cobrashock

Keith- Your reply brings us to the burden of proof agrument.
I'm still working on the tooth fairy myself. If he puts the tooth fairy into the mix in place of God then he would have to except his own argument. Sun Dog is right, we would have to agree on a common premise paradigm in the first place, so we have no argument really. Ron Shockley
cobrashock

John Page

But what if Sun Dog's Paradigm is inappropriate.

cobrashock

John- Then we would have to agree on the other rules first. (logic anyone?)
cobrashock

John Page

There are no rules. There is no methodology. This is reality. The past may not be a good guide to the future. Stocks may go sideways as well as up or down.

Cheers, John

Keith Russell

John said:
There are no rules.

--The above sounds an awful lot like a rule.

Next, John said:
There is no methodology.

--That, too, greatly resembles a rule.

John then said:
This is reality.

--The above sounds like a conclusion, based upon rules.

Keith.

John Page

The above are statements relative to me - you don't have to accept them, of course. But you could if you wanted to.

Yours Relatively, John

Sun Dog

I don't want to speak for Keith Russell, of course, but I suspect that his point was that your statements are self-contradictory. That is, they cannot be accepted even within the context of your own beliefs, let alone somebody else's. For example, you claim that "there are no rules". Now taken at face value, this certainly does seem to be a rule. And if it is a rule, then it's existence contradicts its own claim. So if you believe "There are no rules", then you also believe that there is a rule-- specifically, the rule that forbids the existence of rules. In other words, you believe "There are no rules" and "There is at least one rule" simultaneously. That's a contradiction, and it exists within your own beliefs, not somebody else's.

Of course, there are ways around this. One would be to take the statement "There are no rules" as a metaphor rather than a literal statement. Perhaps the literal meaning behind the statement is simply an exhortation not to be close-minded and dogmatic. Another approach would be to change the statement to "There are no rules except this one", which has the same general impact of the original statement, without the problem of self-contradiction. Third, you might try to argue that "There are no rules" is not actually a rule. If the statement is not actually a rule, then it's prohibition on rules doesn't refer to itself, and therefore there is no self-contradiction. Finally, you could decide to just stop caring about whether your worldview is internally consistent or not. I don't recommend this particular approach, but it is possible.

John Page

There you go, applying rules again!

What you objectify as rules are subjective propositions of the mind of the person that believes that rule. A rule is imputed and not absolute. The rule is the result, not the cause. The rule is what you use to predict a result knowing the cause. The prediction may be inaccurate.

This being the case, I am broadly concuring with your previous post. There is no reliable methodology for learning what you don't know, the methodology can only be established a posteriori and consistency is some indicator of its effectiveness.

Your paradigmicly, John

cobrashock

And this is where we part company. The statement should read;
We need some cogent and persausive reasons why a rational person should embrace the hypothesis there is A GOD. Quite frankly I just simply do not believe that any such reason exist.

The rules of logic cannot be ignored. To deny the converse statement is to deny your own statement. But more to the point.
The second statement is consistant with natural law as I now observe it.
YOU are saying that God exists my friend. That is something more than I see, hear or percieve in this natural world. So the burden of proof is on YOU, not me.
To persist with the top statement you made is to tout a straw man argument in my opinion, and we have no room for any debate. Honest, I was once where you are now. It doesn't hurt here, where I am at now.
Cobrashock, Ron Shockley

burning

people don’t come across the word “paradigm” so much as they read about paradigm shifts: say what one will about relativism or subjectivism, but what can one say about change? are paradigms supposed to be constant? or don’t they evolve like most folks’ seem to do? and shouldn’t accepting the new mean squaring it with the old?

so how do paradigms - even personal ones - account for change? say, one manages to justify evolution into the creation story, isn’t a “first cause” already a rationalization? isn’t accepting this already one compromise removed from the original? - doesn’t change inherently mean something has to give? truth should not contradict truth - yeah, right – but it hurts the brain to accept two explanations being true at the same time. so how should we manage the trick, yet remain true to "our" paradigm?

so the question must be raised: how much does paradigm resemble its previous incarnations? or tradition? or the mainstream? - begging the follow-up: so what’s your take?

subjectively speaking, it’s easy to prove difference; so how easy is it to prove affinity? – or, in more technical terms, faith-?