sex warehouse

On pages 11-15 of his critique of the OTF Christian philosopher Thomas Talbott discusses “The Presumption of Skepticism.” According to him there are three “different kinds of skepticism.” There is “the skepticism of disbelief,” which sometimes requires “a kind of dogmatic certainty.” This is my kind of skepticism he opines, and he implicitly suggests I come across as a “closed-minded dogmatist.” The second kind of skepticism is that of “suspended belief,” which is his kind of skepticism that is “incompatible with dogmatic certainty and sometimes arises when one has the humility to recognize the limits of one’s own knowledge.” Since this is so he says of himself, “I am a true skeptic.” *cough* The third kind of skepticism is “merely the opposite of being overly gullible,” which is a “healthy skepticism” that everyone should have.

It’s true that I am almost certain Christianity is false, especially of the evangelical kind. I have to be. Think about it. If not then I risk being cast into hell for debunking God’s one true faith. This is one reason why it’s so damn hard to leave the Christian faith in the first place. It means that we must be nearly certain our faith is false before we will leave it. It is the church’s cradle to grave threat for entertaining doubts. That’s the main reason why skeptics are required to show the Christian faith is impossible before believers will consider it improbable, which is a nearly impossible burden of proof and why so few believers leave the faith when compared to the total number of converts each year. I wasn’t always this way though. I went through stages where I doubted something, then something else, then something else and so forth. What Talbott sees now is the conclusion of years of study, reflection and personal experience.

There are just too many ways to be wrong. There are too many people claiming they know the answers. I have studied the Christian answer and I have concluded it is almost certainly wrong. It would be akin to someone claiming he knew exactly what happened at Custer’s Last Stand. There are a million ways to be wrong about what happened. What if Custer had a heart attack? What if one of his own soldiers killed him and the rest of his regiment attacked each other in the midst of their battle? What if they made a treaty with the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples who slaughtered them when they let their guard down? I can be almost certain that one of these answers is false even without knowing what actually took place.

Talbott is not opposed to the dogmatic certainty of disbelief, since he’s opposed to the Flat Earth Society. Whew, that was a good call Tom! And he accepts the third kind of healthy skepticism of course. But in the context of our religious disputes Talbott wants to claim a true skepticism of suspended belief. For him this means being open-minded. As an example, with regard to reincarnation he says “I have no settled belief one way or the other on the matter.” And in a like fashion he’s says he’s equally open to the possibility that Jesus rose from the dead as he is to the possibility that he didn’t. He would claim Jesus arose from the grave I think, it’s just that he’s “equally” open to the possibility that he didn’t.

I take the suspension of belief to mean just that, a suspended belief. Let’s say he is equally open to the possibility that an airplane he is about to board will crash as he is to the possibility that it won’t. Would he get on that plane? Likewise, what can it mean to believe Jesus arose, sing worship songs to him in church, pray with faith, argue against skeptics, live one’s life for Jesus and yet at the same time have a suspended belief about it all? This makes no sense to me. How open to the possibility is he that Jesus didn’t arise from the grave? Is his God pleased with his suspended belief? For all I can tell if he is truly “equally” open to both possibilities he is an agnostic in Bertrand Russell's sense of the word.

This is actually the kind of skepticism I have argued for as the default position of the OTF. I have said this all along in all of my discussions of the OTF, which I take it he has read and yet has ignored. I claim that anyone who moves off the default position of this kind of agnosticism has the burden of proof.

So I put it to him, either is he being disingenuous or is he an agnostic. I can’t tell from what he wrote. I can tell that he is not as open as he thinks, for he is clearly not open to atheism, nor Scientology, Mormonism, Militant Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and the many other different religious entities and faiths around the globe, including all of the dead religions and gods and goddesses. So let me remind him what it means to be open-minded.

When it comes to the third kind of skepticism he rants on against the “literal nonsense” of statements to the effect that “we are all atheists with respect to the religions of others,” or that, “when you understand why you dismiss other religions you will understand why we dismiss yours.” These statements are nonsense to Talbott because he does not dismiss other religions, or so he says. He certainly doesn’t understand atheism, something described in a video in the link above on Bertrand Russell.

My problem with Talbott is that he doesn’t understand that he is indeed rejecting other religions. All we need to do is ask the people of different religions to comment on whether he and they agree, ya see, and they don’t. This is obvious. He is not a Muslim. Most of them would kill him as a heretic.

There are mutually exclusive historical and theological claims being made by various religions. So a universalist like Talbott must have some standard for determining the truth in order to determine what is mythical in a religion from what is not. This standard should be the same one I share, reason and science. And this standard, if applied consistently across the board, eschews faith in favor of evidence. If he could only understand that what he’s rejecting are faith-based claims then he would see why he dismisses or rejects these other religions. It is not therefore “literal nonsense” to say “when you understand why you dismiss other religions you will understand why we dismiss yours.” He just doesn't get it.

The other alternative is that the god of the universalist is a deceiver, not a god of universal love, since the various religions have perpetrated horrendous evils upon one another because they were led to believe by this god that their claims were literally true, coming from the one and only true god.

When believers criticize the other faiths they reject, they use reason and science to do so. They assume these other religions have the burden of proof. They assume human not divine authors to their holy book(s). They assume a human not a divine origin to their faiths.

Believers do this when rejecting other faiths. So dispensing all of the red herrings about morality and a non-material universe, the OTF simply asks believers to do unto their own faith what they do unto other faiths. All it asks of them is to be consistent.

The OTF asks why believers operate on a double standard. If that's how they reject other faiths then they should apply that same standard to their own. Let reason and science rather than faith be their guide. Assume your own faith has the burden of proof. Assume human rather than divine authors to your holy book(s) and see what you get. If there is a divine author behind the texts it should be known even with that initial skeptical assumption.

So the OTF uses the exact same standard that believers use when rejecting other religions. If there is any inconsistency at all it is not with the OTF. It is how believers assess truth claims. For it should only take a moment’s thought to realize that if there is a God who wants people born into different religious cultures to believe, who are outsiders, then that religious faith SHOULD pass the OTF.

If Christians want to reject the OTF then either they must admit they have a double standard for examining religious faiths, one for their own faith and a different one for others, or their faith was not made to pass the OTF in the first place. In either case all of their arguments against the OTF are based on red herrings, special pleading, begging the question, the denigrating science, and an ignorance that I can only attribute to delusional blindness.

To read more on the OTF click here.

I have found most of the criticisms of the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) are asking it to be something that it is not. The rest are based in a lack of understanding, probably because of the need to believe and defend what cannot be defended. The OTF is expressed to believers that they should examine their own faith with the same level of skepticism they use when examining the other religious faiths they reject. This has annoyed believers, since what it asks is that there should be no double standards when evaluating religious faiths, one for your own culturally inherited religious faith and a different one for the other religious faiths you reject.

The most common objection is why I single out religious faith for this kind of test. Why not treat all beliefs in the same way? Talbott expresses this objection: “the OTF is but a specific instance of the more general Outsider Test for Beliefs (OTB).” As such “Both employ the idea of an outsider test, and both are relevant to a question that I, for one, would like see answered clearly: Just what, exactly, would count as passing an outsider test in any context, whether it be moral, political, metaphysical, or religious?” Then he says:

So when you ask whether one should use the OTF to decide whether to molest children, I presume you mean to ask whether one should use the OTB to decide this issue. That is, should one adopt the perspective of an outsider--the perspective of someone who rejects the moral point of view altogether--and try to decide from that perspective whether to molest children? And the answer to that question, as I’m sure you will agree, seems clear: “Of course not!” But don’t you see that this answer undermines the whole strategy of trying to adopt the perspective of an outsider, particularly if the outsider’s view of the world is already radically different from yours, as a means of testing your own beliefs? Is there any reason whatsoever why modern scientists, for example, should restrict themselves to evidence that might appeal to some outsider, such as an African Bushman?

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In effect Talbott is asking that if believers should examine their own faith with the same level of skepticism they use when examining the other religious faiths they reject, then why shouldn’t we examine our own anti-rape ethic with the same level of skepticism we use when examining a rape ethic that we reject? Why not examine our own anti-molesting ethic with the same level of skepticism we use when examining a molesting ethic that we reject? Why not examine our own belief in a material world with the same level of skepticism we use when examining the belief in Idealism (that there is no material world) that we reject? And incredibly he suggests why not examine our own scientific understanding with the same level of skepticism we use when examining the non-scientific beliefs of an an African Bushman that we reject? This list could presumably be extended.

I have met this objection head on in two ways. In the first place I have argued that the level of skepticism warranted for a particular belief depends on several criteria. On page 91 of The Christian Delusion:

The amount of skepticism warranted depends not only on 1) the number of rational people who disagree, but also 2) whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, 3) the nature of their beliefs, 4) how their beliefs originated, 5) under what circumstances their beliefs were personally adopted in the first place, and 5) the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between the differing beliefs. My claim is that when it comes to religious faiths, a high degree of skepticism is warranted precisely because of these factors. [Call these items with inserted numbers the “amount of skepticism warranted criteria”, or ASWC.]

Then on page 93 of The Christian Delusion I said:

I’m arguing that religious faiths warrant the same level of skepticism that other similar beliefs require, like beliefs in the elves of Iceland, the trolls of Norway, and the power of witches in Africa. They must all be subjected to the same levels of skepticism given both the extraordinary nature of these claims and how some of these beliefs were adopted in the first place.

So based on ASWC and the extraordinary claims of religionists, debates about rape and molesting (if there can even be such things) are in a different category than debates about religion, and hence do not meet the same criteria as the OTF. There are plenty of differences.

Secondly I have argued that even if these beliefs are in the same category, which they are not, that an anti-rape ethic and the belief in a material world can be more than justified from an outsider perspective, that is, there are good arguments for thinking this is so. I can think of no better response.

Anyone who tries to justify a rape ethic or a molesting ethic fails the criteria of the ASWC on every single item. I know of no rational person, not one, who would presume to justify either rape or child molesting, except perhaps in the case of rape where it is justified from a religious standpoint, something the OTF targets. If this is not a red herring then what is? Such anti-ethics are additionally not making extraordinary claims about supernatural beings and forces, something that best defines a religion. These are not similar beliefs. Our beliefs about rape and molesting do not require the same level of skepticism as those who oppose them. Neither do our "beliefs" about science, so Idealism additionally fails science, as I’ve argued.

Which brings me to science. One cannot doubt empirical evidence for it is the strongest evidence we can have about something. To suggest or hint that we should question science from the perspective of an African Bushman, which it seems Talbott did, actually gives the game away. For it shows the depths that a believer will go in order to defend his faith no matter what. If this is not a case of a smart person who is made dumb by his faith, then what is? It shows the disingenuousness of Talbott’s arguments, for behind them all he is throwing up smoke screens in order to deflect the force of the OTF. In order to do this he finds it necessary to denigrate science. That’s typical of believers. All believers must denigrate the sciences in some places in order to believe.

On pages 15-20 of Christian philosopher Thomas Talbott’s “The Outsider Test for Faith: How Serious a Challenge Is It?,” he critiques the idea of an outsider.

Talbott has two arguments in this section. First he struggles to find a relevant sense for the idea of an “outsider” and says “the position of an outsider appears to have no role to play in the test itself.” And as he sees it, the standard “is not an outsider’s skeptical stance towards Christianity; it is instead the Christian’s own skeptical stance towards other non-Christian religions.” But Talbott notices a problem here, for “not all Christians adopt the same dismissive attitude towards other religions.” Furthermore, “Whatever complicated factors may figure into someone’s adopting a given moral, religious, or metaphysical perspective, these same factors will likewise make an outsider’s perspective appear less than fully cogent.”

What can be said about this?

Talbott and other apologists like him have mastered the art of Definitional Apologetics. No matter what a critic says, Christians will break a word or phrase down into several different senses and then claim they don’t know what the critic is talking about, in good Socratic fashion. Words are notoriously difficult to define. Define a normal human being, or pornography. If you do not want to face the full force of a criticism against your faith just do Definitional Apologetics. Talbott also does this with the phrase “extraordinary claim,” for he doesn’t know what one is in the face of a concrete example like a virgin birth, or a resurrection or an ascension into the sky (WTF?). How can I be expected to carry on a reasonable discussion with someone like that? Because of these questions Cratylus in Socrates’s day didn’t think anyone could communicate at all. After reading Talbott’s paper I’m wondering if Cratylus was right after all! ;-) I don’t think I could satisfy Talbott since it just doesn’t seem to me he would accept it. He could always gerrymander around what I say. That’s just what delusional people do.

In any case I’ll respond for the people who are really interested in having a discussion, knowing in advance what believers like Talbott do. An outsider is someone who is skeptical of a different religious faith. There, that should be adequate. I think anyone who has read what I have written can understand what I mean if they want to. One might even call the OTF the “Skeptical Test for Faith,” and I have said that on occasion. The title of an argument is not the argument itself. The title is to get people’s attention and the OTF title provides the most poignant example of what it means to be skeptical for most people because most people are skeptical of other religions. The OTF asks believers to be as skeptical of their own faith as they are of the religious faiths of others.

I have found most of the criticisms of the OTF are asking it to be something that it is not. That’s like asking arguments against divine hiddenness to show God does not exist. Such arguments are not designed to do this, and likewise the OTF is not designed to do everything either. Talbott says he is not that skeptical of other religions. Instead he wants to learn from them. But I’m sure he knows what it’s like to be skeptical of snake handlers, six day creationists, hellfire and brimstone preaching, Scientologists, Cargo Cults, Militant Muslims, and Mormons though, so why the disingenuousness? He either knows what it’s like to be skeptical of other religions or he does not. Which is it? Even if he does not know what it’s like to be skeptical (and who is he trying to kid anyway?) the OTF targets the faiths of an utterly overwhelming number of people with a force they have probably not considered before. And even if complicated factors may figure into how people evaluate faiths that’s just the nature of people, something I have no remedy for, nor can I be expected to solve.

In any case, if there is a God who wants us to believe in him or fry in hell, then that kind of religion might fall under the force of the OTF more so than others, since whatever complicated factors there are in adopting and evaluating one’s faith, you would expect such a God to help these people get it right.

Secondly, Talbott argues he doesn’t know how a person might one go about adopting an outsider perspective, or the skepticism of an outsider. He asks, “Should Christians merely pretend that they have never encountered the Christian faith, or pretend that they do not believe it, or pretend that they have considered it and then rejected it? If so, how are they to manage such a feat?” He ends by saying that “many of our deepest convictions…are simply not under the control of our wills. For in general, you cannot both believe that some proposition p is true and, at the same time, disbelieve it in a sense that the skepticism of disbelief entails.”

Here Talbott continues with Definitional Apologetics, so I’ll just note this again. Furthermore, I find this to be an odd criticism of my argument. Is the OTF now subject to the criticism that it doesn’t include a manual on critical thinking or a detailed explanation of the sciences? If people need help knowing how to be skeptical then something is wrong. All people need to do is hear an extraordinary claim (something Talbott has never heard) and they already know how to be skeptical. It’s easy to doubt since there are so many ways to be wrong. In any case, people should begin by taking science classes, critical thinking classes, reading books outside their comfort zone, engaging other believers, and so forth.

The sociological, anthropological and psychological facts that are the basis for the OTF should be enough for reasonable people to doubt their faith in some measure. The OTF then is designed to produce this doubt given these facts. I am not just asking people to doubt. I am giving them reasons to doubt. I’m trying to help believers see what it’s like from the outside. I’m trying to show them what it means to be skeptical of their own faith. This should be good enough I would think. Why should I reside in one of Talbotts’s gerrymandered intellectual districts? The OTF does this work on its own. People already know what it’s like to be an outsider to a different religious faith. I need not explain this to them in detail. And I’m arguing that they ought to consider that perspective as much as they can knowing in advance no one can fully step outside one's own shoes. Why should that even be required? Just because that cannot be done does not mean it shouldn’t be attempted to a greater degree. Talbott is suggesting that because we cannot be totally skeptical we shouldn't be skeptical at all, or it seems. If so, that's idiotic to me.

No wonder I say that dealing with delusional people is trying to catch a greased pig.

This post anticipates what Thomas Talbott might say to my suggestion that he should get behind the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance.

Let's say Talbott replies that given an omniscient God he cannot fathom how God might reveal himself when behind the Veil of Ignorance, so the thought experiment is inapplicable. If he does, like I've seen other believers do, then we'll see his delusion most demonstrably. For we must be able to know enough about God's ways in order for us to believe that he knows what is best. Get it? If God's ways are so far above us that it appears his ways are not best, then it is counter-productive to give us a progressive revelation in which we cannot see that his ways are best. It would be akin to God planting false evidence to deceive us about the age of the universe, which was claimed by some Christians when science had shown the universe is much older than the genealogies in Genesis allowed (another delusional tactic in the face of hard cold evidence to the contrary).

Let me say it forthrightly: If this is the best that God can do then he is stupid and unworthy of worship because he does not have a minimal understanding of what it takes for us to believe in him, even though he supposedly created us. Does he not know who we are as human beings enough to know that by revealing himself in ways that are indistinguishable from not revealing himself at all that we cannot believe? Such a God therefore is ignorant, not omniscient.

So, either we can judge how God should reveal himself behind the Veil of Ignorance or we can't. If we can, then reasonable people should conclude as I do that this so-called progressive revelation does not come from a good omniscient God. If we can't, then the same conclusion follows.

I have been faulted for starting my critique of Thomas Talbott's essay at the end. The claim is that I have not dealt with the substance of his critique of the OTF, and that it is found in the earlier portions of his essay. If so, then Talbott himself was wrong to title his last section as "A Fundamental Inconsistency in the Loftus Approach." (p. 20) For what does it mean to use the word "Fundamental" if it is not Fundamental? In any case, I'm going through his essay with a fine toothed comb and will get to it all, so hold your pants on.

In the very last two paragraphs Talbott writes:

George MacDonald concluded that no “revelation can be other than partial.… Because of a lower condition of the receiver, a more partial revelation might be truer than that would be which constituted a fuller revelation to one in a higher condition; for the former might reveal much to him, the latter might reveal nothing.”

All of which leads naturally to the idea of progressive revelation and to the idea that in different cultural contexts any revelation, assuming for a moment that such a thing is truly possible, would have to accommodate very different patterns of thought. And that casts a rather different light on the whole issue of religious diversity. For a religious person who believes in revelation or even in revelatory experiences should expect religious diversity every bit as much as an atheist or an agnostic might expect it.

There are two claims here. The first is that we should expect there to be progressive revelation, and the second is that we should expect religious diversity on a Christian theistic supposition.

This is not the case at all, not by a long shot, not even close, on both counts, since the amount of progressive revelation creates new Christianities in every generation, and since all non-Christian theologies change is similar ways over the years. Moreover, the amount of religious diversity is massive and growing every single day.

To see this let's place Talbott behind the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance. As a Christian philosophy professor I expect him to know what that is, even though he has previously shown himself to be ignorant of what cultural relativism is. The Veil of Ignorance, for people who are unfamiliar with it can be adequately understood by reading through this link. The question John Rawls put to us is that if we were placed behind a Veil of Ignorance about our status in life, gender, race, and so forth (i.e., before experiencing the world), what moral rules would we adopt and what kind of societal structure would we think is fair--one we would want to live in? It's been criticized from the left and the right, but it's still a great thought experiment.

Talbott needs to say what he would really expect when it comes to how God would reveal himself to human beings before experiencing this world. My claim is that believers are deluded, that they have what is called the Stockholm Syndrome, hostages who like and even defend their captors. In the case of believers their captor is the Celestial Dictator, as Hitchens calls him. Psychology confirms that we are not all that rational and that we defend our beliefs because we prefer them. Hostages have to come to terms with why they are held captive and to resolve their captivity they convince themselves that their captors are good people, at least, enough of them do it that there is a named syndrome for this phenomena.

My claim is that if we place Talbott behind the Theological Veil of Ignorance he would utterly reject both claims of his given his Anselmian concept of God, which evolved out of the tribal deity Yahweh, from which this was derived. He would do so for several good, strong reasons. What would you expect from God prior to experiencing this world? Not what we see, that's for sure, for so many reasons I don't have the time or my reader's patience to read through it all should I do so.

To see this read chapter 7 of mine, "What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate" in The Christian Delusion. I'll have to assume that since Talbott quotes from that same book to criticize the OTF he can read it for himself. There was a great amount of killing and rape and slavery going on, even between Christians themselves to the tune of eight million of them during the eight French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years War because God did not have even the minimal communication skills we would expect from a normal non-omniscient human being.

I see no reason at all why Talbott's God could not have informed the faithful that slavery was unequivocally wrong, or rape, or religious wars, or killing heretics, or even what Christians themselves should believe about hell, the church, salvation, baptism, the priesthood of all believers, the Eucharist, and so on, from the very beginning. That's what reasonable people would expect from such a God behind the Theological Veil of Ignorance.

What Talbott does, just like every believer, is he looks at what he sees and re-interprets his religion in light of that rather than asking himself if this is really what he would expect. He's clearly defending that which he wants to believe. He has the Stockholm Syndrome, defending his Celestial Dictator no matter what, because he has a need to believe.

No, we should not expect the kind (or magnitude) of progressive revelation that we have seen down through the centuries. This is not even close to being a close call. Such a claim as his is palpably false, undeniably false, obviously false. And likewise this is the case when it comes to religious diversity. If there is a God who wants us to believe in him, there would not be so much religious diversity spread around the globe. The probability that the Christian God exists is inversely proportional to the amount of religious diversity that exists (i.e., the more religious diversity there is, then the less probable it is that God exists), and there is way too much religious diversity to suppose that he does.

In my own short life, as I explained in the Introduction to The Christian Delusion, I have seen that theology evolves. Talbott is another example of this, for he does not believe anyone goes to hell. Bravo for him, for he made such a change in light of religious diversity, despite what the historic church has traditionally believed which would have caused him to be executed for heresy in previous centuries by that church.

Christians can either adjust their views like Talbott, when it comes to liberal views of hell when compared to the Middle Ages, or like they’ve done with their present liberal views on women when compared to Christians of earlier centuries, or like they've done by condemning racism and slavery, or like they've done with regard to their liberal and heretical ideas of a free democracy when compared to earlier times of the divine rights of kings, or like Christians have done who no longer think the Bible justifies killing people who disagree, or they can admit that they are gerrymandering in favor of a faith that was caught not taught to them inside their given Christian culture.

My naturalistic proposal is that theology evolves down through the centuries as societies learn from science and grow from their mistakes. This fits the data much better. This evolution does not just apply to the various Christianities, some of which have died out, but to all theologies. All theologies evolve, all of them, down through the decades and the centuries. It is a phenomena we see everywhere in all religions. Do I need to elucidate this point? So if Talbott's God existed then why does the progress of his God's revelation mirror that of other mutually exclusive theologies? Why is the progress of this so-called progressive revelation indistinguishable from no revelation at all?

This is all that an apologist offers, post hoc explanations, based in special pleading and begging the question. When will they actually make a reasonable case for their faith? So far I have not seen it. The case they make is palpably false.

Faith is no substitute to reason and evidence. Talbott is special pleading plain and simple. What he needs to do is take on the naturalistic explanation concerning progression revelation and religious diversity. He will not do that. He can't. He's blind as a bat. I cannot help him see because I cannot heal him.

If I cannot convince a person who argues for a rape ethic that he is wrong, then maybe we should just lock him up in advance. And if I cannot convince a person that there is a material universe, then maybe he should be under intense psychiatric care. In either case, people like them have abandoned reason and science to a delusion that stems from a religion. The OTF seeks to evaluate religion fairly according to reason and science. Tom, you intuitively know your faith does not pass the OTF. So you attack the test. But please tell us why you prefer a double standard, one for evaluating your own culturally inherited faith (with modifications, I know) and a different one for evaluating the faiths of others. This is the point, Tom. Why the double standard? Why? I cannot imagine this in our court system; that fairness means asking the judge to be unfair??? I can hear Tom before a judge now, "Your honor, I humbly request that you decide my case by ignoring the scales of justice in my favor." This is what Tom wants, and he's a Christian philosopher! No wonder I say he gives the philosophical disciplines a bad name, and I am serious, dead serious. Either adopt the same standard for judging all religions or you have been exposed as a deluded person not interested in the truth.

Watch out now boys! Get ready for this smack-down:

I think I can explain to Talbott why rape is wrong very simply. Mr. Talbott, would you like to be raped (--think of prison sex and not porn)? Would you like it if your loved ones or children were raped? Do you want to live in a rapey society where people can be raped without consequences? Or would you rather live in a society where we agree not to rape each other in return for not being raped? I would hope that most males are not fighting the urge to rape left and right.. but for those who are-- it doesn't seem like religion is deterrent (I'm thinking of Catholic priests here).

Civil societies develop laws that punish and imprison those that are prone to inflicting unwanted sex upon others-- but I think if all rapers had to experience rape themselves, then they would find a reason not to rape. I think Talbott is purposefully ignorant if he thinks you need to believe in an invisible sky fairy to conclude that rape is wrong. Theists are so stupid when they try to imagine what an atheist must think or believe. Religion is repeatedly shown to be associated with societal dysfunction (such as rape)-- not lack of belief in sky fairies.

I consider Talbott's articles an attempt to denigrate lack of belief so that he can imagine that belief is good for something. To me, it's nothing more than purposeful ignorance to spread anti-atheist bigotry.

I think we were all "skeptical of skepticism" before we became rationalists. The more I try to muddle my way through Talbott and other self appointed experts on the imaginary-- the more disgusted I am with religion. I'm sure I'm every bit as disgusted as Talbott would be if he heard these arguments coming from a person defending Islam or Scientology or Satanism. What a blow hard.

Religionists are the ultimate relativists-- they just ascribe what they do to the will of god. And the evidence verifies this. Every religionist imagines that people who believe like they do are the most moral of all. They don't agree with each other-- how much more relativistic can you get? Religionists get their morals the same way every one else does-- they just imagine it comes from the invisible universe creator who created the universe just for them!

Talbott disgusts me.

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In a section titled “A Fundamental Inconsistency in the Loftus Approach,” Talbott says I have no reason to think rape is wrong based on the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), and claims Victor Reppert’s “previously expressed arguments are pretty decisive in my opinion.” (pp. 20-21) One of these so-called decisive arguments has to do with why we think there is a material world, something I've already addressed. If I'm harsh with Talbott and Reppert then let it be said I don't appreciate Talbott's demeaning attitude toward me. If he can dish it out he should be able to take it.

Talbott offers three counter-arguments to my replies to Reppert. So let’s first rehearse what I had argued for in The Christian Delusion (TCD) as a background, since what I had argued in that chapter forms the basis for my replies to Reppert:

On page 91:

The amount of skepticism warranted depends not only on 1) the number of rational people who disagree, but also 2) whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, 3) the nature of their beliefs, 4) how their beliefs originated, 5) under what circumstances their beliefs were personally adopted in the first place, and 5) the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between the differing beliefs. My claim is that when it comes to religious faiths, a high degree of skepticism is warranted precisely because of these factors. [Call these items with inserted numbers the “amount of skepticism warranted criteria”, or ASWC.]

On page 93:

I’m arguing that religious faiths warrant the same level of skepticism that other similar beliefs require, like beliefs in the elves of Iceland, the trolls of Norway, and the power of witches in Africa. They must all be subjected to the same levels of skepticism given both the extraordinary nature of these claims and how some of these beliefs were adopted in the first place.

Okay so far?

Talbott seems to be yet another brilliant Christian philosopher who is made to look, well, dumb, when it comes to defending his faith. No offense, but this is an argument I make in a chapter for The End of Christianity coming out in mid-July, something he should read. It’s like faith short-circuits the believer's brain process where they cannot see simple facts, to the point where they cannot even read. That’s exactly why I call their faith a delusion in the first place. It has the same brainwashing effects on otherwise smart people.

Talbott’s first criticism to my reply to Reppert on the rape issue is this:

“First, the issue is not whether some skeptical persons today (or some who mistakenly think they are skeptics) “would ever want to morally justify rape.” The issue is whether the belief that rape is morally wrong passes the Outsider Test; and if so, how.” (p. 20).

Here in parentheses Talbott is claiming that he is truly a skeptic because he is skeptical of skepticism, and that people like me are not. But this is utterly ignorant and utterly confused. One cannot be skeptical of skepticism for it is the basis for weeding out the wheat of true ideas from the chaff of false ones. Point. Get. The.

In any case, let’s make some important distinctions before proceeding. a) There are people who know rape is morally wrong and yet do it anyway. This describes most rapists and therefore irrelevant when assessing how the OTF might justify an anti-rape ethic. One way to find this out in the Western democratic civilized world is to conduct a poll and ask convicted rapists if they knew what they were doing was wrong. I suspect they all do. b) There are people who think God commands rape and have raped others because of this. I find this horrific and barbaric to the core and one of the reasons I am opposed to religious faith-based reasoning. c) There are an overwhelming number of decent civilized folk around the world who condemn a rape ethic. They outnumber by far the people in (a) and (b) above.

Now please refer to what I had said on page 91 of TCD. Given the ASWC how skeptical should I be of a non-rape ethic when compared to a rape ethic? Not much. Actually, given these differences the burden of proof is on a person who seeks to justify a rape ethic. Why this is not obvious to these Christian philosophers utterly escapes me. Do I need to spell this out? Rational civilized decent people all disagree with a rape ethic. Others know it’s wrong even if they do it anyway, or they do so as an act of war, such as is happening in Darfur right now. The condemnation of a rape ethic is embraced by all civilized people, and therefore is in a different category than religious faiths where there is so much disagreement (ASWC #1).

Next, please refer to what I had said on page 93 of TCD. An anti-rape ethic is not an extraordinary claim akin to believing in the elves of Iceland, the trolls of Norway, and the power of witches in Africa. The OTF calls upon people to be more skeptical of extraordinary claims. What, again, is so hard for Christian philosophers like Talbott and Reppert to understand about this? They will no doubt use what I call Definitional Apologetics to define this problem away by feigning that they do not know what an extraordinary claim is, when claims like virgin births, donkey's that talk, and resurrected bodies should crash these attempts like a car wreck.

Talbott says,

“Second, the number of irreligious soldiers who have thought it quite acceptable to rape the women of a conquered people probably numbers in the millions (if not tens of millions) over the course of human history.” (p. 21)

But come on now Talbott, we're not talking about times of war. In times of war soldiers rape women. The Christian Crusaders did that (something no doubt, both Thomas Talbott and Victor Reppert would deny they would have done if they were soldiers in one of these Crusades, because they are chronological snobs, as Reppert calls others--people who think they know better than people who were raised in a different era of the past). Again, we’re not talking about the circumstances of war. How do they apply to a modern nation of peaceful democratic civilized people? And we're most emphatically not comparing the ancient barbaric past with the present. Morality evolves. That's my claim. Try to show me otherwise, okay? I am arguing against the religious based nature of these crimes in a modern nation of peaceful democratic civilized people. Remove the religion and you remove a great deal of the violence, as Hector Avalos has argued in his book, Fighting Words.

Talbott also says “In addition to the fact that Loftus fails to cite a single example of an ancient religious text that, as he interprets it, justifies rape, he can hardly deny that many religions condemn it.” (p. 21)

Now this baffles me to no end. He either attributes to me ignorance of the Bible, or else he is the ignorant one. Does he read his Bible? Let me help him out:

“When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house...” Deuteronomy 21:10-12

And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” Numbers 31:15-18

For a detailed exegesis of these and other passages let me recommend Susanne Scholz’s Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible and the Women’s Bible Commentary for starters. I cannot believe how ignorant some Christian philosophers are, or feign to be, in order to defend their faith. They have, what Jaco Gericke calls, a Fundamentalism on Stilts. Come on Talbott and Reppert, come down off your stilts and wallow in the mire of the basis of your faith in scholarly biblical studies. At least touch the covers of these two books, please.

And it's irrelevant if some religions condemn rape. What does that prove when it can be shown that Judeo-Christianity approved it in the past? Again, morality evolves. Christians do not get their morality from the Bible. They read their morality back into the Bible.

Talbott ends with his third criticism by saying,

“And finally, one could easily appeal to cultural relativism and construct an argument that parallels exactly Loftus’ initial four step argument; and in this argument, the third step would read: “Loftus’ belief that rape is morally wrong is probably false.” (p. 21)

The form of my OTF argument does parallel one that cultural relativists use with regard to morality, but not in one important respect. Apparently Talbott’s faith blinds him from the reading skills necessary to see a relevant difference built into my argument. It’s as if he doesn’t even try to understand it. The first three premises go like this:

1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

Notice the words "overwhelming" and “overwhelmingly.” I chose to use those words on purpose. I am not claiming cultural relativism--that all of our religious beliefs are culturally dependent--only that this is overwhelmingly the case. Does he deny this? Let him try. Does this lead to cultural relativism? I have purposely excluded that from the discussion. Talbott and Reppert claim that they are the exceptions to the rule, as do almost all believers I have ever discussed these issues with. WTF? That is impossible. This is a mark of a delusion. They all claim against the probabilities that they are the exceptions to the rule. Yeah, right. Then let them kick against the goads and explain away the rule.

Besides, Talbott doesn't even know what cultural relativism is. And he's a philosopher of religion? No wonder I claim he's giving the rest of us who appreciate the philosophical disciplines a bad name. He should be fired as incompetent if he's teaching an Introduction to Ethics class. One cannot say, given cultural relativism, that the dominant cultural opinion on an ethical issue is "probably false." Does he not understand this?

Talbott ends his discussion of rape by saying, “So I cannot think of anything beyond a sheer anti-religious prejudice that would lead him to trace every moral view he rejects, and no moral view he accepts, to some religious influence.” (p. 21)

I am anti-religious, that’s true. But I was not always this way. My faith was ripped from me against my preferences due to everything I had experienced and everything I had learned. So it’s not fair to dismiss my arguments because I am presently an anti-religious person when that’s a conclusion I reached over the decades based on everything I had experienced and learned. In my book Why I Became an Atheist, if he reads the first part, it justifies an anti-superstitious viewpoint more than sufficiently.

Now, can an anti-rape ethic be justified by the OTF? Yes, most assuredly. Why is rape wrong? 1) Because of the nature of the act itself. As an act of violence against another human being it harms people, mostly women. Harming people is wrong. 2) Because fathers, husbands, and brothers would kill us if they caught us. 3) Because of a social contract between rational people that allows us to raise our daughters and allows our wives and mothers to live in an environment where they will not fear walking home from work in the dark, which would create a great deal of social dysfunction. Who in their right mind would try to justify a rape ethic if he had daughters, a wife and a mother? That is insane, for he would be saying men could rape the women closest to him! This would be an utterly barbaric society if a rape ethic was accepted. What, do Talbott and Reppert actually think a non-religious society would be a barbaric one? What utter and complete rubbish based on utter and complete ignorance. Finally, but not exhaustively, 4) Because we should not treat people as means to an end, as Immanuel Kant argued.

If I were an outsider to a anti-rape ethic I would quickly embrace it, easily. It passes the skepticism of the OTF, even against any hedonistic preferences for wanting to embrace a rape ethic, since I want the women I love to be able to walk the streets unmolested, highlighting just one of the above arguments for a anti-rape ethic. And if I were a woman this would be an absolute no-brainer, duh, which represents more than half the population of the world.

For further reading on a non-religious skeptical scientific based morality I recommend Morality without God and Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

I have offered reasons for an anti-rape ethic that an overwhelming number of people accept and that is good enough. What if Talbott rejects these non-religious reasons? So what? Why should it be required that I need to convince a deluded person that he is wrong in order to have a anti-rape ethic? Why should it matter at all if people disagree with my anti-rape ethic? No ethical view is agreed upon by everyone. An argument does not have to convince someone for it to be a good one. I have offered a good anti-rape ethic. That should be sufficient.

One thing we know is that one of the main reasons there is moral diversity is because there is religious diversity. Likewise, one of the main reasons people have sought to justify a rape ethic is because of their religious views. Remove the religious diversity with the OTF and we remove one of the major reasons we cannot come to a global consensus about morality, and one of the main reasons people seek to justify rape.

More to come. I'm making an example of Talbott to warn others who wish to engage me.

Do not piss me off. ;-)

This is funny but what I think:

Christian philosopher Thomas Talbott recently criticized The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) in what looks to be an article he might submit to a philosophical journal. I would hope if he does, the editor would include my response if he wants to fully inform his readers. I plan on responding in some detail to his essay in a series of posts. This is the first one.

I find it amazing that philosophers like Talbott propose things that they do not accept in order to criticize the OTF. I mean, really, for all of his verbosity he thinks like I do that there is an external material world. I taught philosophy. I know what it's like to argue that there isn't a material world (i.e., Idealism). I did it every semester whenever I taught an Introduction to Philosophy class. It was fun to do. It takes students by surprise as they struggle to find reasons why they think otherwise. It was, to use, Talbott's own phrase, "a pedagogical device." [See page 24, footnote 23]. Apparently then, Talbott is stuck in a pedagogical mode, which he states as follows:

As any good teacher knows, a less than fully accurate statement will sometimes reveal more to beginning students, or do more to nudge them in the right direction, than a fully accurate statement will when the latter would be unintelligible to them. As I have elsewhere put it: “like many teachers, I often find myself saying things to beginning students that I would prefer them to reinterpret (perhaps even to discard) as they mature into more advanced students. (p. 26)

Being pedagogical just won't do here. Either he believes there is an external material world or he does not. If he does, then why bother with this an an objection at all?

My reasons are similar to Dr. Johnson's as interpreted through G.E. Moore. In what has been dubbed the G.E. Moore Shift, Moore argued that he's more sure he has a pencil in his hand than that the skeptical arguments to the contrary are correct. There are other reasons, plenty of them. One of them is simply that it makes no difference at all if there isn't a physical universe. There ought to be some sort of difference between propositions if we are to make sense of them as different propositions. Occam's Razor does the requisite work after acknowledging this. Another reason is science itself. How can we conceive of it working without an external material world? Why do we need brains, a liver, lungs, and organs of any kind? Why does surgery save us from death if these organs are not real? How does a doctor prescribed pill heal us if there is no material body? What then causes us to be healed if the pill doesn't do it? Where's the mechanism for producing a healing effect from a non-physical cause? To argue there is a spiritual reality that heals us means we do not need to take the prescribed pill at all.

Why is it I also have the experience of moving about from place to place? Who is moving about if I am not the one doing this? How can there be a change of scenery if I do not have a physical body that moves about? And who or what guarantees that when I step outside my house day after day it always has the same physical characteristics? Why should our experience be the same every time we look at an object unless there really is a physical object and a physical world? Who or what guarantees that what we experience is uniform and consistent?

The burden of proof is therefore laid squarely on the back of anyone who denies this. But there is no way anyone can deny an external material world since one must presuppose it for the sake of the arguments. After all, these arguments require physical evidence of some kind, so where are we supposed to find this physical evidence if it doesn't exist? Why not just dispense with the physical evidence altogether and simply assert that an external material universe does not exist, since if this is the case, the physical evidence is irrelevant?

Even scientists who argue for a holographic universe, who think our experience is nothing but a hologram, do not deny that a universe exists, because they base their conclusions on the physical evidence. How is it possible to argue there is no external material world from evidence that cannot exist given the denial of an external material world? This would be utterly contradictory.

It seems to me the only people who argue there is no external material world are believers like George Berkeley who used it as an empiricist argument to God's existence. Occam's Razor does it's work here on this score too.

How would such an Idealist be able to exclude the possibility there isn't a totally different kind of reality beyond the spiritual one, or an even more different reality beyond that one, and so forth at that point, potentially leading to an utter solipsism? That's why Occam's razor stops these kinds of questions with the simplest explanation rather than adding on entities endlessly.

Talbott says,

With respect to his [me, John's] belief in an external physical reality, the perspective of an outsider would be that of many Hindus, an idealist, a panpsychist, a panentheist, or perhaps even a philosophical skeptic such as David Hume. So if Loftus should subject his own belief in an external physical reality to the Outsider Test, then he would need to examine that belief at least as skeptically as an idealist or some other outsider might examine it. And yet, one searches in vain for the slightest hint of doubt on his part or even for a willingness to examine an outsider argument against physical realism (of which there are many). (page 24)

I think I have dispelled this criticism of his. It is utterly without foundation. Why oh, why does he assume otherwise? Does he expect me to say everything I know? That's an utterly unreasonable request. This is why, when we criticize someone's viewpoint, we must always use the principle of charity, something for which it appears Talbott does not think I deserve throughout his essay.

And if he thinks for one moment that as an outsider I must take an outside stance to skepticism, science or reason then he should propose a better alternative. As I have said, skepticism is a filter that adults use to help us sift out the wheat of truth from the chaff of falsehood. We cannot doubt that filter!

The bottom line is that Idealism is religious in nature, it has the burden of proof given the G.E. Moore Shift, it fails the tests of science and reason, it is unnecessary due to Occam's Razor, it is utterly contradictory, and it potentially leads to solipsism.

Talbott also argues that because David Hume was looking for and did not find certainty when it came to an external material universe, the self, cause-and-effect and God that I should likewise be skeptical that there is an external world (assuming Hume did). But Talbott should know that the quest for certainty died soon after Hume. Certainty is an unattainable goal. For Talbott or anyone else to suggest that I might possibility be wrong about an external world then all I can say is "so what?" Probability is the only thing that matters. Until he gives me a reason to think I am probably wrong then I'm not changing anything I think. We're always talking about probabilities not certainties. And we're not in his Introduction to Philosophy class either. He should own up to what he really thinks on this issue. I have provided my reasons, just as I did about the Matrix movie which he agreed with me about. That there is an external world passes the outsider test of skepticism.

Only religious people would think otherwise, and only a philosopher would use this to make an argument against the OTF, which is one reason so many people, mostly scientists, eschew philosophy as vacuous.

Talbott, if you want people to respect the philosophical disciplines then please, do it better than you do. You're making the rest of us look bad.

Stay tuned, more to come.

I am honored that Christian universalist Philosopher Thomas Talbott, of Willamette University, has offered a critique of my Outsider Test for Faith. Which can be found here. I plan on responding but I might not get to it for a month (it's not on my high priority list given the other projects I'm involved in right now). [Edit, sorry to say I didn't find anyone's criticisms to deserve the book I had offered for the best one.]