Zach says: “Well, I am not trying to be stubborn headed, I am convinced on what I am convinced on and so are you. We are in the process of dialog and trying to convince each other of our own views. If this isn’t your thing you don’t have to jump in, but I for one REALLY enjoy it. If it wasn’t for my skeptic/agnostic friend, I would not have the interest in these conversations I do today. Iron sharpness iron and all that sort of thing. So I enjoy these conversations – they can get a bit heated, but it’s a discipline to not confuse disagreement with stupidity and get frustrated over the fact that someone doesn’t agree with you. If someone doesn’t at least understand my point of view I strive to not get frustrated with them, but work at being a better communicator. Now if someone understands my view and disagrees, well that is what it is and is still usually profitable conversation.
The best conversations are ones that are actual conversations – as opposed to games of “Gotcha”, which usually is what internet conversations turn into – hence why I am trying to shy away from commentators here who simply just want to argue and not have a friendly conversation.”
You filthy,intellectually dishonest , Gish galloping, nit picking , horrible hypocrite ( that was an intentional ad hominem , I hate your guts)
You want no part in proper discussions,all you care about is games of GOTCHA.
All you do is nit pick people’s arguments
For statements you can use your circular,irrational , broken logic on.
And then Gish gallop like a jockey chased by wolves.
You sir are a yellow belly and I hope you burn in the hell you believe in because my hell is to nice for you

Thanks again.

I think a key component of your argument is this sentence:

“Because we are talking about values, a moral principle can never be a completely empirical fact, and therefore cannot be completely determined by scientific investigation.”

I’m inclined to believe that science, in principal, should be able to cover everything within a naturalistic worldview. I steal a bit from Gregory Dawes here, but that definition includes not only tangible physical entities, but also existential or causal phenomenon that somehow supervenes upon or are realized by physical things (and is therefore subject to empirical investigation through their observable effects). Love, hate, confidence, locus of control and morality should then be well within the purview of naturalistic explanations.

We have plenty of research that examine phenomenon similar to phenomenon mentioned above. True, these are latent and not observable variables, but I don’t think that hurts their validity. I’d even argue that the tendency for distinct societies to repeat certain moral codes is indicative of objective morality (Michael Shermer has this list in one of his books). I think ultimately morals are useful heuristics, that is context-dependent but nonetheless objective and much like Sam Harris, agree it’s useful for science to throw itself in the ring to find it.

Because on some level they actually are just as right as we are. They are not deceiving themselves or attempting to deceive us. This is how they genuinely think and the same way I cannot fathom how to “just believe” something genuinely, I must assume that they cannot fathom how to not use “something else” to “know” things that reflect reality.

It’s back to that Sam Harris quote – what evidence to you show someone to convince them, if they don’t value evidence? What logic can you use with someone who doesn’t value (or in this case understand) logic?

So by the same token, to play a bit of devil’s advocate, since it is we who assert that free will is an illusion and that there is no extrinsic immutable and objective standard by which to measure ourselves is it actually appropriate to consider them – any of them – “crazy”?

We can certainly say they do not conform as well to repeatable reality as we do. And it is Feynman who said “that which I cannot repeat, I cannot understand” after all. It is very feasible that we are repeatable but not accurate. However, since we are consistently inaccurate, we are at a relative peak. I would argue our peak (and take that to mean the general peak of “humanity” however you may want to reasonable and charitably define it) is higher (better) than theirs. But I cannot say ours is the highest possible. We just don’t know.

BTW – I do tend believe we live in a purely deterministic universe, which includes our so-called “free will.” However, this is still a probabalistic universe with an intrinsic level of uncertainty by definition. And compilex enough that, just like evolution makes a bird’s wing look intelligently designed, we are living in a universe such that the probability functions of complex systems rapidly extend towards infinity and thus we have a very solid illusion of free will. I further believe that this illusion is not only entirely sufficient but truly no better option exists than such a reality. And if I am wrong, it is probably by a mostly negligible amount of error which will eventually, hopefully, lay within the intrinsic uncertainty of the fabric of the cosmos.

LOL. I don’t have clinic tomorrow and but I probably shouldn’t stay up late with a vodka soda and wax poetic any longer.

Kalam is just one example that illustrates the thinking of apologists like WLC, and pseudo-apologists like Zach who ape him. Though the thrust of our discussion here hasn’t been Kalam, the basic structure is the same – an apologist making assertions that go against what has been observed in reality that they have no direct evidence for, so they search for evidence that’s not there and ending up “forcing” evidence, like pounding a square peg into a round hole. That’s why nearly all of their arguments are laced with logical fallacies, factual inaccuracies, and outright dishonesty.

What’s worse is when they use their unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable claims as proof of their god’s existence.

At the end, if any of them ever attempt to be intellectually honest, the only recourse they have is to admit that it’s all a matter of faith and it’s something they cannot outwardly demonstrate. I wish more theists could admit that, because though I think that belief is crazy, at least I can respect their honesty, which is always a nice change of pace.

NSC is great, his videos really cut through the rhetoric.

I do agree though – a universe without purpose and in which we are ultimately responsible for each and every of our actions is kind of scary. I liken it to the notion of thinking that one day I will be an attending and final decisions of vital import in someone’s life will literally rest in my hands. I have no one else to turn to and slag off my responsibility.

So I can cower in fear and be a $hitty doctor or I can accept the reality and do what it takes to be worthy of and do well by my responsibility.

The same applies for being human.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Similar to how conspiracy theorists create comfortable fictions out of anomaly hunting and question begging in order to feel less threatened by a chaotic, messy, and oftentimes violent world, it’s similar with many theists. It’s comforting to have some sort of filial relationship to defer to when bad things happen or inexplicable tragedies occur like Sandy Hook. It removes a burden of having to try to make things better or to consider the actual ramifications of belief, though I see some theists put a LOT of effort in trying to force others to conform to their religious belief, thinking that their way is the only right way.

I recently watched an interesting videoby TheoreticalBulls*** called William Lane Craig Is Not Doing Himself Any Favors regarding Kalam’s CAG where TB’s final observation dealt with a long-winded quote from WLC where Craig essentially threw up his hands and admits that the given philosophical definitions don’t accommodate his concept of a God caused universe and they should be revised. Talk about placing the cart before the horse – a vivid example of how apologists search for evidence for their preconceived notion, basically the antithesis of science where conclusions are based on the evidence. All it boils down to is one big argument from ignorance and begging the question, and that’s why they never even try to directly demonstrate their claims.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the video before, but not in some time. And I’ve long since stopped listening to Craig and his windbaggery. But it was amazing how much of a WLC acolyte Zach actually is. And sad that he is quite inept at it. WLC is a windbag and a buffoon, but at least he is cogent and eloquent. Zach was merely parroting the same talking points and simply incapable of actually thinking on his own about them. Hence his incessant return to the same tired points over and over again. WLC at least couches it all in flowery prose to keep the naive entertained.

But to the real point – in listening to the two go back and forth it clicked what this was all about. WLC – and Zach by extension, though he fumbled the point and refused to acknowledge it even though WLC does – concede that a secular purely human derived morality can and does exist. The issue WLC has with that is that if there is no god, then we cannot call things “good” and “bad” or “evil” because the concepts would be meaningless. In a non-directed dispassionate universe there is no extrinsic thing that can say something is evil and what is evil can change.

The mistake he – and Zach – make is that they feel this makes it unacceptable. They use the feeling that this shouldn’t be the case as evidence that it actually isn’t the case. Zach was incapable of taking this thought further, though he tried a bit and in a way slightly different to WLC. WLC prontificates in flowery language and tries to invoke the neccesity of god as evidence for the existence of god and thus his unchanging objective morality.

Of course Harris destroys the entirety of it quite handily, but one analogy he uses that I forgot from the book was the concept of health. Nobody questions why we doctors do what we do – why should I minister to the sick and infirm? But furthermore how do we define health? Is there an objective measure of “health?” Of course not. I cannot say my patient has 72/100 hit points and I need to tank him up to 100 before sending him off on his next quest. Does the fact that my 72 year old grandmother can only walk 5 miles whilst Jack LaLane ran marathons mean she is not healthy and he is? A hundred years ago “healthy” meant living to the ripe old age of 60 or so. So no, there is clearly no objective measure of what “healthy” is, yet we can obejectively assess whether is a person is becoming more healthy or ill and how we can achive the goal of restoring health.

And so is the same with morality. And wishing we had an extrinsic arbiter to remove the burden from ourselves does not make it reality. And wishing that there was “evil” and “good” does not make it so either.

What transpired with Zach was that he leveled secular, physical claims about morality, the physical world, and science. While we all know that his rationale ultimately leads to his fundamentalist christian beliefs, what we were focused on were the non-religious claims he was making. So, for the most part we were not even criticizing his religious beliefs (though that did occur from time to time as comparisons to perceived subjective levels of “good” morality).

Zach’s entire premise was that absolute morality exists and that requires an ultimate omniscient law giver of some sort, a decidedly supernatural belief. So, I don’t see how religion can be avoided in a discussion about that.

I’m not entireyly sure what the real thrust of your comment is. However, I would like to clarify that I do not hate or even dislike Christians. I hate Christianity. I dislike the warped false thinking that all belief systems engender in those they suck in. I see no core differences between Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Scientology, and Heaven’s Gate. The details are different and can lend to a bit more palatability for some religions over others, but that is in the same way that a non-violent rape is slightly less repugnant than a brutal one ending in murder. The core is the same either way, just the details are different. Of course, the real problem is that when someone believes in stupid ideas, they see an attack of their ideas as an attack on them. This is unfortunate and I do, for the most part, try and make the distinction clear. But ultimately it is not my responsibility that someone cannot separate a criticism of their ideas from a criticism of them and, quite frankly, if they genuinely believe it so fervently there is indeed an element of personal criticism that is indivisible from the critique of the idea(s) in question.

I do believe we also made a very fair effort to have a non-religious conversation with Zach and amongst ourselves. We certainly exhausted any attempt at conversation from his POV without tapping into the undeniable religious nature of his claims. The problem was he had no way to defend his stance whatsoever without resorting to citing religion. And then of course, once you do that, the game is over around these parts.