Testimonies

Hello conservative Christians, this message is for you.

I have a testimony that animal sacrifice is abhorrent to God, and always has been. I have a testimony that God approves of homosexuality. I have a testimony that God opposes capital punishment, and always has. I have a testimony of gender equality, including in leadership and headship. I have a testimony that everlasting damnation is incompatible with God's love.

Your testimony may be different from mine, fair enough. But this is my testimony. You may have a testimony that the Bible is completely right; I have a testimony that the Bible contains errors. I can't rationally prove my testimony is superior to yours, but you can't rationally prove that yours is superior to mine either. To each, their own, and everyone will believe what they choose.

MyWikiBiz

I just joined MyWikiBiz. I have created entries there on Maratreanism, the name-a-fallacy-fallacy, and cosmodicy. It seems an interesting site.

The name-a-fallacy fallacy

I think I might have found a new logical fallacy, the "name-a-fallacy fallacy". I wrote an article about it, now available on aSK, Conservapedia, and MaratreanWiki. The article was also hosted at Ameriwki, but they moved it to Argument from falacy; yet that is a separate thing. As I wrote on RW (I'm not going to link to the page, due to the amount of unnecessary sexual offensiveness present on it):

It's not the same thing as the fallacy-fallacy. The fallacy-fallacy is an argument of the form "A is an argument for B. A is fallacious. Therefore, B is false". That's not exactly what the "name-the-fallacy fallacy" is (or the catchy name fallacy, as someone at LessWrong calls it). The name-a-fallacy-fallacy is asserting "Your argument commits the X fallacy" without giving sufficient justification for that. So in the name-a-fallacy-fallacy, your assertion that my argument is fallacious is unjustified. Whereas, in the fallacy-fallacy, your claim that I am committing a fallacy could be completely justified and correct. See the difference?

and:

You might say its a "non sequitur", but it's much more effective than most, because it's the name of a logical fallacy, it sounds logical to many people, whereas most non sequiturs will just sound stupid. And, it's not even necessarily false. They might well be right that your logical argument contains fallacy X, but if it's not bleedingly obvious, then if they haven't provided any explanation of how/why, it's still not right as an argument.

and:

Let me put it this way. Alice produces some elaborate complicated many step argument to some conclusion. Bob says "special pleading!". Let's suppose, that somewhere in Alice's fifty pages of dense prose, special pleading does in fact occur. So what Bob has said, is actually true, and relevant. However, Bob still is not arguing correctly, because he is not pointing to where in Alice's fifty pages of dense prose the special pleading actually occurs. To be arguing correctly, he needs to point out, at which exact step of Alice's argument does the alleged fallacy occur, etc. So this fallacy is not necessarily a non sequitur, because it is not necessarily irrelevant, but it is still in some sense fallacious even when it is in fact relevant. The fallaciousness lies not in necessarily being false or irrelevant, but in failing to provide enough information to demonstrate to a reasonable independent observer that what one has said actually is true and relevant, even if it does in fact so happen to be.

And here is the article:

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The name-a-fallacy fallacy refers to the fallacy in which, rather than engaging with their opponent's arguments in detail, a person responds with the mention of a logical fallacy, without any explanation of how the fallacy actually applies to the argument at hand.
This fallacy is particularly common among atheists, although not exclusive to them. Here is an example of the fallacy in action:

Christian: Everything that begins to exist, must have a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe must have a cause. And the cause of the universe, we call "God".

Atheist: That's special pleading.

The Christian may or may not be guilty of special pleading; but the atheist is definitely guilty of the name-a-fallacy fallacy, because they have made no effort to actually engage with the Christian's argument, or explain how it constitutes special pleading (if it in fact does). Knowledge of logical fallacies can be a useful tool, but they are not magical talismans which will defeat any argument simply by being mentioned; and yet, practitioners of the name-a-fallacy seem to think that they are exactly that.
In order to legitimately accuse your opponent of a logical fallacy, there are three necessary elements:

1. It is necessary to provide a clear definition of what the fallacy is. Many logical fallacies are defined in different ways by different people, and it is impossible to answer the subsequent two questions without a clear definition being adopted.
2. Reason to believe that the fallacy is actually a fallacy. A form of argument does not become fallacious merely by having the label "fallacy" attached to it; anyone who wishes to label something fallacious, needs to provide a clear and convincing argument that what they claim to be fallacious in fact actually is. Even if it is agreed that some instances of a particular type of argument are clearly fallacious, it does not automatically follow that all arguments of that type are necessarily fallacious; to hold so would be to potentially commit the fallacy of overgeneralization.
3. A clear and convincing explanation of why your opponent's argument is in fact an instance of that fallacy. One line answers have no place in serious debate.

This fallacy is also known as the "Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy".^[1]

1. J. G. Weissman, "Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy (and Supporting Disagreement)", 21 May 2009, LessWrong

Self-defeat and self-support as relevant factors in choosing a worldview

I think we can place worldviews on a continuum, in terms of how self-defeating or self-supporting they are. We could express it terms of the likelihood that we will believe in the worldview if it is in fact true. A totally self-defeating worldview would be at one extreme: if it is true, we certainly will not believe it. A totally self-supporting one would be at the other: if it is true, we will certainly believe it. Other worldviews may have this likelihood be somewhere between the two extremes. Now, I'd suggest that considering two worldviews, that if this likelihood is greater for one of them than the other, that is a good reason (but maybe not a totally decisive reason) to prefer the one for which it is greater. And I'd argue that both a theistic worldview, and also non-materialist atheism (e.g. John McTaggart, or some versions of Buddhism or Jainism), would have a higher such likelihood than atheistic materialism. Hence, we should prefer one of those views to atheistic materialism (aka philosophical naturalism).

A justification of this: Theories have predictions. Now, one thing that theories can predict, is whether or not we will believe in them. This is a sort of self-referential prediction a theory may potentially have.  One possible prediction a theory may have, is that if the theory is true, we will certainly not believe it. If a theory predicts we will certainly not believe it, then it is self-defeating - we can never be rationally justified in believing it. For if we believe it is true, then we must believe its predictions are true (assuming we know them); but then, if we believe it is true, we must also believe we don't believe it is true. So, we have justified the following rule: "If a theory implies we will not believe in the very same theory, then that theory is false".  But, we can consider a weaker version of this requirement.  What if the theory did not predict we certainly would not believe it, but merely predicted that our belief in it is extremely unlikely. Suppose a certain theory includes the claim "if this theory is true, then the probability that we will believe in this theory is 10^-1000". Such a theory we are always justified in disbelieving also: if we believe it, then we have to believe that something enormously unlikely (our belief in it) has nonetheless happened, or else that it is mistaken. (If it is mistaken, then the probability of us believing in it may be a lot higher.) So, rationally, it would always make more sense to believe it is false.  This I believe justifies a principle - the likelihood of our believing in a theory if it is true is a relevant factor in deciding whether the theory itself is true. If that likelihood is nil, that is conclusive evidence the theory is false. If that likelihood is small, that is evidence against the truth of that theory - how strong evidence depends on how close that likelihood is to zero.  Applying this principle to atheistic materialism vs. theistic non-materialism, I think we will find that this likelihood is higher for theistic non-materialism than for atheistic materialism. Given the above principle, I think that is evidence in favour of theistic non-materialism against atheistic materialism.

On Music

All the music that I love and I hate
All the music that I have made and have heard
For whoever makes music, I am that person who makes that music
So I have been and so shall I once again be
And whoever hears music, I am that person who hears that music
So I have been and so shall I once again be
And whoever likes what they hear, I am the person so liking
So I have been and so shall I once again be
And whoever dislikes what they hear, I am the person so disliking
So I have been and so shall I once again be
All the music that anyone has ever made,
Or that
I have made and I have heard
I have authored and I have performed
And I have loved and I have hated
For I am everyone who has ever lived, lives now, or ever shall live
And all of them are me

Seek blessing on earth

Seek blessing on earth
And if you find it not upon the earth
Without doubt, you shall find it in heaven
And yet, if you search for it not upon the earth
How shall you find it even in heaven?

How happy am I to know that I am everyone

How happy am I to know that I am everyone
Everyone who has ever lived, and everyone who shall ever live
Everything that has ever happened to anyone, has happened to me
Everything that shall ever happen to anyone, shall happen to me
All the good and all the evil
All the pleasure and all the pain
All the glory and all the shame