(January 16, 2017 at 5:22 pm)ProgrammingGodJordan Wrote: So, how do you know God is true/absolute, without knowing whether or not truth is possible?

Science, the same thing that built your computer, says that humans observe things probabilistically, never observing any total/absolute information.

(ie humans are non omniscient)

I'm wondering how it is that when someone actually agrees with points that you have made, you misunderstand them and argue with them regardless.

(January 15, 2017 at 6:43 am)Mathilda Wrote: Fact is no one can know anything absolutely. Even the phrase is meaningless. What would it even mean?

Which is why you need solid definitions and evidence to assess the likelihood of something existing.

(January 16, 2017 at 5:22 pm)ProgrammingGodJordan Wrote: @Aristocatt

So, how do you know God is true/absolute, without knowing whether or not truth is possible?

Science, the same thing that built your computer, says that humans observe things probabilistically, never observing any total/absolute information.

(ie humans are non omniscient)

Lets break this hypothetical down.
I accept that I am not omniscient.
I accept that I want to believe that god absolutely exists.
Not being omniscient does not prevent me from knowing something absolutely.  Not being omniscient simply means that I do not know everything.
Here is a walk through:
Take the set U = [1,2,3]
By accepting that I am not omniscient with respect to U, I have simple admitted that I do not know 1,2, and 3  although I may not be aware of these, so I would not express it in such a way.
This does not mean that I cannot claim absolute knowledge of 1, or of 2, or of 2 and 3, and so on.


You're original argument is not valid.

Now you want to bring science into the equation.  Cool!  However, what you are doing now is attempting to fill in you "4.3 second conversion" argument with assertions about epistemology, probability, and science.
So now let's try to make your argument obviously valid.

It seems as though your point is that non-omniscience infers absolute knowledge is impossible.
So please define absolute knowledge, omniscience, and fill this mental gap into the argument. Maybe we can make your argument a 10 second conversion. That would still be pretty damn impressive!

(January 16, 2017 at 6:28 pm)Aristocatt Wrote:

(January 16, 2017 at 5:22 pm)ProgrammingGodJordan Wrote: @Aristocatt

So, how do you know God is true/absolute, without knowing whether or not truth is possible?

Science, the same thing that built your computer, says that humans observe things probabilistically, never observing any total/absolute information.

(ie humans are non omniscient)

Lets break this hypothetical down.
I accept that I am not omniscient.
I accept that I want to believe that god absolutely exists.
Not being omniscient does not prevent me from knowing something absolutely.  Not being omniscient simply means that I do not know everything.
Here is a walk through:
Take the set U = [1,2,3]
By accepting that I am not omniscient with respect to U, I have simple admitted that I do not know 1,2, and 3  although I may not be aware of these, so I would not express it in such a way.
This does not mean that I cannot claim absolute knowledge of 1, or of 2, or of 2 and 3, and so on.


You're original argument is not valid.

Now you want to bring science into the equation.  Cool!  However, what you are doing now is attempting to fill in you "4.3 second conversion" argument with assertions about epistemology, probability, and science.
So now let's try to make your argument obviously valid.

It seems as though your point is that non-omniscience infers absolute knowledge is impossible.
So please define absolute knowledge, omniscience, and fill this mental gap into the argument.  Maybe we can make your argument a 10 second conversion.  That would still be pretty damn impressive!

The point is, human has zero awareness of absoluteness, as we observe things probabilistically.
God is said to be an absolute quantity.
So, as the original argument expresses, there is no empirical method of calculating of absolutes in science.

Keep in mind that we don't have absolute conviction for any event, neither for 1, or 2, or 1 and 2 etc.

This is a test.

(January 17, 2017 at 9:43 am)mh.brewer Wrote: This is a test.

This is a test testing your test.

The conversions seem to be taking more than 4.3 seconds, Jordan. I'd like a full report on my desk by morning, please.

Oh, and don't forget to water the hydrangeas.

4.3 seconds? The technique sounds kind of obsolete now that it can (apparently) be done in 1 second. You can do a lot else in 3.3 seconds.

(January 16, 2017 at 11:32 pm)ProgrammingGodJordan Wrote: The point is, human has zero awareness of absoluteness, as we observe things probabilistically.
God is said to be an absolute quantity.
So, as the original argument expresses, there is no empirical method of calculating of absolutes in science.

Keep in mind that we don't have absolute conviction for any event, neither for 1, or 2, or 1 and 2 etc.

Okay, but this was not a part of your original premise.  Nothing in your original premise asserted that humans observe things probabilistically or that it is impossible to have absolute knowledge.  It sounds like you don't know what omniscience is or you are assuming that the link between non-omniscience and the impossibility of certainty is an obvious one. Considering there is an entire branch of philosophy devoted to what we can know with certainty if anything(epistemology), I would argue that you really can't make that leap without qualifying it in your argument in some way.

You should change your argument to assert two things.
1) That we observe things probabilistically.
2) That we can't have absolute knowledge of anything.




I imagine once you change your argument like this, everyone who is absolutely certain that god exists will claim that premise 2 is not true, and that every theist who does agree with premise 2 will already be of the position that they are not certain that god exists, but that they find it to be more probable than not that he does exist.

(January 17, 2017 at 2:52 pm)Aristocatt Wrote:

(January 16, 2017 at 11:32 pm)ProgrammingGodJordan Wrote: The point is, human has zero awareness of absoluteness, as we observe things probabilistically.
God is said to be an absolute quantity.
So, as the original argument expresses, there is no empirical method of calculating of absolutes in science.

Keep in mind that we don't have absolute conviction for any event, neither for 1, or 2, or 1 and 2 etc.

Okay, but this was not a part of your original premise.  Nothing in your original premise asserted that humans observe things probabilistically or that it is impossible to have absolute knowledge.  It sounds like you don't know what omniscience is or you are assuming that the link between non-omniscience and the impossibility of certainty is an obvious one. Considering there is an entire branch of philosophy devoted to what we can know with certainty if anything(epistemology), I would argue that you really can't make that leap without qualifying it in your argument in some way.

You should change your argument to assert two things.
1) That we observe things probabilistically.
2) That we can't have absolute knowledge of anything.




I imagine once you change your argument like this, everyone who is absolutely certain that god exists will claim that premie 2 is not true, and that every theist who does agree with premise 2 will already be of the position that they are not certain that god exists, but that they find it to be more probable than not that he does exist.

Non omniscience = probabilistic expression, as far as science goes.

In other words, there doesn't appear to be any scope, beyond omniscience, or probabilistic expression, so if you aren't omniscient, you do things probabilistically...

Also, it appears I wrote down this obvious probabilistic thing, as a part of a later post of mine, long before your comment above: http://atheistforums.org/thread-47212.html

MY FONT IS MORE IMPRESSIVE THAN YOURS, JORDAN.