Science > Philosophy > Re: Septic X keeps on insisting theism is a belief like atheism
| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"A.Christian" |
| Date: |
11 Oct 2004 06:02:18 PM |
| Object: |
Re: Septic X keeps on insisting theism is a belief like atheism |
wbarwell <wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message news:<4169c052$0$168$811e409b@news.mylinuxisp.com>...
A.Christian wrote:
wbarwell <wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message
news:<41688c18$0$167$811e409b@news.mylinuxisp.com>...
God disproved....
Please note that I have solidly refuted this is the thread, "Are all
arguments for the non-existence of God fallacious?"
Not that I have seen.
I would appreciate it if you would address my refutation of you in
Sorry, I busted you long ago.
Surely it is not that difficult to follow a link. I gave both a link
and an atricle number. If you didn't see what I have now reposted
below, here it is again, so you will be sure to see it. Why dissemble?
Why not address the refutation of your argument? Note that I have
added alt.philosphy to the list of groups.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2847201868d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&selm=83842072.0410090355.79ab2f2e%40posting.google.com
<83842072.0410090355.79ab2f2e@posting.google.com>
wbarwell <wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> wrote :
"Strong Atheism asserts god is disprovable."
That is really capital! Beyond my expectations. Thank you for this
definition of strong atheism, I did not know that was what it was.
Then, my argument against strong atheism is straightforwad and simple:
There is no argument for strong atheism that does not rest on a
fallacy. The reason for this is shockingly simple: God is real, and
strong atheism attempts to prove that God is impossible. If God is
impossible, then he cannot be real, and if real, then he cannot be
impossible. Since I know he is real, I know as a corollary that it is
not possible to conclusively disprove his existence. Therefore, any
argument that appears to positively disprove God's existence hides at
least one fallacy. To find it, will also be an easy task. Truth cannot
contradict truth, so when I encounter an argument for strong atheism,
it is a simple matter of following the argument and accepting the
logic as far as it stays in the truth. When the logic departs from the
truth, it will be due to some fallacy having been committed.
So let's go!
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:23:12 -0400, wbarwell
<wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> wrote:
God disproved.
By god here, I mean the Grand God of Grand Theology,
the god that is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient,
omnibenevolent. The god that is defined as the
most powerful thing that can be imagined, the creator
of all. This god is defined as being intelligent,
having conciousness,and will. I mean this in the general
overall sense that the word god means dogmatically
to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
1. Can god do the impossible, create a square circle or
a 4 sided triangle?
I know you are only using this to illustrate something else, but I
want to insert a comment here. Questions like these are reminiscent of
"Can God create a boulder so big He Himself can't move it?" There is a
difference between an actual impossibility and a logical
impossibility. God is actually omnipotent, and yes, He did create all
the laws and rules of logic. Part of the way logic works is the
principle of contradiction, which says that A and ~A cannot both be
true at the same time. The question about the boulder really amounts
to saying, "Can God be both omnipotent and non-omnipotent at the same
time?" Which is a logical impossibility, that is to say, it violates
the rules of logic, which is also, after all, just a created thing.
God could create a world different from the one we are in, where logic
works differently, or not at all. God could so change our collective
conception of number so that 3 = 4 or 4 = pi. So the answer to
question one is, these things only appear impossible within the
framework that we call logic, which framework is itself a thing
created by God. He could change it at will.
2. That really asks the question, does god create the rules,
the laws, the logic of the Universe at large? And thus
can change them at a whim, or for a reason?
Yes. Of course.
3. Since god is supposedly omnipotent, let us try
answering yes.
O.K.
4. If yes, god could easily create a world where man has
free will yet freely chooses only to do moral good.
Yes, He could, easily, and He did! It is this one. Adam and Eve,
according to the story, existed for some finite and undisclosed period
of time, in the Garden, with free will, and committing no sin. For as
long as that situation persisted, the world you say God could create
was identical with the one He did create. And it was this world, that
we live in now, though things have changed.
5. But in this world we see that man often does moral
evil.
True, but that is his choice. No one is compelled to choose evil, and
no one is compelled to choose good. It is free will. Some do choose
evil, and others do choose good. Why should God prefer one to the
other?
6. If god could create such a word since he creates the
Universe's rules, and does not do so,god is effectively
the creator of all evil, past, present and future.
Not at all. Here is one of your fallacies. To permit a free creature
to commit evil, which is what God does, is not the same thing as him
commiting evil himself. God also gave each creature who has ever
commited evil His Commandment; thus, evil is always disobedience to
God. God is omnipotent, and yet, He allows His creatures with free
will to defy Him, and to commit evil with their own wills, in
opposition to His Will. Since He is omnipotent, He certainly could
stop them at any time, but He does not do so. This does not mean He is
not omnipotent.
To create means to bring into being. God does not create evil, at all.
He creates creatures, and to those creatures He creates with immortal
souls, He gives the gift of free will, also a good thing. Free will is
for freely loving God. That is His Command. When a creature
deliberately refuses to love Him, that is evil. But God does not
create that. The creature does that, with free will.
Evil exists only because god allows it to when he could
easily end all evil by creating a Universe where indeed
man has free will and yet freely chooses only to do
moral good.
That world is this world. Those human beings who choose what you
suggest are called Saints with a capital "S". These are human beings,
who existed in this world with free will, and yet freely chose only to
do moral good. Imagine!
Adam and Eve started out that way, with no sin. They sinned with free
will, and thus doomed the rest of the human race to be born into sin.
But God's Saints, with His help, reversed the process, and were
changed from sinners into loyal friends of God.
7. Thus god is the author and sustaining cause of all
evil and is himself evil, that is omnimalevolent,
rather than as claimed, omnibenevolent.
Here is a second fallacy. Even if it were granted that God is the
cause of all evil in the world, that would not make him
"omnimalevolent," since what you fail to mention is that he is also
the cause of all good in the world. If it were true that he caused all
evil, it would have to be true for the same reasons that he caused all
good, since he caused both good and evil indiscriminately. So the
worst you could say he was would be neutral or indifferent, not
omnimalevolent any more than he was omnibenevolent. That is, if he in
fact is the cause of good and evil alike, he is still God, and He is
still the cause of human freedom, in which it exists to do good or
evil with free will.
It is a matter of perspective, whether we say that God created only
good or good and evil together. It is like the difference between One
and the Origin (zero). God is both. God the Father is the Origin of
God the Son, who is the One. The Scripture says God "sends the rain on
the good and the evil alike," which would tend to suggest
indifference. But if there is a God, He must be either indifferent or
omnibenevolent. He cannot be omnimalevolent, unless you are trying to
assert that there exists no good in the world anywhere.
8. Since dogmatically, god is supposedly omni-benevolent
rather than omnimalevolent, this is obviously not
acceptable.
It is true. God is actually omnibenevolent, and part of that
omnibenevolence is his gift of free will, which contains within it the
possibility of committing evil. Otherwise, we have again the logical
contradiction, of a will that is somehow "free," but not free _to
choose_. Which amounts to saying free and not free at the same time.
9. God therefore does not make the rules, the laws or
the logic of the Universe.
This is a conclusion, arrived at by allowing fallacies.
You argue:
4. ... god could easily create a world where man has
free will yet freely chooses only to do moral good.
This is where you set up your fallacy, which is the fallacy of a
hidden or unstated assumption. Your unstated (and unsupported!)
assumption is this: that the hypothetical world you suggest would be
superior to the world in which we live. The Scripture states that God
can bring good out of evil. Is it not at least possible that the final
good that God brings out of this world of good and evil will turn out
to be much better than all the good there would have been if He had
allowed only good?
There are three very beautiful kinds of things that come about when
certain materials are subjected to extreme heat and pressure. Stars,
and diamonds, and Saints. God's Saints all had in common that they
experienced great opposition in their attempts to do good. Whether
they were martyred, or maligned by the world, or oppressed by evil
spirits, or subject to so many infirmities, or any other ways in which
they experienced opposition, they all experienced it to an
extraordinary degree and they persevered in doing good anyway, in
spite of the opposition, and in this way, God brought out of them far
greater good than if they had never been opposed. Merit is the term in
Catholic theology that refers to the fruit of the struggle to do good
in spite of opposition. Merit is real, though it is unseen. Its
existence can be logically inferred from the existence of three other
considerations: the goodness of the Saints, the opposition they
experienced, and the justice of God.
10. It should be noted, theologians have stated god
himself may not do evil, but that this does not
mean god is not omnipotent, because it is god's
nature to be good. Thus they do not account this
inability to do evil as limiting god's free will
either.
God defines, with sovereignty, what is good and what is evil. He
Himself is the very definition of the Ultimate Good; therefore, evil
is, by definition, that which is opposed to Him. Thus He defines good
and evil with reference to Himself, and apart from Him, these terms
have no meaning. He can do anything; so it is false to say He has
inability to do any particular thing at all. But He is also perfect,
so he would not oppose Himself. It is necessary to differentiate "can"
and "will." God can do anything, but He will do only that which He
wills to do; He is sovereign and no one can force Him to act against
His Own Will. To do evil is by definition to oppose God, and He does
not oppose Himself. He could, but He would not.
Thus the idea of man being unable to do
evil should likewise not be allowed as an argument,
if they refuse to apply the same standards and
reasoning to god, that would be special pleading.
I have no idea what you are talking about, here. No one has ever
asserted that man is unable to evil, except perhaps behavior theorists
delving into psychiatry.
If you are talking about your hypothetical world, where man is, in
some undefinable way, free, but not free to choose, you still cannot
apply the same logic to man and God alike. Man is not the Author of
God's Law, God is. So to say that the Author, with perfect
self-control, will not violate His Own Law, is not based on the same
logic as that in your hypothetical world where man is both free and
not-free at the same time.
11. Free will in man is insisted upon as a dodge by
theology the absolve god of the charge of allowing
evil, evil is necessary to allow for free will,
but that dodge is not acceptable in a world where
man explicitly has free will and a nature where doing
moral evil is impossible. It can't be used here.
Again, where are you getting this "nature where moral evil is
impossible?" Did I miss something, or did you leave something out?
Moral evil is possible. Moral evil happens. Free will is simple fact.
It is not a "dodge." It is not a chimera invented to "absolve God of
the charge of allowing evil." God does allow evil. If he didn't, evil
would not exist. To allow is not the same thing as to do. Apparently
God values freedom more highly than you do. He allows His creatures
with free will to make their own decisions, to decide their own
destinies. What greater gift could there be? A world where everyone
was good "by default," such as you suggest, would not be a world with
Saints. I submit, it would be a world with not as much beauty in it as
the one we really do live in.
Evil is in no way necessary. Evil is most unfortunate, all the more so
for not being necessary at all. But freedom is a good. Freedom implies
a choice, and the choice is between good and evil. Thus, evil is
necessary _as a choice_ if the will is actually free; but a choice is
not a necessity. The making of a decision may be required, but which
decision one will make is not given. The command is always there, to
choose good and not evil. God is not to blame for evil choices made by
His creatures against His commands.
12. God is said to be the most powerful thing that can
be imagined,the greatest thing that can exist.
But if god does not make the laws and rules and logic
of the Universe, and cannot change them at whim,
then the Universe with its rules and laws and logic
are more powerful than god, and this dogmatic claim
is obviously not true.
What you have stated is true, _if_ God does not make the laws of the
Universe, then He is not greater than those laws, and hence, by
definition, not God. But your statement,
9. God therefore does not make the rules, the laws or
the logic of the Universe.
does not follow from any sound argument. Therefore, you cannot use it
to support any later argument.
13. This claim is used as a basis of ontological claims
such as Anselm's ontological proof and these are all
thus falsified.
So, since your argument in (9) rests securely on a fallacy, we can now
rescue Anselm.
14. God is supposedly omnipotent. But if he is limited
by the Universe with its rules and laws and logic,
obviously he is not omnipotent at all. This dogmatic
claim cannot be saved unless you accept a god that
is omni-malevolent as a basic dogma.
Since your assertion of omnimalevolence rests on, not one, but two
fallacies, we cannot allow it at all in any more of your arguments.
And since, for your argument against omnipotence, you rely on (9), we
cannot allow it either.
So now you have given us a bonus fallacy, not really part of your
argument at all, but there nonetheless, the fallacy of a false
dichotomy. It is not true that we need to choose between a
non-omnipotent God or a malevolent God. God can be both omnipotent and
omnibenevolent, with no contradiction.
15. God is dogmatically claimed to have been the creator
of the Universe, of all that is. But if god does not
make the laws and rules and logic of the Universe,
they must be beyond him, outside him, and must either
preceed him or parallel god's existance, he cannot
have created it thusly, so the dogma that god created
all is false also.
Whenever you use (9), and thus the fallacy that underlies (9), from
now on, I'm just going to write, (9), and you will know thereby that
that particular argument is being disqualified. It seems you base most
of the rest of your arguments on it, so - well, anyway - (9)!
16. One dodge here might be to claim god created the
Universe in the manner that limits him, but god,
being omniscient,superintelligent and omnibenevolent
would have known that by creating such a Universe, he
was creating a Uinverse tht contained evil only because
he chose to crteate a limited Universe, so we are back
to claiming god is omni-malevolent. Thus such a dodge
fails.
Since it is not necessarily true that a Universe containing no evil is
actually better than one that does contain it, both the necessity for
the "dodge," and its supposed invalidity even if it were necessary,
fall by the wayside together.
In other words, whether God allowed evil in the Universe by simply
allowing it though He could have prevented it, or whether He limited
Himself, it is still not necessarily true that the world isn't better
for it. As it is, according to theology, He did both. God the Father
continued to be the Sovereign Lord of the Universe while God the Son
was in His mortal, limited human body. The Incarnation is yet present
fact, and will be forever, but not its mortality - that was done away
with at the Resurrection.
or: (9)
17. The idea of a perfect omni-everything god preceeds
Christianity, Epicurus noted the pronblem of evil
in 250 BCE. god is omnibenevolent and omnipotent,
yet evil exists. he either camnnot or will not end
evil thus must be either not omnibenevolent or
omnipotent.
(9)
18. Yet over 2,500 years, the theological methodolgy
used to erect the hypothetical Grand God of Grand
Theology which is now dogmatic in all major religous
traditions has failed to see this god as shown above,
cannot exist as claimed.
That is because you haven't proved anything.
Think, for a moment: which is more likely? That 2,500 years (give or
take) worth of theologians have been so utterly blind as to miss what
you have been clever enough to find, or, you have committed a fallacy
or two in your logic?
Not that _that_ is an argument - it's not, but it is something that
ought to have given you enough pause to try to discern your fallacies
yourself. Or, God has graciously provided you with me to do it for
you.
Now, since you are using (18) above as support for further arguments,
and (18) is based on the soundness of your argumentation above, I will
treat (18) similarly to (9).
19. Thus not only is god as so defined impossible
and failed hypothesis, the theology methodology
used to create such a hypothetical god is a failed
methodology and its basic method, making overarching
assertions without evidence is a failed methodology.
(18). Though, I will grant you, it is not enough at present for the
Church to assert things dogmatically, at least as far as her
relationship to you is concerned. You need to be shown that no
argument supporting strong atheism can survive without a fallacy, and
the more arguments you have, the longer that will take. Even if you
exhaust your particular supply, you are still only left with an
inductive proof, not a deductive one. The only decuctive proof that I
know of is the one I am using, and it is not allowed to you.
My methodology is simple:
1. Since God is real, it is not possible to conclusively disprove His
existence.
2. Therefore any supposed proof of strong atheism must rest on at
least one fallacy.
3. The fallacy will be found at or preceding the argument's departure
from the truth.
That is deductive, but it is based on the stated assumption that God
is real, and you, as an atheist, cannot make that assumption. I cannot
show you the logic that is based on faith. I can only assert that
because of it, no argument supporting strong atheism can ever be
sound. You can come up with as many as you like, but you cannot free
them from fallacy, and lacking faith, the only evidence you are going
to find for that is inductive, by examining each argument in turn and
seeing the fallacies present in all of them. After a while it may
begin to dawn on you that there is a reason for that. The
impossibility of constructing any sound argument for strong atheism
is, in itself, strong evidence for Theism.
20. Being failed, attempts to patch up the problems
pointed out here cannot be allowed to continue
using a failed methodology, making empty assertions,
special pleading, double standards and failing to
adequately test assertions rigorously, accepting
assertions not proven one way or another and in
the final anaylsis, often avoiding reason all
together with rhetorical questions "How can limited
man hope to understand an infinte god?". These
sorts of statments are simply indications that the
person in question is not going to be rational or
reasonable or change his or her mind faced with
facts.
(18). I would submit that this argument applies more to you than it
does me. You were basing your conclusions on fallacies, as it turns
out.
Also - and this is important - the question, "how can limited man hope
to understand an infinite God?" is not rhetorical at all, but useful
and practical. That phraseology can actually be used to ask two
different very important questions. The first, "how is it possible for
limited man to understand an infinite God?" asks us to demostrate that
possibility. It is possible, if God Himself gives the understanding.
The second, "what are the means whereby limited man can understand and
infinite God?" asks for practical direction in this matter. The
practical answer comes, "through prayer."
21. By doing so, one loses the argument and all
expectations of respect for one's claims, that
person has abandoned reason and intellectual
honesty for obscurantism and superstition.
Um, well, I still respect you, because I think you did sincerely try
to prove what you thought was the absolute truth. But now that you see
your arguments were less than sound, what are you going to do about
it? Will you try to eliminate those fallacies and strengthen your
argument? Will you attempt to find new and better arguments? Or will
you rethink the whole "strong atheism" business entirely? No mater
what your level of commitment to finding the truth, ultimately, the
answer to that one depends on the decision you make with your free
will.
22. What are the laws and the rules and the logic of
the Universe? And what can we say about them?
Ah, a tangent! Refreshing, I would say. You were beginning to get
redundant.
23. As far as can be noted, we do have good, basic
understandings of the laws ofthe Universe. Things
are made up of matter and energy, operating in a
framework of time, and dimensions, with rules known
by science, physics, chemisty, astronomy and other
sciences.
I grant you this.
24. There is no room in these laws and rules of
the Universe for dissembodied gods or entities
that have will and who act. Thinking beings
are made of matter and energy and subject to rules
of chemistry and physics.
You have leapt to this conclusion, and you have eliminated all
possibility of good or evil spirits who interact with the world. If
your argument here is that there is "no room" for such beings, I ask
you to demonstrate that. The statement that demonic possession is to
blame in some cases of mass murder, if true, would easily demonstrate
that such entities _make_ room in the world for their wills, without
bothering so much about what you or I think about that. You have
advanced nothing supporting your assertion of "no room."
Also, to make a point, you are no doubt aware of the theology of the
Incarnation, the "Word made Flesh," in light of which the description
"disembodied" simply wouldn't apply to God.
25. If theology wishes to claim otherwise, theology
bears the burden of demonstrating with hard evidence
that a god or other supernatural entity can exist.
Much less the Grand God of theological tradition.
Well, now you are shifting the burden of proof, again. You stated you
coiuld conclusively disprove God, and now you are saying I have to
prove God. What kind of "hard evidence" are you looking for? I have
stated elsewhere that God has already demonstrated His existence
concretely, to the Israelites and to the Egyptians, and to Abraham.
These are only a couple of examples. There are manny more. But they
were not demonstrations made to you personally. Are you demanding of
God that He strike you with lightning on your command, or something
like that? Hell, man: The devil could do that, easily, if God let him.
How would you discern the difference? Let's suppose, for a moment,
that it matters, and that one or the other entity - God or the devil -
is going to prove his existence to you, and demand that you worship
him. Can you devise some sort of reliable test that will keep you from
worshipping Satan?
26. The failed theological methodology of making
unsupported assertions and deriving subclaims
is not an acceptable method for doing so, since
as demonstrated above, that is a failure as a
methodology.
It is _not_ a failed methodology, provided only that the premises used
are correct. If the premises are true, and the logic is valid, then,
necessarily, the conclusions are true. Theology is completely
justified in presupposing faith for any of its conclusions. But that
is for believers. For unbelievers, such as yourself, they really have
no business doing theology until such time as they acquire the virtue
of Faith. Theology does not seek to prove the existence of God; that
is the realm of philosophy.
27. At early times, man had no notion of a supernatural
versus a natural worl, but as the idea of a natural
world has evolved, the idea of a supernatual world
has faded away. All is seen to be a natural world
of matter, energy, physics, no sign of supernatural
worlds or entities can be found.
1. There is no "supernatural world" per se. There is the world, and
there is God, who alone is supernatural. Demons and angels are not
supernatural beings, they are creatures, subject to angelic nature
just as we are subject to human nature.
2. There is a sign in the world of God. That sign is the Catholic
Church. I do not mean the political entity, I mean the spiritual
Church.
28. All claims thus based on the idea a supernatural
world or entities might exist are unproven, and
it is the burden of anyone making such a claim
to prove such a thing does in fact exist, before
attempting to use claims of the existance of a
supernatural realm as a theoretical bassis for
existance of god. And by prove, I mean to produce
good, hard evidencefor such a supernatural world,
not assertions that may or may not be true.
This is the failed theological methodology and is
no longer acceptable.
Since there is no "supernatural realm," I would not be bringing forth
any arguments of the type you suggest.
24. There is a difference between making theoretical
claims a god may exist, and actually showing hard
evidence a god exists. Claiming god exists based
on deeper unproven assertions, existance of a
supernatural world, is not acceptable as evidence.
One may not stack up mere assertions and claim it
is hard evidence. Arranging assertions in a manner
that proof or disproof is impossible because it
involves a general disproof of a negative is not
acceptable as a methodology for providing hard
evidence of a god.
Now you are making a whole lot of conditions, about what you will not
accept, but thus far, you have not asked for any evidence
specifically. God does, as I have stated elsewhere, always provide
such evidence as suits His purposes. He provided each of His Prophets
with enough evidence to cause them to testify to the House of Israel,
at great personal cost to themselves. The question is, what are you
looking for?
25. Since to save god's omni-benevolence, one must
admit that god did not create the rules and laws
and logic of the Universe, we know that these things
are beyond and outside god. But theology cannot
tell us we what these things are,and where they come
from. Since these things must limit god, failure to
be able to tell us anything about these laws and rules
in the setting of theological claims about god, this
means until theology handles this honestly and
adequately, theology cannot tell us anything about
god, even theoretically.
(9) and (18).
But if you have followed my arguments carefully, you now know that
there is no necessary contradiction between God having created the
laws of the universe (which, incidentally, are ideal for creatures
with free will - so many possibilities, and it seems, if we can
conceive of doing something, we can sooner or later find out a way to
do it - so benevolent is He!) and God's omnibenevolence. At least,
none that you have shown. So perhaps you are ready to move on from
this place, or perhaps not. Your free-will decision, again.
26. Theology must do this if it is to make further
claims about god in an attempt to save the concept
of god by making further assertions or claims.
One cannot describe god apart from a world in which
god must operate and exist with existing features
preceeding and outside and limiting or constraining
any possible god.
(9)
27. Possible alternative gods.
A believer might criticize this as it does not
disprove all types of gods, but, as this does
disprovethe dogmatic god of major religous systems,
that claim does not saves this god. And indeed it
is possible to disprove other god concepts.
Whatever. Irrelevant, really, to the topic at hand. There has been no
disproof of the God of Theology. See recap below.
28. Example, older Roman and Greek religions and
numerous other older polytheistic ancient religions
were basically built on the idea of nature gods,
that these gods are responsible for features
of the world, for rainfall, fertility of wives,
cattle and fields, for important activities like
growing wheat. But today, science explains these
things without any signs of a god or any other
supernatural entities or phenomenon being found,
and technology has solved many of the problems
that prompted creation of such gods that were
created in hopes offinding some force to propitiate
to assure success in agriculture, producing offspring
and avoiding or curing sickness and ill health.
These gods are thus failed and disprovable and
were so disproven and abandoned by most mankind
some 2000 years ago.
Well, people still do pray to God about the weather. But a far better
prayer would be one for the fortitude to endure whatever the weather
brings.
29. Other basic ideas about gods were explored long
ago by Greek thinkers and the basic claims are
similar to the Judeo-Christian theological god
and suceptible to similar disconfirmations.
stoic and neo-Platonist thinkers long wrestled
with these problems. Epicurus noted the problem
of evil long before Christianity. Stoics tried
to explain things by positing all is matter but
souls and gods and such are made of a finer grade
of matter. Which ideas are based on unproven claims
of doubtful nature and are thus disprovable.
These systems also created impossible contradictions,
arguments about pre-destination vs free will that
were never solved when Christianiy overtook them
and left these arguments unresolved, as these
religions faded away.
Another fallacy - you should have been able to catch this one. An idea
based on an unproven claim of doubtful nature is thereby rendered
doubtful. It is not thereby disproved. Remember, strict proof (or
disproof) involves rigor, and is only possible using deductive, not
inductive, logic.
As to the supposed contradiction between predestination and free-will,
there is none. God knows everything, and He can do anything. Of course
He knows whether a given soul will accept His grace, but He does not
make them accept or reject it. That is free will.
30. Other arguments, an imminent god versus a
transcedent god, god beyond and outside of time,
a world that does not exist outside the mind of god
and other variations and kinds of gods introduce
a rich soure of further debunkable claims.
Whatever. Maybe you should make certain your own claims have support
before you go about debunking. As it is, your arguments have proven to
be only more fuel for the bonfire of fallacious arguments for strong
atheism. It is becoming more and more apparent that true strong
atheism does not exist. And the question is why? Is it not indeed the
case that if true strong atheism cannot exist, it just might be
because there really is a God after all?
31. Example: a god outside of time sees the world
differently from us as a one big now without actual
past nor future. Thus god see the future and can
know the future with exactitude. But such a god
that interacts with the world is part of it, at
such a point that he so acts, the world and god
are frozen in the big now of the Universe, god
thus is frozen embedded in the Universe and thus
like us, has no free will. All is determined
strongly and already is. Since theology demands
god has free will dogmatically, this god out of time
claim must be false.
Here, your fallacy is similar to that of Immanuel Kant in the _Fourth
Antinomy_. So you are in good company! But a fallacy is a fallacy, no
matter who commits it. My answer to Kant will suffice to answer you as
well:
Notice that he begins by talking about the cause of the world, then he
asserts that its causality must exist in time, and here he equivocates
the cause with its causality, and ends by stating that the cause
itself cannot be outside the world. If we remove the equivocation,
there is no reason at all that the cause cannot exist outside the
world and also begin to act in the world at some time.
God need not be "frozen" to act in time, yet remaining Himself outside
of it. in fact, part of what He knows will definitely come to pass is
a direct result of His Own action. Since He knows everything, He not
only knows what will be, but also, in a hypothetical sense, what might
have been if He, or if X or Y or Z had acted differently.
32. Finally, any empty assertion, unproven, is only that,
unproven. Many claims made for god are just that.
Merely pointing this out when appropriate is the
equivalent of showing that claim is not acceptable
because if is not backed by hard evidence it is true.
Gods based on mere assertions and related concepts
based on mere assertions cannot be said to be true
and are disproven by pointing out they are based
solely on unproven or unprovable or unlikely
assertions.
End
Again, the same fallacy as in (29) above. Unproven, unprovable, and
disproven, are three diverse concepts. You asserted you could disprove
God, but you havee not done so. To recap: Most of your argumentation
is based on the unstated, unfounded, and untenable assumption that the
world as a whole would be a better place if, basically, God had not
allowed the serpent to speak with Eve unescorted. That is what it
amounts to, because the only frame of reference we have for a world
where human beings exist, and are free, but commit no sins, is before
the Fall, and it really was that way, in this very world.
It is somewhat understandable that you might think so, but God created
the world, and the serpent, in His ineffable Wisdom. He is the Supreme
Lord, and nothing escapes His Dominion. Thus, He has always been in
charge of everything that happens, and since He certainly could have
created the world otherwise, but created it, in fact, as it is, it
stands to reason that He must have had a purpose in doing so. And
since He is omnibenevolent, it also stands to reason that His ultimate
purpose was and is good. In His Wisdom, He provided both free will and
a real, not a hypothetical, choice before every one of His free
creatures. And in that same Wisdom, He gave a command: "Choose Life!"
He set before every one of His free creatures, life and death, with
the command to choose life, and free will. Each one chooses for
himself, which it will be, and that choice determines the eternal
destiny of each one for himself.
Now the choosing of good, when it is a real choice, contains merit.
And merit is a thing of untold beauty. To fight against the evil
within, as well as to fight against hostile forces without, all in the
pusuit of virtue, contains even more merit than simply choosing good.
So it is partly because of the existence of real evil already in the
world that God's Saints became quite as beautiful as they are. It was
worth it, to God, to allow all the suffering and the evil that He has
allowed in His world, for the sake of His Saints. And He did not,
even, spare Himself the suffering in this world, but took it upon
Himself and used His Own suffering to work our redemption.
So: it is not true that God ought to have prevented evil from entering
the world. He created a more beautiful world by instead allowing evil
into it and then bringing good out of evil. Since the world is
demonstrably better than it would have been without His allowing evil
to enter it, His allowing evil to enter the world is consistent with
His omnibenevolence, and it is not due to some powerlessness over
the laws of nature. He is the Author of those laws as well. Since He
is the Author of all the laws of the Universe without sacrificing His
omnibenevolence, it follows that he also has power over these laws,
and everything else; thus, He is still omnipotent. There is, in fact,
no contradiction in any of the concepts connected with the God if
Catholic Theology. There are, however, fallacies connected with strong
atheism. From my perspective, since there is a God, it is impossible
to construct a thesis for strong atheism without some fallacy. From
your perspective, since it is impossible to develop a sound argument
for strong atheism, and since strong atheism by your definition
asserts God is disprovable, you are left with weak atheism. And since
strong atheism is fallacious, the case for weak atheism is in turn
considerably weakened.
.
|
|
| User: "X" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief theremight be a magically invisible space pixie |
11 Oct 2004 06:46:29 PM |
|
|
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ...
God®, the hypothetical first cause, is really, really, really imaginary. 8^)
Read this piece by Bertrand Russell on how the theist idea of God®, the
hypothetical first cause, has an inherent fatal problem (a special
pleading for God®) so there cannot be any such of a thing:
"Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the
First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has
a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further
you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the
name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight
nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used
to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause,
and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart
from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First
Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a
young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I
for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day,
at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I
there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who
made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further
question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I
still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If
everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can
be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so
that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the
same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant
and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about
the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The
argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world
could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand,
is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no
reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that
things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our
imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the
argument about the First Cause." -- Russell "Why I Am Not a Christian"
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/russell_wnc.html
It's a very simple problem for anybody like you who still believes there
might be one anyway. All they have to do is come up with an argument for
God®, the hypothetical first cause/creator of the universe, that does
not run into this fatal problem inherent in the very idea of it, which
Russell points out.
<cue the chirping cicadas>
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
11 Oct 2004 10:58:54 PM |
|
|
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:pXEad.371708$Fg5.342407@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ...
God®, the hypothetical first cause, is really, really, really imaginary. 8^)
Read this piece by Bertrand Russell on how the theist idea of God®, the
hypothetical first cause, has an inherent fatal problem (a special
pleading for God®) so there cannot be any such of a thing:
"Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the
First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has
a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further
you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the
name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight
nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used
to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause,
and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart
from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First
Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a
young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I
for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day,
at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I
there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who
made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further
question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I
still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If
everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can
be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so
that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the
same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant
and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about
the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The
argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world
could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand,
is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no
reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that
things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our
imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the
argument about the First Cause." -- Russell "Why I Am Not a Christian"
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/russell_wnc.html
It's a very simple problem for anybody like you who still believes there
might be one anyway. All they have to do is come up with an argument for
God®, the hypothetical first cause/creator of the universe, that does
not run into this fatal problem inherent in the very idea of it, which
Russell points out.
If all we need is an argument that doesn't run into the serial first cause then I
can post an argument I don't really support but still meet the criteria;
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
2) The Argument from Contingency
The third way of Aquinas is a most ingenious attempt to establish the existence
of God. It begins with the a posteriori truth that there are contingent things,
that is, things such that it is possible that they begin to exist and possible
that they cease to exist, and concludes that there exists a necessary being, that
is, a being such that it is impossible that it begin or cease to exist. Such a
being is said to exist necessarily and is what we call God. Aquinas moves from
the premise concerning the existence of contingent things to his conclusion by
adding that it is impossible that contingent things always exist. Thus, he says,
if everything is contingent, then at some time before now, nothing existed. But
if at some time before now nothing at all existed, then nothing exists now, which
is plainly false. Therefore there is a noncontingent, that is, a necessary being,
namely God.
As stated, the crucial claim in Aquinas's third way is the claim that if
everything is contingent, then at some time before now nothing existed. Why would
Aquinas believe this? Partly because he is assuming, for purposes of the
argument, that time is infinite. As Copleston says, "Aquinas is clearly supposing
for the sake of the argument the hypothesis of infinite time, and his proof is
designed to cover this hypothesis." Imagine that this is correct, and that time
stretches back infinitely into the past. We may then ask whether contingent
things have always existed, throughout infinite past time, or whether they have
existed for only a finite amount of time. On either of these answers, two
possibilities are open. Take infinite time and the assumption that contingent
things have existed throughout an infinite past. This may mean either of two
things:
a. At each and every moment, stretching infinitely back into the past, contingent
things have existed.
b. Contingent things have existed at some times or other throughout infinite past
time; that is, for any given moment of time in the past, some contingent things
have existed at some time before that moment.
Thus, as an illustration of (a), imagine a line stretching infinitely back into
the past from right now, where each cut on the line represents a moment of time,
and each use of the letter c represents contingent things. As can be seen, at
every moment of time there are contingent things in existence. If we were able
actually to draw such a line as would be needed, drawn infinitely to the left of
the page, it would have an infinite number of cuts for moments, and each cut
would have a letter c below it. Thus, we would have represented (a) in the
diagram:
Fig 5.1.a
The difference between (a) and (b) is that (b) leaves open the possibility of
there being at least one moment when nothing existed. It requires only that for
any such moment when nothing existed, some contingent things existed before that
moment. Thus, (b) leaves open the possibility of a situation such as that
diagrammed in the following:
Fig 5.1.b
Now let us consider the other option, that contingent things have existed for
only a finite amount of past time. Again we have two possibilities, namely:
c. At each and every moment, stretching back into the past up to time t(0),
contingent things have existed.
d. Contingent things have existed at some times or other throughout past time
back to time t(0), that is, for any given moment of time, back to t + 1, some
contingent things have existed before that time.
Diagrams on lines can now be easily constructed for (c) and (d) based on the two
given above for (a) and (b).
One reason why Aquinas's third way is so ingenious and fascinating is that it is
designed to work no matter which option we choose, from (a) through (d). His
central claim is that, given the assumption of infinite past time, then if either
(a) or (b) or (c) or (d) is correct, then at some time before now nothing
existed. And this, he thinks, is all he really needs to make the argument from
contingency work. Notice that by arguing in this fashion, Aquinas need not
actually assert and endorse any of (a) through (d). In our statement of the
argument, the differences between (a) and (b) on the one hand, and between (c)
and (d) on the other, are not explicitly stated. The argument is, as we said,
designed to succeed whichever of those options we take. The argument, then, is
this:
1. Either there have been things for an infinite amount of time, or there have
been things for only a finite amount of time.
2. If there have been things for an infinite amount of time, then each different
sum total of existing entities that can occur has occurred at some time or other
before now.
3. If the only things that exist are contingent, then one possibility is that at
some time before now none of them existed.
Therefore
4. If there have been things for an infinite amount of time, and the only things
that exist are contingent, then at some time before now nothing existed. (from 2,
3)
5. If there have been things for only a finite amount of time, and the only
things that exist are contingent, then at some time before now nothing existed.
Therefore
6. If the only things that exist are contingent, then at some time before now
nothing existed. (from 1, 4, 5)
7. If at some time before now nothing existed, then nothing exists now.
Therefore
8. If the only things that exist are contingent, then nothing exists now. (from
6, 7)
9. It is false that nothing exists now.
Therefore
10. It is false that the only things that exist are contingent, that is, there is
a necessary being, namely God. (from 8, 9)
Although, in premises (2) and (3), the argument considers the consequences of
contingent things existing over an infinite duration of time, it also, in premise
(5), considers the consequence of contingent things existing only over a finite
duration of time. Premise (5) states that if things have existed for only a
finite duration of time before now, then there was some first moment at which
something began to exist, so that at any time before that moment nothing existed.
This is surely true, if we grant that time is infinite whether or not things have
existed for an infinite duration of time. So, given the addition of this premise
and premise (1), which is an obvious truth, we can conclude (6), which contains
no reference to either hypothesis about how long things have existed. Thus if
premises (2) and (3) are true, then, on this version of the argument from
contingency, we can draw a conclusion that does not depend on which hypothesis is
correct. This is why it was claimed that this is a stronger argument than one
based on the assumption that things have existed for an infinite time. However,
the major question is whether premises (2) and (3) are true. We can surely accept
(9). Premise (7), although not a necessary truth, can be restated as a more
general version of the principle of the conservation of mass-energy, which
states, roughly, that in a closed system no amount of the energy, including that
in the form of mass, can be either created or destroyed. Thus, if something new
appears, this principle claims that it cannot have come from nothing, but
requires a transfer of energy from something else. When premise (7) is considered
in this light, it seems to be acceptable.
The crucial premises are clearly (2) and (3). Let us carefully consider both
premises, beginning with premise (3), which is initially more plausible. If
everything that has ever existed is contingent, then it is possible that each one
ceases to exist at some time. Generally things cease existing at different times,
so that usually at any one time some of them exist. But if we restrict our
sample-for example, to the freshman class of a particular college-then, although
the members of the class will cease to exist at different times, there will come
a time when all of these contingent beings have ceased to exist. If we now
enlarge our sample to include all people and indeed all physical objects, we can
see quite clearly that in this age of nuclear armament it is very possible that
there come a time when no persons and indeed no physical objects exist. Surely,
then, if only contingent things have ever existed, it is possible that at some
time, which may as a matter of fact have occurred before now, every one of those
things that had previously existed had ceased existing and no new one had begun
to exist. Notice that this is not to claim it has happened, but only that it is
possible that it has happened, which is a much weaker claim.
Premise (3) seems to be acceptable. But is it? Consider once again the principle
of the conservation of mass-energy, which we used as a reason for accepting
premise (7). This principle states that if we take the universe to be a closed
system, then no energy can be created or destroyed. But this looks familiar,
because we can restate it to read that in the universe it is impossible that any
amount of energy begin, or cease, to exist. Thus, given the truth of premise (9),
once it is adapted to refer to energy, we must conclude that it is impossible
that at some time before now nothing, including energy, existed. This will lead
us to conclude that premise (3) is false unless we wish to claim that mass-energy
exists necessarily rather than contingently, because it is something that can
neither be created nor destroyed. But this is really not a viable way out,
because when we characterized God as eternal, we decided that this should be
interpreted so that it is logically impossible that he either begin to exist or
cease to exist. Thus a necessary being is one that it is logically impossible to
create or destroy. Therefore energy is contingent because it is logically
possible to create or destroy it.
3) Objection: An Equivocation-Physical
versus Logical Possibility
Something has gone wrong. On the one hand, premise (3) seems acceptable; on the
other, it seems...
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
<cue the chirping cicadas>
Contents for just that chapter;
Chapter 5 - The Problem of Justifying Belief in God
A) Examination of the Concept of a Supreme Being
1) The Supreme Being Is All-Good
2) The Supreme Being Is Omnipotent
3) The Supreme Being Is Omniscient
4) Other Characteristics of a Supreme Being
B) Can the Belief in the Existence
of a Supreme Being Be Justified?
C) Appeal to Experience of God
1) The Argument from Mystical Experience
2) Support for the Argument: God Must Be
Postulated as Experienced or as Cause
3) Objection: No Need to Postulate the Supernatural
4) The Argument from Revelations and Miracles
5) Hume's Objection: Belief in
Violation-Miracles Is Always Unjustified
6) A Third Argument from Experience
7) Objection: Perception of Physical Objects and
Perception of God Are Radically Dissimilar
8) Reply: Arbitrary Double Standards and
Epistemic Circularity
9) Two Further Objections: The Fundamental
Nature of Perception, and the Easter Bunny
D) Three A Posteriori Arguments
1) The First-Cause Argument
- First Interpretation:
Temporally First Cause
- Second Interpretation:
Ontologically Ultimate Cause
- Third Interpretation:
Ultimate Explanation of Things
- A Problem: Are Adequate Scientific
Explanations Complete Explanations?
2) The Argument from Contingency
3) Objection: An Equivocation-Physical
versus Logical Possibility
4) The Argument from Design
- Analogical Arguments
- Two Versions of the Argument from Design
- Objection to Cleanthes' Analogy:
Nonintelligent Causes of Design
- Objection to Inferring that the Cause
of the Universe Is God: Like
Effects Have Like Causes
E) An A Priori Argument
1) The Ontological Argument:
Descartes's Version
- Kant's Objection:
'Existence' Is Not a Predicate
- Another Objection:
Existence Is Not a Perfection
2) The Ontological Argument:
St. Anselm's Version
- Gaunilo's Objection:
The Greatest Island Possible
- Reply to Gaunilo: A Being Greater
Than the Greatest Island Possible
- Another Objection:
The Dirtiest Being Possible
F) A Pragmatic Justification of
Belief in the Existence of God
1) The Religious Option and
the Right to Believe
G) Evil as Evidence Against the Existence of God
1) The Argument from Evil: The Logical Version
- Objection: The Best
World Might Contain Evil
2) The Argument from Evil: The Probability Version
- Objection: Evidence Available
to Human Beings Is Insufficient
- Reply: Believe in Accordance with
the Total Evidence Available
- Objection: People Are
Responsible for Evil
- Reply: Moral versus Natural Evil
- Objection: Satan as One
Cause of Natural Evil
- Reply: Noninterference and
Natural Causes
- Compensation for Victims:
The Prospect of an Afterlife
- Reply: No Good Evidence of an Afterlife
- Objection: Natural Evils Are Unavoidable
- Reply: Examples of Avoidable Evils
- Objection: Some Evil Is
Necessary for Some Knowledge
- Another Objection: Evils Are Necessary
for There to Be Higher Goods
- Reply: Why So Much Natural Evil?
- Objection: Total Evidence and Probability
- Reply: No Knowledge of the Probabilities
- Objection: Exact Probabilities
and Comparative Probabilities
H) Conclusion
I) Exercises
1) The Concept of a Supreme Being
2) Mystical Experience, Revelation,
and Miracles
3) The First-Cause Argument
and the Argument from Design
4) Other Arguments for Theism
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Virgil" |
|
| Title: Re: Septicism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
11 Oct 2004 07:40:56 PM |
|
|
In article <pXEad.371708$Fg5.342407@attbi_s53>, X <X@nospam.net> wrote:
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ...
God®, the hypothetical first cause, is really, really, really imaginary. 8^)
Read this piece by Bertrand Russell on how the theist idea of God®, the
hypothetical first cause, has an inherent fatal problem (a special
pleading for God®) so there cannot be any such of a thing:
Does Septic X Capon, the Simple Pimple, credit Russell with
infallability? Then read Russell on why what Septic X Capon, the Simple
Pimple, says is false:
Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me.
Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place
they always ask me what is my religion.
From an Essay, "I an an Atheist or an Agnostic?",
by Bertrand Russell,1947:
<QUOTE>
I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say
"Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of
you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a
purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself
as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive
argument by which one may prove that there is not a God.
<UNQUOTE>
If Bertrand Russell says he doesn't think it can be done, why does
Septic X Capon, the Simple Pimple, allege that Russell has done it?
Because Septic X Capon, the Simple Pimple, has no respect for truth,
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "X" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief theremight be a magically invisible space pixie |
11 Oct 2004 06:53:18 PM |
|
|
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
11 Oct 2004 11:03:14 PM |
|
|
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:O1Fad.371762$Fg5.38541@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
["religious concepts are parasitic upon other mental capacities"] ...the
variety of human religious concepts is not infinite, suggesting an
underlying pattern in the way certain kinds of religious concepts engage the
mind by "successful activation of a whole variety of mental systems." These
patterns increase the probability that such concepts will be remembered and
transmitted.
http://www.wordtrade.com/society/anthropologyreligion.htm
....there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness. Some aspects
relate to inference systems in the brain (how we think about causality and
ontology), others relate to features of our social awareness (how we
represent and interact with persons), and still others relate to how
memories are processed and stored....an analysis of the inference-systems
that govern our perception of cause-effect relations, systems organized by
natural selection that produce concepts of unseen powers and agencies.
Consider the concept of momentum. We all know that if you throw a baseball
it will continue (roughly) in a straight path forward before falling to the
ground (rather than flying at the speed of light towards Jupiter, etc.) No
one teaches us to think that way. Instead this pattern of inference forms
part of our intuitive psychology of physical objects: human beings grasped
the concept of momentum long before Newton gave it a theoretical
explanation. Moreover we all know that a seedling may grow into a tree, but
not into a snake or zebra. We know this because we come equipped with an
intuitive folk-biology that provides us with the relevant inference
structures to predict the behaviour of organic life. These inferential
structures, which suit us well to the circumstances of biological existence,
employ concepts of unseen powers. Next Boyer looks to the systems that
generate internally structured beliefs regarding the causal effects of
various human activities. When I throw a ball it flies, when I plant a
seedling it grows, when I kick Paul, he groans, and so on. Generalizing,
humans can engage in activities that produce reliable outcomes.
Boyer explains ritual action in virtue of the interaction between these two
systems. Given that our cognitive systems predispose us to think both that
hidden causal forces operate in nature, and that our actions have effects,
we are naturally disposed to engage in practices in which we act to
influence hidden powers in favourable ways. We seek to influence the hidden
world of causation to further our interests by relating our activities to
it.
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/eras/edition_4/bulbulia.htm
No, that's not it at all. Memetics studies how the
future is influenced by differential selection of
replicating cultural elements. It is orthogonal to
cognitive science, not a replacement for it.
Indeed. Cognitive science may eventually be up to the task of predicting
what memes would do well in the meme pool given the common features of human
minds. Again, Boyer's book is largely about the mental mechanisms,
particularly inference mechanisms, evolution has shaped in our brains/minds.
But memetics itself is only about replicating information (cultural
elements) in human minds and the differential selection of that information.
http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/15509.html
....religious ideas have spread as memes--though modified in cultural
transmission by various human cognitive inference systems...:
"The notion of human culture as a huge set of copy-me programs is very
seductive and it is certainly on the right track, but it is only a starting
point. Why are some memes better than others? Why is singing Land of Hope
and Glory after hearing it once much easier than humming a tune from
Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire? What exactly makes moralistic ancestors better
for transmission than immoral ghosts? This is not the only problem. A much
more difficult one is that if we look a bit more closely at cultural
transmission between human beings, what we see does not look at all like
replication of identical memes. On the contrary, the process of transmission
seems guaranteed to create an extraordinary profusion of baroque variations.
This is where the analogy with genes is more hindrance than help. Consider
this. You (and I) carry genes that come from a unique source (a meiotic
combination of our parents' genes) and we will transmit them unchanged
(though combined with a partner's set) to our offspring. In the meantime,
nothing happens; however much you may work out at the gym, you will not have
more muscular children. But in mental representations the opposite is true.
The denizens of our minds have many parents (in those thousands of
renditions of Land of Hope and Glory, which one is being replicated when I
whistle the tune?) and we constantly modify them." (p.38)
"Before we accept emotion-oriented scenarios of religion's origins, we
should probe their assumptions... Consider a simple emotion like the fear
induced by the lurking presence of a predator. In many animals, including
humans, this results in dramatic somatic events--most noticeably, a
quickened heartbeat and increased perspiration. But other systems are doing
complex work. For instance, we have to choose among several behaviors in
such situations--freeze or flee or fight--a choice that is made by
computation, that is, by mentally going through a variety of aspects of the
situation and evaluating the least dangerous option. So fear is not just
what we experience about it; it is also a program, in some ways comparable
to a computer program. It governs the resources of the brain in a special
way, quite different from what happens in other circumstances. Fear
increases the sensitivity of some perceptual mechanisms and leads reasoning
through complicated sets of possible outcomes... In the case of fear
triggered by predators, it seems quite clear that natural selection designed
our brains in such a way that they comprise this specific program." (p.
21-22)
"Even though we know nothing about the particular cultural context of these
descriptions, we can see how each of them combines a particular ontological
category and a special characteristic:
(31) Thirsty people disappear [PERSON] + special biology, physics
(32) Cologne spirits [PERSON] + invisible + drinks perfume
(33) People with flying organ [PERSON] + extra organ
(34) Counterintelligence wristwatch [TOOL] + detects enemies
(36) gourmet mountain [NATURAL OBJECT] + digestion
(37) Guardian river [NATURAL OBJECT] + incest abhorrence
(38) Guardian forest [NATURAL OBJECT] + likes a good tune
This, obviously, is a terribly simplified description of people's actual
representations. But that is an advantage. Summarizing concepts in this way
highlights a very important property of religious concepts. Each of these
entries in the mental encyclopedia includes an ontological entry between
brackets and a 'tag' for special features of the new entry. These tags added
to the default category seem very diverse, but they have one property in
common: The information contained by the tags contradicts information
provided by the ontological category.
Since this is a rather important property, allow me to elaborate on the
point a bit. When you activate an ontological category, such as ANIMAL, this
delivers all sorts of expectations about the object as a member of the
ANIMAL category. Now the concepts listed above seem to (i) activate those
categories and (ii) produce something that goes against what the categories
stipulate... To sum up, religious concepts invariably include information
that is counterintuitive relative to the category activated." (p. 64-65)
Readers who prefer rigorous empiricism to abstract reasoning will doubt some
of Boyer's fundamental ideas:
"So it seems sensible that a 'one thing led to many things' scenario is
apposite for cultural phenomena... But we can approach the question from
another angle. Indeed, we can and should turn the whole 'origin explanation
upside down, as it were, and realize the many forms of religion we know are
not the outcome of a historical diversification but of a constant
reduction... The religious concepts we observe are relatively successful
ones selected among many other variants... To explain religion we must
explain how human minds, constantly faced with lots of potential 'religious
stuff,' constantly reduce it to much less stuff." (p. 32)
"So we should abandon the search for a historical origin of religion in the
sense of a point in time (however long ago) when people created religion
where there was none. All scenarios that describe people sitting around and
inventing religion are dubious. Even the ones that see religion as slowly
emerging out of confused thoughts have this problem. In the following
chapters, I will show how religion emerges (has its origins, if you want) in
the selection of concepts and the selection of memories. Does this mean that
at some point in history people had lots of possible versions of religion
and that somehow one of them proved more successful? Not at all. What it
means is that at all times and all the time, indefinitely many variants of
religious notions were and are created inside individual minds. Not all
these variants are equally successful in cultural transmission. What we call
a cultural phenomenon is the result of a selection that is taking place all
the time and everywhere." (p. 33)
http://naturalscience.com/ns/books/book14.html
Consciousness underlies non-rational and supernatural beliefs, which are a
universal attribute of all human societies and would therefore appear to
reflect innate qualities of the mind. Pascal Boyer in Religion Explained
(2001) maintains that the social inference system in the mind evolved to
handle innate notions of morality and situations of misfortune. He describes
some fundamental features common to all "supernatural explanations " as
follows: " Our evolution as a species of cooperators is sufficient to
explain the actual psychology of moral reasoning, the way children and
adults represent moral dimensions of action. But then this requires no
special concept of religious agent, no special code, no model to follow.
However once you have concepts of supernatural agents with strategic
information, these are made more salient and relevant by the fact that you
can easily insert them in moral reasoning that would be there in any case.
To some extent religious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions." 4
Clearly there is a genetic origin to these explanations but to take us
further it is necessary to explore the cultural conditioning that turns such
explanations into driving forces in human development. It is one thing to
have supernatural explanations; it is something else to insist on conformity
in beliefs about that supernatural explanation. That takes us to the second
feature.
Increasing self-awareness has led humans to ever more elaborate efforts to
structure their environment as the development of language and then symbolic
storage systems made possible far more complex forms of human organization.
Edelman summarizes the issue as follows: "Meaning takes shape in terms of
concepts that depend on categorizations based on value. It grows with the
history of remembered body 4 Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained, (2001), Basic
Books, p. 191 5
Sensations and mental images. The mixture of events is individual and, in
large measure, unpredictable. When in society, linguistic and semantic
capabilities arise and sentences involving metaphor are linked to thought,
the capability to create new models of the world grows at an explosive rate.
But one must remember that, because of its linkage to value and the concept
of self, this system of meaning is almost never free of affect; it is
charged with emotions." (p. 170) The widely varied experiences of humans in
different settings have produced immensely varied cultures with different
combinations of supernatural beliefs and institutions, but the important
point is that it is the complex interplay between these genetic
predispositions and varied experiences of humans in different settings that
gives us a starting point in understanding the process of societal change.
How do we account for cultural variation? Some evolutionary theorists have
created a parallel category to genes to explain cultural evolution. They use
the term memes to describe the intergenerational transfer of cultural
attributes. 5 But such an extension is clearly misdirected. Cultural traits
do not possess attributes parallel to those of genes and indeed the growing
literature of the new institutional economics makes abundantly clear that
institutions must be explained in terms of the intentionality of humans. It
is particularly the development of informal norms that have salience for
incorporating the blend of moral inference of genetic origin with the
intentional aims of humans, which together provide the backbone of what we
should mean by the term culture.
This term was popularized by Richard Dawkins, CITE and is featured in D.
Dennett's Consciousness Explained, Little Brown, 1991. Searle devotes a
chapter (chapter 5) to a biting criticism of Dennett in The Mystery of
Consciousness. The powerful influence of myths, superstitio ns, and
religions in shaping early societies came from their role in establishing
order (the subject of chapter 8) and conformity. Ideological conformity to
this day is a major force in reducing the costs of maintaining order, but it
comes with the additional societal costs of preventing institutional change,
punishing deviants and serving as the source of endless human conflict with
the clash of competing religions. Thus the expansion of consciousness is not
only the source of the wonders of human creativity and the rich
civilizations that humans have created but also a source of intolerance,
prejudice, and human conflict. It could hardly be otherwise given its
central role in human intentionality. Conformity has still another cost in a
world of uncertainty. In the long run it produces stagnation and decay as
humans confront ever new challenges in a non ergodic world that requires
innovative institutional creation because no one can know the right path to
survival. Therefore institutional diversity that allows for a range of
choices is a superior survival trait as Hayek has reminded us. Religious
diversity such as Luther and Calvin produced has long been celebrated as
providing just such a stimulus, as Weber's famous argument reminds us. But a
more fundamental source of creativity has been the evolution of
institutional diversity in general, of which Protestantism was one
illustration and symptomatic of the overall diversity in thinking associated
with the Renaissance.
Political fragmentation in western Europe played just such a role in
creating diverse and competing institutional settings for diverse beliefs
and hence economic institutions which were critical in the relative rise of
Europe as well as critical to the growth of impersonal exchange which
underlies modern economic growth. All this is the subject of chapter 10
below.
http://www.esnie.org/pdf/north2003/chap4_consciousness.pdf
For eons, people naturally have talked about millions of exceedingly
parochial and contextual matters but also about some objects and things that
are not directly observable. It is after all a hallmark of the "modern
mind"-the mind that we have had for millennia-that we entertain plans,
conjectures; speculate on the possible as well as the actual. Among the
millions of messages exchanged, some are attention grabbing because they
violate intuitions about objects and beings in our environment. These
counterintuitive descriptions have a certain staying power, as memory
experiments suggest. They certainly provide the stuff that good stories are
made of. They may mention islands that float adrift or mountains that digest
food or animals that talk. These are generally taken as fiction though the
boundary between a fictional story and an account of personal experience is
often difficult to trace. Some of these themes are particularly salient
because they are about agents. This opens up a rich domain of possible
inferences. When you talk about agents, you wonder to what extent they are
similar to unseen and dangerous predators. You can also try to imagine what
they perceive, what they know, what they plan and so on, because there are
inference systems in your mind that constantly produce such speculations
about other people. Among these accounts, some suggest that counterintuitive
agents have information about relevant aspects of interaction between the
people exchanging these messages. This gives speakers and listeners a strong
motivation to hear, tell or perhaps challenge such stories. This also allows
a further development, whereby people can combine their moral intuitions
with the notion that such agents are indeed informed of the morally relevant
aspects of what they do and what others do to them.
When counterintuitive agents are construed in this way, it becomes easy to
connect them to salient cases of misfortune, because we are predisposed to
see misfortune as a social event, as someone's responsibility rather than
the outcome of mechanical processes. So the agents are now described as
having powers such that they can visit disasters upon people, which adds to
the list of their counterintuitive properties and probably to their
salience. People who have such concepts will probably end up connecting them
with the strange representations and emotions caused by the presence of dead
people, because this presence creates a strange cognitive state in which
various mental systems-those geared to predation and to the identification
of persons-produce incompatible intuitions. We sense both that the dead are
around and that they cannot be around. If you have concepts like that, at
some point it will make sense to connect them with the various repeated and
largely meaningless actions that you often perform with some fear that
nonperformance will result in grave danger. So there are now rituals
directed at these agents. Since many rituals are performed in contexts where
social interaction has non-obvious properties, it will become easy to
conceive of these agents as the very life of the group you are in, as the
bedrock of social interaction. If you live in a large enough group, there
will probably be some people who seem better skilled at producing
convincing messages from the counterintuitive agents. These people will
probably be considered as having some special internal quality that makes
them different from the rest of the group. They will also end up taking on a
special role in ritual performances. If you live in a large group with
literate specialists, these will probably at some point start changing all
these concepts to provide a slightly different, more abstract, less
contextual, less local version. It is also very likely that they will form a
manner of corporation or guild with attendant political goals. But their
version of concepts is not really optimal, so that it will always be
combined in most people's minds with spontaneous inferences that are not
compatible with the literate doctrine.
When the story of religion is told this way, it seems to amount to an
extraordinary conspiracy. Religious concepts and norms and the emotions
attached to them seem designed to excite the human mind, linger in memory,
trigger multiple inferences in the precise way that will get people to hold
them true and communicate them. Whoever designed religion, or designs each
religion, seems to have uncanny prescience of what will be successful with
human minds.
But there is of course no designer, and no conspiracy either. Religious
concepts work that way, they realize the miracle of being exactly what
people will transmit, simply because other variants were created and
forgotten or abandoned all along. The magic that seems to produce such
perfect concepts for human minds is merely the effect of repeated selective
events. A complex organ, the human mind produces a multitude of
mini-scenarios, evanescent links between thoughts and new concepts that
quickly degrade. This maelstrom of elusive thought is certainly not what we
are aware of, because in a sense the only thoughts that we entertain
consciously have already passed a number of cognitive hurdles. But even
explicit thoughts that we entertain are not all equally likely to produce
similar thoughts in other people; far from it. You must remember that in the
domain of inference-production many will be called and few will be chosen.
One of my Fang friends thought that spirits were two-dimensional and always
stood sideways when facing human beings lest they be detected. But this
ingenious notion was perhaps too complex. Most people quickly forgot it or
distorted it. Other inferences have more staying power.
I have explained religion in terms of systems that are in all human minds
and that do all sorts of precious and interesting work but that were not
really designed to produce religious concepts of behaviors. There is no
religious instinct, no specific inclination in the mind, no particular
disposition for these concepts, no special religion center in the brain, and
religious persons are not different from nonreligious ones in essential
cognitive functions. Even faith and belief seem to be simple by-products of
the way concepts and inferences are doing their work for religion in much
the same way as for other domains.
Instead of a religious mind, what we have found is a whole frustration of
invisible hands. One of these guides human attention toward some possible
conceptual combinations; another enhances recall of some of these; yet
another process makes concepts of agents far easier to acquire if they imply
strategic agency, connections to morality, etc. The invisible hand of
multiple inferential systems in the mind produces all sorts of connections
between these concepts and salient occurrences in people's lives. The
invisible hand of cultural selection makes it the case that the religious
concepts people acquire and transmit are in general the ones most likely to
seem convincing to them, given their circumstances.
I call this a frustration because religion is portrayed here as a mere
consequence or side effect of having the brains we have, which does not
strike one as particularly dramatic. But religion is dramatic, it is central
to many people's existence, it is involved in highly emotional experience,
it may lead people to murder or self-sacrifice. We would like the
explanation of dramatic things to be equally dramatic. For similar reasons,
people who are shocked or repulsed by religion would like to find the single
source of what is for them such egregious error, the crossroads at which so
many human minds take the wrong turn, as it were. But the truth is that
there is no such single point, because many different cognitive processes
conspire to make religious concepts convincing.
I am of course slightly disingenuous in describing this as a frustration,
when I think it is such a Good Thing. That we fail to identify hidden hands
and simple designs and instead discover a variety of underlying processes
that we know how to study sometimes happens in scientific endeavors and is
always for the better. The progress is not just that we understand religion
better because we have better knowledge of cognitive processes. It is also,
conversely, that we can highlight and better understand many fascinating
features of our mental architecture by studying the human propensity toward
religious thoughts. One does learn a lot about these complex biological
machines by figuring out how they manage to give airy nothing a local
habitation and a name.
http://www.wordtrade.com/society/anthropologyreligion.htm
...................................
http://www.ghg.net/phf/disbelief/origins_of_gods.htm
G00Goo
.
|
|
|
| User: "X" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief theremight be a magically invisible space pixie |
13 Oct 2004 11:21:49 AM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:O1Fad.371762$Fg5.38541@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
...there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness. ...
Yes there is, 'delusional disorder', a psychosis. See:
http://www.psychologynet.org/delusion.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
13 Oct 2004 12:45:42 PM |
|
|
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:xCcbd.384742$Fg5.334048@attbi_s53...
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:O1Fad.371762$Fg5.38541@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
...there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness. ...
Yes there is, 'delusional disorder', a psychosis. See:
http://www.psychologynet.org/delusion.html
"Before we accept emotion-oriented scenarios of religion's origins, we
should probe their assumptions... Consider a simple emotion like the fear
induced by the lurking presence of a predator. In many animals, including
humans, this results in dramatic somatic events--most noticeably, a
quickened heartbeat and increased perspiration. But other systems are doing
complex work. For instance, we have to choose among several behaviors in
such situations--freeze or flee or fight--a choice that is made by
computation, that is, by mentally going through a variety of aspects of the
situation and evaluating the least dangerous option. So fear is not just
what we experience about it; it is also a program, in some ways comparable
to a computer program. It governs the resources of the brain in a special
way, quite different from what happens in other circumstances. Fear
increases the sensitivity of some perceptual mechanisms and leads reasoning
through complicated sets of possible outcomes... In the case of fear
triggered by predators, it seems quite clear that natural selection designed
our brains in such a way that they comprise this specific program." (p.
21-22)
"Even though we know nothing about the particular cultural context of these
descriptions, we can see how each of them combines a particular ontological
category and a special characteristic:
(31) Thirsty people disappear [PERSON] + special biology, physics
(32) Cologne spirits [PERSON] + invisible + drinks perfume
(33) People with flying organ [PERSON] + extra organ
(34) Counterintelligence wristwatch [TOOL] + detects enemies
(36) gourmet mountain [NATURAL OBJECT] + digestion
(37) Guardian river [NATURAL OBJECT] + incest abhorrence
(38) Guardian forest [NATURAL OBJECT] + likes a good tune
This, obviously, is a terribly simplified description of people's actual
representations. But that is an advantage. Summarizing concepts in this way
highlights a very important property of religious concepts. Each of these
entries in the mental encyclopedia includes an ontological entry between
brackets and a 'tag' for special features of the new entry. These tags added
to the default category seem very diverse, but they have one property in
common: The information contained by the tags contradicts information
provided by the ontological category.
Since this is a rather important property, allow me to elaborate on the
point a bit. When you activate an ontological category, such as ANIMAL, this
delivers all sorts of expectations about the object as a member of the
ANIMAL category. Now the concepts listed above seem to (i) activate those
categories and (ii) produce something that goes against what the categories
stipulate... To sum up, religious concepts invariably include information
that is counterintuitive relative to the category activated." (p. 64-65)
Readers who prefer rigorous empiricism to abstract reasoning will doubt some
of Boyer's fundamental ideas:
"So it seems sensible that a 'one thing led to many things' scenario is
apposite for cultural phenomena... But we can approach the question from
another angle. Indeed, we can and should turn the whole 'origin explanation
upside down, as it were, and realize the many forms of religion we know are
not the outcome of a historical diversification but of a constant
reduction... The religious concepts we observe are relatively successful
ones selected among many other variants... To explain religion we must
explain how human minds, constantly faced with lots of potential 'religious
stuff,' constantly reduce it to much less stuff." (p. 32)
"So we should abandon the search for a historical origin of religion in the
sense of a point in time (however long ago) when people created religion
where there was none. All scenarios that describe people sitting around and
inventing religion are dubious. Even the ones that see religion as slowly
emerging out of confused thoughts have this problem. In the following
chapters, I will show how religion emerges (has its origins, if you want) in
the selection of concepts and the selection of memories. Does this mean that
at some point in history people had lots of possible versions of religion
and that somehow one of them proved more successful? Not at all. What it
means is that at all times and all the time, indefinitely many variants of
religious notions were and are created inside individual minds. Not all
these variants are equally successful in cultural transmission. What we call
a cultural phenomenon is the result of a selection that is taking place all
the time and everywhere." (p. 33)
http://naturalscience.com/ns/books/book14.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "X" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief theremight be a magically invisible space pixie |
13 Oct 2004 01:03:22 PM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:xCcbd.384742$Fg5.334048@attbi_s53...
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:O1Fad.371762$Fg5.38541@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
...there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness. ...
Yes there is, 'delusional disorder', a psychosis. See:
http://www.psychologynet.org/delusion.html
... religious notions ...
Religious notions are just that: notions with no basis in fact,
symptomatic of delusional disorder. See above.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
13 Oct 2004 02:31:57 PM |
|
|
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:K5ebd.119588$He1.111955@attbi_s01...
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:xCcbd.384742$Fg5.334048@attbi_s53...
Immortalist wrote:
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:O1Fad.371762$Fg5.38541@attbi_s53...
A.Christian wrote:
... God is real ... I know he is real.
Can you explain precisely how it is that you came to know this so that
others, even the doubters, can replicate your observations?
...there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness. ...
Yes there is, 'delusional disorder', a psychosis. See:
http://www.psychologynet.org/delusion.html
... religious notions ...
Religious notions are just that: notions with no basis in fact,
symptomatic of delusional disorder. See above.
You are claiming that natural and cultural selection could have no effect on the
capacities that are equivalent to notions and religious notions? Please show the
evidence for you assertion. Unless survival is somehow equivalent to delusion.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Richo" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
13 Oct 2004 11:23:46 PM |
|
|
"Immortalist" <Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<nKqdnV2XpJ3eHvDcRVn-iw@comcast.com>...
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:K5ebd.119588$He1.111955@attbi_s01...
<snip>
Religious notions are just that: notions with no basis in fact,
symptomatic of delusional disorder. See above.
You are claiming that natural and cultural selection could have no effect on the
capacities that are equivalent to notions and religious notions? Please show the
evidence for you assertion. Unless survival is somehow equivalent to delusion.
"X" AKA Dixit AKA Arno AKA Skeptic will not listen to or understand
anything you say to him.
It serves no purpose "arguing" with him.
You may as well try and teach a chicken calculus.
Mark.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: theism is characterized by an irrational religious belief there might be a magically invisible space pixie |
14 Oct 2004 01:18:49 PM |
|
|
"Richo" <m.richardson@utas.edu.au> wrote in message
news:d753a705.0410132023.6c4166ac@posting.google.com...
"Immortalist" <Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<nKqdnV2XpJ3eHvDcRVn-iw@comcast.com>...
"X" <X@nospam.net> wrote in message news:K5ebd.119588$He1.111955@attbi_s01...
<snip>
Religious notions are just that: notions with no basis in fact,
symptomatic of delusional disorder. See above.
You are claiming that natural and cultural selection could have no effect on
the
capacities that are equivalent to notions and religious notions? Please show
the
evidence for you assertion. Unless survival is somehow equivalent to
delusion.
"X" AKA Dixit AKA Arno AKA Skeptic will not listen to or understand
anything you say to him.
It serves no purpose "arguing" with him.
You may as well try and teach a chicken calculus.
You mean if we suppose, that there are basic empirical beliefs, that is,
emperical beliefs which are epistemically justified, and whose justification does
not depend on that of any further emperical beliefs, since for a belief to be
episemically justified requires that there be a reason why it is likely to be
true and a belief is justified for a person only if he is in cognitive possession
of such a reason, then a person is in cognitive possession of such a reason only
if he believes with justification the premises from which it follows that the
belief is likely to be true, but the premises of such a justifying argument must
include at least one empirical premise, whence the justification of a supposed
basic empirical belief depends on the justification of at least one other
empirical belief, contradicting that there are basic empiri | | | | | | | | |
