Bloggers and YouTubers "Deflating Atheism" and "Escaping Atheism"

Bloggers and YouTubers "Deflating Atheism" and "Escaping Atheism" (Dean Esmay aka "Max Kolbe": American loon #655 http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/08/655-dean-esmay.html)) decided to take a swing (and a miss) at me, Aron Ra, Genetically Modified Skeptic and Godlesss Cranium. (Time stamp 27:30) https://youtu.be/-_Y0mKm1dwo?t=27m30s

https://escapingatheism.com/2017/11/29/deflating-escaping-week-atheist-stupid-twis/

From Max in his comment section:
"We'd argue that McRae is worse. He's one of those scumbags like Penn Jillette who puts on a show of being reasonable but knows exactly what he's doing when he lies his ass off. And Steve McRae never stops lying."

Now let's look at the massive irony here shall we? While I'm sincerely flattered to be compared to Penn Jillette and that I "put on a show of being reasonable" I find it pretty comical that here is a person accusing me of lying and yet makes a video calling me an atheist...after being corrected on this numerous times. As Godless Cranium astutely notes I self Identify as a temporal agnostic, which is not an atheist by more formal definitions. I have never once self identified as an atheist, but here are two theist completely and willfully lying about my theological position in a video deliberately relating me to a ideological position that I do not hold to.

Another interesting thing to note from the video is that neither of them truly seem to understand the word "skeptic" or that it is a polysemous term that represents many possible meanings. The word itself to me is rather vague, as there are many types of skeptics...and generally the word refers to someone to adheres to Skepticism, a philosophical position that I don't have as it maintains that philosophical skepticism questions our ability to make knowledge claims. I am quite fine with make knowledge claims as I have a pretty well defined epistemic framework that allows me to make knowledge claims...now, if one is referring to scientific skepticism then sure, I would be a scientific skeptic who does believe that scientist should be ethical and follow Mertonian norms...but it is quite obvious that neither Deflating Atheism nor Escaping atheism understand these types of positional nuances. They are quite typical of people who focus more on assigning their own version of a label to someone, rather than trying to actually understand that persons beliefs and positions.

I also would very much like to know how I am being paid to "be a skeptic" or how I "make cash" by converting people to atheism. 3 years on YouTube and I know of absolutely no one that I have ever "converted" to atheism...nor of a penny that I have earned from making one either.

Max then goes on to make the infelicitously bizarre claim that I am in an "atheist cult" and that I have a "talking point" of "I hope I have offended you"...in my 570+ videos on YouTube those words have never been uttered by me. My goal on YouTube is not to offend, it is to foster meaningful and interesting dialog between people with various differing positions. Does this mean no one ever gets offended? Of course not...as if someone on YouTube isn't offended by something you say every so often, then you really have nothing of consequence to say.

Tautologies using metalogic

( Φ ∧  Ψ ) -> Φ and ( Φ ∧ Ψ ) -> φ are tautologies. Why? Since for the same reason that (p ∧ q) -> p as well as (p ∧ q) -> q are tautologies. If you do the truth tables:

(p ∧ q ) -> p

p q p ∧ q (p∧ q) -> p
T T T T
T F F T
F T F T
FF F T

ALL values are TRUE...thus it is a tautology.

Just do the same for (Φ ∧ Ψ ) -> Φ and ( Φ ∧  Ψ ) -> φ as they are also tautologies. Remember these symbols "Φ" and "Ψ" are just symbols that represent other symbols in metalogic. We can substitute (p ∧ q ) -> p and see that is a tautology as all values are T.

(So it is clear you get T for (p ∧ q) ->p by implication, since
p ->q means ¬p V q or here it, (p ∧ q) ->p, means ¬(p∧ q) V p )

Regarding the Claims! Claims! Claims! stream and the ternary system.

Regarding the Claims! Claims! Claims! stream and the ternary system.
or ternarinception
-By Barney Tearspell

barney tearspell

Great Debate Community

Oct 25, 10:34 AM



Regarding the Claims! Claims! Claims! stream and the ternary system.
or ternarinception

Let’s employ some programming skills with ternary operators and a bit of logic and see where it gets us.


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definitions and notation
Before I get into the argument let me set up some tools. You can skip or glance over these, but they're there if you need them later.

We assume that it is only possible to hold one of three positions on any proposition

A = Accept
B = Reject
C = Abstain

Given any proposition P one can then make three derived propositions P' of the form:

PA ⇔ position on P is 'Accept'
PB ⇔ position on P is 'Reject'
PC ⇔ position on P is 'Abstain'

The ternary system must then be applicable to each of those statements but must retain logical consistency, so each statement must infer meaning about the other statements.

PA ⇔ PAA ∧ PBB ∧ PCB

In other words:
Accepting P is equivalent to Accepting PA AND Rejecting PB AND Rejecting PC

And the relation can be written as:

PAA ⇔ PBB ∧ PCB
Accepting PA is equivalent to Rejecting PB And Rejecting PC
In other words:
Accepting P is equivalent to neither Rejecting nor Abstaining from P


Solving this derived set of propositions gives complete information about the position on P.

This chain of derived statements should hold all the way down to the axioms if the system is to be consistent

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disagreeing with TheRumpus

+TheRumpus Account has claimed that statements like not-accept are illegal because they lead to contradiction.

I disagree. Statements that are contradictions are illegal, but statements that are not contradictions are fine-just-fine (but might be incomplete).

The way in which this becomes crystal clear for me is to see it from an outsiders perspective trying to find out what some person's position is

So lets write the legal positions.

The set where I agree with TheRumpus

PAA ⇒ PBB ∧ PCB
position is known: the person Accepts P (e.g., Theism)

PBA ⇒ PAB ∧ PCB
position is known: the person Rejects P (e.g., Hard Atheism)

PCA ⇒ PAB ∧ PBB
position is known: the person Abstains on P (e.g., Agnosticism)

Since the position is known, any of these sufficiently answers the question:
“What position does the person hold on P?”


The set TheRumpus calls illegal


¬PAA ⇒ (PBA ∨ PCA)
position is unknown: the person either Rejects or Abstains on P (e.g. non-theism)
Along with PAA, sufficiently answers the question “Does the person Accept P?”
Technically the full form is: ¬PAA ⇒ (PBA ∨ PCA) ∨ (PBC ∧ PCC) but it can be reduced with no loss.

¬PBA ⇒ (PAA ∨ PCA)
position is unknown: the person either Accepts or Abstains on P
Along with PBA, sufficiently answers the question “Does the person Reject P?”
Technically the full form is: ¬PBA ⇒ (PAA ∨ PCA) ∨ (PAC ∧ PCC) but can be reduced with no loss.

¬PCA ⇒ (PAA ∨ PBA)
position is unknown: the person either Accepts or Rejects P
Along with PCA, sufficiently answers the question “Does the person Abstain on P?”
The long form would contain a contradiction in the second part of the statement so that part must be excluded (giving a consistent reduction)

And there are other non-contradictory values in the derivations such as
PAC ∧ PBC ∧ PCC which would reduce to PC but I would argue that it a possible answer in case the person doesn’t know of P (literally, doesn’t know of the proposition itself)

Contrast this with ternary values (T - true, F - false, U - undefined).
A negation of ternary values would work something like:

¬T=F
¬F=T
¬U=U

And applying that to the examples in which this ternary system is proposed, you could get the following exchange:
"Are you an Agnostic?" - "No!" - "Oh, so you're an Agnostic then."

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Conclusion

All of this violates the excluded middle rule but maps much better to how people actually think (since ignorance is a major component of cognition) and converse.

It could be interesting to derive the mathematical properties and rules of the system and construct truth tables (or rather the position tables) to see how the positions interact and sum up to see which form of ternary logic would fit best.

Problem with Divine Command Theory presupper's don't want to address.

Problem with Divine Command Theory presupper's don't want to address.

It was truly enjoyable to watch a presupper creationist run ass in hand when he was trying to question how morality exists with out God by asking:

"So today it might be wrong to kill and eat a three-year-old child but next year in might be perfectly acceptable in your world view right?"

to which I just replied to him the obvious:

"Nothing I said even remotely would imply that...in YOUR world view that would be perfectly acceptable if GOD COMMANDED IT right?

If God commanded you to go out and kill and eat the first 20 babies you found...YOU would have to do it because it was MORAL to you right? So today it may not be moral to you....but tomorrow it may be perfectly moral to you because your GOD COMMANDS YOU TO DO IT!"

He left a few comments later after completing avoiding having to address what I said.

Go figure.

Complementary sets of a universal set.

Given p=theism, then theism is a category, and NOT theism is also a category. The universal category give by a complementary set of A'= U\A where A'={x∈U |x∉A} This means that anything NOT in set A or theism, exists at an element in A' or NOT THEISM which again is the universal set minus the category set of A. Since elements of A are mutually exclusive to A' then any x as a member of A as a member of U can not at same time be member of A', which means p v ~p are mutually exclusive sets as well.

Thoughts?

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously...interpretations of Chomsky's famous statement.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously...interpretations of Chomsky's famous statement.

Ozymandias Ramses II seems to prefer using the phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" (or some variation, as I don't remember if that is the "exact" phrase he uses) to describe things which are semantically nonsensical, even if grammatically correct. Usually when discussing things like theological non-cognitivism which would be if someone said that the statement made no sense and therefore could not have a truth value of attached to it...but If one wanted to make that phrase semantically correct, could there be (at least) two ways of doing it?

1) By use of polsemy such that each word has more figurative meaning and can be re-interpreted in some other way, that doesn't change the over all meaning of the word, but only how the contextually or semantically the words operate with in the phrase.

2) Adhere to the Bertrand Russell approach that any sentence that is not true for what ever reason, is false...so if we said colorless green ideas with "ideas" being the operative noun and colorless green just being descriptors then it simple boils down to ideas don't sleep, since ideas are just concepts in a mind, but they do not have the ability to sleep, therefore the sentence is not true and therefore is false. So a propositional value could be attached that sentence. So here a theological non-cog could still attach a F value as the sentence is no longer meaningless to them in the sense of not being able to have a truth value attached to it (even if still semantically nonsensical)... it is just false because it is not true.

Thoughts?

A response I wrote to someone claiming we don't have beliefs, and that beliefs are always without evidence (or little evidence):

A response I wrote to someone claiming we don't have beliefs, and that beliefs are always without evidence (or little evidence):

If I asked a semasiological question "What is the meaning of the word "belief" I am asking what we have sociality attached to it to convey meaning. The way you are using loses that colloquial understanding of the word, as the word "belief" is a very real cognitive state of a person that a propositional state (propositionally) is true (or false), or that something ontologically exists in our universe (metaphysically). It makes no difference if the justification for their belief is evidential, pragmatic, or prudential...or even it is unjustified and lacking warrant.

If I said p=at least one God exists in reality (or p=some God exists, or p=one or more God exists in our universe)

Then if someone is asked to provide a truth value for that proposition, that is a "belief" state. If someone says that T is true (theist) that is a "belief"...REGARDLESS of it being justified or not. If someone says that statement is false (philosphical atheist) that too is a "belief".

Everyone has beliefs, and to resorting to epistemological nihilism is just absurd. If I took a different approach and asked an onomasiological question: "What is the cognitive state when you take a position on a proposition being true or false?" ...we have a word for that...the answer would be "belief".

Thoughts?

Positive vs Negative Claims:

Positive vs Negative Claims:

There seems to be a lot of confusion lately of what constitutes a positive and negative claim...as there does seem to be some vagueness as to what that actually means. A negative claim is often the phrase used when someone expresses that something does not exist, as opposed to claiming that it does exist.

To me if I say X does not exist, that is making a positive claim of the negative existence of something which people call a negative claim, but this leads to confusion. As one is making that claim that the state of affairs of the universe is such that X does not exist in the universe, or the universe is devoid of X.

Personally, I don't care if someone calls this a negative claim or a positive claim...as both require just as much a burden of justification...and I think the distinction is rather meaningless to me.

Again to me, if someone saying "God does not exit", viewed by me, is a positive assertion of a negative claim (claim of nonexistence). Since in a debate both parties are arguing their own positions, both are arguing from a position that their position is correct and both need to give positive evidence for their position (Evidence for their own position), not just negative evidence (evidence against the opponents position)...which to me means both are in essence making a positive claim. Calling something like "God does not exist!" a "negative claim" doesn't mean it has any less of a burden of justification.

Thoughts?

(May have a hangout on this soon as well as that constitutes a claim as +Nesslig 20 and +TheRumpus Account have been going back and forth on this for a while and ofc Rumpus thinks everyone in the world is an idiot, but him. His position is that "I believe God does not exist" ("declaration of belief") is not a claim and is different from saying "God does not exist!" (assertion/claim). Nesslig and I disagree with Rumpus here, as I view it someone saying "I believe God does not exist", while declaring their belief, is making a weak statement that is saying ontologically that the universe is devoid of Gods and I take that as a claim. What are you thoughts?)