Hey abge,
Thank you very much for the lengthy write-up. I truly appreciate the time you took to do so. I would like to respond to a few of the points you made.
You disliked my house analogy. That's reasonable. I was aware it had flaws when I used it -- I concluded that they were both small enough and obvious enough that the point would still be made, but reasonable people can disagree on such things. That said, I think the specific points you raised slightly miss the point. For example, it's true that some homes don't need foundations, but those are designed with that in mind. Can't we assume without saying it that we're talking about the other kind? There were word limits in the debate, and not every tiny detail could be spelled out. Also, in some parts of the country, basements are very rare, so one can't necessarily look at the foundation very easily. Of course, you're right that this would usually still be inspected to some degree, but I would actually argue this cuts both ways in the debate.
Nevertheless, the analogy was admittedly flawed -- a house with a flawed foundation isn't going to collapse right away, so some license was needed for the application of the analogy. As I say, it's reasonable to disagree on whether this was helpful or distracting.
On the other hand, my point about dollar bills on Eden's economic analysis was not an analogy but an example, and it was in service of an indisputably correct and somewhat imoprtant point, so I do want to clear that up. (Word limits kept me from addressing it explicitly more in the debate, though I did do so implicitly; and Eden himself walked back from his economic-rationality standard on this thread, so I didn't pursue it earlier here).
The point is a simple logical one. Eden is attempting to get around the short-comings of pure reason (which he has already stipulated), whereby it is impossible to know anything, by replacing it with economic reason, whereby one takes the course of action that leads to the best result. (I'm paraphrasing from memory, and may not be using precisely the same words).
My point was that "the course of action that leads to the best result" may not be well-defined and/or single-valued: there may be two or more courses of action that are equally important. Eden's response was that, well, then "doing any of them" is "the course of action that leads to the best result." So far as that goes, it's fine -- basically it's a matter of semantics. However, by taking that step, he has completely destroyed what he was trying to do with economic rationality. Because we can't know anything (by his own stipulation, though you might disagree), then all courses of action (including doing nothing) are equally likely to lead to "the best result," and so all economic rationality can tell you in such circumstances is, "do/believe something (or nothing)." So Eden's whole definition of rationality comes apart on this point which, again, is not really controvertible given what he had already stipulated (although apparently I made it poorly -- alas).
This is not really a surprise, if you think about what the concept of economic rationality really is. The whole theory deals with choosing a best course of action, given certain factual knowledge. If you begin by denying all factual knowledge (which Eden did), it's going to be a singularly useless theory. He was trying to put it into service far afield of the questions it was developed to address, a point I think he and I may now agree on.
"Second, I take issue with your analysis on induction. To the best of our knowledge, the laws of the universe have remained constant for billions of years. To claim that “we have no reason one way or the other” in regards to if tomorrow will be like today seems like an incredible claim to make. I understand your reasoning for such a claim, but I feel one would have an incredibly hard time getting anyone to believe that the sun won't rise tomorrow based on what was written alone."
I don't disagree -- in fact, I know from experience that one does have an incredibly hard time "getting anyone to believe that the sun won't rise tomorrow based on what was written alone." That, however, is a very interesting statement about human psychology, and what the human mind finds it easy or possible to believe.
On the other hand, if the subject is reason, and what we have rational warrant to believe (and it was), then one would need an actual counterargument to the arguments I presented, not merely an assertion of robust personal belief without rational argument.
"Finally, I was confused by the purpose of your first two questions during cross examination."
Alas! I should have been more explicit, it seems.
"What were you trying to prove by asking Eden to justify eating?"
I was actually continuing precisely the earlier point about economic rationality, the dollar bills, etc. Eden had asserted that we could know nothing; yet he had then said that eating was nevertheless more (economically) rational because failure to eat might lead to death, whereas eating will at worst do nothing.
But that actually presupposes (factual) knowledge. If we can truly know nothing, then we can't know that "failure to eat might lead to death, whereas eating will at worst do nothing." In fact, the opposite might be true -- it might be eating that leads to death, and not eating might be the only course open to us. Eden was sneaking factual knowledge back in in his employment of economic rationality; with genuine lack of factual knowledge, no course of action (eating or not eating) is more rational than any other, just as either dollar bill is as good as the other.
"I also don't understand the point of Pascal's Wager, which, as Eden points out, any god would surely see as merely “insurance against damnation”."
I agree that Pascal's Wager is flawed, and for some of the reasons Eden points out. The Wager says, there may or may not be a god, I can't know; but if there is, then I should appease him by believing in him, which won't do any harm if there isn't.
This argument has lots of problems. One is that it attempts to derive factual belief from possible consequences; another is that it fails to realize there are many possible gods, not just one. I brought it up because Eden was making precisely these same mistakes with his economic-rationality points. He was saying, "Eating may or may not help me, but if I do eat, it may save me, and if I don't I may die, so I should believe that it helps me." This is also trying to derive legitimacy for a belief from consideration of consequences, and it also ignores the existence of other possibilities (that eating may harm me, e.g.), exactly analogously to Pascal's Wager; in fact they are exactly the same argument.
"I'm sure that these questions were meant to further your argument in some way, but it was not apparent to me and should have been better addressed in your closing statement."
You're no doubt right. I found it very hard to get my closing written and in under the word limit, unfortunately.
"You take the time to describe what you mean by the Christian god so that there is no confusion, but you then do nothing more than quickly glance over him through your argument. "
Well, I defined him largely because my opponent asked. Typically I assume it's well known what the Christian God is, but it's certainly good to be careful, so I was happy to provide a definition.
" What you fail to address in any substantial way is why the Christian god is better than any other god. To use proof-by-assertion to discredit both the ancient Greek gods and Pastafarianism makes for a weak argument at best. "
It wasn't my burden to prove that other gods were irrational. That said, I disagree that I did not make reference to properties of the Christian God. One of the properties I listed for Him was that He had revealed Himself truly in Scripture, and so every reference to Scripture (of which there were quite a few) was a reference specifically to the Christian God. Without these references, I would have been unable to show that the Christian worldview was any less deficient than the atheist one. For example, it's all very well to show that atheism fails to ground induction, but if it were not revealed to us that God keeps His word and has promised a regular world, then the Christian worldview would not, either. These are very specific properties of the Christian God, and it's not just proof-by-assertion to point out that they're not properties of (for example) Zeus: they're simply not, and Zeus is sufficiently common-knowledge that these properties can be plainly seen as part of his mythos.
Of course, Zeus was, in any case, an example, since (once again) it was not my job to show the IRrationality of some other theistic system of belief.
"Most damning is admitting that parts of the bible are figurative, throwing into question if Christianity can even be considered one of regional belief systems at all."
I'm sorry you found that confusing. Had I known it was a tripping-point, it would have been easy to clarify -- part of ANY text like the Bible is figurative, and they all must be interpreted carefully using the usual methods of interpreting a text from context, etc. I advanced (very briefly) a specific argument that a specific part of the Bible was in parts figurative. That no more undercuts the authority or reliability of the Bible than the realization that Britannica sometimes uses analogy undercuts Britannica; and just in the Biblical case, one would make a hash of interpreting Britannica if one were blind to when it was and wasn't using figures of speech.
I am admittedly somewhat confused by the conclusion that I showed that belief in an arbitrary god is rational, but not in the Christian God; if belief in an arbitrary god is rational, then in particular, belief in the Christian God is so, no? In any case, I have shown above that my argument in fact would not work for an arbitrary god, but that it relied in key ways on properties of the Christian God, specifically.
Thank you again for taking the time to write a thoughtful and specific critique. I appreciate it.
World diplomacy
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