SeaKayaker

Well, I expected a stronger reaction to a paper that claims that Christianity must be true, especially here! I decided to make this argument to see if it could be done, since nobody seemed to think that it was possible. Now I would like help finding the flaws in my arguments. Any takers? I realize that the paper is long reading, but I would appreciate some critiques.

Thanks.

pug846

I read through the whole paper and have an initial comment and a few comments on your paper. I probably won’t have time to get into a discussion on anything I raise…so, sorry for the hit and run post.

You aren’t getting a lot of comments yet for a few reasons. I would be willing to bet the main reason is you're actually polite and seem humble. I can’t remember the last Christian poster who came into this forum and had either of those qualities. So, if you came in here and said, “you stupid atheists are going to burn in hell and my paper shows conclusively why you are morons and wrong,” I would be willing to bet you would have received quite a few comments by now because people would have been more motivated to show you that you are wrong. Throwing in a few bible verses would have sufficed too…
---
On to the comments from your paper:

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “part of the universe,” but it seems you would have a hard time reconciling that with claiming that when, according to Christian mythology, God came down to earth in the form of Jesus. Was Jesus not “part” of the Universe?

Assuming I accept your arguments that unity and diversity are insufficient answers to your question and further that this is the correct answer, this doesn’t lead to your conclusion. You briefly discuss Islam and reject it since you claim it teaches that God is not separate from and above the Universe. Even assuming this is true, you give no reason why I should accept Christianity as the only possibility that fulfills the criterion. In order for your argument to be sound, you would have to provide us reason to believe that no other possible conception of God could possibly exist.

You attempt to show how Christianity is somehow unique (e.g., the oldest manuscript), but you fail to show why that difference makes a difference. Why should we expect the God who is “involved in the Universe” to be involved in such a way that She wants a book written down about Her? You then admit that your argument is circular since all systems are bound to be. But there is a near infinite amount of similarly circular argument that would fulfill your criterion.

I’m also not sure why you begin with atrocities committed in the name of “the one” and “the many.” I think most people who read that will immediately think of atrocities committed by people who believe the Christian God has told them to do X.

[ November 30, 2002: Message edited by: pug846 ]</p>

Anti-Creedance Front

Though I doubt many Christians would applaud you for relating to the metaphysical, I could never see the religions of the book as philosophical or universally important. I see the true roots of Christianity in pagan culture, as many nontheists are starting to realize. All you need is two words: Zoroaster and Mithra, and you can go from there. I am going to eventually give your reading the once over, and not denounce it as futile just because you're a Christian, but I have my premonitions. That, and I doubt it will change the fact of El, the omnipotent, jealous Canaanite god shown in the Old Testament.

Keith Russell

SeeKayaker:

In reading what you've written, it seems that when you say 'the one and the many', you are trying to reconcile the 'subjective' with the 'objective'. Is that how you see it?

Stated another way, could it be that you are trying to reconcile 'the self' with 'the Other'?

This can be done, but I don't believe it can be done from a religious, especially not a Christian, premise.

Religion isn't objective, nor is it entirely subjective. It is 'dogmatic', with its Commandments accepted on faith, taken for granted.

Thus, if the religion doesn't allow for both 'the self' and 'the Other' (and I don't believe Christianity does, 'God' being 'One'...), then you won't be able to reconcile them, and still follow the dictates of the faith.

Keith.

SeaKayaker

Pug846,

Thanks for your reply. The best way for me to think about what you said is to write about it, so I will post a response. In other words, feel free but not obligated to respond…

You are probably right there. Hearing someone say that sure would make me want to believe in Christianity .

That is an interesting point that I had not considered. My reaction is to say that Christ retained two distinct natures, the human and the divine. There was no mixture between the two natures, so the divine nature (God) always remained distinct from the universe. I do also affirm that there was no separation between the two natures. My concern with this response is that I am defining the universe as everything but God, which works great for my purposes, but seems to border on semantic wordplay. Thanks for bringing that up; I will think about that some more.

My goal is to show that any true worldview must answer this problem successfully and validate human knowledge (recognizing that these are not two totally distinct criteria). I them attempt to show a certain set of conditions that must be met to validate human knowledge. Finally, I will try to show that these conditions, taken together, equal the key points of Christian doctrine. You could create a religion that affirmed all those points but denied every other aspect of Christianity, but the more conditions I can describe the stronger this case becomes. Apparently I need to do some more work on that part of the paper though…

I think that there is a key philosophical difference between the examples that I gave and examples of “Christians” who have committed atrocities claiming that they are serving God. I can condemn those “Christians” from the very Bible in which they claim to believe, whereas I cannot condemn Hitler or French Revolutionaries based on their philosophical systems. However, that is not going to change your gut reaction when reading it and that gut reaction is detrimental to the paper. If I can come up with an introduction that will be both interesting and understandable to my audience, I may change that.

Thanks for your comments. I will be turning in the first rough draft in about two weeks, so I will think about them as I continue to flesh out the paper.

Soli Deo Gloria,
SeaKayaker

Beoran

This "problem" of the one and many has been solved 2500 years ago in China by the Taoist philosophers. Unfortunately, the style of Chinese philosophy back then is highly different from the western philosophy that has evolved from the ancient greek philosophy.

Note the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching:
<a href="http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/contao/laotzu.htm" target="_blank">http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/contao/laotzu.htm</a>
<a href="http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html" target="_blank">http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html</a>

In essence, all things are indistinguishable befefore they are given names. Names are mere manifestations of the human interpretation. There is no problem of the one and all, for this distinction is only a human interpretation of the universe. We desire to be separate of the universe and of other people, and thus the distinction between you and me, and between one and all is created by the names "one" and "all". However, these, names are but "manifestations", not the "mystery" of reality.

In classical terms this would be that the distinction between one and all is not metaphysical. It's not ontological. It's epistemiological. Using a synthetic approach, the "all" is emphasised, using an analytical approach, the "many" are emphasised. These two approaches are both useful, yet only lead to partial understanding. When we combine these two, we get an improved understanding of reality.

pug846

I’ve never been able to comprehend the Christian rational for the Jesus/God dichotomy. (Whether that’s because there is no coherent rationale or whether I’m just too slow is another matter all together…) How was Jesus, God if the divine nature never interacted with the flesh and blood? Saying Jesus was God but that the divinity never interacted with his material nature seems to be conceptually meaningless.

But you are trying to make a stronger case. You aren’t trying to just show that Christianity fulfills the necessary criterion, but that only Christianity fulfills the necessary criterion. It’s like trying to prove that Manny Ramirez is the best player in baseball, but saying the best player must be (1) a home-run hitter (2) have a great arm (3) drive in a lot of runs and (4) hit well in the clutch. Manny fulfills each of those criterion, but isn’t the best player. Again, assuming I buy your argument that the one and the many falls short of explanation, you have only provided us with two criterion for the “right” religion. You can’t simply add on criterion and say, look, Christianity fulfills that. If I added on the criterion “plays for the Boston Red Sox,” you would be justified in asking me why would the best player need to play for the Red Sox?

Keith Russell

Beoran said:
In essence, all things are indistinguishable befefore they are given names.

Keith: No, we give things names because we see the separations between them. If I take the labels off my bottles of paint, I can still find the colour I need. I often choose to buy a tube of paint, without even knowing the specific name of that colour.

Beoran said: Names are mere manifestations of the human interpretation. There is no problem of the one and all, for this distinction is only a human interpretation of the universe. We desire to be separate of the universe and of other people, and thus the distinction between you and me--

Keith: I could not 'be' you, even if I had that desire. Desire does not affect reality, only actions do.

Beoran: --and between one and all is created by the names "one" and "all". However, these, names are but "manifestations", not the "mystery" of reality.

In classical terms this would be that the distinction between one and all is not metaphysical. It's not ontological. It's epistemiological. Using a synthetic approach, the "all" is emphasised, using an analytical approach, the "many" are emphasised. These two approaches are both useful, yet only lead to partial understanding. When we combine these two, we get an improved understanding of reality.

Keith: I have never found a rational basis for the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. I believe it can only be accepted on a mystical basis.

Keith.

Beoran

Keith: No, we give things names because we see the separations between them. If I take the labels off my bottles of paint, I can still find the colour I need. I often choose to buy a tube of paint, without even knowing the specific name of that colour.

Bjorn: That is also true. However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Seeing distincions indeed leads to giving names. However, conversely, and especially for children, the words often precede the distinctions. For example, children will often not use the word "I" even if they know it, because they have yet to distinguish between the self and the world. In cultures where the word "I" is rarely used, like the Japanese culture, this distinction seems to develop later and to a lesser extent. Also in Japanese, several colour shades that we would call "green" are classified as "blue". The distinction is made differently than in English because the words Japanese has for the colours are different in meaning.


Keith: I could not 'be' you, even if I had that desire. Desire does not affect reality, only actions do.

Beoran: Exactly! Desire does not affect reality. But it does influence our perception of reality. If you really desired to be me, you would be able to percieve yourself as me. Whether such a state of mind would be desirable remains to be seen, though. I'm quite happy being me, but I don't know how you would experience it. ^_~

Keith: I have never found a rational basis for the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. I believe it can only be accepted on a mystical basis.

Beoran: Exactly! There is no dichtomy. Only different names (categories). It's not a dichtomy. Those are just two names I use for nonconflicting ways of thinking. I simply use categories and names as tools for understanding reality and communication. My main point is exactly that there are only dichtomies in our minds, not in reality. Therefore, there is no real dichtomy between "one" and "all".

Oh, and I'm not very high on mysticism, contrary to the "real" taoists. I'm foremost an eclectic, you know. I learn from many sources, but what I learn may not be what was taught in the first place. ^_^

kennyminot

Keith:

You seem a little grumpy. You should cheer up. I think you are too serious. You shouldn't be serious about things like beliefs. They are not that important. They are like having material things, like condominiums and quarters.

On the relationship between desire and reality:

One time, when I visited a Pentecostal church in Minnesota, I watched a bunch of people dance and sing and chant. They had tambourines. They smacked them against their hands. They talked about pleasing some thing called "God" -- I am not sure who that was -- and they delivered little speeches called 'testimonies.' They talked about driving down the street, looking up at the sky, and seeing a 'divine' sign in the clouds. The world spoke to them. Everything was a sign from this 'God' person. It certainly seemed -- quite contrary to my intuitions -- that this 'God' thing did exist. I could not deny that they were seeing something. I suppose -- if I wanted -- I could call them delusions. But that would be substracting some important quality from their experience. Even if it was a pyschological misfiring, a freak accident of the brain, they seemed to be percieving some divine force . . . because, quite frankly, they desired it. They wanted to find a happy person staring down at them from the heavens.

&lt;&lt;--desire + belief = reality--&gt;&gt;

Could this be a possible equation?

Question:

I know about this scientist named Fred Hoyle. He supports a different cosmological perspective -- the 'static universe' theory -- which contradicts the 'Big Bang' model. In the beginning, most people took him seriously. But he STILL publishes books which speak out against the established consesus. Even when such a amazing amount of evidence supports the other position! What nerve!

But he's probably involved in self-deception. It couldn't be that . . . that . . . his desires are whispering in his ear. Because once people start admitting that desires have some influence, that they shape our perspective along with beliefs, then we start admitting that a 'non-rational' part of our being has some control. Heaven forbid! And then . . . what happens to our picture of reality? Could people have desires sitting behind them, whispering, telling them what to think, what to believe . . . ?

And do we have the ability to talk about a 'mind-indepedent' reality when we admit a stupid thing like that?

But what am I talking about! I'm just babbling. Besides, it's not important what people believe. It's important what they do. People can have all kinds of different beliefs and still be meany boo-boo heads. That's because beliefs are not that important. If you have a 'jerk-off' temperament, you are going to be a 'jerk-off' regardless of your (non)belief in an omnipotent loving Being.

Peace out.
Kennie Smith

[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: kennyminot ]</p>