I suppose it has been a while since PS has “celebrated” this phenomenon. Would anyone like to have the honor of providing their personal definition of The Byers’ Point™? (Perhaps you could even share a favorite memory or anecdote.)
This subtopic may even merit my resorting to the use of an emoticon.
(@misterme987, perhaps this phenomenon even preceded your joining us here at PS. Or have you heard the term before?)
(I recall @Dan_Eastwood providing a reaction whenever The Byers’ Point™ was announced.)
Fortunately, WLC has learned considerably more science in recent years—and his hearing our own Joshua Swamidass speak at a conference at Trinity International University a few years ago and then their dialogue and friendship which followed seemed to have changed him. I listened to one of his [WLC’s] recent lectures and still cringed at some of his summations of the “well-known weaknesses” of evolutionary theory. So I was definitely disappointed but I can at least say that he has made a lot of progress in not maintaining some of his worst arguments of a decade ago.
Of course, as a Visiting Scholar at Biola University (a bastion of ID), I don’t expect him to denounce ID theory any time soon. But the fact that he has considerably warmed to evolutionary processes in recent years and directly denounces the “young earth” movement as “an embarrassment” delights me to no end (especially when I hear some of the YEC leaders go into apoplexia reacting to that declaration.)
My personal history with WLC goes way back (our academic careers intersected and we chatted occasionally) and I greatly appreciated him (then and now) on various levels. And if I had to make a prediction, I think given a few more years he will more fully appreciate the solid foundations of evolutionary biology and will prove to be an even better advocate in Christian circles. I’m not agreeing with or justifying everything he says but I generally regard him as a positive force in combating anti-science tendencies in various Christian circles. (I mean, anybody who so openly declares “young earth” positions as “embarrassing” is a step in the right direction.)
Your mileage may differ. (Maybe I’m an old softie.)
@Faizal_Ali Mr. Byers has a particular talent for making comments that … defy all rational understanding … might be the shortest way to describe it. It’s more than just being wrong, and closer to being in a different reality. Any dicussion following that was certain to go off the rails. @AllenWitmerMiller coined The Byers’ Point™ as an amusing way of marking these events.
Byers is still around, and you can find him at Panda’s Thumb and The Skeptical Zone. He is often child-like in his understanding of things, seemingly naïve and harmless, perhaps incapable of adult thinking. But then he might innocently let loose an opinion that would get him banned on any slightly civilized forum.
I have since come to the conclusion he is not the child-like, innocent, or harmless person many take to be. Do not engage if you encounter him. Block him if the option is available.
Oh, I’m also quite well acquainted with Mr. Byers and his peculiar form of self-expression that, at times, resembles a particularly obtuse from of Beat poetry. I just didn’t know what the Point was.
Little known fact: Robert actually wrote and published (in a manner of speaking) an article on Post-Flood migration of marsupials. It’s far more coheren than most of his on-line comments, which suggests either he had assistance from an editor, or he has been committed to a very extended piece of public performance art.
With the onset of the new administration, I had briefly considered hosting a weekly political commentary program for NPR called The Byers’ Point. Then I realized that PBS already had a similar program. It’s called Washington Week in Review.
I have my own personal history with him, in a manner of speaking. I had made some comments on the Reasonable Faith Facebook page and then received a response in the form of a personal message. In the ensuing discussion, I assumed I was corresponding with an employee or intern in his organization until, at one point, I referred to WLC in the third person, to which he replied “I am WLC.”
I don’t really think his newfound acceptance of common ancestry reflects a greater understanding of science so much as that GAE has provided him a pretext to incorporate accepted science into his apologetics. It’s not much different than how he overstates or outright misuses science to support the Kalam cosmological argument or respond to the argument from animal suffering. The main difference is that, in this instance, he’s getting the science right.
I also don’t appreciate how he slips into the role of apologist when he presents glosses on philosophical arguments whose nuances he ought to understand better than he lets own. For instance:
He is fully capable of putting out a video that uses cute animations and plain English to, instead, present a balanced overview of the argument including some of the stronger arguments made against it, like this:
I too have always reacted strongly to his animal suffering position.
For those who are interested, here is one of WLC’s responses to the claim that Anselm’s Ontological Argument is guilty of the begging-the-question fallacy:
I have always struggled with the complexities of the ontological argument debate. I returned to the topic a few years ago intent on getting a better grasp of it and deciding once and for all whether or not premise #1 truly did beg the question. To my surprise, I even found non-theist philosophers who denied that it begged the question. I can’t recall their names today nor do have any links to share. I just remember walking away from the debate recognizing that I’m really quite weak in philosophy. [I’d also have to say that I’m rather weak on the areas of symbolic logic which arose in some of the articles I read at that time. Considering that I used to teach advanced Boolean logic (including mixed-logic for engineers doing integrated circuit design) . . . well, yeah, that’s pretty lame on my part. So sue me. And, yes, I feel self-loathing when I lower myself to use an emoticon.]
I found this video to be a good discussion of the various forms of ontological arguments, and the problems with each. Just about the right balance of rigor and simplicity for me, though I did have to hit replay many times. The channel as a whole is quite good.
It is worth mentioning—as I’ve mentioned multiple times on PS—that a proof in philosophy is different from a proof in mathematics. (And this reminder is not at all a defense nor an attack on the Ontological Argument. It is simply a clarification for those who haven’t studied philosophy.) A mathematical proof establishes beyond doubt that one must accept the conclusion of the proof as true because all of the premises and logic steps along the way demand acceptance. In philosophy, proofs are NOT so definitive as to truth. For the most part, philosophical proofs assert that the position/conclusion described and the steps to reach that position are reasonable (and thereby, not unreasonable.)
Of course, there are many philosophical proofs for which philosophers disagree as to whether the proof is indeed reasonable. But this underscores how the definition differs from a mathematical proof. A mathematical proof basically COMPELS recognition and agreement. (Of course, if someone publishes a refutation of a mathematical proof—by exposing a logical flaw—the mathematics academy recognizes that flaw and the proof is no longer considered compelling and it is no longer considered a proof)
I recall an article I read years ago that underscored these differences and gave a number of examples of philosophical proofs which are “reasonable” and yet obviously not true.
[I remember at that time trying to use a Rudolf Carnap’s famous example in “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language” to come up with a cartoon with the caption “An Amazon account number is an Amazon Prime but is not always a Mersenne Prime.” I failed at both the illustration and the attempt at humor.]
That really isn’t a great reply from Craig. He mixes up modal, logical and epistemic possibility when the three are distinct. He also manages to ignore the fact that the argument can be inverted. Really it seems to me quite clear that it is more reasonable to assume that a maximally great being does not possibly exist (in modal terms) than that one does.
It means that there is no “possible world” where one exists. (And “possible world” means a complete and consistent “way the world could have been” - at least according to Wikipedia. I’d add at this point that I find cross-world properties a rather dubious idea.
My argument would deal with “maximally excellent” beings which do not necessarily exist (in modal terms)
It is clearly more reasonable to say that there is at least one possible universe without a maximally excellent being than not.
To claim that a maximally great being does not possibly exist is no stronger a claim and hence no less reasonable.
To claim that a maximally great being possibly exists (which means that it necessarily exists) is no weaker than the claim that there are no possible universes and hence no more reasonable.
And, yes, I feel self-loathing when I lower myself to use an emoticon.]
