Why?

[barmar]

That's where science comes in. With science, you CAN sometimes make simplistic statements to summarize a subject that is an area of study about which tomes have been written. My favourite example of this is astrology. It has been shown scientifically that it is nonsense. That doesn't stop people from practising it, and it doesn't stop others to use these services. And yet others still write books about it.

 

And why not, if it makes people happy. Everyone is entitled to spend their money badly. That's freedom for you. I prefer to play some game with cards known to most to be popular with seniors and spend money on that. Others may find that silly.

The difference is that believers in astrology don't generally try to impose their beliefs on others, or make public policy based on these beliefs. There's no one pushing to get astrology added to school curricula. Professing a disbelief in astrology is not likely to affect a politician's ability to get elected (on the contrary -- if a politician announced that he makes his decisions by consulting star charts, I hope he be laughed out the election).

 

But it's likely to be political suicide to declare yourself an atheist. I'll bet there are more openly gay legislators than openly atheist/agnostic ones.

[Winstonm]

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith had an equal share in the responsibility for the actions taken by the extreme believers of that same faith because they were unwilling or unable to castigate the belief system itself, and thus could only argue against the actions - which in turn was nothing more than an argument of opinion about which interpretation of the belief was right.

 

I sense some of that in the current creationism-in-schools attack. If memory serves, the literal creationists are a pretty small minority of all believers, yet they are the group pushing the hardest for creationism in schools - yet other believers cannot castigate them for irrational beliefs, but only about theological differences in interpretation, that is, about belief itself.

 

In the area of education, I have to think Harris was right, that in those instances where creationism has been voted into schools by either state action or city action, the fault lies not with the extremist minority but with the silent moderate majority, and ultimately in the lap of the irrational belief itself.

[luke warm]

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith ~~~

what exactly is an "irrational faith?"

[phil_20686]

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith had an equal share in the responsibility for the actions taken by the extreme believers of that same faith because they were unwilling or unable to castigate the belief system itself, and thus could only argue against the actions - which in turn was nothing more than an argument of opinion about which interpretation of the belief was right.

 

Sam Harris' argument seems deeply flawed. Ultimately we are only responsible for our own actions, and of course we have a certain responsibility to challenge erroneous views, but ultimately individual people can only do so much, and your chances of actually changing someone's mind is pretty small. This kind of argument would hold all busy housewives responsible for McCarthyism purely because they were too busy to be politically active. Morover, in the scale of things, YE creationism is not a particularly extreme or destructive beleif. As a Christian it is way down my list of priorities compared to supporting pro-life causes. Or helping end poverty.

 

Also, in the case of YE creationism, its not true. Both the Catholic and Lutheran churches have challenged Evangelical Christians on biblical literalism and various pieces of bad theology for literally centuries. Infact, the first argument over whether to interpret the biblal literally was between Eusibus and Origen in the 2nd century, and by the first council of nicea the Allegorical interpretation had "won" and strict biblical literalism declared a heresy. Indeed, even "literalists" are not completely literal, they do not normally beleive that

1) The earth is flat, and supported on 4 pillars. (Psalms 93 and 96)

2) Sea Monsters guard the edge of the World. (Psalm 104, Job)

 

I could go on, but there is no point. Indeed, for nearly 17 centuries the position of all the major Christian churches (although for most of that there was really only one) was summed up as "The bible contains within it all the information necessary for the salvation of souls, but its inerrancy should not be considered to spread beyond these matters."

[phil_20686]

This is a conflict that will never go away, because, as I pointed out before, Religion really matters. It matters what assumptions you make about what humans are, what will make them happy, what our purpose is. It matters when you talk about a justice system, about education, and about foreign policy. It matters whenever you talk about social policy. There is a significant number of people on this forum who seem to think that its "obvious" that there is no God, and that we are purely material creatures. I would argue that not only is it far from obvious, it conflicts with our own experience:

 

For example, if there is no god, and materialism is all there is, then there can be no free will. This is because for an action to be "free" we must be the origin of a causal chain, which means that we must be capable of effecting material change without needing anything to act on it. Now this argument has been made many times since time immemorial, and I have no wish to go over it when you can find it in any library, but it seems certain to me that you cannot believe in free will without believing in some form of spiritual nature. I observe myself to have free will and would need strong evidence to persuade me otherwise. Indeed, the real challenge is to see why our free will is "imperfect" by which I mean that we often act in ways that frustrate our intentions.

 

Moreover, it is a principle of all forms of thought that we should try to explain things from as few assumptions as possible. Atheism is a content free theory, it is by nature incapable of explaining anything about human nature. This is deeply unsatisfying. Moreover, it necessarily follows from atheism that one should expect no particular unifying explanation for why people are a certain way, beyond the fact that intelligence has made us widely successful in an evolutionary sense. I think that Christianity has real explanatory power, that makes sense of many puzzling aspects of the world.

 

Indeed, not only this, but atheism in its common forms (i.e. materialism) suffers from an ontological incompleteness. That is, to claim it is "reasonable" to be an atheist, you are assuming the existence of reason as some kind of abstract concept, to which you can compare different modes of thought. However, if thought is to be seen as a material phenomenon, and indeed the universe contains nothing non-material, how can we refer to some arbiter of common thought? Are the rules of logic to be decided by common vote? Do they exist only as we humans perceive them? It is the unspoken assumption of all human dialogue that the rules of logic and reason are common, i.e. independent of any particular human. We "discover them" rather than "create them", and if so, then atheistic materialism is intrinsically incomplete, in that it fails to explain a crucial fact of our existence.

[PassedOut]

I could go on, but there is no point. Indeed, for nearly 17 centuries the position of all the major Christian churches (although for most of that there was really only one) was summed up as "The bible contains within it all the information necessary for the salvation of souls, but its inerrancy should not be considered to spread beyond these matters."

You are certainly right about biblical literalism. I do have a quibble with your statement that there was really only one Christian church for most of 17 centuries. That was true for the period from 325 to 1054 or thereabouts, about 7 and one-quarter centuries.

[hotShot]

Didn't it take the Council of Chalcedon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon) 451 to get the existing Christian churches to reach some fundamental consent, about the nature of Jesus, building the base of the separation of the East European church at the same time?

[Winstonm]

what exactly is an "irrational faith?"

 

That's a valid question. My understanding is that an irrational belief is one that does not adhere to the principles of known natural laws or is a belief that incorporates "ontological contradictions". (I use quotations for the phrase ontological contradictions" as I may well be using the phrase incorrectly, and what I mean by ontological contradiction is a claim of the reality of 4-sided triangles or of intersecting parallel lines.)

 

An example might help: human experience has shown that horses cannot fly or that there is nothing above us other than the Earth's atmosphere followed by space, so it is irrational to believe that a human being was once flown to heaven and back mounted on the back of a flying horse, that this same human wrote down in a book the actual words god spoke to him, and that now in the 21st century all of mankind must live their lives according to the writing in that ancient book.

 

Another: Our understanding of nature is that something can only be itself, that a jellyfish cannot be two jellyfish or a jellyfish, a shark, and a squid at the same time. But some belief holds that it is possible that an entity can be three separate entities at the same time, and one being of these three lived and died as a human in order to be acceptable to the other three as a necessary sacrifice to themselves because of rules they created, rules over which they held total control to change.

 

From outside the beliefs, both would appear irrational.

[PassedOut]

For example, if there is no god, and materialism is all there is, then there can be no free will. This is because for an action to be "free" we must be the origin of a causal chain, which means that we must be capable of effecting material change without needing anything to act on it. Now this argument has been made many times since time immemorial, and I have no wish to go over it when you can find it in any library, but it seems certain to me that you cannot believe in free will without believing in some form of spiritual nature.

And, of course, the refutations of these arguments from time immemorial can be found easily as well.

 

I do appreciate your willingness to state the reasons for your beliefs, which you clearly have thought about and hold deeply. On the other hand, you've set up a straw man you call "atheistic materialism" to argue against. Not everything is material, even to an atheist like me.

 

That reminds me of a discussion we had on these boards awhile back on whether or not a rule describing a set is interchangeable with an enumeration of its members. I (still) claim that it is not and gave something like the following example:

 

The set of trees over one thousand years old.

The set of trees over one hundred meters tall.

 

Even if those two rules at some time described the same set, those rules would not (in my opinion) be interchangeable. Others disagreed.

 

And folks disagree about what is and is not "deeply unsatisfying." It's good that you find your beliefs satisfying, as I do mine. In the long run, our beliefs will not matter.

[PassedOut]

Didn't it take the Council of Chalcedon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon) 451 to get the existing Christian churches to reach some fundamental consent, about the nature of Jesus, building the base of the separation of the East European church at the same time?

As you say, it was a long process. Probably your date is the better one for my quibble.

[hrothgar]

 

I could go on, but there is no point. Indeed, for nearly 17 centuries the position of all the major Christian churches (although for most of that there was really only one) was summed up as "The bible contains within it all the information necessary for the salvation of souls, but its inerrancy should not be considered to spread beyond these matters."

 

Agreed... Not much reason to go on because this last statement is ludicrous on multiple levels

 

1. What was this "one" Christian Church of which you speak? The Roman Catholics? The Eastern Orthodox? The Copts? The Georgians? The Armenians? The Western Schism? The list goes on...

 

2. Exactly which 17 centuries did this church exist? I assume that your "17 centuries" terminates with the Protestant reformation which is generally accepted to have started in the early 1500s... I don't think that you can really claim that there was anything approaching a unified concept of Christianity prior to the first Council of Nicea in 325. Indeed the entire purpose of this council was to attempt to agree upon niggling little details like "the Trinity"... I'm hard pressed to understand just where this figure came from

 

3. As for the whole Biblical Inerrancy statement: There's a reason that the Evangelicals had to issue the Chicago Statement and Vatican II issued Dei Verbum... No one could agree whether their churches advocated Biblical innerancy, Biblical infallibility, or something altogether different. Its ludicrous to presume that the early church, struggling with primitive communication systems and vast geographical differences had anything approaching a unified position on this topic. The history of Christian church is a history of a 1,001 different heresies.

 

Given that you are so blindingly ignorant about the basic history of your church - and this is basic stuff that I recall from confirmation classes and high school history 25+ years ago - why should we pay any attention to your attempts at more sophisticated analysis?

[luke warm]

And, of course, the refutations of these arguments [cause and effect re: free will] from time immemorial can be found easily as well.

list one or two, if you don't mind

I do appreciate your willingness to state the reasons for your beliefs, which you clearly have thought about and hold deeply. On the other hand, you've set up a straw man you call "atheistic materialism" to argue against. Not everything is material, even to an atheist like me.

i think he used that term because atheists are, almost by definition, materialists... if you are not, as you seem to imply, in what way are you not?

what exactly is an "irrational faith?"

An example might help: human experience has shown that horses cannot fly or that there is nothing above us other than the Earth's atmosphere followed by space, so it is irrational to believe that a human being was once flown to heaven and back mounted on the back of a flying horse, that this same human wrote down in a book the actual words god spoke to him, and that now in the 21st century all of mankind must live their lives according to the writing in that ancient book.

aside from the fact that there isn't enough time to correct all misconceptions people might have about this or that religion, your example does nothing to further an argument that christianity (for example) is an "irrational faith"

Another: Our understanding of nature is that something can only be itself, that a jellyfish cannot be two jellyfish or a jellyfish, a shark, and a squid at the same time. But some belief holds that it is possible that an entity can be three separate entities at the same time, and one being of these three lived and died as a human in order to be acceptable to the other three as a necessary sacrifice to themselves because of rules they created, rules over which they held total control to change.

 

From outside the beliefs, both would appear irrational.

as i've said repeatedly for several years now, we all (you included, me included) approach things from within our own worldviews, with our own preconceptions... if in your worldview the supernatural does not, cannot, exist then it would of necessity preclude other explanations... to deny the possibility of any one thing the explanation for which is other than material is the definition of presupposition... to say that the material is all there is because it's all we can observe says nothing about rationality

[PassedOut]

i think he used that term because atheists are, almost by definition, materialists... if you are not, as you seem to imply, in what way are you not?

Thought I answered that. Here's just one example: I don't consider rules, such as the rules of logic and some generalized rules of set definition, to be material. This has no connection with atheism.

[Winstonm]

to say that the material is all there is because it's all we can observe says nothing about rationality

 

It does by my definition of irrational faith, which is what you asked for. We have gone round and round about these issues before, so before we get into a rehash I would simply like to make some observations.

 

From your stated education, I am firmly convinced that you are a wealth of knowledge about the fact that the word "exist" has been defined and redefined ad nauseum, and even today there is not a uniform understanding of the word. We can, of course, go to a dictionary and find the common-usage understanding, but mostly we will find there synonyms rather than definitions. To be, is, happen, live, etc., have all been used as synonymous for the word exist.

 

I once ran into a rather interesting fellow named Bill Gaede who argued that the word exist could be used objectively if it were defined unambiguously. His definition was that exist meant physical presence, that which has shape and location. He further argued that after making this definition, one only had to objectively compare the definition to the proposed object or concept to determine existence. In this sense, there is no subjectivity to determine if god exists or not, as existence is defined. The definition tells us whether or not god exists.

 

You asked me to define irrational faith, and then claimed that my examples did not establish irrationality, but in doing so you used an apparently different definition for the word rational than what I proposed.

 

If there is to be precision of thought, of idealistic exchanges, then the definitions of the key terms must be not only precise but unambiguous. It is this very ambiguity of definitions that has caused the theist/non-theist debaters to chase around in circles for centuries debating with proofs and refutations, logics and rebuttals. but with no precision of definitions.

 

It may be well and good for Alvin Plantinga to use the S5 Modal axiom to establish that God exists, but without an understanding of what exists means he has really said nothing at all, has he?

 

Does he mean God is alive? Then is my Mazda also alive or perhaps it does not exist? See?

 

Here is my basic contention - I admit it may be either wrong or a wrong application of an axiom. I trust you will correct me if I err. :)

 

Either anything is possible, or anything is not possible. I believe this adheres to the LNC. I am strongly in the anything is not possible camp. I am in this camp because of reason - reason tells us by definition there can be no 4-sided triangles - and because of observations - physical laws have been repeatable and consistent without fail.

 

When we discuss possibilties, though, it appears to me that we must open the door of anything is possible, and thus if we posit an immaterial spirit that can mediate physical events, then we must also accept 4-sided triangles, intersecting parrallel lines, and married bachelors, too. If anything is possible, we cannot pick and chose what may not be entirely possible or hold out exlusions to our rule.

 

Once we go down the path of anything is possible, it appears to me we are simply playing a parlor game of what if, with no useful conclusions ever being found - but a good time is surely had by all, and it is great intelluctual stimulation.

 

LSD can also be great fun and intellectually stimulating, but I am not sure it is useful to conclude that tangerine flowers of yellow and green are floating over our heads.

 

I mean none of this as insult, and surely some very bright minds have been interested in and studied possibilities, but unless the words we chose to use are precisely and unambiguously defined, we will simply add to the growing and non-meaningful theist/non-theist debate dump ground, which, btw, is already starting to smell rotten.

[Winstonm]

A couple more points about definitions and the problems that occur. Here are a couple of random definitions I pulled off the internet:

 

 

Objective – is a statement that is completely unbiased.

 

Discussion: How is it possible for anything to be unbiased if it is based on an observer?

 

It is not touched by the speaker’s previous experiences or tastes.

 

Discussion: So two men stand in front of a house they have never before seen, and one guys says, the house is green, while the other guy says, it looks blue-green or maybe acqua to me.

What is the objective color of the house?

 

It is verifiable by looking up facts or performing mathematical calculations.

 

Discussion: so I look up Muslim and one book says the religion is based on a pagan moon god Allah, while a second book says no, allah is a generic word for "the god" and the Islamic god is the same as the one worhiped by the Christian and Jews.

And the objectivite fact between these two is...?

 

IMO a better definition of objective would be: observer independent. This definition seems to work well with the one suggested for exist. The blind man could grasp by understading the shape definition that the moon exists (by understanding other shapes he could feel like a cup) and also like the cup that the moon has location, yet he has never had a sentient experience with the moon.

 

The moon's existence would be objective, observer independent.

 

Subjective – is a statement that has been colored by the character of the speaker or writer. It often has a basis in reality, but reflects the perspective through with the speaker views reality. It cannot be verified using concrete facts and figures

 

Dicsussion: It seems easier to say simply observer-dependent, as a subjective claim requires an opinion of a sentient being, and is thus colored by the senses, regardless of motivations.

 

These are the definitions with which I am familiar and the ones I use, not to be difficult but simply to create a precise and unambiguous language so we all can understand that when I say my Mazda objectively exists, everyone listening will understand exactly what that means, that I cannot mean that my car is alive because the first guy who saw it was stoned on acid when he described it and he was certain that the car was breathing.

 

 

Even if that were possible.

[PassedOut]

list one or two, if you don't mind

I think you know that free will and determinism have a long philosophical history with many different takes. If you are really interested, look here: Causal Determinism

and here: Philosophical Questions of Free Will.

 

The philosophy of religion is replete with arguments to prove the existence of god, starting with Anselm's ontological argument. Refutations of those arguments and subsequent attempts to conceal the problems with those arguments continue to this day (in our time Plantinga has tried to fix the ontological argument).

 

If you are honestly interested in these questions, you can look here for more material: Ontological Argument: Immanuel Kant. And, of course, there is always wikipedia: Existence of God.

 

Seek, and ye shall find.

:)

[barmar]

For example, if there is no god, and materialism is all there is, then there can be no free will.

So if you could be convinced that free will is just an illusion, you might be willing to give up your belief in god?

 

Because neuroscientists have found evidence that might just show that. They've done a number of experiments that show that when we think we've made a conscious decision to do something, the parts of the brain involved in "willing" become active AFTER the parts that actually cause the action. So in fact, what actually seems to happen is that the action starts to occur in a more automatic fashion, much as they do in reflexes or in the actions of lower animals, and then the conscious brain notices this and manufactures the "I willed it" thought.

 

Free will could be analogous to Newtonian mechanics. It's a reasonable approximation when dealing with everyday phenomena, but it's not the actual truth. It's an illusion like the solidity of material objects; in reality, they're made up of atoms that are almost entirely empty space, and the only thing preventing objects from passing through each other are the electromagnetic forces between them.

 

The point of this is that you can't use simple, everyday experience to explain the actual workings of the universe. Einstein's theories and quantum mechanics have shown conclusively that "common sense" doesn't always reflect reality. Why should free will be any different?

 

Then again, if you don't have free will, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to talk about beliefs at all.

[luke warm]

Thought I answered that. Here's just one example: I don't consider rules, such as the rules of logic and some generalized rules of set definition, to be material. This has no connection with atheism.

metaphysical laws, iow... believing in their existence leaves the atheist in somewhat of a bind...

 

I think you know that free will and determinism have a long philosophical history with many different takes.

yes, i might have some familiarity with those concepts, just not in the guise of "refutations"

 

So if you could be convinced that free will is just an illusion, you might be willing to give up your belief in god?

i can't speak for phil, but there are those who believe an omniscient God exists... iow, free will isn't a necessary precondition for his existence - in their view, in fact, free will *is* an illusion

 

Discussion: How is it possible for anything to be unbiased if it is based on an observer?

it rarely is

 

IMO a better definition of objective would be: observer independent.

some (all?) definitions are contextual... when i use the word objective, it's almost always in this way... an object or view is or is not true regardless of an individual's perception

 

These are the definitions with which I am familiar and the ones I use, not to be difficult but simply to create a precise and unambiguous language so we all can understand that when I say my Mazda objectively exists, everyone listening will understand exactly what that means, that I cannot mean that my car is alive because the first guy who saw it was stoned on acid when he described it and he was certain that the car was breathing.

perceptions vary

[Winstonm]

Somewhat off topic, but I appreciate Richard's help in relieving me of some of my ignorance by referring to the Chicago Statement and Dei Verbum. I had been aware that Moody Bible College in Chicago had made similar claims, but I was unaware that an evangelical conference had been held to formalize the ideas.

 

From wikipedia concerning Chicago Statement:

 

Under the statement inerrancy applies only to the original manuscripts (which no longer exist, but can be inferred on the basis of extant copies), not to the copies or translations themselves. In the statement, inerrancy does not refer to a blind literal interpretation, but allows for figurative, poetic and phenomenological language, so long as it was the author's intent to present a passage as literal or symbolic.

 

Is it possible to be any more purposefully vague, or to create a more opinion-based authority, than to declare inferred, non-surviving documents inerrant but surviving copies of those documents not? Isn't that pretty much a paraphrase of the Church position prior to the Reformation and the printing press - trust us - we will tell you what you need to know?

 

Can there be better description of faith than citing that long-dead authors' intents can be knowable by the expediency of formulating a present-day opinion about those intents?

 

Yet these were the Chicago conclusions of intelligent men and women.

 

Sometimes I ask myself if intelligence is measured by the ability to rationalize a position, no matter how unlikely the explanation, or is it measured by determining the most likely occurence, a best explanation to match facts.

 

Then I read an explanation of why intelligent people hold irrational beliefs: because their high level of intelligence allows them to formulate much more sophisticated and complicated rationalizations for the belief.

 

O.K. Now that makes sense.

[Winstonm]

perceptions vary

 

Yes, but a precise definition of the word "exist" eliminates perception in favor of definition. Resolutions become binary - something either is or it is not.

 

And then there is quantum.

Henny (Albert) Youngman fist explained quanta: You know, light is crazy these days. Take the idea of quanta...please!

 

Maybe a better question than is the cat dead or alive would be, does the cat even exist? The answer is, of course, but only if you don't know where it is or how fast it is going. :)

[PassedOut]

metaphysical laws, iow... believing in their existence leaves the atheist in somewhat of a bind...

Nope.

 

Classifying rules as non-material has no connection whatever with the existence of god. Nor does free will. No amount of sophistry can change that.

[mycroft]

re: the Chicago Statement:

Is it possible to be any more purposefully vague, or to create a more opinion-based authority, than to declare inferred, non-surviving documents inerrant but surviving copies of those documents not? Isn't that pretty much a paraphrase of the Church position prior to the Reformation and the printing press - trust us - we will tell you what you need to know?

 

Can there be better description of faith than citing that long-dead authors' intents can be knowable by the expediency of formulating a present-day opinion about those intents?

 

Yet these were the Chicago conclusions of intelligent men and women.

Lk. 18:9 "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:..." It is written that Jesus told stories to make the Truth clear to his audience (in this case, the Jews present). So, why would a Rabbi (teacher) tell stories? Maybe because that was the traditional way that the Jews - to this day - learn and teach their religion? If so, how much of a mindbreak does it take to believe that "yeah, well, they didn't do that in the 53 books that a bunch of Romans took from a bunch of Greeks who decided which of the Jewish stories were Divinely Inspired and which were only Useful Teaching"?

 

Also, unless you believe in the context of anyone who ever, with proper intent, translates/transliterates/copies the Divine Word will be guided by the Hand of God inerrantly - and I don't know anybody who believes that, especially given 20th century archaeology - then the Chicago Statement that "only the originals were correct, and literal only when they intended to be" can not be anything but accepting reality.

 

So, it might be <church lady>Conveeeenient</cl>, sure, but it's the only conclusion that can, logically, rationally, and with any reasonable chance of being accurate, be drawn. If you don't like the fact that the Bible wasn't written with the rigour required of a mathematical textbook (and note that even with those, they start with a few axioms - things taken as correct without proof, and unprovable; in some cases, the resultant math is logical and "correct" with the axiom refuted (parallel axiom, axiom of choice)), well, then, one is kind of stuck, as that level of rigour was only truly codified with the Scientific Revolution (Euclid had that, of course, but not to the rigorous extent we have now).

 

The other issue is that we know that some of the Law has been superseded by the Great Covenant. It is interesting to note that Bible Literalists do a very good job of "deciding" which parts of they Law they feel are superseded (food and uncleanness restrictions, mostly) and which were not (I'm sure we can all iterate those).

 

And I do take a bit of stick at "the moderates" not criticising - after having just done that. If what Mr. Harris means is "because the YE creationists that insist on breaking their countries scientific future are batcrazy insane, I either have to say that Christianity is also batcrazy insane or I'm helping the YE creationists", then well, yeah. I'm calling fallacy of the excluded middle on that one. I realise that excluded middle is a very useful tool in preaching the Religion of Logic and Science, however; but of course, given that that is a fallacy, it's imperative on the "moderate believers in Logic and Science" to either criticise the Logic and Science, or they're helping the obviously fallacious.

[luke warm]

Classifying rules as non-material has no connection whatever with the existence of god. Nor does free will. No amount of sophistry can change that.

you seem to use the words 'rule' and 'law' as if they are synonyms, but they are not... aside from that, no post of yours that i've ever read leads me to believe that you are in a position to dismiss decades of writings and studies by calling them "sophistry"... if one metaphysical entity can exist, upon what do you rely to deny the existence of God? superior intellect?

[luke warm]

The other issue is that we know that some of the Law has been superseded by the Great Covenant. It is interesting to note that Bible Literalists do a very good job of "deciding" which parts of they Law they feel are superseded (food and uncleanness restrictions, mostly) and which were not (I'm sure we can all iterate those).

they all were... the 'law' was a whole

[kenberg]

you seem to use the words 'rule' and 'law' as if they are synonyms, but they are not... aside from that, no post of yours that i've ever read leads me to believe that you are in a position to dismiss decades of writings and studies by calling them "sophistry"... if one metaphysical entity can exist, upon what do you rely to deny the existence of God? superior intellect?

 

Let me ask you about some of this. I might not call the metaphysics sophistry, but I see it as post hoc. So the question is: When you think of your faith, how important is the metaphysics in sustaining your faith? I realize that both metaphysics and faith are important to you, but I am asking you to sort a little. Try this: I can imagine my mind being changed. A finger appears in the sky, pointing at me, and says Repent. I don't expect this to happen, and I would check behind the metaphorical curtain, but I can imagine it. If I became convinced, I guess I might Repent. I cannot imagine that my mind would be changed by metaphysical argument. I really do not think any metaphysical argument could be devised that would change my mind. Can you, as a thought experiment, imagine that your mind would be changed on the existence of God by some philosophical argument?

 

Another way of putting it: I believe there is no God. If philosophy cannot support this view, so much the worse for philosophy because I am not changing my mind. Of course philosophy is fine with supporting this view and really seems to be able to support pretty much any view.