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01-11-2013 , 10:04 AM

NotReady

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This will be a debate on 2/1/13 7-9:30 EST. It will be streamed live and you can sign up for it here:

http://live.biola.edu.s3-website-us-...amazonaws.com/

Topic of the debate:

Is Faith in God Reasonable?

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01-11-2013 , 10:18 AM

zumby

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 4,277

This will be the first WLC debate where I don't know who to root for.

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01-11-2013 , 11:40 AM

Mightyboosh

mmm mmm good

Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 5,560

Cool, will try to see that. Won't be able to watch it live since it doen't start till after midnight GMT but hopefully they'll make it available afterwards.

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01-11-2013 , 11:43 AM

NotReady

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Quote:

Originally Posted by zumby

This will be the first WLC debate where I don't know who to root for.

What I think might be interesting is apparently Rosenberg, a philosophy professor, supports Scientism, and attempts to ground all human values in ideas like evolution. I don't know how tough an opponent he will be, but the subject matter is somewhat different than Craig's normal debate.

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01-11-2013 , 11:46 AM

NotReady

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Mightyboosh

Cool, will try to see that. Won't be able to watch it live since it doen't start till after midnight GMT but hopefully they'll make it available afterwards.

They probably will. If you really want to listen you could record the audio - turn the speakers off and leave the computer on, for instance.

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01-11-2013 , 01:26 PM

LEMONZEST

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thread is promising. look forward to the discussion afterward.

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01-11-2013 , 01:50 PM

Original Position

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Quote:

Originally Posted by NotReady

Rosenberg is a self-described nihilist, so it isn't quite accurate to say he grounds all human values in evolution.

I don't like the resolution - I'll predict that they will use different understandings of "reasonable" as the basis for disagreement without really engaging in the reasons for those different understandings.

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01-11-2013 , 02:34 PM

nooberftw

adept

Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1,005

ill wait for a restream instead of signing up
craig needs some more arguments i think or its not gonna go anywhere

not saying im better but god bless him

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01-11-2013 , 03:02 PM

Original Position

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Quote:

Originally Posted by zumby

This will be the first WLC debate where I don't know who to root for.

Why do you have such a low opinion of Rosenberg?

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01-11-2013 , 04:29 PM

#10

duffee

banned

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For anyone is interested, here’s an article by Rosenberg outlining his position:

The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg

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01-11-2013 , 04:54 PM

#11

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,078

Thanks duffee

Am I right in assuming that on the topics of meaning or purpose in life, atheists who disagree with Rosenberg would mostly be emergentists? Or to quote a commenter:

Quote:

First, consider this. I have a car made of many different parts. None of them can “go fast”; they’re just parts. Does it follow that my car cannot go fast? Obviously not. Thinking otherwise involves a simple fallacy of composition. Professor Rosenberg, in my estimation, is committing a similar fallacy, not a simple and obvious one, but a fallacy all the same. The core thought is that if the rudiments of our physical nature and our causal history do not have purpose, then no purpose can arise. From ingredients entirely lacking in purpose, nothing can emerge that has purpose. But that seems plainly false. As a naturalist, I agree, I am wholly constituted of fermions and bosons—entities lacking in purpose. But I do things intentionally. So do all of you.

That seems reasonable enough to me, but it does seem to me that Rosenberg's nihilism with regard to free will or morality is not quite escapable in the same way, or at least not without changing the understanding of those concepts quite drastically. i.e in terms of morality it seems to me that Rosenberg must be correct that physicalism is incompatible with the idea of an absolute notion of morality. And it seems to me that compatibilist explanations of free will don't really have much in common with naive psychological notions of "free will". The compatibilist description is so different that it's not really the same thing, it seems.

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01-11-2013 , 05:13 PM

#12

zumby

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Quote:

Originally Posted by well named

And it seems to me that compatibilist explanations of free will don't really have much in common with naive psychological notions of "free will". The compatibilist description is so different that it's not really the same thing, it seems.

Just a quick note that there is empirical evidence that the bolded is false.

http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/E...l%20prepub.doc
http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/I..._Intuitive.pdf

Quote:

Consider Kane’s assertion that “ordinary persons … believe there is some kind of conflict between freedom and determinism” (Kane 1999: 217). This suggests the following prediction:

(P) When presented with a deterministic scenario, most people will judge that agents in such a scenario do not act of their own free will and are not morally responsible for their actions.

We suggest that incompatibilists making these sorts of claims about the intuitions and beliefs of ordinary people are tacitly committed to something along the lines of (P). And since (P) is an empirically testable prediction, we tested it.

We surveyed people who had not studied the free will debate. In our first study, participants read the following scenario, drawn from a Laplacean conception of determinism:

Imagine that in the next century we discover all the laws of nature, and we build a supercomputer which can deduce from these laws of nature and from the current state of everything in the world exactly what will be happening in the world at any future time. It can look at everything about the way the world is and predict everything about how it will be with 100% accuracy. Suppose that such a supercomputer existed, and it looks at the state of the universe at a certain time on March 25th, 2150 A.D., twenty years before Jeremy Hall is born. The computer then deduces from this information and the laws of nature that Jeremy will definitely rob Fidelity Bank at 6:00 PM on January 26th, 2195. As always, the supercomputer’s prediction is correct; Jeremy robs Fidelity Bank at 6:00 PM on January 26th, 2195.

Participants were asked to imagine that such a scenario were actual and then asked: “Do you think that, when Jeremy robs the bank, he acts of his own free will?” A significant majority (76%) of participants judged that Jeremy does act of his own free will.

One might worry that people are inclined to overlook mitigating factors when judging the freedom or responsibility of an agent who has performed an action they deem immoral. To test for the possibility that participants were influenced by the negative nature of the action, we replaced Jeremy’s robbing the bank with a positive action (saving a child) for another set of participants and a neutral action (going jogging) for a third set. Changing the nature of the action had no significant effect on responses: 68% judged that Jeremy saves the child of his own free will, and 79% judged that he goes jogging of his own free will. We also asked additional sets of participants directly about moral responsibility: 83% responded that Jeremy is “morally blameworthy for robbing the bank,” and 88% responded that “he is morally praiseworthy for saving the child.”

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01-11-2013 , 05:17 PM

#13

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,078

fascinating. I stand corrected. Thanks zumby.

I would have answered no to the question and felt like it was pretty obvious. lol me I guess. I'll have to read the paper

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01-11-2013 , 06:19 PM

#14

NotReady

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Quote:

Originally Posted by duffee

For anyone is interested, here’s an article by Rosenberg outlining his position:

The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg

Thanks for the link. Gave it a quick scan and looks a lot like Harris. I expect another Craig slam dunk.

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01-11-2013 , 08:28 PM

#15

Original Position

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Quote:

Originally Posted by NotReady

Thanks for the link. Gave it a quick scan and looks a lot like Harris. I expect another Craig slam dunk.

Not really. They have very different views on morality, the mind, and science. They also have different professional backgrounds.

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01-12-2013 , 02:26 AM

#16

BeaucoupFish

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

Why do you have such a low opinion of Rosenberg?

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Just as an aside, you can turn off the signature that the updated mobile software automatically adds for you (that reveals the exact hardware you use!) from the Options menu.

As for the debate, I'd really like to hear something new from WLC, he and his ilk are prime examples of why these debate formats, while popular, are so useless.

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01-12-2013 , 10:47 AM

#17

zumby

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

Why do you have such a low opinion of Rosenberg?

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Because he says things like this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Rosenberg

Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality. You don’t have to be a scientist to be scientistic. In fact, most scientists aren’t. Why not?

Most scientists are reluctant to admit science’s answers to the persistent questions are obvious. There are more than enough reasons they are reluctant to do so. The best reason is that the answers to the persistent questions are not what people want to hear, and the bad news may lead them to kill the messenger—scientific research. It’s people who pay for science through their support of the NIH, the NSF, and the universities where most research happens. So, scientists have an incentive to cover up.

Incidentally, if you watch the Moving Naturalism Forward roundtable discussion on Youtube you can see the same scientists Rosenberg cites in his book (Weinberg, Sean Carroll etc) disagreeing with him on pretty much every topic discussed. Of course, Rosenberg can just fall back on claiming that they are "covering up" their real thoughts, but **** that guy.

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01-12-2013 , 12:30 PM

#18

BustoRhymes

Grand Elf

Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 26,670

Zumbo,

Please to be offering more biting commentary during/post debate

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01-12-2013 , 07:09 PM

#19

zumby

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 4,277

Quote:

Originally Posted by BustoRhymes

Zumbo,

Please to be offering more biting commentary during/post debate

Spoiler:

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01-12-2013 , 07:24 PM

#20

uke_master

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

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Surely this can be turned off?

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01-13-2013 , 02:01 AM

#21

BeaucoupFish

Pooh-Bah

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Quote:

Originally Posted by uke_master

Surely this can be turned off?

Post 16

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01-15-2013 , 10:05 AM

#22

Mightyboosh

mmm mmm good

Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 5,560

Does anyone know if there's an audio recording of this anywhere? Been looking but not found anything yet.

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01-15-2013 , 10:13 AM

#23

kb coolman

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Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 5,452

Unless you can travel to the future, you won't find it.

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01-15-2013 , 10:56 AM

#24

Mightyboosh

mmm mmm good

Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 5,560

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb coolman

Unless you can travel to the future, you won't find it.

Oops... that's me reading the date as 13th Jan because of the format not being what we use. Must have been bleary eyed at the time. And then completely failing to deduce from the fact that all the information about it was still current that it hadn't happened yet, I just thought they hadn't updated the page. Is that a confirmation bias or a confabulation?