It's called "Fideism", Phil...

Phil Johnson is playing the part of an Orwell character over at TeamPyro. In this post, part of a series on the John MacArthur book "Truth War", Phil wonders how "vital" truth is, and has this to say:

Phil Johnson:
So give him a look like, "Huh?" and remind him that the position you are defending has historically been associated with a point of view that is known for its militant opposition to modernism. Then ask if he understands what "modernism" is.

The irony. What's that pre-modern position called Phil? What's the underlying epistemology you're espousing, here?

Phil goes on, and lets us know how clever he is by zooming right past modernity when talking to post-moderns, and scoffing at their assumptions about his "modern", foundational epistemology. Not so fast, pomos! Phil's not even reached a modern epistemology, something he's quite proud of, even as schedules his next flight on a modern jet, and posts on his modern laptop, relieved from his cold by modern medicine.

Phil Johnson:
He'll most likely respond with a condescending look and tell you in an exasperated tone that—while this all is probably far too complicated for you to understand—you have naively bought into foundationalist epistemology; your worldview has recently been totally discredited; and you need to acquire some epistemic humility.

I don't think there's any problem with complexity here, or mental horsepower. What's in play here is dishonesty and intransigence. Why not just be honest about your fideism, Phil? You eschew epistemology as a discipline. It isn't that you are epistemologically arrogant so much as that you think you are above the discussion of knowledge in the first place.

I'll skip down to the end -- it's just Phil, safe behind his administrative controls, dissembling about the problems of post-modern epistemology. Now post-modern epistemology is problematic; even post-moderns will tell you that. Modernism is fraught with tensions, too. But these are both advanced fighter jets compared to the trike Phil's peddling around, complaining about the comparative weakness of the others.

Here's his finish:

Phil Johnson:
I don't think there's a fancy name for the view of knowledge the Reformers and other biblically-oriented Protestants held, other than "basic Christianity." Call it "Calvinism" if you like. Or you can label it "the Proverbs 1:7 view" to be even more accurate.

"Fideism", Phil. Why not just call it what it is, epistemically?

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Hays Struggles Against the Concept of Freewill

Over here, Steve Hays has a little flare-up of his denialism of freedom of action. Let's take a look at the "metaphysics of free will":

Steve Hays:
Traditionally, libertarians cash out the freedom to do otherwise in terms of alternate possibilities. Although there’s an enormous literature attempting to either prove libertarian freewill or reconcile libertarianism with some other belief, such as God’s knowledge of the future (which, however, some libertarians deny), there’s no comparable literature on the metaphysics of freewill. (In this post I’m going to use freewill as a synonym for libertarian freedom.)

Instead, it’s taken for granted that a free agent can instantiate these alternate possibilities. Let’s pursue that assumption from a number of different angles.

The "granted" obtains from its self-evidence. Whether freedom of action or will truly exists or not, the appearance of agency is simply overwhelming.

Steve Hays:
1.This goes to the question of how the future eventuates, or how time (or segments thereof) comes into being. Do we will the future into being by our choices?

Humans have the ability to influence their surroundings. This ability isn't exhaustive, or even significant on a cosmic scale, but the combination of a desire to effect a particular outcome and the abilities and resources available to a human can produce a "future" that is in line with that choice.

Steve Hays:
How do we will the future into being by our choices? How do we access these abstract possibilities and realize one possibility over against another?

We expend energy in efforts to influence our surroundings. If we find pepperoni more appealing at the moment than sausage for the pizza we are ordering on the phone, we expend the energy in such a way as to give voice to this choice to the person taking the order on the other end of the line. Like all other living beings, we consume energy, and use what we can (there's always waste) to pursue our goals, from survival on down the chain.

Steve Hays
2.From a libertarian perspective, I suppose there must be a general metaphysical divide between one class of events that are willed into being by the choices of free agents, and another class of events that eventuate apart from our volition

No reason to think that. It's fine to make conceptual distinctions in our heads, if that proves to be useful for some purpose, but there's nothing metaphysically different between an impersonal cause->effect chain, and a personal (will-based) cause->effect chain. It's physics-constrained either way. My choices are limited (and enabled) by the physical dynamics of my existence. The physical laws and constraints govern the tumbling rock in the same way they constrain me. Gravity, for example, doesn't care if I have a will or not. I have mass, just like the rock at my foot. There's no "will-based" exceptions to physical laws for humans that I'm aware of.

Steve Hays:
For example, if it rains tomorrow, that future outcome is not the result of human volition. So, if libertarianism is true, then some patches of reality are realized by human volition while other patches of reality are realized apart from human volition. But somehow, these blend into a seamless, unified reality. The reality that it will rain tomorrow, and the reality that I will take an umbrella to work tomorrow, align in time even though these two events are causally independent. One occurs because I willed it while the other occurs without my willing it, or even in spite of my wishing that it would be fair and sunny tomorrow.

Yeah, and the "somehow" has a name: physics. Physics provides the model for how all this is integrated. If I have the determination to bring an umbrella to work, and the physical capabilities (owning or acquiring an umbrella, for example), then I may well realize that goal; it's plausibly within my physical abilities to accomplish. At the fundamental levels of physics, though, the "will" is an irrelevant abstraction. My choice may provide the teleology, but physics governs the reality of it happening, or not.

Steve Hays:
It would be interesting to hear a libertarian explain the metaphysical machinery by which this occurs.

No metaphysics needed, as a metaphysic, to account for this. The "nature of nature" is such that physical dynamics govern all physical interactions, whether attached to something we call a "will" or not. We can muse about why the laws of physics are as they are, but the "machinery" that translates present causes into future effects is just physics. No extra metaphysical machinery needed once the physics are set up and in place.

Steve Hays:
3.At the same time, not everything that human beings do is voluntary, in the sense of a conscious choice. I can deliberately blind my eyes. I can deliberately blink one eye rather than another. I can deliberately blink my eye a certain number of times. But, most of the time, this is involuntary. I give no thought to blinking my eyes. Same thing with breathing and other semiautonomic functions.

Uh, yeah.

Steve Hays:
So, it libertarianism is true, then some blinkings eventuate as a result of human volitions while other blinkings eventuate apart from human volition. Some human actions are realized voluntarily while other human actions realized involuntarily, even when the same type of action is in view. Voluntary blinkings and involuntary blinkings. Human agents will some of their semiautonomic futures into being, but not others. The futurition of some future blinkings is willed by us, while the futurition of other future blinkings is not.

Perfectly uncontroversial.

Steve Hays:
Does this mean, from a libertarian standpoint, that there’s a default possibility which instantiates itself unless that is overridden by the deliberate choice of an alternate possibility? That the future will automatically turn out a certain way unless human volition intervenes? What is the mechanism?

Um, physics! Really, it's an extraordinarily robust model for predicting what will happen, based on what's already happening. At the quantum level, the predictions are probabilistic, and not deterministic. Because of that, the future doesn't evolve in precisely the same way, even from the same starting configuration. The differences at macro-scales are statistically like to be so small as to be undetectable by us. We can predict with remarkable precision where the planet Mercury will be 30 days from now, however, despite the fluctuations at quantum scales.

Steve Hays:
4. On a related note, take habitual actions. Let’s say I learn to operate a stick shift because I like to drive sports cars. At first I have to think about shifting gears. But after a while, it becomes second nature. Yet there are times when I might consciously shift into overdrive if, say, I’m on a wide-open stretch of road, and I want to drive the car flat out.

I think it’s fair to say that, in operating a stick shift, there are degrees of conscious control. Sometimes I consciously shift gears. At other times my mind is elsewhere, and I do it through force of habit. And, at other times, I’m vaguely aware of shifting gears while l listen to music or take in the scenery.

From a libertarian standpoint, how are these alternate possibilities realized? Since they range along a continuum, from subconscious to conscious, what’s the threshold between an outcome that is voluntary and an outcome that is involuntary? What is causing these outcomes to eventuate?

Um, physics! Expressed as biology/physiology here, but physics all the same. In this example, shifting is a task we learn, and eventually learn to do with little to no conscious direction. That is, the tachometer needle and the whining RPM sound of the engine serve as cues that trigger a learned response -- something we have trained ourselves to accomplish with little or no active thought.

The mechanism, then, is our physical capabilities (our muscles, bones, nerve endings, etc. being activated by "macros" we have stored in our brain through learning, practice and repetition. Our memories serve as repositories not just for recognizing the stimuli for an indicated gear shift (tach in the red zone, for example), but for actuating the physical signals and processes to make the action happen (shift from 4th to 5th, for example).

The 'continuum' here is a reflection of the depth of our "automation" through learning, practice and repetition. Not all actions can be so automated, but a great many tasks can be delegated to "habit", requiring little or no CPU cycles from our active thoughts. Humans have a range of capabilities, then between the strictly autonomic (breathing, for example), and the purely directed (focused attention on the task). Physiology as physics.

Steve Hays:
5.How do we cause a possibility to become a reality? Is it simply by willing it into existence, like a Genie? Yet there are many things we cannot will into being.

Um, physics? We are constrained in our abilities to influence the world around us by physical law. We might well manage to locate an umbrella and manage to carry it along with us to work on a day that looks like rain -- well within the constraints of physics for many people. But we'd fail to if decided we desired to drag a 2,000lb boulder in our back yard along with us to work, as a prank. We would need some help, some tools or machinery beyond the strength of our arms, arms which were more than sufficient to tote along the umbrella in our closet.

If our goal is to get the boulder in the backyard to the parking lot at work, we might plausibly devise a way to realize that goal, to achieve the object of our desire. But we would have to interact with our environment -- other people and other things -- in such way as to produce the desired effect within the constraints of physics. We expend energy and resources to coordinate a physics-compliant process to make it happen. Some of our energy is perfecty preparatory; we invest the energy and time to call a neighbor with a Kubota front-loader, for example, and interact with them in such a way that we can bring his machine to bear on our goal ("Don, can I borrow the Kubota, please?").

Steve Hays:
Two young brothers fight over a toy. Both brothers will to have the toy, but the older brother wins the fight because he can overpower his younger brother.

So how is the outcome realized? By willing an alternate possibility? Or by brute force? What’s the relationship between superior strength and actualizing an alternate possibility? Do muscle men have more control over the future than 90-poundl weaklings?

I have twin one year old sons here at home, so this is not an abstract example at all. Physical strength is definitely a factor, but "strength of will" is one also. One of our twins is just a bit smaller and not quite as strong or heavy as the other. But often enough, he prevails, simply because he wants that too more than his slightly larger twin brother. Realizing an effect requires investment of energy and resources, and in many cases, the smaller, weaker twin is prepared to sacrifice more energy and resources than the larger, stronger twin in obtaining/keeping the toy.

Even when the "strength of will" is normalized, brute strength is not the only determining factor. Not by a long shot, as any good martial arts instructor can show you. The dynamics of cause and effect are as complex and diverse as physics itself, so the answer to the question of control would have to take a broad view of not just the determination of the parties involved, but the complete suite of resources and strategies for their use. My eight year old daughter regular "controls" her 11 year old brother without any physical display of strength or control at all, but by psychological and emotional strategies.

Steve Hays:
If it comes down to brute force, then an act of the will is not what instantiates this alternate possibility.

As above, there's a lot more to consider than just physical or muscular strength. But even if we allowed, for the sake of argument that muscular strength was the only determining factor in a contest of wills, then it would be what instantiates the result when there is a conflict. If my goal is to win an arm-wrestling match, the outcome will be determined by my determination and my strength compared to my opponent's. In some cases, the strength differential makes determination and resolve irrelevant -- one contestant is simply too strong, even if just trivially committed to winning the match for the other to prevail.

Steve Hays:
5.Or does it work like this: God causes our choices to eventuate. We choose, but it is God’s creative power that enacts that alternate possibility.

Why would we think that? And even if we imagined such a relationship, this kind of metaphysical subjectivity would be perfectly unfalsifiable, and thus no more 'true' than 'false', so far as we are concerned.

Steve Hays:
But if that’s the case, why does God defer to some choices, but not to others? Why did he defer to the big brother’s choice rather than the kid brother’s choice? Seems unfair to let the older brother win.

Um, yeah. And that doesn't even scratch the surface with respect to the logical problems and conundra this idea introduces.

Steve Hays:
6.And what about animals? Animals also seem to range along a continuum. Higher animals are apparently more intelligent than lower animals. When my dog chases a cat, and I summon my dog, does my dog deliberate over choosing to obey me or choosing to pursue the cat? Are dogs and other animals endowed with libertarian freedom?

Sure, they're part of the physical context too. Their brains aren't as large or well developed, and as far as we can tell, they don't have the same level of congnition, self-awareness and reasoning as (most) humans do. But their brains are organized along the same evolutionary lines -- synapses, neurons, pattern recognition, stimulus response wiring, etc. You can see the differen parts of a dog's brain light up on an fMRI in response to different interactions and stimuli, just like you can with humans (the responses and patterns are different, but the basic neurology is the same, if more primitive).

My dog is often visibly torn between the attraction of the neighbor dog (whom she likes to play with) barking next door, and my command to return to the house. Most of the time she comes at my command, but sometimes she struggles with obeying (visibly!), and runs off to the neighbor's house.

Steve Hays:
A dog is smarter than a crow. A crow is smarter than a clam. Indeed, the idea of an intelligent clam seems pretty absurd—although I’ve never been a clam, and—for all I know—clams have a very low opinion of human intelligence.

"Smarter" is something we can understand in an anthropocentric sense, for sure. Very few clams can read a book and recount its major themes, as far as I'm aware. But by the same measure, the human brain is evolutionarily very poorly suited for life as a clam. Clam brains are highly tuned to serving the needs of a clam, and are "smart" in the sense of utility and efficacy for survival in its ecological niche (it must be, or it would be an extinct species). A human brain would be totally "stupid" for a clam's purposes (survival, reproduction) -- way too large, outrageously expensive in terms of it energy demands.

The brains different animals have are a reflection of what is both a) practically achievable in terms of evolutionary development and b) maximally efficient for survival/reproduction in its environment.

At what point an action becomes "conscious" or "voluntary" is not a discrete boundary, so far as science is aware. If "consciousness" is simply "awareness of one's surroundings", -- and that's a very useful definition for many purposes -- then many forms of life are "conscious".

Steve Hays:
From a libertarian standpoint, are higher animals accessing alternate possibilities? And where’s the threshold below which some animals do not contribute to which possible outcome will, indeed, eventuate?

I don't see the basis for assuming there is a discrete "threshold". If the 'contributary curve' is smooth, then the point at which you would say "this is volitional" and "this is not" seems to be an arbitrary one.

Steve Hays:
Libertarianism presents a patchwork reality in which some pieces of the quilt are willed into being while other pieces come into being without our willing them. Isn’t this a very ad hoc ontological scheme?

It's anything but. The "ad-hockery" here comes from Hays' demand for a discrete threshold. For any given action ("should I open and eat this bag of chips?") there are numerous influences interacting. Some of them are involuntary (when you are hungry, you feel hungry whether you 'will' it or not), while others are more volitional ("I better eat these before my son shows up, or he'll take them and devour them").

The ontology is unified. Physics governs the interaction of physical entities. The "will" doesn't exist in a vacuum, and has complex interactions with other dynamics, dynamics which may be other desires and goals (and ones that may conflict), or which may be entirely "automatic", so far as the mind is concerned. All of that is normalized in our physical context, however. All choices, to the degree that they are choices and not just effects proceeding directly from a determining cause, are still subject to the physics that govern our reality.

Steve Hays:
By contrast, the ontology of Calvinism is far more economical. God has decreed just one unified reality. His decree is realized by means of creation, providence, and miracle.

You don't need Calvinism for a 'unified reality'. Got one without it, check it out. Moreover, the Calvinist use of 'unified' here is just a euphemism for metaphysical subjectivism here, which is unification of reality in the mind of God (what God wills to be real is real), but exhaustive "ad-hockery" for man. Reality isn't "unified" around structures and constraints in this model, but simply whatever the will of God is. Given that, reality is fundamentally as unknowable and as arbitrary as the mind of an impassible God.

But yes, problems notwithstanding, it does make things neat and tidy when struggling with the concept of agency, to just suppose there is none. That I'll grant.

UPDATE:

Hays has responded in the comment stream:

Steve Hays:
T-stone is just confused, as usual. I wrote a critique of libertarianism. The version of libertarianism I'm reviewing is committed to possible world semantics.

Makes no difference. There's a good number of physicists who endorse the Many Worlds Interpretation - quantum decoherence instead of wave function collapse. Steve can protest that he's really picking on something completely detached from reality, and I'd agree; that's his milieu. But even if we suppose his object of critique is completely brain-dead, it doesn't matter. Since Steve insists what he is reviewing is committed to "possible world semantics" he's got a problem. If he is looking for a "mechanism" (his term) for how our reality is unified, it's useless to look for such a thing if he's only playing around with speculative philosophy. The "possible worlds" are purely conceptual -- no other "mechanism" obtains. If he's wondering what really happens, what the mechanism for unification would be in a reality-based many worlds scenario, the answer is that no unification is even happening -- the world we are "in" and calling the "actual world" is just one of many (hence the name!). Terribly confused, he is.

Steve Hays:
T-stone is substituting his own theory of the will. That's irrelevant to my critique of libertarianism.

What "libertarianism"? Steve's shadow-boxing, again. He doesn't provide any citations or source material to substantiate what he's, um, "critiquing".

Steve Hays:
He's also too obtuse even to accurately summarize libertarianism. No one said that my idea or concept *is* an abstract object (e.g. a possible world). The issue, rather, is how my idea corresponds to an accessible alternate possibility.

What does "accessible" mean here, Steve? If I have two options A and B, what's the "issue"? If I want to choose A, then what? There isn't even a coherent enough concept in his statement words to address beyond this.

Steve Hays:
Once again, this is not simply a case of how *I* (as an opponent of libertarianism) frame the issue. This is how many *libertarians* frame the issue. Just spend a little time with The Oxford Handbook of Free Will.

Steve doesn't supply anything that suggest he's read this or is conversant with the ideas it presents. How about a quote of the arguments you're critiquing, Steve? How about something you can be checked against?

Steve Hays:
T-stone is also assuming the truth of physicalism, despite many cogent objections to physicalism.

Not. Rather, I'm assuming the reality of physical law. That doesn't have to be all there is, but it's at least part of what is. And importantly, it's sufficient to provide substantial answers to Steve's questions. Physical law governs how all the various forces and actions around us coalesce into a unified reality.

Steve Hays:
Finally, if T-stone thinks that all future events are the effect of physical determinism, then that commits him to hard determinism. It's the polar opposite of libertarianism.

You can't be passingly familiar with modern physics and mistake it for a "deterministic model". At macro scales it's stable and predictable. At quantum scales, it's only predictable as a matter of probability (try "determining" just when the next atom in an amount of U-238 will decay, for example).

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Great Moments in Calvinist Apologetics #239

Paul Manata in the comment stream of this post:

God does what he pleases, correct... BUT he has a nature that constraines what he pleases.... SO you can't take that verse to imply that God could, say, sin...SINCE there's a limit set on what he can please to do...THUS it is true that God does what he pleases but this doesn't lead to arbitrainess as your enthymeme suggested.

So, who sets this "limit", Paul? Did God please to set his own limit, or has God submitted to external limits?

Classic!

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Dan Phillips Doubts the Value of Doubt

This morning's post over a TeamPyro is a little riff by Dan Phillips on doubt.

Dan Phillips:
Our unbelief has to be unfathomable to God, as was the disciples' to Christ.

and

To say that God knows and understands all things is not to say that God finds everything understandable, if you take my meaning.

The first sentence is absurd on its face; Dan believes in an omniscient God, right? Of course he does, and the second sentence provides the equivocation on that statement. God understands, he just doesn't like it or sympathize with it.

Pressed on this a bit in the comments section, Dan clarifies a bit:

Dan Phillips:
We generally use "understandable" in the sense of taking something as reasonable, to be expected, and thus worth acceptance. God knows and knows the meaning of everything. That is not to say (to say the least!) that God shares our view of everything, or finds our view reasonable, rational, and acceptable.

Here, the post-resurrection Jesus clearly finds their unbelief astonishing. It isn't that He doesn't know literally everything there is to know about it. Actually, it's that He does, and He knows it to be nuts.

This is thoroughly incoherent. It's double-speak. On the one hand, Jesus is supposed to know all things, and on the other, Dan has Jesus thinking doubts about him are "nuts" -- irrational, crazy, unfounded.

If Jesus knows all things, then he fully understands that from a reasoning standpoint, his resurrection, even preceded by preparatory miracles, is completely without precedent, and violates a set of basic understandings rational minds develop about the world. Jesus would understand that the people around him are thoroughly convinced that when a man dies, he's dead, that's it. It's permanent.

So it's perfectly rational for someone to be incredulous at the news that a person they had be killed at the hand of the Romans and buried in a tomb was once again alive, and making appearances to his friends and family. It's such an extraordinary event that it be would irrational to accept such reports at face value. That nullifies and jepoardies everything we know about human physiology, about life and death. Now, maybe something has happened that calls all that into question, but only a fool would simply abandons the witness of one's experiences, and the collected knowledge of those all around him, at first sign of a report that a dead man had come back to life after three days.

If that's not clear, imagine a colleague informing you over the water-cooler on Tuesday morning that your Jim, a colleague who had tragically died of masive heart attack last Friday, and who you had seen in his casket at a reviewal on Sunday, had come back to life! In fact, Jim was planning to be back in the office by mid-day Thursday.

Would you doubt such a report? What would you think about someone who simply smiled, and believed, and said "Wow, that's great news. I'll be happy to see him."?

We're deeply reliant -- necessarily dependent -- on our ability to observe, establish patterns, and expectations, and apply skepticism and credulity. And yet, Dan Phillips supposes that our basic rational processing of new claims and propositions -- doubt in the face of the extraordinary and fantastic is "nuts" -- irrational. He's arguing that our rational behavior is actually irrational.

But wait! Since Jesus knows the truth, doesn't all that doubt become "nuts" then, to Jesus, anyway? No, as per Dan, Jesus would understand the rational basis (proper function) of man's thinking about such matters, and would be fully aware of the limited information man has to go on, which, Jesus' miracles prior to his resurrection notwithstanding, points completely at the permanence of death. Jesus, understanding all this, should not be the least surprised at this -- it's rational behavior.

Commenter "StrongTower" helps make this point a little further down in the comments, if unwittingly:

StrongTower:
In a court of law we must find quilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A reasoned doubt is based upon some finding of fact. Doubt that is based upon no precedent is unreasonable, and therefore without understanding.

There was no reason for those to whom Christ was speaking to doubt, "If you do not believe my word, believe for the sake of these works..." This then goes to the heart. Unreasoned doubt is bound in the darkness of understanding. Where there is no light there is no reason. They stumble but they do not know over what. Why do you doubt? Seeing as there is no reason to give light to your doubt, it is not understandable that you do.

In a court of law, a man's understanding that death was permanent would be held as perfectly reasonable, overwhelmingly indicated by precedent. StrongTower nicely demonstrate the "black is white" inversion that proceeds from Dan's double-speak.

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YWAM/NewLife Killer In His Own Words

Given BarryA over at Uncommon Descent's "interest" in the question of atheism inciting murderous hatred in Matthew Murray, the man identified as the shooter in the YWAM/NewLife killings, there are some "interesting" stretches of commentary from Murray's online postings to review here. For what it's worth, the comments put together in that post seem much more problematic for the kind of Christianity Murray grew up in.

I'm a homeschooler. I've got six kids, four of school age, and their entire schooling has been homeschooling. My wife is quite active in the local homeschool co-op, and we are surrounded by evangelical homeschoolers; this is my demographic. We use Sonlight curriculum, and because of that, both my wife and I have been active in their online community for homeschooling families for years.

I'm intimately familiar with the culture of Matthew Murray's upbringing.

But you know what? For all the references and anger, all the possible "incitement to hate" that I could try and identify in Murray's words, all of that is secondary. This is a young man who went right off the deep end. He's responsible for his terrible actions, and no matter how vicious or hypocritical or humiliating he found his lot in life to be, growing up in a homeschooling fundamentalist Christian home, that's not sufficient to make it "interesting" to me to suggest fundamentalist Christianity is somehow to blame for the murders.

Unlike Barry, who simply popped off with an opportunistic bit of musing, the posts from Murray here shine at least a little bit of light on the mind and attitudes behind the killings. I wonder how "interesting" Barry thinks the situation is now, having read the posts of nghtmrchld26?

It doesn't matter, as far as blame is concerned for the killing, however. For all of that, Murray bears the guilt for his actions. It was his choice, his course of action, and his alone.

What remains is the lingering sense that BarryA, ostensibly concerned about the spread of hatred, about demonization, has engaged in the very practice he's concerned about. Barry's no more empowered to unilaterally instill hate in his readers than Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins are in theirs (does Haggard have an audience anymore?); we must choose to adopt the hatred being offered. But posts like Barry's represent the offer, just as much as the angry words of those he's upset by (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al).

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The Hatred Libel

Barry Arrington is one of my favorite posters at Uncommon Descent. Posts like this are so good at showing the bankruptcy of ID, that one naturally wonders if "BarryA" is extraordinary success in the "deep cover troll" operations that get launched from time to time by the feisty folks at AntiEvolution.org.

This post in particular has the scent of a "false flag operation", putatively pro-ID, but powerful in its discrediting the cause it purportedly advances. BarryA is a contributor at UD, not just a commenter, and I can't recall where, but I know I've read posts by people who are familiar with this guy in real life, so this must be legit. And just so we're clear, that's fine with me.


Do Dawkins and Dennett Incite Hatred? is the title of the post.

Wherein, BarryA says this:

BarryA:
The media is reporting that Matthew Murray posted the following on the web: ”I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

Look at the last part of that quote closely. One wonders if Murray has been reading Dawkins or Dennett. By blaming the world’s ills on religious people do Dawkins and Dennett incite to hatred and make it more likely that tragedies of this sort can occur? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question.

Now, this is a post at Uncommon Descent, the flagship (!) blog for the Intelligent Design movement. This is a blog that is continually at pains to point out that ID is a scientific enterprise, and unrelated and unattached to religion qua religion. From Dembski on down to DaveScot, offenders are repeatedly scolded about conflating ID and Christianity or any particular brand of God. ID defenders routinely bristle at the suggestion that ID is a proxy for evangelical Christianity.

But here, the flagship ID blog is pursuing the intricate scientific details of teleogical design with respect to... well, Barry's not going in that direction at all.

This post is about the scariness of atheism.

There's not much "intelligent design" (pseudo-)science to work with here. Like so many other posts at UD, this is a political missive. Another grenade launched from the ID trench of the Culture Wars.

But remember: ID really is about the science.

As for the "merits" of the post, well, I think the large significance of this post is that BarryA feel comfortable with this kind of "interesting" question in this context. Looking the rationale he's offering topples it over pretty quickly.

• Does BarryA suppose that those who cause the world's ills somehow deserve to be killed, even if we grant Barry his premise?
• Does Barry believe people are responsible for their own actions, or not?
• Does Christian "hatred" of the abomination of homosexual intercourse implicate Christianity in the hate-motivated murders of homosexuals?
  

It's just a non-starter from BarryA, here. And that's what's most disturbing. It's so poorly thought out, that the "design inference" for this post is that it's a bit of low opportunism, an attempt at cheap rhetorical points to make with the faithful on the blog by exploiting a tragedy.

There's a nice self-referential aspect to this post though. Barry's sort of testing his own theory, by spreading his own brand of ill to the world. What now, BarryA? Who's reading your posts, and are you worried?

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Ad Hom Is The Pyro Answer!

Phil's latest post laments the demise of modern evangelicalism, sullied as it is by the waxing tide of postmoderns, Open Theists and that sinister New Perspective on Paul that NT Wright is seducing the faithful with of late. Phil wonders: How did it come to this?

Phil Johnson:
The problem can be traced, I think, to a craving for academic respectability and worldly admiration. In the middle of the 20th century, several leading evangelicals proposed a whole new kind of evangelicalism—less militant, more tolerant, and (above all) shrewd and market-savvy about public relations. They seemed to operate on the assumption that the way to win the world is by making the evangelical movement and its message as appealing as possible to worldly people. In other words, let's "sell" Christianity the way Budweiser sells beer.

Why not? If they like us, surely they'll like Jesus, too.

It's really just the 'badness' of all these lesser Christians Phil is surrounded by, alas. They compromise their principles, don't you know. They don't -- they can't -- arrive at their positions through earnest inquiry. The Open Theist may say he's pulling his conclusions from scripture, and from logical implications that arise from that analysis. But really, Phil has traced the real cause, and that cause is slavish capitulation to the world's ways, anything at all in order to please Babylon.

Phil has canonized certainty here, as well, so this is pretty much a done deal. Cut and dried.

Phil draws his "tracings" through the 70s (soft on God's wrath), 80s (interest in health, wealth and success), and the 90s ("so bent on winning the world's admiration" that they just stopped talking about the Gospel at all). All the motives are as corrupt as they can be, and you know that's what the motives really were, because, remember, Phil has certainty and certainty is good.

Seriously, though, I honestly don't think it occurs to Phil that his brand of Calvinism might actually be a part of the problem. That would involve doubt, and high-impact doubt, at that, so we know that's not going to be entertained, given Phil's commitment to certainty for certainty's sake. He regularly fails to distinguish his own interpretation and take on things from the AbsoluteTruth™, a sign that Phil is a fundamentalist first, and a Calvinist second. He laments evangelicals steering around "the offense of the cross" -- which he conflates with his Calvinism.

It doesn't occur to him that Piper's reassurance to his little girl that "we all deserve that kind of death and worse, kid" when the I-35 bridge collapses in Minneapolis isn't really the "offense of the cross", but the offense of Calvinism. I know it's hard for Phil to keep those things separate -- what is the case and what he thinks is the case -- and the canonization of certainty fairly innoculates him from any reflexes that might help him out here.

But, at length, one wonders why Phil doesn't cut to the chase, and quote his hero Spurgeon, who suffered none of the temptations Phil entertains to put on the airs of reasoned polemic:

Sit thou down, reason, and let faith rise up!

Wouldn't that just be neater, cleaner, less disingenuous than all of this? You wouldn't have to assault the character of all your critics and theological opponents, and you'd own up to the organizing principle of your Calvinist worldview, in one tidy step.

Phil tries to tie things up near the end with this:

Phil Johnson:
I think it would be a mistake to conclude that the blame for evangelicalism's demise lies merely (or even primarily) with the style or character of the movement's current or recent leaders. It's actually a much bigger and more widespread problem than that. The real root of evangelicalism's problems goes back to the whole movement's blithe and chronic neglect of the gospel as it is presented in Scripture—starting several decades ago. All those attempts to tone down and tame the gospel have changed the fundamental character of evangelicalism's message. By systematically doing away with all the hard parts of the message, evangelicals have essentially done away with the gospel itself.

"As it's presented in scripture" Phil grabbing the high ground here for himself, yet again. Those other guys' interpretations? Bah, that's not what scripture says. How do I know?

It's obvious. And I'm certain, doncha know.

I think the "self-knowledge" genes, wherever they may be, must be turned off in the fundamentalist constitution. How else to explain this trait, across so many fundamentalists? There's what is, and there is what I think about what is. And while these two can and should overlap, and to as great an extent as possible, they need to be kept separate, because they are separate. And sometimes, the two don't hardly overlap at all.

So Phil surveys the religious landscape, and doesn't like what he sees. Evangelicalism has not evolved in a direction that he would like. In addressing the problem, though, Phil is confronted with his own problem, a trilemma:

1) Argue your case on the merits. Everyone else is wrong, and hears the reasoned, articulated case for why.

2) Doubt that you are the conflation of what is and what you want things to be.

3) Embrace the comfortable vanity of your certainty, and just dismiss the slackers as the whores and prostitutes they are.

Now 1) seems like the obvious winner on the face of it. But (and surely Phil knows this), it's a bit of a trap. It quickly leads to stalemate, as there is no arbitration process for Biblical interpretation. In science, we can devise tests designed to provide distinctions and falsifications that provide objective adjudication between competing hypotheses. Phil's a milieu is religion, though, and it affords him none of that, such is his trade.

So, 1) has the effect of declaring a tie between all contestants, surely an insufferable outcome for Phil. What to do, then?

Well, doubt and tentatitivity seem to have a lot going for them in other areas. Application of skepticism in the sciences yields knowledge and tools that are, well, "skeptic-proof", and demonstrable as such. But Phil know's that plugging doubt is the crucial finger in the dam; pull it out, and the levee eventually gives way.

So, by virtue of elimination, Phil is fairly forced to the ad hominem explanation. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, and he doesn't relish the kinds of disparagement he's got to dish out. But he's a fundamentalist, after all, and a Calvinist fundamentalist at that. And these are wages paid out from that path.

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Manata "Unmangles"

Manata attempts to set the record straight in this post over at Triablogue.

Paul Manata:
The first thing to point out his title - interesting choice of words given that he's an expert on "secular morality." Touchpebble says, "Manata Mangles Secular Morality." Since there is no such thing as "secular morality" then how did I mangle it? For example, prominent up and coming atheologian Jeffery Jay Lowder states,

"On that basis, atheism alone is not enough to construct a worldview. Atheism does not entail any particular ethical theory; all that atheism entails is a rejection of theological ethical systems, such as divine command theory."

So, I have no idea how I "mangled" a non-existent category, viz. "secular morality."

Well, that explains it, then. Paul just doesn't think it exists as a category. From this Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality

Wikipedia:
Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance (which is the source of religious ethics). Secular ethics can be seen as a wide variety of moral and ethical systems drawing heavily on humanism, secularism and freethinking. The majority of secular moral concepts consist, on the grand scale of the acceptance of social contracts, and on a more individual scale of either some form of attribution of intrinsic value to things, ethical intuitionism or of a logical deduction that establishes a preference for one thing over another, as with Occam's razor. Approaches like utilitarianism and ethical egoism are considered rather more radical.

This article is not one of Wikipedia's gems, and there are certainly better resources for more in-depth discussion of the topic. But there it is, right in a trivially obvious place to look. Paul satisfies himself with a quote from Lowder, that suggests to him that it just "doesn't exist" as a category. Lowder is correct: atheist doesn't ENTAIL any PARTICULAR ethical theory. There are any number of particular ethical theories that can operate under the umbrella of secular morality, as noted in the Wiki quote above.

Whoops. Paul hears Lowder say atheism doesn't require any one specific ethical theory, and makes the leap to "atheism doesn't support ANY ethical theories". Lowder was rejecting supernaturalism, but doing so in a way to leave plenty of room for non-magical ethical systems.


Continuing,

Paul Manata:
Furthermore, as I point out in my post, there is no one accepted "secular morality." I wrote,

"This theory is certainly not the accepted view of atheists and naturalists. Some would say that moral principles are necessary truths expressed as conditionals (cf. Shafer-Landau). Some would say that ethics are the products of social contracts (cf. Hobbes). Some would say that ethical principles are the product of virtues (cf. Aristotle, Mill, etc). Some would say that ethics are supervenient facts, products of the natural world (cf. Brink)."

But, perhaps Touchpebble will reply, conveniently, that I am being pedantic. So let's move on...

This Lowder's point, which Paul used as a mangling device above. It's a category, a set of different constituent frameworks. We could say the same thing about theism: there is no one accepted "theism". Some would say God looks like Allah, some like Yahweh, others Quetzacoatl perhaps. But that doesn't "disappear" theism. Paul's instincts are pedantic here, but he hasn't even reached it yet. He's just confused at this point.

Later on:

Paul Manata:
And as anyone who read my post would surely note, the bolded portion was never my argument. In fact, I claimed that there is a sense in which the atheist most certainly can be moral (the minimalist sense agreed to by both sides). In fact, in this sense, many atheists may be more moral than Christians. I did not seek to "decimate" the Ethical Atheist's paper by what Touchpebble quoted. I simply pointed out that there is a sense in which the theist can say that the atheist can't be moral. I even said that an atheist would agree with me here. (For proof of my claim, note what is stated by Byrne on the SEP article on Moral Arguments for God: "Perhaps this is a point at which proponents and opponents of moral arguments for God's existence might agree on. Moral considerations give all a reason to examine the proposition that there is a God very seriously. For if there is no God, morality is a more perilous enterprise than if there is."

Ahh, someone from the Stanford site said something with some of the same words as Paul used. He's off the hook! It is Stanford and all. If you read Byrne here, this is not the basis for a "sense" -- however trivial and "not my argument" Paul now wants to claim it is -- that atheists CANNOT be moral. From just above Paul's quote in the SEP article:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
These versions of moral argument partake of the flavor, and thus of the difficulties, that surround the pragmatic arguments for religious belief found in writers such as Pascal and James. They will meet with the same response: this is wishful thinking dressed up as argument. The non-theist may press this specific point: only if one is convinced prior to these arguments of the premise that

44. The world is likely to be organized so as to meet our deepest human needs

will one find them cogent. But (44) is just the kind of hypothesis that would be false if there is no God. Arguments such as IX and X thus look circular.

We have here a discussion of the difficulties involved in construction of moral frameworks with and without a God in view. And to be sure, proceeding to build moral frameworks without a supposed supernatural authority presents a significant challenge -- what Byrne calls a "perilous enterprise". It is this peril that points to the criticism leveled at theism -- so much "wishful thinking dressed up as argument". It's just the convenient utility of pointing to an invisible, unverifiable authority that makes theistic morality problematic.

Paul Manata:
So, Touchstone must say that Byrne mangles secular morality as well! Now, I'm a nobody. But to claim that Byrne mangles secular morality stretches credulity.) The obvious implication was, this is not the sense both sides are talking about when they come to the question: Can an atheist be moral? One can easily see, if one were to read my entire post rather than stopping and having a heart attack, that I made nothing of this claim of mine throughout the rest of the post. Touchpebble gives the impression to his reader that I intended the bolded portion to function as some kind of argument in my response to the Ethical Atheist. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. So, this is just flat out shoddy and sloppy work, even for Pebbles.

Paul is clueless as to what is being discussed in this article. Did you read the article, Paul?

Paul then proceeds to distance himself from the relevance or efficacy of the comments of his I looked at in my previous post on this. I'm taken to task for seizing on what really should be taken for what it is -- a trivial "throw-away" digression that really doesn't attach to the rest of his points, the good, relevant points in his post.


Paul thinks about my question of turning the tables...

Paul Manata:
I'd have to see the argument expressed more fully. At this point I'm inclined to say "No." In fact, I'd wager that most atheists don't have a problem saying that Christians can be "good" on myriad secular standards; realist ones, at least. Perhaps some subjectivists would say that those who believe in a god are immoral, and the factor that makes this right is the mere belief of the subject, then I'd agree that if that thesis were true, then I couldn't be good. Perhaps an emotivist thinks: "Theism, boo!" But why think anything of interest follows from that? If pebbles wants this point, I'll gladly give it to him.

This is to miss the point, and the way Paul responds to this 'turning of the tables' reflects the vacuity of his original sense. Indeed, there is a sense in which atheist can say 'theists can't be good'. He then says, without a hint of tongue-in-cheek, "But why think anything of interest follows from that?"

That was precisely MY objection to Paul's original "sense", this self-serving and narrow sense in which Paul gets to define the existential ontology ("God exists"), and the semantic freight too ("Gotta use my interpretation of the Bible to define the terms"). Yes, Paul, there is that "sense" on both sides of the coin -- self-serving and irrelevant. Paul complains that nothing "of interest" follows from the atheist side of that coin. But, well, there's a large paragraph devoted in his original post to the theist side of the coind. Nothing of any interest proceeds from that, either. But Paul is unaware.

Paul now begs off this bit of self-indulgence on his part:

Paul Manata:
Again, Pebbles is running with something that was never there. He's making something from nothing. I indicated that I was speaking about more than one sense. He's picking on what I called "my more qualified sense." That sense was only mentioned in (iv). It illustrated one small point. It was then left and never brought up again. It didn't factor in my "critique," at all. Pebbles simply jumped the gun. He is so ready to shoot his anti-presuppositionalist ray gun at anything that moves, he frequently shoots innocent bystanders. He's the Dick Cheney of atheologians! Pebbles is acting as if my critique was based off his bolded portion, when any one who reads what I wrote in toto can see that this isn't the case, at all. I furthermore do not believe that the "theism" in my post was "Calvinism." I think evangelicals of all stripes could affirm the vast majority of my views on virtue ethics. In fact, much of what I label "my position" on the matter has been gleaned from non-Calvinists. So, Pebbles is wrong on this score, too.

Paul's welcome to minimize his point. It certainly was exceedingly small. Paul here supposes he's hidden his presuppositionalism behind the curtain of "theism", but the larger point of Paul's post (which he stresses is what we should focus on, never mind his "more qualified sense") is that secular morality cannot point to a justification for its qualitative assessments -- "good", "bad", "virtue", "vice", etc. That's a key point for Paul, or any presuppositionalist because their worldview depends on a transcendental argument, one that theism in the general sense neither requires or embraces in many cases. That is, Paul MUST assert that secular morality cannot have a rational foundation because his faith is pinned to the idea that it cannot -- God must exist, presuppositionally, for there to be a basis for morality at all.

A theist who is an evidential, for example, isn't committed to this. He's free to question and doubt the foundations of secular morality, but the discovery or establishment of a secular basis for ethics doesn't invalidate his worldview as it does Paul's. So, whenever you get a presuppositionalist to comment on this topic, you can confidently expect the knee-jerk reaction, the only defense in the presuppositionalist playbook, and one which must be played and stuck to no matter what: there cannot be any basis for secular moral, because God is transcendentally required for morality.

Back to Paul:

Me:
Earlier in the post, Paul dismisses the argument the Ethical Atheist is adressing
-- "atheists can't be moral" -- as a "canard"; no one actually claims that, suggests Paul. But he can't hold off more than a paragraph or two before launching into just that argument.... "if theism is true", of course.

Paul Manata:
I dismiss it because the question he's addressing isn't framed that way in the standard literature. So, in this particular debate, the theist does not make that claim. I did point out, though, that if we did make that claim, the debate would progress beyong a mere discussion of normative or meta ethics. So, that claim could not be defeated by simply pointing out that atheists follow deontic principles, for the most part. That was the point. But, as my post indicated, I didn't wish, or need, to debate that point. I even cited W.L. Craig stating that our objection has never been "atheists can't be moral" (from our position, this is obvious. Thus Saint Paul: "There are none who are good." But we don't make that argument because it would take us right back into a "Does God exist" argument. If G then ~M. We would need to prove G first. Thus the argument could be thought of more like this: If objective morality, then God. Objective morality. Then God. If God then atheists cannot be good persons (in the fullest sense of the term). God. Then atheists cannot be good persons (in the fullest sense of the term). Thus the full argument here would be: {O --> G; O; :. G. G --> ~M; G; :. ~M.} But note that I didn't make this argument.), our objection, the one found in the apologetic literature, is that secularism cannot account for the deontic, normative action guiding prescriptions of objective morality, nor teleological normativity, nor axiological normativity. And that is what I was debating, not what Pebbles so underhandedly presents as my position in the context of the dialogue given the framing by the Ethical Atheist.

Yeah, snore. It's axiomatic for Paul: secularism cannot account for moral norms, because that would invalidate his worldview, a worldview he cannot arrive at reasonably, and can't be expected to leave reasonably. It doesn't matter what arguments an atheists presents, it's literally -- this is vanilla presuppositionalism -- a foregone conclusion. Say what you want, atheists, Paul doesn't need to consider or understand. He knows the TRUTH™ here, and all of this is just so much cynical philosophical swordplay in the fine traditional of van Til and his nihilist heirs. Atheists often make the mistake in reading statements like Paul's "cannot account for" as meaning it's theoretically possible, but atheists haven't succeeded.

That is a mistake.

Paul is telling us here that without God, one cannot account for moral norms, because, well God is the only account. You cannot, even in principle, atheist. All the random quotes Paul wants to throw out from SEP or wherever are just so much hand-waving distractions from the naked assertion he's committed to.


Later:

Paul Manata:
It's unfortunate that Touchpebble had to go on a quote mining expedition--he even states in his response to my that my comments were, "Pure gold"--in order to combat the evils I "most assuredly" spewed in my post. When one wears rose colored glasses, everything looks red. When one just "has it out" for you, then you get read in the worst light and, apparently, people don't even need to bother reading the entirety of your arguments. Like a Pavlovian dog, certain bells and whistles went off, and the machine just turned out a post. It doesn't matter if there is food or doggy doo-doo in the bowl, when the buzzer sounds, the contents of the bowl get eaten. No inspection, just conditioned response. Ironically, this is exactly what he charges me with, and I didn't even bring up Calvinism! Anyway, thanks for playing Pebbles, it's been fun, as always.

Poor Paul. The bad guys have it out for him. Well, I've read plenty in this post, and endless exercises in self-serving sophistry on this from Paul. It's no better on inspection than his "qualified narrow sense". If his Calvinism isn't showing through, then might ask: Paul, if the credentials of secular morality were established, what would that mean? For Paul, a presuppositionalist, his whole paradigm teeters and falls -- that's how he justifies his faith, his worldview, by the assertion of arbitrary, unnecessary axioms. Other theists -- even other Calvinists (there are more shades than just his particular one) -- can be honest and reasonable, at least in principle, with the presentation of such credentials. They don't hang their entire epistemology on God-as-only-possible-source-of-moral-norms.

The larger point, widening out from Paul's "narrow sense" in his long post is that for all its length, it is "content free" with respect to the arguments put forward by the Ethical Atheist et al. That is, when the statement is made that X is considered a norm by virtue of its status as social contract, Paul complains that that is not a sufficient "why". You can point to the evolutionary social constraints that established it, you can point at the biological and instinctual orientations humans bring to the table, their innate sense of empathy, desire, social connection and competition distilled through millions of years of development, and Paul will still say that's not a "why".

Why?

Because Paul has rigged any discussion he's willing to engage in in his favor, is why. The only legitimate "why" for any norm is "God", presuppositionally. So he can simply wave away all the mountains of research and knowledge you dump on his virtual desk. He doesn't even need to address it, any more than he has with the Ethical Atheist. He's presuppositionally right, and the rest is just "narrow sense" details.

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Phil Johnson: Certainly Clueless

Phil Johnson from this post over at Pyromaniacs a couple days ago:

Any assertion not so qualified risks being labeled "excessive confidence," which according to Brian McLaren is a "cancer" responsible for practically everything that's wrong in the world.

Except for one thing. When you start seeing what a noxious malignancy certainty is, then it's OK to be really, really confident about uncertainty itself. In McLaren's words, "Thinking along these lines, I became convinced that, yes, many of our world's worst atrocities were indeed the result of overconfidence" (Everything Must Change, p. 39).

You won't hear postmodernists or their Emerging-church cousins saying many things with that kind of settled conviction! But their doubts about certainty per se are unwaveringly emphatic.

You don't have to read very much of Phil's stuff to understand his penchant for projecting his own problems onto his opponents. Here, he's annoyed because Emergent types somehow maintain some certainty in their uncertainty about various theological issues.

You see, certainty for Phil is some thing you do, like mowing your lawn. It's not the result of a process of weighing and evaluation evidences with reason and logic, it's the means to an end, not the end itself, of an inquiry or anything else. A good pyromaniac is certain because being certain is good, so long its about the things a Pyro should be certain about (other things not sanctioned by Johnson demand solipsistic skepticism, but that's for another post).

We're dealing two different objects of scrutiny here, and this is a either a subtlety Phil just can't grasp, or Phil's hard in "spin mode" here. Uncertainty about theological propositions is the natural, rational, default position, if only because for so many theological claims there is no "feedback loop" to provide any objective verification about the basic soundness of the claim. Certainty about doubts themselves is trvial to justify, on the other hand. The doubts may be unfounded, but certainty about the fact that one has doubts needs nothing more than a little introspection to establish. In the case of historical abuses and tragic moral transgressions by Christians, there's little controversy in being certain there either. Can we be certain that murderous abuses of ecclesiastical power by, say, Torquemada or Calvin were, in fact, cases of extreme overconfidence in one's theological views?

Think about what uncertainty in that regard means from Phil's standpoint: Maybe Torquemada was right after all, or the nice folks who put Michael Servetus to death were as right as rain, and entitled to their confidence in it.

Here's a paragraph from a little further on in the post:

Ironically, the canonization of doubt as a virtue is also a clear echo of the very worst tendency of modernism (see the Ronald Nash quote above)—which means, really, that the "postmodern" skepticism of our Emerging friends isn't technically postmodern at all. Their modernist ancestors were fine with so-called scientific certainties; but they despised spiritual certainties—especially certainties grounded in the conviction that the Bible is truly God's Word. Emergent Christianity has expanded (not rejected) the modernist mindset by insisting on uncertainty about everything—except, of course, the infallible dogma of uncertainty.

Setting aside Phil's hyperbole here ("canonization of doubt" -- sheesh, point me to that canon, I'd like to see that!), what we have is Phil's objection to confidence in modernist empirical claims not being extended automatically to similar confidence in pre-modern spiritual claims. This may be news to Phil, but it shouldn't be news to anyone else -- these are claims with completely different epistemic foundations. They have different levels of trust to the reasoning mind because they deserve different levels of trust. Spiritual claims do not and cannot perform and be tested or falsified the way empirical claims can. We trust empirical claims because they are performative, and we reserve confidence in spiritual claims because they are speculative, and afford no validation or verification -- even in Phil's best case -- until after the inquirer is dead.

It's a hall of mirrors, looking through the "Phil Johnson" lens - an inchoate epistemology if there ever was one. That's bad enough, but read the whole post (or any of his posts), and note the supreme confidence Phil has in his perverted certainty.

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