Is the "Argument from Filibuster" a thing?

Again, mad props to Russell Glasser at the Atheist Experience for having the patience and perseverance to engage in a debate with Pastor Stephen Feinstein , and to deliver calm, mature and rational responses. His final post is worthy of framing.

Second, it would be presumptuous of me to pick up the commentary of Pastor Stephen Feinstein's delightful brand of presuppositional apologetics without a disclaimer and a tip of the hat to Deacon Duncan at Evangelical Realism. The disclaimer is that I'm not as smart, insightful or as good a writer as Deacon, so I don't presume to replace or even supplement him in any way. The tip of the hat is that, if you're interested in examples of fine counter-apologetics, you must visit his blog. Even though he's on indefinite hiatus, the place is full of treasure - much of which I'm still mining.

Although I've made the odd comment on Evangelical Realism, and published the odd post here regarding this extraordinarily weird display of apologetics, I decided to reboot in order to bring the series to a close. Thus, a second installment.

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Today's business:

With three full rounds and the opening paragraphs of the fourth round under my belt, it was apparent that I could say a slight bit more about the first half of the debate than I did last time.

Pastor Stephen Feinstein started his debate with Russell Glasser by stating

“I will give a general opening that will describe ... why I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible.“ and “I argue from the outset for the Christian position only, and I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility.“

These two statements serve, as well as any he made, as his main arguments.

It’s apparent that the pastor is attempting to follow the presuppositionalist program of apologetics, what with the focus on epistemology, worldviews and the copious use of, and wrangling over the implications of the word ”presupposition”.

Additionally, some "themes" seem to have emerged from the pastor’s excessive verbiage, whether by accident or on purpose. I’ll label them as follows:

Theme #1: The discussion of and arguments about science belong in the realm of philosophy, especially epistemology.

Theme #2: The atheistic random-chance universe makes the uniformity of nature impossible.

Theme #3: The problem of induction renders science impossible.

Theme #4: Atheistic preconditions cannot be justified, rendering knowledge built on them invalid.

Theme #5: The Christian God and a worldview built on him renders science and knowledge rational and valid.

There may be more themes, or I may have partitioned these incorrectly, but I’m comfortable in using them to describe where the pastor has been in the debate so far.

For a rational empiricist like myself - the pastor insists on labeling people, so I’m going down that rat hole as well - for the rational empiricist, we find characteristics in the real world that demonstrate that the pastor's themes are evidentially or rationally unsupported, or that contradict those themes in part or in whole. Let me label them as follows:

CounterTheme #1: The discussion of and arguments about science may be exercised in the realm of philosophy, but the practice and products of science are in the real world, and deal with real things. They are in the physical realm, in spite of the pastor’s claims to the contrary.

CounterTheme #2: Atheists individually have worldviews, but a unified “atheist worldview” held by the majority of atheists is a fabrication. Atheists only share a position about one topic - the existence of God. Consequently, a “random-chance universe” - a hypothetical construct fabricated by apologists for just these kinds of arguments - is erroneously attributed to atheists as a group. Neither the “atheist worldview” generalization nor the ascribed belief in the “random-chance universe“ has anything to do with reality.

CounterTheme #3: Induction is a way that we reason from particulars to generalities, but it's not the only way that people learn. Karl Popper would argue induction is a myth altogether, and that science relies on criticism and correction.

Personally, the philosophical “problem of induction” only seems troublesome if someone is attempting to arrive at “absolute truth” solely by inductive inference - without sense experience, trial-and-error, deduction, or any other means of gaining knowledge. So on that point alone, the pastor's criticism misses badly. Additionally, since absolutes are so rarely encountered in real life, the problem of induction, even if it's the sole means used to gain knowledge, rarely presents an impediment to acquiring reasonably practical, imperfect knowledge.

CounterTheme #4: Everyone makes unsupported assumptions. If naturalistic preconditions cannot be said to be axiomatic, then neither can supernaturalistic ones. It's extraordinarily unlikely that some compelling case can be made for unwarranted supernaturalistic presuppositions - and yet the Pastor's whole case rests on it.

CounterTheme #5: God is an obsolete hypothetical explanation for aspects of reality that have been explained better in other ways. He/she/it/they do not appear in the world, and exert no effect on physical reality that cannot be explained equally or better by natural means.

Let me point out again, Russell and Deacon both made most, if not more counterpoints than I just listed. I didn't cheat by referring back to them - so forgive me wherever I missed a point that you thought was prominent.

Face it, the pastor is not good at this presupp shtick. He didn't make concise persuasive arguments. What he did was more akin to a filibuster - that's why I use the term "theme" in favor of the expected concept "argument". At the very least, he could have been more persuasive by stating Themes 1 through 4 as premises, with Theme 5 as the conclusion. He would have had to add supporting warrants and subtract much of his unfocused filibuster in order to clearly make his case, but it was possible. Instead, his unwillingness or inability to get to the point really cost him readers, respect from his atheist antagonists and souls for Jesus.

The Pastor bores another interested party to tears

In my late twenties, I read Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Number of the Beast” - a science fiction novel that explored travel through extra dimensions. It held my interest through about 80% of the book, but I couldn’t finish it. As much as I liked Heinlein, the last 75-100 pages were excruciating. They droned on and on. Pastor Stephen Feinstein is like that in his debate with Russell Glasser .

I started reading the individual debate posts during the first week of November of last year, and soon discovered that Deacon Duncan was doing a much more thorough job at Evangelical Realism than I ever would, so I dropped an attempt at writing this up. Then, a few weeks ago, Deacon burned out after reviewing the Pastor’s 4th post, and kinda left me feeling unfulfilled. So here I am, looking to get closure.

So, what's left me feeling so empty? Wellllll... It’s like this, doc:

Round One Recap

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The Pastor’s first post throws down the gauntlet, somewhat, by exclaiming

“I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" [and] "I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility."

The Christian Worldview includes, of course, belief in a triune God. Stephen professes his belief in this, so we have his position clearly stated, and we expect his arguments to launch from there. He doesn’t launch them in this post, however.

Russell’s first post counters with a rejection of the Pastor’s claim that “Atheism possesses a distinct view of reality (materialism)” etc ... but he admits that “I personally do lean towards materialism, humanism, and a scientific approach to learning about the world” ... he describes himself as an “atheist humanist scientific skeptic”

He goes on to contrast his position in comparison to Stephen’s as

“All else being equal, it’s better not to assume that something is true without good reasons.”

Russell then closes with what he feels the pastor needs to do to win the debate, specifically:

“Give me some good reasons why I should view God, as you define him, as a being that exists; OR, Make me understand that it is foolish to seek reasons for anything, and it’s a good idea to just believe something like your god for no reason.”

This is a fairly uncontroversial beginning.

Round Two

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In his second post, the pastor gives more of “I’m gonna do this”, but no actual doing of the “this”. There are several thousand words in this post, but no detectable argument supporting his round one claims that “atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" and "the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility”.

Russell detects this, and calls him out:

“if you have any interest whatsoever in definitively showing me and other atheists that we hold an untenable position, then you’re going to have to give me some motivation to accept your assumptions over mine. If you can’t do that, then by your own prior promises, you will have lost.”

This apparently hurts the pastor’s feelings.

Round Three Recap

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It gets weird in Round Three.

In a lot of formal debate settings, the opponents go out of their way to be polite and respectful. I believe that politeness pays dividends, because the word “atheist” is usually painted as all sorts of bad: baby-eating, church-burning, religious rights-oppressing atheists. Face it, a calm explanation that there is nothing supernatural going on in the world may convince a believer, or it may not. Yelling at them or ridiculing them beyond their tolerance for ridicule probably makes them more entrenched in their belief, so Russell's being fairly restrained so far.

In this debate, however, the pastor just starts spewing unfocused nonsense. It ramps up significantly in this third post, and then gets worse in following posts. It makes it hard to be respectful of the pastor from here on out. He just really sucks at this. On to the recap:

The pastor immediately whines:

"I am disappointed in your response [...] your condescending remark about me spending many paragraphs on something trivial was unwarranted and unnecessary."

It would be difficult to be won over by this display of thin skin.

Then there’s more emotional gnashing of teeth:

you are doing exactly what I feared you would do“ [...followed by an accusation that Russell is...] “putting forth smoke and mirrors to try to get out of the trap that your position puts you in”

This was said in spite of the fact that he makes no effort to illustrate what the smoke and mirrors are, nor what the trap is that Russell is allegedly in. Thus we have the beginnings of the pattern that will reappear through the rest of the debate. Whine, accuse, claim victory, interject incomplete philosophical claims - and do it in a haphazard order that makes it difficult to understand what he’s getting at. He went on like this for about 30 more paragraphs. If you didn't know better, you'd suspect he was being purposely obtuse.

To give you an idea of how verbose this is: In a “normal” debate, opening statements might be the longest of all spoken segments. The subsequent rebuttal, objection, and closing segments tend to get shorter as the debate progresses. The opposite is true here. The pastor expends about 5500 words (not counting his salutation) - or about 60% more than William Lane Craig might use in his entire opening - and longest - statement.

The pastor also trotted out some other themes that would reoccur:

“atheistic universe where the governing principle is random chance” ... “transcendental logic” ... “ducking the issue of presuppositions"

Notable crazy rantlet:

"if your presuppositions can be shown to be impossible, then does not your entire position come tumbling down? The answer is yes, whether you like it or not."

Tellingly, he doesn't recognize that he hasn't demonstrated that Russell's presuppositions are impossible, and he never presents a plausible alternative. It's as if he has an imaginary debate going on in his head, and we don't get to see his best work.

... "inductive inference / uniformity of nature" ... "transcendental precondition” ... On and on and on these buzz-phrases roll - a few wrapped in intelligible sentences, but few in intelligible paragraphs.

What he appears to be doing is saying that inductive and deductive inferences are unreliable because they rely on presuppositions, and that presuppositions must be explained. He conveniently forgets that his whole “God” alternative is an unwarranted presupposition.

In his half of the round Russell calls him out, on his presupposition of God, his misuse of the word “random” and his erroneous “atheism implies a random universe“ attack.

Finally, Russell summarizes the Round Three exchange nicely:

1. Both Stephen and Russell should agree that some concepts are axiomatic, requiring no explanation. For Stephen, the axiom is God. For Russell, reality and logic are axiomatic, and God is a needless insertion.

2. Stephen cannot assert that the existence of logic requires justification, unless he also attempts to offer a justification of God. If he believes that this is unnecessary, then he should grant point.

3. If the assumptions for all parties are arbitrary then Russell should win this debate, since Stephen failed to meet the burden of proof that he implied when stating that atheism is impossible. If the belief in God is merely Stephen’s preferred assumption, then it is not necessary, and may be discarded due to Occam’s Razor.

4. Stephen’s claim that a godless universe must be a random universe (where “random” is used to mean “inconsistent,” “illogical,” or “haphazard,” as opposed to merely “undirected”) requires justification, otherwise I reject the premise.

5. Stephen should justify how a God would go about “creating” the laws of logic, without himself being subject to logic.

Next time, I’ll break out Round Four separately, and attempt to pick up where Deacon left off.

Impenetrable Quasi-philosophical Wankery

Presuppositionalist apologetics asserts that "the acceptance of the proposition 'God exists' and the truth of the Christian Bible is necessary in order for the world to be intelligible". We were treated to a public example of presuppositionalism in the online "discussion" between Pastor Stephen Feinstein & Russell Glasser this summer and fall. I've made some passing references to the discussion previously: here, here, here and here.

I took my sweet time reading all ten of the "official" posts - plus an eleventh parting shot from PSF - mainly because the Pastor's first two posts had all the literary charm of a grocery list. He didn't seem anxious to make his argument(s). Instead, he wanted to reject the idea of self-evident truths (axioms in Russell's parlance, "preconditions" in the Pastor's), and argue that Russell's axioms needed explaining or justifying, while his own preconditions (God) did not. It was grade-school stuff.

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The prior paragraph is worth emphasizing.

Feinstein assumes that the existence of God to make the world intelligible requires no proof or justification, whereas he demands proof or justification for natural axioms that make the world intelligible as declared by Russell. That double standard really prevents establishing common ground on which the two parties can communicate.

The rest of us amateur counter-apologists might do well to point out that hypocrisy at the beginning of any street debate with a presuppositionalist, and terminate the discussion if he isn't willing or able to present objective evidence or a sound argument for God before proceeding.

Or suggest the following:

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Returning to the written discussion:

While the presuppositionalist axiom "God exists" remains a matter of conjecture in the reality-based community, its corollary that "the truth of the Christian Bible is necessary in order for the world to be intelligible" relies wholly on God's existence - without which it is meaningless. In Feinstein's posts, we are offered no justification for these claims, which renders anything based on them irrelevant. He could have just stayed home, for all the meaning he was able to impart.

Let me turn to what I think PSF's core argument was supposed to be - the Transcendental Argument for God ("TAG"). Here's the short form:

1. If there is no god (most often the entity God, defined as the god of the Christian bible), knowledge is not possible.
2. Knowledge is possible (or some other statement pertaining to logic or morality).
3. Therefore a god exists.

We never saw the argument in this canonical form anywhere in PSF's posts, although he refers to a "Transcendental Argument" in round four, implying that he'd either presented it earlier, or that Russell was expected to understand it without the Pastor having to articulate it. By rereading his first three posts, we can guess, in retrospect, that he recognizes the TAG syllogism in his thinking, but he never expresses it in writing. Regardless, TAG is refuted easily because the first premise relies on the conclusion - a classic circular argument. He wasted thousands of words on this.

In PSF's first post, he establishes his position:

"I plan to debate the issues, and why I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible."
...
"I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility."

Immediately I'm struck by the "atheism as a world view" perspective. Since atheism is lack of belief in a personal deity - and only that - we'll see him construct a more elaborate and hypothetical "atheist world view" that he will then tear down - an obvious straw man. This seems like a common theme used by theists - "atheism is a world view" or "atheism is a religion", yet atheism is (say it with me, people!) an intellectual stance on only one topic. I think this might be worth the atheist community re-emphasizing: It's. Just. One. Topic. It's. Not. A. Religion.

You'll note that the Pastor, besides skipping merrily past an argument for the existence of God (any god, let alone a Christian one), also fails to demonstrate that lack of belief in a deity - atheism - is "untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible". At this rate, I'm betting that it will be decades before PSF is able to stake out a claim as a middle-tier apologist.

PSF further asserts:

"All science, all theories of cosmology, all viewpoints of anthropology, and just about everything else falls under the scope of philosophy and specifically epistemology. As a result, I am going to push all of our arguments into this realm, because it is where they belong by logical necessity."

This claim is a good case of "making shit up" - very philosophical sounding. What reason do we have to accept his claim? The actual practices and products of cosmology and the other "-ologies" belong in the real world where they presently exist, and where their hypotheses can continue to be tested, evaluated, discarded, or modified. The strategy of making this a philosophical discussion just screams "THIS IS NOT ABOUT REALITY".

Okay then ...

I won't go through each post individually. PSF's are a train wreck (although they inspired a morbid fascination) - and Russell shows obvious irritation in his third and fourth posts as the train wreck tumbles into the ravine. I'll still recommend them, however, because they illustrate the magical world view that assumes that the supernatural exists and has some influence on our lives. In general, this series was mostly mud-wrestling about how we can know things, none of which addresses the question of whether a god could exist and be responsible for "intelligibility".

Some other general comments:

One, a shortcoming in the debate format may have been the lack of more formal rules. Neither PSF nor RG state the proposition that they're discussing prior to beginning their theses. Readers can assume it's "Does God exist?", but the discourse would probably would have benefitted from some debating conventions to help the participants "flow".

Two, PSF is the poster child for circumlocution. He apparently thinks he has a knock-down argument to make, he starts talking and he just can't stop. It's almost as if he didn't know what the point of each of his posts was. He just circled for a while and stopped after he was tired of circling. He filibusters for two or three posts - promising in the first two to make his arguments soon - before RG "gives him something he can work with". We might suppose the Pastor's strategy was to rope-a-dope until Russell blurted out something that he could attack. Since I expected PSF to be making an "Affirmative Construction", this stood out like a sore thumb.

In fairness, the Pastor's first two posts were a decent length, had they contained his positive arguments. The following three were way too long. To illustrate, here's a (reasonably accurate) word count of all five - plus his sixth, unsolicited parting shot:

1. 1822
2. 2879
3. 5480
4. 5478
5. 7813
6. 2780 (PSF's self-solicited bonus post)

Let me contrast them to an imaginary 20 minute "First Negative Construction" that I wrote in October - it was 3489 words, including section headers and salutation. My post requires verbal delivery at a pretty good clip, because of its length. I've timed it twice - just to be sure it conformed to a twenty minute limit. If you followed the 20-12-8-5 minute debate format that you often see Dr. William Lane Craig engage in, then my word count should have diminished to 2091, 1396 and 872 over a four round debate. Feinstein's grew by a hilarious amount. His Round Five effort would have taken 45 minutes to deliver if given at a similarly brisk pace.

Three, another peeve: PSF was whiny. In round three, PSF uses "disappointed", "feared", "condescending" and other personal or emotionally-tinged words that just rub me the wrong way. Toughen up Pastor! Have Faith - or something. :-D

All said, there wasn't anything in PSF's lengthy circumlocutions that would persuade a non-believer that god exists. You might not have the patience to sit through it all, even if there was something there.

In contrast (yes, I'm biased), I appreciate the way that RG conducts his end of the discussion. He's much more concise, he didn't have to construct an elaborate straw edifice to knock down, and he didn't have to maneuver the discussion out of the real world into the world of epistemology and philosophy where anything can be rationalized. He was able to pretty much say, "here's what exists, here are axioms that are self evident, and here's how we apply observation and reason to build a knowledge base."

Russell sums it all up this way:

"Presuppositionalists don’t present evidence. They balk at the notion that they should attempt to persuade. They delight in impenetrable quasi-philosophical wankery. They toss in little jibes like “You know in your heart of hearts that I am right.” And then they go for the big finish with the “On your knees, sinner!” speech.

When all is said and done, we might as well be trying to convince people in the modern world that Ra is still necessary to explain the movement of the sun."

"Impenetrable quasi-philosophical wankery" ... Yeah, we saw that!

Presupposing that a Christian God exists

Before I stumbled across Deacon Duncan's review of the debate between Russell Glasser and Pastor Stephen Feinstein, I'd started reading the debate (my prior comments are here and here), and was planning a more elaborate review. Since Duncan is doing this already, I'm relieved of that motivation, and can record my take-away for handy recall, should I ever need it. To re-establish the context of the Glasser-Feinstein debate, Glasser is an atheist, Feinstein is a presuppositionalist apologist, and the topic - which I never saw declared, but which I infer from Feinstein's opening post - is that a Christian worldview is correct.

Pastor Stephen Feinstein asserts that without the Christian God, intelligibility is not possible, thus atheism is impossible. By this last phrase, I believe he means that the lack of belief in a personal god - atheism - cannot be true. His words:

I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility

In a nutshell, Feinstein's argument reduces to an unsupported assertion that the Christian God exists.

My summary - which draws on my own thoughts as well as Duncan's - is this:

Reality must present itself in a way that's capable of being comprehended by hypothetical observers if it is to be understood - it must be "self-consistent". Its features, their attributes, behaviors and relationships must be repeatable under repeatable conditions in order to be understood. From observations that we actual observers make, we can then make inferences about their attributes, behaviors and relationships that might pertain under varying conditions. From those inferences, we then can derive fundamental conventions ("laws" or "axioms") upon which other knowledge items are constructed. Introducing unobserved features into this framework makes the framework inconsistent and thus unintelligible. A god is just such an unobserved feature.

A god or other unobservable feature is not logically ruled out in this scheme, but is instead made unnecessary due to the principle of parsimony ("Occam's Razor"). All other things being equal, the simpler scheme is to be preferred.

It's that simple.