The Münchhausen trilemma entails Secularism

Not too long ago I had a nice discussion with Jonathan Pearce that lead to his posting about the Münchhausen trilemma.

This is an interesting thing I picked up on while debating with a (surprisingly nice) Presuppositional Apologist. 

The interesting thing that came about was that once both theists and atheists come to accept the Münchhausen trilemma as the major issue in epistemology that it is, I think that secularism in terms of governance follows as a result.  This post is to explain why I think that to be the case.

It should be said that if you haven't read up on the Münchhausen trilemma, follow the links above to check it out before continuing with this article.

I was on Atheist Hangouts

Work and family life has been pretty crazy lately, so I'm a bit late in putting this up here for general sharing, especially since it's not hosted on my YouTube channel. 

I was on an Atheist Hangout hosted by Gamma Atheist last Thursday night.  It was a mock debate with Karlton George.

I have to say it was an absolute blast, and I really enjoyed interacting with Karl.  He's an apostate like me, and his former apologist credentials are absolutely spot on.  He was throwing out stuff so hard and fast on the first real exchange we had where he played the apologist that I come across as completely flummoxed.

I didn't do so well when trying to play the apologist in terms of free will, I just don't get their arguments there quite as well as I should.

I do want to thank Dave for hosting and having me on.  He does a TON of these hangouts and they're a good time, so check out his website and his YouTube channel.

There was a funny aside from all this.  I actually got on the Hangout all early to talk to Dave, prepped with a healthy glass of wine, and when I saw how messy my basement was with my wife making Halloween costumes, I was going to hang up a blanket to hide the basement. Well doing that, I moved over a empty DVD case, which then fell over when I turned around and completely shattered the glass my wine was in. 

I was lucky that this was early, I ended up ruining my keyboard and had to act fast to get the glass and wine cleaned up in about a 10 foot radius around everything.  I'm just lucky the wine didn't really get into my gaming computer and the server that sits right underneath it.  Dave probably got a good chuckle at the level of cursing going on after getting over the shock. :P 

The Quiverfull movement and Skeptical Theism

The latest Reasonable Doubts series with Vyckie Garrison (who blogs at No Longer Quivering) is really compelling because her story is so painful, but because things seem to have worked out well in the end for her and her children. 

Her interview in RD Episode 119 where she started talking about “spiritual abuse” it struck me as being related to a counter-apologetic argument – the idea that skeptical theism leads to moral paralysis. 

This seems to be a very real instantiation of that argument playing out in real life, much to the detriment of Vyckie and other women like her in the Quiverfull movement.

For those that don’t know Skeptical Theism is the idea that humans have such a large chasm of knowledge between themselves and the mind of an infinite god that they should not expect to know what reasons god has to permit evils to obtain some greater good. 

The argument is that such a view would lead to moral paralysis because on this view, we don’t know whether or not any given evil that we seemingly come across is being used by god to fulfill a greater good. So if we were to come across an instance of evil (like say a mugging), we wouldn't know whether or not to intervene or otherwise act on our moral intuitions because the mugging may be part of gods greater plan.

This relates directly to Vyckie’s account of “spiritual abuse” where she internalizes the problems with her marriage and the problems with her children that came about as a result of following what she thought was “god’s plan” for the family.  When she speaks about recognizing opportunities to object to or escape the Quiverful doctrine she wouldn’t do so, because she would think “what if god needs me here to intervene in the life of my husband/child/etc.” 

It seems to be a terrible real life instantiation of the epistemic problems that would plague someone who took the skeptical theist answer to the problem of evil seriously and consistently.  I think this is significant because the kinds of problems that pop up in the Quiverfull movement would probably be acknowledged as problems by more progressive or moderate Evangelical Christians.  The issue for them is they would then have to deal with the epistemic problem that arises from the skeptical theism view that the people in the Quiverfull movement take so seriously.

I’d even start to wonder if people in the Quiverfull movement go to such extreme lengths because they take the epistemic issues brought up by their views on the bible so seriously.

I was on the "A Matter of Doubt" Podcast!

I was on the A Matter of Doubt podcast this weekend, and you can listen to it right here.

It was a really fun time and we had a great discussion about the argument from hell and we dug deep down into the problems with the moral argument. I was really happy to discuss this stuff since it's what I've been working on for months as my next big series.

I want to thank Brian and Steve for having me on their show.  A Matterof Doubt is definitely a good podcast to add into your rotation if you're a podcast junkie like I am.

Actually, Quantum Mechanics does undermine the Kalam

I had a reader send me this article over at the Strange Notions blog with a request that I put a comment in given the work I’ve done providing a counter argument to the Kalam.

I find that the article brings up some good points on the theistic side to address objections from quantum mechanics, but it leaves out key points that would count most strongly against the Kalam.

First, there isn’t a direct difference laid out between efficient causation and material causation, the difference is effectively discussed, but it’s not made clear.

What we have in quantum mechanics is what appears to be an effect without an efficient cause. One can argue that there are interpretations of QM that will provide us with efficient causes for these effects, but the standard view currently is that these effects lack an efficient cause.

Given that the Kalam wants to argue that the universe has an efficient, but not a material cause, this is a fairly significant point that shouldn’t be understated.

What Trent rightfully points out is that even if these QM events lack an efficient cause, it’s not “something coming from nothing”, which he calls the main intuitive support for Premise 1. What this is pointing out is that we don’t have something coming beginning to exist without a material cause.

Combine this with the common interpretations of QM, and we find intuitive and evidential support for the idea that we can have things begin to exist with an “efficient and material cause” or “just a material cause”, but never any cases where we have just an efficient cause. This is again a very strong point against the Kalam, since it supports the idea that “something material has always existed”.

That line of thought brings us into premise two of the Kalam, which isn’t really at issue here, so I won’t say much more than there is absolutely no evidence that all of material reality was preceded by a state of “absolute nothingness” in cosmology or philosophy. The most we could say is "we don't know what happened before the first Planck second in the Big Bang".

But let’s get back to this issue of “something can’t come from nothing” since it’s another point where I think counts very strongly against the theist.

The idea that “something can’t come from nothing” is typically supported by the idea that “we don’t see things just popping into existence from nothing”. The QM objection that Trent is addressing here tries to challenge this notion, which he rebuffs by pointing out that “the quantum vacuum is not nothing”.

However in doing this, Trent undermines the only support he has for the premise that “something can’t come from nothing”. How does one know “something can’t come from nothing”? Trent cannot appeal to the common experience we have of things not just popping into existence, since he’s rightly pointed out that when we DO see things popping into existence from “seemingly nothing”, it’s not really the “nothing” he’s talking about in the context of the Kalam.

Let’s pretend that “something could come from nothing”, this notion is no longer problematic or at odds with our common experience, because we have absolutely no experience with the kind of “nothing” in question. This all boils down to how one defines “nothing”, and the definition required by proponents of the Kalam gives us a version of “nothing” that we have absolutely no experience with that we have very good reasons for doubting that a state of this kind of “nothing” could exist in the first place (the First Law of Thermodynamics says hi).

When it comes to cosmological arguments, atheists are generally left with the idea that “something material has always existed” or “something actually can come from nothing”. While I personally hold to the former, the apologist answer to the QM objection shows that the latter could very well be a live option simply because “something coming from nothing” doesn’t contradict any of our common experience.

I was on the Faith & Skepticism Podcast discussing Kalam!

This past weekend I was a guest on the Faith and Skepticism Podcast, and it was honestly awesome!  I was on there with ElijiahT who blogs over at Hashtag Apologetics. He turned out to be as cordial to interact with verbally as he is on Twitter.  I'd definitely class him and Jason (the F&S Podcast Theist Co-Host) as the type of apologist I can happily converse with on these kinds of topics.  They're strong in their positions, but are willing to recognize the validity of others opinions.  That always helps when you're going to go into a debate.  Nathan (the Atheist F&S Co-Host) was also a lot of fun to work with on this, and I recommend checking him out on Twitter.

I was on to debate/discuss the Kalam. I say debate since that's kind of the premise of the show, but in reality I think we had more of a discussion which I think was far more productive for all sides.  We were able to highlight most of the major issues with the Kalam and identified key points where the underlying assumptions of either side play a big role in whether or not someone will find the argument compelling.

I highly recommend checking out the Faith and Skepticism Podcast in general, but you should of course start with the episode featuring me!

Just in case you wanted some links, here's the total of my "Countering the Kalam" series, as well as a helpful video by YouTube Team Skydivephil on Loop Quantum Cosmology which helps answer arguments that reference the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin Theorem that gets brought up so often to try and support the Kalam.  Additionally, here's a great post detailing problems with William Lane Craig's arguments against actual infinites written up by ExApologist.

Virtual Beers with Jonathan Pearce, Justin Schieber - Evidential Problem of Evil!

I just finished up another awesome Virtual Beers session with Jonathan Pearce and Justin Schieber where we discuss the Evidential Problem of Evil and the problems with common theistic responses.

I think that we packed in a lot of philosophical meat in this session and it was honestly a blast!




Extra geek cred if anyone can identify what the wall scroll to the left of me is (ie. not the Dragon Ball Z one). I'd be pleasantly surprised to see if anyone can!

EDIT: The answer is Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury/King of Fighters.  Here's the actual source artwork, from Real Bout Fatal Fury 2