Please do not get turned off by the length of this blog entry, if you are a spiritual person or just care about our society I think you will be interested in reading this.
I want to start this post by saying that I believe there is a high risk that organized religion will be the end of human existence.
I’ve been a part of this site for about a week now and I’ve already gotten into some good discussions. There are a couple of repeating questions which people ask me now and then when it comes to discussions about religion and my quest to clear the world from it. Why do I want to take peoples faith away?
-I don’t. I do not get motivation from dissing believers. My intent is to attack religion, not faith directly. It is important to seperate the two. To me, religion is the same as intellectual rape, it makes you less curious and makes it harder for you to distinguish facts from fiction. The harder you blindly believe the more you get deluded and less open for new ideas, but hang on, I will give a more detailed answer in a bit.
Another question I often get is this: Why is it a bad thing to believe in something if it can make your life better?
-First of all I don’t think its religion in itself that make religious people feel better, I think its the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself and all the social things that come with it, we are after all social beings. I think It also is due to a false feeling of security and comfort, especially if you are experiencing rough periods in your life or having a hard time coping with the fear of death and all the uncertainties around it.
Religion is a system with certain rules you have to follow to be a part of it. It would for instance be hard to call yourself a Christian without believing in Jesus, even if you still believed in God or vice versa. If you experience things which makes you rethink certain aspects of your religion you still cannot actually change anything about it without an exhausting amount of energy spent, there are just so many obstacles in your way because of the way religion is organized. What would your religious leaders say? What would your co-believers, friends and family say? Disputing anything the holy scriptures say would most likely turn you into a victim of ridicule, at the very least they would not be very positive about it. This often results in a fear of new\different ideas and you may start to give up on critical thinking, just buying into whatever the Bible or your religious comrades are telling you. Which brings me over to another problem, preaching. When you hear something enough times it will eventually become true to you, even without anything else than the preachers word for it.
To me, faith is something quite different. Faith is the belief in something which cannot or have not yet been physically proven, like reincarnation or God. Faith, which partly consist of your imagination, has no rules, it is not organized and it does not hinder your mind in any way, on the contrary. Faith is something personal, atleast I believe it should be, based on your own perception of existence and faith is something which changes naturally with it. This is exactly why I think faith is a good thing opposed to religion, since it complements your personality instead of working against it.
I want to continue by showing you some disturbing facts regarding our two biggest religions, Christianity and Islam:
-About 50% of all Americans believe in Creationism and that it is based on science.
-Practically all creationists think that gay individuals choose their sexuality and that it has nothing to do with biology.
-Quote from the Bible: God says all gays must die: Leviticus 20:13 "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
-Quote from the Qu’ran: 5:49-51 "O YOU WHO BELIEVE! DO NOT TAKE THE JEWS AND THE CHRISTIANS FOR FRIENDS; THEY ARE FRIENDS OF EACH OTHER; AND WHOEVER AMONGST YOU TAKES THEM FOR A FRIEND, THEN SURELY HE IS ONE OF THEM; SURELY ALLAH DOES NOT GUIDE THE UNJUST PEOPLE."
-The final words from the 9-11 highjackers were: "Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest"
We have come to a technological point now where our survival as a race depends on how able we are to understand the world and the people in it. I think we have overwhelming evidence that religion works against knowledge and facts. With understanding comes empathy, with empathy comes tollerance, with tollerance comes peace. This is why fighting AGAINST religion equals fighting FOR peace.
Please let me know your views on the matter and what you think needs to be done to overcome the problems that come with religion.
Kind Regards
-L
God morning mr morning flower Paul ;D
It is of no use to get back to any argument if we do not agree on the most fundamental issues.
YOU SAID:
"1.Dr. Craig has a Ph.d in Philosophy and Theology
2.He is the leading source for the Kalam Cosmological argument, the most talked about argument of the 21st century"
MY RESPONSE:
It is a lot because of his Ph.d's, great debating skills and good understanding that enable him to do these tricks of language and logics. He is very good at illuminating inconsistensies in our language and thoughts, which is indeed very helpful and I am sure his arguments will help us make our language evolve further. However, he is not popular because he is right, but because he is able to cleverly trick people into believing he is correct. All his arguments are arguments which does not manifest themselves in any objective reality, yet he presents them as if they are truths on the same line as scientific truths, and that is the reason why he is the psuedo master. He is doing something which most scientists and many intellectual theists are putting up warning signs against; mixing science and religion, and turning religion into being fact based instead of faith based. Philosophy can never be truth itself, it can only point to and help us find the truth.
YOU SAID:
"But if one is agnostic on a foundational belief, then one must remain an agnostic on EVERYTHING"
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, if you claim to believe something instead of claiming you know it then that in itself is an agnostic statement. It is fully possible to claim not to know anything and still base ones life on beliefs and at the same time stay rational. The problems would first begin if you claimed that you did not even believe in reality, not knowing and not believing are two very different things. There are many ways to be an agnostic, I am however not agnostic about my belief in existence, only about my true knowledge about existence itself.
YOU SAID:
All of logic etc. is based on the external world. You rely on logic to prove the external world, therefore your argument beggs the question."
MY RESPONSE:
While this sentence may look correct by itself it makes no sense if you analyze the implications of it. This is just what I mean by a linguistical trick. The practical implications for not believing in existence is so profound that it cannot be compared to any other belief; since all other beliefs would build on this most fundamental belief. We would be annihilated without this belief and that in itself is proof that even if it is a presumption it is vital for our existence. A belief in God or even a proven fact like computers work can never be equivocated with our most fundamental belief as we would be annihilated without it. Unlike any other presumption our survival depends on it and that makes it something more than "just" a presumption, it is a presumption of necessity and is therefor at the very minimum; partly true.
YOU SAID:
"Your absurdities fail criteria 4. Next you say that Christianity fails #4 for the same reason. Unfortunetely, scholars 100% unanimously agree that the disciples sincerely believed in the teachings. So such a parallel is not warranted. If you need me to tell you specifically why they unanimously reject that idea I can tell you."
MY RESPONSE:
It does not matter that the disciples believed in the teachings or not. One or several people believing something does not make it necessarily true. I just convinced a friend of mine that the toilet God indeed does exist by using the ontological toilet argument, so now then, my toilet religion is definately a properly basic belief! The absurdities in my toilet religion is no more absurd than those of Christianity.
Cheers.
-Leo
Let me explain exactly how the criteria for a PBB works. There are a few huge problems in philosophy that only PBB can solve
1.How can we believe in the external world and be intellectually honest?
-Obviously we can not provide evidence for the external world, but being agnostic and being a solipsist leads to self contradictions. The only way we can reconclie this belief is to prove that the burden of proof is not on us.
2.How do we avoid an infinite regress of evidences, making all beliefs unable to be inferred?
-How can we account for any rationaliszation with an infinite regress? There must be foundational beliefs that do not require evidence!
So, how can we formulate our method of justification. Well, it must be experiential! Otherwise we could justify anything using this method!
Second, but what if others experienc cannot experience this? Well, it must be accessible to others.
Thirdly, what if the "Expeiencers" have psychological disorders? Well, the "Experiencers" must have functioning coginitive faculties.
Lastly, yah, but still what if there is a reason to doubt the belief? Well, then they have held up to their burden so we must give up our beliefs. So, the above criteria can only be applied to beliefs without defeaters.
Finally, one can conclude that if the external world meets all the above conditions then we can justifiably shift the burden of proof off of us! Yes! The external world does meet all othe criteria, therefore we can justifiably believe in it!
But if such criteria can be used to justify one belief, it must be able to justify all beliefs that meet the criteria. If it can't then the external world is a ad-hoc idea and hence falsified. So, any belief which passes the tests for being a PBB is justified without evidence because the burden of proof is not on us!
And so PBB were born!
Now that there are beliefs which don't need evidence, we just eliminated the problem of an infinite regress of justification! Yay!
So, Leo, the question is not "Do properly basic beliefs exist", the question is "Does X belief meet the criteria of a properly basic belief". Because, Leo, if PBB do not exist then reason becomes impossible and the external world is non-existent.
With the above in mind, let's see how well you countered the claim that Christianity or OMV exist as properly basic beliefs.
YOU SAID:Yes, if you claim to believe something instead of claiming you know it then that in itself is an agnostic statement. It is fully possible to claim not to know anything and still base ones life on beliefs and at the same time stay rational.
MY RESPONSE:Again, agnosticism on reason and the external world leads to absurdities and self-contradictions. You must either prove it or demonstrate that the burden of proof is not on you.
YOU SAID:The problems would first begin if you claimed that you did not even believe in reality, not knowing and not believing are two very different things. There are many ways to be an agnostic, I am however not agnostic about my belief in existence, only about my true knowledge about existence itself.
MY RESPONSE:If you cannot give me evidence of the external world, then you are believing in it in a intellectual dishonest fashion. Only if the burden of proof is not on us can we be rational in our acceptance of the external world. Therefore, because we must accept the existence of the external world, we must accept the criteria of a properly basic belief.
YOU SAID:While this sentence may look correct by itself it makes no sense if you analyze the implications of it. This is just what I mean by a linguistical trick. The practical implications for not believing in existence is so profound that it cannot be compared to any other belief; since all other beliefs would build on this most fundamental belief.
MY RESPONSE:Not a linguistic attack, a logical fallacy. You just helped me prove my point that we must switch the burden of proof! This is exactly what PBB do. Unless one insists on "special pleading" we must allow other beliefs to be measured by the same criteria. Thank you for the help
YOU SAID:It does not matter that the disciples believed in the teachings or not. One or several people believing something does not make it necessarily true.
MY RESPONSE:Straw man argument. I only said this to rebutt your claim that the disciples just made it up, thus Christianity has a defeater.
YOU SAID:I just convinced a friend of mine that the toilet God indeed does exist by using the ontological toilet argument, so now then, my toilet religion is definately a properly basic belief!
MY RESPONSE:Remember what I said about intellectual honesty, Leo? Did you honestly convince your friend of your made up beleif? As I said, because you blatantly made that up, your belief has a defeater. Same thing with all of these absurdities you try to bring up to try to disprove PBB(Which if you succede falsify the external world).
Anyway, the onological argument disproves your toilet religion lol. Via modal intuition we know that a "perfect toilet" is not possible. All perfect beings must have an intrinsic maximum, I.E. the best that something can be. Unfortunetly a toilet seat "comfotability" is a ralative term. Thus it is impossible for your toilet to exist. Then we can disprove it via ontological argument and axiom S5 of modal logic.
1.It is possible that the toilet God does not exist.
2.There is a possible world where your toilet God does not exist.
3.If the toilet God does not exist in a possible world, then it doesn't exist in any possible world.
4.If the toilet God does not exist in any possible world, then it does not exist in reality.
5.If the toilet God does not exist in reality then the toilet God does not exist.
=>The toilet God does not exist.
As I've said once and will most likely say a few more times, the fact that you purposefully try to disprove properly basic beliefs with absurdities is the defeater for X absurdity. Your arguments are literally self-refuting!
Sincerely,
Paul
Before I forget!
I have a feeling that you are going to substitute the word toilet God with God in my ontological argument against your "toilet God"
Anyway,
When I say it is possible that the TG(toilet God) doesn't exist, I'm referring to metaphysical coherence not epistemic knowledge! Thus, the argument is non-sequitur if you substitute TG with God.
Sincerely,
Paul
One more very important thing I'd like to respond to concerning epistemology.
YOU SAID:All his arguments are arguments which does not manifest themselves in any objective reality, yet he presents them as if they are truths on the same line as scientific truths, and that is the reason why he is the psuedo master.
MY RESPONSE:Hmmm….isn't it interesting that this isn't a scientific argument!? Hey, if its not science it has no bearing on objective reality! Leo, you pseudo master you
If all a priori arguments have no bearing on objective reality it follows that your argument has no bearing on objective reality.
Your entire epistemological stance is just a textbook example of a fallacy of definition known as "conflicting conditions."
if you are right, you too are a pseudo master. Think about it.
sincerely,
Paul
Hello my persistent Paul
YOU SAID:
"Only if the burden of proof is not on us can we be rational in our acceptance of the external world. "
MY RESPONSE:
If you are unable to see that our very existence is proof that we can trust existence without using our intuition, then I do not know how else to explain it to you. I will have to investigate an even simpler way of putting it, if it is possible.
YOU SAID:
"1.How can we believe in the external world and be intellectually honest?"
MY RESPONSE:
By taking it for what it is and not think that we can intuitively know things like complicated cosmological truths. If our intuition tells us anything it is that it can not be trusted. So If you try and find basic truths based on an untrustworthy fundament then there is very little hope for finding any truths at all.
Just because you add intuition to the equation does not mean that you've become "intellectually honest" for some reason, on the contrary. The reason why Craig and Plantinga introduce intuition is precicely to dogde the burden of proof. Instead of keeping truths objective, they turn them into subjective intuition and then label these opinions as objective truths, the only motivation for doing something like this would be to allow for something like a God to exist. When your motive is to find "a truth" instead of "the truth" it all becomes very very questionable.
Let me illustrate why our human intuition would have no place in for instance cosmology. Take complicated theories like the big bang theory, string theory or the theories of relativity, these are all examples that are counter-intuitive and require very complicated math and advanced sensory-enhanced equipment to be developed and confirmed. No matter what the riddle of life is, we can agree that the answer will be even more mind boggling and counter-intuitive than these theories I just mentioned. Who is to say that the final cosmological answer is not an abstract answer, like for instance the root of pi? What if even the most perfect mind will be unable to know it simply because it is unknowable? What if not knowing is the answer? This is a field were our intuition have no place. At best we can use our intuition to keep beliefs, but we should not base our knowledge on beliefs as beliefs can be easily refuted.
YOU SAID:
"2.How do we avoid an infinite regress of evidences"
MY RESPONSE:
Since my english skills are under development and still quite dodgy I have asked my new friend Fat German Bastard from youtube to help me spell this out in a more proper way. You've already labeled him as an amateur so you should have no problems refuting him. For those of you who might be reading this and want to know who he is, here is a link to his channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/FatGermanBastard
He explains how the infinite regress problem may be solved in the argument from morality:
"Now there are two solutions to the so called "Regress Problem":
The first is to simply define morality to describe the relationship between an action and a preferred outcome. I.e. one could say: "Define morality as that which refers to matters of useful and harmful in creating happiness for the largest amount of people". This would be descriptive morality. It actually would not contain a prescriptive component. I.e. it would not imply that we should value happiness for the greates amount of people but simply choose this as the basis of morality arbitrarily by defining the word this way.
One can argue that such morality is not very meaningful and I agree…it isn't.
The second solution is to say that some things contain value independently from an external goal or preference. This is most likely what your Christian friend believes. I.e. he could say:
Murder is bad because it causes pain.
Pain is bad because it causes suffering.
Suffering is bad because it causes people to be unhappy.
Making people unhappy is bad because it's against God's will.
Acting against God's will is wrong because God is intrinsically valuable.
Now the obvious problem with this is that there is no evidence for the statement "God is intrinsically valuable". Even worse: Such evidence is not even logically possible since it would have to be normative. However, something is not intrinsically valuable if it depends on some external normative value. How would one possibly proove that something is in itself valuable – independently from it's real life affect ? This can not be proven.
Of course the Christian apologists are aware of this so they try the intuition boost as they always do. If you can't prove it just say you know it's true intuitively and everyone around you just doesn't realize it because they are "not properly ordered" aka insane in the membrain.
So they say: "Torturing babies for fun is wrong and deep down our heart we all know it".
And they are right… Torturing babies for fun is wrong in regards to our goals and in regards to our desires. But it is not intrinsically wrong. That means. There is no deeper ultimate underlying truth that makes it wrong. Such a thing as intrinsic morality is totally counter inutiive because it means that things would have to be wrong independently from their real life effects. Something can not be wrong independently from it's real life effect. This seems a lot more intuitive to me. Of course they will just insist that intrinsic morality is intuitive. Trying to convince them is a waste of time."
YOU SAID:
"So, Leo, the question is not "Do properly basic beliefs exist", the question is "Does X belief meet the criteria of a properly basic belief". "
MY RESPONSE:
The reason why I invented my Toilet religion was not to disprove basic beliefs, but prove that Christianity is not a basic belief. By your standards there are many religions that would pass off as properly basic, thus rendering your standards wrong.
YOU SAID:
"Straw man argument. I only said this to rebutt your claim that the disciples just made it up, thus Christianity has a defeater. "
MY RESPONSE:
So, are you saying that because they did not make it up their beliefs has to be true? Where is your proof that their faculties were properly working?
YOU SAID:
"Remember what I said about intellectual honesty, Leo? Did you honestly convince your friend of your made up beleif?"
MY RESPONSE:
Where is your proof that Jesus' faculties were properly working and that he was intellectually honest when convincing his disciples of his teachings? If you do not need to present proof, then I do not need to present any either.
YOU SAID:
"Anyway, the onological argument disproves your toilet religion lol. Via modal intuition we know that a "perfect toilet" is not possible."
MY RESPONSE:
Yet again Mr Fat German Bastard has been so kind and invested his time in putting my thoughts into an orderly fassion. He says:
"the Ontological argument is easily reduced to absurdity.
As you may know a necessary statement is one that is always true. Regardless of circumstances.
An example for a necessary statement would be 1+1=2. Even if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow 1+1 does still make 2. It is a statement that is true completely independent from anything else. This applys to all clear mathematical statements that do not contain variables.
Now if you don't know what Goldbach's conjecture is look it up on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conject…
As of yet it is unknown whether Goldbach's conjecture is true or false. If not knowing whether something is logically possible or not being aware of a contradiction in a concept or denial thereof would mean that something is both logically possible and logically impossible then Goldbach's conjecture would be both possibly necessarily true and possibly necessarily false. If that was the case then Goldbach's conjecture was both necessarily true and necessarily false (due to axiom 5). However, that is obviously not possible.
Therefore merely saying that one is not aware of a logical issue in Goldbach's conjecture and it's denial does not mean that both options are possible. Likewise simply not being able in showing that there is a logical contradiction in the concept of God or in atheism does not at all prove that God's existence is logically possible or not logically possible. If not being aware in a contradiction in God nor atheism would mean that God possibly exists and possibly not exists then God would possibly necessarily exist and possibly necessarily not exist. Therefore God would necessarily exist and necessarily not exist. That is obviously not possible.
Now of course one can argue that since there is a lot of inductive evidence there is still good reason to believe in Goldbach's conjecture and this is true. However, the inductive evidence is not at all increased by making a deductive argument out of it. I.e. if using the inductive evidence for Goldbach's conjecture I would come up with the following argument:
If it is possibly necessary that Goldbach's objecture is true then it is necessary that it is true.
It is possibly necessarily true (because of the inductive evidence).
Therefore it is true.
If I argue this way then premise 2 is exactly as likely to be true as the external evidence for Goldbach's conjecture which means that the argument above ads NOTHING whatsoever to support our belief in Goldbach's conjecture.
Therefore even if Maydole's argument proved that God exists with 100% certainty (which it doesn't) then it would be Maydole's argument ALONE that proved this. Plantinga's argument would add NOTHING AT ALL to that. That is why bringing external evidence for premise 2 is a complete waste of time. To make this more easy to understand think about this argument:
If the sky is blue the sky is blue.
The sky is blue
Therefore the sky is blue.
Now anyone sees that this argument is circular. And if I provide external evidence for premise 2 such as my observations of the weather then the argument above adds NOTHING AT ALL to my observations and therefore remains to be complete bullshit even if my external evidence proves that the sky is blue beyond even the smallest amount of doubt. In this case I can believe that the sky is blue but I can do so BASED ON MY OBSERVATIONS. Not based on the nonsense argument above.
Therefore his Maydole counter is total bullshit and that's the friendliest way to put it I can think of."
Lets see what you have to say to all this.
Kind Regards
-Leo
Hola Leo!
YOU SAID:f you are unable to see that our very existence is proof that we can trust existence without using our intuition, then I do not know how else to explain it to you. I will have to investigate an even simpler way of putting it, if it is possible.
MY RESPONSE:Well, it is very good to see that you believe that intuition can prove things about objective reality. If so, then our moral intuitions should be enough to prove OMV. If not, you are "special pleading".
YOU SAID:By taking it for what it is and not think that we can intuitively know things like complicated cosmological truths. If our intuition tells us anything it is that it can not be trusted. So If you try and find basic truths based on an untrustworthy fundament then there is very little hope for finding any truths at all.
MY RESPONSE:Very good leo! So, you agree that PBB exist? If so, you must apply the same criteria to OMV otherwise you are special pleading.
YOU SAID:The reason why Craig and Plantinga introduce intuition is precicely to dogde the burden of proof. Instead of keeping truths objective, they turn them into subjective intuition and then label these opinions as objective truths, the only motivation for doing something like this would be to allow for something like a God to exist.
MY RESPONSE:If this is true, then you have destoyed your own argument for the external world
YOU SAID:Since my english skills are under development and still quite dodgy I have asked my new friend Fat German Bastard from youtube to help me spell this out in a more proper way. You've already labeled him as an amateur so you should have no problems refuting him. For those of you who might be reading this and want to know who he is, here is a link to his channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/FatGermanBastard
MY RESPONSE:I would first like to explain what I meant by "amateur". Although I do think his arguments are very bad I do find him to be an intellectual honest Atheist. I actually learned about the ontological argument through his criticism. I've seen all of his videos and I think I subscribed to his channel. I still am very confident in my refutations of his arguments.
Lastly, if you don't feel confident discussing this argument, it is probably best we move past this topic altogether and try a differnt argument. Because, if you spend time for looking for refutations online you'll never be able to look honestly at the argument. It is probably best we move on. However, I will answer the rest of Fatgermanbastards criticisms.
FGB SAID:The first is to simply define morality to describe the relationship between an action and a preferred outcome. I.e. one could say: "Define morality as that which refers to matters of useful and harmful in creating happiness for the largest amount of people". This would be descriptive morality. It actually would not contain a prescriptive component. I.e. it would not imply that we should value happiness for the greates amount of people but simply choose this as the basis of morality arbitrarily by defining the word this way.
One can argue that such morality is not very meaningful and I agree…it isn't.
MY RESPONSE:Totally irrelevant.
1.He doesn't prove nor disprove objective moral values
2.I wasn't even using thi to defend OMV, I was using this to defend my epistemic view of foundationalist.
FGB SAID:Now the obvious problem with this is that there is no evidence for the statement "God is intrinsically valuable". Even worse: Such evidence is not even logically possible since it would have to be normative. However, something is not intrinsically valuable if it depends on some external normative value. How would one possibly proove that something is in itself valuable – independently from it's real life affect ? This can not be proven.
MY RESPONSE:This doesn't stop the probelm of an infinite regress, he only tries to worsen the probelm. We will always ask "well, under what Authority does X have to have intrinsic moral value". However, such an argument is incoherent because intrinsic value means by definition an "end within oneself". So only if a being is the standard can we halt an infinite regress. He helps me in his "attack".
FGB SAID:And they are right… Torturing babies for fun is wrong in regards to our goals and in regards to our desires. But it is not intrinsically wrong. That means. There is no deeper ultimate underlying truth that makes it wrong. Such a thing as intrinsic morality is totally counter inutiive because it means that things would have to be wrong independently from their real life effects. Something can not be wrong independently from it's real life effect. This seems a lot more intuitive to me. Of course they will just insist that intrinsic morality is intuitive. Trying to convince them is a waste of time."
MY RESPONSE:Again, this is denying our moral experience. This is basically the admission of premise one(which he thinks beggs the question so he must now think God exists
)
The probelm is we intuitively know this, not that it is just an aid for survival, just like truth isn't just an aid for survivial, it IS true based on moral intuition. The man who denys his moral intuition is absurd as the solipsist you denys the external world. Absoulute irrationality.
FGB SAID:As of yet it is unknown whether Goldbach's conjecture is true or false. If not knowing whether something is logically possible or not being aware of a contradiction in a concept or denial thereof would mean that something is both logically possible and logically impossible then Goldbach's conjecture would be both possibly necessarily true and possibly necessarily false. If that was the case then Goldbach's conjecture was both necessarily true and necessarily false (due to axiom 5). However, that is obviously not possible.
MY RESPONSE:Again, I know what Golbach's conjecture is an I've seen this video before.
We do know that God is coherent via Maydoles modal perfection argument:
(M1) A property is a perfection only if it's negation is not a perfection.
(M2) Perfections entail only perfections.
(M3) Supremacy is a perfection
(P1) If it's not possible that a supreme being exists, every being has the property of not being supreme.
(P2) If every being has the property of not being supreme, not being supreme is a necessary condition.
(P3) If not being supreme is a necessary condition, not being supreme is a perfection. (from M2)
(P4) Not being supreme is not a perfection. (from M1 and M3)
(P5) It's possible that a supreme being exists. (from P1-P4)
The entire argument rests on three intuitively obvious modal assumptions. Then it follows logically and inescapable that God's existence is possible. This verifies Plantinga's first premise. Premises 2-5 are uncontroversial and so the conclusion God exists in warranted.
FGB SAID: f it is possibly necessary that Goldbach's objecture is true then it is necessary that it is true.
It is possibly necessarily true (because of the inductive evidence).
Therefore it is true.
MY RESPONSE:This is where FBG really messes up. His argument is sound given premise one is true. The problem is, premise one is false. The possibility premise is talking about METAPHYSICAL COHERENCE not epistemic knowledge. I sincerely do not know whether or not his conjecture is metaphysically coherent, so we must remain agnostic on premise one. He is treating premise one as though it means epistemically possible. Any logically coherent exists in a possible world and thus is possible. However, Robert maydoles proved that God is metaphysically coherent, thus premise one is true. The argument would only be circular if it was appealing to epistemic possibility, which is a blatant misunderstanding of Axiom S5.
FGB SAID:Therefore even if Maydole's argument proved that God exists with 100% certainty (which it doesn't) then it would be Maydole's argument ALONE that proved this. Plantinga's argument would add NOTHING AT ALL to that. That is why bringing external evidence for premise 2 is a complete waste of time. To make this more easy to understand think about this argument:
If the sky is blue the sky is blue.
The sky is blue
Therefore the sky is blue.
MY RESPONSE:Massivde confuion between epistemic and logical coherence. Straw man as well, I'm not saying that MAydole's proves that God exists, I'm using is as a supplement to prove that Plantinga's first premise is 100% true. In such a case the conclusion flows very nicely through Axiom S5. If you Leo want a realy good treatment of this argument you should read Maydole's 75 page essay defense in the Blackwell companion to natural theology. In fact when the argument was published in the secular magazine "Philo", the editor Quentin Smith said that the argument looks sound and that he doesn't have an answer to Maydole's argument.
FGB SAID:Now anyone sees that this argument is circular. And if I provide external evidence for premise 2 such as my observations of the weather then the argument above adds NOTHING AT ALL to my observations and therefore remains to be complete bullshit even if my external evidence proves that the sky is blue beyond even the smallest amount of doubt. In this case I can believe that the sky is blue but I can do so BASED ON MY OBSERVATIONS. Not based on the nonsense argument above.
MY RESPONSE:Again, he misunderstands what the argument is trying to prove.
I don't use this argument in discussions and debates because it is not very convincing. I believe 100% that the argument is sound, but unconvincing to the unbeliever.
If you didn't understand my response or FGB's response or my counter-response I think it is best we move on from the moral and ontological arguments. But, hey, if you feel up to it I'm ready to go!
Sincerely,
Paul
**** COMMENT DELETED DUE TO DOUBLE POSTING BUG ****
However, I might aswell use this space for some fact spreading
Q: What was the name of the first slave ship to America?
A: The Good Ship Jesus
Paul
It seems like our latest comments got removed from this site in their new update so I had to rewrite this comment and is therefor not identical to how it was originally.
YOU SAID:
"it is very good to see that you believe that intuition can prove things about objective reality."
MY RESPONSE:
What? I never said that. I believe that intuition can send us in different directions which at times might be correct, but I never said it was final proof of anything. One do not have to use intuition to understand that a belief in existence is different from a belief in God. Belief in existence is not a presumption like Gods existence, instead it is a logical necessity. It is meaningless to question wether existence can be trusted or not since every thought you have will be dependent on it anyways.
Also, there is a reason why the scientific method does not rely on intuition. Imagine if science had been based on human intuition instead of observable facts to begin with, there would be as many "objective" truths as there would be scientists. There would be no structure to anything and we would have made very little progress, if any.
If intuition was an accepted method for finding facts then it would also have profound implications on our law systems. It would suddenly open for the use of intuition when deciding if a person is guilty or not of a criminal act. It is not hard to imagine the devastating concequenses it would have.
YOU SAID:
"Very good leo! So, you agree that PBB exist?"
MY RESPONSE:
I have not gotten to that yet. I was first trying to show you that your definition or standard of it is wrong by inventing my own religion. It seems like I was correct as you have been unable to show that Christianity is any more properly basic than my toilet religion based on your own explanations.
1. You could not prove that Jesus' faculties were functioning or that his teachings were intellectually honest.
2. You could not prove that the so called religious experiences which 50% of Christians claim to have, are rooted in any kind of divinity.
If you do not have to suply proof for your religion, then I do not have to suply proof for mine. According to your standards Christianity is a basic belief so that makes my Toilet religion basic aswell, but since they are conflicting either your definition or standard is wrong or there is no such thing as a properly basic belief.
You are probably gonna reply to this by saying that my religion has a defeater since I blatantly made it up, but where is your proof that Christianity is not made up? Again, if you do not have to suply proof then I do not either. Actually I have quite good documentation that Christianity is in fact made up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paGZB_G7h0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbbrUXxc8bc&featur… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ZmsRUmuWU
YOU SAID:
"If this is true, then you have destoyed your own argument for the external world
"
MY RESPONSE:
Only if you are correct and I am wrong.
YOU SAID:
"If you didn't understand my response or FGB's response or my counter-response I think it is best we move on from the moral and ontological arguments."
MY RESPONSE:
I do understand what you are saying, I just don't agree. Something non-existing is less ultimate than something existing, therefor you will have to prove Gods existence first. For all we know Maydoles argument could be talking about existence itself, without evidence which rules out all other possibilities it is impossible to know.
Anyways, Fat German Bastards has been so kind and blessed us with a reply to your counter, while he expresses himself a bit different than how I would have done his logics seem correct never the less:
—————————————–
HE SAID:
"This would be descriptive morality."
YOU RESPONDED:
"Totally irrelevant."
HIS RESPONSE:
People need to understand the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic morality so they know what we are talking about. That is why it is relevant.
YOU SAID:
"1.He doesn't prove nor disprove objective moral values
2.I wasn't even using thi to defend OMV, I was using this to defend my epistemic view
of foundationalist."
HIS RESPONSE:
Dude it was merely added so that people understand the difference and know how to tell descriptive from intrinsic morality. Not everyone is a super intelligent philosophy expert like you !
YOU SAID:
"intrinsic value means by definition an "end within oneself"."
HIS RESPONSE:
Yes and my argument is that it is not plausible and counter intuitive to say that some value can end within itself. It is intuitive to say that something is efficient in regards to a desired outcome but saying that something is valuable in itself is absolutely counter intuitive. The non existence of intrinsic morality is intuitive, a starting assumption or you may as well call it "a properly basic belief".
YOU SAID:
"Again, this is denying our moral experience."
HIS RESPONSE:
No my friend. You are denying our logical experience. The non existence of goal independent value is a properly basic belief. A logical experience. If you guys can pull self evident truths out of your asses then so can I !
YOU SAID:
"We do know that God is coherent via Maydoles modal perfection argument:"
HIS RESPONSE:
Again even if Maydole proved God beyond doubt Plantinga's argument would remain circular.
YOU SAID:
"This is where FBG really messes up. His argument is sound given
premise one is true. The problem is, premise one is false. The possibility premise is
talking about METAPHYSICAL COHERENCE not epistemic knowledge."
HIS RESPONSE:
Exactly…and the same applys to Plantinga's argument. Even if the possibility premise was known to be true.
If the sky is blue the sky is blue.
The sky is blue
Therefore the sky is blue.
YOU SAID:
"Massivde confuion between epistemic and logical coherence. Straw man as well, I'm not saying that MAydole's proves that God exists, I'm using is as a supplement to prove that Plantinga's first premise is 100% true."
HIS RESPONSE:
Ouch ! The statements "God is logical" and "God exists" ARE FU****G IDENTICAL !!! When will you finally get it ? This is what Plantinga's whole argument is built upon !
—————————————-
Thanks for the discussion so far Paul! It's been most interesting.
Sincerely
-Leo
Well, Hello Leo! Sorry for not writing back sooner.
YOU SAID:Also, there is a reason why the scientific method does not rely on intuition. Imagine if science had been based on human intuition instead of observable facts to begin with, there would be as many "objective" truths as there would be scientists. There would be no structure to anything and we would have made very little progress, if any.
If intuition was an accepted method for finding facts then it would also have profound implications on our law systems. It would suddenly open for the use of intuition when deciding if a person is guilty or not of a criminal act. It is not hard to imagine the devastating concequenses it would have
MY RESPONSE:Fallacy of the strawman,Leo. You are attacking the wrong defintion of "inuitively obvious" that I do not hold.
Lets set the record straight.
Inuitively obvious is a belief that we know to be true apart from justification. For example, the existence of the external world is intuitively obvious. Mathematics is inuitively obvious. There is no way to prove mathematics, any attempt would begg the question, rather we know it is true just because of intuition. Intuition is not to be confused with opinion. Never. So, if you don't believe that beliefs can be justifiably inferred from intuition then you leave yourself with a self-contradiction. For you are using logic, a system based on intuitively obvious propositions. When I say it is intuitively obvious that say "Homophobia" or raping children is wrong, I mean that we both *experience* it. Think of every objection you gave against moral values. Now replace it with the words "the external world", or "scientific truths" or philosophical truths. I think our posting attests to the fact that every attempt to attack OMV has been falsified. You know it to be true leo, in the same way you know that 1+1=2. It may be more difficult to decipher at times, but there is no reason to be skeptical of our moral experience. At least, not any more than any other intuitively obvious belief.
The scientific does really on intuitively obvious beleifs,Leo
The belief in the external world is an intuitvely obvious belief and is a prerequisite to science. The idea that nature conforms to a pattern is an intuitively obvious belief. We have no justification for such beliefs,at least none that begg the question, to rpove these beliefs however only a fool denys these beliefs!
YOU SAID:I have not gotten to that yet. I was first trying to show you that your definition or standard of it is wrong by inventing my own religion. It seems like I was correct as you have been unable to show that Christianity is any more properly basic than my toilet religion based on your own explanations.
1. You could not prove that Jesus' faculties were functioning or that his teachings were intellectually honest.
MY RESPONSE:Totally irrelevant. If Christianity is properly basic belief, it follows that Jesus' cognitive faculties were functioning. But for either of us to prove either position independently would force us oth to begg the question.
YOU SAID:f you do not have to suply proof for your religion, then I do not have to suply proof for mine. According to your standards Christianity is a basic belief so that makes my Toilet religion basic aswell, but since they are conflicting either your definition or standard is wrong or there is no such thing as a properly basic belief.
MY RESPONSE:It is blatant dishonesty if you think your absurdities meet the criteria. You absurdities, by their very nature, have a defeater, and thus are self-refuting. Iook at my previous posts for arguments for the existence of PBB.
YOU SAID:You are probably gonna reply to this by saying that my religion has a defeater since I blatantly made it up, but where is your proof that Christianity is not made up? Again, if you do not have to suply proof then I do not either. Actually I have quite good documentation that Christianity is in fact made up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paGZB_G7h0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbbrUXxc8bc&featur…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ZmsRUmuWU
MY RESPONSE:Why do I have to prove Ch
Hi, Leo!
Just to make sure we don't get off track…
The moral argument goes like this
1.If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2.Objective moral values and duties exist.
=>God exists.
I don't want to focus on Christianity as being properly basic quite yet for I really don't like argument for Christianity until we are both theists.
Its like teaching a kid geometry before he can add. even if he gets the methods of geometry, it is meaningless if he can't add.
So, I like the topic but I think it is best to wait and talk about PBB in terms of objective moral values.
Heya Paul. ;D
YOU SAID:
"Inuitively obvious is a belief that we know to be true apart from justification."
MY RESPONSE:
This sounds wrong on so infinitely many levels. It is impossible to know if what you think intuitively is a fact as it is impossble to know something as objectively true without justification.
YOU SAID:
"For example, the existence of the external world is intuitively obvious. Mathematics is inuitively obvious."
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, the existence of the external world might seem obvious, but something intuitively obvious to us humans does not equal something necessarrily true. We know the external world is true to the extent it is possible because of justifications, like for instance the logical necessity for a belief in existence. Every thought we have depends on the belief in existence, so therefor it is meaningless to question it, we have to believe in it or else we have no fundament for our thoughts. This is a justifier which is possible to experience in the real world and we do not know of any alternatives to the real world.
Even if mathematics might seem intuitively obvious to some, it is not true because it's "obvious", but because it actually DO have justifiers. We know that 1+1 = 2 because we can experience it in the external world. We know for instance that one and one apple equals two apples and this is how we learned to count. Our real world experience is the fundament of mathematics. It is however true that experienced mathematicians use a lot of intuition when comming up with new theories, but they never say they know something is true without external justifiers. Let's take one of our greatest mathematicians of all time as an example, namely Albert Einstein. He used a lot of intuition when developing his theories of relativity, but it was also his intuition which resulted in what he later regarded as the biggest blunder of his career. He presumed that the universe was static and not expanding due to his intuition ( common sense ) and therefor he added a cosmological constant to his theories to make everything add up. It was not before the great astronomer Hubble discovered the red-shift in other galaxies that Einstein learned that the cosmological constant was a mistake as the universe was not static after all. So you see, even Einstein needed external justifiers to prove or disprove his theories and he was one of the greatest mathematicians ever, not some amateur. Today it is obvious that the universe is expanding simply because it has justifiers.
YOU SAID:
"The scientific does rely on intuitively obvious beleifs,Leo
"
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, but your definition of intuitively obvious is wrong as something which is obvious need atleast one justifier.
YOU SAID:
"It is blatant dishonesty if you think your absurdities meet the criteria. Your absurdities, by their very nature, have a defeater, and thus are self-refuting."
MY RESPONSE:
It is blatant dishonesty if you think the absurdities of Christianity meet the criteria. Your absurdities, by their very nature, have a defeater, and thus are self-refuting.
YOU SAID:
"Let me refute the existence of parallels with the poisen."
MY RESPONSE:
Your example is wrong as you would first have to prove that atleast one of the bottles contains water.
YOU SAID:
"Why do I have to prove Christianity on my view?"
MY RESPONSE:
Because you are the one who claim it is true, it is not an established scientific truth, therefor you have the burden of proof on your side.
YOU SAID:
"Again, if you want my response to any specific argument made, I am 100% ready to respond and would be glad to answer any of the documentaries points. Which ones were most convincing to you?"
MY RESPONSE:
I'm curious why you think Christianity is the original story. How do you explain all the parallels from greek mythology? ( Zeitgeist documentary )
YOU SAID:
"An actual infinite is not possible"
MY RESPONSE:
Please provide proof for this. This is not an established scientific fact. You just know it intuitively? :p
YOU SAID:
"2.Objective moral values and duties exist."
MY RESPONSE:
We do not know that. Please provide proof that the morals we experience are in fact objective in a cosmic sense. Again your intuition seems just as magical as your religion.
Sincerely
-Leo
Hello my ever-fighting Leo!
I think we might be on the verge of progress….just maybe
YOU SAID:This sounds wrong on so infinitely many levels. It is impossible to know if what you think intuitively is a fact as it is impossble to know something as objectively true without justification.
MY RESPONSE: Like I said before, the external world, science, and math are not justified by evidence. Look at science. Science presupposes logic, mathematics, and the external world, so any attempt to prove it would be circular reasoning. Although we can't justify it, I think we all can agree that science is real. You might say well "science works!". That presupposes the external world an experience all of which is a prerequisite to science. Take the external world. You say that the very fact that we experience it proves its real. Well, no, experience presupposes existence as itself, so to try to prove existence itself by experience beggs the question as well.
Take mathematics:
You say that our experience confirms mathematics. This is false because mathematics is based on our experience. You begg the question there as well.
You said "Believe in it or everything is falsified" and I say that that is a logical fallacy known as an appeal to consequence. Also, you require reason to justify your belief, however reason presupposes existence, hence you begg the question again!
Do you understand what intuitively obvious means now? Intuitively obvious, or PBB are Beliefs we accept without justification in the absence of defeaters. The latter should never be excluded.
There is a difference between common sense and intuitively obvious statements. Look at your example, Einstein blundered because he presupposed the staticity[not sure if that is a word
] of the universe. Such a belief has a defeater, thus it is not intuitively obvious. Also, I don't think people can experience a past-eternality of the universe. And such a view has now been falsified anyhow.
YOU SAID:Yes, but your definition of intuitively obvious is wrong as something which is obvious need atleast one justifier.
MY RESPONSE:The scientific method has no justification other than relaying on other intuitively obvious statements. So, it is wrong to say that the scientific method is supported by evidence as I have previously demonstrated.
I SAID:
"Let me refute the existence of parallels with the poison."
YOU SAID:
Your example is wrong as you would first have to prove that atleast one of the bottles contains water.
MY RESPONSE:You misunderstand my argument. IF, IF there is a bottle of water, the existence of other false claims doesn't discount the true belief. So, the point is that the existence of many counterfeits doesn't discount any of them as being potentially. So, we must look at each case. There might even be a name of a logical fallacy that this is a textbook example of, unfortunately I don't it remember at this time. Lets pretend this example fails…are you prepared to defend all of the parallels given?
YOU SAID:I'm curious why you think Christianity is the original story. How do you explain all the parallels from greek mythology? ( Zeitgeist documentary )
MY RESPONSE:There simply is no parallels. All of the Greek myths like Dionysus are to be read and understood in a different theological context. The consensus of ALL scholars is that there is no dying and rising messiah story that predates Christianity. Those who dare to say that there are talking about "Corn King Gods" based on the agriculture cycles, and are not to be understood in the same theological context. I'm not talking about conservative Christian scholars I'm talking about liberals and even radicals. So, if you wish to go against the consensus of NT scholars I'd be very interested to hear your arguments.
YOU SAID:Please provide proof for this. This is not an established scientific fact. You just know it intuitively? :p
MY RESPONSE:Why do you disapprove of anything other than science for proof? Any argument you give on behalf of your view cannot have a repeatable experiment. None of your arguments can fit your own criteria. Your moral crusade against the "Ignorant believers" cannot be justified by the scientific method. Your view is literally self-refuting and commits the fallacy of conflicting conditions.
Anyway…
If there is an actual infinite chain going infinitely backwards, it would take an infinite amount of time to get to the current point in the chain. However it is impossible to arrive at infinity. The impossibility to arrive at an infinite sequentially is a point stressed by your math teachers since 1st Grade. Even if I count forever I will never get to infinity. Thus, an actually infinite is an impossibility. There must be a finite number of justifications. Thus, we conclude that not all beliefs can be justified. Take a look at all of the beliefs we claim are the end of the chain. Can they be justified? As I've already demonstrated, they cannot. So, we use the 4 criteria I set out earlier to arrive at what beliefs are foundational beliefs. The existence of objective moral values passes through each criteria.
So, lets look at so far at all the objection you've made against premise two of the moral argument
1.Morality has changed over time
2.Other people experience different morality
3.I can prove absurdities are Properly basic.
4.Morality is just a feeling
I shall refute these using parallel numbers.
1.Does the fact that people view of the shape of the Earth has changed have any effect on what the objective truth is? Same for Objective morality
You dropped the argument.
2.Does the hallucinogenic person's different perception of the external world have any effect on whether X is objectively there?
You dropped this argument as well
3.I argued that your absurdities are self-refuting. You eventually dropped the point and said that Christianity had a defeater. I counter argued by saying that no real Scholar, radical or conservative, takes those parallels seriously. I think this point has been refuted as well.
4.To this I said our experience of the objective external world is just a subjective feeling until you give me evidence. Our undefeated experience is enough to justify a belief. You dropped this argument as well.
So, we justify the external world using 4 criteria
1.We can experience it
2.Others can experience it
3.Our cognitive faculties are functioning
4.There are no good reasons to doubt it
So, we conclude the external world is real. But, we'd be guilty of the fallacy of special pleading if you don't apply these criteria to other propositions. So, then I asked, "Do OMV pass the criteria?"
1.We experience it-Check
2.Others experience it-Check
3.Our cognitive faculties are functioning-Check
4.There is no defeater of them-Check
Thus, we are justified in believing objective moral values in the same way as we are justified in believing in the external world. Thus, we have very good reasons to regard premise two as valid.
1.If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.(You concede to this premise already)
2.Objecitive moral values and duties exist.(Properly basic belief)
3.Therefore, God exists.(logical conclusion)
Reflect honestly on this argument, Leo and you might be surprised at what good grounds it gives you to accept the existence of God.
God loves you so much, Leo that he sent his only son to die for you. I again encourage you to pick up a New Testament and read it through a different pair of glasses and ask yourself "Could this be true?". It will revolutionize your life just as it has for millions before you.
That be it for now, Mr.Odegaard!
Looking forward to your next response!
With hope,
Paul
And hello persistent Paul.
YOU SAID:
"I think we might be on the verge of progress….just maybe
"
MY RESPONSE:
Well, hehe. We are atleast discovering our most fundamental disagreements on how one should view the world. I'm not sure if we're getting any closer in agreement on anything, but atleast I've learned a lot about how certain fundamental theists think aswell as getting some good debating practice.
YOU SAID:
"Like I said before, the external world, science, and math are not justified by evidence. Look at science. Science presupposes logic, mathematics, and the external world"
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, so let's look at what logics, math and the external world really is. All living creatures use logics to some extent, either purely instinctical or as a mix between instinctual and cognitive reasoning. Logics in essence is our ability to react accurately to the external world, true logic is in other words dictated by the real world. Therefor logics do have justifiers because it is based on actual reality. Math is a part of logics and is also justified by applying it to for instance real world objects like bananas or toilets. We do not trust logics and math because of unjustified intuition, but because we can justify them by doing experiments in the real world and not just imagine it in our minds. Now hear out the rest I have to say before you reply to this.
You argue that since we use logics to justify the real world we are begging the question, and while this might in some sense be linguistically true, it does not logically apply to reality. You argue that since we can not use logics for our most basic beliefs we have to rely on something else, like unjustified intuition to account for the real world, but are you not a victim of your own reasoning? Are you not using logics (however flawed) to come to your conclusion regarding unjustified intuition? It is not possible to dodge justified logics any more than it is possible to dodge reality.
For why is reality justified? It is because we have no other alternatives. Reality is the fundament for everything, for every thought you have, therefor when you say that unjustified intuition is the only way we can trust logics you are actually using logics to come to this conclusion and therefor you too are a victim of "begging the question", it is simply impossible not to beg the question when it comes to logics and reality, but that does not make logics and the real world unjustified.
Anyways, let's for discussions sake argue that you are right. That unjustified intuition actually is an accurate method for discovering facts. Now how would you measure any objectiveness at all? Intuition is as varied as the variations in living creatures. If everything is to be based on intuition we would have no common ground for agreeing on anything, logics would become anarchistic. It does not matter if you call it obvious intuition, nothing in the whole world is obvious in itself. Obvious is a relative term which is relative to the perciever, what is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to me. Who is then to decide which one of us has the most accurate cognitive faculties? There would be no one to decide which one is more correct as that persons intuition could might aswell be different from both of ours anyways.
Humans are social beings, we need a common ground for communication, and objectivity is this common ground. If you base everything on unjustified intuition you are also making all of reality subjective which would make communication impossible, it would result in the extinction of our specie. And here we are actually back to the core of my message. When you claim that your religion is the objective truth you are in reality saying that nothing is objective and that makes it impossible to realise the full potential of empathy and communication.
YOU SAID:
"Look at your example, Einstein blundered because he presupposed the staticity[not sure if that is a word
] of the universe. Such a belief has a defeater, thus it is not intuitively obvious."
MY RESPONSE:
It has a defeater, but he was not aware of it before the discovery of red shifts in other galaxies. This is the very reason why one should never consider anything as the definite truth unless you have proof that pinpoints one specific explanation, and since we have no proven alternatives to the real world we have to base this explanation on real world manifestations. If you do not have proof which rules out all other possibilities then that is the real defeater.
YOU SAID:
"The consensus of ALL scholars is that there is no dying and rising messiah story that predates Christianity."
MY RESPONSE:
I am naive enough to think that you are not lying, so I'll choose to believe that this is something you truly believe. This is not what scholars are saying, they are saying that there are no reasons to think that Jesus as a person did not exist, but they are not at all agreeing that he truly was Gods son, born by a virgin and got ressurected. No serious scholar has ever stated that the miracles in the Bible are to be considered as facts. Are you really trying to argue that the story of Jesus predates the story of Horus?
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5b.htm
http://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/a-…
YOU SAID:
"Your moral crusade against the "Ignorant believers" cannot be justified by the scientific method."
MY RESPONSE:
My main intention is to keep religion subjective, making it purely spiritual. I hold no grudge against beliefs as long as they are considered as beliefs and not facts. Considering beliefs as facts is one of the main reasons for why there is so much suffering in our world, for this I have more than enough scientific proof.
YOU SAID:
"If there is an actual infinite chain going infinitely backwards, it would take an infinite amount of time to get to the current point in the chain. However it is impossible to arrive at infinity. The impossibility to arrive at an infinite sequentially is a point stressed by your math teachers since 1st Grade. Even if I count forever I will never get to infinity. Thus, an actually infinite is an impossibility."
MY RESPONSE:
This does nothing to disprove infinity. Not being able to get from point A to point B does not necessarily mean that point B does not exist. If you are unable to get to the edge of our universe it does not equal the non-existence of that edge. There are many different kinds of infinites, for instance you got the possibility of infinite time, infinite length, infinite mass and infinite dimensions. The only infinite we are vagely sure about is the non-existence of infinite mass in relation to the observable universe, but that does not mean that any kind of infinity is not possible, but infinite mass has not really been disproven either. Our universe could be part of another external existence which could consist of infinite mass. For all we know time could be looping and infinite in that respect. We simply do not know as infinity seems too abstract for our simple human minds to grasp. I agree with Richard Dawkins when he says: "The universe is queerer than we can suppose".
YOU SAID ( 4 times ):
"You dropped the argument"
MY RESPONSE:
No, I absolutely did not. I just went on to argue against the fundaments on which you base your arguments. If I disprove these fundaments then I disprove all your arguments.
YOU SAID:
"Does the fact that people view of the shape of the Earth has changed have any effect on what the objective truth is? Same for Objective morality"
MY RESPONSE:
What??? Crazy analogy. You cannot compare a known fact to an unknown fact because an unknown fact is something we do not yet know. Objective morality is an unknown fact and therefor might not even be a fact. Quite simple really.
YOU SAID:
"God loves you so much, Leo that he sent his only son to die for you."
MY RESPONSE:
I'll use something you tought me: Straw man argument! :p The spaghetti monster loves you so much that if you just submit your mind and heart to him it will revolutionize your life just as much as it has revolutionized my life.
I'll rather submit to the awesomeness of the universe and take it for what it really is than submit to something which holds no ground in reality. I know you only have good intentions, but I need to find my own subjective truth which fits with my perception of the world. If I adopted your subjective truth it would make me into a very depressive human being as that is not the truth which is right for me, even if it might be right for you.
BTW, Fat German Bastard has a reply to your earlier comment
——————————————————————————–
YOU SAID
"An actual infinite is not possible, ergo there must be a stopping point to the moral chain.How is this proposition "intuitively obvious"? It Can not be a properly basic if it has a defeater."
HIS RESPONSE:
No you misunderstood what I am saying. I am saying that since neither an infinite chain nor intrinsic value is a plausible explanation for morality the conclusion of moral nihilism is the one to be drawn: There are no moral truths. This is logical and self evident given the following two facts:
1. An infinite chain of moral claims does not establish morality.
2. The idea that something can be in itself good or bad independently from it's real life affect is counter intuitive and self evidently false.
YOU SAID:
"How is the nonexistence of goal independent values properly basic?"
HIS RESPONSE:
Wait a second… You Christians always tell me that self evident properly basic facts can not and don't need to be logically justified. Now you are asking me to justify a self evident properly basic fact… What's up with that ? Again: The idea that something can have value is considered independently from it's real life affect is self evidently false. I recognize that intuitively. It's self evident and does not require further justification. Your intuition to the contrary is self evidently wrong. You are ignoring our self evident recognition of the aforementioned fact.
YOU SAID:
"I said that morality is properly basic because we have experiential grounds to base it on. If it is "pulling something out of our ass" to use experience then the external world just got pulled out of your ass. In the same way we experience anything else we experience objective moral values. Someone who denies an undefeated experiential belief is on the same level as the solipsist."
HIS RESPONSE:
But your intuition is wrong. I know – because mine implies the opposite ! And I don't need to justify it because it's properly basic ! You can't seriously tell me that you believe a value can exist independently from a desired outcome. If that's what you believe you are obviously not properly ordered and need to be taken care of by the unholy atheist inquisition ! Every properly ordered human being intuitively recognizes that a value without a goal (that is an objective intrinsic value) is counter intuitive. If they don't see this they are witches and need to be burned at the stake.
YOU SAID:
"So you agree that asserting God's coherence is equal to asserting his existence?"
HIS RESPONSE:
Yes !
YOU SAID:
"So, If I can prove God is coherent then I have proven God's existence."
HIS RESPONSE:
Once you have proven God is coherent God's existence is ALREADY proven and therefore does not need further justification. Likewise if you prove that the sky is blue saying that: "Since the sky is blue it therefore must be blue" is a mere waste of time and adds nothing at all to our recognition. It would merely derive from the known to the equally known. This is at least by some definitions of the term circular reasoning.
Again: Maydole's argument is like saying "The sky is blue"
Now after that Platninga jumps in and says: "Wow, guess what I just discovered: If the sky is blue then that means the sky is blue… Hallelujah !!!"
So looking at that who of the two would have proven that the sky is blue ? Would Maydole have proven it and would Plantinga have added anything to it by merely saying that if Maydole is right then Maydole is right ???
Plantinga's argument merely states that if God exists, God exists. It adds nothing at all to the justification for God's existence.
YOU SAID:
"I'm so glad you see that if God is coherent he exists. So, it is my job to prove God is coherent. This is accomplished by Maydole's argument. If I prove God is coherent, then I have proven God exists."
HIS RESPONSE:
Yes, and thus Plantinga's argument becomes obsolete. Even if you manage to prove that God exists saying that God exists therefore God exists does nothing at all to increase the amount of evidence you have at hand. Plantinga merely repeats the conclusion that God exists without giving an argument for that himself. His argument adds nothing at all. Look… if I said I have a great argument for atheism and it goes like this: "If God does not exist then God does not exist. God does not exist. Therefore God does not exist". Wouldn't you say that even if I managed to prove that God does not exist using some other argument or external evidence the argument above would do NOTHING AT ALL to increase the amount of evidence further ?? It would simply derive from the known to the equally known.
But since the non existence of intrinsic morality is a self evident fact we already have discovered a contradiction in the concept of God: Intrinsic value is self evidently non existant. God by definition is self evidently good. Therefore there is a logical contradiction in the concept of God. Therefore God can not possibly exist Q.e.d.
———————————————————————————
With even more hope
-Leo
Mister Leo!
Leo, please tell me if you ever get a webcam or some other device that will allow us to discuss live. In just a half of an hour we could probably cover 6 or 7 posts. We could deal with the questions directly. I think it would be incredible if we could do this live.
So, please tell me if you ever get a webcam or what not…
What did Leo have to say today?
YOU SAID:Yes, so let's look at what logics, math and the external world really is. All living creatures use logics to some extent, either purely instinctical or as a mix between instinctual and cognitive reasoning. Logics in essence is our ability to react accurately to the external world, true logic is in other words dictated by the real world. Therefor logics do have justifiers because it is based on actual reality. Math is a part of logics and is also justified by applying it to for instance real world objects like bananas or toilets. We do not trust logics and math because of unjustified intuition, but because we can justify them by doing experiments in the real world and not just imagine it in our minds. Now hear out the rest I have to say before you reply to this.
MY RESPONSE:You keep on making a grammatical mistake that is bugging me
the word "logic" should almost never take the plural with an "S" at the end. If you want to use it in the plural you would say "Reasoning" instead of "logics".
Anyway
Experience and reasoning are mutually dependant. Our logical intuitition comes from experience. E.G. we know the law of non-contradiction is true because we know in our experience two contradictory truths cannot both be true at the same time and in the same manner. Now, you really on logic to prove the external world. The probelm is you must have already accepted the existence of the external world to make a logical argument. Thus, you literally go no where when you use circular reasoning.
Also, if circular reasoning is valid, then your only objection against Plantinga's ontological argument is false. So, God exists! yay!
Again. mathematics is attained through experience, so you must already believe in the external world to believe in mathematics. And in order to prove mathematics you must already believe in the external world. Thus, your argument is circular and gets you no where.
What do you mean that logical circularity has no bearing on actuality?
Logic is a system of language that symbolizes the external world. Logic is the external world expressed in symbols! Do you really want to say an argument is valid if it commits an informal fallacy? Leo, I think this is where intellectual honesty is very important
Just because there is no alternative[what we would expect if reality didn't exist
]
doesn't mean that your view isn't true. This is again, an informal fallacy known as the appeal to consequence. THe fact is it is impossible to justify foundational beliefs. But isn't it self-evident that they are true? Of course! That is what we mean by intuitively obvious. Intuitively obvious statements are not statements of opinion, they are statements of objective reality! We all know the laws of logic and mathematics, the external world, and moral truths are objective! Unless we have a good reason to doubt our intuitions there is no reason to regard them as false! Again, you are attacking the wrong definition of intuitive. I don't mean "something we just feel is true in the sense we might feel that I got a good grade on a test, we mean something that anyone who has functioning cognitive faculties can come to realize if they truly reflect on it! That is the definition of intuitively obvious.
YOU SAID:It has a defeater, but he was not aware of it before the discovery of red shifts in other galaxies. This is the very reason why one should never consider anything as the definite truth unless you have proof that pinpoints one specific explanation, and since we have no proven alternatives to the real world we have to base this explanation on real world manifestations. If you do not have proof which rules out all other possibilities then that is the real defeater.
MY RESPONSE:I'm not saying that any of our intuitively obvious beliefs are true,Leo. We really don't know if the external world is real. However, we should assume that they do anyhow. Plus, after honest reflection, many people dind't think the universe was static. Look at all the world religions teaching about a dynamic universe. This immediately debunks the idea that the "staticity" of the universe(still not sure if that is a word) is inutuively obvious. This is just a fallacy of relevance.
YOU SAID:I am naive enough to think that you are not lying, so I'll choose to believe that this is something you truly believe. This is not what scholars are saying, they are saying that there are no reasons to think that Jesus as a person did not exist, but they are not at all agreeing that he truly was Gods son, born by a virgin and got ressurected. No serious scholar has ever stated that the miracles in the Bible are to be considered as facts. Are you really trying to argue that the story of Jesus predates the story of Horus?
MY RESPONSE:I never claimed that the consensus of historians believed in the miracles. Straw man and a red herring fallacy. Just so you won't just take my word for it, my source is T.N.D menenger. I honestly don't remember how to spell his name
The Horus parallel is to understood in a completely different theological context! A lot of the supposed parallels are complete lies. For example, some say Horus was born on december 25. Who cares? No we wasn't and niether was Jesus! That is just a arbitrary date to celebrate his birth. Jesus was most likely born in the spring because he was born during pass over, a jewish holiday celebrated at a different time of year! No serious scholar thinks that the story of Jesus was construed from earlier myths. The ancient Jewish people weren't even in direct contact with any of these men. Not to mention the very un-jewish messianic fulfillments in Jesus' life teachings and death.
Any more arguments you'd like to give to Christianity are welcomed…But thus far, I don't think we've seen any good defeaters of Christianity.
YOU SAID:My main intention is to keep religion subjective, making it purely spiritual. I hold no grudge against beliefs as long as they are considered as beliefs and not facts. Considering beliefs as facts is one of the main reasons for why there is so much suffering in our world, for this I have more than enough scientific proof.
MY RESPONSE:You missed the point of my argument. I said you yourself don't believe science can arrive alone at truth. This is evident because you've come to the conclusion that religious violence is immoral without the scientific method. Can you run the claim "Religious violence is immoral" through the scientific method? I think not Leo
My argument was that using science alone for your principle of justification is very closed minded and ultimately self-refuting.
YOU SAID:This does nothing to disprove infinity. Not being able to get from point A to point B does not necessarily mean that point B does not exist. If you are unable to get to the edge of our universe it does not equal the non-existence of that edge. There are many different kinds of infinites, for instance you got the possibility of infinite time, infinite length, infinite mass and infinite dimensions
MY RESPONSE:Wrong. Leibniz's law of the indiscernibility of identicles. If A necessarily has a sequential events leading one way, it necessarily has the same sequential events leading to the other. However, because it is impossible to traverse an infinite(you cannot count to infinity) then it shows that you necessarily cannot arrive at infinity. But if they are necessarily co-dependent, if one is falsified it follows necessarily that the other one is necessarily false. You try to give examples of actual infinites, however, such examples are confusions between potential and actual infinites.
YOU SAID:What??? Crazy analogy. You cannot compare a known fact to an unknown fact because an unknown fact is something we do not yet know. Objective morality is an unknown fact and therefor might not even be a fact. Quite simple really.
MY RESPONSE:You said that changes in morality over time undermine changes in morality. I said that progress in morality lends it credibility. As we learn we adjust our views in the same way that our changing beliefs in the external world have no relevance to truths objectivity. The analogy remains.
I SAID:
"You dropped the argument"
YOU SAID:
No, I absolutely did not. I just went on to argue against the fundaments on which you base your arguments. If I disprove these fundaments then I disprove all your arguments.
MY RESPONSE:When someone says "dropped" in a debate or conversation, they mean that you stopped using the argument. After seeing my refutations, do you wish to use any of those arguments again?
i said:
"God loves you so much, Leo that he sent his only son to die for you."
YOU SAID:
I'll use something you tought me: Straw man argument! :p The spaghetti monster loves you so much that if you just submit your mind and heart to him it will revolutionize your life just as much as it has revolutionized my life.
MY RESPONSE:What? A straw man argument is a logical fallacy where as debater #1 offers position X, debater #2 argues against position Y and claims that position X is false. How is this a straw-man 0_o?
_________________________________________________________________________
FGB SAID:No you misunderstood what I am saying. I am saying that since neither an infinite chain nor intrinsic value is a plausible explanation for morality the conclusion of moral nihilism is the one to be drawn: There are no moral truths. This is logical and self evident given the following two facts:
1. An infinite chain of moral claims does not establish morality.
2. The idea that something can be in itself good or bad independently from it's real life affect is counter intuitive and self evidently false.
MY RESPONSE:Au contraire pierre.
I've argued that moral nihilism is not reasonable to hold because it denys our experience, thus the moral nihilist is on the same level as the solipsist. Thus, I said that intrinsic moral worth is the only possible way to stop an infinite regress. And because objective moral values are self-evident because of our experience it follows that a being with intrinsic worth is necessary because it is a necessary condition for objective moral values to exist, and because they exist, it follows that a being with intrinsic moral worth exists.
FGB SAID:Wait a second… You Christians always tell me that self evident properly basic facts can not and don't need to be logically justified. Now you are asking me to justify a self evident properly basic fact… What's up with that ?
MY RESPONSE:True…the problem is that your belief has a defeater, thus, it is not Properly basic.
FGB SAID:Once you have proven God is coherent God's existence is ALREADY proven and therefore does not need further justification. Likewise if you prove that the sky is blue saying that: "Since the sky is blue it therefore must be blue" is a mere waste of time and adds nothing at all to our recognition. It would merely derive from the known to the equally known. This is at least by some definitions of the term circular reasoning.
MY RESPONSE:I'm glad you agree. So, if I can succefully argue for premise one, then it is equal to succesfully arguing for the conclusion because if the sky is blue, the sky is blue! That is exactly what MAydole's argument does. It supplys premises for the conclusion for premise one. Which, as you said, is the same as the conclusion that God exists.
FGB SAID:Maydole's argument is like saying "The sky is blue
MY RESPONSE:Not exactly. That is the conclusion of Maydole's argument. Maydole's in an attempt to justify P1 of Plantinga. As you said, if MAydole succeeds in proving it is possible that God exists, it follows that God in fact exists. So, FGB, what is wrong with the premises of MAydole's argument?
FGB SAID:Yes, and thus Plantinga's argument becomes obsolete. Even if you manage to prove that God exists saying that God exists therefore God exists does nothing at all to increase the amount of evidence you have at hand. Plantinga merely repeats the conclusion that God exists without giving an argument for that himself. His argument adds nothing at all. Look… if I said I have a great argument for atheism and it goes like this: "If God does not exist then God does not exist. God does not exist. Therefore God does not exist". Wouldn't you say that even if I managed to prove that God does not exist using some other argument or external evidence the argument above would do NOTHING AT ALL to increase the amount of evidence further ?? It would simply derive from the known to the equally known.
MY RESPONSE:No, Plantinga's argument just highlights exactly how we move from possible necessity to actual necessity. His argument rests on P1, which is the premise in question. If it is true, it is like the two premises to the clasic syllogolism
1.All men are mortal
2.Socrates is mortal
Those two premises are the same thing as the conclusion. In the same way, Plantinga's P1 is the conclusion of the argument. So the question then becomes "are the premises justified". And that is the question! So, why do you reject Maydole's premises leading to his conclusion?
Keep it coming FGB! This is really good
Sincerely,
Paul
Lets make a little summary for why I think Objective moral values exist…
THE PROBLEM:IT is impossible to justify the core fundamentals of our reality. Any attempt to do so would begg the question. Also, there cannot be an infinite regress of justification because not only would it be logically impossible to prove anything, but it would be practically impossible to prove anything.
But we intuitively know that things like mathematics, science, moral values, and the external world are objectively real. But, lets look at the external world. Surely we agree that the solipsist is foolish in denying the external world. But why?
1.Because we experience it
2.Others experience it
3.We have functioning cognitive faculties
4.one of the most important, there is no reason to doubt the belief
So, whew, we can be justified in believing in the external world and we have just halted the infinite regress. But, if we can apply this criteria to one experiential belief we must be able to apply it to others as well. If we don't we are guilty of the fallacy of special pleading. So, do moral values meet the criteria?
1.We experience it-You bet. Put yourself in a moral situation right now. IS brutally killing a child a morally neutral act?
2.Can others experience-Sure, everyone with cognitive faculties can experience it.
3.We have functioning cognitive faculties-Yup!
4.There are no defeaters-Well, I think I successfully refuted your evolution of morality argument, the difference in morality argument, and the rest. So, there is no reason to regard moral values as false.
Bingo! Objective moral values exist!
Any argument you try to give against moral values I could give a parallel to the external world. We aren't solipsists, why should we be moral nihilists?
So, Premise two is true.
1.If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.(already admit this)
2.Objective moral values exist.(we aren't skeptical about other areas of experience, why not be skeptical of our moral experience?)
3.Therefore, God exists.
High regards,
Paul
One last thought:
You think that religious violence in wrong don't you?
You think things like peace are really good. The problem is, Leo, your position is as meaningless as my likings and disliking of certain foods. There is no base on which to argue that such acts are really wrong. You might say, "well, maybe not on moral grounds, but maybe on practical grounds".
The problem is, Leo, you are denying your experience. When you think of the catholic church burning an innocent man at the stake do you honestly think this is a morally neutral act?
Of course not.
This will be my catch phrase…
"We aren't solipsists, why should we be moral nihilists?"
Sincerely,
Paul
Paul
YOU SAID:
"Leo, please tell me if you ever get a webcam or some other device that will allow us to discuss live. In just a half of an hour we could probably cover 6 or 7 posts."
MY RESPONSE:
I do not have a functioning webcam, but I do got MSN and Skype. I'll mail my accounts to your youtube mail if you'd like. =)
YOU SAID:
"the word "logic" should almost never take the plural with an "S" at the end. If you want to use it in the plural you would say "Reasoning" instead of "logics"."
MY RESPONSE:
A-ha, thanks! If you see some other mistakes of language I tend to do then please inform me. One of my main reasons for doing discussions like these is to improve my English languange. =)
YOU SAID:
"The probelm is you must have already accepted the existence of the external world to make a logical argument. Thus, you literally go no where when you use circular reasoning. "
MY RESPONSE:
This is where I believe our main difference of perception lays. I really do not see the difference between logic ( without an s! ) and objective intuition, objective intuition is just a synonym for logic. Is not objective intuition logical? Are you not presuming the existence of the external world simply by reasoning for its existence?
YOU SAID:
"What do you mean that logical circularity has no bearing on actuality?"
MY RESPONSE:
I mean that when it comes to proving existence it is impossible not to make a circular argument for it, therefor it is meaningless to question it. It does not matter if you call your reason for believing in it objective intuition, because that too is part of your logic and therefor the circularity is identical.
I do understand that this might seem like too big of a dilemma to accept, but it really is not if you just stop and reflect a little. It is impossible to know for sure that existence really exist beyond any doubt ( this is another reason for my agnosticism ), but we have to accept it or else reality would turn absurd. This does not mean that circular arguments can be used to find the truth, no, it simply mean that the truth about existence might be impossible to know for sure.
Objective intuition originates from experience, logic originates from experience. The concept of objective intuition is based on reason, the concept of logic is based on reason. Logic and objective intution are both components of reason and does therefor not make a difference in the question of existence, they both make the question circular in the exact same way.
YOU SAID:
"Also, if circular reasoning is valid, then your only objection against Plantinga's ontological argument is false. So, God exists! yay!"
MY RESPONSE:
No, circular reasoning is not valid for discovering definite truths, but we have to accept the existence of existence in order to have a container for our reasoning, even if existence might be a lie. Even if we knew that existence was a lie there would be nothing we could do about it. Existence would still be existence relative to us even if it did not exist. If everything is a lie then all the parts that make up this lie is still true relative to that lie.
YOU SAID:
"I'm not saying that any of our intuitively obvious beliefs are true,Leo. We really don't know if the external world is real. However, we should assume that they do anyhow."
MY RESPONSE:
We actually agree on something!
However, assuming that a container exist or not does nothing to the real properties of this container. The content of the container is still the same relative to the containers existence. Facts are the properties of the universe no matter if the universe really exist or not. If the universe does not exist then facts are merely a property of its non-existence. Therefor logic relative to existence is _JUSTIFIED_, even if existence itself would be different from how we presume it is.
YOU SAID:
"after honest reflection, many people dind't think the universe was static. Look at all the world religions teaching about a dynamic universe. This immediately debunks the idea that the "staticity" of the universe(still not sure if that is a word) is inutuively obvious. This is just a fallacy of relevance."
MY RESPONSE:
Teachings can not debunk something if they are not based on justified objective truths. Except from one religion we agree that religion generally does not hold objective truths, so then world religions can not bring defeaters. Einstein did not find the truth just by being honest about his reflections, but also because of scientific proof. Without facts it is impossible to reflect honestly about reality.
YOU SAID:
"But we intuitively know that things like mathematics, science, moral values, and the external world are objectively real."
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, and objective intuition and logics are in fact identical, they are both based on experiences in the external world. Both cognitive and instinctual reasoning are based on real world experiences and they both result in logicobjective intuition. Renaming logic to objective intuition does nothing to change the fact that the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim and the fact that logic, science and math is indeed justified. If you claim that your hair is pink, that there is a toilet orbiting Jupiter or that Christianity is true it is your job to prove that and not my job to disprove those claims, anything else would result in unspoken absurdities.
I'll say it again just to be perfectly clear: We both agree that we need to trust existence no matter if it really exist or not, we both use logic to come to this conclusion, therefor logic is either justified or both of us are wrong.
Fat German Bastard has this to say about your response:
——————————————————————————
YOU SAID:
"I've argued that moral nihilism is not reasonable to hold because it denys our experience"
HIS RESPONSE:
And I'm saying that moral intrinsicism is not reasonable to hold because it denys our properly basic, self evident logical experience. You are ignoring a self evident properly basic fact here. Ha ha ha beating you with your own weapons !
YOU SAID:
"True…the problem is that your belief has a defeater, thus, it is not Properly basic."
HIS RESPONSE:
No ! YOUR belief has a defeater and thus it is not properly basic. Again: Your intuition must be wrong because mine is right. I know it…intuitively ! That means I don't have to justify it. I just recognize it because it's self evident and obvious ! You can't deny that we all need to base our knowledge on properly basic beliefs and here is mine ! Now swallow it already !
YOU SAID:
"I'm glad you agree. So, if I can succefully argue for premise one, then it is equal to succesfully arguing for the conclusion because if the sky is blue, the sky is blue! That is exactly what MAydole's argument does."
HIS RESPONSE:
Yes, that is what Maydole's argument does and I am not attacking Maydole's argument with what I said so far (apart from the fact that my logical experience of moral nihilism is a properly basic self evident defeater for Maydole's argument of course). Here we are talking about PLANTINGA's argument. Plantinga's argument only says that the sky is blue if the sky is blue and therefore adds nothing to our knowledge even if Maydole's argument wasn't refuted by my 100% bullet proof self evident and properly basic recognition that morality does not exist and therefore God does not exist.
HE SAID:
"Maydole's argument is like saying "The sky is blue"
YOU RESPONDED:
"Not exactly. That is the conclusion of Maydole's argument. Maydole's in an attempt to justify P1 of Plantinga."
HIS RESPONSE:
Maydole's argument tries to justify both Plantinga's premise and his conclusion because they are identical. So even if Maydole proved God's existence Platninga's argument wouldn't add to this at all and therefore Plantinga's argument taken for itself is absolutely meaningless.
YOU SAID:
"As you said, if MAydole succeeds in proving it is possible that God exists, it follows that God in fact exists. So, FGB, what is wrong with the premises of MAydole's argument?"
HIS RESPONSE:
Well it's self evidently false because of our properly basic self evident logical experience of the non existence of moral value. Of course there are also other problems with the argument but I got better things to waste my time with knowing that you are not going to accept even a 100% bullet proof refutation anyway. That's what I hate so much about 95% of Christians: That they are immune to logic. Christianity is like a logical firewall: Ignore any thought that threatens your belief even if it requires to ignore your own reasoning. So why would I try to explain it to you ? It would be like trying to ping a computer with a firewall preventing a ping. I had stopped talking to you by now if it wasn't so amusing. If you would at least admit that Plantinga's argument does not prove God's existence unless God's existence is already proven then I might take you serious enough to tell you what's wrong with Maydole's argument… But right now I think it would be a waste of time.
YOU SAID:
"No, Plantinga's argument just highlights exactly how we move from possible necessity to actual necessity."
HIS RESPONSE:
In this case why didn't he simply stick to that and end his argument here. I.e. he could have said:
Whatever is necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly false is not possibly necessary.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is necessary.
If he had said this I would have been the last to criticize him. But no…he had to draw the conclusion that God exists if God exists and this is simply ridiculous. Obviously he wanted to confuse people with insufficient logical knowledge and in your case it seems to have worked. That's like me saying: If atheism is true then atheism is true and then insist that I have just done anything to support my claim that atheism is true.
——————————————————————————
It seems to me that this dispute about logic and objective intuition is the root of most, if not all of our differences. I think it will be meaningless to continue debating anything without some sort of agreement on this matter, even if that agreement would be agreeing to disagree. We will just keep on misunderstanding one another if we do not take care of this matter first.
Looking forward to nesting up the matter of logic and reality with you! ;D
-Sincerely
-Leo
It is kind of hard to respond, Leo, because I agree with a lot of what you said! However, now I think it is time for you to see the implications of it all.
YOU SAID:I do not have a functioning webcam, but I do got MSN and Skype. I'll mail my accounts to your youtube mail if you'd like. =)
MY RESPONSE:ARG! Ask Santa for one…
YOU SAID:YOU SAID:
"The probelm is you must have already accepted the existence of the external world to make a logical argument. Thus, you literally go no where when you use circular reasoning. "
YOU SAID:
This is where I believe our main difference of perception lays. I really do not see the difference between logic ( without an s! ) and objective intuition, objective intuition is just a synonym for logic. Is not objective intuition logical? Are you not presuming the existence of the external world simply by reasoning for its existence?
MY RESPNSE:To the contrary my friend! You hit the nail on the head! Id something is inutitive we should just believe it and never question it. Not even say "I don't know" because this leads to self-contradictions, but answer "Yes, it exists". We must say this even if it doesn't. Does it exist? Honestly I have no idea. But, just as we are rational in accepting the external world, we are rational to accept objective moral values. In fact, we couldn't be more sure than suggesting that it is intuitive! This is because all other beliefs-science, math, ect., come from foundational beliefs! Thus, you have as much evidence of objective moral values as you do that the earth is round! I think we should accept premise two of my argument. If you say "We shouldn't accept it because it cannot be proven!" I will say "We can't accept anything because nothing can be proven. We must just start with the fundamentals and debate everything else. But there is no questioning the fundamentals. But even if it all is false…so what? What is the difference between the perfect illusion, and reality?
YOU SAID:mean that when it comes to proving existence it is impossible not to make a circular argument for it, therefor it is meaningless to question it. It does not matter if you call your reason for believing in it objective intuition, because that too is part of your logic and therefor the circularity is identical.
MY RESPONSE:Exactly! We have no justification, but fundamental beliefs we must accept. They are the given. This is exactly what I've been saying!
YOU SAID:We actually agree on something!
However, assuming that a container exist or not does nothing to the real properties of this container. The content of the container is still the same relative to the containers existence. Facts are the properties of the universe no matter if the universe really exist or not. If the universe does not exist then facts are merely a property of its non-existence. Therefor logic relative to existence is _JUSTIFIED_, even if existence itself would be different from how we presume it is.
MY RESPONSE:again, you're right! We can't prove the container actually has bearing on what is really there? But should we all become solipsists? No! In the same way we should not doubt our moral experience and become moral nihilists.
YOU SAID:Yes, and objective intuition and logics are in fact identical, they are both based on experiences in the external world. Both cognitive and instinctual reasoning are based on real world experiences and they both result in logicobjective intuition. Renaming logic to objective intuition does nothing to change the fact that the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim and the fact that logic, science and math is indeed justified.
MY RESPONSE:You got it boy-O! But should we become solipsists? Or, are we justified without evidence? If so, then the burden of proof isn't on us. If it is, we must become solipsists. But if we become solipsists my argument is meaningless, but that is circular because I presupposed logic to make such an accusation, but such an accusation presupposes what you presuppose…arg…my head hurts….do you see the absurdities that arise if the burden of proof is on us?
YOU SAID:'ll say it again just to be perfectly clear: We both agree that we need to trust existence no matter if it really exist or not, we both use logic to come to this conclusion, therefor logic is either justified or both of us are wrong.
MY RESPONSE: Exactly! We shouldn't deny our experience, even if it turns out it is false. We agree! So, what can we conclude? Well, objective moral values exist! And we shouldn't deny them even if they are false!
This is definitely my favorite argument because it always leads to really interesting discussion when they deny P2 of the argument.
So, follow the conclusion…
1.If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.(You already admit this)
2.Objective moral values exist(We shouldn't deny our experience even if it is false)
=>God exists!
Follow the logic, Leo.
I don't have the time to respond to FGB. Hopefully I'll post a response before you read this.
Sincerely,
Paul
Response to FGB
FGB SAID:And I'm saying that moral intrinsicism is not reasonable to hold because it denys our properly basic, self evident logical experience. You are ignoring a self evident properly basic fact here. Ha ha ha beating you with your own weapons !
MY RESPONSE:You deny our foundational moral experience. You argue from logical grounds that are not foundational. You try to say that moral values lead to an infinite regress which I said isn't necessary if we have a stop to the infinite regress. It's know its not a self-contradiction because our experience affirms its not. Unless you can show a logical incoherence in a being with intrinsic worth(Both of us are just asserting things, you say infinite regress, I say a being with intrinsic worth. The problem is, my solution allows us to accept our experience and yours doesn't. It would be circular of us both to say that a being with intrinsic worth is possible or impossible right now) then I am rational in accepting my experience and not steep to the level of the solipsist and deny my experience.
you failed to beat me at my own game…ha ha ha ha ha!
YOU SAID:No ! YOUR belief has a defeater and thus it is not properly basic. Again: Your intuition must be wrong because mine is right. I know it…intuitively ! That means I don't have to justify it. I just recognize it because it's self evident and obvious ! You can't deny that we all need to base our knowledge on properly basic beliefs and here is mine ! Now swallow it already !
MY RESPONSE:The very fact that I can attempt to give an argument to the contrary proves that your argument isn't self-evident. However, can you give a moral argument against morality? No, you'd be appealing to a different variety of experience. We clearly apprehend objective moral values, however, I don't clearly aprehend that moral values necessarily lead to an infinite regress.
YOU SAID:es, that is what Maydole's argument does and I am not attacking Maydole's argument with what I said so far (apart from the fact that my logical experience of moral nihilism is a properly basic self evident defeater for Maydole's argument of course). Here we are talking about PLANTINGA's argument. Plantinga's argument only says that the sky is blue if the sky is blue and therefore adds nothing to our knowledge even if Maydole's argument wasn't refuted by my 100% bullet proof self evident and properly basic recognition that morality does not exist and therefore God does not exist.
MY RESPONSE:Well, if we can properly accept premise one, using your example "the sky is blue" then it follows logically and the argument is valid.
1.If God exists, then God exists.
2.God exists.
3.Therefore, God exists.
The question is, is P1 valid. And I gave an argument for the premise. If it is valid then the argument is valid. Maydole's argument is an attempt to justify premise one just like I might justify premise one of the famous syllogism by saying that Socrates had all the characteristics of being a man. So, my question to you is, "what is wrong with my justification for premise one?"
If it is true, then duh! Of course the argument works as you've pointed out.
YOU SAID:Well it's self evidently false because of our properly basic self evident logical experience of the non existence of moral value. Of course there are also other problems with the argument but I got better things to waste my time with knowing that you are not going to accept even a 100% bullet proof refutation anyway. That's what I hate so much about 95% of Christians: That they are immune to logic. Christianity is like a logical firewall: Ignore any thought that threatens your belief even if it requires to ignore your own reasoning. So why would I try to explain it to you ? It would be like trying to ping a computer with a firewall preventing a ping. I had stopped talking to you by now if it wasn't so amusing. If you would at least admit that Plantinga's argument does not prove God's existence unless God's existence is already proven then I might take you serious enough to tell you what's wrong with Maydole's argument… But right now I think it would be a waste of time.
MY RESPONSE:Ummm….no arguments there. Just a lot of Ad Hominem fallacies and bare assertions.
YOU SAID:In this case why didn't he simply stick to that and end his argument here. I.e. he could have said:
Whatever is necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly false is not possibly necessary.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is necessary.
If he had said this I would have been the last to criticize him. But no…he had to draw the conclusion that God exists if God exists and this is simply ridiculous. Obviously he wanted to confuse people with insufficient logical knowledge and in your case it seems to have worked. That's like me saying: If atheism is true then atheism is true and then insist that I have just done anything to support my claim that atheism is true
MY RESPONSE:The problem in your argument is that premise 1 is wrong! Don't you see?
If Plantinga's P1 is correct then it is a valid argument. So the question is, "Is there proper justification for premise one?"
___________________________________
I love talking about the deep questions of ultimate reality
it's kind of fun…
I look forward to yours and FGB's response as always…and especially to my latest post.
Sincerely,
Paul
Response to FGB
FGB SAID:And I'm saying that moral intrinsicism is not reasonable to hold because it denys our properly basic, self evident logical experience. You are ignoring a self evident properly basic fact here. Ha ha ha beating you with your own weapons !
MY RESPONSE:You deny our foundational moral experience. You argue from logical grounds that are not foundational. You try to say that moral values lead to an infinite regress which I said isn't necessary if we have a stop to the infinite regress. It's know its not a self-contradiction because our experience affirms its not. Unless you can show a logical incoherence in a being with intrinsic worth(Both of us are just asserting things, you say infinite regress, I say a being with intrinsic worth. The problem is, my solution allows us to accept our experience and yours doesn't. It would be circular of us both to say that a being with intrinsic worth is possible or impossible right now) then I am rational in accepting my experience and not steep to the level of the solipsist and deny my experience.
you failed to beat me at my own game…ha ha ha ha ha!
YOU SAID:No ! YOUR belief has a defeater and thus it is not properly basic. Again: Your intuition must be wrong because mine is right. I know it…intuitively ! That means I don't have to justify it. I just recognize it because it's self evident and obvious ! You can't deny that we all need to base our knowledge on properly basic beliefs and here is mine ! Now swallow it already !
MY RESPONSE:The very fact that I can attempt to give an argument to the contrary proves that your argument isn't self-evident. However, can you give a moral argument against morality? No, you'd be appealing to a different variety of experience. We clearly apprehend objective moral values, however, I don't clearly aprehend that moral values necessarily lead to an infinite regress.
YOU SAID:es, that is what Maydole's argument does and I am not attacking Maydole's argument with what I said so far (apart from the fact that my logical experience of moral nihilism is a properly basic self evident defeater for Maydole's argument of course). Here we are talking about PLANTINGA's argument. Plantinga's argument only says that the sky is blue if the sky is blue and therefore adds nothing to our knowledge even if Maydole's argument wasn't refuted by my 100% bullet proof self evident and properly basic recognition that morality does not exist and therefore God does not exist.
MY RESPONSE:Well, if we can properly accept premise one, using your example "the sky is blue" then it follows logically and the argument is valid.
1.If God exists, then God exists.
2.God exists.
3.Therefore, God exists.
The question is, is P1 valid. And I gave an argument for the premise. If it is valid then the argument is valid. Maydole's argument is an attempt to justify premise one just like I might justify premise one of the famous syllogism by saying that Socrates had all the characteristics of being a man. So, my question to you is, "what is wrong with my justification for premise one?"
If it is true, then duh! Of course the argument works as you've pointed out.
YOU SAID:Well it's self evidently false because of our properly basic self evident logical experience of the non existence of moral value. Of course there are also other problems with the argument but I got better things to waste my time with knowing that you are not going to accept even a 100% bullet proof refutation anyway. That's what I hate so much about 95% of Christians: That they are immune to logic. Christianity is like a logical firewall: Ignore any thought that threatens your belief even if it requires to ignore your own reasoning. So why would I try to explain it to you ? It would be like trying to ping a computer with a firewall preventing a ping. I had stopped talking to you by now if it wasn't so amusing. If you would at least admit that Plantinga's argument does not prove God's existence unless God's existence is already proven then I might take you serious enough to tell you what's wrong with Maydole's argument… But right now I think it would be a waste of time.
MY RESPONSE:Ummm….no arguments there. Just a lot of Ad Hominem fallacies and bare assertions.
YOU SAID:In this case why didn't he simply stick to that and end his argument here. I.e. he could have said:
Whatever is necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly false is not possibly necessary.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is not possibly false.
Therefore whatever is possibly necessary is necessary.
If he had said this I would have been the last to criticize him. But no…he had to draw the conclusion that God exists if God exists and this is simply ridiculous. Obviously he wanted to confuse people with insufficient logical knowledge and in your case it seems to have worked. That's like me saying: If atheism is true then atheism is true and then insist that I have just done anything to support my claim that atheism is true
MY RESPONSE:He could leave at that. But why? He has an argument on his hand if he places God in their. But the above argument is sound. Plantinga just said that one could argue for God on those grounds.
But the question is, do we have proper justification for our premises? And, I don't think there is proper justification for Atheism. But that is the question isn't it?
And no, if you actually read Plantinga's articles he clearly spelled out what his intent was….
___________________________________
I love talking about the deep questions of ultimate reality
it's kind of fun…
I look forward to yours and FGB's response as always…and especially to my latest post.
Sincerely,
Paul
Hola Leo!
This is getting good!
YOU SAID:There is only one fundamental belief that we have to accept and that is the acceptance of existence. This is what we base our reason on and reason is all we've got when dealing with philosophy. Now look very closely at this sentence: "We need to accept existence or else everything will turn absurd". What does this really mean? It means that the belief in existence is to be regarded as a FACT, even though we know it might be wrong.
MY RESPONSE:Well, no, Leo. Science, mathematics and all inutiively obvious cannot be justified. You could just as well be haalucinating. How do you know that other minds exist? I could just be a computer typing a response. All of the above beliefs are rational and we would be foolish to deny them. So, any inuitive belief without a defeater is warranted.
and I agree, all foundational beliefs must be regarded as a fact even if reality doesn't in fact exist.
YOU SAID:So what is your motive for over-justifying existence? I think the reason is to be able to make objective moral values into a FACT aswell. The truth is that we do not know for sure if moral values are objective. Morals are objective in the sense that we can all experience morals, but we do NOT KNOW that morals are cosmically objective, they MIGHT be or they MIGHT NOT be. Something which MIGHT BE is NOT YET a FACT.
MY RESPONSE:My motive is that they are true and we all know it. Think about why we accept all the beliefs I just mentioned.
1.We experience it
2.It is important
3.There is no reason to doubt it
4.Our cognitive faculties are functioning.
Now, we are special pleading if you don't use the same criteria to justifiy other beliefs. Because, if we can apply a criteria to prove one belief, what is so wrong with this criteria that we cannot justify other beliefs?
YOU SAID:If you really claim that objective moral values exist then you need to present PROOF of their cosmic objectivity.
MY RESPONSE:As I've said many times, WE EXPERIENCE IT!
I'm going to use a line from star wars
"Search your feelings luke!"
Honestly ask yourself, is killing someone on a state just a subjective opinion? If someone camed an brutally raped and killed your parents or close family, would that just be a meaningless subjective illusion? Is your want for peace just a subjective illusion? Is what Bin Laden did in the U.S. a morally subjective illusion?
What is your answer?
NO! of course not! We experience a realm of objective moral values. Do you, Leo odegaard sincerely lack the experience of heartbreak when you see a starving Jew who was killed in the holocaust? We experience objective moral values. There is no more reason to doubt them, than the external world.
YOU SAID:You should not be so afraid of accepting that objective moral values is a belief, because you can still believe in Christianity, you can still keep your God and Jesus close to your heart and have a very rich spiritual life. It just mean that you must also let other people be right and rational in having their own belief, even when that belief is not Christianity.
YOU SAID:You agree that the real truth about existence might not be possible to know, this is what you base your whole reasoning on, so why are we not allowed to believe in any existential explanation we want? You are in fact saying no to this by claiming that Christianity is the absolute objective truth, and thus you are contradicting yourself.
MY RESPONSE:Truth is objective. We must try our best to find that objective truth. Any denial of objective truth is self-refuting.
There is nothing better than a discussion of the ultimate questions of existence and reality!
With as much deep respect,
Paul
Yo yo yo Paul!
It's nice to see we are getting closer and closer in pinpointing where our fundamental beliefs go seperate paths. Because of what you just said in your latest posts I believe I am able to pinpoint exactly where your logic goes wrong.
YOU SAID:
"Exactly! We have no justification, but fundamental beliefs we must accept."
MY RESPONSE:
There is only one fundamental belief that we have to accept and that is the acceptance of existence. This is what we base our reason on and reason is all we've got when dealing with philosophy. Now look very closely at this sentence: "We need to accept existence or else everything will turn absurd". What does this really mean? It means that the belief in existence is to be regarded as a FACT, even though we know it might be wrong.
OK, so now we agree that existence is a fact. We have come to the conclusion that existence must be regarded as a fact merely by relying on our cognitive reasoning so why bring in any form of intuition to justify it further? By bringing in objective intuition (or anything else that is an extention of our reasoning for that matter) you are OVER-justifying existence and this is EXACTLY the point where your reasoning goes from right to wrong.
So what is your motive for over-justifying existence? I think the reason is to be able to make objective moral values into a FACT aswell, because this is the fundament of your belief system. The truth is that we do not know for sure if moral values are objective. Morals are objective in the sense that we can all experience morals, but we do NOT KNOW that morals are cosmically objective, they MIGHT be or they MIGHT NOT be. Something which MIGHT BE is NOT YET a FACT.
If you really claim that objective moral values exist then you need to present PROOF of their cosmic objectivity. You have no proof, you are just claiming that you know through your intuition. It is fine to base your beliefs on intuition, we all do, but beliefs are not FACTS. Therefor your belief in objective moral values is a subjective belief. Again, it is perfectly fine to hold subjective beliefs as long as you do not claim them to be objective. Why? Because if you pretend to hold the truth when there is a possibility that this truth is not objective it equivocates to the possibility for that truth being false. And just to be perfectly clear: I do not claim that objective moral values do not exist. I am simply claiming that we do not know.
My intuition tell me that objective moral values are not cosmically objective, your intuition tell you that they are. They are both BELIEFS and we are both entitled to hold them. Why is this so hard to agree to? You are in essence telling me that I am not entitled to hold my belief in agnosticism, because Christianity is a fact.
I know you good enough now to give a good guess on what your response will be like. I think you will respond by saying: "Objective moral values have no defeaters!", but that is not how we define facts. Facts are not facts simply because they have no defeaters. If this was true then we have to regard statements like "There are intelligent aliens living in outer space!" as facts aswell. There might be aliens in outer space, but until we have supporting proof ( like them visiting us in their spaceship ) we can not regard it as a proven fact. When a statement has no known defeaters it only qualifies as a belief or possibility and not as knowledge or a proven fact.
You should not be so afraid of accepting that objective moral values is a belief, because you can still believe in Christianity, you can still keep your God and Jesus close to your heart and have a very rich spiritual life. It just mean that you must also let other people be right and rational in having their own belief, even when that belief is not Christianity.
You agree that the real truth about existence might not be possible to know, this is what you base your whole reasoning on, so why are we not allowed to rationally believe in any existential explanation we want? You are in fact saying no to this by claiming that Christianity is the absolute objective truth, and thus you are contradicting yourself.
With deep respect
-Leo
Good morning Paul!
I feel like you did not properly read my last post.. Your logic makes no sense.
YOU SAID:
"Well, no, Leo. Science, mathematics and all inutiively obvious cannot be justified. All of the above beliefs are rational and we would be foolish to deny them."
MY RESPONSE:
Science and mathematics are based on the FACT that existence exist, you just admitted that existence is justified and therefor it has to be regarded as a fact. I even showed you how to justify the external world without using intuition. When we put correct math to the test in the justified external world we observe that they fit, therefor math is justified without bringing in intuition. Math is just an explanation of the physical attributes of our universe, nothing more. There is nothing miraculous about mathematics relative to existence. We can trust our experience of mathematics because of calculated and properly tested cognitive logic, not because of intuition.
-When we experience morals it proves nothing besides that morals exist ( in some form or another ).
-When we experience existence it proves nothing besides that existence exist ( in some form or another ).
-When we experience math it proves nothing besides that math exist ( in some form or another ).
When you say that moral values are objective in a cosmical sense you are in reality talking about the origins of morals or in other words: their true nature and not the experience of morals through feelings. Let's try the same analogy with math. We experience math, does this mean we experience where it originated from or its true nature? No, ofcourse not. We look at the nature of math from a human perspective and the origin of math is just as mysterious as the origin of the singularity that most likely gave birth to our current universe.
-When you eat a banana you do not automaticly know which tree it was plucked from.
-When you drive a car you do not automaticly know where the car was made.
-When you fall in love you do not automaticly know why.
I know you intuitively think morals have objective value, but I intuitively disagree and there is nothing you can do about that if you do not have any proof supporting your claim.
YOU SAID:
"You could just as well be haalucinating. How do you know that other minds exist? I could just be a computer typing a response."
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, you could be a computer, I could be hallucinating and there is the possiblity that there are no other minds. I do however think it is very unlikely, but what we simply think should not be regarded as facts.
When you say "Science, mathematics and all intuitively obvious cannot be justified" you are actually confessing that your reasoning is not justified. Why would I even want to debate a person who does not really think that what he is saying holds up?
YOU SAID:
"So, any inuitive belief without a defeater is warranted."
MY RESPONSE:
Intuitive belief is warranted you say? Then why is the existence of intelligent life in outer space not a fact? I intuitively believe in intelligent aliens. Please show me your defeaters..
YOU SAID:
"Do you, Leo odegaard sincerely lack the experience of heartbreak when you see a starving Jew who was killed in the holocaust?"
MY RESPONSE:
No, I don't, but I believe I experience moral values in relation to our darwinianly evolved and socially fitted spiecie and not due to some external or cosmical constant. This is not to demean morals in any way. It is just what I believe the truth is and to me it does not make existence any less likely.
We both agree that we experience morals, but we disagree on the nature of them and since neither of us are able to present conclusive proof for our beliefs they have to be regarded as mere opinions and not facts.
YOU SAID:
"Truth is objective. We must try our best to find that objective truth. Any denial of objective truth is self-refuting."
MY RESPONSE:
Yes, truth is objective, but what if the truth is that the truth is unknowable? We don't know that and therefor it is logically incoherent to say that it is a fact that the ultimate truth is knowable.
Fat German Bastard has this reply to you and I see that he is using your kind of reasoning in hope to be able to come through to you:
————————————————————–
YOU SAID:
"You deny our foundational moral experience. You argue from logical grounds that are not foundational."
HIS RESPONSE:
No…my intuition is that value can not exist independently from a goal. This is self evident. Also I do not have any moral experience according to which my desires and preferences are valuable in themselves without my subjective valuation.
I do not see why you insist on your intuition yet don't accept me insisting on mine. However, I will keep doing that.
YOU SAID:
"Unless you can show a logical incoherence in a being with intrinsic worth(Both of us are just asserting things"
HIS RESPONSE:
No ! I am saying it's self evident and properly basic. You can not ask me to justify a self evident properly basic fact. If I asked you to justify what you call "moral experience" you would deny this request because you'd say it's self evident. And thus I do the same: I recognize that intrinsic value is self evidently incoherent. This is my intuition. It does not require justification. End of the story.
YOU SAID:
"It would be circular of us both to say that a being with intrinsic worth is possible or impossible right now) then I am rational in accepting my experience and not steep to the level of the solipsist and deny my experience."
HIS RESPONSE:
I don't have that experience. My intuition is that values do not exist independently from goals. This is self evident and does not require justification. You are right when you say that we can't both hold a contrary belief and call it self evident. Therefore you have to give up yours because mine is right. LOL
YOU SAID:
"The very fact that I can attempt to give an argument to the contrary proves that your argument isn't self-evident."
HIS RESPONSE:
Ha ha ha !! Are you kidding me ? All you have said in response to my self evident truth claim is that you find the opposite self evident. If that refutes my point it refutes yours just as much and then neither you can insist that your point is self evident nor can I. But you keep doing it and so will I.
YOU SAID:
"However, can you give a moral argument against morality? No, you'd be appealing to a different variety of experience. We clearly apprehend objective moral values, however, I don't clearly aprehend that moral values necessarily lead to an infinite regress."
HIS RESPONSE:
I am not arguing that they lead to an infinite regress. I am arguing that it is not coherent for a value to exist independently from a goal. I deny the concept of intrinsicism. I do that using intuition. It is a self evident fact. We clearly do not comprehend objective moral values. The only thing I comprehend are my feelings and desires and subjective goals. I do not comprehend that they correspond to a deeper truth. However, I do comprehend that value can not exist independently from a subjective goal or preference. This is self evident, intuitive and deep down our heart we all know it. If you don't then that's because you are not properly ordered. Every properly ordered being recognizes that value can not exist independently from a goal intuitively. It's self evident.
YOU SAID:
Well, if we can properly accept premise one, using your example "the sky is blue" then it follows logically and the argument is valid.
HIS RESPONSE:
No ! Once we have accepted premise 1 the argument is obsolete since premise 1 and the conclusion are identical.
YOU SAID:
"1.If God exists, then God exists.
2.God exists.
3.Therefore, God exists.
The question is, is P1 valid."
HIS RESPONSE:
Oh come on dude ! You can't be that stupid ! I have told you the problem is that the argument above ads nothing to the recognition that God exists. Even if it is true that God exists the argument above does not make us any more knowledgeable.
YOU SAID:
"Ummm….no arguments there. Just a lot of Ad Hominem fallacies and bare assertions."
HIS RESPONSE:
"No ! It's called intuition ! Not assertion ! Ask your buddy WL Craig about it ! Intuition is a method of reliably recognizing truth. This is not an assertion ! Isn't it funny that intuition is a reliable way of gaining knowledge whenever Christian use it but immediately turns an assumption as soon as an atheist uses it ?"
YOU SAID:
"The problem in your argument is that premise 1 is wrong! Don't you see?If Plantinga's P1 is correct then it is a valid argument. So the question is, "Is there proper justification for premise one?" "
HIS RESPONSE:
Valid but not sound. It derives from the known to the equally known. It has no independent truth value at all. Again: Why did Plantinga not just stick to an explanation of S5 rather than make an argument with a conclusion out of it ? It makes no sense !
————————————————————–
I recommend that you re-read my previous comment as I do not think you properly understood it. You clearly do not understand the implications of regarding existence as a fact through logical cognitive reasoning. You do not seem to grasp that objective intuition is just a misleading synonym for logic and a misplaced extention of reason. You think there is more to objective intuition than there really is and you invent it because you think reason is unjustified, yet you use the exact same unjustified reason to invent objective intuition, making your argument circular and suicidal. It does not get clearer than this: You are using unjustified logic to justify logic which is already justified.
Since I've pretty much said all what is possible to say regarding this matter it is pointless to continue without comming to some sort of agreement. So either we must agree or just agree to disagree and stop our discussion there.
Sincerely
-Leo
Hola Mistah Leo!
I'm just going to ask to ignore my last comment and I'm going to re-respond to your older post.
YOU SAID:There is only one fundamental belief that we have to accept and that is the acceptance of existence. This is what we base our reason on and reason is all we've got when dealing with philosophy. Now look very closely at this sentence: "We need to accept existence or else everything will turn absurd". What does this really mean? It means that the belief in existence is to be regarded as a FACT, even though we know it might be wrong.
MY RESPONSE:I pretty much agree. However, we must not accept on intellectually honest grounds, but on practical grounds. For example, I wouldn't say to you, Leo, "Believe in God or there is a chance you will burn in hell!(Evil laugh)"
Sure, there is practical grounds for believing in God, but does that mean it is true? No.
So, I would say that our true foundation for existence as a foundational belief is our experience of the external world. We experience it. Simple as that.
YOU SAID:OK, so now we agree that existence is a fact. We have come to the conclusion that existence must be regarded as a fact merely by relying on our cognitive reasoning so why bring in any form of intuition to justify it further?
MY RESPONSE:I think we must consider the crucial distinction I mentioned in my last post. We accept because we experience it. We assume it as a fact for practical reasons, but in reality it is the fact that it is inuition that we accept it. Do you understand?
YOU SAID:The truth is that we do not know for sure if moral values are objective. Morals are objective in the sense that we can all experience morals, but we do NOT KNOW that morals are cosmically objective, they MIGHT be or they MIGHT NOT be. Something which MIGHT BE is NOT YET a FACT.
MY RESPONSE:Well, not exactly. We accept the external world as a fact because of inuition as exemplified from our experience, so, if we have an experience criterion for one belief, why special plead an exclude our moral experience.
YOU SAID: If you really claim that objective moral values exist then you need to present PROOF of their cosmic objectivity. You have no proof, you are just claiming that you know through your intuition. It is fine to base your beliefs on intuition, we all do, but beliefs are not FACTS.
MY RESPONSE:Well, I just don't see that as true. If we are using logic instead of practicality we can't really say the external world is a brute fact. Again, I agree we should accept in anyway. But we must ask ourselves, "what is the criteria from which I based my justification?". And of course that criterion was our experience. So, again, I steal the phrase from star wars, "Search your feelings Luke!"
Do you believe raping a child is a morally neutral act? Do you believe it is just a subjective illusion?
Later on you will try to explain this away through evolution, I will handle this objection in a few minutes. If you answered yes, and if my counter argument concerning the apparent evolution defeater, morality meets the criterion of experience. So, it is a misplaced burden of proof to suggest that I must offer proof of morality. In the same why there is no way to get outside of our senses to prove the external world exists there is no way to get outside of our moral experience and prove they exist.
YOU SAID:Facts are not facts simply because they have no defeaters. If this was true then we have to regard statements like "There are intelligent aliens living in outer space!" as facts aswell. There might be aliens in outer space, but until we have supporting proof ( like them visiting us in their spaceship ) we can not regard it as a proven fact. When a statement has no known defeaters it only qualifies as a belief or possibility and not as knowledge or a proven fact.
MY RESPONSE:Well no, you are misusing the criteria of :lack of defeaters", such a criterion is only to be used to measure the adequacy of experiential beliefs. For example, there is no reason to doubt our experience of the external world, so, we are rational in accepting the existence of the external world.
Okay, I think a lot of this message can be apllied to counter objections in your following post. Now, I shall deal with anything that my above comments didn't adequately respond to.
YOU SAID:When you say that moral values are objective in a cosmical sense you are in reality talking about the origins of morals or in other words: their true nature and not the experience of morals through feelings. Let's try the same analogy with math.
MY RESPONSE:I think you are making a category mistake. Let it be known that there is a distinction between knowing where X originated and knowing if X actually exists. Premise one of the argument argues that objective morality can only exist if God exists and premise two aregues that moral values actually exist.
YOU SAID:When you say "Science, mathematics and all intuitively obvious cannot be justified" you are actually confessing that your reasoning is not justified. Why would I even want to debate a person who does not really think that what he is saying holds up?
MY RESPONSE:There is a difference between justification and warrant. I don't think reason is justifiable(any attempt is circular) however we are warranted in believing it. Thus, I think rationality holds up.
I SAID:
"Do you, Leo odegaard sincerely lack the experience of heartbreak when you see a starving Jew who was killed in the holocaust?"
YOU SAID:
No, I don't, but I believe I experience moral values in relation to our darwinianly evolved and socially fitted spiecie and not due to some external or cosmical constant. This is not to demean morals in any way. It is just what I believe the truth is and to me it does not make existence any less likely.
MY RESPONSE:Exactly Leo! You experience the cosmic significance. So, you are literally denying your experience when you are denying moral values. Why deny your experience. Remember, any argument you give against the existence of moral values I could give a parallel against the existence of the external world. So, what argument do you give to deny your experience? You say, "A-ha! Evolution undermines moral values. Moral values were just built in for survival value!"
My response is simple. Our sense perceptions have survival value, does that render them defeated? No.
Our sense perceptions evolved. Does that invalidate the external world? No. The very definition of objective moral values forces this argument out the window. Objective moral values, by definition, are independant of peoples opinions of them.
YOU SAID:Yes, truth is objective, but what if the truth is that the truth is unknowable? We don't know that and therefor it is logically incoherent to say that it is a fact that the ultimate truth is knowable.
MY RESPONSE:There is definitelly some semantics problems in our communication. Anyway, such a proposition is self-defeating because if no truth can be known, it follows that that statement itself shouldn't have been able to be known! Anyway.
Well, I admit that my latest response to FGB was bad. Lets see if I can salvage my arguments…
__________________________________________________________________________-
FGB SAID:No…my intuition is that value can not exist independently from a goal. This is self evident. Also I do not have any moral experience according to which my desires and preferences are valuable in themselves without my subjective valuation.
I do not see why you insist on your intuition yet don't accept me insisting on mine. However, I will keep doing that.
MY RESPONSE:I don't accept your "intuition" because to be a warranted properly basic belief it must not have a defeater. I believe that your belief does have a defeater. To have intrinsic worth is simply to mean that you are not valuable to anything higher to yourself. That is all. We clearly experience moral values so it follows that "intrinsicism" is true.
YOU SAID:No ! I am saying it's self evident and properly basic. You can not ask me to justify a self evident properly basic fact. If I asked you to justify what you call "moral experience" you would deny this request because you'd say it's self evident. And thus I do the same: I recognize that intrinsic value is self evidently incoherent. This is my intuition. It does not require justification. End of the story.
MY RESPONSE:If it's not self-evident to me then it does not meet all the criteria of being properly basic. IT is one thing to say that I think something is true and is another to say that something is proerlyu basic. One of the criteria of a properly basic belief is the ability for any person with functioning cognitive faculties to experience it. The mere fact that I don't see it intuitively obvious means that your belief is not a properly basic belief.
YOU SAID:Ha ha ha !! Are you kidding me ? All you have said in response to my self evident truth claim is that you find the opposite self evident. If that refutes my point it refutes yours just as much and then neither you can insist that your point is self evident nor can I. But you keep doing it and so will I.
MY RESPONSE:I don't share your humor in laughing at other peoples arguments. I guess truth is just a game to you.
Anyway, Because all people with functioning cognitive faculties cannot experience it, it doesn't meet the criteria of a properly basic belief. You are commiting a strawman.
FGB SAID:No ! Once we have accepted premise 1 the argument is obsolete since premise 1 and the conclusion are identical.
MY RESPONSE:You don't understand. How is premise one obsoulete if it is true? The question is, "is premise one true?"
I offered premises leading to a conclusion for premise one. So, unless you pla n on refuting those arguments premise true. and if it is possible that God exists it follows that God exists. In the same way someone might offer premises in favor of the premise "Socrates is mortal" in the following argument.
1.If socrates is mortal then socrates in mortal.
2.Socrates is mortal.
3.Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
So, yes the argument s sound. In order to object to it you must disagree with the premises leading to the conclusion of one of the premises. I phrased that awkwardly, but do you understand? The question is, "Is Premise one justified?" If it is only a complet moron wouldn't agree with the argument because P! and the conclusion are the same thing!
FGB SAID:Oh come on dude ! You can't be that stupid ! I have told you the problem is that the argument above ads nothing to the recognition that God exists. Even if it is true that God exists the argument above does not make us any more knowledgeable.
MY RESPONSE:No, the argument only demonstrates that possible necessity equals actual necessity. Now, will you PLEASE respond to my argument for premise one. Which of course if true, is basicly the same as the conclusion. In the same way the statements, "Every man is mortal" and, "socrates is a man" is the same thing as saying that socrates is mortal. So PLEASE!!!!! What is wrong with my justification for premise
FGB SAID:Why did Plantinga not just stick to an explanation of S5 rather than make an argument with a conclusion out of it ? It makes no sense !
MY RESPONSE:Why not put God in their? Hey, it means that if one can prove it is possible that God exists, it follows that God does exist.
_______________________________________________________
Leo, I think we saw a lot of misrepresentations ad ridicule from FGB, not much more.
Looking forward to your ever-waited responses!
Paul
I just read the blog entry and it is so true!
organized religion is nothing more than a stark example of how society's have grown to control each otehrs thoughts and realisations and not do much
i can say this- coming from a country which has so many religions celebrated and yet so little faith in mankind, with all the communal violence and hatred!
I grew up in a millitary family, with my folks from different religions. I didnt know this until i was like 18 and always believed they were from the same background!
How does this matter one may ask.
It did because suddenly i realized that two people only need love to share and religion aint important.
Being in the army me and my lile brother grew up celebrating each organized manifestation of society's faith. Gurudwara, mosque, church, temple- everything.
Yet i never found any divine light or divine intervention.
Somehow when a difference happened in my life -good or bad it was actions by people, who are real, who i know are around me and not just some random thoughts!
How the world was created is physics.
Its been proved time and over again that its pure science that created this earth and life probably will come up elsewhere too.
So we really need to quit making this whole larger than life manifestation of something that doesnt exist and live a life with ourselves. Each one of us was created alone- that was how the original plan worked- the social contract was entered when evolution took a genetic turn and power struggle became an inherent gene. There cannot be a super power who knows what our affairs are and is actually interested in meddling in them!
The indian mythology and the stories like ramayana and mahabharat are said to be written by the thinkers at that time knowing that mankind will face questions related to themselves in the future! whether or not this could have happened i dont know- but what i know is none of the indian texts(vedas,upanishds,gita etc) talk about a higher manifestation. They talk about dutys as the foremost ground of a man's life and how a balance can be achieved. The distortion by organized religion has only devalued life to the extent that men feel disoriented if they dont ascribe to a particular faith!
I am a believer- believer of love, faith, the amazing human mind and its capabilities:)
Cheers!
M
Thank you very much for sharing your story and thoughts Megha.
I wholeheartedly agree. Organized religion is in reality imprisoned spirituality. We all need to find our own subjective truth or philosophy, without it it is impossible to become balanced, harmonious and live with thy neighbour in peace. I believe that there is a truth for each and one of us and it is only ourselves which may be able to find and experience it. I think the challenge for us human beings is to accept this and not impose one specific ultimate truth upon others which does not necessarily share that truth. This is one of the main reasons why I think indoctrinating children and keeping them from choosing their own philosophy should be illegal.
Cheeers!
-Leo
Yo Paul, glad to see you back at it! I was getting worried that something might had happened to you.
YOU SAID:
"I think we must consider the crucial distinction I mentioned in my last post. We accept because we experience it. We assume it as a fact for practical reasons, but in reality it is the fact that it is inuition that we accept it. Do you understand?"
MY RESPONSE:
I'm not sure if it is possible to understand what you just said there, because it does not seem to make logical sense. Hehe. So, do you consider existence the truth because of intuition or not? If not, then why bring in intuition at all? If yes, then you have to explain me this before I go further: Is intuition based on reason or is reason based on intuition?
YOU SAID:
"We accept the external world as a fact because of inuition as exemplified from our experience, so, if we have an experience criterion for one belief, why special plead an exclude our moral experience."
MY RESPONSE:
Special pleed? I do not experience that objective moral values exist and either does the majority of human beings. Now what the majority of people believe is hardly evidence of something being true, but it does tell us something about our instincts and who's more "normal" than others if that is what you mean by functioning cognitive faculties. I'm sorry, but instincts and intuition cannot be used to prove anything, it can only be used to decide upon what to believe.
YOU SAID:
"Search your feelings Luke!"
MY RESPONSE:
Well, this is what people do and the answer is that our feelings are as different and subjective as the very individual you ask.
YOU SAID:
"So, it is a misplaced burden of proof to suggest that I must offer proof of morality. In the same why there is no way to get outside of our senses to prove the external world exists there is no way to get outside of our moral experience and prove they exist."
MY RESPONSE:
But I am not asking for proof of morality, I am asking of proof for its objectiveness. We can experience existence, but that does not mean that we automaticly know the origin of it or its true nature. How do you not see this? It is so very straight forward..
YOU SAID:
"Well no, you are misusing the criteria of :lack of defeaters", such a criterion is only to be used to measure the adequacy of experiential beliefs."
MY RESPONSE:
Well halleluja, I just had an alien experience. I just spoke to one of these Aliens and he assured me that they do indeed exist, so I guess it is an objective fact then. Nice! ;D I do ofcourse not need to present proof of this, because Christians do not need to present proof of their religious experiences.
YOU SAID:
"I don't think reason is justifiable(any attempt is circular) however we are warranted in believing it. Thus, I think rationality holds up."
MY RESPONSE:
Reason is justified because it is everything we've got. It does not matter if its circular when we do not have any other options. Anything you say will be based on your reason and therefor it does not matter if you come up with intuition or whatever, because its all based on your reasoning. Every argument you make is therefor circular. Either reason is justified or it is not justified, there is no middle ground.
YOU SAID:
"You experience the cosmic significance. So, you are literally denying your experience when you are denying moral values. Why deny your experience. So, what argument do you give to deny your experience? You say, "A-ha! Evolution undermines moral values. Moral values were just built in for survival value!"
MY RESPONSE:
What? You are the one misinterpreting your experience, not me. The cosmic significance you are talking about is the social contract given to our specie through evolution. Feelings are the results of a random process. I do not believe in an external meaning of morals, they only have meaning relative to our human specie and its chance of survival. I have science on my side while you have pure statements on yours. This does not mean that I do not consider morals important, on the contrary, morals are what bring meaning to our lives, but that is just because we are a social specie and not because they have an external value or is valuable in itself. How many times must FGB and I explain this? ;P
YOU SAID:
"I think you are making a category mistake. Let it be known that there is a distinction between knowing where X originated and knowing if X actually exists. Premise one of the argument argues that objective morality can only exist if God exists and premise two aregues that moral values actually exist."
MY RESPONSE:
lol, no, you are the one making the category mistake! It does not matter what some argument argues when it comes to experiencing morals. You do not experience morals because of some argument, but because of your feelings. You may come to believe where morals are comming from through an argument, but that has nothing to do with how you experience it. We both agree that we experience morals, we just don't agree on the objectiveness and it is the very objectiveness of it your argument is trying to prove. You are saying that we experience it and therefor it has an external value, but there is no way you can know that just by the help of your feelings. It is impossible to feel this external value. When you drive your bicycle, do you automaticly feel where it was made? When you fall in love, do you automaticly know why? It is possible to experience something without knowing how or why. Lol.. Sorry for laughing, I just find this funny.
YOU SAID:
"There is definitelly some semantics problems in our communication. Anyway, such a proposition is self-defeating because if no truth can be known, it follows that that statement itself shouldn't have been able to be known! Anyway."
MY RESPONSE:
Eh? Nope… I agree that we might have some semantic problems, but there is nothing illogical with the truth being that the truth is unknowable, because that would be the truth then.
Fat German Bastard has this response for you:
—————————————————————-
YOU SAID:
"I don't accept your "intuition" because to be a warranted properly basic belief it must not have a defeater. I believe that your belief does have a defeater. To have intrinsic worth is simply to mean that you are not valuable to anything higher to yourself. That is all. We clearly experience moral values so it follows that "intrinsicism" is true."
HIS RESPONSE:
Well and I believe that your belief does have a defeater. We clearly do not experience intrinsic value (that is goal/preference independent value). However, we clearly recognize that value can not exist independently from a goal or preference. Therefore your belief has been defeated and therefore my belief does no longer have a defeater.
YOU SAID:
"If it's not self-evident to me then it does not meet all the criteria of being properly basic."
HIS RESPONSE:
Ok let me point you towards research done by the Barna research group. As you may know George Barna is a Christian. His research has shown that the vast majority even of Americans and Christians does NOT believe in the existence of intrinsic morality:
People who do believe in absolut truth if it comes to morality:
13% of those born in 1965 or later.
15% of adults who are not born-again Christians.
16% of Roman Catholics.
22% of all Americans (24% among women; 20% among men).
24% of those born in 1945 or before.
28% of those born between and 1946 and 1964.
32% of those who attend conservative Christian churches.
32% of adults who are born-again Christians.
Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_poll5.htm
Now if a belief can not be self evident or properly basic if not every person with working cognitive abilities has it then that means either of two things:
1. The vast majority of Americans and Christians are insane.
OR:
2. The existence of absolute moral truth is NOT properly basic.
OR
3. You have been wrong when you said that something can not be properly basic unless everyone with working cognitive abilities recognizes it as true. However, in this case your defense fails as a counter argument against my intuition.
YOU SAID:
"I don't share your humor in laughing at other peoples arguments. I guess truth is just a game to you."
HIS RESPONSE:
What I laughed at hardly qualifies as an argument. LOL
FGB SAID
"No ! Once we have accepted premise 1 the argument is obsolete since premise 1 and the conclusion are identical."
YOU REPLIED:
"You don't understand. How is premise one obsoulete if it is true? The question is, "is premise one true?""
HIS RESPONSE:
I did not say that premise 1 is obsolete. I said that Plantinga's whole argument is obsolete. An argument where a premise equals the conclusion is useless. Assume atheism is true. Then atheism is true. This is not an argument. No matter how much external evidence I can bring you for atheism… The argument above remains meaningless. Don't you see this ?
YOU SAID:
""Socrates is mortal" in the following argument."
HIS RESPONSE:
The socrates argument teaches us about reality only in it's inductive form. In it's deductive form it is meaningless. Like the evidence for the mortality of Socrates comes from scientific observations the evidence for God comes from arguments for God. Plantinga's argument does not add anything to the evidence we already have independently from Plantinga's argument.
YOU SAID:
"No, the argument only demonstrates that possible necessity equals actual necessity."
HIS RESPONSE:
No ! He drew the conclusion that God exists ! Otherwise he could simply have explained axiom 5 and be done with it.
YOU SAID:
"Now, will you PLEASE respond to my argument for premise one. Which of course if true, is basicly the same as the conclusion."
HIS RESPONSE:
What argument ? Maydole's ? To be quite honest I think it would be a waste of time because if I refuted it you first not accept it and then you would try to supplement Plantinga's argument with the cosmological argument, the design argument, the kalam argument and all that other bullshit. As long as you insist that Plantinga's argument does anything to increase the amount of evidence for God's existence I can not take you seriously.
YOU SAID:
"Why not put God in their? Hey, it means that if one can prove it is possible that God exists, it follows that God does exist."
HIS RESPONSE:
No ! Axiom 5 (and NOT Plantinga's argument) proves that if one manages to prove that God is consistent he would already have proven that God exists since God must be known to exist in order for us to be able to say that he is logical.
—————————————————————-
Can't wait for your reply!
Sincerely
-Leo
So Glad to be back after my two day vacation
YOU SAID:I'm not sure if it is possible to understand what you just said there, because it does not seem to make logical sense. Hehe. So, do you consider existence the truth because of intuition or not? If not, then why bring in intuition at all? If yes, then you have to explain me this before I go further: Is intuition based on reason or is reason based on intuition?
MY RESPONSE:Sorry for not being concise
Reason and inuition are literally the same thing. I said we assume the validity of a foundational belief until prove otherwise. We agree logically because it is inuitive, hence logical! And we accept it as a fact for practical reasons. Do you understand now?
YOU SAID:Special pleed? I do not experience that objective moral values exist and either does the majority of human beings. Now what the majority of people believe is hardly evidence of something being true, but it does tell us something about our instincts and who's more "normal" than others if that is what you mean by functioning cognitive faculties. I'm sorry, but instincts and intuition cannot be used to prove anything, it can only be used to decide upon what to believe.
MY RESPONSE:I said that we experience objective moral values. If you'll rememeber I asked you whether or not you think raping a child is a morally neutral act. You said it wasn't a morally neutral act, however you tried to explain it using evolution. So, the point is you experience that some actions like rape, child abuse have moral difference to things such as peace, equality, and justice. I said you were special pleading because you were treating the external world to a different standard of proof then another foundational belief.
YOU SAID:Well, this is what people do and the answer is that our feelings are as different and subjective as the very individual you ask.
MY RESPONSE:Do people that hallucinate undercut the objectivity of the external world? In the same way, people with different moral experience doesn't undercut the reality of objective moral values. Also, I think we do find moral constants in all cultures. For example all people believe that we should love our neighbors. But each culture has different factual boundaries that determine who is their brother. But the fact remains that there are constants in the moral structures of human beings.
YOU SAID:Well halleluja, I just had an alien experience. I just spoke to one of these Aliens and he assured me that they do indeed exist, so I guess it is an objective fact then. Nice! ;D I do ofcourse not need to present proof of this, because Christians do not need to present proof of their religious experiences.
MY RESPONSE:You didn't really have that experience,Leo. Thus your belief has a defeater
Also, we would expect more evidence if Aliens wanted to interact. The fact that we don't find such evidence shows that we have yetr another defeater. Also, others can't experience this. Your alien experience has many defeaters.
YOU SAID:But I am not asking for proof of morality, I am asking of proof for its objectiveness. We can experience existence, but that does not mean that we automaticly know the origin of it or its true nature. How do you not see this? It is so very straight forward..
MY RESPONSE:I'm asking you to honeslty ask yourself "Is raping a little girl a subjective illusion?" The answer to that question is the same answer to the question "Do moral values exist". Do you experience that slicing the throat of an inncoent 5 year old is just as meaningless as our liking and disliking is certain foods? Do you honestly experience that these things are subjective illusions?
YOU SAID:The cosmic significance you are talking about is the social contract given to our specie through evolution. Feelings are the results of a random process. I do not believe in an external meaning of morals, they only have meaning relative to our human specie and its chance of survival.
MY RESPONSE:Here you go denying your experience again. I could equally say that you are not experiencing the external world, you are simply experiencing an illusion brought by the random proccess of evolution. The existence of the external world is only relative to our existence. Do you see the absurdities of denying your experience?
YOU SAID:How many times must FGB and I explain this?
MY RESPONSE:lol…how many times must I say that you are on the level as the solipsit who denys his experience of the external world.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I'll respond to FGB in the morning!
What will Leo say next?
Sincerely,
Paul
Yo yo Paul!
YOU SAID:
"Reason and inuition are literally the same thing. I said we assume the validity of a foundational belief until prove otherwise. We agree logically because it is inuitive, hence logical! And we accept it as a fact for practical reasons."
MY RESPONSE:
If they are literally the same thing then why do you need two words to describe the same thing, let us just use reason from now on then. I guess you are going to reply with something like intuition being different from reason anyways, even though it is literally the exact same thing so that would be just another contradiction. Am I right if I say that objective intuition is the same as reason, but with some added magical properties which can not be defined?
YOU SAID:
"I said you were special pleading because you were treating the external world to a different standard of proof then another foundational belief."
MY RESPONSE:
Well, so do you. There is no way around treating existence different than everything else, since our reason is existence based. You agree that we just have to accept it and so you agree that it is special. We have accepted it and that is exactly special pleeding. Again you are condradicting yourself by saying afterwards that you can't special pleed. Either you can or you can't special pleed. If you can't then you have to base EVERYTHING on this and that would only end in absurdities, and this is in fact exactly what many fundamental theists think they are doing, even though they really are not. This way of thought allows for unproven concepts like God, Allah, Cosmic Conciousness, Zombie Elvis, Zombie Jesus, Santa, Aliens, Flying Spaghetti Monster etc to be facts.
YOU SAID:
" I said you were special pleading because you were treating the external world to a different standard of proof then another foundational belief."
MY RESPONSE:
You cannot compare existence to any other belief, existence is on a whole different level. All other "foundational beliefs" are based on the belief in existence and therefor existence is the most fundamental belief. That is why special pleeding is allowed for existence, but not for anything else. We do not have any alternatives to existence, yet we have to rely on it as though it is the truth. Remember, if existence does not exist then facts are just the properties of its non-existence. Comparing anything to existence is a category mistake as existence is a category in itself.
YOU SAID:
"Do people that hallucinate undercut the objectivity of the external world? In the same way, people with different moral experience doesn't undercut the reality of objective moral values"
MY RESPONSE:
Sure it does if the external world is based on functioning cognitive faculties, because you would have to base them on whats normal. How would you decide who has functioning cognitive factulties or not? Would you not have to base that on who is more "normal" than others? The idea that only functioning cognitive faculties is the way to gain knowlegde is proposterous, because there is no way to decide who is functioning better than the other.
YOU SAID:
"You didn't really have that experience,Leo. Thus your belief has a defeater
"
MY RESPONSE:
BINGO! Same goes with religious experiences. If they do not have to prove that their experiences are of divine character then that is a defeater.
YOU SAID:
"I'm asking you to honeslty ask yourself "Is raping a little girl a subjective illusion?"
MY RESPONSE:
Maybe it is, but I think not. Is existence an illusion? Maybe it is, maybe it is not, we don't know, but just because we do not know that does not mean that theism is correct. Something unknown does not make some random explanation true. There might not even be a concrete answer to this. We don't know!
YOU SAID:
"Do you experience that slicing the throat of an inncoent 5 year old is just as meaningless as our liking and disliking is certain foods?"
MY RESPONSE:
No I don't, but that is because morals are the meaning of my life as a social being. Our definitions of good and bad is what we live for, without it we would not be social creatures. Morals have value to me because of what I am, not because it is some external cosmic constant.
You are implying that the lives of all creatures that does not share our moral codes are meaningless or less worth than ours. Who are we to jugde what brings meaning to their lives? Maybe a frog define eating flies as good and eating grass as evil. Maybe dogs consider obeying their master the ultimate good and a spiritual experience. Maybe some beetles consider sniffing poo good and walking on two legs bad. Maybe crows define certain tastes of food as nirvana. We are the only creature that fit into our set of morals, therefor I find it pretty lame to think that all other creatures apply to the same set of codes.
Lateeeeers! ;D
Cheers.
-Leo
It is frightening how you guys can circle talk at each other with out the slightest concern for truth, reason and evidence. We are all born with the inbred knowledge of what is good and bad. We don
Hello R. Realista. =)
What do you mean that we circle talk without the slightest concern for truth, reason and evidence? By saying "we", do you mean Paul and I or fundamental theists? Everything I say, I say because I think it is the truth, and I even believe the same goes for Paul, even though I suspect the cognitive faculties of most properly functioning human beings intuitively disagree on the latter.
I am very concerned about reason and I guess evidence is my religion.
When Paul and I talk so much back and forth it has a lot to do with trying to understand eachother, something which I think is more important than anything. We are a social specie, lack of proper communication is potentially our biggest threat. Only by understanding one another will we be able to agree upon the truth, or at the very least, what is closest to the truth.
I agree that if we do evil then it is because of something gone physically wrong in our brains, either due to faulty genetics or because of mistreatment in some respect. One of the main reasons why I fight religion is because I think indoctrination is a form of mistreatment which may lead to delusions, and even free nations like America has a lot of indoctrination issues to deal with. The kind of delusions I am talking about here are the ones that make you think that beliefs are facts. It is only such things which can make good people do evil acts, like imprisoning scientists ( e.g Galileo ) for discovering "inconvenient" truths or forcing ones subjective religion upon others.
I do not think that people necessarily need to believe in the illogical and delusional, but rather the profound. Most people want and need to believe in something greater than themselves and I think this is really what drives our curiosity. It often goes wrong however when one looses ones ability to distinguish facts from fiction. Existence is so marvelous that if you just take it for what it is there is no need to make up better things to believe in. Nothing beats existence and all that is in it, the challenge is being able to acknowledge it.
Thanks for reading reading my blog and thanks for your comment!
Peace!
-Leo
I actually admire you very much, Leo
R. Realista:
Thanks, I guess.
Actually it is not true that one cannot change their minds. Atheism is growing faster than the fastest growing religion -Islam, and there are many ex-believers contributing to it being so.
I have seen many people change their minds after reading for instance books authored by the four horsemen. ( Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett ) So standing up for reason is not a lost cause, I believe in fighting for it and that is what drives me. I do however think one need to find some kind of middle ground between people who are naturally spiritual and those who are not, but either way religion needs to change its form drastically as it is only hurting human kind, both intellectually and spiritually.
I'm not sure if atheism or even agnosticism is the final answer, but they sure beat any current form of theism by a mile. What matters is that we get our facts straight so we don't end up deluded. Delusion is the only thing I believe can make good people bad.
I agree, I believe in one miracle and that is existence itself. I wish more people would take part in reality and see it for the wonderful thing it really is.
Cheers!
-Leo
It makes sense to focus on common ground and in that respect there is no problem with what you are saying at all. There is only one area where we both probably dug in a bit too deep but where it would be easy to find some common ground.
You write:
I was running late for school today so I literally have about 3 minutes to write a response. I think it is better yet to wait for more time to respond to Leo, however, I'd like to add in a few comments in response to "realista"
He said:
It is frightening how you guys can circle talk at each other with out the slightest concern for truth, reason and evidence. We are all born with the inbred knowledge of what is good and bad. We don
I am not going to try and do what Leo is so good at. You are in title to believe in belief.
Again, I only have like 2 minutes to respond…sorry Leo! I'll have a response after school!
Anyway,
YOU SAID:
No worries Paul. =)
I do however have a hard time believing you were ever a true atheist, but I'll take your word for it.
The child study you are talking about is actually a case for evidence, and not for belief. The reason why the child does not believe the person disappeared is because it contradicts the childs consistent experiences in the real world. Believing the person really disappeared would in fact be similar to a belief in God, as it would be logically inconsistent.
-Cheers
Leo
Okay Leo!
We had a Holiday in the states and I haven't been around…
YOU SAID:If they are literally the same thing then why do you need two words to describe the same thing, let us just use reason from now on then. I guess you are going to reply with something like intuition being different from reason anyways, even though it is literally the exact same thing so that would be just another contradiction. Am I right if I say that objective intuition is the same as reason, but with some added magical properties which can not be defined?
MY RESPONSE:They are similar. I wouldn't quite call them synonyms. Reasoning is a proccess by which we find truth with the foundation of inuition. Reasoning allows us to employ our inuition. Intuition is the foundational beliefs that we use to reason.
Yah, I guess the above is your magical properties…
YOU SAID:Well, so do you. There is no way around treating existence different than everything else, since our reason is existence based. You agree that we just have to accept it and so you agree that it is special.
MY RESPONSE:Well, no. The reason we accept it as fact is for practical and consequential reasons, but the real reason we accept it is because we experience it. Could we accept it if we didn't experience it? No, I don't think we could. So, I ask you, what is the real reason we accept the existence of the external world? And any rational individual will say "Because we see it, smell it, feel it, tast it, hear it, and can reflect on it.". So, if the real test for is experience, then by definition you are special pleading for the external world.
YOU SAID:You cannot compare existence to any other belief, existence is on a whole different level. All other "foundational beliefs" are based on the belief in existence and therefor existence is the most fundamental belief.
MY RESPONSE:You are right in saying it is the most fundamental belief. But again, why are we rational in believing it appeart from practicality and arguments from consrquence? Experience my friend…
YOU SAID:Sure it does if the external world is based on functioning cognitive faculties, because you would have to base them on whats normal. How would you decide who has functioning cognitive factulties or not? Would you not have to base that on who is more "normal" than others? The idea that only functioning cognitive faculties is the way to gain knowlegde is proposterous, because there is no way to decide who is functioning better than the other.
MY RESPONSE:Ummm…so you don't believe in the external world because people have malfunctioning cognitive faculties
The acceptance that you have functioning cognitive faculties is assumed like existence. Are you rally suggesting that we have a defeater of the external world?
YOU SAID:BINGO! Same goes with religious experiences. If they do not have to prove that their experiences are of divine character then that is a defeater.
MY RESPONSE:Well, yes Leo. I'm honestly purporting that I and billions of others have had religious experiences. You too can have one. Unless you can offer a defeater of an experience is should be presumed true unless proven otherwise. So, you are circular reasoning
YOU SAID:Maybe it is, but I think not. Is existence an illusion? Maybe it is, maybe it is not, we don't know, but just because we do not know that does not mean that theism is correct. Something unknown does not make some random explanation true. There might not even be a concrete answer to this. We don't know!
MY RESPONSE:Exactly! You experience it! That is the entire point! Why are we rational in believing in the external world, the existence of the past, and the existence of other minds? Experience, functioning cognitive faculties, and lack of defeaters. We don't know, but are you now going to become a solipsist or are you going to accept the existence of the external world? This is very odd coming from a scientist and empiricist such as yourself. You consider experience and observation to be the most important test for truth. Why are you throwing experience out the window?
YOU SAID:The child study you are talking about is actually a case for evidence, and not for belief. The reason why the child does not believe the person disappeared is because it contradicts the childs consistent experiences in the real world.
MY RESPONSE:Exactly. And on what justifiction does the child infer facts of the real world. Another engrained belief. If you must forget the example, the point is that his view commits the textbook fallacy known as the Genetic fallacy
That sums it up for now!
Sincerely,
Paul
Nice to see you back Paul, Happy Holidays!
YOU SAID:
"They are similar. I wouldn't quite call them synonyms. Reasoning is a proccess by which we find truth with the foundation of inuition. Reasoning allows us to employ our inuition. Intuition is the foundational beliefs that we use to reason.
Yah, I guess the above is your magical properties…"
MY RESPONSE:
Red herring.
You are talking about intuition in its original form so in that sense I have no problem with what you just said, however, I was asking you to define objective intuition, which is something quite different as there is nothing necessarily objective about intuition. Something being objective equals something being a fact. It is impossible to decide who has better functioning cognitive factulties than another because using the word better in this context bears no meaning as someone with different cognitive faculties is not necessarily better.
I and most of the scientific community believe that the best way to arrive at the closest estimation of truth is to cross check facts using many seperate sensory perceptions and minds cognitive faculties. You seem to think that the best way to find the truth is to rely on objective intuition alone, where objective intuition is intuition with no defeaters, or have I understood you wrong? If I got you right, then how do you know that you have thought of every potential defeater? How do you know that you have been able to properly translate your intuition? When you do not have evidence which pin points one specific explanation it is impossible to know wether it has defeaters or not, therefor there is no such thing as objective intuition, even though your intuition might in some cases lead to the correct answer.
YOU SAID
"why are we rational in believing it appeart from practicality and arguments from consrquence? Experience my friend…"
MY RESPONSE:
Agreed. Although experiencing existence tells us nothing about the origin of it or its true nature, just like experiencing morals tell us nothing about wether they are cosmically objective or not.
YOU SAID:
"I'm honestly purporting that I and billions of others have had religious experiences. You too can have one. Unless you can offer a defeater of an experience is should be presumed true unless proven otherwise. So, you are circular reasoning"
MY RESPONSE:
I do not doubt that you have had spiritual experiences, but I do doubt that they are of divine character. You can presume whatever you like to be true, but do not call your presumptions objective facts as that is the very thing that lead people into delusion.
YOU SAID:
"We don't know, but are you now going to become a solipsist or are you going to accept the existence of the external world?"
MY RESPONSE:
To become a solipsist you would have to believe that existence is an illusion, although I believe it is possible I do not believe it is a fact, just like I do not believe that objective moral values is a fact. I do not know the nature of existence, that does not mean that I have to believe it is like this or that, I only have to believe that I experience it.
YOU SAID:
"This is very odd coming from a scientist and empiricist such as yourself. You consider experience and observation to be the most important test for truth. Why are you throwing experience out the window?"
MY RESPONSE:
Although I have a big interest in certain areas of science and do research within games development I am not sure if I can be labeled a scientist. Anyways, I am not throwing experience out of the window. I am throwing the notion that we know the origin of existence and the existence of objective moral values out of the window.
YOU SAID:
"And on what justifiction does the child infer facts of the real world. Another engrained belief. If you must forget the example, the point is that his view commits the textbook fallacy known as the Genetic fallacy"
MY RESPONSE:
Hehe, but it is you who are doing the genetic fallacy. You can't compare the childs belief with a belief in for instance God. We do not experience God, those who believe in him reason their way to God based on lack of explanations, not because of consistent experiences. If God is the reason for your religious experiences then you have to prove that. If you do not have to prove that he is behind them then I do not have to prove that I communicate with aliens, thus they are both properly basic beliefs according to your reasoning.
Looking forward to your answer to both Fat German Bastard and I as always.
Cheers!
-Leo
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
– Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
– Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, page 215
Leo, you are a gem.
Hola! I realized I didn't respond to FGB's latest comments and I will respond after this reply.
YOU SAID:Red herring.
You are talking about intuition in its original form so in that sense I have no problem with what you just said, however, I was asking you to define objective intuition, which is something quite different as there is nothing necessarily objective about intuition. Something being objective equals something being a fact. It is impossible to decide who has better functioning cognitive factulties than another because using the word better in this context bears no meaning as someone with different cognitive faculties is not necessarily better.
MY RESPONSE:Red herring? A red herring is a fallacy of relevance where as person X uses an irrelevant argument or statement and claims to have defeated the original claim of person Y. When I say intuition, I mean things we all consider to be objection. I believe we know about the external world intuitively, we know about mathematics intuitively, and we no the laws of logic intuitively. Intuitive is just something we know even though we didn't come to hold to the belief through evidence. In regard to functioning cognitive faculties-What I mean by that is they don't have an mental illnesses. That's all…
YOU SAID:You seem to think that the best way to find the truth is to rely on objective intuition alone, where objective intuition is intuition with no defeaters, or have I understood you wrong
MY RESPONSE:Again, I think semantics is a big problem. Intuitive are statements we all know to be true, even though we didn't come to the conclusion of the inuitive belief by arguments or evidence. For example, the idea of science being a good concept seems to be quite intuitive. I don't mean intuitive like, "I just have a feeling X is going to be a good president". No, I mean facts we all know without learning about them through other evidences.
YOU SAID: If I got you right, then how do you know that you have thought of every potential defeater?
MY RESPONSE:Ahhh. One of the great problems of epistemology. But, in the absence of any known defeater we are still rational in accepting the intuitive belief as being true. For example, we wouldn't say that because we haven't thought of every possible defeater for science or the external world, therefore we should be agnostic or doubt it.
YOU SAID: Although experiencing existence tells us nothing about the origin of it or its true nature, just like experiencing morals tell us nothing about whether they are cosmically objective or not.
MY RESPONSE: Okay Leo. So, do you now accept premise two of the moral argument? If we aren't solipsists, why should we be moral relativists, right? So, are you now denying premise one of the arguments instead?
YOU SAID:Although I have a big interest in certain areas of science and do research within games development I am not sure if I can be labeled a scientist. Anyways, I am not throwing experience out of the window. I am throwing the notion that we know the origin of existence and the existence of objective moral values out of the window.
MY RESPONSE:Fair enough. Do you now accept premise two and reject premise one?
YOU SAID:Hehe, but it is you who are doing the genetic fallacy. You can't compare the childs belief with a belief in for instance God. We do not experience God, those who believe in him reason their way to God based on lack of explanations, not because of consistent experiences. If God is the reason for your religious experiences then you have to prove that.
MY RESPONSE:How did I commit the genetic fallacy? How did I try to explain a belief based on how you came to hold that belief? That is the genetic fallacy. And experience is proof that God exists. We don't need any more evidence than experience to verify the external world, why would we need more proof than the experience of God? You might say "You must prove God is real to prove the experience is legitimate!" and I could run a parallel and say "You must prove the external world is real first in order to prove that the experience of the external world is legitimate". Experience acts as the proof itself, not vice-versa. So, Leo, all of the Christians you once wrote off as irrational were actually as rational as someone who believes the Earth is round!
YOU SAID:If you do not have to prove that he is behind them then I do not have to prove that I communicate with aliens, thus they are both properly basic beliefs according to your reasoning.
MY RESPONSE:We both know that wasn't a legitimate experience for you Leo. Thus, the belief isn't experiential. Also, I cannot experience it. Almost every case of people "Experiencing Aliens" can be explained away through disfunctioning cognitive faculties. The most common illness is a sleep disorder called sleep paralysis.
I will respond to FGB in my next post!
Sincerely,
Paul
I haven't responded to him in a while! Well, here is my best shot!
FGB SAID:Well and I believe that your belief does have a defeater. We clearly do not experience intrinsic value (that is goal/preference independent value). However, we clearly recognize that value can not exist independently from a goal or preference. Therefore your belief has been defeated and therefore my belief does no longer have a defeater.
MY RESPONSE:Don't you experience that say raping a child has different moral significance than loving a child? If So, you experience objective moral values. Why can't God be the ultimate goal of all moral actions?
FGB SAID:Ok let me point you towards research done by the Barna research group. As you may know George Barna is a Christian. His research has shown that the vast majority even of Americans and Christians does NOT believe in the existence of intrinsic morality:
People who do believe in absolut truth if it comes to morality:
13% of those born in 1965 or later.
15% of adults who are not born-again Christians.
16% of Roman Catholics.
22% of all Americans (24% among women; 20% among men).
24% of those born in 1945 or before.
28% of those born between and 1946 and 1964.
32% of those who attend conservative Christian churches.
32% of adults who are born-again Christians.
MY RESPONSE:We have to make a distinction between whether or not people experience something with whether or not they think it has bearing on reality. I bet if you asked any one of them with functioning cognitive facululties if they experience a moral difference in the brutal killing of a child and loving a child they will acknowlegde a difference. Now, whther or not they think that experience has bearing on reality is irrelevant. I don't experience the truth value of your argument.
FGB SAID:What I laughed at hardly qualifies as an argument. LOL
MY RESPONSE:FGB, If you want to continue treating truth as if it were a child's game I'm going to have to stop talking to you. There is no point in talking to someone who simply ridicules people.
FGB SAID: did not say that premise 1 is obsolete. I said that Plantinga's whole argument is obsolete. An argument where a premise equals the conclusion is useless. Assume atheism is true. Then atheism is true. This is not an argument. No matter how much external evidence I can bring you for atheism… The argument above remains meaningless. Don't you see this ?
MY RESPONSE:You must admit that linguistically there is a difference between coherence and bearing on actual reality. This argument only tries to highlight that the Christian must not prove that God exists he must prove that God could exist. And there is a difference there atleast linguistically. I will use different argument depending on whether I want to prove God is possible or prove God actually exists. That is all the argument is trying to accomplish. Now, how do you respond to Maydole's argument for premise one?
YOU SAID:What argument ? Maydole's ? To be quite honest I think it would be a waste of time because if I refuted it you first not accept it and then you would try to supplement Plantinga's argument with the cosmological argument, the design argument, the kalam argument and all that other bullshit. As long as you insist that Plantinga's argument does anything to increase the amount of evidence for God's existence I can not take you seriously.
MY RESPONSE:Um…no. Maydole's argument tries to justify premise one. And you have to admit that there is a difference in the ammount of burden of proof between possibility and actuality even though one leads to the other modally. By the way, I'm an agnostic on the design argument and I currently reject the Kalam argument.
FGB SAID:No ! Axiom 5 (and NOT Plantinga's argument) proves that if one manages to prove that God is consistent he would already have proven that God exists since God must be known to exist in order for us to be able to say that he is logical.
MY RESPONSE:Whatever, take out Plantinga's name. It is just dubbed his argument because he popularized it. Anyway, you don't need to know if something exists to know it is coherent. Could I have yellow hair? I don't in reality but no doubt it is a coherent concept. And I gave an argument for why the concept of God is coherent.
Sincerely,
Paul
BTW, Realista….
What arguments persuaded you that Atheism is true?
Oh! Before I forget! What game are you developing for the iphone? I happen to own an ipod touch and if I can I would love to see what you made!!!!!
Sincerely,
Paul
Hmm…is there a problem with intent, Leo?
I could have sworn you replied to my latest comment….
Hmmm…can you post another response?
**** COMMENT IS MOVED FURTHER DOWN TO FIX A GLITCH IN INTENTS COMMENT SYSTEM ****
YoYoYOooO Paul!
I moved the comment back down here after they introduced some new bugs in their comment system. =)
YOU SAID:
"Red herring? A red herring is a fallacy of relevance where as person X uses an irrelevant argument or statement and claims to have defeated the original claim of person Y."
MY RESPONSE:
Definition of red herring: "any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue"; You're trying to explain objective intuition by describing intuition alone, that's a distraction and thus it's correct to use the term red herring.
YOU SAID:
"When I say intuition, I mean things we all consider to be objection. I believe we know about the external world intuitively, we know about mathematics intuitively, and we no the laws of logic intuitively. Intuitive is just something we know even though we didn't come to hold to the belief through evidence."
MY RESPONSE:
I think we need a common understanding of what intuition really is. Intuition is reason done by your subconcience based on instincts and earlier experiences. Instincts are in reality knowledge and reflexes based on our ancestors experiences so all aspects of intuition are based on reality and experiences in it. This means that intuition is not any more accurate than our reasoning, they are both flawed when trying to figuring out truths.
We do not know math, logic and the external world intuitively, we use our first years on this earth to learn about them. Have you ever seen a baby doing multiplication? Even though babies can see when they are born they do not know what they see and therefore have to learn how their sight work, the same goes for all the other senses.
When we know that the scientific method is the best way to arrive at the closest aproximation of the truth we do not know this because of magical intuition, but because of experience. If the scientific method was even 0.0000000000000000000001% off we would not be able to send these comments through the internet to one another. No other truth checking method we know of can come close to the accuracy of the scientific method.
So, Intuition is evidence based just like the rest of our reasoning. Intuition and reasoning are not necessarily objective, only facts are. That is why we should not claim anything to be true without facts. You are ofcourse entitled to believe this or that without losing your rationality, but if you are not able to distinguish facts from beliefs that is what we call delusion or disfunctioning cognitive faculties.
I'll give you some examples of facts and non-facts:
Fact: External world exist: Everything we can sense with our senses is proof of the external world.
Fact: Morals: Treat someone bad and you'll notice the person react to it, feelings are proven.
Fact: Cars: Just look out the window and you'll get proof that cars exist, if you doubt your eyes, go down and touch one of them.
Belief: God exist: This is a belief since there are no proof supporting his existence.
Belief: Objective moral values: This is a belief since there are no proof supporting a cosmic moral constant.
Belief: Elvis lives: This is a belief since there are no proof supporting him being alive.
Belief: Matter and energy originated: We have never observed matter or energy comming in or out of existence.
YOU SAID:
"Ahhh. One of the great problems of epistemology. But, in the absence of any known defeater we are still rational in accepting the intuitive belief as being true. For example, we wouldn't say that because we haven't thought of every possible defeater for science or the external world, therefore we should be agnostic or doubt it. "
MY RESPONSE:
When you say "I believe, but do not know" you are being agnostic and leaving room for doubt. When you say "I believe, because it is a fact" then you are in reality not believing, but claiming to know.
I have no trouble with people using their intuition and reasoning to believe this or that without evidence, but if you believe to know something as a fact without proof you are in reality deluding yourself.
YOU SAID:
"Okay Leo. So, do you now accept premise two of the moral argument? If we aren't solipsists, why should we be moral relativists, right? So, are you now denying premise one of the arguments instead?"
MY RESPONSE:
No, ofcourse I do not accept the moral argument. Only a person with disfunctional cognitive faculties could believe any argument to be factual without proof. You can believe it all you want, but don't try and pass it off as an objective truth when you have no evidence supporting it. Do you have any proof that the view of a solipsist is wrong? Do you have any proof that moral relativism is wrong? No, you do not and therefore any of them might be correct. You know I believe that moral values are relative to our specie, and I got pretty good evidence to back it up (evolution). You're bringing it further by saying that God is the origin of moral values, but for this you have no evidence, only flawed intuition and reasoning based on no evidence at all.
YOU SAID:
"How did I commit the genetic fallacy?"
MY RESPONSE:
Definition of the genetic fallacy: "The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context."
You claimed that the childs belief was just like a belief in God even though they are two different kinds of beliefs. The childs belief is based on consistent and repetative experiences, a belief in God is not, therefore they have different contexts.
YOU SAID:
"We don't need any more evidence than experience to verify the external world, why would we need more proof than the experience of God?"
MY RESPONSE:
Again, everything is part of the external world. If you were to experience God that would in fact be proof that the external world exist as he would be part of existence. Everything you experience through your senses, no matter what it is; is proof of the external world, we went over this 10 times already. Comparing anything to the external world is a category mistake as everything we know is part of existence.
When you want to know if what you experience is part of the external world or shared reality you have to prove it. If you are the only one experiencing your experience then it is not a fact even though it might be true for you personally. Personal truths are not facts as these potential truths might not be potential truths at all if you apply them to anyone else.
Saying that God is the reason for your spiritual experiences is the same as saying that the car you are driving was made in Tokyo. If you claim your car was made in Tokyo then we would have to find proof of it being true if we want to establish it as a known fact, the same goes for your claim about God being behind your spiritual experiences.
YOU SAID:
"Experience acts as the proof itself, not vice-versa."
MY RESPONSE:
Experience is not necessarily proof of anything else than us experiencing something. Us experiencing existence tell us nothing about why or who makes us able to experience it. If there is a who that is behind our experiences then we would have to experience this being in order to know that it is behind our experiences.
YOU SAID:
"We both know that wasn't a legitimate experience for you Leo. Thus, the belief isn't experiential. Also, I cannot experience it. Almost every case of people "Experiencing Aliens" can be explained away through disfunctioning cognitive faculties. The most common illness is a sleep disorder called sleep paralysis."
MY RESPONSE:
We both know that wasn't a legitimate experience for you Paul. Thus, the belief isn't experiential. Also, I cannot experience it.
Are you kidding me?!?!??????????? As long as the unproven nature of your experience is not the one of Christianity then you are mentally ill? How do you not see how irrational and disfunctional you are being?
There are millions who have reported contact with aliens and only a small number of these instances can be explained away by mental illness or sleep paralysis. There are billions who have had non-Christian spiritual experiences through-out the ages, are all of these people mentally ill, but Christians are not?
Christians have no more proof than other people belonging to different faiths that their experiences are of divine character. Every believed myth that has ever been known has had people claiming to experience the entities of these myths. There exist vitness accounts for dwarfs, trolls, zombie Elvis, aliens, God, Medusa, Michael Jacksons ghost, toilet monster, zombie Jesus etc, when it comes to evidence they are all on the same shelf.
You are wrong when you say you cannot experience aliens, all you have to do is give your heart, mind and soul to the aliens and I promise you that you will be able to come in contact with them! If you have tried, but not been able to contact them you just have to try harder. You have to take my word on it!
Fat German Bastard has this to say:
————————————————-
YOU SAID:
"Don't you experience that say raping a child has different moral significance than loving a child? If So, you experience objective moral values. Why can't God be the ultimate goal of all moral actions?"
HIS RESPONSE:
That depends on how you define "moral". I certainly have interests, preferences and emotions that raping children is not compatible with and THIS is what everybody with working cognitive abilities has… Not more and not less. However, I do not believe that interests, preferences and emotions qualify as a standard for morality. Therefore I do not have the experience you described. I only have an emotional and rational experience. No experience beyond that.
YOU SAID:
"We have to make a distinction between whether or not people experience something with whether or not they think it has bearing on reality. I bet if you asked any one of them with functioning cognitive facululties if they experience a moral difference in the brutal killing of a child and loving a child they will acknowlegde a difference. Now, whther or not they think that experience has bearing on reality is irrelevant. I don't experience the truth value of your argument."
HIS RESPONSE:
Wrong ! I disagree ! Since morality in the intrinsic sense (as you argue for) is not about feelings, preferences and interests but about the correspondance of such feelings with an independent truth such feelings do NOT qualify as moral intuition unless they include the intuitive recognition that these feelings correspond to an absolute truth. Saying that I recognize that I have bad feelings about rape is not sufficient to conclude that I recognize intrinsic morality.
You can not say: People have moral intuition in the descriptive sense, therefore morality in the intrinsic sense exists. That's like saying: I took more drugs than the Empire State building. Therefore I am higher.
YOU SAID:
"FGB, If you want to continue treating truth as if it were a child's game I'm going to have to stop talking to you."
HIS RESPONSE:
I could say exactly the same to you.
YOU SAID:
"You must admit that linguistically there is a difference between coherence and bearing on actual reality."
HIS RESPONSE:
Wrong ! The statements "God is coherent" and "Atheism is logically impossible" are logically equivalent. Let me prove it:
- If atheism is logically possible then it is logically possible that God does not exist.
- If it is logically possible that God does not exist then God is not necessary.
- God is defined as necessary.
- There is a logical incoherence between being necessary and not being necessary.
- Therefore if atheism is logically possible God is not a coherent belief because if atheism was possible God would have to be necessary while not being necessary.
- Therefore saying that God is coherent contains the claim that atheism is incoherent.
=> By saying God is logically possible Plantinga says that atheism is logically impossible. This is the conclusion of his argument. Therefore premise 1 contains the conclusion. Therefore the argument is circular.
Plantinga could as well say:
1. Atheism is logically impossible.
2. If atheism is logically impossible God exists.
3. Therefore God exists.
However, once we know that atheism is logically impossible we already know that God exists. Therefore the argument concludes from the known to the equally known and is thus circular. Even if you can prove that atheism is logically impossible the argument above ads NOTHING AT ALL to this realization.
I could argue:
1. It is logically possible that God does not exist.
2. Therefore it is logically impossible that God is necessary.
3. Necessity is a part of the concept of God.
4. Therefore the concept of God is incoherent.
5. Therefore God does not exist.
This argument would be the atheistic version of the ontological argument. However, it proves absolutely nothing because the first premise implicitly contains the conclusion. Even if I managed to prove that God's non existence is logically possible I had already proven that God, defined as a necessary being, can not possibly exist and therefore is incoherent. So if I managed to prove that I had already disproven God. Therefore the argument above was no longer required. Therefore the argument above is absolutely useless.
YOU SAID:
"Um…no. Maydole's argument tries to justify premise one. And you have to admit that there is a difference in the ammount of burden of proof between possibility and actuality even though one leads to the other modally."
HIS RESPONSE:
But using two different words to describe the same thing does not stop the argument from being circular.
If God does not exist atheism is true.
God does not exist.
Therefore atheism is true.
You have to admit that "atheism is true" and "God does not exist" are at least linguistically not identical. However, they still have the same exact meaning just like "coherence of a necessity" and "incoherence of the falsity of a necessity" have the same exact meaning. Saying that God's necessity is coherent is identical to saying that the non existence of God is incoherent.
YOU SAID:
"Anyway, you don't need to know if something exists to know it is coherent."
HIS RESPONSE:
False ! This is not true for necessary entities. God is defined as necessary. That means God is a being that can not possibly not exist. If it is possible that God does not exist then God would be a being that can not possibly not exist while possibly not existing. This is a logical contradiction. Therefore the statements: "God is coherent" and "God does possibly not exist" are logically incompatible. Therefore one can only say that God is coherent is one know that it is not possible for God not to exist. Saying that Maydole's argument proves that God exists does not make Plantinga's argument any better. Since if God's existence is proven we don't need Plantinga's argument anymore.
YOU SAID:
"Could I have yellow hair? I don't in reality but no doubt it is a coherent concept."
HIS RESPONSE:
But having yellow hair is not a necessity so your example fails badly !!
————————————————————-
YOU SAID:
"Oh! Before I forget! What game are you developing for the iphone? I happen to own an ipod touch and if I can I would love to see what you made!!!!!"
MY RESPONSE:
Hehe.
http://www.frostsoftware.com/index.php?page=games
PeeHero is the first one we are going to release, hopefully it will be out before Christmas, depending on the length of Apples approval process.
Kind Regards
-Leo
I am not going to give this topic my opinion.
Here is Gods opinion.
Gather it or let it blow in the wind for someone else to grasp The Infinite Wisdom Of God.
http://www.passionofchristministries.org
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.