Amaleq13

You have an over-inflated sense of your importance.

The only thing I'm "baiting" you into is actually supporting your assertion with credible evidence and argument. In vain, apparently.

Sure looks that way.

Actually, it seems more like a little knowledge run amok.

Elijah

Fo so!

Why am i the only one who has to provide evidence when the whole room has the whole world on their side? Shouldn't you be able to illustrate to me how the supernatural position isn't an assumption but a logical conclusion?


Yep, lets see who and what evidence can put me in my place. Learning is a wonderful think even if it means being wrong.

Jeffrey Gibson

Whose understanding of "reality"? Was there a uniform understanding of the nature of reality in the time in which they made their efforts? Did Peripatetics agree with Stoics? Did Cynics agree with Neo Platonists? Did Epicureans agree with Neo Pythagoreans? Did the Skeptics agree with anyone? Do you know?

But what did they understand "nature" to be? Was Aristotle's the same as Plato's? Was Lucretius' the same as Lucian's. How did they understand and explain how it worked? Do you know? Have you done any formal study in this? Have you consulted the histories of Ancient science/physics? Have you read Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, Cicero's On the Gods, Aristotles Metaphysics? Have you read anything of the medical writers of antiquity? The answer is no on all accounts, isn't it.

You think they did this. But you don't know for certain. Is that what I'm hearing? And the reason that you think they (Epicureans as well as Sceptics? Stoics as well as Neo Pythagoreans? Neo-Platonists as well as Peripatetics?) did this, but don't actually know, is that you really have no formal grounding in Ancient philosophy and that you've never read any works of Plutarch' or Lucian on "superstition" not to mention anything of the scholarly work that's been done on Ancient Philosophy, let alone on Paul and Early Christianity. Is that correct?

Why not actually do what you apparently don't do and haven't done vis a vis ancient philosophy and go to a library and read a few of the standard commentaries on the Republic and/or look in the Philosopher's Index and other periodical indexing sources for discussions of Rep. bk. VII, 516b-c?

I'm not going to do your homework for you, especially after you came her and posed for so long as an authority on this and other matters, and lectured people on how they were wrong not only in what they were asserting about ancient superstition and Paul and Christianity and ancient "rationalism", but that they were wrong not to agree with you or to take your claims seriously.

Jeffrey

Elijah

I'm just going to assume you don't understand the cave at all if you don't try. :huh:

You don't need to do any homework. Just a few paragraphs on how you understand it will do.

Jeffrey Gibson

Ummm ... what:huh::huh:

You haven't yet shown that the "supernatural position", especially as you "define it", is anything that anyone in the ancient world ever entertained, let alone that it's a conclusion that they came to. For your claims about what their premises about nature were are all apriori and are not founded in actual knowledge of ancient beliefs about "nature".

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Assume away. It's what you've been doing all along.

I'm not sure what it would "do" since the issue isn't my understanding of it. It's whether yours is in any way informed. And as is more than apparent by now, it isn't. In the slightest.

I'm done here.

Jeffrey

Elijah

Boy, it sounds like you're on my side. So you don't think the ancient world held the supernatural opinion? Including the christian founders?

Elijah

I bet.

Amaleq13

Setting aside that you have been given ample evidence and argument against your view, your original assertion gives you the burden to support it.

So far, all you've offered are possible indications of platonic influence in wholly unrelated portions of text to the ones that explicitly describe supernatural powers and entities. And an admission that you know of no scholars who support your view.

In short, Jeffrey is correct, you've given no reason to take anything you've said seriously.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, you've been given an explanation (repeatedly) but you cannot be given an understanding.

This is only more true when you are clearly too firmly committed to your conclusion to genuinely consider the possibility that you are wrong.

I suspect no evidence exists that can penetrate the wall of your circular reasoning but what sort of evidence do you imagine might succeed?

Elijah

That one piece of scripture is your ample evidence or is there something else on the table?

Again supernatural powers doesn't equal a supernatural understanding and you haven't proven or established criteria for determining if the entities are supernatural or natural.

No reason to take me seriously at all... but you should be able to support your position better then you have.