I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Jon Paul]

P.S. If you don't start answering questions & points that others (including me) put to you I will be left with no choice but to push for moderator action ... remember this theist, this is an atheism forum and YOU are the guest here. Our tolerance of the kind of disingenuous crap you're pulling can be low.

I'll try to answer as many points as I can. But after all I am the guest, in your house, so I am sorrounded by people who are not guests and therefore owe no loyalty to me and are all asking me questions on the same time.

If some questions, which I think I have already answered or are not serious enough to answer (like: did your priest rape you as a child?), are left unanswered, then please excuse me. I don't think theres any need to moderate me for that reason, when you don't moderate such questions.

By the way, EvF: the reason my reply to you didn't come before this post, is that I just spent at least 20 minutes writing a reply, and then my browser crashed. I will re-write it as soon as my frustration over my computer allows me to.

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What's wrong with subjectivity?

Nothing is wrong with subjectivity. Something is wrong with the epistemic structure of atheism.

I didn't say it because I "can't think of any other way".

And I didn't say you said it either. I said "if". I'm saying that you haven't given evidence that God is necessary for moral objecitivity. You've just explained that if he exists then he could do so (because he's God and he can trascend such minds) you haven't shown that there could be no other way.

it has not transcended the realm of subjective mind if there is not an objective mind.

As far as you can conceive you mean.

No, I did not exclude any options because I hadn't conceived of them, but because the nature of the matter itself mandates an option which lives up to particular criteria which subjective minds do not live up to.

But if there's no evidence for God or objective morality, so there's no objective moral mind that you call God, where's your argument? If you're just saying "There can be no objective morality without God!" So what? Neither exist! Where is this going? If it's an argument it's gratuitious!

Of course you say that neither exist, because you are an atheist. That is exactly what the argument says.

Whether you "believe" in God or not, you need to presuppose logical standards and laws and rules, TRUTH, to evidence anything at all. If the rules of logic are not true, then evidentiality is not possible.

In other words, we need the right theory to fit the data, before we can make correct predictions about the data. We need logical coherence before we have logical evidentiality.

So what my argument does is analyse the grounds/foundation which exist before we have evaluated the evidence for something. It analyses the grounds/foundation on which precede evidentiality; on which eventual evidentiality is built upon. That grounds/foundation is, the epistemic structures of already existing worldviews. It is epistemological and analytic; it deals with epistemology, and logical coherence. Not logical justification, evidencing or other evidential matters, which already have epistemelogical presuppositions that my epistemological argument thus analyses.

By bringing the reasons or grounds on which people accepted a certain worldview into the analysis of the epistemic structure of the worldview, you are committing something like the genetic fallacy, since we are not dealing with an evidential question, but one of "which theory fits the data" - of logical coherence.

I understand you maybe either simply can't comprehend this, or maybe you are just not willing to accept it. Which either it is, the discussion is not going to progress until you actually understand the significance of this difference for the argument. I will again, repeat, that there are atheists who have understood this difference, so it's not just me, the "big bad" theist who is talking nonsense.

That's quite obviously complete utter and total nonsense. Because - you are saying without an objective mind there is no objectivity, and without objectivty 1+1 could=5. That's utterly ridiculous. Whether there's a God in this universe or not 2+2 is still 4! And killing babies is still considered wrong by those who aren't baby killers! Either way!

It seems you are appealing to a transcendent factor. It seems you think that, "the truth is that 2+2=4 regardless of what any subjective minds think about it".

It's not all equal to "favourite colour" - that's like saying 'A totally doolally, deluded, insane, delirious psychofreak's opinion is equal to a top scientist on scientific matters, the fact the scientist is a scientist and is not totally insane, is irrelevant - because it's all subjective you see!' That's just plain ridiculous.

Indeed it is, and it's exactly the kind of epistemological problem the epistemic structure of an atheist worldview gives. Because you have only subjective minds. Between the scientist and the psychofreak, you don't have a nr. 3, transcendent objective factor to appeal to, "the objective truth regardless of what subjective minds think of it". You don't have anything outside of the two subjective minds in question to appeal to, except other subjective minds.

The problem is that, if there are only subjective minds, then the "truth" is not "regardless" of what subjective minds think about it. Then, indeed, the truth is only the truth insofar as it is thought to be so by subjective minds. And then the subjective convention that 2+2=5 is just as true insofar as it is thought to be so, as 2+2=4 is true insofar as it is thought to be so. And truth is only true insofar as it is thought to be so if it is not true because of a transcending, objective factor, wholly independent of what is thought about the truth.

Say, subject 1 ("Scientist") thinks that 2+2=5. According to his notion of truth, this is true. Subject 2 (say, "Psychofreak") thinks that 2+2=4. Vice versa. If there are only subjective minds, no objective truth existing apart from subjective minds, then what factor do you appeal to in order to decide who is right and who is wrong? Who has the truth and who has not? Since there are only subjective minds, you can only appeal to another subjective factor, another subjective notion of truth, originating in another subjective mind. But you have not, thereby, epistemologically achieved anything more than subject 1 (Scientist) who thought that 2+2=5.

That is the problem, and it is just one of many incoherencies the epistemic structure of atheism necessarily leads to.

What my epistemological argument then concludes, is that atheism is a theory which "does not fit the data" (in my metaphor), or in preciser words, a worldview with an incoherent epistemic structure which contradicts and refutes itself. So it does not pass the test of logical coherence, before the question of evidentiality/what is evident.