site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32249 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

  1. It is not necessarily necessary for everything to have a cause. There is nothing fundamentally illogical as far as I can tell about the notion of an uncaused phenomenon. And if you believe that everything must have a cause, then that applies just as much to God as it does to the universe, so bringing God in does not actually solve the problem.

  2. Why we find ourselves in an orderly world can be explained by the anthropic principle of "if the world was not orderly, we would not be here asking the question".

  3. Miracles actually are not something that I reject. By the very nature of some phenomena, they can be both true yet also either fundamentally or at least in practice beyond the reach of scientific investigation. For example, let us say that I remember 20 years ago seeing a rock shaped like an arrowhead on a certain trail, but I do not remember exactly where the trail was. Let us say this actually happened, the rock was real. Yet there is in practice no way to prove that it was real. More fundamentally, there is the hard problem of consciousness, which I think quite possibly will be forever beyond the reach of scientific investigation. So it is not that I think it is impossible that 2000 years ago a man multiplied loaves of bread and rose from the dead. I just think that given the available evidence for it, there is no reason to be so convinced that it happened that one fundamentally orders one's life around the belief that it happened.

  1. Well, I don't think God has a cause, so that's not quite the argument. It's pretty dangerous epistemically, to say that things can be arbitrary, though, unless you manage to justify restricting that. I mean, why not think this comment I'm writing is uncaused? Or that a black hole is about to causelessly appear in your house? Or that the universe will vanish in two seconds?

  2. Sort of. But you also get orderly worlds which are more bizarre (remember, think how many ways there are for unusual things to happen), and it also destroys induction, because of all the worlds where it was ordinary for the past however many billion years except for a bizarre change three seconds from now dwarfs the ones where it continues ordinarily, but anthropically look identical.

  3. It doesn't require an enormous level of credulity to require ordering one's life around it, for pascal's wager type reasons.

Why we find ourselves in an orderly world can be explained by the anthropic principle of "if the world was not orderly, we would not be here asking the question".

I've never liked this as a rebuttal to the point made. It definitely answers the question as you've phrased it. Why do we find ourselves in an orderly world? Because if it weren't orderly, we wouldn't find ourselves anywhere. I get the line of reasoning, but it gives no insight into why the world is orderly, which is what question is really being asked. It merely asserts that it is the case, which wasn't really up for debate.

To rephrase the point in a slightly less charged light. When discussing the question "Why does the necessary precursor to A exist?", answering "A exists, therefore the necessary precursor to A exists" doesn't answer the question. It completely ignores the "Why" part of the question.

And if you believe that everything must have a cause, then that applies just as much to God as it does to the universe, so bringing God in does not actually solve the problem.

This is probably the worst of the atheist arguments against a creator, because it seems to result in a failure of basic comprehension. Theists (and deists) are saying “God is, by definition, the exception to the rule that all things must have a cause. He is the Unmoved Mover, and the Uncaused Causer.” And you’re saying, “But wouldn’t an Uncaused Causer need a cause too?” No, obviously not, that’s literally what makes him the Prime Mover. You’re rejecting Christians’ conception of God out of hand, but then acting like you actually refuted their argument, whereas the reality is that you just refused to acknowledge that they made it.

It's amazing to me how much sway the aristotelian unmoved mover god has on a religion that clearly describes a moving, changing god. In genesis god has human emotions, moves around and even shows up at the door of Abraham, on earth. In other words he behaves more like Odin (or rather Baal) than like god-the-philosophical-entity. And even if you discount genesis (and much of the old testament) as analogical writing and superstitions of simple people, how can it be that Jesus is god and also that god is unmoved, unchanging, simple, etc?

For problems with cosmological arguments see Sobel, Logic and Theism, chapter 5.

Right, to be clear, I am not a Christian, and my (admittedly amateurish) research into comparative religion and study of the development of early Judaism demonstrates very clearly to me that the Old Testament is in no sense whatsoever an account of an Aristotelian God-As-Pure-Logos. I’m merely pointing out that the specific argument “the Prime Mover argument is wrong because even a Prime Mover would need a mover” is a bad argument. Most of the other arguments against Judaic and Christian cosmology are still very valid and true.

I’m merely pointing out that the specific argument “the Prime Mover argument is wrong because even a Prime Mover would need a mover” is a bad argument

Yes, you are right about this. I've just been thinking about this for a while and latched on to your message to write it down since you also said: "You’re rejecting Christians’ conception of God out of hand, but then acting like you actually refuted their argument". The argument has other problems, though.

God's active, doing things, but not changing, exactly. Maybe changing in relation to other things, but not in relation to himself. If you think that's unbiblical, I have a quote for you: "I, the LORD, do not change." And another: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever"

You lose a lot of the persuasive power of the argument if you admit that there are things (Jesus Christ) that appear to be moving but do not in fact count as "moving" for the argument. The observation that there are some things that move falls away, as far as I am concerned everything could be like Jesus and actually be motionless.

The problem with those biblical quotes is that there is a colloquial meaning to change and a philosophical one, cosmological arguments only work with the latter but those quotes in context point to the former.

I do think that Jesus Christ moves, just not in respect of his divine nature. For humans to change our actions, we generally need to move our bodies—throwing something involves tensing of muscles, shifting of weight, etc. There's no equivalent for God, just direct acts. Your possibility that everything could be motionless is a good point! I can't articulate any reason way it would be impossible that everything exists necessarily. Indeed, there's at least one system, a version of mathematical platonism, where that's the case. But I have concerns with that system (it seems to mess up induction, for one). More arbitrary systems are less plausible to me. I don't know why e.g. the phone I'm typing on might exist from itself, but a single necessary being with God-ish properties seems more plausibly necessarily existent.

You're entirely correct on the biblical quotes, I should have checked better that what I was saying worked. They're only weakly persuasive, not strongly so. James 1:17 seems slightly stronger. Predestination's probably a point in favor as well, since that's clearly biblical. Declaring the end from the beginning, predestining all things according to his council, etc. fits pretty well with a God who doesn't internally change. (to be clear, that isn't conclusive on its own, but it's evidence in the right direction)

The problem with singling out Jesus as special (or as some kind of flesh robot remotely piloted by god) is that these are heretical (the former would be a kind of Docetism the latter similar to Apollinarianism), Jesus is supposed to be real god and real man.

The problem with making "motion" have a special meaning is that the argument is generally taken to proceed from self evident, observable properties of the universe and making "motion" be some metaphysical property would take that away. I'd argue that the distinction between per se and per accidens already does that but whatever.

Predestination is a whole other can of whorms with the free will problem, the soteriology problems, etc.

But the universe itself can be a causeless phenomenon, there is no need to posit a God. You can call the universe itself God, of course, but this is not what Christians mean by God.

Can a phenomenon be both "causeless" and have a discrete beginning/end? That seems to invite paradox unless you want to go the full Pyrrho and argue against the principles of cause and effect more generally.

I don't see why not but to be fair, I am not well versed in either philosophy or physics.

Okay fine, but you’ve already shifted the goalposts significantly. Your original argument was “nothing can be causeless, not even God”. Now you’ve switched to “okay, God could be causeless, but so could the universe even if it wasn’t God”. Two completely different and mutually-contradictory arguments.

The two things could still be mutually excluding possibilities: If it's impossible for a thing to exist without a cause, than the Uncaused Cause is impossible too, much like a circumference-less circle is impossible; if that's not the case, then there's no reason there must be only one from which everything else is caused. You can, of course, say that everything needs a cause to exist except for a special uncaused being that is an exception to the general rule; but then the statement collapses to "assuming that one and only one Uncaused Cause exists, then one and only one Uncaused Cause exists".

I never said that nothing can be causeless. I said the opposite: "It is not necessarily necessary for everything to have a cause. There is nothing fundamentally illogical as far as I can tell about the notion of an uncaused phenomenon.".

You did, but right after that you argued that anyone who believes that all things need a cause must necessarily believe that God also himself needs a cause, but this doesn’t follow, because anyone who believes in God by definition believes that God does not require a cause. Since you yourself believe that the universe doesn’t require a cause, it doesn’t make sense to then argue that God does.

Fair enough, you are right about that. It's just that to me one might as well accept the universe itself as being an exception to the rule of things needing causes, without a need to posit a God.

What metaphysical sort of thing does this rule exist in? Why is the universe an exception? I don't see why the universe would be the sort of thing that would be uncaused, while that seems much more plausible for a classical theistic God. A priori, I'd be more likely to expect an uncaused God than an uncaused universe, since one seems more likely to be something that would be intrinsically necessary.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats