RE: Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!
March 13, 2013 at 8:05 pm
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2013 at 9:02 pm by jstrodel.)
Quote:Yet you've been corrected numerous times now on the definition of atheism, by actaul atheists. But hey, it's your strawman. Knock yourself out.
You are making an argument from authority, believing that atheists should be able to define their movement anyway that they want. Someone may consider themselves to be "a tory" and that may be acceptable, but that says nothing about the rationality of that identification.
People may think of themselves as anything, but that does not mean doing so is acceptable.
You ignored the argument that I made showing why this is so.
(March 13, 2013 at 4:59 pm)apophenia Wrote:(March 12, 2013 at 5:50 pm)jstrodel Wrote: ....which require more serious considerations to deserve a higher degree of certainty to attain to ethical justification (first do no harm - Hypocrites).
The man's name is Hippocrates. (Though I can understand why you might have the notion of hypocrisy on your brain. Freudian slip much?)
Like I said, I have average intelligence, if you are trying to prove that I'm basically average, that is unnecessary. There are millions of people smarter than me. If you want to actually argue about ideas, that is a different story.
(March 13, 2013 at 1:31 am)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(March 13, 2013 at 12:44 am)jstrodel Wrote: The only thing that you have convinced me of is that you probably don't know what classical foundationalism is.
Your mistake is in assuming that I necessarily subscribe to it.
What philosophers do you consider to be your biggest influence? What sort of position are you coming from?
Quote:You do realise that you are using the interenet? Or more importently - you do realise that not only you are using the internet? The internet gives everyone of it`s users the capabliity to search for explainations of things they dont know or understand.
Was not meant to be obscurantism or intended to be an obscure phrase. Not everyone has studied epistemology, doesn't mean that you are a stupid person. Cthulu dreaming has made a few statements like "I do not believe God exists" is a rational statement because it describes a true proposition, the person is believing that God exists. This seems to me to indicate a very deep level of confusion about the nature of epistemic justification (I could be wrong).
Quote:Yes, we all know that you want to shuck off the burden of proof for impossibly fantastic positive claims which can only ever be justified by appealing to the supernatural or metaphysical, which are both just as impossibly fantastic positive claims. You wish to render every statement of faith as if each of them are equally likely to be true.
No, an irrationalist worldview undermines Christianity because Christianity teaches that God is knowable and belief in God is justified along very specific criteria such as the moral character of God (morals being presupposed first in assessing the nature of knowledge, pointing to God, and good actions including what a sense of a good account of knowledge being grounded in a creator - a chicken and egg problem), miracles which are common in devout believers and historically form an unbroken stream of supernatural (only fantastically impossible if you have no skill in the spiritual), the resurrection of Christ (attested by many eyewitnesses), the confirmation of prophecy, the moral authority of the church, the evidence of good fruit in sincere Christians lives, the evidence of Christian societies which have existed for 2000 years, the explanatory power that Christianity has in dealing with competing claims of revelation, the coherence and explanatory power of theism, etc.
It is possible to know that Christianity is true, although that knowledge comes through seeing the historical reality of Christianity manifest in believers lives. This is something I have had personally happen to me.
The last thing I possibly could want is that all beliefs be placed on an unequal footing, otherwise I would lack insight into morality, law, love, holiness, beauty, wisdom, marriage, power, philosophy, the supernatural, the nature of justice and the joy of mysticism.
I can assure you that I do not want to place all beliefs on equal footing. I want to show, on the contrary, that only Christianity has the ability to shed light on the human experience with clarity and authority, and that apart from Christianity people are sort of confused as to what their life means and where they fit into everything. They think that they have to make it all up.
