RE: Christian Libertarians and Atheists - Common Ground?
May 5, 2019 at 11:02 pm
(This post was last modified: May 5, 2019 at 11:48 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(May 5, 2019 at 9:23 pm)lowellwballard Wrote: Thanks. Good points. That really makes me have to think.
I guess I am referring to applying "A priori" knowledge to an actual, rather than abstract, situation (perhaps is that the same as "A posteriori"?). So, the question may be, is there any application of deductive logic that doesn't also require some form of inductive logic, even if the premises seem almost certainly true?
You seem like a nice guy. Why not introduce yourself here?
A priori truths need not be heavy abstractions. If I say that I've been married for three years, you could deduce a priori that I have been married for at least two years. Such a deduction can be done a priori. While the premise that I've been married for three years is an a posteriori truth, once you've confirmed that it is in fact true, you can use that true premise to deduce other true things without further observation.
Quote:By saying we treat things as "definitely true" that are actually "probably true", I am referring to how we don't give a second thought to innumerable low probability events that could occur. For example, we have "faith" that every elevator we step into will work even though there is a slight possibility it will fail. So, I guess I am arguing that "faith" shouldn't be a religious notion, but rather no different than how we actually act on probabilities in other areas of life.
Sure. But then that would mean that everybody has "faith." And being "a person of faith" then becomes a meaningless term, because it would apply to anyone.
Furthermore, I find the probability of a creator deity to be highly improbable. If someone were to try to convince me to believe in their god, they may say something like: "You need to have faith that Jesus dies for your sins." Since I already think that this is improbable, having faith in the matter wouldn't change a thing (going by your definition, anyway).
Quote:I guess I am not sure there are any premises in real life that are actually 100% "definitely true". At very least, human perceptions of reality would seem to be fallible.
I very much agree with you that human perceptions are fallible. That's why we have disciplines such as philosophy and science that try to work around the basic fallibility of our perceptions... through repeated testing and rigorous logic.
