Origin of Articles

[Cyberman]

If it's the biblical god we're considering, how about some of the stuff from the mythology? I don't mean water into wine kind of parlour tricks, anyone with a half decent home brew kit can do that. I'm talking about making completely new animals from dirt (then ideally making them talk); taking a bone from my body and turning it into a woman; parting an ocean - a small one will do - so as to leave a causeway between the two walls of water wide enough for a small army to walk on. Heck, what about creating a brand new universe?

That's a classic. Why would you demand God to make another universe when your living in the one he already made?

Because you left out the part where you asked what evidence it would take to "satisfy [me] for the existence of the biblical God". Far from "demanding" in my typically and infamously condescending atheist way, I'm asking for no more than the character is believed by the faithful to have done already. I can sympathise with stage and television magicians not wanting to perform the same illusions twice for the same audience, after all s/he doesn't want to give any clues to how the trick is worked. The bible god suppposedly uses real ex nihilo magic as opposed to sleight of hand, so the same rule doesn't apply. What is it afraid of?

He already performed the things you mentioned. You think just because you're born he has to do it for you again? If you reject him why should he do anything for you? The least you could do is thank him for every breath you take.

I ask you this for the one and only time: do not tell me what I think. You may ask, if you so wish; who knows, I may even feel like telling you. However, dictate my own mind to me once more and the discussion (such as it is) ends. Thank you. Now onto more risible matters:

You've made at least three claims here. The bible god already did those things I suggested; I reject this god (thus rendering myself ineligible for presentations of evidence); the god is owed my thanks for all this, including for my own existence. Actually, there's a fourth claim you made, which is that this god has to be male, but I'll let that one go. Let's take this slowly.

The bible god already did those things I suggested - Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? We keep going round this Magic Roundabout, in which we ask for evidence of this pretty bold claim and you assert that the existence of the things 'created' is the evidence for the 'creator'. Then you question why we find this evidence unsatisfying, whereupon the roundabout begins a new circuit. Don't get me wrong, roundabouts can be entertaining for a time, but after a while one gets tired of looking at the same old scenery going round and starts to wonder what the fairground looks like from other angles.

Do you have any evidence, anything at all that we can examine, to back up your assertion that not only a god did the things I mentioned, but that it was your particular pet god? Remember, it's your claim that the god exists and is capable of the things under discussion.

I reject this god - Since the only 'evidence' ever presented to support its existence is nonsensical, contradictory (either with itself or with reality), unavailable, or all of the above, then I reject claims of the existence of this or indeed any god or being of equal distinction. However, I do not reject the god itself, in the sense you were portraying of my knowing it's a real entity and defying it. That could be interpreted as an ad hominem, since you went on to declare me and others of the same opinion unworthy or ineligible for any presentation of evidence.

The god is owed my thanks for all this, including my own existence - Again, until the first principle is shown to be even a real thing, all the rest of the garnish and window dressing is rendered completely moot. It's your faith system, not mine, I don't subscribe to your tenets and doctrines. You do the bowin' and scrapin'.

Besides which, you do realise you are addressing someone who, in this bizzaro reality of yours with omni-everything dictators, has been so shit upon by this monstrosity that expects my undying worship that I would feel more than justified in not only denying, defying and decrying it, but would (if it ever existed) take up automatic weaponry and actively seek to assassinate the damnable thing?

You have a double standard. You don't question what you're told by secular scientists and interpret all scientific evidence with your presuppositions which you can't account for.

No, I have one standard for this sort of stuff. If what we're told by "secular" scientists (as opposed to what, religious scientists?) accords with reality and leads to something that works, then I accept it into my world as something real. If not, if the evidence is presented in vaguely scientific terminology but relies on faulty science to make it 'work', then I reject it as garbage. It's not a case of my being too closed-minded, it's that I'm not credulous enough. From astrology to palm reading via alchemy and homeopathy - if it's junk, it's junk and will be treated appropriately.

Case in point: a couple of years ago there was a huge scandal involving the sale of explosives detecting equipment to Baghdad. They had flashing lights in all the right places, they made all the right beeping sounds; unfortunately they were nothing more than dowsing rods in a fancy box. More to the point, they did not work. If they had worked, reliably and for the purposes as sold, then dowsing would almost certainly have been vindicated, at least to the point where it could have been taken seriously as a scientific principle.

It's not my fault that your god claims do not meet this standard of reality. Get better claims.

Is this how you determine the existence of beauty, Barometric pressure,
quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radioactivity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, etc...?

Does knowing why a flower grows in such distinctive colours and produces such evocative scents take away from the beauty of a flower? Does understanding the nature of acoustic wavelengths, their production and propogation, the understanding that increasing or decreasing their frequency or amplitude alters the perceived pitch stop me from enjoying a Strauss symphony? Does knowing that stars are titanic nuclear fusion reactors held together structurally by their own gravity, understanding the different phases of their life cycles, how long they tend to last and what's happening at the atomic level during each of them spoil my enjoyment of a sunset? Of course not.

When you watch a movie, let's say that Passion of the Christ thing a while back, you know that the people on screen are only pretending. They don't really walk around in those clothes in everyday life, they don't normally talk like that. You know that Jim Caviezel didn't really have the skin flayed from his back, it wasn't his own, or even real, blood spraying all over the camera, and he wasn't really nailed to a stick. Yet none of this knowledge takes away from whatever you may get from the whole experience of watching a story playing out in front of your eyes, whether you may personally regard it as beautiful or not. Why should I be any different?

[YahwehIsTheWay]

Jesus is Lord!

We know He's Lord because He performed miracles!

We know he performed miracles because the Bible says so!

The proof of the Bible's claims is the miracles He performed!

That's how we know Jesus is Lord!

Praise!

[Mister Agenda]

Speaking of miracles, a God who performs miracles means the universe is not consistent, therefore presuppositionalists cannot contend a miracle-working God explains consistency and the usefulness of inference.

A presuppositionalist also can't believe in the Trinity, because the Law of Identity is universal; a being can't be both one being and three beings at the same time.

At least a presuppositionalist can't believe these things while being logically consistent. Since the universe is consistent and the Trinity is self-contradictory, a singular God who does not work miracles, like the God of deism, is not out of the question, logically.

[DeistPaladin]

It seems like presuppositionalism is a conglomeration of many logical fallacies. Let's see if we can list them all.

Argument from Ignorance:
"You can't explain the laws of logic"

Argument from Incredulity:
"I can't imagine any other way to account for the laws of logic except Jesus"

Bare Assertion:
"(Yahweh)'s existence accounts for the laws of logic."

Bare Assertion to justify a bare assertion:
"Only by assuming (Yahweh's) existence can we account for the laws of logic"

Circular Reasoning:
"(Yahweh's) existence accounts for reason and that's why we can reason (Yahweh) exists."

Ad Hominem Tu Quoque
"Well, every philosophy is circular. You have unfounded presuppositions too. ...Do so! ...Do so!"

Special Pleading:
"None of the other gods can account for the laws of logic. They're not real. They're just made up. But Jesus, he's real."

Shifting of the Burden of Proof:
"The skeptic can't account for..."
a.k.a. "Neener, neener, you don't know everything, therefore Jesus"

False Equivalency:
"Well, you have faith in all that science and evolution and stuff. That's no different than my faith in the Bible."

God-Verb-It:
OK, this technically isn't a logical fallacy but presenting it as an "explanation" for anything should be.

Raising the Bar:
"Explain why we use reason without using reason, otherwise, I'll say 'that's circular reasoning'."

Non-Sequitur:
If you can't account for the laws of logic, I'll take that as proof of Jesus.

[YahwehIsTheWay]

It seems like presuppositionalism is a conglomeration of many logical fallacies. Let's see if we can list them all.

The objective is to pack as many logical fallacies closely together, hoping to reach a point presuppositional gravity as to collapse it all into a singularity of stupid that will suck in and destroy all nearby logical arguments in its event horizon.

[downbeatplumb]

It seems like presuppositionalism is a conglomeration of many logical fallacies. Let's see if we can list them all.

The objective is to pack as many logical fallacies closely together, hoping to reach a point presuppositional gravity as to collapse it all into a singularity of stupid that will suck in and destroy all nearby logical arguments in its event horizon.

The stupidity advent horizon, otherwise known as texas.

[Angrboda]

Actually, I'll furnish this move for him/her. Yes, the presuppositionist can assert these things and remain consistent. The reason s/he can is what's known as epistemological holism (aka underdetermination of theory, or the Duhem-Quine thesis).

In a nutshell, epistemological holism is the quality of theories that, in addition to the top level hypothesis, are supported by a raft of auxiliary assumptions and hypotheses, all the way from auxiliary components from the theory of measurement, to theories of falsification, to theories of logic and mathematics and metaphysical postulates (e.g. the many worlds hypothesis). If we have a fact or observation which is not what was predicted by our hypothesis, the hypothesis itself may be the faulty component in the system, or the fault could be in an auxiliary component of the theory, totally unrelated to the question we framed with our hypothesis. So logically speaking, since any theory, including his/her presuppositionalism, is composed of manyfold unarticulated parts, any failure of the top level theory can be accommodated by adjusting an auxiliary part, many of which may be unknown until they are changed explicitly to handle an exception. In this way, a bad theory or an unscrupulous person can make any theory be effectively unfalsifiable, and essentially meaningless. Like this perpetual round of ad hoc justifications and bare assertions; a talented person could keep this game going indefinitely. But in the end, that's all it is: just a game.

For example, in the first half of the 19th century, astronomers were observing the path of the planet Uranus to see if it conformed to the path predicted by Newton's law of gravitation; it didn't. There were an indeterminate number of possible explanations, such as that the telescopic observations were wrong because of some unknown factor; or that Newton's laws were in error; or that God moves different planets in different ways. However, it was eventually accepted that an unknown planet was affecting the path of Uranus, and that the hypothesis that there are seven planets in our solar system was false. Le Verrier calculated the approximate position of the interfering planet and its existence was confirmed in 1846. We now call the planet Neptune.

There are two aspects of confirmation holism. The first is that interpretation of observation is dependent on theory (sometimes called theory-laden). Before accepting the telescopic observations one must look into the optics of the telescope, the way the mount is constructed in order to ensure that the telescope is pointing in the right direction, and that light travels through space in a straight line (which Einstein demonstrated is not generally true, but is often an adequate approximation). The second is that evidence alone is insufficient to determine which theory is correct. Each of the alternatives above might have been correct, but only one was in the end accepted.

That theories can only be tested as they relate to other theories implies that one can always claim that test results that seem to refute a favoured scientific theory have not refuted that theory at all. Rather, one can claim that the test results conflict with predictions because some other theory is false or unrecognised (this is Einstein's basic objection when it comes to the uncertainty principle). Maybe the test equipment was out of alignment because the cleaning lady bumped into it the previous night. Or, maybe, there is dark matter in the universe that accounts for the strange motions of some galaxies.

That one cannot unambiguously determine which theory is refuted by unexpected data means that scientists must use judgements about which theories to accept and which to reject. Logic alone does not guide such decisions.

And that last sentence suggests that the reasonableness of interpretation of the evidence is dependent on the reasonableness of the interpreter. Since we know that a presuppositionalist is beholden to two masters, reason and her religious beliefs, it's questionable that such a person can be trusted to interpret the evidence. Not my main concern but it points up a side of science which many people deny, that science depends as much on the skill and values of the scientists themselves, as it does on the method. (And I would contend that the method and scientific presuppositions (assuming that there are any that aren't shared with the presuppositionalist) is only a small part of what makes science. Some may see this as playing into the presuppositionalist's hands, but I am not concerned with a political goal or justifying an end result here, so that cannot be my guiding principle.)





(I'm not certain of this latter point, but since the boundaries of what a hypothesis is dependent upon are never explicit, it would seem reasonable to suppose that one might restore coherence by introducing additional assumptions that weren't included before, solely to bear the burden of taking the logical hit, or, reframing the question so that the prior observation or evidence is no longer applicable, as that may obsolete the failed observation, or provide justification for shifting the blame for the observational failure; note that in this case, a clever presuppositionalist will always explain the failure as occurring in that part of the system that lies outside her presuppositionalist theories, aka science, thus avoiding all fault to his system. This is the so-called ad hoc explanation.)

[elunico13]

Oh, and to save a reply, please provide me a reference to the passage in your bible where God explicitly said that logic is uncreated, as you claim above.

If you want to know why laws of logic are the nature of God (universal, immaterial, invariant) then your going to have to find my answer to that in the thread. I can't take you seriously when you post comments and questions which show you haven't read the thread. I can't take you serious when you post a pink poster of Jesus claiming contradictions. If you have questions about certain verses than include them in your post. I can't take you serious when you use sources like Wikipedia to support your arguments. This forum is notorious for that.

Here is the answer to your question. The link below provides the whole chapter. Read it at least once to put it into context.

http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm...2&t=NKJV#1
Proverbs 8:22-23 (Wisdom & Knowledge)
"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.

It's important to note that Genesis 1:1 states God created the heavens and the Earth. So these verses here are before creation.

---

Speaking of miracles, a God who performs miracles means the universe is not consistent, therefore presuppositionalists cannot contend a miracle-working God explains consistency and the usefulness of inference.

That's like saying a total lunar eclipse makes it impossible to predict the sunset or sunrise.

If water turns into wine does that make it impossible for astronomers to study the night sky? Of course not.
If God halts the Earth's rotation for a day he can do it because he sustains the universe and established the laws of uniformity. And as a result of such a miracle scientists can detect a the "time change" by using the law of uniformity sustained by God to calculate it. (Only if we had an accurate earth-based clock with which to compare our astronomical observations going back to the time of Joshua.)
Joshua 10:13

The bible never says the trinity is 3 separate beings. 1 John 5:7 KJV
For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.

[DeistPaladin]

If you want to know why laws of logic are the nature of God (universal, immaterial, invariant) then your going to have to find my answer to that in the thread.

OK, so let me see if I got this straight.

Logic is universal, immaterial and invariant. Your idea of God is universal, immaterial and invariant. Therefore, logic = God, since they share three common features?

Am I following your line of "logic" correctly here?

Are you seriously proposing that if two things, one of which has yet to be demonstrated to actually exist, share three common features, they are one and the same?

Btw, the god of the OT has a physical body.

[elunico13]

No, I have one standard for this sort of stuff. If what we're told by "secular" scientists (as opposed to what, religious scientists?) accords with reality and leads to something that works, then I accept it into my world as something real.

Its secular science because of the assumption that science equals naturalism which seems to be the lie you've bought into. You could answer alot of your own questions by reading my thread here.

This is the exact reasoning process that refutes itself.
example: "if empiricists tell me so, then I empirically accept it as reality."
Also how does a theory like the big bang "lead to something that works"???