RE: What the God debate is really about
March 11, 2014 at 8:33 pm
(This post was last modified: March 11, 2014 at 8:37 pm by Angrboda.)
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Religion is not the only culprit here. Atheist members blur those lines all the time.The counter-factual to this, unless stated as a form of the non-contradiction principle, includes the many worlds hypothesis.
Knowledge comes from reason applied to experience. People need first principles in order to gain knowledge. First principles include:
1) There is only one reality.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 2) Our senses do not deceive us.The counter-factual of this is not self-refuting. Our senses deceive us. Nothing contradictory there.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 3) Sound reasoning yields truths about reality.The counter-factual of this is paradoxical, but not self-refuting. It's a variant of the liar's paradox.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 4) Truths about reality are universal; they do not vary between individualsArguably acceptable. (What it means for something to be a truth about reality is important; in the many-worlds hypothesis, this may not hold.)
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 5) Knowledge requires someone that knows.Heavily dependent on what you mean by knowledge and someone. Is a valid sentence in a hypothetical interpretive system knowledge?
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 6) Something that is cannot also not be.This is not self-refuting under dialetheism.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 7) Out of nothing, nothing comes.There are multiple counter-factuals here, none of them self-refuting.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: 8) That which does not begin cannot have an end, i.e. infinite regress.Unclear; "that which did not begin has an end." At the least, it's not obviously self-refuting.
(March 11, 2014 at 2:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Counterfactuals of the above refute themselves.False.