R
reen12
Guest
quote: EnterTheBowser
Best,
reen12
I’ll give you no argument on* that* point. :tiphat:
Best,
reen12
- Status
S
Sparetherod
Guest
Ryan says:
Later.
You may be feeling the heat…but it is not you I have a problem with. It is your ideas and what they can do to people. Think about it…you don’t ask me to respect your ideas about science or history.You have good data or you don’t. Why should I give you a pass and respect your ideas about religion or dogma? People should be embarassed by bad ideas. Example: What should I respect about prohibiting condom use in third world countries when this results in untold suffering in disease and poverty. When principle is valued over lives…do you want to defend that?
Later.
A
Anonymous_1
Guest
For you see, she would put aside her Agatha Christie novel,
and I would find her napping…her rosary in her hand, her
glasses atilt on her nose…and somehow the “deductive”
enterprise - that I was engaged in - seemed to pale…
in comparison to her faith.
If it were maintained that Aquinas provided logical
sequences - by which faith can be seen to be not “illogical” -
I could go with that.
But “irrefutable proof” ?
I…don’t…*think…*so.
cf. my post, this thread, # 84.
[And, before we get too settled on “irrefutable” - a
quick tour of the Square of Oppositon might be
be of interest.]
plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/
quote: Anonymous_1
Glad to hear it!
[BTW, you might check my “signature” line, below.]
Best wishes,
reen12
when i say irrefutable proof i mean the notion that deductive reasoning is so powerful that it can prove something given that the premises in the argument are true and the argument is of valid form.
Aquainas essentially set up this MP
Anything that begins to exist has a cause
The universe began to exist
Therefore the universe has a cause
and yes, in light of 1 Corinthians 1:18
however, everyone is wired differently…not everyone can just accept something, I dont need apologetics to believe in God, i always believed in Him, and im grateful for that faith…i only need look at a sunset or goto the mountains…when i found apologetics i was delighted for i found that there was firm reason behind the teachings of the Church.
However, for some people, there are certain dead ends or road blocks that keep people from comming to the truth.
Im not saying that we could possibly understand the things of God, we need faith, but our faith does not contradict rational thought reason. as i said before faith is supra rational.
S
Sparetherod
Guest
Actually faith is fairly understandable from the standpoint of an evolving human mind. My take on faith from that angle, reprinted from post# 83 that got no comment as far as I can tell:
Actually, I would love to see evidence for a god, and UFOs, and ESP, and astral projection, and psychokinesis, and the list goes on. They’re all in the same category for me. Fancifull ideas with no evidence other than testimonials, tradition, faith, or misinterpretation of natural phenomena.
The idea of a god may be a little different, precisely for the reason more people hold to it. Our brains are wired to see causality. All things happen for a reason, don’t they? We are even capable of projecting reasoning or intention onto others; a very helpful survival tool in a social creature. We are also very aware of the difference between living and non-living things. Death confuses us. What happens to the life, the intentions, of the dead? Might it be that it still exists around us, still has intentions, and interacts with us…a nonscientific mind might find this reasonable, and certainly early man saw meaning and intention behind many natural phenomena. Coincidences would drive them crazy. “Hey, I was hoping that guy would just die…and then that tree feel on him.” “Man, the last time we danced, it rained!!” Couple the fact that we tend to presume causes, spirits, intentions, the “evidence” of coincidence, with story telling…and voila, you got religion. It all seemed reasonable to early man, and developed in all cultures, because as I said, we’re wired for it. Religions evolved as well, animism and ancestor worship, to polytheism and then monotheism. With modern religion we don’t even have to give up the spirits of our ancestors…".we’re all going to heaven…but wait, thats only if you believe and behave, because after all, the gods and spirits want something…they still have intentions." Does that make any of this true or real? Of course not. Any religious claim to how the world works can be put to the test, except for the very existence of spirits and gods, which is after all only an idea without attributes. All claims of interaction with us can and have been put to the scientific test and found lacking, which is why we hardly think it’s reasonable to sacrifice goats any more. Prayer and occasional coincidental results still have a powerful influence on the gullible, though. Before the scientific method came along the human mind had no real way of testing his religious theories, we now do and they don’t work, except for the undoubted sense of well being that some claim from belief itself. Can that be replicated in other ways? Yes. So when the magical thinking is revealed as false, all we are left with is the basic question…could gods exist? Who knows? Anyone who caims to have the answer, needs to start their own personal religion, because no two people will believe in the same god. And I would prefer that they kept it to themselves (when it comes to public policy) since they are not likely to have the evidence I will need to believe in their god. Again appeals to faith, tradition, authority, logic word games, emotions, testimonials, all work on many people because they want or need to believe. I’m sure it seems undeniable to them. It’s not.
M
Maranatha
Guest
Actually I believe you do profoundly loose creditability when you equate Pat Robertson and St. Thomas Aquinas. It shows how little understanding of the two men you truly have.
Yes, He really was protecting society. If you don’t understand that, it shows a lack of understanding of the Middle Ages.
You easily assign blame to “religion” for wars and atrocities and claim it to be a main reason for unbelief. Then you are presented with much worse wars and atrocities when belief is taken out of the picture and disavow responsibility. This double is a double standard. Sorry if you don’t like it but those are the facts.
Y
Youngcatholic
Guest
Actually, Catholicism is a very intellectual faith. There are volumes upon volumes of church history and doctrine. Aquinas clearly outlined many intellectual proofs for God’s existance. The Founding Fathers also based the U.S. government on Christian principles. This is hardly anti-intellectual but pro-intellectual. Catholicism is hardly a blind acceptance of “pie in the sky” ideas. Not sure what you mean by “thinks dinosaurs played with Adam and Eve”- I have never thought that before nor do I think most Catholics believe this. Pat Robertson is also a fundamentalist Christian, not Catholic, so some of his ideas might seem “far out”. Thanks for your interest, but I do not think you have us Catholics all figured out.
P
PLP
Guest
This is simply not the case. It’s helpful to understand the history of Einstein’s ToR.
Maxwell’s theory became mathematically “ugly” under certain kinds of motion and accelleration. Lorentz made an ad hoc patch to the theory to fix the mathematical ugliness, but it was without any sort of physical justification from first principles.
Einstein put the Lorentz contraction on a firm physical basis with the Special Theory of Relativity, but it made physical predictions far beyond electromagnetism. Of course the General Theory of Relativity brought the SToR to accellerating reference frames and constructed a theory of gravity since, according to the GToR, gravity is equivalent to accelleration.
However, Einstein’s theories of Relativity were a matter of great controversy for decades. Einstein won his Nobel primarily on the basis of his work on Quantum Mechanics and not Relativity. Scientists todeay are pretty confident about S>or, but even so, they still do test it.
The only scientific theory I know about which has received wide support without direct testing is Hawking’s Theory of Black Hole Radiation. However, that theory is accepted without direct evidential support only because it derives straightforwardly from ordinary QM and GToR, which both have strong evidential support. Even so, if we ever get our hands on a black hole, you can bet your house that testing Hawking Radiation will be a top priority.
All science requires experimental support and evidential argument. Although a scientific theory must by logically coherent, logical argument without appeal to experiment can establish scientific truth under only the most narrow, limited circumstances noted above. And under those circumstances, no scientific theory can ever logically prove something fundamental.
Of course not, on both counts. But it’s simply not a component of my own ethical beliefs that it is good to have free will to accept or reject the existence of an entity. I simply do not see rational adherence to fact as objectionably coercive, and I’m simply mystified by the argument that it should be “good” to be free to ignore any fact about the world.
P
PLP
Guest
I think it would be helpful here for you to understand the terminology I use with philosophical discussions.
An argument is any set of statements intended to rationally persuade the reader to the conclusion.
A proof is a special kind of argument, an argument which consists of a rigorous logical deduction from premises to a conclusion (a.k.a. theorem). It’s important to note that from this definition, it follows that you cannot “prove” your fundamental premises, since your fundamental premises are not derived from other premises; if they were derived, they would not be fundamental.
We know that if you can prove two contradictory conclusions from the same set of premises, then the premises themselves contain an internal contradiction. Internally contradictory premises are typically seen as a Bad Thing.
What is most discussed in philosophy are those selfsame fundamental premises. Since “argument” is a more general term than proof, you can argue for fundamental premises even though you cannot, by definition, “prove” them.
For instance, most scientific theories are, structurally, sets of premises. The argument in favor of a scientific theory is that the theory forms the simplest set of premises from which one can derive all the observed evidence. This is not a “proof”, because you are not deriving the scientific theory from any premises. You can, at best, prove that the theory does entail the evidence, but that doesn’t prove the theory true in the deductive sense.
If you merely substitute “argument” and make the quoted sentence: “I wouldn’t call conflicting arguments bad, it just increases uncertainty,” then it becomes uncontroversially acceptable.
You are, of course, free to use whatever terminology you wish, and I’ll just substitute “argument” for “proof” in my own mind when I read your posts, but I think my terminology is a little closer to canonical philosophical usage.
Indeed.
Do you mean “unreasonable” in the sense of immoderate? Or in the sense of irrational, i.e. contrary to sense and logic? The “correct” level of moderation is usually a matter of subjective opinion. To shamelessy rip off Barry Goldwater, immoderation in the pursuit of truth is no vice, at least not in my opinion.
As an atheist, I’m “demanding” only some reason to doubt atheism to switch my position to agnostic, and I’m demanding only the preponderance of evidence (the weakest standard of legal proof) to conclude theism. I consider this position both moderate and rational.
P
PLP
Guest
I understand. I would respectfully request then, since this is your position, that you refrain from using terminology such as “liar” which does in fact reference one’s character. You can call me mistaken, wrong, and even completely full of baloney without disturbing me in the slightest. But I bristle a little when my character is impugned. As mistaken, wrong or full of baloney as I might be, I am definitely sincere.
I tend to agree. If faith is ethically important, I think it should be at least rationally supportable.
I like some of his work. I don’t agree with anything he says, though.
P
PLP
Guest
I won’t speak for EtB, but yes, I believe that the theories of neo-Darwinian Evolution show that unguided natural processes can account for the the diversity and complexity of the biological organisms we observe, as well as the fossil record and observed characteristics of DNA.
Well, the analogy is not quite apt. Programming languages do not encode much information. Computer programs encode information. AFAIK, (and we don’t know precisely how much information is actually encoded in a genome), the Windows Operating System (probably the most complicated computer program in wide use) is only one or two orders of magnitude less complex than the human genome.
And it would be interesting to compare the sum total of information we humans have written down (including the Library of Congress, the Internet, and all the various written works floating around in other places) to the sum total of genetic information on the planet. I don’t know the answer, but I strongly suspect that if is has not already the trend is for human information to overtake genetic information in the foreseeable future.
I tend to agree with you on this point. But all this point demonstrates is that, in a narrow sense, a gene pool is *itself *intelligent, in the same sense that the fact that I can create “information” demonstrates that I myself am intelligent, not that I’m being guided by an intelligent being.
As noted earlier, I disagree.
I’ll address Aquinas’ arguments in a separate thread. I don’t see the connection with the noted links.
No argument there!
I heartily endorse this philosophy!
P
PLP
Guest
Well, let’s keep discussing this. Can one rationally deny the existence of any entity without perfect knowledge? Can one rationally disbelieve in, for instance, the existence of pixies, fairies, unicorns? Can one rationally assert that there are no Apaches hiding in one’s living room*?
Can one make even positive assertions with certainty? Is it absolutely certain that there is a couch in my living room? I saw it there ten minutes ago, but is it still there? Is it there only when I’m looking? Was I merely hallucinating? Am I merely misremembering?
The insistence on absolute certainty for rational belief is problematic. It’s probably better to go into this topic in more detail in a separate thread.
I’m uncertain now… Is your stance that disbelief in the existence of God is absurd predicated on general epistemological principles? Or is it predicated on good arguments for the existence of some sort of “Intelligent Creator”?
Well, it is certainly the case that if God existed, and the nature and properties of God can be obtained only by revelation by virtue of grace, then it is definitely the case that God has not revealed Himself to me personally.
P
PLP
Guest
It’s a complicated topic, and delves into the great morass of philosophy: Metaphysics. I’ll start a thread on it as soon as is practical.
Let me just make the short comment that requiring certainty for knowledge is no less arbitrary than any other metaphysical definition of knowledge. Furthermore, since only a proposition which is independent of or compatible with any logically possible evidence can be held with certainty, we cannot have certain knowledge about this universe unless every possible counterfactual statement were somehow logically impossible. However, I’ve never seen the logical impossibility of counterfactuals even attempted, much less proven.
P
PLP
Guest
Well, it’s at least a little more focused than my first thread. I’m in no particular hurry, though; we can focus on specific topics as they come up in the fullness of time.
That’s definitely high on my list, yes.
An interesting position!
Well sure. Essential properties are just those properties which establish membership in a class and differentiate the class from other classes. To say that humans are a class of organisms distinct from all other organisms is to say that there are some properties which define and distinguish that class. This assertion is uncontroversial.
They are pretty convincing to me.
The argument from what… Intelligent Design of Human Consciousness? An interesting position, worth of its own thread.
[/quote]
P
PLP
Guest
I’ve chosen these two arguments only on their apparent popularity: They were the first two arguments for the existence of God promulgated in depth in my threads. As I intend to continue posting as long as I have something to say (and, of course, so long as I am welcome here), I’ll get to other arguments in the fullness of time.
It’s fun and rewarding to find out with confidence that a particular line of discussion is indeed a dead end. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.” Of course, Doyle wasn’t a philosopher, and Holmes’ “Law” is an oversimplification (and, of course, has a hidden assumption of naturalism), I still do believe that the search for truth is, in no small part, a process of elimination of at least the implausible.
P
PLP
Guest
Oops! I forgot the footnote. The old joke goes:
Q: How many Apaches are hiding in this room?
A: As many as want to.
The point being that Apaches are so skilled at hiding, that if they had a mind to do so, you could not possibly find them.
Given this definition, can I rationally conclude that there are, in fact, no Apaches hiding in my living room?
P
PLP
Guest
Oops! That should be, “I don’t agree with everything he says.”
P
PLP
Guest
On the one hand, I don’t believe a comparison of Robertson and Aquinas is at all justified. Unlike Aquinas, Robertson is a greedy, megalomaniac lunatic with a double-digit IQ; he’s also probably a hypocrite to his core.
On the other hand, someone who says, “That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell,” might not be held, especially by atheists, to be the most moral person who ever existed.
H
hurst
Guest
PLP,
Are you going to be starting separate threads yet?
I agree with you that it is counter-productive to have long threads covering many different aspects of something needing to be discussed at length in its particulars.
hurst
Are you going to be starting separate threads yet?
I agree with you that it is counter-productive to have long threads covering many different aspects of something needing to be discussed at length in its particulars.
hurst
S
Sparetherod
Guest
Maranatha on Aquinas:
You did not comment on my proposition that strife is inevitable with the current world clash of religions that are mutually incompatable. If actual power can be put in secular hands we may avoid some problems, but as I stated there will always be fanatics as long as there are people who can interpret “God’s word” to not tolerate the heretic or infidel. Again, I put Aquinas in that group as well as Osama. Different religion, same results.
Even in the secular societies, religious hierarchies have resisted the more liberal attitudes and freedoms we now take for granted, and then amazingly want to take credit for them now.
No, he wasn’t, and I have a fair grasp of history. Rebellious groups are one thing…people like me and heretics in general are another. Aquinas made no distinction. What if Bush decided to exterminate Mormons for their heresy? Aquinas would have had no problem with that. Apparently the Catholic Church now would, and has apologized for the Inquisition. Why did they apologize?
OK, how do they differ? I can learn something here.
I did not say religious wars are the main reason for unbelief. Likewise, secular wars are not the main reason for belief. In fact truly religious wars may be debatably rare. Religion does foster contempt for the “other”, and helps motivate wars that are fought for other reasons. Even when christians have fought each other they try to convince themselves that the enemy aren’t real christians. People, on the other hand, have no reason to kill for atheism. Communists fought for communism, not atheism; these irrational people made communism their faithbased religion, and likewise had disdain for all others. Nazism was an irrational cause held to by many christians as well as atheists. I do not say all believers are fanatics…and you should not lump atheists with fanatical causes and tell me I should take responsibility. Atheism fosters no cause in itself. Religion, like nationalism, does foster the “us vs them” mentality.
You did not comment on my proposition that strife is inevitable with the current world clash of religions that are mutually incompatable. If actual power can be put in secular hands we may avoid some problems, but as I stated there will always be fanatics as long as there are people who can interpret “God’s word” to not tolerate the heretic or infidel. Again, I put Aquinas in that group as well as Osama. Different religion, same results.
Even in the secular societies, religious hierarchies have resisted the more liberal attitudes and freedoms we now take for granted, and then amazingly want to take credit for them now.
This is wrong, as stated by Washington himself. Google the Treaty of Tripoli. Blanket statements that this country was founded on christian principles are patently false. How many of the Ten Commandments are in the Constitution? Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Payne among others were not christians. Preachers in the 1820’s were still wondering when we would have a christian president. The first six were not; they did not believe in the divinity of Christ. Don’t believe me? Google and you shall find. Jefferson said " a priest ridden society shall not long keep it’s freedom." And he was talking specifically about Catholics. Adams election was fought by many sects because they thought he was an atheist. Never hear any of this in sunday school, do you? A bunch of deists and atheists were the only ones able to step outside of dogma and give us a country that had the possibility of avoiding Aquinas’ religious fervor.
I am not trying to figure out Catholics. Don’t take it personally, but it’s the larger question of whether this world will survive it’s religious differences that I am concerned about. Think about it, if most Catholics, and everybody else, simply held to ethics and science, Robertson would not be a fundamentalist christian…he would simply be a deluded idiot and we would all tell him so.
P
PLP
Guest
More will be coming soon. My son is in town for the next week, which will limit my posting time, especially in the evening. Please be patient!
- Status