The Slippery Slope

Dear readers abroad and home.

Tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, the scales can tip either way; I've got no clue or hint. Our Swedish Parliament - the Riksdag - is going to vote for, or against, a new law which enables the authority FRA, Swedish Radio Surveillance,
to monitor and bug any arbitrary email, internet traffic or cell phone conversation which connects with other countries than Sweden. No approval from prosecutor, government or police will then be required.

Also, reporters and editors can no longer protect the identity (from FRA and the government) of the person who gives information to the media in question. I. e. freedom of speech walks on a thin line.

All in the name of, and hunt for, possible terrorist activities and threats to our civilization and Kingdom.

In this particular case, I would like to defend the so called 'slippery slope argument', or maybe I needn't bother:

"It suggests that an action will initiate a chain of events culminating in an undesirable event later without establishing or quantifying the relevant contingencies." (source: wikipedia)
but on the other hand:
"Arguments that provide a well-supported chain of contingencies are not slippery slope arguments."

I ask for some guarantees, or at least reassuring laws, for protection of the individual citizen, before any monitoring or bugging propositions are even up on the table at our governing politicians.

Namely, these ones:

* That no other authority, but the FRA, and the government, should have access to the collected information.

* That no employer can ask for, and be granted, info from FRA:s stack of information. I've talked to people/colleagues who have never said anything about their religious beliefs at work, out of fear of losing the job. And there are probably many more things not mentioned to the boss, which I don't know about.

* That the monitoring itself should be supervised by colleagues, following consistent rules from the commanders at FRA.

* Consider the protection of the identity of a person being interviewed by a reporter.
Would you really like to remove this cornerstone of human rights?

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If these four issues were properly dealt with before any legislative decision of the sort, and carefully displayed in the media, I think the citizens of Sweden would almost be content, and gain more confidence in the politicians we elected. This time we see many loose ends lingering about, frequently asked questions unanswered, etc.


I ask the members of the Swedish riksdag to vote No/Negative tomorrow morning. Thank you, in advance.


(Readers are welcome to comment in both English and Swedish)
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Dagen, Dagen, Dagen, SvD, SvD, DN, DN, DN, Sydsvenskan, Sydsvenskan, HD, HD: Sigfrid röstar nej till FRA-lagen,

photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net (CC: Attribution-NonCommercial)

Believers in God are Not logically obliged to accept any Flying Tea Pots, Spaghetti monsters, Elves, Banshees, or Fairies

This is only my third posting in English, and I'd like to explain myself to readers who got here through clicking my comment link on English-speaking blogs, especially those debating atheism and the existence of God.
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One recurring comment from debating foundationalist-atheists, is this classic one:
"The Great Pumpkin", "The Flying Spaghetti monster", and fairies/elves have also not been proven to exist! Why don't you guys believe in those as well?
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Bertrand Russell:
There is also no evidence against a china tea pot revolving about the sun, somewhere between the Earth and Mars! We cannot prove that it's not there somewhere. But should we believe, only because we have no proof against its existence?
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One man who put words to my feelings around these questions, is professor Alvin Plantinga, and this post will mainly be a summary of his article Is Belief in God Properly Basic? (Blackwell Publ. 1981)
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But first, some main expressions:
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Basic belief - not based on any other belief,
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Foundational belief - based on other beliefs "I believe A on the basis of B"

Foundationalist: A person who claims that every belief should be based on other beliefs.
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Proposition - statement, Incorrigible - Unchangeable, Self-evident - obvious, natural
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Plantinga asks himself: "How do we rightly arrive at, or develop, criteria for meaningfulness or justified belief? Where do they come from? Must one have such a criterion before one can make any judgements about proper basicality?"
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Russell's own logical paradoxes say this: Some propositions seem self-evident when in fact, they are not.
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We could consider R. Chisholms little question:
What is the status of criteria for knowledge or justified belief?
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* The foundationalist states:
(1) For any statement A, and person S,
A is properly basic for S if, and only if, A is incorrigible for S, or self-evident for S
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Or, as philosopher Ingemar Hedenius puts it:

"One should only accept statements in which there are good reasons to believe."
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But how could one know a thing like that? What is "a good reason to believe"? Clearly enough (1) in itself, is not selfevident or obviously true.
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Proposition (1) has not been proven.
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A foundationalist finds (1) so appealing that, he simply takes it to be true, neither offering arguments for it, nor accepting it on the basis of other things he believes (= failing his own foundationalist criterion). (1) is self-referentially incoherent i.e. it doesn't meet its own standards.
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You may seem to remember that you had breakfast this morning, and perhaps you know of no reason to suppose your memory is playing you tricks. Then it means that you are justified to take this as a properly basic belief. Of course it isn't properly basic on the criteria offered by the foundationalists, but that fact counts not against you, but against those criteria.
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Plantinga argues that it seems as though criteria for proper basicality must be reached from below, rather than above; they should not be presented as ex cathedra, as dogma from above, but argued to, and tested by a relevant set of examples. But there is no reason to assume, in advance, that everyone will agree on the examples.
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How about what i, as a believer consider meaningless? Am I entitled to consider anything at all as meaningless.? Yes I am, of course. Even though i cannot present some illuminating criterion of meaning, I can quite properly declare (2) as meaningless:
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(2) twas brilling; and the slithy toves did gyre and gymble in the wabe
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I can reject (2) even if i disagree with the verifiability criterion in Language, Truth and Logic (Ayer).
The same goes for the believer; the fact that he rejects the classical foundationalist's criterion of proper basicality does not mean that he is committed to supposing: just anything is properly basic. So, I'm not at all obliged to accept Flying Spaghetti monsters, voodoo, or astrology.
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* The Christian will of course suppose that belief in God is entirely proper and rational; if he doesn't accept this belief on the basis of other propositions, he will conclude that it is properly basic for him, and quite properly so.
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Followers of Bertrand Russell and Madelyn O'Hair may disagree, but how is that relevant? Must my criteria, or those of the christian community, conform to their examples? Surely not. The christian community is responsible for ITS set of examples, not to theirs.
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Thank you all for reading my Plantinga-summary with explanations. I mixed the sections a bit, for the sake of interest and results. I will try and answer your questions as best as I can. Both in Swedish and English.

.............................................................................................. z

Bob, where are you?

Dear commentator Bob

I would like to apologize for inserting one of your photographs without asking for your permission.

My blog, for which i don't receive any money at all, i.e. not for commercial use, is mostly built up by pictures i find using the search engine Google images. I'll try to be more thorough when it comes to mentioning the picture sources.

I write this as a blog entry, since i wasn't able to find any email address this morning, when i searched through your page & blog. I couldn't even establish your surname.

I have now inserted the line: "Picture source: http://huronriver.pinckneymich.net/"
in the post. And will, of course, remove the photo, as soon as you tell me to.

Urgent message to Blogger Support crew - link to ALL commentators again, will you?

Dear Google Blogspot Support crew (or whatever your name is):

Immediately remove the new type of Blogspot Comments form, where only Blogger account users are being linked to! ;" There is now no link function for people with other blog hosts)

....and replace it with the old system which we had until last week, where ALL commentators' blogs were referred to in the comments field.

Or i'm thinking of changing web host (sad to, since Blogspot has the absolute best form of free layout design)
I understand that You want every last human being in the world to have a Google Blogger account. Things would probably be easier for you then, with all types of control systems enabled.

But believe me, monopolies have absolutely nothing to do with democracy and the free market. The plan will probably backfire in some kind of way. For example: In arrested technique developments.

I also understand Blogger Support constantly keeps changing its url and email (peculiar, indeed!!), so You can not be reached in any other way than this, it seems. I've searched Google for "Contact Blogger" and "Blogger support" & "Letters to Blogger" with no result.
Improve, please!

And while You're at it; finally enable a function for us Bloggers to send pingbacks, like the rest of the whole blogosphere (Wordpress, Blogsome, Typepad, etc...) can,

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen at the Google Blogger crew!


Ps. Mind You, I think i speak for many blog authors when i say this


Edit: Blogger improved! :) :)



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