How so ? If you remove assumptions of divinity from the book - as for example a Christian interested in not letting his or her confessional affiliation get in the way of analysis might, and Atheists and Agnostics do more or less by default - it's 'just' a writing of considerable historical and social significance. But then, so is Das Kapital.
Now apply his statement to this analysis. If a writing of considerable historical and social significance is not to be taken seriousily - why study it?
No. Contingent means dependent. A contingent being is one that owe's its existence to another being. Pindar is pointing out that the concept of an Almighty God that in fact owes his existence to another being is absurd.
Actually looking at what Pindar's post was adressed to...
that'd be why I haven't seen 'contingent' used like that before.:beam:
Now apply his statement to this analysis. If a writing of considerable historical and social significance is not to be taken seriousily - why study it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Claudius the God
The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics --
I do not see him denying its significance in itself or claiming it should not be taken seriously as a whole, here meaning its impact on people and so on.
All he is denying is it being God's Own Truth (:sweatdrop: ) as a primary historical source or the end-all be-all guide to How Thou Shalt Live Thy Life.
Studying the Bible - or rather its multitudous different versions, translations and interpretations - would strike me as rather useful for understanding all those often rather arcane and esoteric fights (that all too often got settled with armies, or at least tried to) that have happened over it. It was also a cornerstone of the worldview of very many people for a long time, which obviously makes it useful for trying to decipher how people back then thought.
I do not see him denying its significance in itself or claiming it should not be taken seriously as a whole, here meaning its impact on people and so on.
All he is denying is it being God's Own Truth (:sweatdrop: ) as a primary historical source or the end-all be-all guide to How Thou Shalt Live Thy Life.
Studying the Bible - or rather its multitudous different versions, translations and interpretations - would strike me as rather useful for understanding all those often rather arcane and esoteric fights (that all too often got settled with armies, or at least tried to) that have happened over it. It was also a cornerstone of the worldview of very many people for a long time, which obviously makes it useful for trying to decipher how people back then thought.
This makes logical sense - however that is not the same as his statement of
The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism...
Which does not. If one is to use it as an important piece for academic study one is taking the text seriousily for its historical impact on society. In itself the Bible is a source of historical information - some which is indeed accurate once the story is broken down to what is history, and what is methaphorical story telling for the moral and ehtical point of the religious text. In fact several historians have researched some of the historical tells of the Bible and have found a few to be accurate in the locations of events, and yes even outcomes of some of those events. If one removes the "diety" function from some of the historical text in the Bible - one can gain a picture of life during those times - that in itself is of some historical significance. As a universal guide to ethics the Holy Bible has been used by societies for many thousands of years. One can claim that they do not follow the text, but to discount the text because of a philisophy disagreement with it - does not consitute a logical denouncing of said text as a serious piece to be studied.
If one is attemptin to deny the impact of the holy bible on society - one is attempting to discount history. Which would make his statement rather illogical in itself from that viewpoint.
In fact I found your logical reasoning in response to my statement supporting my postion that his initial statement in itself was not logical. Your statement agrees with the premise that their is significant historical information in the Bible, and that should always be taken seriousily when studing history.
For some reason I'm suspecting we have a little different idea as of what exactly "taking seriously" means here. Maybe I'm just giving too much benefit of doubt, but I interpret the never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics to mean more that it should not be taken at face value and as is.
As for the historical events recorded for example in the Old Testament, heck, many of them have been corroborated by for example Assyrian and Babylonian records of the same happenstances by what I've heard. Although unsurprisingly the Mesopotamians' view tends to be a tad more down to earth...
For some reason I'm suspecting we have a little different idea as of what exactly "taking seriously" means here. Maybe I'm just giving too much benefit of doubt, but I interpret the never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics to mean more that it should not be taken at face value and as is.
Yep I am thinking so also. To me in the context that he used the sentence is that the Bible should not be taken serious as a historical work. That I find illogical.
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As for the historical events recorded for example in the Old Testament, heck, many of them have been corroborated by for example Assyrian and Babylonian records of the same happenstances by what I've heard. Although unsurprisingly the Mesopotamians' view tends to be a tad more down to earth...
Yes indeed that is why I found is statement illogical - many facts have corroboration from other records and research. Now should one take the moral lessons literally or methaphorical seriousily would be a logical arguement, but to deny the Bible as a historical reference in itself seems illogical given the evidence to date.
To me serious implies not only the religious aspects of the Bible - one that some could remove themselves from by not taking it serious, but the historical references should be taken serious with a juidance eye toward the religious aspects of the text to seperate the historical fact from the Religious dogma.
You know, this seems to be turning into tiresomely nitpicky and semantical interpretation of the content of a somewhat vague sentence used by a third party. And I know I can't sustain the interest for that sort of word-mincing. Wouldn't it work rather better if we just waited until Claudius clarifies what he specifically meant ?
You know, this seems to be turning into tiresomely nitpicky and semantical interpretation of the content of a somewhat vague sentence used by a third party. And I know I can't sustain the interest for that sort of word-mincing. Wouldn't it work rather better if we just waited until Claudius clarifies what he specifically meant ?
Probably - since that was my initial point with the statement that the sentence did not make sense logically.
Anyway, suppose that, for some religion, it makes a claim that: If God exists then there is X. Would lack of X not show that God, as they concieve it, does not exist? That, for all practical purposes, is the position of most atheists. For, it shows that the God you are talking about does not exist, and I suppose that most atheists aren't really concerned w/ creating their own version of what "God" is, which would be like making any definition for some word that they made up and testing its reality. It very well could be that zark, and infinite other conceptions of deities, cannot be disproven, because we may not know of them, but once I have denied your God, I have gone far enough and I don't think it's worth my time considering zark, zank, timmy, and the flying spaghetti monster. In short, some unkown deity X which I still ought to believe in, would consume all of my time, and unless the trob deity shows that he will punish me for not considering -- I suppose as a form of worship -- zank, zark, timmy, et al, I won't concern myself, and I will live a life that is not all spent in consideration of the infinite forms X (not the same X as above, but some deity) may have.
Anyway, suppose that, for some religion, it makes a claim that: If God exists then there is X. Would lack of X not show that God, as they concieve it, does not exist? That, for all practical purposes, is the position of most atheists. For, it shows that the God you are talking about does not exist, and I suppose that most atheists aren't really concerned w/ creating their own version of what "God" is, which would be like making any definition for some word that they made up and testing its reality. It very well could be that zark, and infinite other conceptions of deities, cannot be disproven, because we may not know of them, but once I have denied your God, I have gone far enough and I don't think it's worth my time considering zark, zank, timmy, and the flying spaghetti monster. In short, some unkown deity X which I still ought to believe in, would consume all of my time, and unless the trob deity shows that he will punish me for not considering -- I suppose as a form of worship -- zank, zark, timmy, et al, I won't concern myself, and I will live a life that is not all spent in consideration of the infinite forms X (not the same X as above, but some deity) may have.
"absence of proof is not proof of absence."
however, your point, i think, is that to a rational mind absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. imo, Pindar's argument (more or less the cosmological argument, i think) is premised on a subjective truth, revelation. this is because the reductio ad absurdum need not lead to "God", per se, just some uncaused entity. i don't see why this uncaused entity couldn't just as easily be the "universe" (physical reality). an uncaused universe should be no more absurd than an uncaused supreme being.
because of this, faithfuls often assert that the way to determine the nature of the great uncaused is revelation, which is entirely incommunicable to the non-faithful, apparently. however, to experience revelation, one must have faith. for someone without faith looking for evidence of a supreme being or even a valid reason to try to assume faith, this presents an obvious catch-22.
edit: this is not to say faith/revelation are invalid, but that they are useless with respect to this debate.
however, your point, i think, is that to a rational mind absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
This would not be rational though it may be a common enough error.
Quote:
imo, Pindar's argument (more or less the cosmological argument, i think) is premised on a subjective truth, revelation. this is because the reductio ad absurdum need not lead to "God", per se, just some uncaused entity. i don't see why this uncaused entity couldn't just as easily be the "universe" (physical reality). an uncaused universe should be no more absurd than an uncaused supreme being.
Hello Big John, (you're far too big)
The argument I used as a simple proof to help Sasaki is basically the cosmological argument. It doesn't appeal to revelation. If one posits the universe as the uncaused cause there are a few problems: one, the universe itself is a concept referring to stuff both here and out there. It is not itself a concrete thing, but a label for a collection of things: planets, stars, Deep Space 9 etc. It therefore runs into the fallacy of reification. Two, to admit the universe is necessary being means it cannot thereby be contingent being as the two are mutually exclusive. This runs into the problem that a host of things that compose the universe seem quite contingent: people for example (maybe not Captain Sisko however).
This looks like a form of argumentum ad ignorantiam, a favourite fallacy for proponents of intelligent design, i.e. something must be true because it cannot be disproven.
howdy, Pindar (you are not too pindarious, yet). kudos for the DS9 reference.
--although would captian sisko be necessary if the wormhole aliens are themselves contingent?
i have questions:
1. is the physical universe necessarily so ambiguous that to refer to it as a "concrete thing" commits a fallacy of reification? is this a semantic argument? a collection of 5 apples can be called a "bunch", but is a "bunch" an entity? if i call this collection uncaused, and refer to the "supreme bunch", is this an ambiguous abstraction masquerading as the concrete? what if i just say bunch = the 5 apples and substitute... the "supreme 5 apples"?
2. how is a necessary universe being composed of contingent entities any more of a problem than a necessary creator creating contingent entities?
edit:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Peasant
This looks like a form of argumentum ad ignorantiam, a favourite fallacy for proponents of intelligent design, i.e. something must be true because it cannot be disproven.
i am not saying that X is true because there is no proof that X is false, just that X is not necessarily false simply because there is no proof that X is true.
You know, this seems to be turning into tiresomely nitpicky and semantical interpretation of the content of a somewhat vague sentence used by a third party. And I know I can't sustain the interest for that sort of word-mincing. Wouldn't it work rather better if we just waited until Claudius clarifies what he specifically meant ?
goodness me, I guess I have some explaining to do regarding this point:
Quote:
Originally Posted by claudius the god
The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Now apply his statement to this analysis. If a writing of considerable historical and social significance is not to be taken seriousily - why study it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
I do not see him denying its significance in itself or claiming it should not be taken seriously as a whole, here meaning its impact on people and so on.
All he is denying is it being God's Own Truth (:sweatdrop: ) as a primary historical source or the end-all be-all guide to How Thou Shalt Live Thy Life.
Studying the Bible - or rather its multitudous different versions, translations and interpretations - would strike me as rather useful for understanding all those often rather arcane and esoteric fights (that all too often got settled with armies, or at least tried to) that have happened over it. It was also a cornerstone of the worldview of very many people for a long time, which obviously makes it useful for trying to decipher how people back then thought.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
This makes logical sense - however that is not the same as his statement of
The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism...
Which does not. If one is to use it as an important piece for academic study one is taking the text seriousily for its historical impact on society. In itself the Bible is a source of historical information - some which is indeed accurate once the story is broken down to what is history, and what is methaphorical story telling for the moral and ehtical point of the religious text. In fact several historians have researched some of the historical tells of the Bible and have found a few to be accurate in the locations of events, and yes even outcomes of some of those events. If one removes the "diety" function from some of the historical text in the Bible - one can gain a picture of life during those times - that in itself is of some historical significance. As a universal guide to ethics the Holy Bible has been used by societies for many thousands of years. One can claim that they do not follow the text, but to discount the text because of a philisophy disagreement with it - does not consitute a logical denouncing of said text as a serious piece to be studied.
If one is attemptin to deny the impact of the holy bible on society - one is attempting to discount history. Which would make his statement rather illogical in itself from that viewpoint.
In fact I found your logical reasoning in response to my statement supporting my postion that his initial statement in itself was not logical. Your statement agrees with the premise that their is significant historical information in the Bible, and that should always be taken seriousily when studing history.
...etc...
okay, The Holy Bible has been edited and ommited and manipulated and mistranslated so much that it can't be taken too seriously as a piece of serious History. if anything, it is a good text to examine in the light of history and with other texts (such as the apochiphrya (spelling?)) in order to examine how history can be manipulated.
The Holy Bible deserves a fair bit of academic criticism... and it should not be taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics... if someone wanted to study the types of Laws and societies of the ancient near-east, then the Holy Bible may offer some clues, but today in many parts of the world, many of the moral lessons are inappropriate and uncivilized or simply contrary to how many societies have developed...
there have also been numerous problems in accuracy during the processes of translating one version into others... this also makes the text less authentic...
when I was talking about 'bad stuff' in the Bible, I'm talking both about the manipulation of history and several stories or moral lessons or whatever in the Bible that are promoted as ethical, but many today would consider highly UNethical...
as a text (many versions actually) which has been used in shaping western civilization and beyond for almost two millenia, it is incredibly important in the development of ideas, religions, intellectual movements, art, and so on... it also has plenty of social significance. But as a guide to Ethics or as a piece of History, it deserves considerable academic study and criticism
"why study it?" you ask... for numerous reasons... but not as accurate History itself, nor as a universal guide to Ethics today...
The text itself is historically important to many people, but to view Genesis or Noah's ark/the flood or the divinity of Jesus as historical fact is nonsense. nor should the Bible be taken as 'God's own truth'...
I am not attempting to deny the impact of the Holy Bible on society at all...
Oh, no! I've been called a Liberal! That made my day. :laugh4:
Does this mean I have to stop being a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment? What about my stance that all government is bad government and thus the smaller the government the better? Don't "liberals" believe in big government? Of course, I am an anarchist and a socialist, so maybe that makes me a liberal? Or is it my anti-religion/anti-superstition/pro-humanism/pro-rational stance which makes me a liberal? Maybe I'm just confused... or, perhaps someone else is. :wink:
I wasn't picking on Pindar per se, I posted the foil covered cubicle pic in a perhaps misguided attempt to lighten the atmosphere in the thread before it became unnecessarily vitriolic. Then, of course, Pindar's darkness quote deserved something even sillier. Pindar can take it. He's a reasonably rational person, even if he is a Mormon. grin:
goodness me, I guess I have some explaining to do regarding this point:
The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism...
So you agree with my statement that your statement here does not make Logical sense?
Do you realize that in your attempt to explain the logic behind such a statement you have contradicted yourself throughout your post?
Answer these two questions without consideration of what document or text one is speaking about.
Is not a document worthy of discussion, review, criticism, and study make the document important?
Does that not indeed make the document a serious piece for study?
So you agree with my statement that your statement here does not make Logical sense?
no i do not agree... however I admit that I should have elaborated further the first time...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Do you realize that in your attempt to explain the logic behind such a statement you have contradicted yourself throughout your post?
Answer these two questions without consideration of what document or text one is speaking about.
Is not a document worthy of discussion, review, criticism, and study make the document important?
Does that not indeed make the document a serious piece for study?
I said: (boldness added for emphasis)
"The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism..."
so I've already said that it is important for academic study. BUT it should NOT be taken seriously as an accurate historical text. It can be taken seriously on other questions such as the manipulation, abuse and misuse of History.
There is considerable historical information in the text, but the events described should never be taken as absolute fact as many do...
If you were writing a proffesional history of events of the first century CE in the Ancient Near-East, would you take the texts of the New Testament as FACT?
Would you describe Jesus as divine or the son of 'God'?
Would you use the Gospels of Judas or Thomas or James or Peter or Mary Magdelene or any of the other non-canonical Gospels as historical references for events?
I'm done with going over my previous statement, I'm not going to waste my time going back over it again if I can help it
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_John
i am not saying that X is true because there is no proof that X is false, just that X is not necessarily false simply because there is no proof that X is true.
with no proof and no evidence either way - only absense of both, there are two possibilities: either deities exist or they do not... what is so wrong about the theory/belief/assumption/reasoning that they do not exist? there's no real evidence to contradict this theory, so what's the problem with it? - it's just one theory out of two possible realities... the other theory being that deities do exist
there's no logical point at all in making the assumption that deities do exist if there isn't any real evidence to base it on in the first place...
it is possible that deities exist or existed in some form somewhere somewhen, but the same can be said about the tooth-fairy and the flying spaghetti monster... that's no reason to assume they do exist or did exist some time in the past...
when the basic argument about the existence of God goes in the direction the theists want it to, it is often one nonsensical argument and conclusion after another... Sin, worship, sacrifice, repent, heaven, hell, prayer, etc, scripture, etc, dogma, etc, indoctrination, etc...
the theist argument is designed to get the 'target' to believe one illogical thing after another, starting with the existence of God/s without any evidence...
Well, they had to tell all those happy pagans something to get over the bafflement over why something called a soul needed saving in the first place you know...
no i do not agree... however I admit that I should have elaborated further the first time...
Which leads me to conclude that my initial statement is indeed correct. There is not a logic base to your statement.
Quote:
I said: (boldness added for emphasis)
"The Holy Bible is an important piece of literature for academic study, but it should never be taken seriously as a historical text nor taken seriously as a universal guide to ethics, but the bad stuff is still in the Bible and isn't going away any time soon... so it still deserves plenty of criticism..."
so I've already said that it is important for academic study. BUT it should NOT be taken seriously as an accurate historical text. It can be taken seriously on other questions such as the manipulation, abuse and misuse of History.
This does not make logical sense. If a document is important for academic study it should be deemed a serious piece of literature. Several historians have indeed reviewed the text and determine that there are many parts of the text that are indeed accurate in relationship to historical events. Your statement here seems to be an attempt to dismiss that effort of scholars. Are you attempting to appeal to emotion to make such a claim?
Quote:
There is considerable historical information in the text, but the events described should never be taken as absolute fact as many do...
Never stated it should be taken as absolute fact only that as a historical text it should be taken seriousily for the information that it does contain.
Quote:
If you were writing a proffesional history of events of the first century CE in the Ancient Near-East, would you take the texts of the New Testament as FACT?
I would use it as source material and along with other source material, I might be able to come up with a logical sequence of events concerning that historical event. In fact several historians have done just that. They discount the relgious text of the material and focus on what they can determine to be the actual historical event.
Would you consider Homer's epic a serious piece of literature?
Quote:
Would you describe Jesus as divine or the son of 'God'?
In the historical context of the literature I would discuss the nature of the religion and the views described in the text as it describes Jesus.
Are you attempting to state that a historian should make a claim that Jesus was Divine or the Son of God based upon using the text for historical record?
Or should the historian review the information to determine what historical fact can be gathered from the document? You do understand that in the New Testiment - very little historical reference points are available, however in the Old Testiment many historical reference points are available and have indeed been verified as religious text and historical describitions of real historical events. A historian must be able to seperate the religious aspects of the document from the historical event and reach a logical conclusion and interpation. A religious individual only needs to reach a logical conclusion based upon his religion.
Quote:
Would you use the Gospels of Judas or Thomas or James or Peter or Mary Magdelene or any of the other Gospels as historical references for events?
Yes indeed, plus any Roman records I can find, any other writings of the time period I could find access to to verify information or to discount information. That is how one checks facts - verification. Not simple dismissal.
It seems more and more that your initial statment and your follow up explaination contains several logical fallacies.
I wonder if you would consider and answer the questions from the previous post.
Answer these two questions without consideration of what document or text one is speaking about.
Is not a document worthy of discussion, review, criticism, and study make the document important?
Does that not indeed make the document a serious piece for study?
And then add
Does that mean that the document can not have other purposes beside being only a historical collection of facts?
with no proof and no evidence either way - only absense of both, there are two possibilities: either deities exist or they do not... what is so wrong about the theory/belief/assumption/reasoning that they do not exist? there's no real evidence to contradict this theory, so what's the problem with it? - it's just one theory out of two possible realities... the theory that deities do exist
there's no logical point at all in making the assumption that deities do exist if there isn't any real evidence to base it on in the first place...
[...]
the theist argument is designed to get the 'target' to believe one illogical thing after another, starting with the existence of God/s without any evidence...
as i understand it, the gist of the cosmological (or "first cause") argument is basically:
there exist "contingent" entities. i.e., entities exist, but do must not necessarily exist (it is possible for those entities to not exist). using a previous example, take apples. apples do exist, but they need not (i think one can imagine a reality where apples did not and never will exist).
if an entity need not exist, then it must be caused.
if one goes back in time far enough, you must come to a point where all contingent entities are yet-to-be-caused (since causation depends on time).
thus contingent entities cannot account for the existence of each other; something non-contingent, necessary, uncaused must have been the first cause for all these contingent entites, otherwise reality is an infinite series of contingent entities, ceaselessly causing other contingent entities. this seems problematic to me, but i don't know that this is inherently absurd as i think Pindar asserts. let's assume that it is absurd, for the sake of argument. btw, there may be thermodynamic reasons to believe that the universe cannot be eternal, which an infinite chain of "contingents" may require.
the only conclusion availible is that there must be a necessary uncaused entity which caused all contingent enities, and for which non-existence is impossible.
(i could be wrong, but i think this is similar to the argument upon which the idea of metaphysical reality is based)
i don't necessarily buy this argument on its face, and my exam tomorrow morning precludes me from reading up on its criticisms. but my first concern was why the uncaused entity could not be the "universe". Pindar's first objection (i think) was that the "universe" is an abstraction, simply a collection of contingent enities. but i'm not sure if we can categorize all aspects of the "universe" as contingent (e.g. what about time? is matter/energy contingent?).
one question i have: is it necessarily incorrect to describe the universe as a system of causation? if not, is it fallacious to consider that system itself an "entity"? if not, can that system be "uncaused"?
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when the basic argument about the existence of God goes in the direction the theists want it to, it is often one nonsensical argument and conclusion after another... Sin, worship, sacrifice, repent, heaven, hell, prayer, etc, scripture, etc, dogma, etc, indoctrination, etc...
i believe this stuff comes in later in an attempt to determine the character of the necessary first cause. none of this makes any sense to me, but i think this is where ideas like faith and revelation become important.
Which leads me to conclude that my initial statement is indeed correct. There is not a logic base to your statement.
...
This does not make logical sense. If a document is important for academic study it should be deemed a serious piece of literature. Several historians have indeed reviewed the text and determine that there are many parts of the text that are indeed accurate in relationship to historical events. Your statement here seems to be an attempt to dismiss that effort of scholars. Are you attempting to appeal to emotion to make such a claim?
It is important for academic study, but the extensive manipulation of the text makes it something that an academic can't take seriously. it is important BECAUSE of the extensive manipulation of the text and the social importance of the text, but that doesn't mean that the events depicted should be taken seriously.
... how many times do I have to say this before you understand?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Never stated it should be taken as absolute fact only that as a historical text it should be taken seriousily for the information that it does contain.
and I'm saying that it deserves extensive critical analysis and academic evaluation in order to establish which parts of the text can be considered reliable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Would you consider Homer's epic a serious piece of literature?
Yes, I would. but I would need a critical analysis/academic evaluation of the text before I can comfortably use any of the text as a piece of History...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Are you attempting to state that a historian should make a claim that Jesus was Divine or the Son of God based upon using the text for historical record?
I'm saying that during the Dark ages and Middle Ages, historians did just that... they would take the Biblical text as historical fact and deduce that Genesis occurred only some 6000 years ago or some nonsense like that...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Or should the historian review the information to determine what historical fact can be gathered from the document? You do understand that in the New Testiment - very little historical reference points are available, however in the Old Testiment many historical reference points are available and have indeed been verified as religious text and historical describitions of real historical events. A historian must be able to seperate the religious aspects of the document from the historical event and reach a logical conclusion and interpation. A religious individual only needs to reach a logical conclusion based upon his religion.
the question is how much has been manipulated to serve the religious aspects of the text? - that is why critical analysis is necessary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Yes indeed, plus any Roman records I can find, any other writings of the time period I could find access to to verify information or to discount information. That is how one checks facts - verification. Not simple dismissal.
I never said to simply dismiss the text, I said it requires critical analysis or academic evaluation or whatever - that is in order to verify the authenticity of the text...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
It seems more and more that your initial statment and your follow up explaination contains several logical fallacies.
I don't see any logical fallacies... just because a text is important doesn't mean it should be taken seriously...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
I wonder if you would consider and answer the questions from the previous post.
I already have once...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Answer these two questions without consideration of what document or text one is speaking about.
Is not a document worthy of discussion, review, criticism, and study make the document important?
most documents are Important for various reasons. discussion, review, criticism and study can make a text important.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Does that not indeed make the document a serious piece for study?
How seriously a text should be taken depends on its level of authenticity. If one knows that a text has undergone numerous translations, mistranslations, editing, omitting, and has otherwise been manipulated for political reasons; then it should not be taken seriously as a reliable interpretation of the facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
And then add
Does that mean that the document can not have other purposes beside being only a historical collection of facts?
what other purposes? if something is a load of B.S. then I don't think it is really suitable for educational purposes, only for criticical analysis.
are you arguing that all texts, no matter how corrupted, should be regarded as reliable and useful?
as i understand it, the gist of the cosmological (or "first cause") argument is basically:
there exist "contingent" entities. i.e., entities exist, but do must not necessarily exist (it is possible for those entities to not exist). using a previous example, take apples. apples do exist, but they need not (i think one can imagine a reality where apples did not and never will exist).
if an entity need not exist, then it must be caused.
if one goes back in time far enough, you must come to a point where all contingent entities are yet-to-be-caused (since causation depends on time).
thus contingent entities cannot account for the existence of each other; something non-contingent, necessary, uncaused must have been the first cause for all these contingent entites, otherwise reality is an infinite series of contingent entities, ceaselessly causing other contingent entities. this seems problematic to me, but i don't know that this is inherently absurd as i think Pindar asserts. let's assume that it is absurd, for the sake of argument. btw, there may be thermodynamic reasons to believe that the universe cannot be eternal, which an infinite chain of "contingents" may require.
the only conclusion availible is that there must be a necessary uncaused entity which caused all contingent enities, and for which non-existence is impossible.
(i could be wrong, but i think this is similar to the argument upon which the idea of metaphysical reality is based)
i don't necessarily buy this argument on its face, and my exam tomorrow morning precludes me from reading up on its criticisms. but my first concern was why the uncaused entity could not be the "universe". Pindar's first objection (i think) was that the "universe" is an abstraction, simply a collection of contingent enities. but i'm not sure if we can categorize all aspects of the "universe" as contingent (e.g. what about time? is matter/energy contingent?).
one question i have: is it necessarily incorrect to describe the universe as a system of causation? if not, is it fallacious to consider that system itself an "entity"? if not, can that system be "uncaused"?
so basically you're arguing that there must be a 'creator' or something that created the universe simply because the universe exists? :thumbsdown: now that's an argument with no substance...
so basically you're arguing that there must be a 'creator' or something that created the universe simply because the universe exists? :thumbsdown: now that's an argument with no substance...
i am an atheist, and i am arguing nothing at this point. i am trying to understand Pindar's position.
however, your point, i think, is that to a rational mind absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. imo, Pindar's argument (more or less the cosmological argument, i think) is premised on a subjective truth, revelation. this is because the reductio ad absurdum need not lead to "God", per se, just some uncaused entity. i don't see why this uncaused entity couldn't just as easily be the "universe" (physical reality). an uncaused universe should be no more absurd than an uncaused supreme being.
Not exactly, I was not very clear. First, on the general topic of absence of proof, I recognize that absence of proof is not proof of absence. For a careful mind though, it should certainly play a limiting factor. Lack of evidence means that there is no justification, and there is then no reason to hold some belief, and introduce your system of understanding to unnecessary risk of error and misunderstanding.:whip:
I am unswayed though in this idea that a negative cannot be shown, or proof of something's non-existence. If in some religion the claim is made somewhere that 'If God, then perceptible X' then lack of X shows lack of its cause. I do not actually know any religion's scripture well enough to say that this is in any one of them, but I think that claims along those lines would exist, because religion is about the consequences of God on us and reality. In such a case, X does not show proof, but lack of X which it claims should be perceptible shows a lack of God as they understand it to be. I suppose, maybe wrongly, that there are cases in script that have this claim, though probably not said so plainly~;) It may be that scripture mistook what that real being once said via revelation to someone, but I can still conclude that their notion of God is not represented in reality. The atheist is not concerned with showing that an all encompassing 'God' does not exist but with the general lack of justification for deistic qualities being applied to truth-God even refutation of deistic qualities in particular ideas of God. Indeed, Only if the claims of those religions, or one of them, are true do we have any reason to tie the ideas of deity and all encompassing being together. That is what makes the atheist. The refutation of that scriptural God is enough for the atheist to put God out of his mind, for w/o the claim of some perceptible and revealed religion there is no reason to think and conceive of all the infinte labels and infinite minor differences between ideas of deistic 'God' which one could suppose. I.e., because the religion created that particular idea of God which is denied in the 'if-then' and there would be infinite equally unjustified recategorizations calling it the same being, we ought not concern ourselves, as we would then fetter ourselves for all time in a fruitless search.
And Pindar, we are not swine; we are inquiring minds that need to know, if we are to have any fruit.~:)
It is important for academic study, but the extensive manipulation of the text makes it something that an academic can't take seriously. it is important BECAUSE of the extensive manipulation of the text and the social importance of the text, but that doesn't mean that the events depicted should be taken seriously.
... how many times do I have to say this before you understand?
Again how can a document that is important for academic study not be considered seriousily? For it to have academic value a scholar has determined that the document is worthy of serious study. Your statement in itself is a contradiction.
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are you arguing that all texts, no matter how corrupted, should be regarded as reliable and useful?
No - I am arguing the counter of your postion. That when one conducts a critical analysis of a written document one is taking the information contained in the document seriousily.
Is Your arguement that the Bible can not be considered as a serious piece or that it should not be considered seriousily as a document of social history, a document of history, and a history of a religion? That the document itself has had a serious impact upon the history of the world?
If indeed this is your arguement it is incorrect given that numerous scholars have taken the information contain in the Bible seriousily to the point that many a few sites have been confirmed as actually existing, and that some type of event actually happened. What those same historians (read Archlogists (SP)) are attempting to determine is what actually happened. Religious texts place a religious interpation to the event. In the time that the text of the old testiment in the Christian bible was written man tended to believe that a diety often had something to do with diasters or events that they faced.
What you have been doing in your posts in response to my question about the statement not making logical sense, is the logical fallacy know as Posioning the Well.
Now for a critical analysis of the Bible that takes the Bible seriousily and is highly critical attempting to sort out the relgious dogma from what one can precieve from other historical records.
i am an atheist, and i am arguing nothing at this point. i am trying to understand Pindar's position.
my apologies, I was unaware that it was Pindar who made that argument in the first place...
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Originally Posted by Redleg
Again how can a document that is important for academic study not be considered seriousily? For it to have academic value a scholar has determined that the document is worthy of serious study. Your statement in itself is a contradiction.
we obviously have different definitions or interpretations of the term 'seriously'... what country are you from if you don't mind my asking?
I'm saying that the highly corrupted text of the Holy Bible is an Important text (reasons given above) yet I don't take it seriously as a source of reliable information... this is mainly because much of the information is either too biassed or too unreliable... if you still don't understand then I'm sorry, you're not going to get another explanation.
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Originally Posted by Redleg
No - I am arguing the counter of your postion. That when one conducts a critical analysis of a written document one is taking the information contained in the document seriousily.
oh, the critical analysis should be taken seriously, but one should question the information given in the text and not take those fables as historical truth. I would think this to be quite obvious...
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Originally Posted by Redleg
Is Your arguement that the Bible can not be considered as a serious piece or that it should not be considered seriousily as a document of social history, a document of history, and a history of a religion? That the document itself has had a serious impact upon the history of the world?
it should always be viewed with a critical eye, and the numerous translation errors, omissions, and editing and so on should be kept in mind when studying the text. it should not be taken too seriously as a document of historical events, though it can be informative as a document of social history and as a history of religion. and as I've said several times before it is important for its impact upon societies throughout history.
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Originally Posted by Redleg
What you have been doing in your posts in response to my question about the statement not making logical sense, is the logical fallacy know as Posioning the Well.
I've never heard of this term before. "poisoning the well"?
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Originally Posted by Redleg
Now for a critical analysis of the Bible that takes the Bible seriousily and is highly critical attempting to sort out the relgious dogma from what one can precieve from other historical records.
as i understand it, the gist of the cosmological (or "first cause") argument is basically:
there exist "contingent" entities. i.e., entities exist, but do must not necessarily exist (it is possible for those entities to not exist). using a previous example, take apples. apples do exist, but they need not (i think one can imagine a reality where apples did not and never will exist).
if an entity need not exist, then it must be caused.
if one goes back in time far enough, you must come to a point where all contingent entities are yet-to-be-caused (since causation depends on time).
thus contingent entities cannot account for the existence of each other; something non-contingent, necessary, uncaused must have been the first cause for all these contingent entites, otherwise reality is an infinite series of contingent entities, ceaselessly causing other contingent entities. this seems problematic to me, but i don't know that this is inherently absurd as i think Pindar asserts. let's assume that it is absurd, for the sake of argument. btw, there may be thermodynamic reasons to believe that the universe cannot be eternal, which an infinite chain of "contingents" may require.
the only conclusion availible is that there must be a necessary uncaused entity which caused all contingent enities, and for which non-existence is impossible.
(i could be wrong, but i think this is similar to the argument upon which the idea of metaphysical reality is based)
i don't necessarily buy this argument on its face, and my exam tomorrow morning precludes me from reading up on its criticisms. but my first concern was why the uncaused entity could not be the "universe". Pindar's first objection (i think) was that the "universe" is an abstraction, simply a collection of contingent enities. but i'm not sure if we can categorize all aspects of the "universe" as contingent (e.g. what about time? is matter/energy contingent?).
one question i have: is it necessarily incorrect to describe the universe as a system of causation? if not, is it fallacious to consider that system itself an "entity"? if not, can that system be "uncaused"?
i believe this stuff comes in later in an attempt to determine the character of the necessary first cause. none of this makes any sense to me, but i think this is where ideas like faith and revelation become important.
If I am understanding this debate correctly, there is one proposition that has not been taken into account. The concept of time is a dimension of the current universe - causality dependent on time (ie the notion of "before") is limited only to the extant universe.
Quantum mathematics is beginning to explore the beginnings of the universe and show that there is no necessity for a "before". The position that "there must have been someone/thing before to create the universe" does not really figure in modern cosmology.
we obviously have different definitions or interpretations of the term 'seriously'... what country are you from if you don't mind my asking?
US. As evident in my profile where in Location it states Dallas, TX.
Regardless of your use of the term seriously, its not consistent with how the document is viewed in academics. Your use of the term seriousily is an attempt to imply that people should not take the document as a guide to life or to take the text as factual history. I realized that from the very beginnning - but when you took the course of acedemic study - well it was important to demonstrate that the document is seen in serious and important way in the study of not only relgion, but history and social developlement. That from this viewpoint the document is indeed taken seriousily. Attempts to discount that point seem to fall short of how the document is viewed by those who study it.
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I'm saying that the highly corrupted text of the Holy Bible is an Important text (reasons given above) yet I don't take it seriously as a source of reliable information... this is mainly because much of the information is either too biassed or too unreliable... if you still don't understand then I'm sorry, you're not going to get another explanation.
This is a logical fallacy - its called Posioning the well. It is also inconsistent with the approach historians are using with the text (especially the Old Testiment) to research the past.
Edit: You should also notice I only approached the seculer academic reasons why the text is seriousily consider in historical studies, cultural studies, and yes even other such studies as archology (SP?). Why do this areas study take a serious look at the text - there are several such reasons as pointed out in another post. Now there is also the obvious theist reasons for taking the text seriousily, but this is the part you wish to discard as an atheist, and rightly so since you do not practice the religion.
A critical essay reference can be found here - a library normally has access to the full article. This is a professional association so I can only reference that they have articles - I have not read most of the material contained within the site from home. Limited time for indepth library research is available for me at this time - so if any finds access and determines the articles and information is irrelevant then won't reference the site.
Now I also know from watching the Discovery Channel and the History Channel that several Archalogists (SP) have used the bible to attempt to answer some of the questions about events depicted in the testaments. Some of it is very interesting - especially the episodes around Jericho. One theory was that the Bible actually tells how the Israeli's laid seige, had a spy inside the wall which helped saboters get inside the city walls to open the gates, and the story in the text was used to hide this. Rather interesting theory. Then there is the dating techniques done on what some consider to be the historical location of Jericho.
howdy, Pindar (you are not too pindarious, yet). kudos for the DS9 reference.
--although would captian sisko be necessary if the wormhole aliens are themselves contingent?
I thought I remembered right that you were one of the wise who recognized DS9 was the best of the Star Treks. Regarding our good Captain Sisko: he would be contingent if the wormhole fellows were similarly so.
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i have questions:
1. is the physical universe necessarily so ambiguous that to refer to it as a "concrete thing" commits a fallacy of reification?
It's not ambiguity, but the fact the idea 'the universe' is itself a mental construct.
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is this a semantic argument?
No, it's an ontic argument: if a posited X exists it must have distinct being.
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a collection of 5 apples can be called a "bunch", but is a "bunch" an entity?
No.
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if i call this collection uncaused, and refer to the "supreme bunch", is this an ambiguous abstraction masquerading as the concrete?
Yes. To quote Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our intellect by means of language"
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what if i just say bunch = the 5 apples and substitute... the "supreme 5 apples"?
Is the adjective 'supreme' an objective statement? If not, then it does not impact the status of the apples which remain 5 apples.
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2. how is a necessary universe being composed of contingent entities any more of a problem than a necessary creator creating contingent entities?
Save for pantheists, theists do not conflate the creator with the creation. A necessary being is ontically distinct.
with no proof and no evidence either way - only absense of both, there are two possibilities: either deities exist or they do not... what is so wrong about the theory/belief/assumption/reasoning that they do not exist? there's no real evidence to contradict this theory, so what's the problem with it? - it's just one theory out of two possible realities... the other theory being that deities do exist
Claudius my good man,
I have already explained two issues with atheism. Note them again:
Atheism is a decided position regarding an Absolute. Typically atheism is subdivided into strong and weak forms. Both have their problems. The strong form is making a truth claim about reality: there is no god. This is a universal positive assertion about a negative particular which is logically problematic: one cannot prove a negative. The weak forms of atheism reduce to the personal belief of the subject: one simply doesn't believe in god. The weak form makes no claim on the larger universe. It simply states the personal penchant of the subject which is not particularly interesting in itself.
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there's no logical point at all in making the assumption that deities do exist if there isn't any real evidence to base it on in the first place...
I have already given a simple proof to Sasaki. One shouldn't use categoricals unless they have refuted conflicting stances already put forward.
Atheism: He doesn't exist. Not provable.
Christian: He does exist. Not provable.
Agnostic: We can't tell. Not provable.
So, you aren't making a valid criticism. A movie reviewer does not criticize a movie for "not being interactive" since no movies are interactive.
My post on atheism makes no reference to the "Christian God". The above post does not respond to the issue. Absurdity is the issue with strong atheism. Emotivism is the issue with weak atheism.
Note: I already gave you a simple proof for theism which you admitted was valid.
My post on atheism makes no reference to the "Christian God". The above post does not respond to the issue. Absurdity is the issue with strong atheism. Emotivism is the issue with weak atheism.
Note: I already gave you a simple proof for theism which you admitted was valid.
Then you are admitting that your post on atheism was a strawman. You are first claiming atheism is a positive statement that god doesn't exist (even though it is also defined as simply a lack of belief in a god) and secondly equating a creator of the universe with "god".
As I said, I believe yours was a valid argument for a first cause of the universe. A valid argument can have false premises as I'm sure you know.
America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be 'raptured' up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the 'Armageddon' that is to presage the Second Coming. Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull's-eye as usual:
It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ . . .Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
Does Bush check the Rapture Index daily, as Reagan did his stars? We don't know, but would anyone be surprised?
My scientific colleagues have additional reasons to declare emergency. Ignorant and absolutist attacks on stem cell research are just the tip of an iceberg. What we have here is nothing less than a global assault on rationality, and the Enlightenment values that inspired the founding of this first and greatest of secular republics. Science education — and hence the whole future of science in this country — is under threat. Temporarily beaten back in a Pennsylvania court, the 'breathtaking inanity' (Judge John Jones's immortal phrase) of 'intelligent design' continually flares up in local bush-fires. Dowsing them is a time-consuming but important responsibility, and scientists are finally being jolted out of their complacency. For years they quietly got on with their science, lamentably underestimating the creationists who, being neither competent nor interested in science, attended to the serious political business of subverting local school boards. Scientists, and intellectuals generally, are now waking up to the threat from the American Taliban.
Scientists divide into two schools of thought over the best tactics with which to face the threat. The Neville Chamberlain 'appeasement' school focuses on the battle for evolution. Consequently, its members identify fundamentalism as the enemy, and they bend over backwards to appease 'moderate' or 'sensible' religion (not a difficult task, for bishops and theologians despise fundamentalists as much as scientists do). Scientists of the Winston Churchill school, by contrast, see the fight for evolution as only one battle in a larger war: a looming war between supernaturalism on the one side and rationality on the other. For them, bishops and theologians belong with creationists in the supernatural camp, and are not to be appeased.
The Chamberlain school accuses Churchillians of rocking the boat to the point of muddying the waters. The philosopher of science Michael Ruse wrote:
We who love science must realize that the enemy of our enemies is our friend. Too often evolutionists spend time insulting would-be allies. This is especially true of secular evolutionists. Atheists spend more time running down sympathetic Christians than they do countering creationists. When John Paul II wrote a letter endorsing Darwinism, Richard Dawkins's response was simply that the pope was a hypocrite, that he could not be genuine about science and that Dawkins himself simply preferred an honest fundamentalist.
A recent article in the New York Times by Cornelia Dean quotes the astronomer Owen Gingerich as saying that, by simultaneously advocating evolution and atheism, 'Dr Dawkins "probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists".' This is not the first, not the second, not even the third time this plonkingly witless point has been made (and more than one reply has aptly cited Uncle Remus: "Oh please please Brer Fox, don't throw me in that awful briar patch").
Chamberlainites are apt to quote the late Stephen Jay Gould's 'NOMA' — 'non-overlapping magisteria'. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:
To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.
This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis — by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn't, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared.
To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: "Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium." Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.
Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle — and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it — an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity's best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today.
The Chamberlain tactic of snuggling up to 'sensible' religion, in order to present a united front against ('intelligent design') creationists, is fine if your central concern is the battle for evolution. That is a valid central concern, and I salute those who press it, such as Eugenie Scott in Evolution versus Creationism. But if you are concerned with the stupendous scientific question of whether the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence or not, the lines are drawn completely differently. On this larger issue, fundamentalists are united with 'moderate' religion on one side, and I find myself on the other.
Of course, this all presupposes that the God we are talking about is a personal intelligence such as Yahweh, Allah, Baal, Wotan, Zeus or Lord Krishna. If, by 'God', you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck's constant, none of the above applies. An American student asked her professor whether he had a view about me. 'Sure,' he replied. 'He's positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is ¬religion!' Well, if that's what you choose to mean by religion, fine, that makes me a religious man. But if your God is a being who designs universes, listens to prayers, forgives sins, wreaks miracles, reads your thoughts, cares about your welfare and raises you from the dead, you are unlikely to be satisfied. As the distinguished American physicist Steven Weinberg said, "If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal." But don't expect congregations to flock to your church.
When Einstein said 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' he meant 'Could the universe have begun in more than one way?' 'God does not play dice' was Einstein's poetic way of doubting Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle. Einstein was famously irritated when theists misunderstood him to mean a personal God. But what did he expect? The hunger to misunderstand should have been palpable to him. 'Religious' physicists usually turn out to be so only in the Einsteinian sense: they are atheists of a poetic disposition. So am I. But, given the widespread yearning for that great misunderstanding, deliberately to confuse Einsteinian pantheism with supernatural religion is an act of intellectual high treason.
Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why.
First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things. Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer — a random quantum fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it — it will be simple. Complex, statistically improbable things, by definition, don't just happen; they demand an explanation in their own right. They are impotent to terminate regresses, in a way that simple things are not. The first cause cannot have been an intelligence — let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.
Another of Aquinas' efforts, the Argument from Degree, is worth spelling out, for it epitomises the characteristic flabbiness of theological reasoning. We notice degrees of, say, goodness or temperature, and we measure them, Aquinas said, by reference to a maximum:
Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things . . . Therefore, there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
That's an argument? You might as well say that people vary in smelliness but we can make the judgment only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion. That's theology.
The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today is the teleological argument, sometimes called the Argument from Design although — since the name begs the question of its validity — it should better be called the Argument for Design. It is the familiar 'watchmaker' argument, which is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered — and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin's brilliant alternative.
In the familiar world of human artifacts, complicated things that look designed are designed. To naïve observers, it seems to follow that similarly complicated things in the natural world that look designed — things like eyes and hearts — are designed too. It isn't just an argument by analogy. There is a semblance of statistical reasoning here too — fallacious, but carrying an illusion of plausibility. If you randomly scramble the fragments of an eye or a leg or a heart a million times, you'd be lucky to hit even one combination that could see, walk or pump. This demonstrates that such devices could not have been put together by chance. And of course, no sensible scientist ever said they could. Lamentably, the scientific education of most British and American students omits all mention of Darwinism, and therefore the only alternative to chance that most people can imagine is design.
Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn't know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science's future ability to explain everything else.
Natural selection is not just an alternative to chance. It is the only ultimate alternative ever suggested. Design is a workable explanation for organized complexity only in the short term. It is not an ultimate explanation, because designers themselves demand an explanation. If, as Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel once playfully speculated, life on this planet was deliberately seeded by a payload of bacteria in the nose cone of a rocket, we still need an explanation for the intelligent aliens who dispatched the rocket. Ultimately they must have evolved by gradual degrees from simpler beginnings. Only evolution, or some kind of gradualistic 'crane' (to use Daniel Dennett's neat term), is capable of terminating the regress. Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step. The end product of this ratcheting process is an eye, or a heart, or a brain — a device whose improbable complexity is utterly baffling until you spot the gentle ramp that leads up to it.
Whether my conjecture is right that evolution is the only explanation for life in the universe, there is no doubt that it is the explanation for life on this planet. Evolution is a fact, and it is among the more secure facts known to science. But it had to get started somehow. Natural selection cannot work its wonders until certain minimal conditions are in place, of which the most important is an accurate system of replication — DNA, or something that works like DNA.
The origin of life on this planet — which means the origin of the first self-replicating molecule — is hard to study, because it (probably) only happened once, 4 billion years ago and under very different conditions from those with which we are familiar. We may never know how it happened. Unlike the ordinary evolutionary events that followed, it must have been a genuinely very improbable — in the sense of unpredictable — event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened. This weirdly paradoxical conclusion — that a chemical account of the origin of life, in order to be plausible, has to be implausible — would follow if it were the case that life is extremely rare in the universe. And indeed we have never encountered any hint of extraterrestrial life, not even by radio — the circumstance that prompted Enrico Fermi's cry: "Where is everybody?"
Suppose life's origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And — this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in — Earth has to be one of them, because here we are.
If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn't bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it. The anthropic principle really is rather elegant. By the way, I don't actually think the origin of life was as improbable as all that. I think the galaxy has plenty of islands of life dotted about, even if the islands are too spaced out for any one to hope for a meeting with any other. My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life's presence on our own planet.
The anthropic principle is usually applied not to planets but to universes. Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good — as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.
Again, the anthropic principle delivers its devastatingly neat solution. Physicists already have reason to suspect that our universe — everything we can see — is only one universe among perhaps billions. Some theorists postulate a multiverse of foam, where the universe we know is just one bubble. Each bubble has its own laws and constants. Our familiar laws of physics are parochial bylaws. Of all the universes in the foam, only a minority has what it takes to generate life. And, with anthropic hindsight, we obviously have to be sitting in a member of that minority, because, well, here we are, aren't we? As physicists have said, it is no accident that we see stars in our sky, for a universe without stars would also lack the chemical elements necessary for life. There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack. Similarly, it is no accident that we see a rich diversity of living species: for an evolutionary process that is capable of yielding a species that can see things and reflect on them cannot help producing lots of other species at the same time. The reflective species must be surrounded by an ecosystem, as it must be surrounded by stars.
The anthropic principle entitles us to postulate a massive dose of luck in accounting for the existence of life on our planet. But there are limits. We are allowed one stroke of luck for the origin of evolution, and perhaps for a couple of other unique events like the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the origin of consciousness. But that's the end of our entitlement to large-scale luck. We emphatically cannot invoke major strokes of luck to account for the illusion of design that glows from each of the billion species of living creature that have ever lived on Earth. The evolution of life is a general and continuing process, producing essentially the same result in all species, however different the details.
Contrary to what is sometimes alleged, evolution is a predictive science. If you pick any hitherto unstudied species and subject it to minute scrutiny, any evolutionist will confidently predict that each individual will be observed to do everything in its power, in the particular way of the species — plant, herbivore, carnivore, nectivore or whatever it is — to survive and propagate the DNA that rides inside it. We won't be around long enough to test the prediction but we can say, with great confidence, that if a comet strikes Earth and wipes out the mammals, a new fauna will rise to fill their shoes, just as the mammals filled those of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And the range of parts played by the new cast of life's drama will be similar in broad outline, though not in detail, to the roles played by the mammals, and the dinosaurs before them, and the mammal-like reptiles before the dinosaurs. The same rules are predictably being followed, in millions of species all over the globe, and for hundreds of millions of years. Such a general observation requires an entirely different explanatory principle from the anthropic principle that explains one-off events like the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, by luck. That entirely different principle is natural selection.
We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.
[First published by Huffington Post, October 23, 2006.]
My post on atheism makes no reference to the "Christian God". The above post does not respond to the issue. Absurdity is the issue with strong atheism. Emotivism is the issue with weak atheism.
Note: I already gave you a simple proof for theism which you admitted was valid.
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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro
Then you are admitting that your post on atheism was a strawman.
This doesn't follow.
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You are first claiming atheism is a positive statement that god doesn't exist (even though it is also defined as simply a lack of belief in a god) and secondly equating a creator of the universe with "god".
To define atheism as a simple lack of belief is the fail to apply any rigor to the meaning of the concept. It cannot make distinction between atheism and agnosticism for example or an atheist and a hedgehog. This has already been pointed out. Atheism in its strong form is a claim: god does not exist. This is a positive knowledge claim. I am not the source for the distinction of strong and weak forms of atheism. This is rudimentary material with an established theoretical pedigree..
My discussion of the notion atheism makes no comment on god as the creator of the universe.
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As I said, I believe yours was a valid argument for a first cause of the universe. A valid argument can have false premises as I'm sure you know.
Something that is valid is a proof and thereby logical. The simple argument I gave was in direct response to your claim: "All strong positions on god are illogical." which was in error. Truth is not a criteria of logic. Do not confuse the issues.
To define atheism as a simple lack of belief is the fail to apply any rigor to the meaning of the concept. It cannot make distinction between atheism and agnosticism for example or an atheist and a hedgehog. This has already been pointed out. Atheism in its strong form is a claim: god does not exist. This is a positive knowledge claim. I am not the source for the distinction of strong and weak forms of atheism. This is rudimentary material with an established theoretical pedigree..
It's in the dictionary ~D Even if you feel it isn't rigorous enough you can't define it how you like. You claim there are only two forms of atheism while leaving out the definition many self proclaimed atheists would say fits them. This is a false way of making your position easier to defend and is therefore a straw man. Your criticism of atheism is invalid because of how you are defining it to meet your own needs.
Actually where are you getting your definition of weak atheism? The definition I find is "absence of belief". I think your definition is incorrect here.
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My discussion of the notion atheism makes no comment on god as the creator of the universe.
You did right here:
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Something that is valid is a proof and thereby logical. The simple argument I gave was in direct response to your claim: "All strong positions on god are illogical." which was in error. Truth is not a criteria of logic. Do not confuse the issues.
I said "god" and you gave me an argument for "first cause". They are not equal.
In summary:
You criticize weak atheism but your definition is incorrect.
You criticize strong atheism, but:
If you take it as "god does not exist" there is no logical position, so atheism is not absurd.
If you take it as "a creator does not exist" there are multiple logical positions (your contingency thing, scientific explanation) so atheism is not absurd.
It's in the dictionary ~D Even if you feel it isn't rigorous enough you can't define it how you like. You claim there are only two forms of atheism while leaving out the definition many self proclaimed atheists would say fits them. This is a false way of making your position easier to defend and is therefore a straw man. Your criticism of atheism is invalid because of how you are defining it to meet your own needs.
The dictionary is not where one looks to find the meaning of a concept if accuracy is important. That you are in college and make this mistake surprises me.
As mentioned: the distinction between strong and weak forms of atheism is not my construction. It is a mundane distinction in philosophical discourse. I'm sure if you were to look you will find references a plenty. To charge a basic distinction (that strong and weak forms of atheism exist) is a false position indicates either the entire thrust of a discipline is in error or the one making the charge is deeply confused.
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Actually where are you getting your definition of weak atheism? The definition I find is "absence of belief". I think your definition is incorrect here.
If you found a definition of weak atheism that necessarily implies other forms of atheism as well. You should have also noted strong atheism as the other category. To your question: sometimes weak atheism is defined as absence of belief. This is problematic as it doesn't allow distinctions between itself and agnostics who often take exception. Atheism and agnosticism are not the same. Atheism derived from Greek involves a negative prefix attached to the word for god. It is thus: the negation of god. Agnosticism is the same negative prefix attached to the word for knowledge. It is thus the negation of knowledge (which is used traditionally as knowledge about god). The position I put forward that weak atheism reflects back on the private sentiments of the subject only is the most charitable explanation that still allows agnostics their own position.
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I said "god" and you gave me an argument for "first cause". They are not equal.
First cause does not appear in my argument. I used necessary being. If you wish to argue there is a necessary being other than god do so. If you cannot do so and insist on the distinction then you have created a false dichotomy. This is a fallacy. Within the Western Intellectual Tradition necessary being has been understand as synonymous with god.
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In summary:
You criticize weak atheism but your definition is incorrect.
No, it is not. See above.
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You criticize strong atheism, but:
If you take it as "god does not exist" there is no logical position, so atheism is not absurd.
If there is no logical position then atheism is by definition absurd.
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If you take it as "a creator does not exist" there are multiple logical positions (your contingency thing, scientific explanation) so atheism is not absurd.
Ok. I'll define God as nonexistant. Prove that god exists while accepting my definition. ~:rolleyes:
Sasaki you're demonstrating a certain argumentativeness that is not becoming. If one really took the above as something other than what it is, the answer is obvious: existence only has meaning because of nonexistence (the meaning relies upon a juxtaposition): to posit one necessarily implies the other. Therefore insofar as you accept existence there must be nonexistence. Since you have defined God as this necessary other, you are therefore an implicit theist. Welcome. I don't expect to hear anymore advocacy or self-identification with the other flawed viewpoint.
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I don't see anything convincing in your post sorry. You're just restating what I've already disagreed with.
Your being convinced or not is not my concern. Disagreement alone is not compelling. The position revolves around a logical point that can be dated back over 2,500 years. Logic is objective. If there is a flaw in the logic show it. Thus far you have not done so (quite the opposite as you admitted it was valid). If you wish to argue for a necessary being that is other than God do so, otherwise your not being 'convinced' rests on a false distinction.
As far as distinctions/definitions are concerned: strong and weak atheism is a common distinction within theoretical circles. This is easily verifiable. That you take issue with the division speaks more about yourself than the distinctions since they are reasonable and commonly accepted. To fail to make proper distinction between weak atheism and agnosticism is to fail to apply any rigor to the notions at hand since they are clearly separable (I already explained the basic meaning of the two words themselves). Further, claiming strong atheism is outside of logic or citing non sequiturs does not address the logical tensions inherent in the knowledge claim. Finally, were one to simply accept the uncritical version of atheism you seem fond of, where there is no difference between your view and a hedgehog's: the stance can be simply dismissed (like the hedgehog's) as self separating from critical judgment and is thus irrelevant.
Atheism derived from Greek involves a negative prefix attached to the word for god. It is thus: the negation of god. Agnosticism is the same negative prefix attached to the word for knowledge. It is thus the negation of knowledge (which is used traditionally as knowledge about god).
I would think that there are plenty of agnostic theists; those who believe in God while saying that it cannot be known... as opposed to those who don't believe in God and think that it cannot be known. Those who don't believe in God and are 'agnostic' are apologists:P (really though, especially in the context of this debate and people trying to deny the 'absurd' contents of the label, it implies more respect for theists, trying to lend the idea of validity -- where atheists supposedly add the invalidity -- and their choice to believe in God, in usage). The point that someone prefers it to be used towards themselves is irrelevant, as in lay use, which supposedly justifies one term over the other, they both have more meaning than "I don't know, I don't believe," and agnostic itself doesn't necessarily mean, "I don't know, I don't believe," like atheism.
(Who needs more cowbell, I gave you more rigor!?!~D)
My point, which was apperantly considered too absurd to respond to, that in those notions of non-contingent being, there is nothing that also ties theistic qualities into 'God', as in it should be worshipped, or as somehow being scripture related. And again, praying and worshipping to every concept of deity that I can apply to the non-contingent being would mean spending my entire life just hoping that I would tie in the right qualities of deity, which unless zark's goal is really for me to worship him by trying to worship him, it would be a better use of my time not to bother, as the infinite conceptions would take me much longer to finish a concievable fraction of a percent than my life will give me.
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Save for pantheists, theists do not conflate the creator with the creation. A necessary being is ontically distinct.
I think those theories of universe are served better by saying all that ever was, is, but has existed variously... space-time, motion, matter are due to those basic and identical parts arranging variously, determined only by their nature.
Finally, were one to simply accept the uncritical version of atheism you seem fond of, where there is no difference between your view and a hedgehog's: the stance can be simply dismissed (like the hedgehog's) as self separating from critical judgment and is thus irrelevant.
The article aside from having a screed like quality is philosophically naive. This is the unfortunate condition of far too many scientists.
And, you are a renowned philosopher I suppose, Pindar?
That is peremptorily dismissive of you. Dawkins may only be a scientist, but he has spent many years studying this stuff because philosophical questions about how life arose, or came into being, impinge directly upon his chosen discipline. The arguments he uses are not made up, although he adds his own 'unique' insights, but can be found widely taught by modern philosophers. The only proviso is that D. takes a 'hard' stance on this subject whereas it would be fairer to say that the questions concerning the existence of God and the origins of the universe/life are still mysteries that can ultimately be neither explained nor explained away. However, the rationality of theism is on a par with belief in the tooth fairy. ~;)
Personally I haven't read much of his work on this question because I find his tone and style too strident, but he is a big hitter at this game and you should do better than just dismiss him off-hand.
I'm completely aware now of how you choose to define the two, I've been disagreeing with your choice.
Weak atheism can be seen as separate from agnosticism. If you have never thought at length about god you would be atheist but not agnostic. If you had thought a great deal but not come to a conclusion that he exists or that you can't tell if he exists you would be atheist but not agnostic. It isn't only hedgehogs who are like this as you seem to be trying to say.
When someone says "god does not exist" they are expressing a belief. I do not see why you take issue with this.
I may be being argumentative but you are being obtuse. I asked for a strong logical position on god, you have me one for a creator, thus defining creator as god, which I disagreed with, and are now saying I am defining god as creator :dizzy2:
Arguments for a creator alone have no influence on daily life and so are not interesting. I've tried to steer the discussion back to god for this reason. To repeat:
Take any god that is more than creator you like:
Atheism: He doesn't exist. Not provable.
Christian: He does exist. Not provable.
Agnostic: We can't tell. Not provable.
This isn't an answer to your statement, I'm showing why it is irrelevant. The very fault you ascribe to weak atheism.
ps: What do hedgehogs have to do with anything, really?
I would think that there are plenty of agnostic theists; those who believe in God while saying that it cannot be known...
Maybe. I haven't met any, but it's certainly possible.
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Those who don't believe in God and are 'agnostic' are apologists:P (really though, especially in the context of this debate and people trying to deny the 'absurd' contents of the label, it implies more respect for theists, trying to lend the idea of validity -- where atheists supposedly add the invalidity -- and their choice to believe in God, in usage). The point that someone prefers it to be used towards themselves is irrelevant, as in lay use, which supposedly justifies one term over the other, they both have more meaning than "I don't know, I don't believe," and agnostic itself doesn't necessarily mean, "I don't know, I don't believe," like atheism.
(Who needs more cowbell, I gave you more rigor!?!~D)
An agnostic is one who doesn't claim to know regarding god.
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My point, which was apperantly considered too absurd to respond to, that in those notions of non-contingent being, there is nothing that also ties theistic qualities into 'God', as in it should be worshipped, or as somehow being scripture related.
The simple proof I gave is not concerned with worship or scripture. Such issues are sect specific. (I don't understand the comment about points being too absurd to respond to. If you made this point earlier and I didn't respond then I didn't notice it. It wasn't an intentional slight)
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Originally Posted by Me
Save for pantheists, theists do not conflate the creator with the creation. A necessary being is ontically distinct.
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I think those theories of universe are served better by saying all that ever was, is, but has existed variously... space-time, motion, matter are due to those basic and identical parts arranging variously, determined only by their nature.
By those theories do you mean pantheism?
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How do you mean "self separating"?
Self-separating means the subject identifies themselves by absence of belief or judgment (since making a conclusion would bring in the earlier issues about knowledge claims). The reason for the self separating label is because man as a rational creature is able to make judgments (and does about a whole host of things), but this particular uncritical view opts for identification by the lack of that very quality.
And, you are a renowned philosopher I suppose, Pindar?
I'm actually a fairly renowned speculative poet.
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That is peremptorily dismissive of you.
I don't think so. I read the piece. This comment: "First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself." is something a first year student in a history of philosophy class would put forward. No serious thinker familiar with St. Thomas or more properly Aristotle or the general issue would take such a view. Anyone who can dismiss a view that has literally millennia of thought behind it, was proposed by the founder of logic, held by arguably the greatest mind of the Middle Ages, and also held by the founder of calculus as a few examples is telling.
I'm completely aware now of how you choose to define the two, I've been disagreeing with your choice.
Disagreement is not an argument.
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Weak atheism can be seen as separate from agnosticism. If you have never thought at length about god you would be atheist but not agnostic.
No, one would be ignorant regarding the question.
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If you had thought a great deal but not come to a conclusion that he exists or that you can't tell if he exists you would be atheist but not agnostic.
No, one would be agnostic.
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When someone says "god does not exist" they are expressing a belief. I do not see why you take issue with this.
Quite right! That is exactly my point!
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I asked for a strong logical position on god, you have me one for a creator...
My argument doesn't mention a creator. It refers to necessary being. This has been pointed out several times.
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I may be being argumentative but you are being obtuse.
This comment above and the "talk talk smilely" used for my entire previous post indicate personal attacks that do not serve you well as a moderator or interlocutor. Emotion seems to have taken hold. Best you disengage.
My argument doesn't mention a creator. It refers to necessary being. This has been pointed out several times.
I don't see the difference in this case. A necessary being is just as irrelevant as a creator.
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This comment above and the "talk talk smilely" used for my entire previous post indicate personal attacks that do not serve you well as a moderator or interlocutor. Emotion seems to have taken hold. Best you disengage.
The talk talk smiley is a standard when quoting long posts, though not on these forums. I thought it was cute :sweatdrop:
As for obtuse: I apologize, I looked it up and it means something other than what I thought it meant. I was aiming for "stubborn".
This discussion is far too theoretical for any emotion, I would like a response to the rest of my post following the obtuse comment.
I think we've been spending far too much time defining and neatly arranging words already, myself. I tend to find arguments that mainly concentrate on syntax rather boring, as they tend to feature excessive dosages of nitpicking. :brood:
I think we've been spending far too much time defining and neatly arranging words already, myself. I tend to find arguments that mainly concentrate on syntax rather boring, as they tend to feature excessive dosages of nitpicking. :brood:
Pindar and Sasaki seem to be enjoying it though.
I don't agree with your definition of "nitpicking" :shame:
This comment above doesn't relate to my post(s) you cite both of which are quite straight forward answers to you comments.
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So then what is your problem with atheism?
I don't have a problem with atheism. I simply pointed out the logical tensions inherent in the notion both of which directly relate to atheism as a belief. In its strong form the belief is put forward as a knowledge claim. In its weak form it is a privately held sentiment only. The objection you had fails not only in that it doesn't allow the proper distinction between atheism and agnosticism, but it also makes atheism totally irrelevant as it doesn't even warrant belief standing: like the lack of abstract ideas of a hedgehog.
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I apologize,... I was aiming for "stubborn".
Very good. Why would you be aiming for stubborn. Nothing I've put forward is personal. The arguments stand independently.
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This discussion is far too theoretical for any emotion, I would like a response to the rest of my post following the obtuse comment.
This comment seems tied to what's noted below:
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I don't see the difference in this case. A necessary being is just as irrelevant as a creator.
I'll answer both together.
I don't understand what you are looking for. After the obtuse comment you mention my giving arguments for a creator. I didn't do this. I did give you a simple argument showing why not all "strong arguments for god" are illogical based on contingent being. I also gave you a simple proof when you flippantly said you defined god as non existent. If the focus of your question is about influence in daily life: this is a category mistake. Philosophy is theoretical. It is not concerned with any praxis. Even so, given the billions who have sacrificed and killed over their version or a Creator over centuries this seems historically wrong to boot.
Guys, if I may venture an opinion from an interested reader:
We are veering dangerously near "angels dancing on the head of a pin" territory here.
:smash:
Hello BG,
I hope not. I've tried to keep things really simple. I don't think the position I put forward on atheism is complex. I don't think the simple proof I gave to Sasaki on a necessary being is complicated either.
I do think we've reached the point where we are merely disagreeing about definitions. Oh well, it was fun. :balloon2:
The definitions I put forward are both standard to the subject and correct based on you own admittance that Atheism is a belief. I also explained the ramifications of following the less rigorous hedgehog definition of atheism.
To sum: atheism is distinct from agnosticism. The logical tensions with atheism (both in its strong and weak forms) remain. I also provided a proof for god that answers the charge all strong positions on god are illogical (which itself admits the strong form of atheism is untenable).
And, you are a renowned philosopher I suppose, Pindar?
That is peremptorily dismissive of you. Dawkins may only be a scientist, but he has spent many years studying this stuff because philosophical questions about how life arose, or came into being, impinge directly upon his chosen discipline. The arguments he uses are not made up, although he adds his own 'unique' insights, but can be found widely taught by modern philosophers. The only proviso is that D. takes a 'hard' stance on this subject whereas it would be fairer to say that the questions concerning the existence of God and the origins of the universe/life are still mysteries that can ultimately be neither explained nor explained away. However, the rationality of theism is on a par with belief in the tooth fairy. ~;)
Personally I haven't read much of his work on this question because I find his tone and style too strident, but he is a big hitter at this game and you should do better than just dismiss him off-hand.
:inquisitive:
Pindar has a point on Dawkins...
Hume was much more intelligent and original, not to mention that his writing was tactful and eloquent, as well as persuasive and cogent.
Don't know why atheists quote Dawkins over Dave... :shrug:
Alright, in order to speed this all along a little, I will adopt your terms, and inquire in quality where I think it is needed...
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I would think that there are plenty of agnostic theists; those who believe in God while saying that it cannot be known...
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Maybe. I haven't met any, but it's certainly possible.
Really, you haven't seen people to tend toward using the mysterious quality of religion to justify specific doctrinal belief?
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An agnostic is one who doesn't claim to know regarding god.
Alright, as stated, I'll agree.
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The simple proof I gave is not concerned with worship or scripture. Such issues are sect specific.
I see, so Christianity and Islam are sects of Judaism, or those being sects of vedas? While the general argument for god is in consideration, what makes god and what makes God? The notion of necessary worship is inherent in the abrahamic deity; I'm not sure on the etymology, but to me deity always carries the notion of worshipping it as prescriptive for righteous adherents. Really, all this rambling is getting at: athiesm and agnosticism do not keep their positions to the thing in the proof, but are claims of not accepting religion or deity... if you want my version of atheism to be called the calculus raciocinator, and unassociated with God, I could accept that too. I may be persuaded to some other term, but it seems unlikely.:clown:
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(I don't understand the comment about points being too absurd to respond to. If you made this point earlier and I didn't respond then I didn't notice it. It wasn't an intentional slight)
Indeed, I thought that ignoring somebody was inherently unPindarlike. If it were the case though, it was only meant to compel consideration. I'm always interested to see how my half-baked, ocassionally 3x baked, ideas fair against another's consideration...
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By those theories do you mean pantheism?
Those theories of a physical universe made of a basic part that always has been, but which we perceive in the forms like space-time, matter, and energy has always existed. Relativity predicts this.
Several hypotheses have been put forward about the meaning of The Creation of Adam's highly original composition, many of them taking Michelangelo's well-documented expertise in human anatomy as their starting point. In 1990 a physician named Frank Lynn Meshberger noted in the medical publication the Journal of the American Medical Association that the background figures and shapes portrayed behind the figure of God appeared to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain, including the frontal lobe, optic chiasm, brain stem, pituitary gland, and the major sulci of the cerebrum.
so basically Michelangelo is likely suggesting that even though "God created Man", that the idea of "God" and things like cherubs actually come from the human mind...
Really, you haven't seen people to tend toward using the mysterious quality of religion to justify specific doctrinal belief?
Hi Kanamori,
Yes I have, but I haven't seen it so much as a justification as a final retreat by parishioners when unable to answer a question on some point.
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Originally Posted by Me
The simple proof I gave is not concerned with worship or scripture. Such issues are sect specific.
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I see, so Christianity and Islam are sects of Judaism, or those being sects of vedas?
I was using sect as a division within a religion: Christianity, Islam Judaism, Hinduism are religions. Examples of sects would be Catholicism, Sufism, Hasidism and Vedanta respectively. The notions of worship, liturgy and canonic appeal often vary within different sects of a religion.
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Those theories of a physical universe made of a basic part that always has been, but which we perceive in the forms like space-time, matter, and energy has always existed. Relativity predicts this.
Did you mean pantheism then?
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Really, all this rambling is getting at: athiesm and agnosticism do not keep their positions to the thing in the proof, but are claims of not accepting religion or deity...
I put this quote last as you noted this was your point as it were: I don't understand how your post engages what I have been posting on. If you were aiming to respond to my stuff (I'm not sure you were), what is the disagreement or point of contention?
a final retreat by parishioners when unable to answer a question on some point.
My point is that it varies according to religions, but not just based on sect.
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Did you mean pantheism then?
I don't know of scientists that are planning to have people worship our 'building blocks'.
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I put this quote last as you noted this was your point as it were: I don't understand how your post engages what I have been posting on. If you were aiming to respond to my stuff (I'm not sure you were), what is the disagreement or point of contention?
Also, that God is a misleading word for the non-contingent being. Nothing religious or deistic in nature is included in it. Other than that, yeah, it was worthless observation.
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Self-separating means the subject identifies themselves by absence of belief or judgment (since making a conclusion would bring in the earlier issues about knowledge claims). The reason for the self separating label is because man as a rational creature is able to make judgments (and does about a whole host of things), but this particular uncritical view opts for identification by the lack of that very quality.
The judgment is that I shouldn't spend my time in worship, believing, or assuming god, because it would be spending time on a total uncertainty and no evidence to show that I should. It entails judgment, therefore has meaning.
My point is that it varies according to religions, but not just based on sect.
I don't know what the pronoun refers to, but if the it refers to your earlier stated "specific doctrinal belief" that is sect specific not simply religion bound.
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I don't know of scientists that are planning to have people worship our 'building blocks'.
This comment doesn't fit with the train of thought leading up to it. It doesn't connect to pantheism or the ontic distinction between necessary and contingent being.
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Also, that God is a misleading word for the non-contingent being.
If non-contingent being means necessary being then the Western Intellectual Tradition disagrees with you.
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Originally Posted by Me
Self-separating means the subject identifies themselves by absence of belief or judgment (since making a conclusion would bring in the earlier issues about knowledge claims). The reason for the self separating label is because man as a rational creature is able to make judgments (and does about a whole host of things), but this particular uncritical view opts for identification by the lack of that very quality.
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The judgment is that I shouldn't spend my time in worship, believing, or assuming god, because it would be spending time on a total uncertainty and no evidence to show that I should. It entails judgment, therefore has meaning.
This doesn't relate to my usage of self separating.
ok, i've been away doing some thinking i hadn't time for earlier and now i'll step into the wayback machine for a few..
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Originally Posted by Pindar
one, the universe itself is a concept referring to stuff both here and out there. It is not itself a concrete thing, but a label for a collection of things: planets, stars, Deep Space 9 etc. It therefore runs into the fallacy of reification. Two, to admit the universe is necessary being means it cannot thereby be contingent being as the two are mutually exclusive. This runs into the problem that a host of things that compose the universe seem quite contingent: people for example (maybe not Captain Sisko however).
one: why is the universe not a "concrete thing"? what is an example of a concrete thing?
two: what exactly is the problem with a necessary entity being comprised of contingent entities? does the contingent property of the pieces of the universe necessarily extend to the whole universe?
can you, Pindar (or anyone else), point me to some modern philosophy involving criticisms/apologetics of the first cause argument (the sort one would find in a suburban public library)? because i'm thinking about a few things..
can there exist a universe where nothing is necessary except that any one contingent entity exists? that is, nothing in the universe is necessary, but any possible universe would contain at least one contingent being?
as anyone with a science background knows, the matter-energy conservation is an observed law of the universe. is it fair then to consider matter-energy contingent? just because we think we can imagine a "universe" without matter-energy, does that mean such a thing is actually possible? obvisouly, what i'm wondering is could matter-energy be the uncaused necessary being?
as per Banquo's Ghost's earlier observation, what is the modern take on causality (with respect to the first cause argument) in light of quantum indeterminacy?
it must be said at this point, while i think DS9 was indeed the best star trek series in terms of the quality of the whole product, i enjoyed TNG more.
The universe is not a concrete thing because its an abstract concept.
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what is an example of a concrete thing?
A hedgehog.
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two: what exactly is the problem with a necessary entity being comprised of contingent entities?
Because contingent and necessary are mutually exclusive.
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does the contingent property of the pieces of the universe necessarily extend to the whole universe?
This depends on how one defines universe. As far as ontic standing of the 'pieces' are concerned: yes.
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[*]can there exist a universe where nothing is necessary except that any one contingent entity exists? that is, nothing in the universe is necessary, but any possible universe would contain at least one contingent being?
No.
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[*]as anyone with a science background knows, the matter-energy conservation is an observed law of the universe. is it fair then to consider matter-energy contingent?
Materiality is the composition of being: it is not being itself. Recall, Aristotle was a thorough going materialist.
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[*]as per Banquo's Ghost's earlier observation, what is the modern take on causality (with respect to the first cause argument) in light of quantum indeterminacy?[/LIST]
Indeterminacy does not mean there is no cause, but rather the causal tie is not known/determinable.
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it must be said at this point, while i think DS9 was indeed the best star trek series in terms of the quality of the whole product, i enjoyed TNG more.
I don't know what the pronoun refers to, but if the it refers to your earlier stated "specific doctrinal belief" that is sect specific not simply religion bound.
I was wrong, there was no disagreement.
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This comment doesn't fit with the train of thought leading up to it. It doesn't connect to pantheism or the ontic distinction between necessary and contingent being.
My only point was that there are no non-contingent beings in those theories of universe, 'we' are only the various results of those interacting non-contingent beings. No thing is not of them.
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If non-contingent being means necessary being then the Western Intellectual Tradition disagrees with you.
Well of course, it came up w/ the usage. Those looking to justify their beliefs found the proof and called the necessary being 'God' overlooking that the idea of 'God' entails many more qualities than are necessarily in the necessary being. There is nothing to say besides reiterating it, because you haven't given an argument against it...
My only point was that there are no non-contingent beings in those theories of universe, 'we' are only the various results of those interacting non-contingent beings. No thing is without them.
I'm not sure I understand your point. If "those theories" is referring to your earlier comment on scientists (which itself didn't relate to the discussion) then you are committing a category mistake. Science is bound by inductive logic and concerned with the physical arena, not ontology.
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Well of course, it came up w/ the usage. Those looking to justify their beliefs found the proof and called the necessary being 'God' overlooking that the idea of 'God' entails many more qualities than are necessarily in the necessary being.
The idea God entails necessary being is not simply a devotional position. Moreover, that the notion God entails more than necessary being does not negate that aspect of God that can be so identified.
The universe is not a concrete thing because its an abstract concept.
how is the universe more of an abstract concept than a hedgehog?
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Because contingent and necessary are mutually exclusive.
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This depends on how one defines universe. As far as ontic standing of the 'pieces' are concerned: yes.
how does mutual exclusivity matter? a thing cannot be both an atom and a hedgehog, because hedgehogs are composed of atoms, right? the definition of one excludes the possibility that either can be the other. if we have some yet-to-be-determined object in our hands, we can say with certainty that it is not both a hedgehog and an atom.
yet, there is no problem with saying that all hedgehogs are composed entirely of atoms. by extension, why should a necessary universe not be composed entirely of contingent things? explain how mutual exclusivity relates in the case of universes, but not hedgehogs.
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No.
tldr.
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Materiality is the form of being: it is not being itself. Recall, Aristotle was a thorough going materialist.
but then objects are just contingent in form, not substance. you can say "object X could be otherwise, or not be at all", but in this universe, under conservation, that means object X's matter could be arranged differently, or could be transformed entirely into energy. so the existence of matter/energy is not contingent, just its form.
in order to break conservation, and thus demonstrate that matter/energy is contingent, you have to suppose that a universe can exist without any matter or energy. on its face, this seems absurd, but i'll have to think about it more.
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Indeterminacy does not mean there is no cause, but rather the causal tie is not known/determinable.
i'll not argue this for the time being. but if a "causal tie" is not determinable, that does beg a question.
How do you arrive at conclusion that a hedgehog is not an abstract thing, but the universe are? Im inquiring because a hedgehog could as well as the universe be an abstract thing to the mind. Where is the exact difference? That you can observe the hedgehog with the senses? I think that has been showed throughly not to fulfill much. (Eg. Hume et. al.)
ps. interresting discussion, keep it up and dont let my comment derail you
I don't think so. I read the piece. This comment: "First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself." is something a first year student in a history of philosophy class would put forward. No serious thinker familiar with St. Thomas or more properly Aristotle or the general issue would take such a view. Anyone who can dismiss a view that has literally millennia of thought behind it, was proposed by the founder of logic, held by arguably the greatest mind of the Middle Ages, and also held by the founder of calculus as a few examples is telling.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
No serious thinker would validate an argument based on the pedigree of its proponents nor would they pass it based on merits of age. Bloodlines and pensions do not a valid argument make. The argument must stand on its own merits not on its debators.
The argument must stand on its own merits not on its debators.
Quite the contrary. If you evaluate an argument soley on its philosophical value, you'll hardly ever reach any proper results. Instead, you need to take a historical approach and place the argument into a context. That means also trying to figure out what a thinker actually meant, not what he wrote. Quite a difficult excersice. Since Im studying History of Ideas (opposed to philosophy) I can recommend that you read Skinner and Foucault on this matter.
Generally that is correct that one needs as a listener to understand the cultural context of the speaker. However argument X should not have any more or less value based on the speaker. A discussion about the Universe should not be validated by who states their claim nor the age of that claim, it should be the argument itself that makes it 'true' or not, God actually showing up as the speaker in the debate would be the obvious exception to this idea.
Now that is just the first order approximation. Just like the validity of search engines, once you find one that works and understand its nuances and deeper properties you can adjust to its quirks. The same applies to the debaters, once you know who is debating that will generally help you find a valid argument easier then just a random grab-bag of contenders. So with the selection of great thinkers, by selecting from their arguments it has an much higher chance of finding a solution.
However in the end of the day the argument itself, understood within its milieu of cultural baggage, must stand on its own merits apart from its parent and their parents previous progeny of arguments.
Generally that is correct that one needs as a listener to understand the cultural context of the speaker. However argument X should not have any more or less value based on the speaker. A discussion about the Universe should not be validated by who states their claim nor the age of that claim, it should be the argument itself that makes it 'true' or not, God actually showing up as the speaker in the debate would be the obvious exception to this idea.
Now that is just the first order approximation. Just like the validity of search engines, once you find one that works and understand its nuances and deeper properties you can adjust to its quirks. The same applies to the debaters, once you know who is debating that will generally help you find a valid argument easier then just a random grab-bag of contenders.
However in the end of the day the argument itself, understood within its milieu of cultural baggage, must stand on its own merits apart from its parent and their parents previous progeny of arguments.
This supposes the thesis that there indeed is such a thing as the 'objective' or 'universal' argument. I do not believe there is such a thing detached, as you say, from the milieu of cultural baggage. The todays debate about God is quite different from that of the middle ages or of antiquity.
Historicism needs taken into account and also the princple of charity (opposite of the straw man).
This that I argue of course supposes that we want to understand and further knowledge. A philosophical discourse is all well and good for the excercise of brainpower, however, it fails where historicism succeeds.
