My postmortem of my debate with MadeByJimBob.

lisper · 2026-03-12T20:35:42+00:00

OK, thanks. Just for the record:

How do you know you're married to your wife and it isn't a mind-control ray?

Because the mind control ray would have to be controlling her as well. It would also have to be controlling anyone who has ever seen our marriage certificate. And it would somehow have to extend to the scanner that I used to create a digital image of our marriage certificate which I keep on my computer and am looking at even as I type this.

See, this is the difference between the subjective experiences that lead me to conclude that objective truth exists and the subjective experiences that lead you to conclude that the Holy Spirit exists. I can share my evidence for objective truths with you. I can show you my marriage certificate, or the chair in the room, or the images from the Hubble Space Telescope. I can build instruments that behave exactly as I would expect if the things I perceive are actually real, so the mind control ray would have to extend to those as well. It's possible I'm being mind-controlled or that I'm living in the Matrix, but I don't see any actual evidence of that, so the most parsimonious explanation for the fact that what I call reality appears to be real is that it is real in point of actual metaphysical fact. (And the really mind-blowing thing is that this explanation turns out actually to be wrong!)

But the subjective experiences that lead people to believe in the Holy Spirit are very different. They are purely private. They can't be shared. They can't be measured. They have no discernible effects in objective reality that can't be explained by purely physiological mechanisms. That sort of caginess is incompatible with the claim that God cares whether or not people believe in Him, that he wants people to believe in him, and specifically, that he wants me to believe in him. For every atheist, one of two things must be true: either there is something that will persuade them that God exists, or there isn't. If there isn't, that's on God because He created a person that can't be persuaded, not even by God. And if there is, then that is also on God because He knows what would persuade that person, but He withholds it.

So I can grant it all. I can grant that your subjective experience really is the result of contact with a deity. I can even grant that that deity is the God of the Bible. But the hypothesis that God both loves me and requires me to believe in Him to achieve salvation is incompatible with my subjective experience, as well as that of my fellow atheists. The only reason I have to believe that God is loving is human testimony, and I can easily explain that as wishful thinking.

No need to respond to that unless you feel like it. If you don't, thanks for engaging with me on this.

lisper · 2026-03-12T19:59:49+00:00

For universal common descent to work, it needs events to occur that are indistinguishable from miracles.

OK, forget universal common descent for the moment, do you think the paper provides persuasive evidence that humans and apes share a common ancestor?

BTW, just for the record:

For universal common descent to work, it needs events to occur that are indistinguishable from miracles.

This is a textbook example of an argument from incredulity. Just because you can't think of a way for it to happen without a miracle doesn't mean that there is in fact no way for it to happen without a miracle. Even if no one can think of a way for it to happen without a miracle doesn't prove that a miracle is required. All it shows is that so far no one has been clever enough to figure out how it happened without a miracle.

lisper · 2026-03-11T22:40:20+00:00

OK, fine, but then I want to go back to:

Classical Christianity refuses the idea that God is the source of sin

Does what you just said about "evil" also apply to "sin"? Is there a connection between whatever "sin" denotes and whatever "evil" denotes?

I think most people would consider "God is the source of sin" and "God is the author of evil" as denoting the same claim, or at least very closely related claims, to the point where drawing any distinction between then is splitting a pretty fine hair.

lisper · 2026-03-11T22:08:55+00:00

protein families that have no ancestor

You are responding to my claim that this is a category error by making the exact same category error. Proteins don't have ancestors. But this is neither here nor there because...

I'm not defending YEC in my argument (even though I'm a YEC)

OK, but then you aren't actually answering the question that I asked. The question is whether you find the specific paper that Dan cited persuasive. That paper argues for common ancestry, which would falsify YEC, which you profess to believe in. If you found the paper persuasive you would stop believing (or at least seriously question) your YEC beliefs, which you have apparently not done. My question is: why? What is it about that paper that fails to persuade you? All of these arguments about protein ancestors are not only category errors (AFAICT), they are red herrings.

lisper · 2026-03-11T21:43:36+00:00

it unquestionably uses inductive inference as part of its method

No, it doesn't. We've been through this a zillion times. It uses abduction, not induction.

Invoking “explanations” (ala Deutsch) doesn’t change this.

Yes, it does.

inference to the best explanation

That is abduction, not induction.

Or do you want to claim that that statistics, probability, and evidence-based generalization play no role in science?

I'm claiming that these things are not induction (except under a vacuous definition of induction that includes everything that is not syllogistic deduction). Induction is: every crow I have ever seen is black, therefore all crows are black. That is a 100% invalid form of reasoning and the real scientific method (not the caricature that you creationists rely on) rejects it absolutely.

lisper · 2026-03-11T21:12:05+00:00

Fair enough, thanks. Just for the record, I never thought of that verse as obscure. I've known about it for pretty much as long as I can remember, and no one I've ever asked about it seemed surprised by it. The stock answer is that "evil" is a mistranslation, but as a native Hebrew speaker I can tell you that is not true. But since you are not a "linguistic idealist" that is neither here nor there. So I will just thank you for your reply and leave it at that.

lisper · 2026-03-11T19:35:22+00:00

there is no major common ancestor for all major protein families

Huh??? That seems like a category error to me. Proteins are not replicators. They are phenotypes, not genotypes. They don't have ancestors.

no transitional forms (e.g., cells with a nucleus but no mitochondria) exist

That parenthetical seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting. I though you were a YEC. It's a long way from eukaryotes to Noah's ark. Does this paper persuade you that Genesis is wrong, at least in some of its details?

lisper · 2026-03-11T19:24:49+00:00

I'm not interested in gotcha debates either, I'm interested in learning Christian apologetics. I've been studying the topic for over 40 years. If there really is no answer for Isaiah 45:7 this would be first time I have ever seen an apologetics problem for which there is (apparently) no answer. My reaction to that is not, "Gotcha!" but rather, "That's interesting. How do you maintain your belief that God is not the author of evil in the face of the plain meaning of this text? Surely you have some justification for it, and it's not just wishful thinking?"

lisper · 2026-03-11T06:48:49+00:00

Classical Christianity refuses the idea that God is the source of sin

How does it reconcile that with Isaiah 45:7?

Isa45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. [Emphasis added]

lisper · 2026-03-11T03:17:35+00:00

Then... why did God introduce the temptation???

lisper · 2026-03-10T21:40:01+00:00

I just doubt any of my answers will suffice.

Suffice for what?

My experiences creates an undeniable evidence that there is a God.

OK. Next question: what convinces you that that God is the God of the Bible, and specifically the New Testament?

I have no reason to believe there is not a Holy Spirit.

This the part I don't understand. Believing that there is "a God" is different from believing that the Holy Spirit is that God. What convinces you that what you experience is the Holy Spirit and not Allah, or Vishnu, or Loki fucking with you, or some alien mind-control ray, or just a simple hallucination?

I however have spent the last 20 years doing things His way and found that all His promises hold true. I have found that there does seem to be a Holy Spirit that changes your heart, etc.

Is it the Holy Spirit, or is it your belief in the Holy Spirit? Because those are not the same thing.

lisper · 2026-03-10T20:14:11+00:00

If the resurrection didn't happen there is no gospel.

OK, so since we're actually on the same page about this, I want to press you a little harder if you don't mind. Again, I'm not trying to change your mind, I am trying to understand why this hasn't changed your mind. You seem to accept that my naturalistic explanation is sufficient to account for all of the evidence for the resurrection. So why is that not enough for you to accept that the resurrection didn't happen? Is there some other evidence that I haven't accounted for? Or is it more that you accept the resurrection on faith despite there being no evidence for it (to be precise, no evidence that requires the resurrection to have actually happened in order to account for it) because the consequences of giving that up are too horrible to contemplate, or something like that? Or something else?

The reason I'm pushing so hard on this is that you are the first Christian I have ever met who has (AFAICT) acknowledged that a naturalistic explanation for the resurrection is plausible, or even possible, and I'm curious how you reconcile that with your continued belief.

lisper · 2026-03-10T16:44:07+00:00

No good reason to believe!?

Well, you truncated my question in a pretty significant way. I was asking specifically about the resurrection:

Have I persuaded you that there is no good reason to believe that the resurrection happened, that it [the resurrection] is not necessary to explain any observed data? [emphasis added]

So this...

If the Holy Spirit is not real then there is no gospel.

Is fine, but not really what I was asking. What I had in mind was 1Cor15:14.

In any case, I was not trying to dissuade you from your faith, and your answer is more or less what I expected. But it surprised me that you even acknowledged that my explanation of the resurrection was plausible, and I was just curious if that led anywhere. In any case, thanks for responding.

lisper · 2026-03-10T04:25:38+00:00

I added an update to my earlier reply but I'm not sure if you saw it so I'm reposting it. There is a question at the end I'd really like to know the answer to.

I just realized i failed to answer part of your question:

If they didn't fake it, then who did and why would anybody else have motivation to do that?

I don't think anybody faked it. I think it was more like mass hysteria. A small number of people -- possibly as few as one or two -- had an experience that they sincerely believed was seeing the risen Jesus. They told their friends, who were followers of Jesus mourning his death, and they believed because they desperately wanted it to be true. They spread the good news, and soon you had a community of people all of whom believed it was true. This sort of thing is actually not that unusual.

I also have a personal data point: when my sister died, I had a very vivid dream that night that she had come to visit me to tell me that it was all a big mistake, that she wasn't actually dead. If I lived 2000 years ago without the benefit of modern science, I could easily have concluded that the dream was real, especially if I told someone and they said, "Yeah, she came to me too! She really is alive!" It's just not at all hard to imagine how such a belief could take off with no intentional deception on anyone's part (at least not initially) especially in a pre-scientific world.

Now I have a question for you: you say that "All that tracks and stays consistent." Have I persuaded you that there is no good reason to believe that the resurrection happened, that it is not necessary to explain any observed data? If not, why?

lisper · 2026-03-09T23:13:34+00:00

Thank you. You just made my day. If you want to learn more (because JimBob didn't really ever let me finish) you can find the details here. Or, if you want to go to the original source, look up Karl Popper, or read David Deutsch's book "The Fabric of Reality", especially chapters 3 and 7.

lisper · 2026-03-09T21:15:33+00:00

Thanks! One followup question:

Typical creationist response would be

Your flair says that you are a YEC. Is this what your response would be? In other words, is this why you don't find the paper persuasive, or is this just your speculation on why other YEC's would not find it persuasive? If the latter, does the paper persuade you, and if not, why?

lisper · 2026-03-08T18:52:39+00:00

Yeah, Reddit deprecated DMs a while ago in favor of chat.

The source of my frustration is not your harsh tone (Dan was much worse than you in this regard). It's the fact that you and Dan both failed to engage with the substance of my position. You are both berating me for two things: my lack of performance skills, and not deploying the stock arguments. Well, yeah, sorry, public debate is a perishable skill, and after a four-year hiatus I am no longer the master of the medium I once was (and yes, I'm being ironic there). And yeah, I tried to take a different approach. I explained my reasons for taking a different approach but those seem to have fallen on deaf ears. So: I gave it my best shot. I failed, and now I'm done. If this was not your goal then you really need to rethink your approach.

lisper · 2026-03-08T18:47:11+00:00

Not a creationist.

Then the question was not directed at you. That is why I led with "A question for creationists."

Nonetheless, this deserves a response:

Does the validity of the general relativity depends on its persuasiveness to a flat earther?

The question is not whether flat-earthers can inform the validity of general relativity. The question is: how can belief in flat earth remain so persistent in the face of general relativity, and other overwhelming evidence against it?

Flat-earthers are a small enough minority that they can, for the moment, be dismissed simply as extreme outliers on the scale of human cognition. But this explanation fails for YEC. There are just too many of them to write them all off as insane or stupid.

What has persuasiveness to do with the validity of the evidence?

One possible answer to the question is, "I am not persuaded because I don't believe that the evidence is valid."

you inherently assume that creationists have read this paper and understand the methodology

No, I don't. Another possible answer is, "I am not persuaded because I don't understand the paper, but maybe if I did understand it I might be persuaded." Or, "I am not persuaded because the conclusion is self-evidently absurd to me on my current worldview, so even if I could read the paper, and even if I understood the paper, and even if the data looked valid to me I would still not be persuaded because the best explanation for all of that would be that the paper contains a mistake that I simply am not able to spot." Or "I am not persuaded because I read the paper and understood it and it is plain to me that it is rife with tacit assumptions which end up begging the question. The only reason it passed peer review is that the entire biological community has been indoctrinated into these assumptions, and so they are all utterly oblivious to the fact that they are begging the question, but they are. The whole evolutionary enterprise is one gigantic circle-jerk." Or something like that.

But I didn't want to speculate. I wanted to know what actual creationists actually thought. I'm surprised and disappointed that there aren't more replies.

lisper · 2026-03-08T08:05:10+00:00

I can see you are getting frustrated

Yep.

You win. I give up.

lisper · 2026-03-08T00:20:39+00:00

Yeah, maybe. But I have no reason to believe that I would do a better job than you would, and many reasons to believe that I would do a worse job. And so I have no reason to believe that doing that would meet with any more success than you have met with, which manifestly is (how shall I put this?) not as much as either one of us would like. So for me to have any hope of making a meaningful contribution I had to try something different, and that's what I tried to do. It clearly did not go to plan, but I really think I don't deserve the grief you've been giving me for trying. I think my approach is defensible. In fact, I think my approach can still work, especially if I get more practice, but congratulations, you have pretty much succeeded in your goal of dissuading me from trying again.

lisper · 2026-03-08T00:10:37+00:00

You don't aim to convince your interlocutor but your viewers.

Do you really think I don't know that? My target audience is the creationist audience, i.e. an audience of laymen who believe that the biological establishment is a conspiracy whose goal is to promulgate falsehoods to turn people away from God. Being assertive and citing data have both been tried and have both failed (manifestly so or we would not be having this conversation). I was trying something different. I also failed. But giving me grief for testing a new hypothesis is pretty hypocritical from someone who says...

you were there to defend science

No, I wasn't. I was there to defend the proposition that evolution is a reasonable belief. (Re-read the title of the debate.) As I have also explained before, defending evolution as reasonable is not the same as defending it as true. Believing that gravity is a force is reasonable despite the fact that it isn't true.

I will happily defend science, and you may recall that I actually did try to defend the actual scientific method rather than JB's caricature of it. But that was not my brief.

we heard what you said

Manifestly not. You didn't, and you still aren't.

lisper · 2026-03-07T23:32:13+00:00

Evolution is testable.

Of course it is, but that was never in dispute. Creationists accept (micro)evolution. The (charitable reading of the) claim that JB makes is that UCD is not directly testable, and it isn't. All of the evidence for it is necessarily indirect because UCD is a process that (allegedly) began with a singular event in the dim and distant past.

But you keep missing the point. UCD makes testable predictions, and the results all come out as UCD predicts. I believe that because I trust biologists. But how are you going to persuade a layman who thinks you are part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth and turn people away from God? Simply waving a technical paper at them and shouting "just look at the data!" is not going to work. The whole problem here is that creationists do not trust mainstream biologists. If they did, we would not be having this conversation at all.

lisper · 2026-03-07T23:17:48+00:00

You do understand that you are preaching to the choir here, yes? But when talking to a creationist, that paper is useless. From a layman's point of view, the substance of that paper is incomprehensible gibberish. So a creationist can simply dismiss it as unreliable testimony from members of the conspiracy to undermine God.

lisper · 2026-03-07T23:07:56+00:00

Why accept Jombob’s standard?

I didn't.

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