A Question for Anyone who Believes in the Judeo-Christian God

i'm not precisely sure why i'm supposed to expect anyone, including a god, to conform to what i expect them to be. i don't expect this of my husband or children, why should i expect it of anyone else?

 

I'm glad you see the hypocrisy.
Because the purpose of the story of the Garden of Eden was to remind the ancient Mesopotamians, such as the Hebrews, of the Godly heights that they fell from, and the pathetic hypocritical delusions of their now Civilized State of Knowledge.

 

Christians create this illusion, presuppose it as fact and offer ZERO evidence of it. Instead they say to the doubter: PROVE IT DOESN'T EXIST.

How about coming up with something that is NOT a logical fallacy for a comeback.

C'mon..."prove there is no God"...shit, why don't you PROVE that there's not an invisible, intangible fairy-troll named Larry shovelling shit out of your asshole whenever you take a dump? Why? Because there's no reason to believe that in the first place!

Look, I'll make it easy for you. I don't even need CONCRETE evidence. Just give me more reason to believe than not to.

 

Judeo-Christians create this fallen illusion of GOD because they are faithless, fearfull seekers of knowledge.

Only the fearless embace the eternal moment.

 

I was going to write up a response to this paragraph, but I think it more appropriately belongs after your second point. So, we'll get to it later.

While I haven't explicitly defined "faith," I have given a more precise explanation than "not grounded in reason." I have said at least twice now that faith is a choice, whereas the principles of common sense cannot be held to be false. This is really the crux of the argument. It's simply incoherent to believe that the senses are always inaccurate (the argument for which I have already given), whereas one can consistently maintain that there is no God.

This is what I find strange. You're very eager to point out that the only possible arguments that justify deduction, induction, the accuracy of the sense, etc. are circular, but you readily adopt circular reasoning concerning God and epistemology (so far). Why is it that I am to be held to a higher standard than you are?

And I maintain that they are circular from any world view. Second, I would very much like a demonstration how you argue for the validity of deduction or even the general reliability of sense-data in a non-circular way.

It's simply an argument to show that not all circular reasoning is viciously so, and that, at times, it is even indispensible.

 

Yeah, let's go nowhere!

 

I hope God does.

 

You mentioned before that a leap of faith is synonymous with a bad inference, a “departure from rationality,” as you called it. You also said that faith is a “conscious choice.” From this I infer that faith is any conscious choice that is a departure from rationality. Here is where our conflict arises. I simply believe that faith, at least in the first since, is any belief which is itself not based in rationality--a non sequitur shall we say--regardless of whether that choice is conscious or not. However, I don’t think that this is a problem since I think I can show that you have faith even given your definition.

In one post, you give an argument for the reliability of the senses based on “common sense” principles, and at one point conclude that if we do not except the senses as reliable, “then no knowledge is possible.” I think there are some problems here, two of which I'll mention. First, the argument does not give any reason why we should expect that the senses are reliable (but it does beg the question by assuming them to be so), it only gives us reason why we are justified in operating as if they were. It does not answer the question “are the senses reliable?” In fact, if the senses are not reliable, and all knowledge has its basis in sensation, then the argument may be false. Second, suppose one knows this bit of information and holds to your argument. When she is faced with the question “are the senses reliable,” she has three conscious choices in the matter. She can either (1) choice to believe that the senses are reliable (2) choose to believe the senses are not reliable or (3) choose become skeptical on the matter. In the case of (1)&(2), neither conclusion follows. That is, it doesn’t follow from the circular manner in which the reliability of the senses are affirmed that the senses are not reliable. Is also doesn’t follow that they are reliable. The only consistent choice, then, would be for her to become skeptical on the matter. But if she holds to your argument, then knowledge only becomes possible through the reliability of the senses, so for her to be skeptical in the case of the reliability of the senses means she must be skeptical of all knowledge. She must claim that she can know nothing, or at least know nothing for sure. But this is, of course, self-defeating. Now, I think that in the case of all three of these choices, they are all both (1) a conscious choice, and (2) a departure from rationality, which classifies all of them as leaps of faith.

“But” I can hear you say, “you’re missing the point. As I’ve already said, ‘I cannot help but believe my senses,’ and ‘I may be able to doubt my senses as an intellectual exercise, but in real life it's just in our nature to accept the reliability of our senses.’ There are no other options in the matter. One cannot choose to not believe in the reliability of the senses; this was the point of the whole argument. This is why it is reasonable to believe in the senses, you can’t believe otherwise.”

I think the problem here is that one can deny that the senses are reliable while at the same time continuing to operate as if they weren’t. In fact this was done by Gordon Clark and, other occasionlist such as Vincent Cheung (not that I endorse either of their philosophies). One can also affirm (and more consistently I might add) that he cannot know whether the senses are reliable or not while continuing to operate as if they were. One may have no choice but to operate as if the senses are reliable, but that doesn’t stop one from believing otherwise.

But you’re simply begging the question since if God does exist and He sustains all things, including the faculties of reason and thought, then one cannot consistently maintain that there is no God. And second, as I’ve think I pointed out above, your argument doesn’t answer the question “are the senses reliable.” It only states that one must first presuppose that they are before knowledge is possible. But the something can be said of God.

Why do you consistently think that I do not hold myself to the same standards? I’ve said several times now that my point is to show how everybody including the atheist uses faith right? The point of me showing an argument to be circular is to show that there is no rational basis to hold to that argument, and that if one choices to do so anyway, he does so on faith. And as I’ve said before, (in the quote you were responding to, even) I don’t deny that I have faith. Faith isn’t a problem for me, it is a problem for you. Also, I'm not the one who pointed out the circularity of deduction and induction, you were.

Then you’re talking to the wrong person. As I said before, I think that everybody ultimately argues for their position in a circular fashsion. Try talking to a Biblical rationalist like Vincent Cheung. Good Luck!

 

Look Libertine, how do you expect me or any other Christian to respond to you if when someone does respond, you completely ignore them? I did explain (twice I believe) why I expect for you to give evidence for your position. I also explained why I believe it isn't a fallacy to expect the atheist to give evidence for his position. But you never answered that. Instead, you go on as if I never said anything at all. For example you state "Christians create this illusion, presuppose it as fact and offer ZERO evidence of it," and "How about coming up with something that is NOT a logical fallacy for a comeback." But I've already challenged you on both of these points. I even answered the “logical fallacy” objection before you ever even raised it. The honest thing to do would be to acknowledge this fact, and acknowledge that you disagree. And possibly even offer an argument against what I've said. If you can't, however, fine; that doesn't mean I'm right or that you don‘t have the right to disagree, it only means that you can’t offer an argument against what I've said. And besides all that, it's not as if I completely dumped the burden of proof off on you (as you attempted to do to me, ironically enough); I think I made it clear that it is a mutual thing, that all need to argue for their position.

Also I did give a reason why you should believe in God, that presupposing Him is the precondition for intelligibility. You never responded to this, probably because it wasn't the evidence you were looking for, but it's a reason nonetheless. It's not like I'm a rude egotistical jerk; if you’d questioned me further on the matter, it’s not like I would’ve said, "Look you stupid atheist, you are presupposing God in your very denial of Him. Either bow the knee or get out my sight!" than go on to quote Psalm 14:1. But the fact that you haven’t questioned further leads me to believe that you don’t take what I have to say seriously. If you aren’t gonna take the Christian seriously, than don’t ask questions and pretend you will take them seriously just so you go back and say “I listened to the what the Christian has to offer, and concluded that he has nothing to offer.” But of course if you’d been serious in your enquiry and had actually listened, you would have learned that the Christian has much to offer. Anyway, let me end by saying this: If you want to be serious, then let’s be serious. Let’s talk about atheism, let’s talk about theism, let’s talk about God, let’s talk about the resurrection and Christ’s work of redemption on the cross for yours and my sins. However if you don’t want to be serious, than don’t waste the time of me of any other Christian.

 

Rather than responding point by point, I have decided that it would probably be more effective to write in essay form, so that I can give better emphasis to key points.

We have strayed very far away from the topic of this thread, but it still seems like a good idea to keep this thing going, where ever it's leading. The focus of the thread now, I think you'll agree, is epistemology, more specifically the problem of skepticism. Obviously, neither you nor I are skeptics. However, you have chosen to employ skeptical reasoning to counter my positive claims. I can only guess how you plan to get yourself out of the skeptical hole that you yourself have dug.

There are two ways of approaching the basic questions of epistemology. The first and most famous way is to reason "from the top down," to extrapolate further truths from a set of obviously or trivially true axioms. Descartes is probably the most famous philosopher to use this method. The other way is to reason "from the bottom up," to take simple facts about the world, not abstract axioms, and build knowledge from there. I'll use Reid to represent this position because I can't think of anyone better at the moment. There are two, related problems with the former view. The frist is that there really are no obviously true propositions, by which I mean that, in principle, any fact can be doubted. "x or not-x" is truth-functionally true in sentential logic, but if I were to doubt it, even hypothetically, no logician can provide a proof of "x or not-x" that is not circular. The same goes for Descartes' conclusion, "I am; I exist," or for the popular example, "All bachelors are unmarried." Of course, it is true that either x or not-x, that I do, in fact, exist, and that no bachelor is married. But that doesn't change the fact that any person can doubt them, or at least say that they do. No logician could tell me why "x or not-x" is truth-functionally true without an appeal to bijection, which would be circular. The second problem is that, even if there were propositions that were true a priori, there would still be know way to figure out exactly which truths are a priori and which are not. Which sentences make the list and which don't? Most philosophers would be willing to write truth-functionally true propositions into the list. But it's another matter entirely to decide which statements are semantically true, true by definition. The reason for this is the "indeterminacy of translation," which I'm not going to get into here but gladly will if you like.

When reasoning from the bottom up, we are not concerned with intuitionistic truths or first principles. We don't even have to regard epistemology as first philosophy. Our thinking is more aligned with the way scientists think rather than the way philosophers think. The most obvious truths are the ones that we see every day, not facts arrived at through speculation. These facts can, of course, be doubted, like all others. But knowledge doesn't require certainty or a sure footing. Something isn't reasonable because it is true beyond all doubt, that would be far too strong a claim that no fact would ever meet. It is reasonable to think what is most likely true. Problems such as that of the skeptic are the last things to be considered, not the first.

Keeping in mind the the two strategies mentioned in the last paragraph, which is more likely, the accuracy of my sense or the existence of God? This is not a false dichotomy; I know very well that both could be true. I only mean to show you how, using a rather naturalistic method, we can arrive coherently at the conclusion that my senses are accurate without needing to posit a God or appealing to faith.

Forget the latter part of the question. Is it likely that my senses are accurate?

If my senses are not accurate, then I can know nothing. So, it is pragmatic to trust in my senses. Good inferences tend to be pragmatic, in that they pay-out in some way in everyday life.

If my senses are not accurate, then it's just a plain miracle that I have lived as long as I have. What I thought was nourishing food and thirst-quenshing were not. I wouldn't go on living for very much longer if I were to decide to cross the street with my eyes closed from now on.

If what I perceive is not actually the case, then what is? Presumably, there is an entire world that I do not have access to. But there is no reason to assume the existence of a world I cannot access. So, it is only parsimonious to believe my senses, and parsimony is a sign of good reasoning.

None of these arguments are beyond all doubt, but no such arguments are possible. However, I have shown that it is reasonable to believe that the senses are accurate without making a leap of faith, since a leap of faith would be to infer the conclusion that is most likely not the case, to be unreasonable dispite the evidence.

 

Common Sense,

I hope you get more takers for your very pragmatic (and I think, correct) post than I've gotten for any of mine. Seems that all anyone wants are knock-down objections (which I define as denying the truth of a conclusion). It upsets me that so many philosophy instructors (and students) spend weeks talking about Descartes and the Moderns, but can't even pronounce C S Peirce's name correctly and think that all John Dewey ever did was give young people a license to be classroom terrors.

Good luck.

 

First, common sense, I would like to thank you for the time you took for your well thought out reply. I said before that I really didn’t have all that much time, and the amount of time it’s taken me to post this response should be some evidence of this. Anyway, I have enjoyed our discussion, but unfortunately this will my last reply here, which is unfortunate since there is far more that needs to be said here for both our positions. But let me move to my response:

I think that you rightly point out that I reduced your position to skepticism, or at least showed that I believe skepticism is a consequence of your position. And I think if you followed my posts closely (and if I have presented my case clearly, which I admit isn’t always my best attribute) then you should have realized that I actually reduced all positions to skepticism since I affirmed that all positions are built on a set of axioms (or I guess I call them “presuppositions”) which are themselves either never affirmed, or are affirmed ultimately in a circular fashion. So how does one get himself out of this mess I created? The answer should have been apparent. Faith is how one gets out of this whole mess, and this has actually been my whole point from the get-go. One has faith in his presumptions, and to deny this is to fall into skepticism. So the question is how do you get out of the mess I dug. If you deny that you have faith, then I believe skepticism is the only answer. But skepticism, it turns out, is self-referential and therefore defeats itself causing it to become just as much of a “faith” position as the others. So the only alternative to faith is an incoherent one. And I believe that if you are consistent with your own argument for the reliability of the senses, then you should accept this one: if one has faith, then knowledge becomes possible, if one denies faith, then no knowledge is possible--for to deny faith is incoherent. So how does this work in practice? I believe Parmenides is credited with saying something like, “from nothing, comes nothings,” and even though he meant this in a metaphysical sense, I think it still applies here. From no knowledge comes no knowledge. That is to say, if one doesn’t presuppose something to begin with, than he can obtain no knowledge at all. Augustine once said, “I believe that I may understand.”

But I want to move to your classification of the two approaches to epistemology. The first strategy you call the, “from the top down” approach to epistemology, and say that it is a system in which one infers “further truths from a set of obviously or trivially true axioms.” Desecrates’ rationalistic system is given as an example. You then move to the problems of this school of thought. The first problem you mention is that there are no obviously true propositions; that any proposition can be doubted. And to this I say, you’re probably right. The second objection is that there is no way to figure out which truths are a prior and what not. And to this I agree. I think Quine was right. Like I said a few posts back, I don’t buy the whole analytic/synthetic classification of propositions. To do so, I think, would be devastating to the infallibility of the Bible among other things.

The second approach you mention is the pragmatic “from the bottom up,” approach to epistemology. I find problems with this approach because I cannot see how this position offers any meaningful distinction from the “from the top down” approach, and I actually think that this position is really a “from the top down” approach in disguise. And as such, I believe that it suffers from the same “problem” and cannot get off the ground without first presupposing and placing faith in a set of presuppositions from which the entire worldview is built. For example, you still must first presuppose the reliability of the senses before you can draw any inference about the senses. I anticipate that you’ll disagree here since it appears from your last post that you imply that any inference about sensation comes afterward through observation. But I don’t think that this can be the case, however. Let’s suppose that a person really were agnostic about the reliability of the senses. What inference could she make? If she were only agnostic about, say, the existence of gremlins, then we could say that she is waiting for evidence to confirm or deny their existence. But it is an entirely different matter with the senses, for if all knowledge comes by way of sensation, then from no amount of evidence could she infer the reliability of the senses unless she were to first presuppose them to be reliable (or if the presupposition were at least more basic in her “network” of beliefs), in which case she could then rely on the evidence produced by them. Set aside from that, from where does she get this rule or law of inference? She must first know that she can make an inference before she can infer anything from sensation, but she must also first make an inference from sensation before she can know anything at all, including this rule or law of inference. Even if we ignore these two problems, and we suppose that she has in her mind this law or rule of inference, by what non-faith-based process does she infer that this rule or law applies to the external world that she perceives? But even if we forgo this problem as well, we still have the problem of perception itself. How does she infer from looking at a kite flying in the sky that she is looking at a kite flying in the sky? That is, why does she see two objects--the sky and the kite--and not one? How or why does she perceive the kite and sky or an apple and a table, as separate? Why does she not perceive a huge glob of colors? Perhaps you could appeal to Kant here, in which case we would be getting somewhere.

How can one get pass these problems? How do they forgo all these gaps? I believe they must leap these gaps using presuppositions. Presuppositions which are affirmed only by faith. Why is it that we are all programmed, if you will, with these natural presuppositions which allow us to intuitively ‘bypass’ these problems? As I sure you can smell, I see God in all this. I see a design, a purpose. Anyway, although I see God as central importance here, I don’t think that He is our current discussion right now (at least not directly), which is currently revolving around faith and it’s relation to knowledge.

You see, I think that presuppositions are unavoidable even in your pragmatism. You can claim that the system operates in reverse by inferring a system that works from what is available, but as shown above, even this method requires one to hold to principles which are themselves universal and held with certainty. Otherwise I believe your brand of pragmatism could not stand. The point is that this system relies on invariant universal principles which if not there, the system would collapse.

Also, in answering the question, “Is it likely that my senses are accurate,” you say, “If my senses are not accurate, then I can know nothing.” But is this an adequate answer to the question? No doubt this is a pragmatic or “useful” answer, but is it adequate? I believe that it isn’t for a few reasons. First, let us suppose that the same person from above, is then faced with the question ,“Is it likely that my senses are accurate?” What choices has she in the matter? She could answer “no,” or “I can’t know” in which case she would become skeptical. But what if she answers, “Yes because if they are not then knowledge is not possible. I have knowledge, therefore it is likely that the senses are reliable”? I can see at least five problems with this answer. First, the answer simply begs the question. Second, it is not the only option. Perhaps she will reason that since she cannot know if the senses are reliable on the basis of the sensation, it is more likely that sensation isn’t the only source of knowledge. Maybe she’ll then go on posit some other source for, or in addition to, knowledge gained through sensation. Perhaps she will conclude that these rules or laws of inference come to her by intuition. Third, how does the word “likely” come into play here, i.e., how does it draw a meaningful distinction on the matter given her view of things? That is, given the circular fashion in which the senses are affirmed, how could it be more “likely” to believe one way or the other? She would need to first begin with the reliably of sensation, then define some rule of probability based in sensation , then affirm by this law (which inherently assumes the reliability of the senses) that it is more “likely” that the senses are accurate? But the use of the word “likely” here assumes some standard which exist outside the circle (by circle I mean the circularity of affirming the senses with the senses) by which the circle is judged. But if the circle is, itself, more basic then the standard, and if the standard itself depends on the circle, then it is nonsense to speak of the conclusion being more “likely.” Fourth, again this appears to be a “from the top down” approach. When she labels one conclusion as “likely” she would mean “likely” true. But this would assume that she knew what “true” is. Or at least that she knew what to look for when looking for what is true. But if a “from a the bottom up” approach is supposed to be a position in which one infers her system from what is observed (as opposed to starting with presuppositions), one would need a working understanding of what she is looking for before she ever began. But this would be what you call a “from the top down” approach, since she would first need to define these principles (that truth is what “works,”--what has “cash value”-- for example) before she could ever began looking for what is likely true. And fifth, the use of the word “likely” implies that one proposition can be closer to or further from the truth than another. But this implies that there exist some standard by which each proposition is judged. Now if this be the case, then the knowledge she would have of one proposition being “likely” would be based on the certainty of this standard. So if this knowledge is based in certainty, how is be possible to gain knowledge of this using a purely “from the bottom up” approach?

Anyway, I think that I’ve shown that even your “from the bottom up,” approach to epistemology relies on presuppositions. You can’t start from the “bottom” without presupposing a foundation to begin with, in which case you’re really starting from the “top.” The next question is if these presuppositions are synonymous with “faith.” I’ve noticed that, unless I’ve messed it before, you’ve added an additional proposition to your “implicit” definition of faith. At the end of your post you say, “…since a leap of faith would be to infer the conclusion that is most likely not the case, to be unreasonable despite the evidence” So faith is now an inference made which is a conscious departure from rationality, and is most likely false…or something like that. I will maintain that this is an incoherent definition given the word “likely” in conjunction with your world view. In order to know what is more likely, your knowledge must be based in certainty. For this reason, I will ignore your recent addition, and maintain that even on your view of faith you have faith.


Until next time,
God Bless!

 

A Christian responder: that's just the way it is - and as is, it works for me.

 

I think Jatom's position comes down to this:

(i) All philosophical systems rest on a set of axioms, which are true a priori.
(ii) A priori truths are tautologous and non-empirical. So, all a priori truths, even if they are true, are question-begging and are therefore left open to skeptical doubt.
(iii) So, any proponent of a philosophical system must either (a) be a skeptic or (b) rely on faith on to "justify" his axioms.

It's some choice, isn't it, between rational doubt and irrational belief? And we all like to think, of course, that we know something. In this way, Jatom hopes that we will choose (b) over (a), leaving the door open for God.

But it is a false dichotomy. There is another option that Jatom has not considered, not because he's being "sneaky," but, I think, because of the distinctively rationalist frame of mind. Part of the problem lies in the meaning of the word "rational" when compared to the word "reasonable." In every-day speech, they are synonyms. In philosophy, a distinction can be drawn. Let's use the word "rational" to describe, loosely, the general way of doing philosophy for the continental rationalist philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and the rest of the crew. This is the way of doing philosophy that Jatom illudes to in (i), axiomatic and a priori. But look, a proposition doesn't have to be rational, that is a priori, to be reasonable. To pick the most likely to be true of two alternatives is to be reasonable.

Let's use Newton's three laws of motion as an example. We'll call them L1, L2, and L3. If they are all true, then the conjunction [(L1 & L2) & L3] is true (but clearly not a priori). Now let's introduce L4, which states, "God exists." I'm a little weary to use this as an example because it's the topic of this thread, but I'm only using it because it has no empirical consequences whatsoever. "There exists an invisible, intangible man" would be another fine example, but let's go with the first anyway. If L4 is true, then the conjunction [(L1 & L2) & (L3 & L4)] is true. Both of our conjunctions are logically indeterminate (i.e. not true a priori) and empirically underdetermined (i.e. empirical evidence confirms both theories equally. How could it not when L4 has no empirical consequences?) But clearly the first conjunction is the better theory, altough clearly not for any logical or empirical reasons. So, there must be some criteria for reasonable theory-choice that is neither strictly empirical nor strictly logical. Since we will all agree that it is reasonable, we are not refering to faith.