Paul Manata and TAG
Offline Paul Manata has "come out of the closet". The TAG closet, that is.
Those of us that have debated/argued with Paul Manata over the years or those who listened with interest to his debate with Dan Barker owe themselves a read. Paul describes himself as a former "right wing Van Tillian", and now acknowledges his belief rests on faith instead of certainty.
After Paul spells out in detail that the TAG doesn't do as it says, prove the impossibility of the contrary and publically not only admits it is a bad argument but challenges others to defend it, he makes this statement acknowledging his belief is faith based.
"I actually find zero psychological or emotional problems admitting this. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I trust in the word of Christ. The mere logically possibility that another worldview also can provide for preconditions of knowledge does not bother me. I don't see anywhere where God promises that I'll have this kind of certainty. I am called to trust in His word. I don't question it."
here
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/10/coming-out-of-closet.html
and here
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-on-tag-and-certainity_05.html
Now, I realize this threads aren't new, but they are new to me because I had pretty much given up on Paul. I could easily discern that he was increasingly well read and refined in his debating skills but believed he was so immersed in his dogma that he couldn't see the obvious flaws in the TAG argument. Apparently I was wrong.
Paul, if you read this, my respect for you has increased substantially.
- Login to post comments
That's a ditto from me. That puts him just barely above negative infinity on my respect meter.
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Support our activism efforts by making your Amazon purchases via this link.
haha. I hear you. There are personal issues that I am setting aside and only talking about him dropping the transcendental argument. I also thought others here would perhaps find it significant that one of the most vocal internet TAG proponents would come out and publically denounce it. We all were pointing out the same problems to the TAGGERS and they would just go on attack. That one of them has now thrown the same critiques back at the others is very interesting. At least to me it is.
Excuse my ignorance, but WTF is TAG?
Here's a Wikipedia article. TAG is akin to the argument which says the problem of induction implies a God.
Frankly, Manata wasn't that interesting anyway. The Reformed formulation is much better. Good riddance, eh?
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
After years of tossing insults and running away from backing up his inane assertions, he finally concedes the obvious.
After having people spell this out in detail to him, for years.
What an asshole. It took him years to figure out that faith doesn't get you anything, let alone certainty.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
One thing that I've found about debate is that it rarely delivered instant results.
I know that I've never been instantly turned by an argument, and often during the debate I can miss a lot of the points being made, throw a lot reflex counters and not always fully address my opponent's point.
However, although I don't instantly 'get' these points, they often slowly seep into my subconscious, the functions of the mind that continually analyse data even when we're not aware of it.
Then after time the subconscious delivers results of this analysis, giving sudden insights or inspirations, and as the ideas swim around the points that I didn't really get before they finally start to convince me.
Changing an opinion on a position is a complex thing that happens over time.
So when people criticise debate, claim that it isn't going anywhere because both sides appear to be just shouting past the other, it seems that they have only a very shallow idea of what's going on in these minds.
I'd imagine that these anti-tag arguments finally sunk into this Paul guy.
Now we just after get onto the anti-faith ones... they should only take a couple of years or so to sink in!
As a Christian proponent of TAG, I agree with Manata's remarks as well. TAG does not necessarily (100%) prove the existence of God or a god. This is fine to admit because actually nothing proves anything with 100%. As far as proofs go in being useful, they only give us propensities (liklihoods) based on the data or information available to us at the moment.
Being said, TAG is still proof of God's or a god's existence (from a strictly human rational angle) just as much as any other proof. What I'm sure Paul is advocating in terms of getting to the 100% proof of God's existence is that "we can't know anything for certain, unless that which is certain makes itself known to us." Apart from this, nothing can be known for certain, we can only have good reasons for believing things. This is why Paul ultimately falls back on God given faith. Christians believe that God must change one's heart to believe in Him (because otherwise we are by nature hostile to Him), not necessarily believe in Him by rationality in and of itself (which TAG would argue only God can account for).
You are mixing up deduction with induction.
Induction cannot provide 'proofs'
Deduction can.
Proofs are certain.
Proofs are from mathematics/deduction. They provide certainties.
Inductive claims cannot provide proofs at all. They provide likelihoods.
TAG is a miserable argument, it demonstrates nothing other than a lack of basic knowledge of logic, and I think even Manata can see that now.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
todangst,
The word "proofs" can be a game of symantics. If what you're saying is really the case then no scientist has any proof of anything, because all science it based on induction, or generalizations of our limited data (because no one is omniscient).
Further, deductions only work in thought, not practically. No one can prove that numbers even exist. We just assume they do based on a-priori assumptions, which actually ties into TAG if we are going to ask what must first be the case before immaterial classifications (such as number) can exist.
And you're misinterpreting TAG. It does not ask where do logical syllogisms come from or where does induction and deduction come from, but moreso, where do the 3 laws of logic come from? Simply stated, the laws of logic require immaterial classifications (which are purely material word can't account for), that they be universal and absolute (which the finite can't create), and the law of non-contradiction (a prescriptive not descriptive law). All of these are required to think, thus even do science.
(These 3 laws are the law of identify, the law of excluded middle, and the law of non-contradiction)
TAG is hardly a monolithic entity. TAGers in fact DO put up arguments based on the problems of induction. So you're wrong here.
This is utter nonsense.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/supernatural_and_immaterial_are_broken_concepts
http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_materialist_account_for_abstractions_or_how_theists_misplace_the_universe
Incorrect. All thought is not logical thought. Dreams contain violations of the law of non contradiction.
These are not the laws of logic. You've given the axioms of syllogistic logic, and they are not even univeral to logic, let alone all thought.
Anyone who asserts that these are the laws of logic demonstrates that the closest they've ever come to a logic textbook was during a visit to the library
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
No, it is not. You can use the word corredtly or misuse it. Your choice.
Oh my!
Hey, guess what. They don't have proof of anything. Any scientific claim is falsifiable, and open to dispoof.
You can't prove in science, only disprove.
Does this mean every scientific claim is unproven? Yes.
Does this mean that we can reasonablyy doubt every scientific claim.
No.
Argument from Uncertainty
This is a bit different from Arguing from Ignorance. Arguing from uncertainty occurs when one attempts to use the tentative nature of inductive claims as a reason in of itself to reject an inductive claim. Inductive claims are accepted or rejected on a probabilistic basis, as per their evidence.
Consider the following table:
Here we can see that whereas mountains of evidence exist to support the notion of gravity, there is but a dearth of evidence to support "Big Foot' Therefore, while both ideas lie along the continuum, they are hardly equitable in truth value. We can reasonably reject Big foot claims, while we can reasonably accept claims about gravity.
"Quite frequently I encounter people who equate lack of certitude with giant inferential leaps. Science deals with probabilities, often quite high probabilities, but not certitudes. It is one of the strengths of the scientific method as it acknowledges a chance of error(while maintaining rigorous standards to establish provisional acceptance of propositions). Therefore, to reject a claim such as "smoking is bad for your heatlh" based on the tentative nature of scientfic claims in of itself, is equitable with questioning whether there is gravity (as the concept of gravity is an inductive claim as well.)
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'