raven. But it isn't "sound," and so we know it isn't true. "Soundness" indicates truthfulness of statements.

Everyone uses formal logic every day of his life. They may not know it. But it is the deductive method by which the mind works. The mind is limited to 256 ways of thinking about things deductively. "The problem of zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered," is what we use logic for and we do it pretty accurately, especially the big winners in life. But studying formal logic formally would serve a person well. I mean, it served Aristotle well, because he discovered and gave us the 256 forms and they have not changed in all the millenia, in any language.

I hope Brown's efforts are not ivory tower. Perhaps they will be like the quality control principles of W. Edwards Deming, and change the face of man's methods of "zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered."

But what is up with the bias--sound or not, which Brown never proves--against Scientology, ID, and Creationism? Yes, I have problems with those subjects. I have my own arguments against them. But I state the argument, where appropriate. Brown never does, not on his own website.

It seems these days that no faction can leave any other faction alone without picking it out for scrutiny. If Brown is not a Scientologist--and I must assume he is not a member of that "cult,"--then where is his problem? Where is his intolerance coming from? I wish he would state it for the record.

[Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Church of Scientology. But what ever happened to religious tolerance?]


Major Reference Work on Libertarianism Released
"The Cato Institute is pleased to announce the release of The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, a compilation of and introduction to libertarian scholarship. This comprehensive book, years in the making, includes more than 300 succinct, original articles on libertarian ideas, institutions, and thinkers. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism belongs on every libertarian's bookshelf." Cato Institute news release


On Revelations: Thomas Paine [Republished from 8.18.08]
I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their JesusChrist, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, andconsequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me tobelieve it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.
When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this- for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
Thomas Paine; "The Age of Reason"; 1794 http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm

Please send all comments to

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

On Revelations; Thomas Paine

I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus
Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and
consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to
believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this- for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

Thomas Paine; "The Age of Reason"; 1794 http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.comThe Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage. This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®