(July 10, 2013 at 5:07 pm)Inigo Wrote: I don't have faith in the existence of a god. I have faith in the existence of instructions that have inescapable rational authority. But not in a god. If someone can show me how instructions that inescapably confer reasons to all to whom they are directed could be created by something other than a god, I'm all ears and I'll instantly drop my belief in a god.
Well as others have already brought up, what is your justification for faith in the existence of these instructions? More to the point, what makes you think these instructions are in fact instructions, rather than an, say, evolutionary molded disposition towards certain advantageous behaviors? Because such would account for the 'moral sense' you've referred to, without them having to actually be a instructions even if they feel as such. Nor do I recall having read (in the pages I've so far read, which is admittedly few compared to the total) seen you actually say what these 'inescapably rational' instructions actually are (unless I missed them).
Quote:Do you believe that there are some acts that are not to be done, even by those who really want to do them?
Again, this would only seem to make sense within the context of having a particular goal or a set of goals. If the individual has different goals than you (say simply getting pleasure however they can), then clearly their goals would lead them to (try and) do what would complete them, regardless of what I or anyone else thinks (again depending on some goalset).
With regard to a reply of yours to me earlier: I wasn't arguing 'in bad faith'. The only relevance that the numbers had (as I explicitly stated... twice) was to show that if a claim made about a particular topic has bad or near non-existent support in the relevant academic discipline, that is good grounds for justify finding the claim suspicious. For example, if someone claims that they've disproven the theory of evolution by natural selection and demonstrated that intelligent design and YE Creationism is in fact the case, yet I notice that suchhas very miniscule support from actual biologists, I've good grounds for finding the claim dubious and in need of MAJOR defense. That does NOT the position false - which I stated - but if all you're going to say is that I'm merely covering myself, then I'd have to think it were actually you who is arguing in 'bad faith', if you're going to merely assume I'm being disingenuous rather than meanimg what I say.
Also, there's seems to be some confusion. I brought up the is-ought gap NOT to fight your argument. If you'll recall, I specifically brought it up - along with Hume on causation and a couple of scientific discoveties - as demonstrations that simply because something feels "intuitively obvious" has no inescapable bearing on the truth or falsity of something. It could be the case that out intuitions are pointing in the right directions, and as you noted there has been good scholarship on the times that it has, but MY point was that huge swaths of philosophical and scientific work have shown that our intuitions can be ass-backwards about so many things (like the ones I noted) that it's unreal.
