tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post113894423784988009..comments2024-03-28T12:34:14.649-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: A Dialogue with TriablogueVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1146123325906579122006-04-27T00:35:00.000-07:002006-04-27T00:35:00.000-07:00Vic,In your response to Triablogue you mentioned m...Vic,<BR/><BR/>In your response to Triablogue you mentioned me: <BR/><BR/>"I am afraid that the criteria you [Triablogue] are using to try to get to the conclusion that there are no atheists will get you the conclusion that there are no theists. Which is the tack people like Babinski and Loftus seem to be taking." <BR/><BR/>MY RESPONSE: Thanks for using the words "seems," though I would still disagree that I seek to even "seem" to argue that there are "no theists." [sic] Rather, I suspect there is a bit of a doubter in even the most dogmatic fundamentalistic theist, and perhaps a bit of a "hoper-in-something-more" in every atheist. <BR/><BR/>RELEVANT QUOTATIONS: <BR/><BR/>Believing hath a core of unbelieving.<BR/><BR/>Robert Williams Buchanan: Songs of Seeking<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>One does not have to believe everything one hears.<BR/><BR/>Cicero, De Divinatione, Book 2, Chapter 13, Section 31<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.<BR/><BR/>Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>All great religions in order to escape absurdity have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage (whether of the African bush or the American Gospel broadcast) who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.<BR/><BR/>We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.<BR/><BR/>H. L. Mencken<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover “the secret of God” that our difficulties disappear.<BR/><BR/>Mark Twain<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.<BR/><BR/>Thomas Jefferson, Writings, Vol. II, p. 43<BR/><BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>Let God alone if need be. Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him--I should keep myself, rather--at a more respectful distance. It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover that God is. I say, God. I am not sure that is the name. You will know whom I mean…<BR/><BR/>Doubt may have “some divinity” about it…<BR/><BR/>Atheism may be comparatively popular with God himself…<BR/><BR/>When a pious visitor inquired sweetly, “Henry, have you made your peace with God?” he replied, “We have never quarreled.” <BR/><BR/>Henry David Thoreau as quoted in Henry David Thoreau: What Manner of Man? By Edward Wagenknecht<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>I believe in Someone Out There--call Him God, since other names, like Festus or Darrin, do not seem to fit--but I am not entirely certain that He is all that mindful of what goes on down here. Example: Recently a tornado destroyed a town in Texas and dropped a church roof on a batch of worshipers. One of the few things left standing were two plaster statues, one of Jesus, the other of Joseph. The townspeople, according to the news, “looked at the statues’ survival as a sign of God’s love.” Hold the phone. This sounds like the he-beats-me-because-he-loves-me line of thought. If the Lord in his infinite wisdom drops a concrete roof on the true believers but spares two hunks of modeling compound, it is time to question the big Fella’s priorities. If I have to be made up of plaster to command attention in this universe, something is amiss. <BR/><BR/>James Lileks, “God Has Call-Waiting,” Notes of a Nervous Man<BR/>____________________________<BR/><BR/>WHO KNOWS?<BR/><BR/>Who truly knows what the cosmos "is" and whence it came to be? I don't, and don't claim to know. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps our cosmos (or the cosmos behind the cosmos behind the cosmos, ad infinitum) is pantheistic or pan-en-heistic and has always been fluctuating somewhere between divine and less-than-divine omniscience, or between omnipotence/powerlessness, or between individual and collective consciousness, for eternities upon eternities<BR/><BR/>Or perhaps a Platonic demiurge (Divine Tinkerer) has been toying with cosmoses for untold infinites (splitting zeros into “plus ones” and “negative ones,” i.e., splitting “nothingness” into cosmoses of “matter” and “anti-matter”), and came up with this one, and perhaps some others like it (and some better than this one, this one not being the most prosperous nor the most bountiful of cosmoses what with death and extinction from cosmic collisions, explosions, black holes, or radiation remaining a distinct possibility, and with life restricted to only one-planet-in-nine in our own little star-system, which itself lay in but one arm of a spiral galaxy with over one hundred billion galaxies out there--yet only two of those galaxies are near enough to the earth to be seen with the naked eye. (The two galaxies that are visible only appear as faint white dots in the nighttime sky. The rest of the white dots you see are stars in our own galaxy, along with a few “wandering stars” or planets, which appear as white dots too. Obviously the rest of the galaxies were not created to "light the earth, nor for signs and seasons on earth,” since no one knew they were even there until after the world’s largest telescopes had been built).<BR/><BR/>Some people say the choice is between believing in either a Designer or absolute randomness, and they say that the latter view does not make sense, but not for the reason they suppose. The trouble lies in the word, “absolute,” not in the word “random.” For they don’t realize that discussions of “absolute randomness” are fraught with philosophical self-contradictions. If you grant for the sake of a thought experiment that “random” cosmoses exist, how “absolutely” random could such cosmoses be? Wouldn’t some interactions or patterns repeat themselves in them? And repetition is a form of order. So to keep orderliness out, you would have to posit a force that knows every past interaction or pattern and also knows how to prevent them from repeating themselves. But such a force would constitute a form of “order” needed to maintain “absolute disorder.” But if absolute randomness requires a form of order to keep itself “absolutely” random, then absolute randomness does not exist. In other words, given a random cosmos, some things would tend to repeat themselves over time, and some form of order would thus transpire. Possibly even the most improbable events might take place given matter/energy and an infinite amount of time. Acknowledging this possibility does not make me atheist. I am simply admitting questions and limitations inherent in philosophical language and concepts. <BR/><BR/>But if the idea of “absolute randomness” doesn’t make sound philosophical sense, then maybe the idea of “absolute order” is an equally sterile philosophical concept? Perhaps in the end, Plato’s “demiurge,” or “Divine Tinkerer,” as I proposed in the first paragraph, might be considered as a possible compromise?<BR/><BR/>Searching for the meaning of life seems a bit of a daunting task given the shortness of life and the immensity of ignorance and depth of the swaying seas of emotion on a planet filled with walking talking primates--a planet that is adrift like a tiny lifeboat in a cosmic sea of space. We haven't even crawled off this cradle planet but we have invented gods and holy books and doctrines about invisible and unseen things that one “must believe,” plenty of them in fact. The most popular of those holy books begins by claiming everything was created for a flat earth that was called forth even before the sun, moon “and the stars also” were “made and set” above it, and for whom the first light was created merely to ensure “evenings and mornings” on that flat earth, with everything in this vast cosmos being created according to “earth-days.” How geocentric. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps it's not the meaning of life but the question of life that is meant to propel us all. <BR/><BR/>E.T.B.Edwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1139090788194335602006-02-04T15:06:00.000-07:002006-02-04T15:06:00.000-07:00Pehaps another way to look at this is to realize t...Pehaps another way to look at this is to realize that many of the motives behind one's personal religous belief also exist in the secular arena.<BR/>I often suspect that the really important element of a theist's belief in God is not the propositional knowledge he may claim to have of that God, but the sense of meaning such a belief brings. Non-theists also seek a sense of meaning in the world, but for whatever reason may not feel a need to attribute such a sense to a supernatural being.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1139033367793794002006-02-03T23:09:00.000-07:002006-02-03T23:09:00.000-07:00We need to decide the question "What does Loftus b...We need to decide the question "What does Loftus believe about God" in the same way that we decide the question "What does Reppert believe about the Suns' chances in the NBA playoffs?" We can't be using cooked criteria to make our interpretation of Scripture come out true. We have to do honest philosophy of language. If the evidence suggests there are people who do not believe in God, and we are interpreting Scripture to say that everyone believes in God, then either there's something wrong with our Bible interpretation or we have evidence against the inerrancy of Scripture. If the latter we are left with a choice of exercising "faith" in Scripture in the teeth of strong evidence to the contrary, or not. But if it comes down to that, we no longer would have a defensible apologetic position. <BR/><BR/>Suppose the following were true: everyone would come to know God if they would set aside their attitude of "I will not serve" and open their minds to the possibility of a Lord over their life. If that were true, then we would still have to say that apparent atheists are atheists. If we introspect and report certain beliefs when asked, and if our conduct is consistent (for the most part) with those beliefs, then the person in question has those beliefs. <BR/><BR/>To say that someone is not an atheist on the grounds that, according to the Bible, deep down inside there is an awareness of God which is clearly being completely rejected by the people who have that awareness, seems, well, silly. By our normal means of deciding what a person believes, that person believes that God does not exist.Victor Repperthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1139004576909502802006-02-03T15:09:00.000-07:002006-02-03T15:09:00.000-07:00VR: "My main point is, and always has been, that i...VR: "My main point is, and always has been, that in order to make statements like "There are no atheists" we need some criteria for determining what a person believes. Using those criteria, even if you accept van Tillian presuppositionalism, I can't see how you can get to the claim that the denizens of Internet Infidels are not exactly what they say they are: atheists."<BR/><BR/>PM: *WE* need a criteria? As in Christians? Well, does not God's word suffice? If God says that all men "know" him, then all men "believe" that he exists.<BR/><BR/>If you accept this, then *you* must also give an account for how all men believe that God exists yet some men do not believe that God exists.<BR/><BR/>Also, if *you* believe that all men have a "natural knowledge" then *you* also belive that all men, including atheists, "believe" that God exists, since belief is a sub-set of "knowledge."<BR/><BR/>So, it looks like you're in the same boat that we are, we're just trying the give a defense of the paradox when others just ignore it.<BR/><BR/>Dr. Reppert, I would read this: http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pa207.htm<BR/><BR/>You also ask what is the difference between "self-deception" and "lying." are you saying that the Puritan preacher, Daniel Dyke, who wrote a four-hundred page treatise published in 1617, entitled <I>The Mystery of Selfe-Deceiving</I> just meant "lying?" When Bemjermin Franklin said, "No one has deceived me so often as thyself" did he mean that he was "lying" to himself? Indeed, the term "self-deception" has been around for a while and has been distingushed from mere lying. So, if we're going to be sticklers on langauge :-)...<BR/><BR/>Bahnsen writes, "You see, the natural thing to do is to model self-deception on the well-known activity of other-deception. Deceiving oneself is thought of as a version of deceiving someone else. A problem here, of course, is that in other-deception the roles of deceiver and deceived are incompatible; yet in self-deception a person is thought to play both of these incompatible roles himself!"<BR/><BR/>and he continues,<BR/><BR/>"Let us stop and analyze the situation. In a case of other-deception, Jones is aware that some proposition is false, but Jones intends to make Smith believe that it is true - and he succeeds. If we take Smith out of the picture and substitute in Jones, so as to gain "self-deception," we end up saying "Jones, aware that p is false, intends to make himself believe that p is true, and succeeds in making himself believe that p is true."[59] Such a statement is surely puzzling, for it suggests, "that somebody could try to make, and succeed in making, himself believe something which he, ex hypothesi, at the same time believes not to be true."[60] It would be easy to conclude, then, that self-deception is an incoherent project that cannot be fulfilled."<BR/><BR/>So, I hope that gives some anticipation to bahnsen's paper. Anyway, I still contend that it is not a "silly" idea. You may disagree, but I think we've shown that it is anything but "silly."Errorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10615233201833238198noreply@blogger.com