Relativism and skepticism are logical suicide

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Once upon a time an acquaintance roared at me when I said something which used the term, “True”

He bellowed at me: “We Cannot Know Anthing!”

I said: “Do You Know that to be True?”

That reduced him to Silence.

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Yeah sorry for my part in that, misconceptions about evolution and the frequency at which they’re spread are a trigger point for me and it’s hard not to engage.

I think my response to your original question has handled by others, that they take a narrow, easily countered extremist position of each philosophy and offer a retort. They’re valid retorts to those extreme positions but I don’t think you’ll find many people actually holding them. A relativist is unlikely to apply principles of relativism to say, the gravitational constant, a measurable phenomenon. And likewise skepticism is about proportioning your belief in a proposition to the strength of evidence provided. The idea of there being a limit to ‘certainty’, kind of best summed up in solipcism, doesn’t mean skeptics believe you can’t know things to be true. It just means there’s a finite limit to how certain one can be about something, given we have no perfect mechanism by which to analyze our existence.
 
Sophism is Revativism of which Plato effectively countered;
although, it is not yet over done and buried…

Skepticism must become quieted in order for Reaons de FAITH to have a chance to be realized.

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I don’t see how evolutionary theory has anything to say about it. Since I don’t think anyone, at least in the theological circles I’ve read, asserts Original Sin is a gene sequence, it literally doesn’t touch on evolution at all.
 
So far as I understand it, the Church does not teach that Genesis 1 and 2 were actual literal histories. This appears to be applying Sola Scriptura to those passages.
 
Evolution, at least so far as it deals with humans, attempts to explain how H. sapiens came to be. It does not delve into matters of Original Sin, and most of the Christian theistic evolutionists I’ve ever encountered view the Fall as something that happened somewhere near (before or after) H. sapiens sapiens evolved.

The evidence for humans evolving from early hominids, and having common genetic ancestors with the other great apes, is very compelling, right down to the same endogenous retroviral sequences in the same places with other great apes. I don’t think it is the job of any scientific discipline to square that evidence with theological statements, any more than I think it is the job of any theologist to square the Bible with the scientific evidence. The theistic evolutionists I’ve talked to view them simply as two separate yet unified revelations. They cannot be opposed to each other, and any apparent conflict is due to our lack of understanding, not to some inherent flaw in the science.

One of the greatest of all the evolutionary biologists was Theodosius Dobzhansky, an Orthodox Christian. If he found no conflict between scripture and evolution, I’m not prepared to argue with him. Evolution has nothing to say on matters like Original Sin. Unless you can point to some genetic sequence that created Original Sin, I’d say there’s nothing to debate. Frankly, i suspect even asserting that there was a genetic component, rather than a spiritual event, probably runs rather close to heresy.
 
Curious, would a human body without a soul be a human under that teaching?
 
Gotcha. So there wouldn’t have been any human death before Genesis. If one believes there was no death at all that would seem to be in conflict, not just with evolutionary theory, but fossil evidence and such. Somewhat depends if you also want to adopt young-earth ideas I suppose. Regardless some people do find a way to reconcile the two.
 
I don’t think that Dan is talking about coal and gas. We have fossils of animals that lived many millions of years ago. We even have complete insects trapped in amber that died millions of years ago. So death obviously predates Homo sapien.
 
If you don’t believe there are fossils millions of years old then you take a literal view of Genesis. That’s fine. But you are then going to need to reject an awful lot of scientific facts in order to hold to that position. As long as you are aware of that.

And no, I don’t believe in the resurrection. I’m an atheist. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. Just that I personally don’t find it credible.
 
The closest I can come to off the top of my head is that the blood of Christ was an atonement for sin. But that’s not the same thing as saying that Original Sin is passed down by blood.

The risk, to my admittedly outsider view, is insisting that Original Sin is genetic, is that someone could find the gene sequence, use CRISPR to edit it, and create a sinless human. That’s why I think arguing that Original Sin is a genetic inheritance, rather than a spiritual one, is a problematic claim.
 
jan10000 said:
Not so. Original sin IS an actual event passed BY BLOOD to the original sinner (Adam’s progeny). This is an essential component of original sin.
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You are biologically incorrect here. A sperm cell does not contain any blood and neither does an egg cell. Hence a newly fertilized zygote does not have any blood from either parent. At a later stage, once the zygote has implanted into the womb, then some blood from the mother, not the father, will pass into the developing baby’s bloodstream via the placenta.

No descendant of Adam contains any of Adam’s blood; they do contain some of Eve’s blood. Your idea of inheritance from Adam through blood is incorrect.

Perhaps that is why some Christians talk about DNA rather than blood. Interpreting “Adam’s blood” as “descent from Adam” is equivalent to “inheriting Adam’s DNA”, which seems a better way to go.
 
Interesting post. I relate it to what Descartes said, that by reason alone, everything can be doubted, except one’s own existence. Faith is indeed a gift.
 
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LeonardDeNoblac said:
  1. Relativist: “Nothing is always true.”
  2. Skeptic: “We can’t know the truth.”
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As someone that subscribes to both philosophies to some degree, I’d probably present them as thus;
  1. Relativist: “Truth not rooted in objective reality is subjective.”
  2. Skeptic: “The less discreetly observable something is, the less certain we can be in describing it.”
 
Hume said:
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LeonardDeNoblac:
  1. Relativist: “Nothing is always true.”
  2. Skeptic: “We can’t know the truth.”
Click to expand...
As someone that subscribes to both philosophies to some degree, I’d probably present them as thus;
  1. Relativist: “Truth not rooted in objective reality is subjective.”
  2. Skeptic: “The less discreetly observable something is, the less certain we can be in describing it.”
Click to expand...
We’re all relativists and skeptics to some degree. If anyone here’s not a skeptic I’ve got a nice harbour bridge I can let you have pretty cheaply. I could even throw in the Opera House…
 
A bit of relativism and a bit of skepticism may be in order. For example:
Morality does change with the times and cultures. Previously, even a one-piece bathing suit for women might be considered risque. Now we have seen reports of a case of a reader at a papal Mass with a lot less clothing. Previously the death penalty was justified, now it is inadmissable.
Some truths we cannot ever know for sure. For example, what exactly was there before the Big Bang. Some will say nothing as it was the moment of Creation, others will say that it cannot be determined whether or not there was something that existed previously and if there was, it is difficult or impossible to know what it would be.
 
There are theories (plural) of ‘evolution’ … including Classic Darwinism…

No one can disprove what is evidenced by Faith … i.e. GOD and His Son JESUS
 
Freddy said:
If anyone here’s not a skeptic I’ve got a nice harbour bridge I can let you have pretty cheaply. I could even throw in the Opera House…
Click to expand...
Again, checking facts is not philosophical skepticism, just critical thinking. So that’s a strawman.
 
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