daemon

Where are you getting this from? I am not "reject[ing] certain things about God," I am saying that the traits you're attributing to this God character are, based upon personal experience, negative ones. I have no way to determine this is not the case.
This still appears to be a non sequitur. Why is it impossible to have objectivity based on the finite, especially if the finite is all there is?
I can think of several facts which I find to be valueless--for example, the precise position of an electron around an atom. Regardless, one may not be able to divorce value from fact on a subjective level, but facts are independent of values--they are whether we like them or not.
Well, then, I suggest you find someone who actually believes in total subjectivity to discuss such with. I'm relatively sure you'll find few here.
In such a case, there are a number of possibilities that can be tested, but there may not be a standard for such a case.
I'm afraid I don't understand your complaint. I informed you of how I link meaning to subjective concepts. If you are looking for something further, you'll have to specify.
I think you're arguing against pure subjectivity here, again. As I said, I don't believe such, so am unsure I can effectively argue its case. From my viewpoint, objective reality itself is that which allows us to correlate belief to reality. As far as compelling such belief, that it does not; sophists still exist.
Perhaps I'm unclear as to what you mean by "historical meaning." What sense of "meaning" are you using?
No, actually, I assume simply that I can reason. Reason is reason, autonomous or not.
Only if you additionally deny the possibility of authority of any and all human institutions.
You are incorrect. Please do not continue implying that I am a liar; that really torques me.
Perhaps you don't realize what clarity means. It is complete nonsense to call something which is not understood clear.
I still don't understand how this is atheistic, nor really what this "autonomous" reason means.
This is simply a tu quoque fallacy, coupled with a strawman to boot! I have made no argument for my worldview, simply asked about yours. Had I made such an argument as the one you claim I have made, I would say that it was unreasonable!

I am also afraid that I assume only that I can reason; the status of "God" in that ability is not defined. To put it more formally, you claim I believe if God does not exist, I can reason (~G->R). I assume only R. Assuming R, ~G->R is true, though it is unproven unless I can prove that G->R entails a contradiction; I do not believe I can necessarily do such.
Yes, I realize that you do, but restating your beliefs repeatedly does not an argument make, much less a necessarily reasonable one.
Okay. I thought as much.
It is a circular argument. Circular arguments are fallacious.
Well, given that I don't assume either of the first two, and am unsure of the third, it appears that you're constructing strawmen.
So are you actually going to start arguing anytime soon, or are you going to continue to present chains of assertions and fallacies?
So, justice is evil?
That didn't even constitute a discussion, much less inform me about why epistemological arguments cannot, apparently, be logical.
So, are you arguing that it is not the case? The argument here is somewhat circular, but it offers the out in that the only way to determine that it is not worth using is for it to fail through experimentation.
Okay, so, by your definition, I can't justify morality. I don't consider your criteria for justification to be important, however.

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: daemon ]</p>

DaveJes1979

daemon

Dave: why do you interpret them as negative? You have already presupposed your own standard of ethics (atheistic ones) in order to interpret your experience.


Dave: because objective knowledge presupposes a PERFECT standard. One one looks at the finite for such a standard, one finds only relatively good or bad things. One has thus grounded their standard in a relativistic framework - basically a subjective framework.

Dave: I agree with your last statement, if "facts" are understood as objective knowledge. Concerning an electron around the atom - you certainly understand some value or meaning about it, otherwise those words would carry no semantic content.

Dave: indeed, I have found some here. But I have also found some who are "soft" subjectivists. That is, they are inconsistent subjectivists. And indeed, they are just that - inconsistent.

Dave: so your "standard" has to be supplemented? I find this to be inconsistent (especially since you have not, perhaps cannot, enumerate the "possibility that can be tested").

Dave: in other words, what we label the color "blue", in our language, is merely a societal or linguistic convention. It is arbitrary. But that does not mean that blue's "blueness" derives from society or subjectively. Blue's blueness is inherent and objective.

Dave: I know you don't claim "pure subjectivity," but I would like to know how your worldview can even account for the existence of objective knowledge at all. All of the explanations you have given me so far seem to justify objective knowledge by subjective means!

Dave: I am talking about ANY philisophical, moral, ethical, value, or causal meaning.

Dave: you do not assume "simply that [you] can reason." Since you do not believe in God, yet trust your own reasoning, you have assumed that you can reason autonomously from Him. You are trying to get onto a middle ground that doesn't exist. Its a binary choice: start your thinking with God (theism), or start your thinking with something else (idolatry).

Dave: this is problematic, because this makes human institutions defenitionally irreformable, since this posits them as normative. This also fails to address inter-institutional matters.

Dave: well, I wouldn't precisely call it lying. I believe you are self-deceived.

Dave: its not that you don't or can't understand, its that you deny (even to yourself) that which you know on some level.

Dave: because theism entails that one can and must start one's thinking with God. Only if one assumes that God does not exist would come to the conclusion that one can start elsewhere.


Dave: actually, you have talked a good bit, and defended your own worldview. If you look above, a good deal of your post is devoted to statements, not questions at all. You have hardly "simply asked about" my worldview.

Dave: I did not claim that you "believe if God does not exist, [you] can reason." My claim is that you believe God does not exist (1), AND you can reason (2). It was not an if/then conditional statement.

Those two statements taken together constitute atheistic presuppositions.

Dave: in the domain of logic they are, not in the domain of epistemology.

Dave: you have assumed the first two statements. You demonstrate that you do not believe that the human mind needs to to rely on divine revelation because you have not submitted to divine revelation, and yet claim to know at least some truth.

Dave: well I supposed you simply do not understand transcendental argumentation since you are so adamant about seeing circularity as a "fallacy" in this context. Transcendental argumentation requires that one make assertions, based on one's presuppositions, to demonstrate how a given set of presuppositions accounts for different types of knowledge.

People who are most blinded by their presuppositions are those who don't think they have any.

Dave: by no principle of logic can one derive "justice=evil" from what was said. It was justice on God's end, evil on the father's (man's) end.

Dave: because epistemology is the study of knowledge, logic being merely A form of knowledge. Epistemology asks questions such as "why should we even believe that such a thing as logic exists"??

Dave: once one "experiments", how does one interpret the results? Induction, of course!

Dave: so I should accept your worldview which you cannot demonstrate to be non-arbitrary and coherent?????

Dave Gadbois

daemon

It would be incorrect to say that I have presupposed my ethics as they are derived from my assumptions. Correcting for that, however, I can't really disagree. Obviously, you see this as a problem, however--why?
I'm sorry, but this seems self-contradictory to me. Perfection seems to be a subjective term, and deriving objective knowledge from such appears nonsensical.
You seem to be arguing values here, not facts. I do not believe one can have objective values.
I'm talking about the meaning of the brute fact of the precise location of an electron in relation to the atoms nucleus. In and of itself, it has no meaning, it just is, as far as I am concerned.
As I do not consider this standard to be absolute, I see no inconsistency.
That's an interesting assertion. I don't buy it--I don't think "blue" objectively exists. Phenomena we label "blue" do, but "blueness" does not exist by itself.
You are somewhat correct. I believe approximate knowledge can always be gained by subjective means, but truly objective knowledge may be difficult and/or impossible to arrive at. As an example, take pi--we can approximate it, but we cannot know it completely. It does fundamentally assume a certain level of reliability in perception, of course.
You misunderstand: why can you not derive subjective meaning? I don't see a logical connection here.
Again, I tell you, I assume only that I can reason. That I can reason "autonomously from God"--regardless of what that phrase means--logically follows from that statement. It is incorrect to say that a logical conclusion is an assumption!
I don't assert that such a system exists--I don't believe in universal moral norms. You might have a more profitable discussion with someone who does believe in objective morality.
Look, it's a binary situation: either I do understand something or I do not. If I say I don't understand, then either (a) I am telling the truth, or (b) I am not. If you are unwilling to assume my truthfulness, I see no point in continuing to converse. Tiptoeing around it doesn't make it acceptable.
I can't willfully deny knowledge of anything to myself--that denial entails the knowledge. Therefore, this is a self-contradicting statement.
This appears nonsensical. Please expand upon this point.
You are correct in that I have attempted to correct your misconceptions about my worldview, but I do not consider what I have said to be an argument, per se, for it.

However, given that you did not respond to the actual point--that you have nothing on which to base your assertion that epistemological arguments are privileged--I will assume you accept the refutation.
Then you are incorrect about point (1). I do not believe that God does not exist; I grant that it is possible. I have seen no compelling evidence to believe God does exist, however.
Refuted.
I hope to know some truth, but it would be inaccurate to state that I claim I actually do. I've been wrong before.
However, there must be some method to go from presupposition to conclusion. My only accepted method is logic. Logic states a circular argument is fallacious. If you can prove that such is not the case, or must be waived in such situations, I might be willing to accept your alternative, but you have not done so.
Yes, yes, I've already knocked down this strawman before. Or perhaps by "any," you mean "the ones I want them to have?"
So it's both good and evil, right?
Logic is a method of arriving at knowledge, not knowledge in and of itself.
Correct. If inconsistency is found, that would indicate a potential failure of the method.
Since when did this become about my worldview? I am not arguing mine--I'm probing yours.

Quatermass

What has your belief got to do with an objective standard? According to Greg Bahnsen the OT law is normative (and according to Deut 17:2-7 people who follow other gods, i.e. everything except the Judeo/Christian God, should be put to death). I shouldn’t question Bahnsen because he is a presuppositionalist - like you. And I shouldn’t really question his interpretation because he was using the standard of God’s word - like you. It's difficult to condemn atrocities when they are part of your infallible standard.

Calvin in defending the death of Servetus said,
<strong>"Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime... There is no question here of man's authority; it is God Who speaks, and it is clear what law He would have kept in the Church even to the end of the world."</strong>

Perhaps you should rethink this enforcement by sword issue. Perhaps you've let some atheistic presuppositions creep in!

To bring this back to your answer to the original question of this thread - God's glory, here's the rest of the quote from Calvin,
<strong>Wherefore does He demand of us so extreme severity if not to show us that due honor is not paid Him so long as we set not His service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory?"
</strong>

This is an example of what I meant by saying that making God’s glory the ultimate purpose of the universe allows any type of evil to be committed.

Your presuppositionalism is unassailable because you have defined it to be. There really isn’t anything to argue – the impossibility of the contrary, you know. However, if our common ground is language and induction, it’s a different story.

One of my favorite quotes (not an argument) on Calvin is from Will Durant:
<strong>”… we shall always find it hard to love the man who darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honored history of nonsense.”</strong>

DaveJes1979

daemon
Dave: so you are attempting to defend your ethical criticism of God's "egotism" by appealing to your own presupposed ethical framework (which you admit are derived from your assumptions)? Therefore, you have given us no compelling reason to believe that God's passion for His own glory is a bad thing. You need to defend the ethical framework you have presupposed.

Dave: why, precisely, is perfection a "subjective" term? If this is the case, then you have made "perfection" to mean little more than "preference" once again.

Dave: if there are no objective values, then you have destroyed the basis of meaningful and value-ful facts. Uninterpreted, meaningless facts are unknowable and do us no good.

Dave: "location" is certainly a form of meaning.

Dave: since you have not given us an absolute standard, you have not given us a coherent ethical framework. You have given us a few specific principles which you follow, that are divorced from any framework - and thus are unjustifiable.

Dave: then you are basically asserting that nothing is blue until we see it and the human mind comprehends it. This is akin to the belief that a tree that falls in the forest makes no sound.

Dave: I am not asking about how one comes to subjective certainty about specific objective truths (the value of pi). I am asking how your worldview can account at all for objective reality existing in the first place - which would render subjective knowledge possible.

Dave: based on what you have laid out in this thread, the only subjective meaning we can come to is arbitrary and preferential in nature. I see nothing in the atheist worldview which would make knowledge both meaningful and knowable, since matter and humans is all that exists for most. There is no personal, good Being, or guiding Spirit behind reality in which to ground meaning in.

Dave: so you have come to a conclusion, have you? That means you have already done some reasoning. But what criteria and methodology did you use in that reasoning? You supposed that your own criteria and methodology were adequate, without reference to God.

Thus, you had an atheist presupposition hiding in your reasoning process before you came to any conclusion the whole time!

Dave: and your subjective morality leaves us with little more than "I like vanilla ice cream" statements. Its a nice preference - but I have no idea why I should be morally compelled to accept your flavor of ice cream.

Dave: I believe you are not telling the truth.

Dave: you are confusing HAVING knowledge with the cognitive/moral denial of knowledge.

Dave: it simply means that, since man is a finite and contingent creature, His knowledge is wholly dependent on the Creator. Only the Creator can and has exhaustively interpreted reality and all the facts in the universe. Only through His revelation can man know truth with certainty, since finite man is in no position to try to tie together the handful of facts at his disposal.

Dave: I answered this later on in the post.


Dave: because you interpret evidence based on distinctively atheistic reasoning, as I explained above.

Dave: when and how??? You have not even demonstrated that you are AWARE of the fact that logic and epistemology are two different domains.


Dave: but what is at stake here is not a "presupposition to conclusion" set of reasoning, which logic applies to. It is presupposition vs. presupposition reasoning, and thus the arguments must be transcendental, not logical. These are competing theories of knowledge - not the exercise of deductive or inductive reasoning. In these cases, the presuppositions, methodology, and conclusions cannot be broken apart into a nice, linear or deductive arrangement.

Dave: depends on what "it" is. The suffering itself is not intrinsically good nor evil. What makes something good or evil is the motivations behind it. God's motives were right. Man's are wrong.

Dave: but logic is only A method. What I have asked, and what epistemology asks, is why one assumes that logic is a valid tool of knowledge. I fail to see how an atheistic worldview, that has no providential God to order the universe, can account for the validity of logic (which assumes the existence of order).

Dave: no, inconsistencies would only show that induction must be practiced MORE in order to formulate more general principles to account for the discrepancies. But induction itself cannot be criticized.

Dave: don't pretend that there is such a thing as "neutral" probing. You raised criticism about God's "egotism" based on your own ethical framework. I defend God's God-centeredness by pointing out the deficiencies in your own framework, and showing the necessity of a God-centered framework.

Quatermass

Dave: well, I'm certainly glad you're reading Greg Bahnsen! I have learned much from him, indeed. He is indeed a presuppositionalist, but there are many presuppositionalists who do not share his views on the role of government based on biblical considerations. I do not see biblical warrant for making the Old Test. laws normative in the way Bahnsen does. Alas, on this side of eternity we will have to agree to disagree.

But by what principle of logic do you claim that "I really shouldn't question his interpretation because he was using the standard of God's word"?? Interpretations are ALWAYS open to scrutiny. You are obligated to judge, using the bible as the standard, any and all uses of Scripture (including your own).

Mere disagreement does not entail that there is no reliable standard. One of us is right in this debate - and another is wrong.

Dave: interesting thought, but my considerations are based on the New Testament pattern that the ancient church gave us. I do not see them following the OT laws as if they were the "new" theocratic kingdom of Israel.

Dave: although it is noble that Calvin made God's glory his ultimate purpose, my criticism would be Scriptural and exegetical in nature. God has prescribed precisely what part He has ordained for us to play in giving God his due glory. It is not our prerogative to decide for ourselves how to accomplish this ends.


Dave: presuppositionalism is not simply unassailable because it is circular in nature. If you can demonstrate that you can make knowledge certain and meaningful without a theistic worldview, you have proven your case.

Dave Gadbois

daemon

Okay, then, this will be my last post to you. Perhaps one day you can learn to converse civilly.

Jack the Bodiless

Dave:

Presuppositionalism will get you nowhere. We are familiar with it: it is nothing more than a pile of baseless assertions and logical fallacies. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that the Judeo-Christian God is "required" for anything at all. This can be demostrated very easily: whatever essential function you believe to be necessary can simply be ascribed to "the Universe".

If you still believe that presuppositionalism is of any use whatsoever, then why not discuss it in the appropriate thread in the Philosophy forum?

I would, however, like to return to the example of the abusive father.

You have stated that EVERYONE deserves eternal punishment.

WHY?

If this is so, why does the child NOT deserve to be punished by his father?

It is a central tenet of Christian "justice" that children are to be punished for the crimes of their parents. This happens over and over again throughout the Bible. The entire doctrine of "original sin" is based on this concept!

According to the perverted morality of Christianity, therefore, the child deserves to be punished: not just because of what Adam and Eve did, but because his father is a child abuser. "Child abuse is a WICKED &lt;thwack&gt;, WICKED &lt;thwack&gt;, SIN!!! &lt;thwack&gt;".

According to the moral standard clearly set out by God, the child deserves abuse for the father's sin of being an abuser.

Is this what you actually believe?

Can you even answer the question of why innocent (yes, innocent, look it up in a dictionary) children deserve ETERNAL punishment?

What will it take to make you see that you worship evil?

DaveJes1979

daemon
Dave: if I thought you were telling the truth, we would have nothing to discuss. I don't see anything "uncivil" about charging another (with argumentation to back it up) of not telling the truth.

This is a cop-out.


Jack the Bodiless

Dave: if you're so confident of that fact, then by all means - present such a case. Interact with the issues I have already raised, and tell me how the "Universe" - whatever you define that as - can provide a basis for interpreting reality.

Dave: everyone deserves eternal punishment because of the fact that man has rejected God.

But the child does not deserve punishment from the father, since the child is indebted to God, not the father. The father does not have the ethical prerogative to carry out God's wrath.

Dave: children are punished as well as parents because of the fact that we are one corporate humanity. As such, we all fell away from God in Adam. Adam's sin is not Adam's alone, but it is ours as well, as he has represented us.

As such, humanity has inherited God's curse, and suffering is the result. Some suffering comes from God's direct intervention (the Flood), and some comes by God using man's evil as the instrument.

Dave: no child is innocent in God's eyes, as discussed already. I would also note that you have no foundation to define in any non-arbitrary fashion what "evil" is. You have simply assumed an atheistic ethical framework to argue so.

Dave Gadbois

daemon

I will respond to hopefully enlighten you as to why I do not believe further fruitful discussion can be had. You have asserted that I am speaking falsely, that I am deliberately misrepresenting facts. I see this as a slur against my character, and a grevious one at that.

If you simply thought I were mistaken, yes, that would provide grounds for discussion. That is not what you have stated, however.

Jack the Bodiless

YOU are lying, Dave. You never had an argument to back up your assertion. Your claim that daemon lied is an attempt to avoid yet another falsehood within your own beliefs. "I cannot be wrong, therefore you are lying" is not an argument.
I have presented it on <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000169" target="_blank">this thread</a>.
False. There is no entity called "man", merely a collection of individuals. According to you, those who have NOT rejected God deserve eternal punishment.

You obviously have absolutely no concept of "justice" or "morality".
He is equally "indebted" to both. He owes his existence to the actions of both (according to Christianity). He deserves punishment from neither, because he has transgressed against neither.
We did not consent to be represented by Adam. And proxy representatives are used in the real world only for pragmatic reasons stemming from our non-omniscience. This is a basic contradiction in Christian doctrine: God can supposedly see into each individual soul and judge us accordingly, but he punishes EVERYONE for original sin?

"Kill them all, let God sort them out!"... Oops, God CAN'T (or won't) sort them out...
Because God is immoral. But you are contradicting yourself again. You say that I have "no foundation", then state in the next sentence that I have "assumed an atheistic ethical framework" (which provides the very foundation that I supposedly don't have).

By exactly the same argument, you have arbitrarily assumed the ethical framework of a tribe of Bronze Age goat-herders. Why? You have provided no justification for this bizarre choice.