tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post2239075505800923110..comments2023-12-01T18:05:24.875-05:00Comments on Debunking Christianity: What is the Likelihood That a Trickster or Evil God Exists?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-92030878362993143222010-02-20T21:44:17.455-05:002010-02-20T21:44:17.455-05:00(continued.)
"How could one refuse (2)? Only...(continued.)<br /><br />"How could one refuse (2)? Only based upon one's religious beliefs that (1) must be true."<br /><br />Or the philosophical consistency that the Creator of a system/world sets the standard for what is "good" in the world/system they create. Just like if you created an imaginary world and YOU determined what you "wanted" in it.<br /><br />If God creates, then He Owns His Universe and sets the STANDARD logically by His very WILL.<br /><br /><br />"The problem is that one's beliefs that (1) must be true could be part of the cosmic joke in scenario (2)"<br />Except that it is illogical for an omniscient Creator to play "jokes" on the premises that He knows all outcomes (without a past or a future tense which is imperfect to apply - using natural theology).<br /><br />Only because you do not address specific purpose (glory of Love) and all of the cosmological principles that make the temporary creation logical do you consider such meaningless possibility (for which we could list other ones).<br /><br />"and thus there is no real way to differentiate between (1) and (2) for a religious believer."<br /><br />Clearly by addressing the purpose itself and the logical Nature of a Holy and Righteous God in "His Own universe" which "He created and HE sets the standard for" RATHER than addressing multiple meaningless possibilities that are circular (at the point of possibility).<br /><br />We often identify "meaningless possibility" as one of the many enemies to the atheist/agnostic.Breckminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16059206540177008895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-53815290057199111332010-02-20T21:42:14.294-05:002010-02-20T21:42:14.294-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Breckminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16059206540177008895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-66372684890304435942010-02-20T21:41:54.203-05:002010-02-20T21:41:54.203-05:00"then you must consider that your point numbe..."then you must consider that your point number 1 can be countered with this argument."<br /><br /><br />How we distinguish between the following:<br /><br />"(1) An all-powerful deity created and guides the universe ultimately towards a good purpose;"<br /><br />By what objective moral *standard* would we be able to appeal to? - to somehow judge that the Creator (and Owner of the universe)is guiding toward anything BUT a "good" purpose??? His WILL would<br />trump all moral appeals to arbitrary definitions of good..number one. Two...this fails to identify the good purpose and is empty without it (the glory of eternal LOVE and fellowship with Him).<br /><br />"and<br /><br />(2) An all-powerful deity created and guides the universe ultimately towards an evil purpose, but have chosen to maliciously presented himself as benevolent to play a trick on created beings."<br /><br />Fascinating that you could substitute "a powerful angel who was created and attempts to guide the universe" and the rest of the sentence follows so nicely.<br /><br />Yes, this point is incongruous..and the reason is - that these points are completely evasive to the REASON for creation and that is so that LOVE or the action of love can exist (clearly there is much more to it). How can you ask to differentiate between the two WITHOUT addressing the "purpose" itself? It is empty philosophy to do this. (Question why). Just change "good purpose" in the first point to "glory of Love" and ask how such "glory of Love" could be an evil purpose? (let alone the fact that you have no standard by which to judge that something the Creator in question is doing could be anything BUT good in His Own universe).<br /><br /><br />"I mean, since believers are big on creating conceptual space to make their positions logically POSSIBLE, then it is also possible that God is a Cosmic Trickster who takes pleasure in fooling them."<br /><br />Except that this doesn't address the premises of Christianity itself..NOT that God is omnibenevolent (which is an incorrect word to even apply to God) but that God takes pleasure IN specific things (such as showing mercy, observing faithfulness, observing logical loyalty, observing growth and maturity, observing reconciliation,<br />observing logical trust (faith),etc). Without addressing the premises of what God takes pleasure in "within the agreed set of assumptions of Christianity which you are entering into when you ask how a Christian distinguishes between the two" the question of a "possible trickster" becomes meaningless and circular! Why? Because you could just as well as all sorts of other meaningless circular possibilities (a creator who is neither good nor bad, a creator who isn't there anymore and how do you distinguish a good creator from a non-existent one?, a creator who was 'good' but changed his mind, a creator who WAS bad and learned and became good...etc etc. all of these are circular and do not deal with the reality of the universe based on evidence).Breckminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16059206540177008895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-49910400718855536732010-02-13T23:36:03.196-05:002010-02-13T23:36:03.196-05:00No worries, Rob.
Thanks for the discussion.
But ...No worries, Rob.<br /><br />Thanks for the discussion.<br /><br />But I still think I'm right. ;)dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-90328656490805583442010-02-13T15:12:00.161-05:002010-02-13T15:12:00.161-05:00I'll just say you win, what ever that means. ...I'll just say you win, what ever that means. You found my achilles heal. I write long posts but at this point, I've seriously intended to respond but I just end up procrastinating.<br /><br />The extent to which you won, you've made substantive comments that deserve a response in your last set of posts. The extent to which you didn't, If we did it all over again, I'd pretty much take the same route as I have. For me, this is a challenge to express myself, to play the semantic game, but conceptually speaking, I haven't moved much at all.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-82530428182178940502010-01-30T22:45:39.146-05:002010-01-30T22:45:39.146-05:00>> you think? just as the evil God scenario ...>> you think? just as the evil God scenario is too silly to waste our time on. Just as the idea that it is equivalent to traditional judeo-Christian theism.<br /><br />Sigh.<br /><br />Instead of just directly confronting my argument by showing how you can prove that your Good God scenario is a non-question begging possibility that follows from the evidence of our reason and empirical experience, you keep perseverating about this radical scepticism nonsense.<br /><br />Let me spell it out for you AGAIN.<br /><br />Solipsism undermines ALL our experience, because it says that our experience is basically false. In other words, my experience says that I am really typing on this keyboard to a person named Rob. Solipsism says that my experience is just the experience that I am typing on this keyboard to a person named Rob. The latter completely undermines the former. I do not just experience an experience. I experience things in the real world. There is no good argument to demonstrate that all I experience is subjective experience, because they presuppose a distinction between real and illusory experiences, which are IMPOSSIBLE in solipsism. So, if solipsism is true, then ALL our experience is false. And thus, we are left with incoherence and CHAOS.<br /><br />My Evil Deceiver scenario just undermines YOUR version of God. My experience and reason, and everything else in the world remains the same. <br /><br />So, whereas solipsism undermines EVERYTHING, my Evil Deceiver only undermines your religious beliefs. <br /><br />TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and thus cannot be analogous, except in the most superficial and unconvincing way.<br /><br />Just be a man, stop dicking around, and directly prove, using reason and experience, why your Good God scenario is true and my Evil Deceiver scenario is false without begging the question. Enough of this stupid sceptical red herrings, because they are not salient to this issue at all. <br /><br />Come on, Rob. You can do it!<br /><br />>> let me summarize. I justified my faith and I continued to do it here. And they aren't different types of faith as I define it, the confidence in something that is unprovable, unprovable because we can concoct scenarios that lead to radicle skepticism. Coherent ones no less. As I said in my first post (which was not to you) in this thread, I never retracted any of that<br /><br />You haven’t justified your faith. You have engaged in extended non sequiters and red herrings about radical scepticism to distract from your inability to demonstrate that your Good God scenarios is more consistent with logic and empirical evidence than my Evil Deceiver scenario. Yes, we can concoct an infinite number of radical scenarios about our everyday experience, but those radical sceptical scenarios would undermine themselves, because they would undermine our logic, experience and capacity to mean anything by our words, and thus are incoherent. My Evil Deceiver scenario is not in this category at all, and you have failed to demonstrate that it is. All you have done is run away from the challenge that started this whole thread.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-3077843649554207662010-01-30T22:41:44.262-05:002010-01-30T22:41:44.262-05:00>> And I have much more, I have the explanat...>> And I have much more, I have the explanatory power needed that commends the epistemic strength of a view.<br /><br />Care to elaborate?<br /><br />>> that's right. you can engage in ad hoc reasoning. that is not a strength.<br /><br />You are right. It is NOT a strength, especially when believers imagine what must be going on in God’s mind to justify the horrors that he causes in the world. There’s nothing ad hoc about that! LOL.<br /><br />>> right, because they stick closer to revelation, reason, experience, our existential concerns and so on. And they aren't post hoc when they become demonstrable in several different areas. That's the way much of Christian scholarship is.<br /><br />Revelation is not a valid source of knowledge, unless you want to demonstrate why your specific revelation is true while others are false. Also, you know my opinion about our “existential concerns”. They have NO bearing upon the truth of things, but only what we WANT to be true. Unless you are arguing that if we want X to be true, then X is true, then why bring up this red herring? <br /><br />Reason and experience are another matter altogether. Could you show me how using only reason and experience that you can justify the existence of a good God over and above my Evil Deceiver? Again, that would conclusively refute my argument. So why not just do it?<br /><br />>> it doesn't beg the question. It highlights that the question cannot be answered on purely empirical grounds.<br /><br />It DOES beg the question. That was Austin’s point. The solipsist must demonstrate that all we experience is experience itself without any referent outside of experience. In order to do so, the solipsist basically relies upon illusions in which our experiences are of things that are not really there, and thus he concludes that we cannot be experiencing something that is not there, and must be experiencing something, namely, experience itself. <br /><br />However, if that is true, then there cannot be illusions at all since there is no longer any difference between an experience of a real tree and the illusion of a tree, because they BOTH are just the SAME experience of the experience of a tree. And therefore there is no grounds to make the solipsist argument at all.<br /><br />Seriously? You can’t see this?<br /><br />>> Right. appeal to explanatory power, Just as I do with theism over against your scenario.<br /><br />There is a difference, though. I HAVE an explanation for why my Evil Deceiver can create the same world that we experience. I actually provided it in detail. On the other hand, the solipsist has NO explanation for where these experiences are coming from and why they appear to connect to a real world outside myself. Big difference. Bad analogy, on your part.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-89143897789272941032010-01-30T22:41:17.552-05:002010-01-30T22:41:17.552-05:00>> It's my advantage to use all our epis...>> It's my advantage to use all our epistemic faculties. it is your problem that you don't, that you think a more robust epistemology is one that treats our humanity as a liability.<br /><br />Our humanity CAN be a liability when it comes to knowing the truth. Or do you believe that our capacity to delude ourselves and convince ourselves of things that are untrue is a STRENGTH?<br /><br />>> Whether we can think rationally or not at all is a psychological matter. This is a rather odd argument you are making that invalidates everything we do.<br /><br />Not at all. I am not saying that we are ALWAYS biased and distorted, but only that we have a TENDENCY towards this that we must be CAREFUL about. Similarly, just because we CAN be wrong about some things does not imply that we are wrong about EVERYTHING. I mean, that’s just basic logic.<br /><br />>> Bacteria do not value anything. Bacteria do not have consciousness.<br /><br />I am using the term “value” loosely. My point is that ALL living things can be conceived as having “values” in the sense of having underlying programming that guides their behaviour towards what they are programmed to value. It is that movement towards X that implies that X is valuable. Now, our values are much more sophisticated, because we have conscious awareness of our actions and tendencies, and thus can reflect and modify them in a variety of ways. However, the underlying principle remains the same, and is essentially biological and natural.<br /><br />>> That is a tragedy. I have a means for explaining this tragedy. I don't see that you do. If materialism is true, then we humans only think there is tragedy, but there is no basis for it in the laws of physics.<br /><br />Again, why does physics have to imply tragedy? X is a tragedy if X causes an emotion of sadness, sympathy and suffering in conscious beings. That’s all there is to it. Physics? Jeez, what narcissism! So, if the universe doesn’t care whether you love your child, then you cannot possibly really love your child? Really??<br /><br />>> If you've only had shallow emotions, I geuss you should not be impressed. But extreme emotions are no less self evident than logic itself. it is not enough to think deeply. We must also feel deeply. That is the way we are made to be knowers of reality.<br /><br />Right. I have found that when I really, really want X to be true, then that is when I am least likely to deceive myself in ways that maximize the evidence for X and minimize the evidence against X. You are right that there is no such thing as a confirmation bias or any other cognitive distortion that has been uncovered by psychological studies. And if an objective inquiry finds that the earth revolves around the sun, but my feelings are deeply, deeply hurt, and my existence itself feels threatened, then I can dismiss that inquiry and continue to believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Rrrrrrrright.<br /><br />>> I didn't base anything upon my dislike for your scenario. I based it upon it's inability to satisfactorially and coherently explain human worth and oughtness that it attested to by that which is a part of what is necessary for our humanity, our emotions. <br /><br />Ummm, yeah I did. I told you how our emotions are neurobiological byproducts of human evolution, and that they indicate what our deeper values are by virtue of the approaching behaviour that they induce. You complained that this does not explain why the galaxy would weep when I scrape my knee. And I would reply that you have to show me that my explanation must also include an explanation for why the universe cries when I cry. That onus is upon you, not me.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-37141506270867974572010-01-30T22:40:56.280-05:002010-01-30T22:40:56.280-05:00>> We make the universe great. Without us, o...>> We make the universe great. Without us, or at least some consciousness, it has no worth and no truth worth knowing. So how real is that worth? I can say it is absolutely real. Can you?<br /><br />“Worth” and “value” are relative to our psychological appraisal of entities. Without our psychological appraisal, there is no “worth” and “value”. Since the universe cannot be shown to appraise things in such a way, it cannot be said to “value” anything at all. I don’t know what you mean by “absolutely real” worth.<br /><br />>> I have no objective reason to believe that subjective biases need to be reduced as much as possible and that they aren't even necessary for truth.<br /><br />Really? You really believe that there is no good reason to minimize our subjective biases when we are trying to discover something true? So, if you are trying to decide if X murdered Y, then you would put the testimony of X’s best friend, who needs X to stay out of jail to keep his job, and who told others that he would lie on X’s behalf, over the testimony of someone who does not know X at all, but witnessed the murder of Y? And why not? Because X’s best friend is BIASED!!! And it is best to minimize bias when trying to uncover the truth, because bias DISTORTS our search for the truth. <br /><br />>> Well intrinsic human worth is not an objective natural phenomena now is it? It is apart of our subjective experience.<br /><br />No, it is not, except in the sense that our subjective experiences are objective natural phenomena. It is an objective fact that we have subjective experiences involving valuing different things. <br /><br />>> So you're using one eccentricity of our vision to invalidate epistemic means of valuing in the world? Maybe our vision can't be trusted at all on the basis of one blind spot. So much for empiricism. But as I've already argued, the exceptions don't invalidate our general reliance on our epistemic faculties that we take holistically and intertwined.<br /><br />First, you cannot just dismiss my counterexample to the claim that if X is an “essential part of our humanity”, then X must be indicative of a true state of affairs outside of ourselves. Your principle is clearly FALSE if X = our blind spot. QED.<br /><br />Second, we can trust our vision, but must be cautious, because we have a blind spot that is filled in by our brain and does not actually refer to anything really out there. I am NOT saying that we must therefore reject ALL our vision, but only that your principle is false. <br /><br />Third, I agree that “the exceptions don't invalidate our general reliance on our epistemic faculties that we take holistically and intertwined”. That has nothing to do with the point I was making, which was that just because our values seem to point to something beyond ourselves does not imply that they really do refer to objective entities out there. You would have to provide an argument for that. And making an analogy between our senses’ experience of external empirical objects and our moral intuition’s experience of external objective values is just ludicrous. You would have to show how the two things are similar. Good luck with that.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-77972098534547062552010-01-30T22:40:31.146-05:002010-01-30T22:40:31.146-05:00>> The grief one has for losing an opportuni...>> The grief one has for losing an opportunity to eat icecream cannot compare to the earth shattering loss of a loved one.<br /><br />Again, we know that we value X if we grieve X’s absence, and the degree of grief is proportionate to the degree that we valued X. I think that our values guide our emotions, which alert us to the values that guide them. Just as a bacteria values glucose by virtue of its movement towards glucose in a gradient, so do we value different things as evidenced by the emotional arousal of those things, which moves us to approach them. I see no need to write anything into the cosmos in this matter. If our emotional apparatus was different, then we would value different things. There is nothing inherent in what we value, except in that we invariably are driven by our emotions to approach it.<br /><br />>> You could have brain damage that would inhibit your ability to reason at all. That doesn't mean that your reasoning faculties aren't necessary for truth just as the same possibility for emotions doesn't mean that they aren't necessary for some truths.<br /><br />No, you are assuming that facts about the world have the same ontological status as our values. That would require some argumentation to support. Mountains would continue to exist, even when humanity goes extinct, but our values would no longer exist if we were gone. They are different things entirely.<br /><br />>> How we came by this aspect of our humanity doesn't explain whether those beliefs are true or not. At the loss of a loved one, the content of the feeling is that what is lost ought not be lost. Well is this true or not? And what support can materialism give to this? <br /><br />I have no idea what you are talking about. What do you mean “whether those beliefs are true or not”? <br /><br />It is a FACT that human beings are interdependent upon one another. That is not a value. It is also a FACT that we have feelings of empathy and compassion towards one another. That is not a value. A VALUE would be that SINCE we are interdependent upon one another, then we SHOULD use our feelings of empathy and compassion to build loving and supportive relationships with one another, because that would maximize our ability to live in peace. And that value is based upon the fact that using our compassion and empathy DOES lead to loving and supportive relationships with one another, which have a higher chance of building lives of satisfaction than lives of selfishness and callousness. <br /><br />This is just trivial.<br /><br />>> True. Very true. A materialistic universe is rather useless here isn't it. Good thing I reject materialism.<br /><br />You didn’t answer my question. WHY does the universe have to cry for the suffering of human beings? It isn’t enough for you to just say that believing that it does makes you feel good about yourself. Your feelings are irrelevant to the truth of these issues. <br /><br />>> thus our belief that such a thing would be immensily tragic cannot be sustained in a naturalistic view of the world. Such as extinction is a horrific thought and the horror of that thought is true through and through. <br /><br />It would be tragic FOR US if we went extinct, because WE value each other. However, the universe is NOT us, and it would require an argument to demonstrate that the universe has the SAME concerns that we do. Good luck with that argument.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-69532423427146871562010-01-30T22:40:05.144-05:002010-01-30T22:40:05.144-05:00Rob:
We agree that there are degrees of faith tha...Rob:<br /><br />We agree that there are degrees of faith that we have in our beliefs. I believe that an implication of this is that we should probably try to minimize our beliefs to those that require the minimal degree of faith. I think that you agree, because you state that “blind faith” is “negative”, mainly because there is a maximum degree of faith involved in such beliefs.<br /><br />>> That said, it would take a very high level of faith for one to believe that your evil God scenario is true, and inversely, it would take a low level of faith to believe that it is false. I don't need much faith for my confidence in the falsehood of your scenario. There are better alternatives out there even if Christian theism wasn't one.<br /><br />First, I could easily say the same to you: “it would take a very high level of faith for one to believe that your [good] God scenario is true, and inversely, it would take a low level of faith to believe that it is false”. And that would be true. Given the horror in the world, it would take a low level of faith to believe that there is no benevolent and good God involved in the world’s creation, design and sustenance. <br /><br />Second, you have not addressed WHY you think that my Evil Deceiver scenario has a lower level of probability than your Good God scenario. You raised two issues in your previous comments, and I replied to them.<br /><br />>> I don't accept that it is coherent with moral realism (which I described in my last set of posts). I could be wrong about moral realism, but I have every reason to have confidence in moral realism and my reasoning behind it.<br /><br />If you are going to hitch your entire wagon to “moral realism”, then you had better be clear about what you mean by that term. <br /><br />>> And so what best explains this? That the loved one did indeed have value in and of themselves or that the value is nothing more than the result of a trait that had an evolutionary advantage?<br /><br />I would say the latter explanation, but I would expand upon it. We have evolved a complex capacity to evaluate various internal and external events as valuable or not, and depending upon the context, the appraisal of X as valuable can generate a variety of thoughts and emotions within us, usually geared towards approaching it in some way. This capacity has had an evolutionary advantage in the sense that it contributed to our ability to interact in complex social groups, and thus facilitated our cultural development. <br /><br />I do not understand this persistent need to have our values written into the fabric of the universe, i.e. “value in and of themselves”. Why this grandiose narcissism? Why isn’t it good enough that we value things that have brought benefit to our lives, and that we have evolved psychological mechanisms to alert us to what we value? Why does EVERYTHING have to have cosmic significance or else it is utterly insignificant?<br /><br />>> you ignored what I said. A porsche does not have the same value as a human baby or person. Someone who values it that much is warped.<br /><br />Not necessarily. A person can value a Porsche for its capacity to signal one’s power and prestige, which one can use to get a high paying job, which one can use to support one’s children, which one values. Values are complicated things and different situations will bring out different values over others.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-82774940032583070962010-01-30T17:29:28.205-05:002010-01-30T17:29:28.205-05:00post 6 of 6
And again, the fact that the only so...post 6 of 6<br /><br /><br /><em>And again, the fact that the only solipsists that I have ever met have been psychotic individuals suffering from derealization who were totally unable to function. That refutes your claim that one can be a solipsist and still continue to function and behave as if one believed that the external world existed.</em><br /><br />It does not refute that claim in the slightest since if solipsism is true, there are no psychotic people, only characters in the solipsistic narrative. And if the central character who solely recieves the experiences of the solipsistic narrative ever figures out that solipsism is true, he would relize that his experience could be a nightmare of living in a psych ward if he revealed this fact within the narrative.<br /><br /><em>I mean, seriously, this is all too silly to waste our time on.</em><br /><br />you think? just as the evil God scenario is too silly to waste our time on. Just as the idea that it is equivalent to traditional judeo-Christian theism.<br /><br /><em>Are we seriously going to have to go through this issue of “faith” again? Let me summarize where we left off: faith in our senses and reason is justified, but faith in the supernatural is not. They are different TYPES of faith.</em><br /><br />let me summarize. I justified my faith and I continued to do it here. And they aren't different types of faith as I define it, the confidence in something that is unprovable, unprovable because we can concoct scenarios that lead to radicle skepticism. Coherent ones no less. As I said in my first post (which was not to you) in this thread, I never retracted any of that.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-70853493722670635222010-01-30T17:28:36.091-05:002010-01-30T17:28:36.091-05:005 of 6
This is not true. Experience is NOT “the ...5 of 6<br /><br /><br /><em>This is not true. Experience is NOT “the only thing the mind directly contacts”. J. L. Austin destroyed his claim decades ago in his “Sense and Sensibilia”. I suggest you look it up.</em><br /><br />Then you should be able to present his argument here. Otherwise, this is a fallacious appeal to authority that not all philosophers would agree with.<br /><br /><em>I think that you have fallen into the same mistaken Cartesian line of thinking as many before you. You arbitrarily narrow the definition of “experience” to “private, subjective, and incorrigible qualia”, and then are stuck with solipsism.</em><br /><br />I am not stuck with solipsism because I am not an empiricist and I accept that knowledge is not invalidated just because scenarios for radicle skepticism cannot be disproved.<br /><br />And as to Descarte, it is Humes destruction of the rationalist/empiricist paradigm that I am pushing here. Hume is the father of radicle skepticism in modern times and his basis was empericism in that.<br /><br /><em>Why make such a narrow definition at all when it leads to something as ludicrous as solipsism? </em><br /><br />why be an empiricist since it is unable to rule out solipsism?<br /><br /><em>This has been shown to be a fallacious form of reasoning, because it begs the question about there being a difference between illusions and veridical experiences.</em><br /><br />it doesn't beg the question. It highlights that the question cannot be answered on purely empirical grounds.<br /><br /><em>However, it follows that there IS no difference between an illusory and real rose, and thus the very example that was used to justify the existence of qualia falls apart.</em><br /><br />I don't see how it falls apart.<br /><br /><em>Furthermore, assuming that solipsism is true, then one must account for WHERE these experiences are coming from, and WHY they appear to direct us to the existence of a causally integrated and coherent external world?</em><br /><br />Right. appeal to explanatory power, Just as I do with theism over against your scenario.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-83983067736078439162010-01-30T17:27:48.935-05:002010-01-30T17:27:48.935-05:00post 4 of 6
Again, if your only grounds to rejec...post 4 of 6<br /><br /><br /><em>Again, if your only grounds to reject my Evil Deceiver scenario is that it gives you the flutters, then I would say that you have very little justification.</em><br /><br />If you've only had shallow emotions, I geuss you should not be impressed. But extreme emotions are no less self evident than logic itself. it is not enough to think deeply. We must also feel deeply. That is the way we are made to be knowers of reality.<br /><br /><em>You would need a lot more than your emotional uneasiness and dislike to justify rejecting my scenario.</em><br /><br />I didn't base anything upon my dislike for your scenario. I based it upon it's inability to satisfactorially and coherently explain human worth and oughtness that it attested to by that which is a part of what is necessary for our humanity, our emotions. And I have much more, I have the explanatory power needed that commends the epistemic strength of a view.<br /><br /><em>The fact of the matter is that I can concoct a variety of possible explanations for whatever concerns you may have. </em><br /><br />that's right. you can engage in ad hoc reasoning. that is not a strength.<br /><br /><em>The irony is that you would reject these post hoc revisions in a way that you would never even consider rejecting the post hoc revisions in your own religious beliefs.</em><br /><br />right, because they stick closer to revelation, reason, experience, our existential concerns and so on. And they aren't post hoc when they become demonstrable in several different areas. That's the way much of Christian scholarship is.<br /><br /><em>I never said that “the whole purpose of the world is to be broken”. I said that the Evil Deceiver created the universe with the intention of playing a joke on human beings by presenting himself as a benevolent deity, dangling the hope of heaven and the fear of hell, and watching them struggle throughout their lives in the midst of this illusion</em><br /><br />which would be broken from our perspective given our views of the way things ought to be are fundamentally at odds with their intention.<br /><br /><em>My statements about undermining logic, reason and experience were about radical scepticism in general, not solipsism in particular.</em><br /><br />then they are wrong in general since radically skeptical arguments are at odds with normal epistemic reasoning on all sorts of different levels.<br /><br /><em>It does undermine experience, because it essentially says that all experience is false.</em><br /><br />It says it is false to trust that experience leads mind to external reality. But it's not false that mind has experiences.<br /><br /><em>This is because all experience is fundamentally intentional, and thus is directed towards something else, including external entities.</em><br /><br />Including our existential concerns which are about people who are external to ourselves. But if you don't want to trust those, you are engaging in specail pleading to suggest that we can trust the alleged intentioning and directing of our experience to external reality but not our experience of existential concerns.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-6740386028673506062010-01-30T17:27:05.674-05:002010-01-30T17:27:05.674-05:00post 3 of 6
It is false that if X is an “essent...post 3 of 6<br /><br /><br /><br /><em>It is false that if X is an “essential part of our humanity”, then X must be indicative of a true state of affairs outside of ourselves.</em><br /><br />Why?<br /><br /><em>Having a blind spot is an easy counterexample</em><br /><br />So you're using one eccentricity of our vision to invalidate epistemic means of valuing in the world? Maybe our vision can't be trusted at all on the basis of one blind spot. So much for empiricism. But as I've already argued, the exceptions don't invalidate our general reliance on our epistemic faculties that we take holistically and intertwined. <br /><br /><em>If this is a truth that you have decided to find unacceptable, then that is your problem.</em><br /><br />It's my advantage to use all our epistemic faculties. it is your problem that you don't, that you think a more robust epistemology is one that treats our humanity as a liability.<br /><br /><em>However, your psychological inhibitions are not relevant to determining the truth about the world, only about your psychology. And since your psychology is not the focus of this discussion, I will have to ignore your inhibitions are irrelevant.</em><br /><br />Whether we can think rationally or not at all is a psychological matter. This is a rather odd argument you are making that invalidates everything we do.<br /><br /><em>You are assuming that a theory that explains why we value various things must also ENDORSE these values.</em><br /><br />That's right. I assume that the more harmonious our epistemic resources are, the more robust and reliable our epistemology is.<br /><br /><em>Bacteria value glucose as fuel, </em><br /><br />Bacteria do not value anything. Bacteria do not have consciousness.<br /><br /><em>The tragedy is that human beings spend their limited amount of time living according to values that are fundamentally false. It is a tragedy whenever individuals waste limited resources for the sake of illusory and useless ends.</em><br /><br />That is a tragedy. I have a means for explaining this tragedy. I don't see that you do. If materialism is true, then we humans only think there is tragedy, but there is no basis for it in the laws of physics.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-68249438247927369762010-01-30T17:26:25.769-05:002010-01-30T17:26:25.769-05:00post 2 of 6
Do you need such a convoluted justif...post 2 of 6<br /><br /><br /><em>Do you need such a convoluted justification to support the “incredible value” that you have for your favourite flavour of ice cream?</em><br /><br />I'd say convolution comes when we think that human worth can be compared to the worth of a favorite flavor of ice cream. The grief one has for losing an opportunity to eat icecream cannot compare to the earth shattering loss of a loved one.<br /><br /><em>For example, if I suffered brain damage to my temporal lobes and became unable to experience emotions, then how could anyone know what I valued?</em><br /><br />You could have brain damage that would inhibit your ability to reason at all. That doesn't mean that your reasoning faculties aren't necessary for truth just as the same possibility for emotions doesn't mean that they aren't necessary for some truths.<br /><br /><em>In other words, why isn’t it enough that human beings have intrinsic value, because we have evolved to have empathy and altruism, and are fundamentally interdependent upon one another?</em><br /><br />How we came by this aspect of our humanity doesn't explain whether those beliefs are true or not. At the loss of a loved one, the content of the feeling is that what is lost ought not be lost. Well is this true or not? And what support can materialism give to this? <br /><br /><em>Why does the entire universe have to cry when a human being dies? The universe doesn’t give a damn, because it lacks the cognitive and emotional capacities to value anything, intrinsically or extrinsically.</em><br /><br />True. Very true. A materialistic universe is rather useless here isn't it. Good thing I reject materialism.<br /><br /><em>When human beings have become extinct, the planet earth will not mourn our loss.</em><br /><br />thus our belief that such a thing would be immensily tragic cannot be sustained in a naturalistic view of the world. Such as extinction is a horrific thought and the horror of that thought is true through and through. We make the universe great. Without us, or at least some consciousness, it has no worth and no truth worth knowing. So how real is that worth? I can say it is absolutely real. Can you?<br /><br /><em>I never said that truth must only be arrived at objectively without any subjectivity whatsoever. I said that when we are trying to understand what is going on in the world, we must be careful to MINIMIZE our subjective biases, distortions and wishful thinking, because these will confound the results of our inquiry.</em><br /><br />I have no objective reason to believe that subjective biases need to be reduced as much as possible and that they aren't even necessary for truth.<br /><br /><em>Our emotions would be important sources of information if we are studying human psychology, but they enhance bias when used to study objective natural phenomena.</em><br /><br />Well intrinsic human worth is not an objective natural phenomena now is it? It is apart of our subjective experience.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-66137583057301304302010-01-30T17:25:47.491-05:002010-01-30T17:25:47.491-05:00post 1
dguller, I did not say that faith is only...post 1<br /><br /><br />dguller, I did not say that faith is only confidence. It is that state where one has confidence in spite of some degree of unprovability. When I speak of a high level and low level of faith, I'm not simply speaking of the degree of confidence. The degree of faith is a reflection of the epistemic risk, the risk that what is believed to be true might be wrong. I'm speaking of the difference between the degree to which something is arguable or provable and that confidence that it is true. I think this is better explained by example. The belief that thinking is taking place requires no faith because it is the only belief that is absolutely provable and undeniable. Then logic and math take a little more faith. After that, some scientific claims take a little more faith that that, and some religious claims take more faith that science. (and as I explained in the last thread, faith as I discuss it here is not the same as faith as discussed in the bible where the greater degree of faith is always a positive. Here, it is not necessarily positive or negative, but if it is too great, then it is negative as it is blind faith which are beliefs held for no reason at all).<br /><br />That said, it would take a very high level of faith for one to believe that your evil God scenario is true, and inversely, it would take a low level of faith to believe that it is false. I don't need much faith for my confidence in the falsehood of your scenario. There are better alternatives out there even if Christian theism wasn't one.<br /><br /><em>Okay, so you acknowledge that my Evil Deceiver scenario is a “possibility”, which means that you accept that it is logically consistent.</em><br /><br />I don't accept that it is coherent with moral realism (which I described in my last set of posts). I could be wrong about moral realism, but I have every reason to have confidence in moral realism and my reasoning behind it.<br /><br /><em>For example, when we experience the emotion of intense grief following the death of a loved one, this indicates to us that we valued the loved one in a deep and fundamental way.</em><br /><br />And so what best explains this? That the loved one did indeed have value in and of themselves or that the value is nothing more than the result of a trait that had an evolutionary advantage?<br /><br /><em>Why does this require the “warping of the human mind by sin”? Why can’t someone fundamentally value possessing a Porsche, not necessarily in and of itself, but because having a Porsche represents power and prestige? Can’t those be existential values? Or do you arbitrarily limit them to only those values that YOU value?</em><br /><br />you ignored what I said. A porsche does not have the same value as a human baby or person. Someone who values it that much is warped.<br /><br /><em>All of these are important pieces of information in addition to the emotions involved to determine what the parent’s REAL feelings and values are.</em><br /><br />All the factors you spoke of are part of truely warped people. Again, people can be broken to the point that they'd gamble on their child's life. If you don't see the problem with that, I don't claim that I can convince just anyone of anything. I don't think I could help you out here. People have value in and of themselves and even if one takes that for granted without much reflection and decides that this is more consistent with theism, they are far better off with a human epistemology than someone for whom human value and worth is an open question.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-24209462579926254092010-01-30T01:28:10.319-05:002010-01-30T01:28:10.319-05:00Recharging his batteries, no doubt.Recharging his batteries, no doubt.Bronxboy47https://www.blogger.com/profile/12820086206830534185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-85595699306811443782010-01-30T00:55:00.405-05:002010-01-30T00:55:00.405-05:00Hello, Rob?Hello, Rob?dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-9955130481424795272010-01-26T07:10:26.745-05:002010-01-26T07:10:26.745-05:00Rob:
>> I do recognize this possibility. An...Rob:<br /><br />>> I do recognize this possibility. And i am confident that it is false. That is what I have described as faith in our previous discussion. it is a very low level of faith though that is required since your alternative view has so little going for it.<br /><br />Okay, so you acknowledge that my Evil Deceiver scenario is a “possibility”, which means that you accept that it is logically consistent. Otherwise, it would be impossible. So, if it is possible, then your only grounds of refutation are do show that it is a poor fit for the data that we have about the world we live in. I think that I have addressed your concerns fairly well, and thus I believe that you have not conclusively shown that the Evil Deceiver hypothesis poorly explains the phenomena that we experience in the world. All that you have done is perseverate about the importance of emotions guiding us to our intrinsic values, and some red herrings about the world being broken and the meaning of “tragedy”. <br /><br />So, what are you left with, especially since you have failed to show either logical inconsistency or empirical falsification of my Evil Deceiver hypothesis? A “very low level” of confidence and faith that it is false. Wow. That’s very overwhelming. (Not even a high level of faith in its falsity?) And not just any faith, but your particular definition of “faith” as “belief without absolute proof”! And what is the ground for this confidence and faith? Ultimately, nothing but your emotions and preferences, or as you call them, “existential concerns”. <br /><br />Seriously? Is that why you spent so much time previously trying to justify your narrow definition of “faith” and the concept of “properly basic” beliefs? Because at the end of the day that’s ALL YOU HAVE to support your specific supernatural hypothesis and avoid mine and all the 500 others?<br /><br />If so, then that is just sad.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-74396747721270846052010-01-26T02:52:36.024-05:002010-01-26T02:52:36.024-05:00>> There is of course a lot that can be know...>> There is of course a lot that can be known as experience presents a coherent world and narrative to the perceiver. But once you suggest that these experiences reflect something that is independent of the experiences, you assert, against the most rigorous empiricism, something that cannot be known as it is not what we directly perceive.<br /><br />I think that you have fallen into the same mistaken Cartesian line of thinking as many before you. You arbitrarily narrow the definition of “experience” to “private, subjective, and incorrigible qualia”, and then are stuck with solipsism. Why make such a narrow definition at all when it leads to something as ludicrous as solipsism? <br /><br />Where is this idea coming from? I’ll tell you where it comes from: Descartes’ pondering of subjective illusions. He felt that the experience of an illusory rose was the same as that of a real rose, and thus there must be a common subjective experience of “rose”, which may or may not be related to a real rose. <br /><br />This has been shown to be a fallacious form of reasoning, because it begs the question about there being a difference between illusions and veridical experiences. In other words, it begins with comparing two DIFFERENT situations, perceiving a real rose and perceiving an illusory rose, and concludes that there is a common experience. However, it follows that there IS no difference between an illusory and real rose, and thus the very example that was used to justify the existence of qualia falls apart. <br /><br />Furthermore, assuming that solipsism is true, then one must account for WHERE these experiences are coming from, and WHY they appear to direct us to the existence of a causally integrated and coherent external world? A far more persuasive explanation is that our experiences are usually reliable testimony about the existence of entities outside ourselves, and that they are essentially byproducts of the interaction between our brain, our body, and our surrounding environment. <br /><br />And again, the fact that the only solipsists that I have ever met have been psychotic individuals suffering from derealization who were totally unable to function. That refutes your claim that one can be a solipsist and still continue to function and behave as if one believed that the external world existed. I know, facts are stubborn things.<br /><br />I mean, seriously, this is all too silly to waste our time on.<br /><br />>> My response in the last thread was not to deny the coherence of your scenario or arguments of radical skepticism. it was to deny that they destroyed the foundations of normal knowledge since faith in trusting our normal epistemic faculties and intuitions is a reasonable alternative to the agnosticism they imply.<br /><br />Oh my God. Are we seriously going to have to go through this issue of “faith” again? Let me summarize where we left off: faith in our senses and reason is justified, but faith in the supernatural is not. They are different TYPES of faith.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-62192716240149104102010-01-26T02:52:13.748-05:002010-01-26T02:52:13.748-05:00>> And so if our value is false, then where ...>> And so if our value is false, then where lies the real tragedy and evil that this malignant God dreamt up? This is poorly explained.<br /><br />The tragedy is that human beings spend their limited amount of time living according to values that are fundamentally false. It is a tragedy whenever individuals waste limited resources for the sake of illusory and useless ends. <br /><br />Again, if your only grounds to reject my Evil Deceiver scenario is that it gives you the flutters, then I would say that you have very little justification. You would need a lot more than your emotional uneasiness and dislike to justify rejecting my scenario. The fact of the matter is that I can concoct a variety of possible explanations for whatever concerns you may have. The irony is that you would reject these post hoc revisions in a way that you would never even consider rejecting the post hoc revisions in your own religious beliefs.<br /><br />>> There is not a lot of sense in your view that the whole purpose of the world is to be broken. And here, as I suggested in my first post comes a matter of incoherence. How can something be broken if it does not have an original intention of wholeness, if there isn't a way that it ought to be. And yet the way that the world ought to be is the way that it ought not be. The Judeo-Christian view makes more sense, that there is a way that the world ought to be, it is broken against it's intentions, and God is at work to restore the world through his faithful.<br /><br />I never said that “the whole purpose of the world is to be broken”. I said that the Evil Deceiver created the universe with the intention of playing a joke on human beings by presenting himself as a benevolent deity, dangling the hope of heaven and the fear of hell, and watching them struggle throughout their lives in the midst of this illusion. <br /><br />So far, still no good reason to reject this scenario other than your dyspepsia. <br /><br />>> Solipsism does not necessarily undermine logic. <br /><br />My statements about undermining logic, reason and experience were about radical scepticism in general, not solipsism in particular.<br /><br />>> It actually doesn't undermine experience but suggests that experience is all that there is (though you could add logic and a personal mind to that without damage to solipsism). <br /><br />It does undermine experience, because it essentially says that all experience is false. This is because all experience is fundamentally intentional, and thus is directed towards something else, including external entities. Solipsism says that when we experience external entities, we are really just experiencing our subjective experience itself. I’m really sorry if you cannot see how this falsifies all our intuitions about our experience.<br /><br />>> Experience is the only thing that mind directly contacts, thus, by the most rigorous empiricism, it is all that can be reasonably known. <br /><br />This is not true. Experience is NOT “the only thing the mind directly contacts”. J. L. Austin destroyed his claim decades ago in his “Sense and Sensibilia”. I suggest you look it up.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-86460098012063021492010-01-26T02:51:35.790-05:002010-01-26T02:51:35.790-05:00Second, why the need for intrinsic value to be an ...Second, why the need for intrinsic value to be an essential part of the universe? In other words, why isn’t it enough that human beings have intrinsic value, because we have evolved to have empathy and altruism, and are fundamentally interdependent upon one another? Why does the entire universe have to cry when a human being dies? The universe doesn’t give a damn, because it lacks the cognitive and emotional capacities to value anything, intrinsically or extrinsically. When human beings have become extinct, the planet earth will not mourn our loss.<br /><br />Third, why is it impossible for an Evil Deceiver to have created us with the emotions that we have, and with the values that we have?<br /><br />>> But of course, you could reject it all, and to that, i offer no apology as I have rejected that truth must be arrived at only objectively on grounds that just anyone can see without subjective considerations. <br /><br />That is a straw man and red herring. I never said that truth must only be arrived at objectively without any subjectivity whatsoever. I said that when we are trying to understand what is going on in the world, we must be careful to MINIMIZE our subjective biases, distortions and wishful thinking, because these will confound the results of our inquiry. Our emotions would be important sources of information if we are studying human psychology, but they enhance bias when used to study objective natural phenomena. <br /><br />>> But I find nothing in your denials to even suggest a hint of a reason to shake my confidence in this. This is an essential part of our humanity. It is non-negotiable for me. If you insist on disagreement, then it is the case that no agreement can be had here.<br /><br />It is false that if X is an “essential part of our humanity”, then X must be indicative of a true state of affairs outside of ourselves. Having a blind spot is an easy counterexample that demonstrates that just because we cannot help but NOT see the blind spot that we are, therefore, truly seeing something in that area of our vision. What we are seeing is filled in by our brain and not objectively there.<br /><br />If this is a truth that you have decided to find unacceptable, then that is your problem. However, your psychological inhibitions are not relevant to determining the truth about the world, only about your psychology. And since your psychology is not the focus of this discussion, I will have to ignore your inhibitions are irrelevant.<br /><br />>> The theistic view affirms the value and worth that presents itself to us almost every day, and in extreme situations from the positive such as the love of spouse and children to the negative situations as described above. It affirms this and it has resources for an explanation, our creation in the image of God. It is rooted in the personhood of God. <br /><br />You are assuming that a theory that explains why we value various things must also ENDORSE these values. That is silly. Bacteria value glucose as fuel, and they move towards glucose as evidence that they value it. Does a theory to explain this phenomena have ENDORSE that glucose is fundamentally valuable? What about to entities that do not require glucose and require another source of fuel? All it has to show is WHY bacteria value glucose. Similarly, a theory of human beings must explain WHY we value our values, but does not have to agree that they are fundamentally valuable, even when there are no human beings in existence.<br /><br />>> There is no basis for the value of humans in the view with the malignant God. Our value is false as we are created for no good purpose but to suffer or to be deceived. <br /><br />Of course there is a basis, but it is not one that you happen to like. Now, you may have an emotional aversion to my hypothesis, and that indicates that you have little value of it, but it does not follow from your emotional aversion that it is false, only that your values are inconsistent with it. You would have to demonstrate how your values are indicators of the truth or falsity of my hypothesis.dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-89291291153081209972010-01-26T02:50:56.433-05:002010-01-26T02:50:56.433-05:00Rob:
Okay.
If I understand you correctly, your ...Rob:<br /><br />Okay. <br /><br />If I understand you correctly, your “existential concerns” ultimately come down to the powerful emotional responses we have in various situations that indicate what our fundamental values are. For example, when we experience the emotion of intense grief following the death of a loved one, this indicates to us that we valued the loved one in a deep and fundamental way. I agree with this concept, especially since it is in accordance with the findings of affective neuroscience in which our emotions are guided by underlying valences, i.e. our positive and negative attributions of different persons, places, things and circumstances, which can be understood to be our deeper values, in a certain sense.<br /><br />Now, the issue in question here is whether our existential concerns are relevant to determining whether a hypothesis about how the world works is true or false. They are certainly relevant when the hypothesis involves determining what we feel and what we value, but it does not follow that they are relevant to determining other empirical phenomena. For example, my emotion of frustration upon hearing water patter against my window, because I believe it is raining, does not imply that it is, in fact, raining. My neighbour just turned on his sprinkler and its water was striking my window, not rain. You recognize this by saying that “emotions are not in and of themselves enough”, and I would agree with you. <br /><br />Up until now, I think we are on the same page, but your next comments make us part ways.<br /><br />>> Even here, it is possible for a fallacious conclusion as one may feel just as strongly about a porsche. And this we also can explained by noting the warping of the human mind by sin.<br /><br />Why does this require the “warping of the human mind by sin”? Why can’t someone fundamentally value possessing a Porsche, not necessarily in and of itself, but because having a Porsche represents power and prestige? Can’t those be existential values? Or do you arbitrarily limit them to only those values that YOU value?<br /><br />>> The emotional conclusion of the parent for his child need not stand on it's own. <br /><br />I agree that the emotional response of the parent for their child’s survival does not necessarily indicate the truth of their valuing the child, because they may want the child to survive for a number of reasons, e.g. to continue to raid their trust fund, to continue to feel the pride of being a parent, to win a bet that the child would survive, and so on. The additional factors would include the previous relationship between the parent and child, the context of the relationship, and so on. All of these are important pieces of information in addition to the emotions involved to determine what the parent’s REAL feelings and values are.<br /><br />>> It is mutually supportive of divine revelation that we are created in God's image and thus bear incredible value. One notion isn't more foundational than the other but are intertwined and they strengthen each other.<br /><br />First, why do we have to be created in God’s image to have “incredible value”? Do you need such a convoluted justification to support the “incredible value” that you have for your favourite flavour of ice cream? Maybe we value things BECAUSE we have the emotional responses that we do? In other words, without those emotional responses, we could not be said to value anything at all. For example, if I suffered brain damage to my temporal lobes and became unable to experience emotions, then how could anyone know what I valued?dgullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14647381896282400404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-87511721268390221152010-01-26T00:08:02.282-05:002010-01-26T00:08:02.282-05:00pst 5 of 5,
the former undermine ALL knowledge ...pst 5 of 5,<br /><br /><br /><br /><em>the former undermine ALL knowledge whereas the latter only undermine ONE part of knowledge, i.e. supernaturalism.</em><br /><br />They undermine the narrative of external reality that we have come to identify as the object of the vast majority of our knowledge. But different knowledge is entailed in it's place. Less knowledge, but it is not all knowledge that disappears. The ins and outs of the fiction of external reality may be something that can be known. If mind wills that the hand of its dream enters a fire that is also dreamed, then the experience of pain will consistently follow. Such rules may very well be an object of knowledge even though there is no external reality to match this fiction presented to mind. Logical truths may still be known (nothing about them implies the external reality of the solipsistic fiction/dream actually exists and mind does indeed ponder such rules).<br /><br /><em>The bottom line is that if you accept the veracity of the supernatural as a possibility, then you must admit that there are a wide variety of hypotheses about what goes on in the supernatural realm. If you believe that one particular supernatural hypothesis is true, whereas the others are false, then the onus is upon you to justify your belief in that one hypothesis.</em><br /><br />Been there done that, beyond your ad hoc suggestion to other religions that are not so ad hoc. And for the others, there is no way to deal with them except to go into the details, which is well beyond the scope of this discussion.<br /><br /><em>Furthermore, you must be open to the possibility that your particular hypothesis is an illusion fostered upon your mind by supernatural entities unlike those in which you believe.</em><br /><br />I do recognize this possibility. And i am confident that it is false. That is what I have described as faith in our previous discussion. it is a very low level of faith though that is required since your alternative view has so little going for it.<br /><br />My view by the way is not a hypothesis. It is too complex and is not discretely testable. It is more adequately described as a paradigm. Describing all truth claims as hypotheses is quite an oversimplification.Rob Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08937716910001145836noreply@blogger.com