Keith Parsons's Blog, page 17

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (ECREE), Part 6: Is ECREE False? A Reply to Greg Koukl and Melinda Penner (continued)

(continued from Part 5)



Penner's Third Rebuttal: A third response to the demand recognizes that very extraordinary events
happen all the time if the co-occurrence of several features in a state
of affairs is evaluated probabilistically.



I agree with this sentence (if "extraordinary events" means "improbable or very improbable events"), but this does not in any way undermine ECREE.



Penner also writes: "So no matter how extraordinary the event, no explanation is needed because extraordinary events happen all the time."



I find it odd to read this comment coming from a theist like Penner. On this logic, an atheist would be perfectly justified in dismissing cosmological fine-tuning arguments for God's existence: the apparent fine-tuning of the universe may be viewed as an extraordinary event and "no explanation is needed because extraordinary events happen all the time." I don't think this is what Penner has in mind.



I agree with Penner that improbable and even very improbable events happen all the time. The issue isn't one of "explanation" so much as it is of "evidence." Extraordinary claims do still require extraordinary evidence, since while improbable events may happen all the time, a specific event is not the same thing as the class of all improbable events. It may be the case that extraordinary events happen all the time and a specific extraordinary claim is not sufficiently supported by the evidence to be regarded as probable.



Koukl's First Objection (which he credits to Richard Howe): Does the adjective that applies to the claim have to be the same adjective that applies to the evidence? If you have a hilarious claim, does it require hilarious evidence?



This strikes me as a very odd question. Indeed, I am tempted to accuse Koukl and Howe of criticizing a caricature of ECREE, but I am not going to do that since Koukl made his comments on the radio and I don't have the context for Howe's original remarks. Or maybe Koukl/Howe were just trying to be funny rather than making a serious objection. In any case, I am not aware of anyone who claims that ECREE is true or should be adopted because of some rule about syntax or symmetry whereby the adjective used in the first part of the expression must be used in the second part of the expression. I have defended ECREE here by showing that ECREE, when interpreted in a Bayesian manner, follows directly from Bayes's Thereom, which itself follows from the axioms of the probability calculus plus the definition of conditional probability.



Koukl's Second Objection: Determining what counts as an "extraordinary claim" and "extraordinary evidence" is entirely subjective and will depend on which worldview one holds.



As I noted in my reply to T. Kurt Jaros, it is true that the Bayesian interpretation of ECREE is inherently subjective in the sense that it
depends entirely upon what a person knows and believes. So what? It does not follow that (a) there is no such thing as objective truth; or (b) there is no such thing as an objectively correct way to reason with subjective probabilities.



Koukl's Third Objection: ECREE functions to "stack the deck" against the theist. It turns out there is going to be no evidence that is extraordinary enough to meet that challenge.



If Koukl is claiming that "there is going to be no evidence even in theory that is extraordinary enough to meet that challenge," then this objection is false. Again, as I noted in the combox on part 5, the essay by Tim and Lydia McGrew on the resurrection of Jesus contains a lengthy defense of an argument that the combined Bayes' factor for the various lines of evidence for the Resurrection has an explanatory power of 1044. If their argument is correct, that would certainly count as "extraordinary evidence" capable of overcoming any prior probability of 10-40 and still establishing a final probability for the Resurrection greater than 0.99999. This example proves that it is possible, at least in theory, for there to be extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.[image error]

Humor: Facebook Still Tickles Me from Time to Time

HT: Tris Stock[image error]

Atheist Ethicist: Theism, Atheism, and Blame

This is an old post, but worth linking to now regardless. Alonzo Fyfe at the Atheist Ethicist makes this important point.

If you take “atheism” and its counter-part “theism” NEITHER of these are a source of violence or evil. You cannot draw any moral implications from the statement, “It is not the case that at least one God exists” just as you cannot draw any moral implication from the statement, “It is the case that at least one God exists.” They are both behaviorally, morally, and practically impotent.



In order to get to any moral conclusion – any type at all – you have to add something to your fundamental premise, regardless of whether it is atheist or theist.

Atheist Ethicist: Theism, Atheism, and Blame[image error]

Jehovah is a Sexist - Part 6

I have finished examining the first three chapters of Genesis, and have also provided more than a dozen other examples from other parts of the Old Testament that show Jehovah to be a sexist (freely borrowing from Michael Coogan's excellent book God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says):



http://crossexamination.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-islam-evil-part-7.html



In summary,  my reasoning goes like this: Jehovah is a sexist, so Jehovah is less than a perfectly good person.  If Jehovah is less than a perfectly good person, then Jehovah is a false god. But Jesus taught his disciples to pray to Jehovah, so Jesus is a false prophet, because he taught others to pray to a false god.  Since Jesus is a false prophet, Christianity is a false religion.  Thus, Christianity is a false religion, because Jehovah is a sexist.[image error]

Theological Noncognitivism on Youtube

I am not a noncognitivist, but philosopher Ted Drange says that this video is the best one on YouTube about noncognitivism.






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Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (ECREE), Part 5: Is ECREE False? A Reply to Greg Koukl and Melinda Penner

In my first post
in this series, I offered a Bayesian interpretation of the principle, "extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE). Greg Koukl,
however, disagrees with ECREE. He recently explained why on his radio show (click here for audio); also, Melinda Penner, a member of Koukl's staff, has written on the issue here. In this post, I want to explain why I think Koukl's and Penner's objections to ECREE, like those of William Lane Craig and T. Kurt Jaros, are misguided.





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On the Idea of Doing Something "in the Name of Atheism"

Over at Dangerous Idea, Victor Reppert asks, "Why couldn't there be mass killings in the name of atheism?"



I suppose there could be, just as I suppose there could be mass killings in the name of theism, but then I suppose there could be mass
killings in the name of... a lot of things. It depends on what it means
to do something "in the name of" something else. So it would be most helpful if Reppert were to clarify this: what does it mean to perform an action A "in the name of" X?



Does it mean the agent shouts the words, "In the name of X!", and then does A? Does it mean the agent believes X and does A? Does it mean A is logically required by X? Or that it is impossible to condemn A if one believes X? Or that it is impossible to condemn A, if one believes X, on the basis of X only (and not on some other, independent grounds)? Does it mean that performing A somehow benefits those who believe X? Or something else?

William Lane Craig's Defense of Akin

LINK[image error]

Benjamin Netanyahu on Communists vs. Theistic Terrorists

(redated post from March 26, 2006)



Jim Still's recent entry on this blog, "Everything is Permitted Under God," reminded me of a Larry King interview of Benjamin Netanyahu from several years ago (2001?), in which Netanyahu made a very interesting comparison of the behavior of atheistic communists vs. the behavior of theistic terrorists. Ever since watching that interview, I have been trying to track down the exact quotation as I think it would be useful in the context of theistic complaints that if there is no God, there is no reason for someone not to behave according to pure self-interest. I just found what I was looking for. A transcript of Netanyahu's speech used to be available at the website of the US House of Representatives, but it has been removed. (A copy may be found on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.) In that speech, Netanyahu makes basically the same point he made during the Larry King interview. Here is the relevant excerpt:

To understand the true dangers of Islamic militancy, we can compare it to another ideology which sought world domination - communism. Both movements pursued irrational goals, but the communists at least pursued theirs in a rational way.



Anytime they had to choose between ideology and their own survival, as in Cuba or Berlin, they backed off and chose survival.



Not so for the Islamic militants. They pursue an irrational ideology irrationally - with no apparent regard for human life, neither their own lives nor the lives of their enemies. The Communists seldom, if ever, produced suicide bombers, while Islamic militancy produces hordes of them, glorifying them and promising them that their dastardly deeds will earn them a glorious afterlife.



This highly pathological aspect of Islamic militancy is what makes it so deadly for mankind.

As Netanyahu shows, sometimes it will be in the self-interest of some theists to sacrifice their own life while committing evil acts. As Netanyahu says, when the Communists had to choose between ideology and their own survival, they chose survival. In contrast, Islamic terrorists do not have to choose between ideology and survival; they are able to consistently act as suicide bombers in support of their irrational ideology.[image error]

The Evidential Argument from the History of Science, Part 4: Reply to 'cl'

Introduction



Theists hold that there exists
an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person (God) who created
the universe. Metaphysical naturalists, on the other hand, hold that the
universe is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part
of the natural world affects it. Metaphysical naturalism (N) denies the
existence of all supernatural beings, including God. Therefore, N entails that any true scientific explanations must be
naturalistic (i.e., non-supernatural) ones.





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