Monthly Archives: June 2012

Evil Amish Bishops Drunk with Power

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in The Amish

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You have probably heard of the Amish beard-cutting incidents that took place in Ohio recently. If you haven’t, simply Google “Sam Mullet”. Sam Mullet is the bishop of an Amish splinter group in Ohio, members of which have been accused of religious hate crimes. Sam Mullet is the alleged ringleader of the hair-cutting attacks against other Ohio Amish.

The bishop holds the highest office in an Amish church. He is generally the leader of a single Amish church and presides over, on average, 20 to 30 Amish families.

Evil bishops that are drunk with power are uncommon but not unheard of among the Amish. Sam Mullet is a notable example. I also had a personal experience with such a bishop. In the community where I grew up there were a small group of us Amish kids (several boys and several girls) that were friends with each other and hung out together as often as possible. After I left the Amish, my house became a popular place for us to gather because we could watch television and drink alcohol whenever we could get our hands on it.

One of the girls in our group was a daughter of the community’s bishop. Of course he tried to keep her away from my house with threats and all manner of punishments but she was a rebellious girl and continued hanging out with us.

Then one day when I was alone at home this bishop came to my house and threatened me with physical harm if his daughter continued hanging out with us at my house. She was not yet eighteen but it wasn’t like I was forcing her to come to my house. Anyway, I decided if that bishop was going to heaven then heaven was no place that I ever wanted to be. I moved hundreds of miles away from that community not long after that.

Semantics Shemantics

02 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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The statement, “God does not exist,” is perfectly fine when used in normal conversation. Many atheists are heard saying this and they are attacked for it because of epistemological reasons. In the epistemological sense, this statement is not okay because it has not been proven that God does not exist. In fact, it may well be impossible to prove that God does not exist.

Likewise, the statement, “Santa Claus does not exist,” is perfectly fine in ordinary conversation but it’s not okay in an epistemological argument because it has not been proven in the strict sense of logic that Santa Claus does not exist.

When somebody says, “Santa Claus does not exist,” their statement is epistemologically suspect. But what the person really means is, “The available body of evidence does not warrant a belief in the existence of Santa Claus.” The latter statement is fine in the epistemological sense but the first statement is not. The first statement is fine in normal conversation because we are used to taking shortcuts in everyday language. It is the same way with the atheist’s proclamation that, “God does not exist.”

Before you rail on the atheist for making epistemologically suspect claims, perhaps you should consider what the atheist really meant. Before you claim that atheism is an untenable position because it asserts a nonexistence claim, perhaps you should consider what it really means.

The Nonexistence of Undetectable Things

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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Why is there no proof of God’s existence? If you ask a Christian this question, you get a barrage of “proof” that after a little digging, turns out to be nothing but faith.

However, some of the Christians I have met (I even entertained this idea at one point in time as being the reason I couldn’t find proof of God’s existence) claim that there is no proof of God because God is in principle, undetectable.

The idea goes something like this… God transcends time, space, and even the universe itself. Our science instruments are limited to the universe, so that’s why we can’t detect God. We will never be able to detect God because our instruments will always be limited to the natural things that are lurking about in the universe. Since God can exist and be undetectable, we must take it on faith that he does exist.

Something that can in principle never be detected, is by definition, nonexistent and I’ll explain why in the next few paragraphs.

We detect things by the way they affect other things. For example, we directly detect the moon because of the way it reflects particles of light. We also indirectly detect the moon by the gravitational force that it exerts on the Earth and its contents.

The only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no effect on anything else in the universe. In other words, it cannot have mass because then it would exert a gravitational force which could in principle be detected with gravity gradiometers. It cannot have any sort of electrical charge because then it could in principle be detected with a variety of electromagnetic detectors. For any other property of something that exists, there could in principle, be designed a detector which detects that property, otherwise the property isn’t real. In other words, the only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no real properties.

And let’s not forget statistical analysis. Even if something real could not be detected by scientific tools, if it affects real objects or events, then its influence could, in theory, be statistically calculated using our knowledge of the affected objects or events and our knowledge of how the universe works.

In conclusion, the idea that something could be said to exist and at the same time be undetectable in principle, doesn’t make sense. It is a contradiction. On the other hand, if you decide to drop the idea that God is in principle undetectable while maintaining that he does exist, then the burden of proof is on you. If you claim the existence of something which has heretofore not been verified, then it is your burden to propose a method of detection that would reasonably prove its existence.