(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Yet unless you can prove God exists (and that the God you prove exists is the Christian God), your Biblical world view is nothing more than mindless speculation, thrown together and held as truth without good reason.

Mere opinion. I could say the same about your world view. But neither statement (from you or me) is helpful in moving a conversation forward.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I could equally argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster accounts for the uniformity of nature, laws of logic, etc, etc, or any other God I can think of.

Straw-man. If it was my position that God alone was my presupposition, then maybe you would be right…except then the only difference would seem to be that God = FSM.

But as I have said previously, my world view involves more that just God as a presupposition. It also involves God’s revelation through His creation and His Word, the Bible. While I understand you could attribute the universe to FSM’s revelation also, without some written word of the FSM, such an argument is not on the same level as what I have indicated as my world view. Furthermore, as I indicated above, even if you attributed the Bible to FSM, that would just mean that you named the God of the Bible something else, i.e., God = FSM.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: It should also be pointed out to you that the Bible has an abismal track record of making truthful claims about reality. In Genesis alone, we have a creation story that reflects none of what nature tells us happened, the moon being described as a "light" (it is not one), and a global flood that le, leaves no trace whatsoever (despite it happening recently in terms of geological time), and fails to account for the diversity of animals and their locations on every land-mass on Earth.

But again, this is all based on your interpretation based on your own presuppositions.

I do not see a problem with describing the moon as a light in the night. It does light up the sky in the night to some degree. You are simply using a hypertechnical definition of “light” and applying that to the Bible and since the Bible doesn’t fit in with your hypertechnical definition, you conclude that the Bible is wrong. Maybe you should conclude that your hypertechnical definition is not appropriate here.

Relative to the global flood, again you are merely showing your bias. I think this is a classical case of not being able to see the forest because of the trees. The majority of the fossil record is evidence of the global flood. But you look at the fossil record through uniformitarian glasses and see millions of years of build up.

Regarding the diversity of animals, the Bible certainly accounts for this. I have no idea what kind of basis you would have for saying it doesn’t. Relative to their locations, the Bible doesn’t go into how that occurred, but that does not mean that it cannot be accounted for in a Biblical world view.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: No, science would not discover this answer, and I still hold that science is not meant to discover such answers! Science is the observation of nature, not super-nature. If the super-natural exists, and someone develops an accurate way of observing and learning about it, then the study of the supernatural shall sit next to science. However, I no of no such methods (at least not reliable un-debunked ones) that do this.

Then I wonder why you hold the scientific method and the conclusions made by materialistic scientists relative to origins in such high regard.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Not all proofs. Certainly the three laws of logic and their proofs of validity rest on no unprovable premises, since for one of them to be untrue would be a contradiction of another law, which would lead to the "untrue" law to be true.

Could you please explain further as I am not familiar with this proof? However, from the little you said, it seems like the proof merely show that the three laws of logic work well together but it does not appear to provide any proof regarding the truthfulness of each law on its own. Therefore, it seems like each one is being taken individually as an unprovable premise even here.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: All arguments that come directly off these laws are likewise confirmed and true. An example of such an argument would be "I think, therefore I am" which is the famous Descartes proof of self-existence. Using the principle that anything with an attribute exists in some form (otherwise it cannot have that attribute), further defining something that thinks as having an attribute of "thinking" and therefore of existence, to ponder about whether you actually exist is to prove that you do.

And yet even for this proof, one begins with the unprovable premise that “anything with an attribute exists in some form”. While one might say that this is self-evident, that is not a proof. Therefore, I still stand on my previous statement that all proofs to back to some unprovable premise which could be wrong by definition.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: No, that is not how presuppositions works. Presuppositions are as good as assumptions (and by that, I mean not very good at all). For instance:

X - Some presupposition.
Y - Some other presupposition that contradicts some part of X (but is not necessarily equal to ¬X)

One could argue, "presupposing X, we see that Z is explained, therefore C1". However, one could also argue "presupposing Y, we see that Z is explained, therefore C2".

I do see what you are saying here, but that is not really how I am using the word “presupposition”. My use is more along the lines of equating it with “first principles”. And in this sense my previous argument regarding circularity does still seem to apply.

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: It is in this sense that TAG fails as well. One can presuppose Christian theism, explain the existence of morality or knowledge, and say that God exists. One can also presuppose evolutionary morality, the evolution of brain patterns, etc, etc, and explain the exact same thing, coming to no conclusion about God's existence.

One could do that, that is true. But where does presupposing evolutionary morality, the evolution of brain patterns, etc, etc, and explaining the exact same thing, coming to no conclusion about God's existence lead. As I pointed out in my previous post to Void:

“It does not seem to me that such an atheistic/materialistic/evolutionary world view can support anything other than relativistic truth since it seems that truth, morals, logic are accounted for in such a world view as being solely due to the genetics of a person and the electrical impulses in a person’s mind (possibly as a result of other causes, such as environmental ones). If this is the case, from your world view how can you say that any other person’s view or interpretation of evidence is any more accurate than yours? Wouldn’t it just mean that they have merely different electrical impulses in the brain that are no better or worse than yours? Furthermore, it would seem to follow from this that interpretations and conclusions made in the scientific method would be subject to this same relativism. This, in turn, seems to lead to the conclusion that an atheistic/materialistic/evolutionary world view cannot account for any truth claims in any objective sense, even given the scientific method. Without being able to account for any truth claims in any objective sense, I do not see how the claims of this world view relative to origins is anything more than a shot in the dark.”

If that is true and how you look at things, I do not see how you could ever criticize my view of origins in any credible manner (even from your own world view). Nor do I see how such a world view could reasonably lead one to conclude with any sort of certainty things like “We have the fossil record…we win.”

(January 18, 2010 at 12:06 pm)rjh4 Wrote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Yet unless you can prove God exists (and that the God you prove exists is the Christian God), your Biblical world view is nothing more than mindless speculation, thrown together and held as truth without good reason.

Mere opinion. I could say the same about your world view. But neither statement (from you or me) is helpful in moving a conversation forward.

How are they remotely similar? You presuppose the existence of the biblical God and then base your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true where as i base my world view on repeatable, verifiable, testable observation and change my opinion if the observed evidence changes whilst withholding judgement on the things that are outside of my current scope of knowledge. I work from the ground up piecing together the puzzle along the way where as you already know what picture you are trying to make and select the pieces that support your preconception.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I could equally argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster accounts for the uniformity of nature, laws of logic, etc, etc, or any other God I can think of.

Straw-man. If it was my position that God alone was my presupposition, then maybe you would be right…except then the only difference would seem to be that God = FSM.

But as I have said previously, my world view involves more that just God as a presupposition. It also involves God’s revelation through His creation and His Word, the Bible. While I understand you could attribute the universe to FSM’s revelation also, without some written word of the FSM, such an argument is not on the same level as what I have indicated as my world view. Furthermore, as I indicated above, even if you attributed the Bible to FSM, that would just mean that you named the God of the Bible something else, i.e., God = FSM.

Nonsense, you believe in God as described in the bible, there are not two elements to your description of nature, just one futile exercise in circular logic.

Are you really going to dismiss the FMS as an equally adequate carte blanche for explaining the universe just because people didn't write a book that claimed direct inspiration on his part?

What about the Egyptian faith? Their gods form an equally adequate carte blanche that could be used unfailingly to explain the entire universe in the same way your God, and they also happen to have a book containing claims of revelation in The book of the Dead. You could just as effectively argue based on the standard you set above that the Amun Ra has revealed himself through his creation.

Considering the fact that both of these mutually exclusive ideas can achieve the objective of explaining the origins and structure of the universe and have claims of divine revelations you must find a more adequate standard of evidence in order to weigh between the two.

When you discover what this standard of evidence is that allows you to separate multiple contradictory supernatural claims of origin from each other please do present it, but until that point in time you have demonstrated nothing more than picking one amongst a myriad of carte blanche explanations for no rational reason.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: It should also be pointed out to you that the Bible has an abismal track record of making truthful claims about reality. In Genesis alone, we have a creation story that reflects none of what nature tells us happened, the moon being described as a "light" (it is not one), and a global flood that le, leaves no trace whatsoever (despite it happening recently in terms of geological time), and fails to account for the diversity of animals and their locations on every land-mass on Earth.

But again, this is all based on your interpretation based on your own presuppositions.

No, it's based on observable reality that leads to the insight of a kind that may be used to formulate testable, repeatable, falsifiable, independent hypothesis. Show me one testable, falsifiable, rigorous hypothesis of the cosmos you can formulate from the bible that can be tested independently and repetitively. Until you can achieve that you have achieved absolutely nothing.

Quote:I do not see a problem with describing the moon as a light in the night. It does light up the sky in the night to some degree. You are simply using a hypertechnical definition of “light” and applying that to the Bible and since the Bible doesn’t fit in with your hypertechnical definition, you conclude that the Bible is wrong. Maybe you should conclude that your hypertechnical definition is not appropriate here.

Sure, but that is clearly the analysis of a primitive culture and not the inspiration of a deity who could have adequately explained the reality of the situation to his subjects that the moon is not a light but rather a reflective surface. Also, it would not have been hard for this deity (actually it would be as easy as any task he could possibly accomplish considering his omnipotence) to explain the reality of the situation to his followers, especially considering they would have encountered reflection numerous times on their own from the natural world.

Quote:Relative to the global flood, again you are merely showing your bias. I think this is a classical case of not being able to see the forest because of the trees. The majority of the fossil record is evidence of the global flood. But you look at the fossil record through uniformitarian glasses and see millions of years of build up.

Evidence of the global flood? Sure, God flooded the world in such a way that all of the fossils would represent apparent geological time. He also modified the topology of the radioactive elements in the strata so their would be more heavily decayed radioactive isotopes the further back in the strata you reach. The strata would also be layered into distinct geological regions descending into the earth in an extremely uniform way to give the illusion that the layers of strata themselves formed over time from different materials in different atmospheric conditions.

If this is the case then God is the ultimate swindler, liar and fraud. If he did not want to make it seem as if these events happened in such a uniform and predictable manner over time then he would have simply have left the usual chaotic flood to disperse and fossilise the animals as you would expect from a flood scenario, by weight, surface area any buoyancy rather than tampering with his own natural laws. It would have made the existence of a global flood being responsible for such formations likely and expectable rather than his expecting that people believe other people who wrote a book that they claimed without proof was inspired by God outlining the details of the flood....

Quote:Regarding the diversity of animals, the Bible certainly accounts for this. I have no idea what kind of basis you would have for saying it doesn’t. Relative to their locations, the Bible doesn’t go into how that occurred, but that does not mean that it cannot be accounted for in a Biblical world view.

Sure it could have happened, anything could have when your intellectual backbone is effectively a blank cheque.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: No, science would not discover this answer, and I still hold that science is not meant to discover such answers! Science is the observation of nature, not super-nature. If the super-natural exists, and someone develops an accurate way of observing and learning about it, then the study of the supernatural shall sit next to science. However, I no of no such methods (at least not reliable un-debunked ones) that do this.

Then I wonder why you hold the scientific method and the conclusions made by materialistic scientists relative to origins in such high regard.

If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.

Every single double blind clinical trial involving prayer ever conducted has shown absolutely no positive statistical trends compared to the control group.

This means either:

1) Your God does not answer prayers

2) You were praying to the wrong God

3) God chose not to answer the prayers

or

4) There is no God

This method could easily be used to establish the positive effect of prayer compared to the control groups, but thus far no results.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Not all proofs. Certainly the three laws of logic and their proofs of validity rest on no unprovable premises, since for one of them to be untrue would be a contradiction of another law, which would lead to the "untrue" law to be true.

Could you please explain further as I am not familiar with this proof? However, from the little you said, it seems like the proof merely show that the three laws of logic work well together but it does not appear to provide any proof regarding the truthfulness of each law on its own. Therefore, it seems like each one is being taken individually as an unprovable premise even here.

He is talking about the logical absolutes:

1) The law of identity : P = P, P ≠ ¬P (A car is a car, it is not a fish)

2) The law of non contradiction: ¬(P ^ ¬P) (A car is not not a car)

3) The law of excluded middle: P ∨ ¬P ("I am alive" is either true or false)

There is not a single instance of any imaginable reality anywhere, natural or supernatural, in which these laws will not be true.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: All arguments that come directly off these laws are likewise confirmed and true. An example of such an argument would be "I think, therefore I am" which is the famous Descartes proof of self-existence. Using the principle that anything with an attribute exists in some form (otherwise it cannot have that attribute), further defining something that thinks as having an attribute of "thinking" and therefore of existence, to ponder about whether you actually exist is to prove that you do.

And yet even for this proof, one begins with the unprovable premise that “anything with an attribute exists in some form”. While one might say that this is self-evident, that is not a proof. Therefore, I still stand on my previous statement that all proofs to back to some unprovable premise which could be wrong by definition.

It is logical proof, you cannot get around it, but i would love to see you try.

For example:

Green and Purple spotted comets exist.

It does not matter whether or not Green and purple spotted comets actually exist physically or not because we have defined them into existence as a concept, and since Concepts exist, Green and Purple spotted comets exist conceptually, the attributes being that of a comet that is coloured in green and purple spots.

I challenge you to find a single thing that does not meet these conditions (Hint, you can't, as soon as you think of it then it will at the very least exist as a concept).

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: No, that is not how presuppositions works. Presuppositions are as good as assumptions (and by that, I mean not very good at all). For instance:

X - Some presupposition.
Y - Some other presupposition that contradicts some part of X (but is not necessarily equal to ¬X)

One could argue, "presupposing X, we see that Z is explained, therefore C1". However, one could also argue "presupposing Y, we see that Z is explained, therefore C2".

I do see what you are saying here, but that is not really how I am using the word “presupposition”. My use is more along the lines of equating it with “first principles”. And in this sense my previous argument regarding circularity does still seem to apply.

Example:

Presupposition x : Ra exists
Presupposition y : God exists

Presupposing Ra exists, we can explain the origins of the universe, therefore the creation stories in the book of the dead are true.

Presupposing God exists, we can explain the origins of the universe, therefore the creation stories in the Bible are true.

Which is exactly what you have done.

Quote:

(January 13, 2010 at 12:45 pm)Tiberius Wrote: It is in this sense that TAG fails as well. One can presuppose Christian theism, explain the existence of morality or knowledge, and say that God exists. One can also presuppose evolutionary morality, the evolution of brain patterns, etc, etc, and explain the exact same thing, coming to no conclusion about God's existence.

One could do that, that is true. But where does presupposing evolutionary morality, the evolution of brain patterns, etc, etc, and explaining the exact same thing, coming to no conclusion about God's existence lead.

The tag attempts to show that God is the only explanation for Logic, morals etc. As you admit there is another way to reach an explanation for logic, knowledge and morals, therefore the TAG, being a positive argument for the existence of god and thus bearing the burden of proof fails.

Adrian was not (afaik) using that argument to lend favour to one argument over another, he was simply showing that the TAG fails to live up to the burden of proof.

Side note:
The law of the excluded middle is dropped in some versions of quantum logic leading to multiple valued logic. Since quantum mechanics is closely tied to the fundamental nature of reality, it might be that the law of the excluded middle is not essential in our reality. So your statement that "there is not a single instance of any imaginable reality anywhere, natural or supernatural, in which these laws will not be true." is too strong. It is clear however that one cannot change the choice of a specific logic under the reasoning. If your opponent chooses multiple valued logic as a basis he has to build alll arguments from it. In informal logic common in debate the three rules are generally taken for granted. The only reason to change the logic in scientific endeavour would be that the results in terms of predictiveness are better.

One of the problems with the great flood that alot of people tend to over look.. Other than the lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary (fossil) you couldent possibly get thousands of years of sea bed fossils (in the case of the US midwest) due to a flood that supposidly lasted a year. But dont take my word for it do some real research and read up on articles from REAL geologist. But one of the big problems would be that if there was a huge flood all the water on this planet would be 1 large body of water.... Think about that for a second..........nothing comming to mind..... go buy an assortment of fresh water fish from any pet store ... now get a second tank fill it full of 90% sea water and about 10% fresh water.... now transfer the fish over to the second tank.. oh and pray real hard that they will live ...... granted the 10% fresh water would be a stretch but even with that NONE of the fresh water fish would survive.... So other than maybe salmon, nothing of fresh water speices would survive..

(January 18, 2010 at 10:34 am)Tiberius Wrote: Sorry, but logic doesn't work like that. If an argument is based on an assumption you can't just say "well, until the assumption is proven, we'll assume it is true".

Two things (I seek learning here)
1. So how IS logic supposed to work??
2. The assuption that something is true is/has been used as a starting point for scientific investigation which has resulted in the assumtion in question either being validated or declared false.

(January 18, 2010 at 10:34 am)Tiberius Wrote: What you have to admit, is that science assumes materialism in order to work, and on that assumption the entirety of science stands. Assumptions aren't good places to stand upon...

^^^
Why not?? They are used as a starting point for investigation are they not??

(January 19, 2010 at 2:29 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Two things (I seek learning here)
1. So how IS logic supposed to work??
2. The assuption that something is true is/has been used as a starting point for scientific investigation which has resulted in the assumtion in question either being validated or declared false.

Well, what's tested in science is called a starting hypothesis or null hypothesis. It is not really assumed true before there is sufficient proof. Sufficient means repeatable and sustained by other evidence. Even than all scientific truths are considered tentative truths, not absolute truths. They are considered true in the sense that from them it is possible to build descriptive and predictive models with some precision and reliability. So in science, contrary to what most people think, absolute truth does not really exist.

Also logical truth are truths under the asumption of logical foundation. Mathematical truths are truths under the assumption of their foundation, they don't necessarily apply to reality. A good example is Euclid's Geometry, it's valid under its basic assumptions but Einstein showed that it is essentially not valid in our spacetime. Since in our spacetime matter curves spacetime the basic rules of EG are not valid, especially near massive objects. In practice however EG is accurate enough to give good descriptions in most cases.

(January 18, 2010 at 10:34 am)Tiberius Wrote: Sorry, but logic doesn't work like that. If an argument is based on an assumption you can't just say "well, until the assumption is proven, we'll assume it is true".

What you have to admit, is that science assumes materialism in order to work, and on that assumption the entirety of science stands. Assumptions aren't good places to stand upon...

Ok, let us take this to a real life basis.

I work as a heavy diesel mechanic.

The vehicles in my working day have a 24 volt electrical system.

The alternators in these vehicles(buses in fact) charge at 27.5 volts (plus or minus)

Now I put my multimeter across the battery terminals while the bus is running

and the multimeter only shows 24 volts.

So from this I conclude that the alternator is not charging properly.

Now by your criteria I am only assuming that this is the case.

So what should I do????

(January 19, 2010 at 2:51 am)Purple Rabbit Wrote:

(January 19, 2010 at 2:29 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Two things (I seek learning here)
1. So how IS logic supposed to work??
2. The assuption that something is true is/has been used as a starting point for scientific investigation which has resulted in the assumtion in question either being validated or declared false.

Well, what's tested in science is called a starting hypothesis or null hypothesis. It is not really assumed true before there is sufficient proof. Sufficient means repeatable and sustained by other evidence. Even than all scientific truths are considered tentative truths, not absolute truths. They are considered true in the sense that from them it is possible to build descriptive and predictive models with some precision and reliability. So in science, contrary to what most people think, absolute truth does not really exist.

Also logical truth are truths under the asumption of logical foundation. Mathematical truths are truths under the assumption of their foundation, they don't necessarily apply to reality. A good example is Euclid's Geometry, it's valid under its basic assumptions but Einstein showed that it is essentially not valid in our spacetime. Since in our spacetime matter curves spacetime the basic rules of EG are not valid, especially near massive objects. In practice however EG is accurate enough to give good descriptions in most cases.

So essentially you are saying there is no such thing as 'truth'? Only what is observable??

I can live with this....

(January 19, 2010 at 6:40 am)Zen Badger Wrote: So from this I conclude that the alternator is not charging properly.

Now by your criteria I am only assuming that this is the case.

Of course you are only assuming that this is the case. There are plenty of other explanations, some of them even logically valid! Here are a few:

1) The multimeter isn't working.
2) You misread the value.
3) Your knowledge about the charging volts is wrong.
4) God was interfering with the measurement (here we go into slightly logically invalid, but an explanation nonetheless).
5) X was interfering with the measurement (replace X with anything that can interfere with the measurement).

Your conclusion might be the right one, it might even be the most likely explanation, but don't kid yourself that "most likely" equates to "right".

(January 19, 2010 at 7:31 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: So essentially you are saying there is no such thing as 'truth'? Only what is observable??

I can live with this....

My view is that there is such a thing as truth, otherwise the operation of the universe would be impossible. Something, at some time, has to "be", has to "happen". My contention is that we are unable to know these truths, only make educated deductions in hopes of finding a possible explanation that fits.

The observable is hardly truth, given that there are no methods of confirming whether what we observe is real. For instance, imagine you see a cat in the middle of a room. You can say "I observe a cat". A million friends of yours can come in and say "I observe a cat too". You can point a machine at the cat that outputs "DATA OBSERVED. SUBJECT: CAT", yet at no point can you know for certain that everyone who sees the cat isn't just hallucinating, or that the cat is some illusion or anomaly, or that the machine used isn't being faulty and confirming something which appears to be there but actually isn't.

Observation sucks

(January 19, 2010 at 10:48 am)Tiberius Wrote:

---

My view is that there is such a thing as truth, otherwise the operation of the universe would be impossible. Something, at some time, has to "be", has to "happen". My contention is that we are unable to know these truths, only make educated deductions in hopes of finding a possible explanation that fits.

The observable is hardly truth, given that there are no methods of confirming whether what we observe is real. For instance, imagine you see a cat in the middle of a room. You can say "I observe a cat". A million friends of yours can come in and say "I observe a cat too". You can point a machine at the cat that outputs "DATA OBSERVED. SUBJECT: CAT", yet at no point can you know for certain that everyone who sees the cat isn't just hallucinating, or that the cat is some illusion or anomaly, or that the machine used isn't being faulty and confirming something which appears to be there but actually isn't.

Observation sucks

---

And yet, at the same time, operating under the idea that we live in a Matrix is fundamentally useless in our day to day lives, so we must do our best with what we have. Therefore if all these other people and other evidence points to a cat in the room, we are justified in believing it to be so until evidence proves otherwise.