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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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

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