…why should we appeal to evidence in order to undermine the appeal to evidence?
The statement itself appeals to evidence, not us. (If I understand what you mean by “appeal to evidence”.)
…‘empiricism for which there is no evidence’ …
I don’t know what this phrase means to you.
…that still leaves room for an epistemology which relies upon evidence but which is not empiricism.
I don’t see any room for it, and the best minds in the business worked on it for decades without finding a solution. That seems pretty far fetched.
This seems to be a shared basis between us - Christianity is based on evidence and generally speaking, my thoughts are too.
Being based on evidence doesn’t mean you are an empiricist, claiming that statements can only be considered true/meaningful if they are empirically evidence is what makes one an empiricist.
If you are to insist on the value of evidence as opposed to faith plucked from thin air, mentioning Descartes seems to add nothing.
This sentence doesn’t make sense to me. What do you mean that “I insist on the value of evidence”? and why do you think faith is plucked from thin air? Faith is not belief without evidence as atheist would like to define it, it is a theological virtue.
If our senses can be undermined we both fall.
Just the empiricist who relies on senses alone for a theory of knowledge falls. Rationalists do not rely on the senses alone.
However, Descartes does not even undermine the appeal to evidence!
It certainly undermines empiricism, it demonstrates that something exists completely independent of the empirical. Something that certainly shouldn’t be possible were empiricism not a logical contradiction …I have no idea what "the appeal to evidence means unless you mean empiricism.
Yes our senses may be faulty, but they are all we have to experience experience. Faulty is better than imaginary, and doubt can be empirically evidenced.
We experience reality through mathematics without the empirical all the time. Haven’t you ever wondered why mathematics just happens to map to the physical universe? Our senses are not the only way to find knowledge. Empiricism is not just faulty but
necessarily false, and I have no idea how you would empirically evidence doubt, if your senses are faulty.
The most challenging thing to show is what you mean by a reality which is not empirically evident. We might as well say: ‘there is a reality about which we sense nothing and from which nothing has been evidently produced. There is no trace of this reality’. If I can make statements on this sort of grounding, it’s a free for all: ultimate relativism!
We can say, and I demonstrated to you that there is a reality which is not empirically evident, and from which nothing can be empirically produced. There is a trace of this reality, as I pointed. That was the purpose of the
Dubito example. As to a “free for all” it doesn’t matter. Empiricism is necessarily false. It doesn’t matter if we like the consequences of that. That is not the same thing as a free for all, that doesn’t mean that any statement made is necessarily true.
And just a correction: I said ‘If true statements make a correspondence with reality’ and did not say: ‘If true statements make a correspondence with empirical reality’. Isn’t all reality essentially the same, in its reality, empirical or not?
I was pointing out the implication of your statement, that’s why it was parenthetical. “Corresponding to reality” when you use it means “empirical”. Because we know empiricism is a false idea, we know that “corresponding to reality” does not actually mean “empirical”
What on earth is this non-empirical reality, how can we talk about it and how can we have Testament of it if it is beyond perception and evidence?
We use logic. That’s what metaphysics is, the study of being. Mathematics is the study of quantities using logic. Its a similar system of elucidation studying different things. A mathematical statement is true without regard to empirical reality in the same way a metaphysical one is. Do you need empirical evidence to accept set theory? Of course not, yet just about every mathematician on the planet does. Our friend JonP is a rationalist and an atheist. But one cannot be a rational atheist and still accept the validity, or truth of a logical contradiction. That’s just a guy who really, really, hopes G-d does not exist.
Why appeal to the non-evident if Christianity is based on evidence?
Logicians like to play. Christianities truth is mathematically verified*, we don’t need anything else. We do it because we can. People ask for proof that G-d exists, but they don’t want to accept the massive documentation we have. Instead, they want us to meet the false standard of empiricism. .
Over to you, theists!
Aren’t you angry that you were taught something false all these years? You seem to be interested in defending the people that threw you under the bus. What if you went to hell because these people lied to you and you never found out? We are the good guys. They are the bad guys. They didn’t care enough about you to tell you the truth. We do. We won’t throw you under the bus.
- I am referring to the fulfillment of Messianic Prophecy, the math is interesting but it is an entirely different subject.
