Jobar

Kent- "I think you are misunderstanding my position. As a Christian my ultimate authority is the Christian God revealed in the scriptures. If there was a message written in the sky it would be less authoritative than the message I already have in scripture."

No, Kent, I am not misunderstanding your position at all. What I am saying is that this assumption is simply meaningless. And since this is a vital link in the chain of your argument, you can carry no weight with it.

The scriptures are words, Kent. Oh, I am aware that plenty of people agree with you- extremely aware, in fact! But it is the overwhelming opinion of the ones you are addressing here that the words in your Bible, the ideas about your God, are in most ways false.

How you can think these words are meaningful because they have no physical evidence, is simply incomprehensible to us. (Well, Dawkins did write an article on religious memes that explains it- but that explanation comes down to, "you were brainwashed as a small child to believe this".)

Oh, I suppose you can continue your line of thought without addressing this problem, but your argument is left hanging in mid-air.

[ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: Jobar ]</p>

Mark_Chid

Suffering is bad because I don't like it.

Why do Christians keep insisting that we atheists must have absolute, objective moral systems. If we had those WE WOULDN'T BE ATHEISTS!

HRG

But you need an authority to choose your ultimate authority, and to determine whether some text whose author claims that it is a message from said ultimate authority is actually genuine.

Of course, you haven't yet answered on which authority you have determined that the ultimate authority doesn't lie to you. That it itself knows the truth (by definition) doesn't help your point.
Protagoras, AFAIK, did not claim to be infallible.
And since no authority can be self-authorizing, we conclude that there are no ultimate authorities.

HRG.

[ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: HRG ]</p>

Synaesthesia

Kent,
This is the problem of induction; in fact the issue which first introduced me to the marvels of modern epistemology.

More detailed universal theories are more powerful than less detailed ones. This is primarily because they are more aminable to falsification and more a priori unlikely. Universal hypotheses that have been falsified are clearly wrong. (barring the complications entailed by theory holism)

Now of those hypotheses that have not been falsified, there are various criterion by which we can choose amongst them. Explanatory coherence, parsimony, novelty of prediction, opportunities for testing etc.

So there are indeed methods by which we can establish a truth-preference about universals. We can never be absolutely certain that we won’t find a better theory, but that’s a good thing in my books! Our theories about universals may be provisional, but if we are right, the universals themselves are objective.

“When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
-- Isaac Asimov, "The Relativity of Wrong" (1989)

Incorrect. Presupposing one thing can never be better than presupposing another thing so long as presuppositions require nor accept support from anything else. As soon as a presupposition is supported, it ceases being a presupposition and becomes open to question.

So your presupposition that the bible is better than words in the sky is valid only because you presuppose that the bible is better than words in the sky. If we reversed the situation, you would have no way to reach the conclusion that the bible was superior. (since that is the folly and nature of presupposition)

Kent, everybody knows that suffering is meaningful to human representational system. It is beside the point whether it has any meaning to the cosmos. Exactly how the mechanisms by which emotion works is not understood. That puts you squarely in the same boat that we are.


No justification for the idea that “we must presuppose God” for ANYTHING as been given. You have again and again begged the question and presupposed that we must presuppose god. I remain unconvinced by you repetition and I do not share your dogmatic assumptions.

You assumptions are, by your own admission, not only unsupported but unsupportable. It is an artifact of your dogma for truth-preference not involving magical creatures to be unsupportable.

Some of us do indeed think we can know that the earth moves round the sun, even if in the bible says that God says that the sun moves around the earth.

I suspect you do too, oddly enough.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Kent Symanzik

Hi Jobar,

I'm not saying that scripture is meaningful because it does not have physical evidence. In fact, I believe it does have physical evidence. But, the Christian God of scripture as my ultimate presupposition cannot be authenticated by another source. If it could it would no longer be ultimate. Ultimate presuppositions must be self-authorizing.

I'm sure you realize that this is true of all ultimate presuppositions. Take for instance a person who says "all things must be validated by physical evidence". This person is asserting a presupposition. But, the problem with this presupposition is that it cannot be self-authorizing because it is actually self-defeating. Can the statement, "all things must be validated by physical evidence" be itself validated by physical evidence?

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Hi Mark_Chid,

My critique of atheists and suffering is not just based on the question of ethics. It's also a question of value. My question is whether suffering can be described in atheistic terms at all. I suppose we should first deal with the difference between life and death because it is living things that suffer. In atheistic worldviews, how is the difference between life and death anything more than a difference in the state of the chemicals in our body?

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Hi HRG,

Of course, this statement itself requires an ultimate authority. You must at least presuppose the laws of logic.

The problem is that thinking must start somewhere. If you do not have an ultimate authority then you cannot even think.

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Hi Synaesthesia,

I think I understand what you are saying but it seems to me that all you are doing here is making the human representational system some kind of magic. The problem is that whether you call it a human representational system or a person it is still just a bag of chemicals that changes state in atheistic worldviews. You have not explained the difference between life and death in atheistic terms. All you have done is admit that it cannot be understood. This is simply admitting that your atheistic worldview cannot account for the experience. Isn't it?

If your worldview cannot account for something that you experience aren't you acting inconsistently with your worldview? Or are you saying that you can just leave it in the unknown column? But I guess I would argue that your worldview and your experiences are contradictory to eachother and therefore the worldview must be discarded.

Hmm, we must have missed eachother somewhere. I don't recall you pointing these things out anywhere. The justification I have given is that the Christian worldview is the only worldview known that can justify the use of logic, ethics, and science. To my knowledge you have not shown this to be false. Let me know if I missed you somewhere.

Maybe you misunderstood me. The only concession I have given is that I do not know how to prove how there may not be an unknown worldview that can be viable like the Christian worldview. But, I do not know of any atheistic worldviews that are viable.

Glib references to the bible will not further discussion much. God knows that the earth moves around the sun just like our weather man does when he tells us what time the sun will rise tomorrow.

Kent

acronos

Hi Kent,
Hmm. The universe is the source of all I know. I agree that observation is crucial to my understanding of the universe. Still, I strongly disagree with your statement. The universe is a source of knowledge. The universe is the source of all knowledge. Everything I know either came from my direct observation of the universe, another person in the universe, or the genes I inherited from the universe.

I have observed universals. Omniscience is not a requirement for learning. I can come to conclusions with incomplete evidence. I have observed that the universe has characteristics that seem to be universal.

Why do I have to know all of what the universe is? Do you know all of what the universe is? Does this statement not also invalidate your world view if it were true? You are free to presuppose God, but you have no way of knowing all of what God is. Why do you have to know all of what God is to believe in him? Why do I have to know all of what the universe is to believe in it?

Say I observe the series 1,2,3,_,5,_,7,8,_,10. When I look at this series I see a trend. I conclude that there is a good chance that the actual series is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. I can make useful predictions based on this assumption. I recognize that it is an assumption, but my experience with the world is such that trends typically continue. I can construct a completely logical world view for this series assuming the information that I don’t know but have guessed is correct based on my experience. If I later discover another piece of information and find that 1,2,3,4,5,_,7,8,_,10, then I have even stronger evidence that my assumption was correct. However, when I find 1,2,3,4,5,7,7,8,_10, then I have to reevaluate my assumptions and create a new world view. However, conclusions that are based on the series 1,2,3,4,5 I can retain. It is only conclusions that are based on the 6 in the 5,6,7 series that I have to reassess. I think this system is perfectly reasonable and consistent. I don’t have to know everything to draw conclusions.

Why wouldn’t they fit into an atheists world view if they are observed in the world? If I observe it I generally assume it exists. I don’t see your problem.

Why does my worldview need to justify the source of logic. If I use it and I discover that it works, I think I am justified in believing in it and using it. I don’t need to fundamentally understand it. I can use formulas in math before I understand how to derive them.

How can anything be required outside without logic? It requires logic or reason to require something like this.

I am going to make a huge leap and say that you think that an atheist must form a world view without order. Why does the existence of order conflict with my world view. Even if I didn’t have an answer to such questions about order, order does not necessitate a God. I don’t have to know everything. How did order come to exist is just as unknown as how did the universe come to exist or how did matter come to exist or how did God come to exist. Some things we just accept even though we don’t know everything.

Everything in our universe physicists have summed up in four physical laws: Weak, strong, gravity, and electromagnetism. I have run computer simulations that demonstrate the huge amount of complexity and order that can be generated by very simple rules. I don’t need a God to explain complexity and order. I have seen what can happen with my own eyes. But, even if I hadn’t, I could still know that it exists because I observe it. I don’t have to know how or why it came about to build a world view around it.

Second Post
Why does my worldview have to account for everything. I make most decisions with incomplete information. I am not inconsistent because I choose to do so.

Third post
I see no way that my worldview restricts universals. Universals are part of my worldview. The universe exists. That is my universal. My view of the universe is incomplete. That does not take away from my statement that the universe exists nor does it make the universe incomplete.

Again, I don’t have to explain them to believe in them. If I see that it exists, there is nothing in my world view that says that I cannot accept it and every reason to accept it. I actually think suffering can be good because it teaches us what to avoid. We are discussing the origins of concepts and words when we discuss the origin of what makes something good or bad. This is very fundamental. It would require me to write a book or two to explain my understanding on this concept. I cannot explain it to you a short post, but I will try anyway. I will place a post entitled ‘how evolution fits into my understanding of everything.’ The simple answer is that human suffering is a direct consequence of the evolution of pain.

[ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: acronos ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

What is the basis for selecting an "ultimate presupposition" and deselecting the rest?