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Shannon9791
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So I just watched that video, and the shot of him staring at that cruise ship just about made me wet my pants. Thank you so very much for posting that.
Why are the New Age movement and other exotic ideas so attractive?
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Lost_Wanderer
Guest
The different ways they exist does not terminate or nullify their reality. You also still deliberately ignore the fact that there is a connection between the two things, the external and the internal. That relationship is significant. You have indeed used examples that verify this. The hallucinations, despite the falsity of the images they induce, still have such images as proof of those same hallucinations. We can even go further still and say that perhaps there is a significance to the images also (I mean, self-proclaimed Freudians do it all the time).
I’m afraid it does. As I’ve said, there are many holes and mysteries in the history of this world. There is room for much uncertainty and that uncertainty can nurture types of speculation that you will have no reason to impede other than your own speculation.
Again, you do nothing but oversimplify. For instance, you haven’t considered if this “Billy” asked himself the source of this experience. What is the meaning of having this experience? Could he be deranged? Could he be possessed? Is there a meaning to why he would choose flying over all “miraculous” things instead of turning water into wine (which arguably even safer)?
I tire of repeating myself. So long as there can be many flaws in man’s means to determine truth, a leap of faith is required in any of them. Secondly, having faith in a certain means does not guarantee truth. Finally, despite previous two points, the diversity, complexity, and imperfections in man’s journey in search of truth does not mean TRUTH itself does not exist.
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AntiTheist
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Certainly I agree that there is truth.
The question before us is how we go about determining whether a claim is likely to be true or not. I have pointed out that evidence-based inquiry is the only consistently reliable method we have of determining whether a claim is likely to be true. Your latest post seems to suggest that you agree with this, as you noted that BIlly Bob in the example would have to analyze and evaluate the evidence for these claims.
So I again ask the question that started this whole digression: what other method of obtaining knowledge do you think there is than evidence-based inquiry? If you agree with me that evidence-based inquiry is the only consistently reliable method of obtaining knowledge we have (and, to be clear, “consistently reliable” does not mean “infallible” or “totally perfect and always correct”), then we have no disagreement in our basic approach to claims. It’s likely that we just evaluate the evidence differently in some cases, and it might be fruitful to have a conversation about those few cases.
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Lost_Wanderer
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The reason why I cannot fully agree with you is that your very simplification of “evidence-based inquiry” denies the diversity of procurement methods, analysis of evidence, and even the reliability of it all which is entirely synonymous with what I meant by different means to discern truth. I’m not even going to start returning to my previous point in that even what qualifies for “evidence” is up to debate and is dependent on context and circumstances.
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AntiTheist
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I think we are actually in agreement that we evaluate whether a claim is true or not by applying reason to evidence.
Indeed, we may disagree in certain cases about what qualifies as evidence or how best to obtain evidence or whether certain evidence is sufficient (or even valid at all) or how best to analyze the evidence, but we agree, it would seem, that the only consistently reliable method that humans have to obtain knowledge is applying reason to evidence.
I would be willing to bet that you and I use evidence-based inquiry to draw similar conclusions in the vast majority of our lives. I will bet that most of the conclusions I make by applying reason to evidence are identical to yours – for example, probably neither of us believes in the loch ness monster, neither of us believes that people can fly under their own power, neither of us believes that doing a rain dance can make it rain; probably both of us believe that objects fall at the rate of 32 seconds per second on this planet, both of us believe that the current President of the USA is named Barack Obama, both of us believe the earth is rotating (thus creating the illusion of the sun moving in the sky), both of us believe…tons and tons and tons of things that are identical, all by means of applying reason to evidence.
At a guess, you and I probably would draw similar or identical conclusions about well over 95% of the claims we encounter, all due to the way we apply reason to evidence.
I would suggest, then, that an examination of where we differ in those very, very few areas where our application of reason to evidence does not yield the same results would be fruitful.
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StTommyMore
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AntiTheist, you are missing a very important fact: A priori truth can never be arrived at through empirical evidence alone.
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TruthSeeker60
Guest
How can you know that something is true a priori?
There are a few necessary assumptions (such as logical absolutes) that need to be made in order to know anything at all. Eventually, these assumptions don’t stay assumptions as they become increasingly justified by evidence. For example, our experience, plus our application of reason, verifies the principle of non-contradiction by telling us that A=A and not not A.
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StTommyMore
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There are many things we can know a priori. Peace is superior to war. Love is superior to apathy. These are things we can know without ever having experienced them. Through Metaphysics, we can also know that God must exist.
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TruthSeeker60
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I asked how one can know something is true a priori. Instead of answering that question, you started talking about things people value such as peace and love.
How? Show, through metaphysics, without using empirical evidence, that a god must exist.
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StTommyMore
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How about I just direct you to someone much more intelligent to you or I:
St. Thomas’s Proofs for the existence of God
You want Article 3
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TruthSeeker60
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Is this a joke? I have a hard time believing that anyone takes St. Thomas’s “proofs” seriously just as much as I have a hard time believing that people buy into the new age movement.
If this is your justification for thinking that you know that a god exists without finding any evidence in this reality for the existence of a god, then you fail.
In principle, I try to only respond to arguments that people write in their own words on this thread, rather than what is written elsewhere. If you think that St. Thomas’s “proofs” justify believing in a god without finding any evidence in this reality, we could perhaps discuss it in a new thread (since it would be diverting this thread off-topic). However, what I won’t do is play a battle of saying, “see this link to this apologist” or “see this link to this counter-apologist.”
If someone just gives a link to an external source that makes the argument, I generally assume that that person cannot articulate the argument in such a way that it logically makes their point.
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StTommyMore
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I assume you are unable to refute the proofs, since all you can manage to do is mock them
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OrdinaryMelkite
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As a former New Ager, I can say with certainty that lot of the reasons many are attracted to the New Age trap are that (among other things):
- Ignorance of Catholic/Generally Christian teaching.
- A tendency to want to believe in something where one gets to “pick and choose” what one wants to believe without incurring any consequences.
- A general unwillingness to believe that there is such a thing as “sin.”
- A general unwillingness to believe in “good and evil.”
- Growing up in a hostile religious environment (usually, not totally, fundamentalist Protestant) which causes one to flee to a more “tolerant, more open-minded” religion and religious atmosphere. Fanaticism (Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise) genrally cause that.
- The New Age also tends to be Pro-Choice and is totally Pro-Gay Rights-------so if you are already predisposed towards that liberal mindset, then you will find yourself in tune with New AGE ideology, particulary if you are disenchanted with you religion’s opinion on the subject.
- The New Age Movement is very pacifistic and anti-war. If your religion is not like that (or it is not suffiently like that for your liking) then the New Age is great for you.
- You cannot sin-------you are actually a GOD!!! Plus you get to do stuff over and over again (reincarnation) until you “get it right” and become part part of the “God Mind.”
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TruthSeeker60
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You can think whatever you like, but if you aren’t willing to take the time to back up those arguments on this site, than it’s not worth it for me to take the time to refute them on this site. It’s not worth it for me to spend several minutes to give thoughtful refutations to 5 different arguments when it probably took you a few seconds to find that webpage from a Catholic encyclopedia. I guess I could descend to your style of arguing by responding to your links to arguments by giving links to counter-arguments…
Would you like me to respond by simply giving a link to a site that refutes St. Thomas’ “proofs”? If I did so, would your lack of response vindicate me by proving that you had no refutation of my site’s refutation? If not, why would it be so if you are giving a link to a website, but not when I give a link to a website?
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StTommyMore
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I play to my strengths. I am a theologian, not a philosopher. To my mind, St. Thoma s’s proofs are sufficient and make perfect sense. If you want me to explain why Baptism is necessary for salvation, or the nature of sin, or the faults in Sola Scriptura, I will talk your ear off. But as to the existence of God, Aquinas makes sense, and there are no refutations that make logical sense.
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TruthSeeker60
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You’re free to choose not to discuss you belief that you can know a priori truths without any evidence from this reality, but don’t expect me or others to be convinced that that belief is justified if you don’t want to talk about it.
My position is that we, by necessity, need to assume some a priori truths to know anything about reality, but once we do that there are ways these truths can be verified.
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StTommyMore
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If it needs to be verified, it isn’t a priori.
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TruthSeeker60
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You interpreted what I said backwards. I said it first needs to be assumed, and that it can be verified after we do that, not that it needs to be verified.
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AntiTheist
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In the first place, the kind of claims we’ve been talking about on this thread are claims about the external world – claims that need to be demonstrated – and not “a priori truth” at all.
In the second place, whatever you happen to mean by “a priori truth” doesn’t seem to mean anything at all since, when pressed on the matter, you simply blather on about values (such as the fact that most people prefer peace over war), rather than about facts.
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StTommyMore
Guest
Just because something is a value, it does not mean it is not a fact. If we can understand an an a priori truth to be something that must be true not only in thios world, but in all possible worlds, then the “blather”, as you so uncharitably called it fits this criterion. By definition noting observable can be a priori because if something is observed you have experienced it. God is not something that can be proved by observation, but is made necessary becuse of the nature of existence, as St. Thomas articulates in the Summa
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