Political Revolution: From Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. - Abraham Lincoln

I voted for G.W. Bush in 2000. There I said it. I knew nothing about him but of course my whole family votes Republican so back then I voted Republican. It was also the first time I could officially vote for a Presidential candidate so you always get one "mistake vote" in your life, right? Usually it's your first one too. Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better because despite Al Gore /actually/ getting more votes, G. W. was elected our 43 President. Sorry that I contributed to that, everyone. In the words of Rick Perry "... Oops."

As we all know the year after President Bush took office in 2001 the attacks on the World Trade Center happened. My friend and roommate at the time recommended I read some "unconventional" scholars on current affairs and history. So I did. I read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Noam Chomsky's short book- 9/11: Was There an Alternative? Chomsky was against the war in Afghanistan from the start. This blew my mind. Virtually everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, Fox News/CNN/MSNBC - ALL were lock-step with our President when it came to the Afghanistan war.

This is the very moment when I turned into a liberal. I began to read all sorts of books by many on the left about all of our wars and what the CIA calls "blow back". Then of course Bush makes his announcement we were going to go to war with Iraq. Like many people in this country I was confused. The media painted the picture for Bush's administration and made his case linking 9/11 hijackers with Iraq (even though the hijackers were all /actually/ from our ally- Saudi Arabia). Before they were looking for WMDs I was reading articles in the Nation and many other left-wing newspapers that said that this was all a lie - Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

We all know how that turned out. These left-wing articles, magazines and books were all right about that. A complete failure of a war with the wrong country - creating a vacuum for would-be Islamic fascists after removing Saddam. And of course now we have ISIS. It isn't quite so simple, there is more to the story, but needless to say one thing is for sure: Without Bush's War in Iraq there would be no Islamic State as we see them today. (which actually IS a threat to the U.S. unlike Saddam's Iraqi army).

This was in the days of myspace and I did a bit of political blogging on myspace back then. I swallowed everything Michael Moore was feeding us young impressionable liberals hook, line, and sinker. I had a close friend who was a die-hard Republican and Bush supporter. We argued in great detail day in and day out online about the War in Iraq. Passions ran high in each exchange and she had her very Republican, Christian dad join in on some counterpoints from time to time. I still have those exchanges printed out (not sure why?). I read through them the other day and laughed at how misinformed I was about things and how misinformed she was as well. As these things usually devolve - we ended on a sour note, but she always said no matter what she just agreed with President Bush; that someday down the road history will judge the Iraq War and that overall it was a good decision to invade Iraq. I of course disagreed and still do.

I want to reach out to her again, but have lost contact unfortunately. I'd love to know where she stands now on the Iraq War since the overwhelming majority of American citizens (even Republicans) consider it a bad idea that we invaded Iraq. I also want to reach out to her because I want her to know where I stand now on other issues we once discussed. I was very wrong on many things ... One of the major things was my naive Reza Aslan-like views of Islam. I no longer consider it the religion of peace I claimed it to be. I no longer consider modern day terrorism to have "nothing to do with Islam." My views of Islam more currently line up with Sam Harris or Maajid Nawaz. My friend had very much been right about her thoughts on Islam back then.

Fast forward to 2008 with then-candidate Barack Obama gaining steam over Hillary Clinton (who, like now was supposed to be crowned the democratic candidate with no serious opposition). I didn't like Hillary Clinton back then and I don't like her currently. Like most of us I didn't really know much about Barack Obama. I did know one thing - He voted AGAINST the Iraq war while Hillary Clinton voted FOR it. This was enough for me. The horrible mistake to invade a country that never attacked our country by a horrible excuse for a President was at the top of my list of issues. Most democrats voted for the war in Iraq. It felt like a bad dream, at that time, when all who claim to be liberal suddenly bought the propaganda for the Iraq War by the Republicans! This was when I realized very much that I wasn't a democrat. Sure, I was a liberal, but I was an independent that couldn't be one of the two parties because both parties were dead wrong about Iraq.

This to me was an unforgivable mistake. It still is! I don't have a short memory like most of my democrat friends ... this is a war (supported by fiscal conservatives where trillions of tax dollars were spent) we're talking about not some pet issue. Hundreds of thousands of people died on both sides in this war of choice in which congress overwhelmingly voted with Bush. So I voted for Obama. The first four years of Obama's presidency were frustrating to me to say the least. Many of us liberals considered Obama a centrist at best. He didn't close down Guantanamo Bay as he had promised and continued many of the wars Bush had started. Obviously many of these things that bothered us liberals were obstructed by Republicans in congress but Obama had both houses in the beginning of his first term and didn't do much that he should have done with such control. He did hold strictly to Bush's timeline of exiting Iraq, but he was, and still does constantly bomb Pakistan and several different countries with drones with no congressional oversight. In some ways we liberals found him almost worse than G.W. Bush because he fooled liberals that he was much less hawkish than Bush. There were several bills he signed in his first four years that continued Bush's war on our civil liberties.

During this time I began to read much more of the libertarian philosophy. There is usually a streak of libertarianism in many old school liberals - mostly in social issues. Obama was not talking as he is now about ending the drug war or decriminalizing marijuana. President Obama was still increasing the defensive budget as Bush did while libertarians were beginning to speak out against these endless wars and endless spending on national defense. Valid concerns were being raised by people like congressman Ron Paul. His son Rand was also vocal on issues with our civil liberties, with bills such as the Patriot Act and NSA spying. Obama was just not the man we liberals thought he would be or should be.

We wanted /actual/ change! Real progressive change! So in 2011 I joined up with some libertarian friends and started pushing for Ron Paul. My friend was a die-hard Ron Paul libertarian and convinced myself and my friend Forrest (Gog) to join in with him for the cause of Ron Paul getting the GOP nomination. We caucused for Ron Paul and became delegates for him. Ron Paul ended up winning in Nevada and we were all apart of this. The experience of being embedded in the political mix and doing the work to get our candidate the nomination was a very rewarding experience.

Once in Reno, NV my friend Forrest and I (liberals who mostly vote Democrat) found ourselves in the belly of the GOP beast. We certainly were upsetting this giant buffet-loving belly. For example, we were all asked to stand and bow our heads to pray at the beginning of the events each day. Forrest refused and stayed seated (he is an atheist like myself) and many people gave him dirty looks. We all engaged in several arguments with Romney supporters that could not understand why we would not be voting for whoever won the GOP nomination. They didn't understand we were there ONLY for Ron Paul. If Ron Paul got the nomination we would be voting Republican in that upcoming general election. If the GOP base didn't make Ron Paul their nominee we would likely be voting 3rd party or begrudgingly again for President Obama.

I still stand by my campaigning and being a delegate for Ron Paul. I had to recently switch back to a registered democrat because in Nevada you cannot vote across party lines in the caucus. There are several policies that I differ with Ron Paul. I don't think Ron or Rand give nearly enough attention to the very real and really the most looming problem of our lifetime - climate change. This is where I diverge with many libertarians. Yes I also want free-market solutions for sustainable, clean energy but I think at this point it's necessary to have federal and state government intervention and regulation of carbon and other fossil fuels. All-hands-on-deck approach to me is necessary for this problem we must mitigate immediately! Most my issues with Ron and Rand too have to do with environmental regulations. As of recent I also feel I've moved further away from isolationist philosophy regarding foreign policy. I think we to a degree do need a serious plan of attack to stomp out ISIS and many other radical Islamists terror cells. I feel as if the Chomsky/Ron Paul philosophy of U.S. military involvement = all our problems with terrorism is too simplistic and not the whole truth. It's just not that simple. It's much more complex with multiple factors - deep personal belief in a strand of one religion being at the forefront.

So here we are today. I went from being a delegate for Mr. Free-Markets-Solve-All-Things Himself (Ron Paul) to canvassing and caucusing for an open proud democratic socialist - Bernie Sanders. It's not all that unusual actually. I know a few once-Paul-now-Sanders supporters. And it's actually not even really like that. I have always liked the independent Bernie Sanders in congress. Even when I was campaigning for Paul. He was a frequent guest on Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time" and made great points on issues in which I agreed with. So I've always liked Bernie Sanders. I liked that he wasn't beholden to one party! Our country clearly wants someone outside of the political two-party system this election cycle. Trump was basically once a liberal now he's playing the part of a Tea Party conservative with Neo-con talking points. Or what one person said - Trump's playing Stephen Colbert's old character, just will billions of dollars.

There really is a similarity here between Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders. I realize that many die-hard Ron Paul "rEVOLution" supporters would take issue with that. Ron Paul has said that he respects Sanders and they have worked together in congress in years past. Paul considers democratic socialism deeply flawed though, but I simply disagree. There are positives and negatives about libertarianism and I prefer to pick out the ones I like and mix them with democratic socialism. I know it's a radically absurd idea but if Sanders doesn't pick Elizabeth Warren (if she would even consider it) as a VP if he wins the nomination it would blow our minds and possibly unite the country if he picked Ron Paul as his VP. One could only dream I suppose. Though Warren as VP would be so amazing!

This coming Saturday is the caucus for Nevada democratic party and all of us Bernie Sanders supporters will be out in full force to support our candidate. I have received some push back from old school democrats that no matter what we all need to fall in line and get behind Hillary in the general election if she wins this against Bernie. I would hope that there are enough actual liberals and progressives in the democratic party to push the scales slightly over to Bernie's favor and elect him to represent us. It still seems unlikely but we have some hope now because Bernie, unlike Queen Shillery is surging!

I don't want to "fall in line" for Democrats like the Republicans wanted me to "fall in line" for Romney if he beat Paul in primaries. No. I'm not a Republican (gag!) and I'm not a Democrat either. Sorry, I don't want to "fall in line" because I can't stand Hillary Clinton. Some reasons are for the same reasons the Republicans can't stand her. She seems like a slime-ball politician that will (just like Ted Cruz) say anything to get elected. She's fake, she's a liar and she's wrapped in crony capitalism dark money. It's not at all progressive and it's barely status quo. We need someone that will actually change this country. President Obama's last 4 years were so much better than his first four years. He did some very rational, wise, and helpful things for this country, but we want to go further because we, for once, have a candidate that will take us that far -

Bernie Sanders!

So will I likely vote for Hillary over a Trump, Cruz, or Rubio? Yeah, probably (gag!). I jokingly said I will get black-out drunk first on November 3rd so that I have no memory of voting for some queen shill that strongly supported Bush's war in Iraq. I vowed years ago to never vote for anyone that supported that war. Hillary isn't quite as bad as a Romney, I guess...  but she's basically the same when the dust has settled. Romney and Clinton are pretty much the same - one just gives kick backs to different industries than the other. Hillary has Wall Street, giant financial firms, and banks. Romney had big oil, coal, all the above etc. Bernie is truly unique. He doesn't have a SuperPAC. He can't be bought by the billionaires. Nope. Bernie is not for sale. He doesn't take donation money from the same financial institutions and banks that brought down our economy like Hillary does. We, liberals are the smart ones right? So why would you ever vote for someone like Hillary (besides oh, right she's a woman).

So what? A vagina = vote? Really? That's really all it takes for some people. I don't remember thinking Obama is black - that alone is enough for my vote! NO. How ignorant. It's too late to sit back and just watch this all fall back into the hands that usual control our economy and all of our lives. We have this chance right now to vote for someone that will bring change to this country. Change we need now more than ever. Let's actually be fiscally conservatives! We need to take care of our own and stop spending trillions on wars with countries that never attacked us. Let's stop shoveling money into a broken war on drugs. Let's turn off our cable news altogether. Let's stop building straw men (Fox News w/ President Obama) then tearing down these straw men. Let's stop creating fake problems (Trump said a cuss word! Beyonce shook her butt on TV! OUTRAGE!) and deal with real problems like climate change. We need to realize making money off of the health of our citizens is fucking immoral. We need to realize that making money off of making college less and less accessible for working class citizens of our country is fucking immoral. We cannot survive as a whole nation, with crumbling infrastructures and this deep wealth inequality. This cannot be the way forward for America - the top 1/10th of 1% just take it ALL!

#FeelTheBern ! Please vote Bernie Sanders in your state's primaries, caucuses then general election. But NOW is the time to get political! Now is the time to not just settle for who the party wants you to vote for - the Bush's the Clintons. Stop! Wake the fuck up liberal America, black America, progressive America, ACTUAL conservative America - Bernie Sanders is right here- the perfect candidate to change it all for the better. We don't get chances like this very often in our life times if at all - this is it. Don't let this opportunity pass by because you are lazy or misinformed and/or brainwashed by the propaganda of TV news or your favorite radio personality. Vote smart!

Vote Sanders NOW in your state! Find out how and where you are voting and caucusing!

This is video below is short. If you are feeling apathetic towards politics. Watch this. Just watch it. and you will see why this is so important.

Bernie Sanders, "Don't let anyone tell you politics is bullshit"...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ86jToKVPs

Sites:

How to vote for Bernie Sanders in Nevada Caucus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs7Ve2l3mdA

Operation Cyclone (When President Reagan armed the Mujahideen to fight Russians):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

Bernie Sanders explains democratic socialism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6T_TCE064

Bernie Sanders (in the 80's) defends gay soldiers from bigot Congressman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM

Ron Paul on Sander's plan for free education:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOlpT4yGyZ4

Ron Paul on Debunking Bernie Sanders Myth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J4TLIPB1uc

Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHHewmk3_P8

The Mind-Body "Problem": A Blog Short by Gog

The mind-body problem arises from a category error due to grammatical muddles. For an obvious illustration: It's a bit like what Wittgenstein said that imagine that "Mr. Nobody is in the room" became part of our colloquial talk and it had the same use as the regular, "Nobody is in the room." In this case, the idea that 'Mr. Nobody' refers to something would be a mistake. And it'd be a grammatical mistake. So any so-called philosophical problem that came from treating 'Mr. Nobody' as referring to something would be a mistake.

Basically, the problem arises by treating "there occur brain processes" and "there occur mental processes" to be of the same grammatical rules.

Comparing "there occur mental processes" and "there occur brain processes" as having the same underlying rules of language use is a bit like treating "happiness came to my party" and "John came to my party" as having the same underlying rules of language use.  It would obviously be a mistake firstly to think that 'happiness' represents an entity, like 'Johnny'. But it is furthermore, and more subtle, a mistake to think that happiness coming to a party is anything like a person coming to a party.

The mind-body so-called problem arises because of a mistake that would arise from treating 'happiness' like 'Johnny' and their coming and going to places similarly, in that mental processes are treated as para-mechanical to make them "work" with (or at least be an epiphenomenon of) mechanical processes. Mental processes just don't make sense to be in episodic mechanistic pictures. It's not because they're "hidden" or "non-spatial". 

**A perfect example of how language misleads us given by Gilbert Ryle from his book The Concept of Mind:

Basically, If I say, "I'm attending to what I'm reading", we might think two seeming occurrences are simultaneously going on: reading and attending. But if I say, "I'm reading attentively", only one seeming occurrence is alluded to. Both sentences mean the same thing though, only there is an adverb use for 'attend' in the second sentence rather than the regular verb use that's in the first sentence. The second form of expression is less misleading than the first though, when philosophizing at least, because no occult occurrence is seemingly defined in addition to the reading. This book totally demolishes the myth of "the ghost in the machine ". So this "sky daddy theory" is largely the result of not being able to navigate basic grammar. "We aren't just physical stuff" - Okay, how are we defining 'stuff'? If you want to play the language-game of physics and evoke paramechanistic "things" in addition to mechanistic things, then you're just going to lose. Some stuff just isn't anything like other stuff! But that's a linguistic distinction, not a "beyond" or "outside of" or "supernatural" distinction. The stuff found in Super Mario bros, for example, just isn't the kind of stuff physicists study. But you don't need to explain Super Mario bros stuff in paramechanical terms. Maybe you explain it in terms of Koopa Troopas and mushroom kingdoms. Sorry, No "soul thing" exists in the way physical entities exist.

- Gog is Forrest Rice 

 SUPPORT HIM HERE!:

https://www.patreon.com/forrestrice?ty=h

**Taken from previous blog "Christ or Chaos": A Book Review+ by Gog and (Magog)

- Image taken from still of Forrest Rice's short film "Evolution of an Atmosphere" (in which I assisted in the making). Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGoY4ZFbGo

"Christ or Chaos": (A Book Review+) by Gog (& Magog)

¹⁸ I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. ¹⁹ Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. ²⁰All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. ²¹ Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” - Ecclesiastes 3:18-21

Introduction: Science or Storytelling?:

Dan Dewitt is the author of the book Christ or Chaos. This book is a follow-up to his first book Jesus Or Nothing. I know Dan. Our history goes far back to junior high school. We attended the same Christian private school in a small town in Illinois. We didn't really hang out growing up, but in the past five years or so we've exchanged a decent amount of emails discussing theology, philosophy, science etc. Dan is currently the dean of Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky. As for Dan's credentials: He holds a PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dan and I have a deep disagreement in many different things that will be highlighted to a small degree in this blog entry. I started a book review for Dan's first book yet never finished it, so this will have to do. Also, I would like to introduce those reading this to the soon to be co-author of this blog: Gog. His name is Forrest Rice. He is an independent filmmaker and my close friend. I'll link to his patreon account below where you will find several short films he's already made. In small degrees I have helped contribute to all of these films. Gog recently read through passages of Dan's newest book as well and will comment on these below. Dan is a friend but understandably I will be blunt, direct, and honest about how I feel towards the substance of this new book. First and foremost, I admire anyone that can finish a book - let alone two; so in this regard I deeply respect Dan's determination and passion for what he believes. There is a lot to comment about in this book and besides the part about Reza Aslan (who's dishonest about his credentials and expertise on Biblical scholarship) I disagree with most things on every page. I will inevitably miss a myriad of points that hopefully in upcoming blog entries I'll get around to addressing, but anyways, let's jump right in:

Dan begins his book with this:

The sun will probably kill us. That’s what scientists tell us. The large warmth-giving star our earth orbits around will continue to heat up until it burns all its nuclear fuel. Feeding its insatiable hunger for energy, it will grow into what experts call a “Red Giant.” In its hot wrath this giant will gobble up all life on earth and burp out a silent planet. The End.
...
The plot begins in a murky prebiotic ocean and ends in the heat death of all civilization. (Dewitt, pp 15-16)

Dan never claimed for this book to be a science textbook but there is a running theme throughout this book that is false. The main issue I have is despite Dan's best efforts the message of this book is too over-simplistic. The sharpest edge cutting through the dark unknown, the mysteries in physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, paleontology, psychology, and even philosophy paints a much more complex and different picture than what Dan is painting in his book. My overarching complaint about this book is it leaves way too many holes while jumping to conclusions based on nothing. Mostly, I feel the author needs to delve much deeper into the natural sciences and philosophy where he will find his conclusions are mostly faulty and don't actually solve any problems. There are several major categorical errors which I will address more about later. Ultimately, the book will just make people that accept the Jesus meta-narrative already happy and comforted confirming their worldview.

First example of over-simplicity: Take the first passage I quoted above. Yes. The star in which we orbit will finally begin it's helium-burning processes turning into a red giant star 5 billion years from now. What life is left on Earth 5 billion years from now will die. However, humans will not be around 5 billion years from now. That we know for a fact. How do we know? For one, just look back 5 billion years ago into our specie's past. What were humans billions of years ago? Well, there were no humans billions of years ago. There was no life then at all 5 billion years ago. There was no Earth 5 billion years ago. So, if by some chance "humans" are around that far in the future we will have evolved into something completely different and unrecognizable from our present species' anatomy. Our human ancestors around the time of the dinosaurs were small shrew-like rodents. So of course there will be no "civilization" .. at least not a human civilization when our star engulfs this planet.

Dan has a very passive aggressive attitude with evolution. His position specifically on what he accepts in the theory of evolution is still a little ambiguous to me. I'm not a biologist by trade. My rule of thumb is it's always best to side with the majority of scientists in the natural sciences on major theories. I clearly don't know more than 99% of all biologists about the theory of evolution. I think it's currently safe to say we can go with the 99%. Dan makes statements on evolution like this in his book,

If the supernatural perspective is as delusional as some authors suggest it is, then it should be easy to shake off. But we seem infected by it with no sign of a remedy. And if evolution is so crafty as to hardwire, direct, supervise, plan, architect, et cetera, so much of our outlook, then why can it not rid us of this pernicious fantasy? Or might it be that the Darwinian metanarrative has met its match? (Dewitt, pg. 120)

Of course, the naturalist /must/ assume that Darwinian evolution will, in time, give an adequate explanation of pretty much everything. For the naturalist, evolution is the only game in town. It is, in essence, the secular religion. (Dewitt, pg 86)

I'm always amazed at all the hardwiring, directing, deciding, and planning attributed to evolution. Somwhere between the Big Bang and the world we live in today, we are supposed to take a massive leap of faith and credit this blind process known as evolution, and its kissing cousin chance, with every kind of intellectual achievement. (Dewitt, pg. 113)

Evolution being a "secular religion" reminds me of many sermons, Sunday school classes, and Christian science courses growing up in my small hometown. Despite all the fancy dress-up of the New Christian spin it's really just "old-timey religion". Many arguments are just the same as those presented to me as a child by those without a degree in theology.

Dan has told me before he sees no problem with evolution. From previous talks, he didn't accept certain parts of the theory - like common descent. He's said that even if the biological theory of evolution was 100% true (which is settled science by the way) then it wouldn't affect the Bible, the gospel, or his faith. However from these quotes above from his book it would suggest otherwise. I would tend to agree with the conflict between religion and evolution. This flies in the face of theistic evolutionists such as Kenneth Miller or Francis Collins. A very good case could be made for evolution tearing apart the very idea of God. There is no other book better in highlighting this than Steve Stewart-Williams book Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew. I couldn't recommend this book more. I left a link to the book below. I will soon be doing a stand alone blog about this highly informative book. So keep an eye out for that.

So here's just a few things Dan is misinterpreting about evolution in regards to the above selection of quotes from his book:

Evolution doesn't have a "mind of it's own". Evolution doesn't "plan", "supervise", "architect", or "decide" anything. When evolutionary biologists or science writers use these words to describe the process of evolution over millions of years they don't mean it literally! These are merely helpful words for the general non-science readers. Many people that are religious cannot seriously get this bias out of their heads - that there is "purpose" or "planning" by a God or by a scientific process. No. no. no. There is no teleology in evolution- Period! All the theistic evolutionists in the world do not invoke God in their scientific papers or lab results. This is why theistic evolution is just evolution with some pointless word tacked on in front of it. You don't hear most evolutionary biologists say they are 'atheistic evolutionists'. Why? Because it doesn't matter. There are a lot of issues with language-use that Dan is getting tripped up on and I'll address those at the end of this blog.

Dan also brings up Alvin Plantinga's "evolutionary argument against naturalism." The idea goes like this:

1. Our beliefs about the world can only have evolutionary consequences if they affect our behaviors (otherwise they are invisible to natural selection);
2. Natural selection favors advantageous behaviors, not directly the ability to form true beliefs;
3. Natural selection has no way to favor true non-adaptive beliefs over false but adaptive beliefs.

Massimo Pigliucci addresses some basic problems with Plantinga's argument against naturalism,

What about C1? That one also doesn’t follow from the argument as stated, unless we add an additional, hidden premise: that natural selection is the only way for us to evolve the ability to form (largely) reliable beliefs about the world. But biologists agree that natural selection is just one evolutionary mechanism, and that a number of things come into existence in the biological world as byproducts of evolution. No serious biologist, for instance, would argue that our ability to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem, or — more prosaically — to, say, read trashy novels, is the result of evolution by natural selection. We are capable of both (and many other) feats as a byproduct of having large brains capable of sophisticated thinking. Those large brains evolved for reasons of survival and reproduction (e.g., the ability to coordinate large game hunting, or to advantageously interact in socially large groups, etc.) that have nothing directly to do with Fermat’s theorem or trashy novels.
...
There is another obvious problem with Plantinga’s argument: the definition of naturalism. To begin with, as Michael Ruse has pointed out in his own response to the EAAN [1], Plantinga fails to make the crucial distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. Science, and in particular the theory of evolution, is committed only to the former, not to the latter. More broadly, naturalism is actually surprisingly difficult to define, and what it logically entails is even more subject to debate. Plantinga gets around this by defining naturalism as “the idea that there is no such person as God or anything like God.” But which god is he talking about? Would the above mentioned Big Simulator count as a god? Not in Plantinga’s book, by why not? Indeed, naturalism doesn’t even need to be limited to physicalism, as for instance in the case of naturalist philosophers who entertain some versions of mathematical Platonism or structural realism. This doesn’t make naturalism incoherent, but it certainly makes it much less of the clearly defined target that Plantinga’s attempts to deploy. 
*Read a more in depth breakdown of Plantinga's argument from Pigliucci's blog I posted in the "sources" segment.
 
My friend Forrest Rice (*Gog) read some of Plantinga's ideas in his book God and Other Minds and had this to say about Plantinga,

First Quoting from " God and Other Minds" (1967), -- "... by drawing an equivalence between the teleological argument and the common sense view that people have of other minds existing by analogy with their own minds."

Already we can write it off. People don't come to believe in other minds by analogy to their own mind. Rather, we come to know how 'mind' is used in various ways. I don't believe /said person/ has a mind because he/she acts like me. I know /said person/ has a mind because I know how 'mind' in various ways is used. If I say, "Keep your mind on what's important" this has nothing to do with me extrapolating from me to you. There's hundreds of other ways in which the concept is used in real life and they having nothing to do with what philosophers theorize.

The Multiverse or an Old Book?:

In Dan's first book Jesus or Nothing he spends a bit of time bashing the multiverse theory. I have absolutely no problem with this. He's right. Currently there is no direct evidence in physics for this, but it is important to understand that there is elegant mathematics that comprises the backbone to the multiverse theory. On the other hand, what do we have as the backbone of a theistic (specifically Christian) view of the universe? A pieced-together book from antiquity written before science. I'll take mathematics over ancient writings when given a choice, but Dan is also right that the "nothing" in Krauss' book is technically "something" and if direct evidence for multiverse was found today we would still be justified in asking what came before/or created the multiverse? Of course, we can also be justified in asking the theist the same exact question: - What came before/who created God? Theists think they have an answer but it's not a sufficient answer. They have yet to solve the problem. God is eternal and is where it stops, you say? OK, then we are at a stalemate because you see the multiverse is eternal and is where it stops as well. So we're back to nothing.

Nature or Super-nature?:

It is what creation is pointing to beyond itself. Nature is simply doing its job. It is directing our attention upward. (Dewitt, Pg 69)

No. There is no teleology in nature. In academic circles, this died off soon after Darwin wrote Origin of Species. I find this line so insulting to all natural processes on our planet! What an insult to photosynthesis or respiration! What an insult to one element turning into another element (nuclear transmutation)! What an insult to nucleation in crystallography! These are some of the most amazing processes ever, some of which are crucial for the origin of life on Earth. Crudely attaching a "purpose" behind a biological mechanism is what theistic evolutionists do. It's simply unnecessary and unhelpful in understanding the planet. I've mentioned this in blogs past. We can filter our science through a Nordic or Wiccan perspective just as we can with a Christian perspective. That's fine for fun, but it's completely useless for discovery.

Adam and Eve or Genetic Evidence?:

If one wants to knock the foundation out from under Christianity all one needs to do is talk in detail about the historicity of the "First Adam" .. Let's set aside the historicity of the "Last Adam" (Jesus) for now. Let's look at the historicity of "Adam and Eve" because if this story didn't take place then Christianity fails before it gets going. Dan writes,

This reminds me of an exchange I recently had with my son Micah. "Daddy", he said, "I wish Adam and Eve never disobeyed God." "Me too, buddy - me too." I told him. I love at such a young age, he is learning to connect the dots between his sin and the sin nature he inherited from the first human, Adam. (Dewitt, pg 78)

Dan had mentioned once in an email that he was intending to read Jerry Coyne's book, Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. In this book Coyne writes,

Science has completely falsified the idea of the idea of a historical Adam and Eve, on two grounds. First, our species wasn't poofed into being by a sudden act of creation. We know beyond reasonable doubt that we evolved from a common ancestor with modern chimps, an ancestor living around six million years ago. Modern human traits - which include our brain and genetically determined behaviors - evolved gradually. Further, there were many species of proto-humans (all called "hominins") that branched off and died before te ancestors of our own species remained as the last branch. As many as four or five species of humanlike primates may have lived at the same time! Some of these extinct groups, like the Neanderthals, had culture and big brains, and were "modern" humans in all but name. Theologians, then, are forced to square the sudden incursion of sin with the gradual evolution of humans from earlier primates. More important, evolutionary geneticists now know that the human population could never have been as small as only two individuals... (Coyne, pp 126-127)

So when Dan uses the phrase "the first human, Adam" he is in conflict with discoveries in modern genetics. You would think there would be no wiggle room here, but of course there is. As we know religious apologetists are doing their job when squaring dogma with discoveries in science that point against said dogma. There is a handful of other theories for what "Adam and Eve" /really/ were in the Bible since there was no actual historicity to "the first man" as laid out in Genesis. Many liberal Christian theologians now consider the "Adam and Eve" story a metaphor. Though they still consider the gospel based on the historicity of "the Last Adam". So Jesus must have died for a metaphor if there was no actual "first Adam". Sounds like a pointless death to me.

On pages 106-107 Dan writes,

It's the sort of prejudice illustrated in a statement skeptics often make to Christians, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." While this might sound logical, it's often a way of saying that no amount of evidence could lead the skeptic to accept something supernatural. 

If evidence points beyond nature it is summarily disqualified as never meeting the floating standard of extraordinary evidence. The term is left nebulous, arbitrary, and elusive- conveniently undefined, so that evidence for the resurrection remains always out of reach and unobtainable. 

I have brought up this Carl Sagan metric for extraordinary evidence to Dan before in our email exchanges. First, take a step back and think about how science works and again compare that to this line of thinking in Dan's quote above. Science, as a method, pursues at excruciating levels to filter out as much bias as possible when formulating theories so that errors are not glossed over. This is at the very heart of science. This is why science as a discipline is extremely competitive and why scientists have a peer-review process. Christians aren't going about this search for /truth/ the same as scientists. As I said before it's backwards: starting with answers and retrofitting everything we know to these answers.

To approach anything scientifically we expect to have extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. Dan once asked me in these emails what I meant by "extraordinary". I responded and apparently he wasn't satisfied with my answer or wasn't listening since he calls this a "nebulous, arbitrary, elusive" requirement. I simply answered with : extraordinary evidence = extra amounts of evidence. Sure, I didn't put a number to the specific amount of evidence I was referring to but with something as extraordinary as a member of our species coming back to life after being dead for three days we need more than what Dan lays out in his book. We need a lot more! Especially with this being the most important event in history, with all our fell-fire fates on the line.

Also, I would like to take what Dan is saying here and throw it back to the very foundation of his faith - The "First Adam". If we know, as I pointed out, through modern genetics that there was never a "first human" and are left with these "nebulous, arbitrary, elusive" theories postulated, without evidence, by liberal theologians for the "First Adam" then why isn't this an issue? Why is the very bedrock of the Christian faith some elusive, vague, nebulous mystery with zero, yes ZERO historicity behind it. We must just brush past the historicity of "the origin of sin" then be expected to take on board -  the "Last Adam", the gospel, the resurrection, God's plan for our species and so on? This is just another example of "special pleading" in all it's glory.

So when Dan writes,

The incarnation and the resurrection are the historical events from which all of history derives its meaning. All our hope and all our longing is summarized in the simple words of a college student sitting in a coffee shop: - "Duh, Jesus."(Dewitt, pg 111)

That's not the full sentence. It's - "Duh, Jesus ... apparently died for a metaphor." If we cannot pinpoint the historicity of "The First Adam", "The Fall", "Original Sin" then all else is meaningless - Even the incarnation and resurrection events that according to Dan have enough historical evidence to accept the whole story.

Make no mistake about it Dan Dewitt believes not only in a literal "First Adam" (which has been disproved by genetics) but a literal "Garden of Eden". He brings it up in detail on page 119,

I don't think our nostalgia is the result of living in the sloped savanna near a water source that contributed to our survival. It is the ache of our hearts for a place where man and God once walked in peace, where human relationships were harmonious, and where death was not victorious.

It's often the case New Christians become very literal in their arguments when preaching to the choir about these important things like "the first human" but then use this vague, nebulous description of human origins when talking with skeptics. Look at a chart of hominid evolution and please point to me where precisely "the first human" is or where "the soul was seated" or when we became 100% made in the "image of God". It's silly and over-simplistic in the face of what we know about our origins through science. Hold them to an answer on this. They are very slippy when pinned down. They cannot have it both ways. The burden of proof is on those that claim a book has the answers OVER what modern genetics tells us. Let's hear something about this sometime from a New Christian somewhere. Please!

Para-Mechanisms or Currently Unknown Mental Processes?:

On pg. 64 Dan writes,

Why is it so breathtaking to view a vibrant sunrise, or witness a deed of kindness, or hear of an act of heroism? Why do these things strike us with more force than the Law of Gravity? If they cannot be explained in scientific categories, then why do they seem so important. 

This is good. This cuts right to the heart of the author's misunderstanding. Let's break it down. First though, I must say that to gain a much more balanced perspective (a little less anthropocentric) I have recommended before that Dan read books written by authors such as Frans de Waal, Jane Goodall, or Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (to name just a few), which will help cast a more accurate viewpoint on "human nature". Humans are not the only species that experiences many of these things Dan suggests are solely human-centered. In Moussaieff's book The Pig That Sang to the Moon he explains in great detail coming across a pig on a beach, smiling and singing to the moon with an expression that can only be described as joy or pure bliss. We think we are special. In some ways we are (we have the big brains in nature), but not these ways. Not on the emotional front. We are living among multiple species of emotional creatures. We are not the only species that has these core-emotional subjective experiences. And the more complex the subjective experience the more complex the neuroprocesses. It's really that simple.

Let me explain a little bit more about mental processes in our species. Take something like qualia for example. When philosophers or theologians say there's this immediate, private qualia, they are simply just ignorant about what goes on behind this impression. What goes on is something which involves numerous complex processes that they just don't understand. So let's not get ahead of ourselves, Christians. Not so fast with your answers to all things all the time. Humans don't understand these processes yet. I feel as if some day we will and we will by studying artificial intelligence. Gilbert Ryle said in his book The Concept of Mind that, The language of 'volitions' is the language of para-mechanical theory of mind.

*Remember we should be working outward from a place of humble ignorance. We have no answers to start and are trying to find answers (through centuries of scientific discoveries) not starting with answers (given to us in a book) and working to select and choose data that support that answer we've predetermined. This is not a healthy way to get to the truth. We've figured this out centuries ago.

My friend, Forrest Rice (Gog) wrote me regarding some passages he read from Christ or Chaos. He comments on the core of the book. Here's a few things he said regarding substantive dualism and "ghost organs" such as "souls" "spirits" and "minds".:

I never understood this "problem" about mindless causes preceding/causing/descending from/whatever, etc... minds. Why does a rational mind creating a mind ensure that it's rational? Couldn't you just as well have a rationally minded deity create an irrationally minded person?

Isn't the truth that sometimes our minds act rationally, sometimes irrationally, and that the origins of the mind (whatever that means) have nothing much you do with it? I mean, the etymology of words doesn't tell us what their actual uses are in any particular context, so who cares if the current norms have nothing to do with the original uses? Something similar is happening here. There's just this insane assumption that isn't remotely close to being a necessary condition, and Dan takes it as obvious. It's not obvious!

I'll take it further: Who cares if our bodies are made up of mindless mechanisms which purely arose from mindless self-replicating molecules? That's not what we're talking about when we're discussing what it means to have a rational mind. That just means that, basically, one acts and/or forms beliefs in accordance to the faculty of reason. You don't look at biological mechanisms to understand that. You see how human beings interact with each other and the world. We trust this faculty over a random shot in the dark because it can be demonstrated to allow us to be far more likely to understand, manipulate, account for, and predict phenomena. In fact, there's not even a "view" C.S. Lewis has built his straw man out of. It's just circular nonsense that no thinking person would subscribe to. To deny the faculty of reason means you can't even say, "Minds are unreliable because they came from mindless processes." That's a paradox and self-defeating (doesn't it look like we're giving a reason here?). So, if reason is an imperative, isn't that more important than if a deity endowed us with it? I think it's REASONABLE to say that our ability to reason isn't necessarily dependent upon having a rational deity instill us with it. I don't have to have "faith" in reason. 

There are quite a lot of problems in this book that stem from categorical errors and language. Forrest (Gog) continues to addresses this in our exchange regarding Dan's book --

A perfect example of how language misleads us given by Gilbert Ryle from his book "The Concept of Mind":

Basically, If I say, "I'm attending to what I'm reading", we might think two seeming occurrences are simultaneously going on: reading and attending.

But if I say, "I'm reading attentively", only one seeming occurrence is alluded to.

Both sentences mean the same thing though, only there is an adverb use for 'attend' in the second sentence rather than the regular verb use that's in the first sentence. The second form of expression is less misleading than the first though, when philosophizing at least, because no occult occurrence is seemingly defined in addition to the reading.

This book totally demolishes the myth of "the ghost in the machine ". So this "sky daddy theory" is largely the result of not being able to navigate basic grammar. "We aren't just physical stuff" - Okay, how are we defining 'stuff'? If you want to play the language-game of physics and evoke paramechanistic "things" in addition to mechanistic things, then you're just going to lose. Some stuff just isn't anything like other stuff! But that's a linguistic distinction, not a "beyond" or "outside of" or "supernatural" distinction. The stuff found in Super Mario bros, for example, just isn't the kind of stuff physicists study. But you don't need to explain Super Mario bros stuff in paramechanical terms. Maybe you explain it in terms of Koopa Troopas and mushroom kingdoms. Sorry, No "soul thing" exists in the way physical entities exist. 

The Gilbert Ryle book Gog and I are speaking of was written in 1949 and is skyrocketed to one of my top five favorite books ever written. This is just a brief passage from the opening chapter called "Decartes' Myth",

Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine'. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake of a special kind. It is namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type of category (or range of types of categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth. 

I must first indicate what is meant by the phrase 'Category mistake'. This I do in a series of illustrations: 

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. (Ryle, pp 15-16)
 

Another great excerpt from Ryle's The Concept of Mind demonstrates the problem with categorical mistakes (as Dan makes in this book, as all substantive dualists do),

Now the dogma of the 'Ghost in the Machine' does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I shall argue that these are other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself. I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase "there occur mental processes" does not mean the same sort of thing as "there occur physical processes", and therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two. (Ryle, pg. 22)

 

Conclusion: (Christ or Chaos?):

Dan hinges the book on a counter to Carl Sagan's quote, The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.

Forrest (Gog) had this to say about the Sagan quote and Dan's interpretation,

I don't think it's a clear proposition. I don't know what to make of it anymore. For example, some people would define 'cosmos' to include the measurable universe. If the statement means, basically, all that we can (i.e. makes sense to) measure or hope to measure, and/or represent mathematically, then Sagan is right. Depends on the use of 'thing'. Dan wants to say non-measurable para-mechanical things and processes exist and those exist "outside" of what's measurable. He's committing a linguistic category error. I would say Sagan is less misleading than Dan. But I see metaphysical "propositions" to usually be muddled unclarities to begin with. I just wouldn't make utterances like that. 

... Later Gog writes back,

Thinking about it now, I think Sagan's quote was somewhat poetic anyway. It seemed to be used more to set the tone of the show than to be some grandiose unassailable truth anyway. Funny, how atheists can't be poetic to theists, but any time atheists point out an absurdity in the bible, it's automatically only because atheists aren't understanding poetry. Whatever.

Overall I feel like Dan's second book in his ____ or ______ series falls flat on a lot of levels. I won't bother addressing the false dichotomy of this title and the last book because he's already addressed it and you can find several YouTube videos of Dan discussing his first book Jesus or Nothing. However, This book, in my humble opinion, is simply over-simplistic and distorts what we can and can't do with the theory of evolution. There is no "purpose" or "willing" by evolution, the cosmos, or any deity. There is no cosmic purpose, but that doesn't lead to nihilism. In his essay called "Navigating Past Nihilism" Sean D. Kelly writes,

The meaning that one finds in a life dedicated to "the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country." - these are genuine meanings. They are, in other words, completely sufficient to hold off the threat of nihilism, the threat that life will dissolve into a sequence of meaningless events. But they are nothing like the kind of universal meanings for which the monotheistic tradition of Christianity had hoped. Indeed, when taken up in the appropriate way, the commitments that animate the meanings in one person's life- to family, say, or work, or country, or even local religious community- become completely consistent with the possibility that someone else with radically different commitments might nevertheless by living in a way that deserves one's admiration.

By limiting the options to Jesus or nothing or Christ or chaos we are ignoring the rich array of other options out there. We are also, ignoring (as Kelly writes in the same article), many different lives of worth. Life can steer directly between these two wordviews and avoid nihilism and monotheism. We do not need 'one grand cosmic meaning' to counter nihilism. 'Local-level meaning' is the best meaning because it's based on verifiable real things. It's in front of you. it's never "out there" like the ghostly-afterlife destinations or sky daddy tales. We have real ape-meaning on a local ape-level with our fellow ape-species.

There is a central push behind Dan's arguments in these books that flirts with appeal to emotion. He isn't out right saying it but I catch a undertone of the sentiment that - We /must/ believe in 'the God of our fathers' because if not .... ??? ... how scary!!! .. Look, without God we're all just atoms in the void of a meaningless cosmos! To this I say, Please. Who cares? We can deal with this. Truth doesn't care what we think or feel and we should always be keeping our eye towards believing as many true things as possible in our lives.

I understand. We all have dads and so we extrapolate this to think our specific ape species has some ape(human)-looking dad "somewhere out there" who cares for us and so on, but this is completely wishful thinking for some based on zero evidence. However, not for others like atheist Christopher Hitchens, who, despite this upcoming New Christian book title suggesting otherwise, didn't have an ounce of faith in any of this sort of fantasy. I tend to agree with Hitchens, who thought it to be quite horrifying if it were true to have a celestial commander or dictator. No thanks.

Lastly, I did notice that Christ or Chaos doesn't mention hell at all. In his book we are not given that glimpse of the future for Dan's atheist main character Zach. Maybe this will be in upcoming books... that being Zach burning forever in a lake of fire. I look forward to that conclusion unless Dan decides to convert his main character to Christianity before the conclusion of Zach's story.
 
In the end we see that this is all really just a mix of category errors, misuse of language, and fundamental misunderstandings of scientific theories. I like Dan as a person. He's funny and engaging but we deeply disagree on these things and I feel it's important to get out the message as he feels it's equally as important to get out his message. We, Gog and Magog, had our say (for starters) in this blog, but I suggest you pick up his book and read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Are our options really only - Jesus or Nothing; Christ or Chaos?

Sources:

"Christ or Chaos" book for sale:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christ-or-chaos-dan-dewitt/1121903670?ean=9781433548963

Dan Dewitt's blog:
http://www.theolatte.com/ 

Forrest Rice's Patreon page:
https://www.patreon.com/forrestrice?ty=h

Concept of Mind book by Gilbert Ryle:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-concept-of-mind-gilbert-ryle/1122979310?ean=9780226732961 

Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompadible book by Jerry Coyne:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/faith-versus-fact-jerry-a-coyne/1120421936?ean=9780670026531

Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew book by Steve Stewart-Williams:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/darwin-god-and-the-meaning-of-life-steve-stewart-williams/1111653119?ean=9780521762786

The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in a 133 Arguments:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-stone-reader-peter-catapano/1121167477?ean=9781631490712

"Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism" by Massimo Pigliucci:
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2013/07/plantingas-evolutionary-argument.html


Marvin Minsky: Accounting for Qualia with Complicated Processes:
http://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/118;jsessionid=1AB2C364850922C0DA2E6814FF164748

Marvin Minsky: Evolution Intervened between Psychology and Physics:
http://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/119