Re: Intelligent Design?
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Sep 20, 3:43 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Sep 15, 2:12 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Sep 14, 2:24 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Sep 14, 12:34 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>> [long, apparently fruitless discussion deleted]
> >>>>>>>>> Do you have ANY personal beliefs about which of the following is most
> >>>>>>>>> likely?
> >>>>>>>>> 1. Our young [1] tiny [2] universe [3] is all there is or can be.
> >>>>>>>>> 2. A super-powerful being created this universe.
> >>>>>>>>> 3. There is a mind-boggling, perhaps infinite number of universes.
> >>>>>>>> Yes. I think #2 is unlikely because if there were such a being we would
> >>>>>>>> probably see some evidence of its existence.
> >>>>>>> And many have claimed to have it, including St. Paul in I Corinthians
> >>>>>>> 15, where he says that there were upwards of 500 people who saw Jesus
> >>>>>>> after he rose from the dead.
> >>>>>>> [Note: the word "says" applies to everything you read after it in the
> >>>>>>> same sentence.]
> >>>>>> I don't count that as evidence. Do you?
> >>>>> Yes, but not convincing evidence.
> >>>>> I count it as evidence especially because St. Paul went to his death
> >>>>> for his Christianity. If he hadn't been convinced by the testimony of
> >>>>> those who said they were eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, he could
> >>>>> easily have repudiated his claims.
> >>>> There is equally good evidence for all manner of untrue things.
> >>> Let's see some examples. And please, read my reply to Rolf of less
> >>> than an hour ago before making your selection.
> >> Mohammed was assumed bodily into heaven from Jerusalem. I believe there
> >> are eyewitness accounts of that.
>
> > But can you actually find any? I don't think so.
>
> Turns out that I was wrong. There were no observers other than Mohammed
> himself. But surely the messenger of God himself is a reliable witness.
I see very little reason to think Mohammed was a messenger of God.
Certainly nothing comparable to what is testified about Jesus.
> It's reported in the Qur'an and all the major Hadiths.
On what alleged basis? I think it is pretty well established that
parts of the Qur'an were composed after he was no longer with us, to
use a quaint turn of phrase.
> >> Joseph Smith has testimony from many
> >> individuals that they had seen the golden plates.
>
> > No evidence they were miraculous, though.
>
> You think he actually had any golden plates?
No. The people who claimed they saw them had no such evidence.
>Your credulity at times
> amazes me.
Your ability to jump to conclusions like this while being very
stubborn about other kinds of inferences is quite unique in my
experience.
> >> The miracle of Fatima
> >> was apparently witnessed by thousands.
>
> > ...who might have thought that an especially bright and spectacular
> > sundog was the sun.
>
> So maybe Paul or his contacts were also mistaken.
One can hardly be mistaken about some of the events, such as that
which Doubting Thomas experienced.
> > I've seen such a sundog, and to make it even more interesting, it was
> > at Conyers, Georgia, where alleged apparitions of the Blessed Virgin
> > were taking place right then and there.
>
> > It was the best sundog I have ever seen, and because of the way the
> > clouds were moving behind it, it kept changing its appearance fast
> > enough so that some might have thought it "danced."
>
> > That's not at all like the the eyewitness accounts of the aftermath of
> > the Resurrection. Jesus was reported in the Gospel According to John
> > that he walked together with Peter with John close by on the shores of
> > a lake, and ate fish that had been caught from the lake.
>
> Is it your claim that the apostle John actually wrote the book
> attributed to him?
I believe it was an accurate account of what he verbally told the ones
who wrote it.
> >> It really isn't easy, especially
> >> when you have second-hand accounts long after the fact, some of them of
> >> dubious authorship.
>
> > The authorship of I Corinthians 15 has never been in doubt. We have
> > pretty reliable dates for some of those letters, too. The first, I
> > Thessalonians, was written ca. 50 AD.
>
> I refer to the entire corpus of Paul's epistles.
Irrelevant.
> >>>> But if
> >>>> you don't count that as good evidence anyway, I don't see the point of
> >>>> bringing it up.
> >>> Because I am, technically speaking, an agnostic and definitely in
> >>> search of the truth about these matters. Are you an atheist,
> >>> convinced you know the truth about these matters?
> >> To the extent that I am convinced that I know the truth about, say,
> >> whales being the living sister group of hippos, yes.
>
> > Despite the lack of any evidence that St. Paul was lying?
> > Interesting.
>
> Not so interesting as you may imagine. Paul may or may not have been
> lying, but I don't count even his sincere account, if such it was, as
> much evidence for the existence of the resurrection or of God. On the
> other hand, there is very good evidence against that particular god.
Such as...?
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
I don't see a major difference. I see very little reason to believe that
either of them had anything to do with any actual god. Obviously you're
a Christian agnostic. If you were a Muslim agnostic you'd be on about
how relatively credible the Qur'an was.
>> It's reported in the Qur'an and all the major Hadiths.
>
> On what alleged basis? I think it is pretty well established that
> parts of the Qur'an were composed after he was no longer with us, to
> use a quaint turn of phrase.
On the same alleged basis as most religions. Mohammed is said to have
written both of them. (Well, dictated.)
>>>> Joseph Smith has testimony from many
>>>> individuals that they had seen the golden plates.
>>> No evidence they were miraculous, though.
>> You think he actually had any golden plates?
>
> No. The people who claimed they saw them had no such evidence.
So why make a point about whether they miraculous? Isn't their
nonexistence a simpler objection?
>> Your credulity at times
>> amazes me.
>
> Your ability to jump to conclusions like this while being very
> stubborn about other kinds of inferences is quite unique in my
> experience.
You ability to avoid the implications of your statements is, sadly, by
no means unique.
>>>> The miracle of Fatima
>>>> was apparently witnessed by thousands.
>>> ...who might have thought that an especially bright and spectacular
>>> sundog was the sun.
>> So maybe Paul or his contacts were also mistaken.
>
> One can hardly be mistaken about some of the events, such as that
> which Doubting Thomas experienced.
Was said to have experienced.
>>> I've seen such a sundog, and to make it even more interesting, it was
>>> at Conyers, Georgia, where alleged apparitions of the Blessed Virgin
>>> were taking place right then and there.
>>> It was the best sundog I have ever seen, and because of the way the
>>> clouds were moving behind it, it kept changing its appearance fast
>>> enough so that some might have thought it "danced."
>>> That's not at all like the the eyewitness accounts of the aftermath of
>>> the Resurrection. Jesus was reported in the Gospel According to John
>>> that he walked together with Peter with John close by on the shores of
>>> a lake, and ate fish that had been caught from the lake.
>> Is it your claim that the apostle John actually wrote the book
>> attributed to him?
>
> I believe it was an accurate account of what he verbally told the ones
> who wrote it.
Do you have a basis for that belief?
>>>> It really isn't easy, especially
>>>> when you have second-hand accounts long after the fact, some of them of
>>>> dubious authorship.
>>> The authorship of I Corinthians 15 has never been in doubt. We have
>>> pretty reliable dates for some of those letters, too. The first, I
>>> Thessalonians, was written ca. 50 AD.
>> I refer to the entire corpus of Paul's epistles.
>
> Irrelevant.
Agreed.
>>>>>> But if
>>>>>> you don't count that as good evidence anyway, I don't see the point of
>>>>>> bringing it up.
>>>>> Because I am, technically speaking, an agnostic and definitely in
>>>>> search of the truth about these matters. Are you an atheist,
>>>>> convinced you know the truth about these matters?
>>>> To the extent that I am convinced that I know the truth about, say,
>>>> whales being the living sister group of hippos, yes.
>>> Despite the lack of any evidence that St. Paul was lying?
>>> Interesting.
>> Not so interesting as you may imagine. Paul may or may not have been
>> lying, but I don't count even his sincere account, if such it was, as
>> much evidence for the existence of the resurrection or of God. On the
>> other hand, there is very good evidence against that particular god.
>
> Such as...?
If he existed, we would expect to see considerable evidence of his
existence. The failure to see such evidence is evidence against the god
hypothesis. One could of course assume a stealth god, but that would not
fit the one being claimed.
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Sep 21, 6:50 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Sep 20, 3:43 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>> Mohammed was assumed bodily into heaven from Jerusalem. I believe there
> >>>> are eyewitness accounts of that.
>
> >>> But can you actually find any? I don't think so.
>
> >> Turns out that I was wrong. There were no observers other than Mohammed
> >> himself. But surely the messenger of God himself is a reliable witness.
>
> > I see very little reason to think Mohammed was a messenger of God.
> > Certainly nothing comparable to what is testified about Jesus.
>
> I don't see a major difference.
eyewitness accounts of Jesus's various miracles like the raising of
Lazarus on the one hand and totally unspecified events in the Islamic
literature? If you can name any of the events to which you allude,
please do so.
Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
God."
>I see very little reason to believe that
> either of them had anything to do with any actual god. Obviously you're
> a Christian agnostic. If you were a Muslim agnostic you'd be on about
> how relatively credible the Qur'an was.
even one Muslim trying to argue for the existence of God the way
Thomas Aquinas did in _Summa Contra Gentiles_ and _Summa Theologica_?
I get the impression that it is blasphemy for a Muslim to question the
existence of Allah, and thus very bad form to argue for Allah's
existence.
> >> It's reported in the Qur'an and all the major Hadiths.
>
> > On what alleged basis? I think it is pretty well established that
> > parts of the Qur'an were composed after he was no longer with us, to
> > use a quaint turn of phrase.
>
> On the same alleged basis as most religions. Mohammed is said to have
> written both of them. (Well, dictated.)
of eyewitnesses to Mohammed's ascension into heaven? You found none
in the Quran. Does your denial above go a lot further than that?
> >>>> Joseph Smith has testimony from many
> >>>> individuals that they had seen the golden plates.
> >>> No evidence they were miraculous, though.
> >> You think he actually had any golden plates?
>
> > No. The people who claimed they saw them had no such evidence.
>
> So why make a point about whether they miraculous? Isn't their
> nonexistence a simpler objection?
individuals" [did John Smith name any of them?] could hardly have
rendered an opinion on whether they were miraculous, or just a labor
of love by John Smith.
> >> Your credulity at times
> >> amazes me.
>
> > Your ability to jump to conclusions like this while being very
> > stubborn about other kinds of inferences is quite unique in my
> > experience.
>
> You ability to avoid the implications of your statements is, sadly, by
> no means unique.
misinterpreted the alleged "implication" above.
> >>>> The miracle of Fatima
> >>>> was apparently witnessed by thousands.
> >>> ...who might have thought that an especially bright and spectacular
> >>> sundog was the sun.
> >> So maybe Paul or his contacts were also mistaken.
>
> > One can hardly be mistaken about some of the events, such as that
> > which Doubting Thomas experienced.
>
> Was said to have experienced.
and did, since it might have been a hallucination to which he
responded "My Lord and my God!"
[...]
> >>>>>> you don't count that as good evidence anyway, I don't see the point of
> >>>>>> bringing it up.
> >>>>> Because I am, technically speaking, an agnostic and definitely in
> >>>>> search of the truth about these matters. Are you an atheist,
> >>>>> convinced you know the truth about these matters?
> >>>> To the extent that I am convinced that I know the truth about, say,
> >>>> whales being the living sister group of hippos, yes.
> >>> Despite the lack of any evidence that St. Paul was lying?
> >>> Interesting.
> >> Not so interesting as you may imagine. Paul may or may not have been
> >> lying, but I don't count even his sincere account, if such it was, as
> >> much evidence for the existence of the resurrection or of God. On the
> >> other hand, there is very good evidence against that particular god.
>
> > Such as...?
>
> If he existed, we would expect to see considerable evidence of his
> existence.
But more to the point: as should be clear from my last reply to Rolf,
there IS evidence, and AFAIK there is a deafening silence from the
skeptics of the modern-day miracles attributed by the Vatican to Edith
Stein, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.
For that matter, have you ever read any account debunking the "miracle
of Fatima"? I have never seen even an attempt at explaining it the
way I did. [Most of my explanation is missing above; the post where I
made it has several specific details].
Peter Nyikos
John S. Wilkins
> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> God."
And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple."
Some advocate of peace...
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
John Harshman
> On Sep 22, 12:31 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Sep 21, 6:50 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Sep 20, 3:43 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>>>>>> Mohammed was assumed bodily into heaven from Jerusalem. I believe there
>>>>>> are eyewitness accounts of that.
>>>>> But can you actually find any? I don't think so.
>>>> Turns out that I was wrong. There were no observers other than Mohammed
>>>> himself. But surely the messenger of God himself is a reliable witness.
>>> I see very little reason to think Mohammed was a messenger of God.
>>> Certainly nothing comparable to what is testified about Jesus.
>> I don't see a major difference.
>
> To what does this refer? no major difference between the (allegedly)
> eyewitness accounts of Jesus's various miracles like the raising of
> Lazarus on the one hand and totally unspecified events in the Islamic
> literature?
No.
> If you can name any of the events to which you allude,
> please do so.
I'm alluding to reasons to think Mohammed was a messenger of God
compared to reasons to think Jesus was the son of God.
> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> God."
So? In order to draw any conclusions from that, you have to know what
God likes. How do you know what God likes?
>> I see very little reason to believe that
>> either of them had anything to do with any actual god. Obviously you're
>> a Christian agnostic. If you were a Muslim agnostic you'd be on about
>> how relatively credible the Qur'an was.
>
> I doubt it. Apologetics is not an Islamic specialty.
Then why all the Islamic apologetics web sites?
> Can you cite
> even one Muslim trying to argue for the existence of God the way
> Thomas Aquinas did in _Summa Contra Gentiles_ and _Summa Theologica_?
> I get the impression that it is blasphemy for a Muslim to question the
> existence of Allah, and thus very bad form to argue for Allah's
> existence.
It's certainly good form to argue that Islam is the one true religion
and the Qur'an is superior to other religious books. Isn't that close
enough?
>>>> It's reported in the Qur'an and all the major Hadiths.
>>> On what alleged basis? I think it is pretty well established that
>>> parts of the Qur'an were composed after he was no longer with us, to
>>> use a quaint turn of phrase.
>> On the same alleged basis as most religions. Mohammed is said to have
>> written both of them. (Well, dictated.)
>
> The real issue here is: what accounts are there alleging the presence
> of eyewitnesses to Mohammed's ascension into heaven? You found none
> in the Quran. Does your denial above go a lot further than that?
There are no alleged witnesses, as I discovered upon looking it up.
>>>>>> Joseph Smith has testimony from many
>>>>>> individuals that they had seen the golden plates.
>>>>> No evidence they were miraculous, though.
>>>> You think he actually had any golden plates?
>>> No. The people who claimed they saw them had no such evidence.
>> So why make a point about whether they miraculous? Isn't their
>> nonexistence a simpler objection?
>
> Simpler, but not as thorough. Even if they did exist, the "many
> individuals" [did John Smith name any of them?] could hardly have
> rendered an opinion on whether they were miraculous, or just a labor
> of love by John Smith.
Now where is Joseph Smith going to get enough gold to make his own
golden tablets? Your credulity surfaces at bizarre times and places.
>>>> Your credulity at times
>>>> amazes me.
>>> Your ability to jump to conclusions like this while being very
>>> stubborn about other kinds of inferences is quite unique in my
>>> experience.
>> You ability to avoid the implications of your statements is, sadly, by
>> no means unique.
>
> Wrong: what you are seeing above is an explanation that you
> misinterpreted the alleged "implication" above.
I'm going to stand by this one. You are actually willing to believe that
Joseph Smith might really have had golden tablets.
>>>>>> The miracle of Fatima
>>>>>> was apparently witnessed by thousands.
>>>>> ...who might have thought that an especially bright and spectacular
>>>>> sundog was the sun.
>>>> So maybe Paul or his contacts were also mistaken.
>>> One can hardly be mistaken about some of the events, such as that
>>> which Doubting Thomas experienced.
>> Was said to have experienced.
>
> I see no compelling reason to doubt the account of what Thomas said
> and did, since it might have been a hallucination to which he
> responded "My Lord and my God!"
It might have. If indeed there was such a person, and if he told this to
someone, and if it was written down. On the other hand, it could just
have been made up by the person, whoever that might have been, who wrote
the sole (as far as I know) source for the story. I see no compelling
reason to believe the account.
> [...]
>>>>>>>> But if
>>>>>>>> you don't count that as good evidence anyway, I don't see the point of
>>>>>>>> bringing it up.
>>>>>>> Because I am, technically speaking, an agnostic and definitely in
>>>>>>> search of the truth about these matters. Are you an atheist,
>>>>>>> convinced you know the truth about these matters?
>>>>>> To the extent that I am convinced that I know the truth about, say,
>>>>>> whales being the living sister group of hippos, yes.
>>>>> Despite the lack of any evidence that St. Paul was lying?
>>>>> Interesting.
>>>> Not so interesting as you may imagine. Paul may or may not have been
>>>> lying, but I don't count even his sincere account, if such it was, as
>>>> much evidence for the existence of the resurrection or of God. On the
>>>> other hand, there is very good evidence against that particular god.
>>> Such as...?
>> If he existed, we would expect to see considerable evidence of his
>> existence.
>
> Deists would disagree with you.
Deists don't believe in that particular god, but in a quite different god.
> But more to the point: as should be clear from my last reply to Rolf,
> there IS evidence, and AFAIK there is a deafening silence from the
> skeptics of the modern-day miracles attributed by the Vatican to Edith
> Stein, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.
Are you indeed claiming that there are such miracles? What kind of
agnostic are you, exactly?
> For that matter, have you ever read any account debunking the "miracle
> of Fatima"? I have never seen even an attempt at explaining it the
> way I did. [Most of my explanation is missing above; the post where I
> made it has several specific details].
Even if we are unable to explain accounts of (alleged) odd events, how
is that evidence for the existence of the Christian god? What in his
supposed nature leads you to believe he would reveal himself through
rare, cheap tricks rather than through more general effects?
Mitchell Coffey
> pnyikos<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
>> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
>> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
>> God."
>
> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
> and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
> also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
> Some advocate of peace...
see Him putting up with what went down under Moses in the Wilderness, or
after Moses in the conquest of Canaan. You can't imagine seeing Him
going along with that Amalekites business; what I'm saying is, if Jesus
had been around back then, God would have stripped Him of the kingship.
Mitchell
Rolf
> pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
>> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
>> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
>> God."
>
> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
> mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
> his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
> Some advocate of peace...
Rolf
with attributes, features and irrational behaviour to match. Faith is
sustained and reinforced by a positive feedback loop. It hardens like a
sediment.
I suppose not all 'miraculous' events may have a rational explanation but
even so, that doesn't mean there is a benevolent deity out there somewhere
doing it. Strange things seem to happen at times, I can only shrug and say
so what?
A few people thanking God for being saved from this or that accident - but
what about the vast number of people not being saved? Seems to me the hand
of God in human affairs is as random as mutations. Isn't that just what it
is: natural events with no particular 'cause'?
Mike Lyle
Wilkins) wrote:
>pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
>> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
>> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
>> God."
bloodthirsty deed by Muhammad or his immediate followers. You may
question the record, but as far as it goes it indicates that the early
Muslims really were an endangered minority forced to act in
self-defence. Whatever the balance on that score, the claim that
Muhammad was a warmonger is a moronism worthy of the highest
traditions of American Christian derangement.
>And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
>sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
>and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
>also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
>Some advocate of peace...
--
Mike.
pnyikos
> > Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> > bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> > "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> > God."
>
> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> sword."
essence, "My teachings, peaceful though they are, will divide people
from each other as surely as a sword does." And that has come to pass
countless times, including today.
It reminds me of the uproar that is taking place at a University of
Wisconsin branch campus, where a professor is even threatened with
criminal charges because the words in a provocative poster he put up
on his door are completely misunderstood. Have you heard about this
incident?
> and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
> and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
> also, he cannot be my disciple."
have read.
Peter Nyikos
John S. Wilkins
And perhaps the kind of evasions and retrointerpretations you just did
are what we might expect from them?
It's totally amazing how much Christian teachings have been used to
justify invasions, genocide, war, imperial ambitions, racial
discrimination, slavery and yet we hear from Christians of all stripes
how that isn't *true* Christianity. But it is true Islam, right?
Something about motes and beams comes to mind, but that's just because I
studied Christian theology...
pnyikos
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Sep 29, 10:28 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> > > > bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> > > > "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> > > > God."
>
> > > And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> > > sword."
>
> > Read the sequel, and I believe you will see that he is saying in
> > essence, "My teachings, peaceful though they are, will divide people
> > from each other as surely as a sword does." And that has come to pass
> > countless times, including today.
> > It reminds me of the uproar that is taking place at a University of
> > Wisconsin branch campus, where a professor is even threatened with
> > criminal charges because the words in a provocative poster he put up
> > on his door are completely misunderstood. Have you heard about this
> > incident?
If you read the excellent account in the article below, I think you
will see why I was reminded of this uproar when I read your comment:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/university-wisconsin-firefly-_b_985486.html
> > > and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
> > > and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
> > > also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
> > "hate" is a mis-translation from the Greek, according to one article I
> > have read.
>
> Perhaps you are doing to Islamic doctrine what I just did to Christian?
> And perhaps the kind of evasions and retrointerpretations you just did
> are what we might expect from them?
wonder whether you
(1) read the sequel to the quote you gave [did you just grab the quote
out of an atheist rag?]
(2) know what you are talking about.
> It's totally amazing how much Christian teachings have been used to
> justify invasions, genocide, war, imperial ambitions, racial
> discrimination, slavery and yet we hear from Christians of all stripes
> how that isn't *true* Christianity. But it is true Islam, right?
in: the value of the evidence provided in the Gospels and in I
Corinthians 15 for the ressurection of Jesus and hence the existence
of a god. What people calling themselves Christians did or did not do
in subsequent centuries is neither here nor there.
> Something about motes and beams comes to mind, but that's just because I
> studied Christian theology...
think about how relevant it is to the question of what kind of person
he was.
If you stay on your anti-Christian soapbox here, without getting back
to the issue we were discussing, don't expect me to respond to you on
this thread any more.
By the way, how has your job situation evolved? I seem to recall you
were facing a crisis there a while ago.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
to do a more detailed, direct reply to Harshman.
On Sep 30, 4:23 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
> John Harshman wrote:
> > pnyikos wrote:
> >> On Sep 22, 12:31 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>> I see very little reason to think Mohammed was a messenger of God.
> >>>> Certainly nothing comparable to what is testified about Jesus.
> >>> I don't see a major difference.
>
> >> To what does this refer? no major difference between the (allegedly)
> >> eyewitness accounts of Jesus's various miracles like the raising of
> >> Lazarus on the one hand and totally unspecified events in the Islamic
> >> literature?
>
> > No.
"major difference" has a highly specialized meaning in his eyes:
> >> If you can name any of the events to which you allude,
> >> please do so.
>
> > I'm alluding to reasons to think Mohammed was a messenger of God
> > compared to reasons to think Jesus was the son of God.
>
> >> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> >> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> >> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> >> God."
>
> > So? In order to draw any conclusions from that, you have to know what
> > God likes. How do you know what God likes?
[lots of back-and-forth, including some more deck-stacking by
Harshman, deleted here]
> >> But more to the point: as should be clear from my last reply to Rolf,
> >> there IS evidence, and AFAIK there is a deafening silence from the
> >> skeptics of the modern-day miracles attributed by the Vatican to
> >> Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.
>
> > Are you indeed claiming that there are such miracles? What kind of
> > agnostic are you, exactly?
side. Until that deafening silence ends, or until I witness such a
miracle myself, I have to remain in a state of suspended judgment on
this one.
Harshman, on the other hand, is behaving like a typical "atheism of
the gaps" devotee: as long as his nose isn't rubbed into an actual
miracle, he refuses to seriously entertain the possibilty that they
may occur.
> >> For that matter, have you ever read any account debunking the
> >> "miracle of Fatima"? I have never seen even an attempt at
> >> explaining it the way I did. [Most of my explanation is missing
> >> above; the post where I made it has several specific details].
>
> > Even if we are unable to explain accounts of (alleged) odd events, how
> > is that evidence for the existence of the Christian god? What in his
> > supposed nature leads you to believe he would reveal himself through
> > rare, cheap tricks rather than through more general effects?
> Right. People of faith create their God in their own image, equipping him
> with attributes, features and irrational behaviour to match.
Greek gods, which WAS valid. Its validity wrt the Judeo-Christian-
Islamic tradition is debatable.
I asked you whether you had read Mircea Eliade's book about the myth
of eternal return. It's title is _Cosmos and History_.
You left that question in your reply, unaddressed, so now let me ask
you: have you ever even HEARD of Mircea Eliade?
If you haven't, your exposure to sophisticated philosophy and
psychology of religion is sadly deficient.
> Faith is
> sustained and reinforced by a positive feedback loop. It hardens like a
> sediment.
mail. :-)
> I suppose not all 'miraculous' events may have a rational explanation but
> even so, that doesn't mean there is a benevolent deity out there somewhere
> doing it. Strange things seem to happen at times, I can only shrug and say
> so what?
would NOT shrug his shoulders and say "so what?" He would try to
assess the evidence in the light of everything he knows.
> A few people thanking God for being saved from this or that accident - but
> what about the vast number of people not being saved?
that seem to contradict what we seem to know about science and
medicine.
You may have been exposed to priests or ministers who were closet
atheists and who claimed e.g. that in the "miracle of the loaves and
fishes" it was an actual "miracle" for Jesus to get the people to
share their food (mostly loaves and fishes) with those who had none.
That's a typical redefining of "miracle" by people who are firmly in
the Humean camp as to whether miracles of the sort that I mean ever
happened.
>Seems to me the hand
> of God in human affairs is as random as mutations. Isn't that just what it
> is: natural events with no particular 'cause'?
you may be seriously undemining science.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> Short on time, I do a "twofer", hoping to have enough time this week
> to do a more detailed, direct reply to Harshman.
>
> On Sep 30, 4:23 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
> > John Harshman wrote:
> > > pnyikos wrote:
> > >> On Sep 22, 12:31 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > >>> pnyikos wrote:
> > >> But more to the point: as should be clear from my last reply to Rolf,
> > >> there IS evidence, and AFAIK there is a deafening silence from the
> > >> skeptics of the modern-day miracles attributed by the Vatican to
> > >> Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.
>
> > > Are you indeed claiming that there are such miracles? What kind of
> > > agnostic are you, exactly?
>
> One who does not dismiss evidence without hearing from the other
> side. Until that deafening silence ends, or until I witness such a
> miracle myself, I have to remain in a state of suspended judgment on
> this one.
>
> Harshman, on the other hand, is behaving like a typical "atheism of
> the gaps" devotee: as long as his nose isn't rubbed into an actual
> miracle, he refuses to seriously entertain the possibilty that they
> may occur.
I've run into this "atheist of the gaps" business a few times recently
and I'm keen to know if it has any meaning beyond a silly reflexive
riposte.
Can you explain what it means to you and how you use it? My initial
impression is that it's like saying, "Oh yeah, well every time you see
no evidence for (X) you conclude that it's unreasonable to infer (X)!"
I could certainly be missing something, but I have difficulty
perceiving the above as a particularly stinging rebuke.
<snip>
> > I suppose not all 'miraculous' events may have a rational explanation but
> > even so, that doesn't mean there is a benevolent deity out there somewhere
> > doing it. Strange things seem to happen at times, I can only shrug and say
> > so what?
>
> That's a typical "atheism of the gaps" response. A true agnostic
> would NOT shrug his shoulders and say "so what?" He would try to
> assess the evidence in the light of everything he knows.
An assessment of evidence is suggested in the phrase "Strange things
seem to happen at times," the obvious implication of which is that
there will inevitably occur phenomena for which there is no satisfying
naturalistic explanation forthcoming from available evidence. It is at
this point that both atheist and agnostic will be faced with a choice
of filling in the blank with some comforting narrative or accepting
the condition as indeterminate (hence the shrugging).
Neither a true atheist or agnostic looks at an evidential disparity
and infers support for that which is not demonstrably there. To
complain about this approach by calling it "atheism of the gaps" seems
pretty naive to me.
RLC
pnyikos
> On Oct 3, 8:24 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Short on time, I do a "twofer", hoping to have enough time this week
> > to do a more detailed, direct reply to Harshman.
It's a conviction that all unexplained phenomena can simply be
dismissed as something for which we just haven't found a natural cause
yet. Compare the following two statements:
"The Resurrection obviously didn't happen, because it contradicts
science."
"If the Resurrection happened, we will find a purely naturalistic
explanation for it."
The first is a typical "village atheist" remark. The second would be
expressive of an "atheism of the gaps" attitude.
Harshman's statements aren't quite so clear cut as the second, but
they seem to betoken the same attitude, typified by his aggressive
reaction to my comment about the miraculous cures attributed to the
intercession of the people named.
> My initial
> impression is that it's like saying, "Oh yeah, well every time you see
> no evidence for (X) you conclude that it's unreasonable to infer (X)!"
>
> I could certainly be missing something, but I have difficulty
> perceiving the above as a particularly stinging rebuke.
your 'initial impression'.
>
> <snip>
>
> > > I suppose not all 'miraculous' events may have a rational explanation but
> > > even so, that doesn't mean there is a benevolent deity out there somewhere
> > > doing it. Strange things seem to happen at times, I can only shrug and say
> > > so what?
>
> > That's a typical "atheism of the gaps" response. A true agnostic
> > would NOT shrug his shoulders and say "so what?" He would try to
> > assess the evidence in the light of everything he knows.
>
> Again with that phrase. I don't see how it pertains.
reminded him of the way I [AND also the Vatican office responsible for
the canonization of Stein and the beatification of the other two] use
the word "miracle."
You deleted that part. I recommend that you read it again.
Peter Nyikos
Rolf
What evidence? There are so many words in print and so many of them just
that, words without substance. I like words have backing in verifiable facts
or at least be reasonable. People rising from the dead after two nights in
the grave don't meet any of my criteria.
Robert Camp
I'm not confused about how you, or others, apply it. I'm trying to
determine if it has any meaning beyond the pejorative.
The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
reason. It's about a tendency to interpret a lack of observations or
data as evidence in favor of the proposition that god exists. This is,
for obvious reasons, a mistaken assumption. "That god exists" is a
positive statement which requires positive evidence, not a lack of
evidence (unless justification can be provided for why a paucity of
data should be a prediction which follows from the statement).
Atheism, on the other hand, is a reaction to that proposition ("god
exists"). And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural is a reaction to
the error of reason presented by a "god of the gaps" argument. As a
result, finding a lack of support for some particular proposition (god
exists) in a dearth of data is an expression of reason, not error.
Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
rhetoric.
Now, if you contend that "atheism of the gaps" is an active, not just
reactive, bit of argumentation then I invite you to cast about for
instances where atheists pick examples of incomplete knowledge out of
thin air and declare, "Aha, this previously-unmentioned-by-any-theist
gap proves there is no god!" I suppose you might find one or two, but
I sincerely doubt you'll discover a ubiquity deserving of the name
"atheism of the gaps."
> Harshman's �statements aren't quite so clear cut as the second, but
> they seem to betoken the same attitude, typified by his aggressive
> reaction to my comment about the miraculous cures attributed to the
> intercession of the people named.
I'm not really concerned with what Harshman was saying. But it seems
to me his question about what you were *claiming* regarding miracles
was the part that required your attention. If you weren't claiming
anything, just refusing to repudiate something for which the evidence
was inconclusive, then you could have just said so. But you went ahead
with the silliness about "atheism of the gaps" and nose-rubbing (which
was more illogic of a similar sort).
> > My initial
> > impression is that it's like saying, "Oh yeah, well every time you see
> > no evidence for (X) you conclude that it's unreasonable to infer (X)!"
>
> > I could certainly be missing something, but I have difficulty
> > perceiving the above as a particularly stinging rebuke.
>
> That's because you spin-doctored Harshman's aggressive attitude with
> your 'initial impression'.
Like I said, I'm not talking about anything Harshman wrote. I simply
want to understand your use of the phrase in question. I think it is a
silly junior-high level "Oh, yeah, well so are you!" kind of comment
masquerading as wit. Since you are one of the few here who would both
use that phrase and be able to put together coherent sentences I'm
asking you to explain it.
> > > > I suppose not all 'miraculous' events may have a rational explanation but
> > > > even so, that doesn't mean there is a benevolent deity out there somewhere
> > > > doing it. Strange things seem to happen at times, I can only shrug and say
> > > > so what?
>
> > > That's a typical "atheism of the gaps" response. A true agnostic
> > > would NOT shrug his shoulders and say "so what?" He would try to
> > > assess the evidence in the light of everything he knows.
>
> > Again with that phrase. I don't see how it pertains.
>
> See above. �Rolf was doing some spin-doctoring of his own, and I
> reminded him of the way I [AND also the Vatican office responsible for
> the canonization of Stein and the beatification of the other two] use
> the word "miracle."
>
> You deleted that part. �I recommend that you read it again.
Why? I wasn't concerned with any of that. I deleted it because it was
immaterial.
What is this mania that suggests to you that everyone is, or should
be, interested in everything you write?
RLC
Ray Martinez
> > Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> > bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> > "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> > God."
>
> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
> and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
> also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
> Some advocate of peace...
> --
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
(doesn't know anything about Theology); for it surely shows in his
message.
Ray
Burkhard
X to "therefore, _necessarily_,
God did it" would indeed be fallacious. But that I think is not what
normally happens. it seems to me
that typically, a much weaker claim is made, something more like:
therefore, God might_ have done it"
This I'd say is not a fallacious inference. Very bad theology, and
maybe an unwillingness to draw an inductive
inference from past experience, but not in itself a logical fallacy
> It's about a tendency to interpret a lack of observations or
> data as evidence in favor of the proposition that god exists. This is,
> for obvious reasons, a mistaken assumption. "That god exists" is a
> positive statement which requires positive evidence, not a lack of
> evidence (unless justification can be provided for why a paucity of
> data should be a prediction which follows from the statement).
>
> Atheism, on the other hand, is a reaction to that proposition ("god
> exists"). And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural is a reaction to
> the error of reason presented by a "god of the gaps" argument. As a
> result, finding a lack of support for some particular proposition (god
> exists) in a dearth of data is an expression of reason, not error.
> Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> rhetoric.
>
it happens.
Should I assume that i simply mislaid them, or do I give up looking
for them because a deity might have nicked them?
Greg G.
Wilkins quoted Matthew 10:34 and Luke 14:26. A theological scholar
should recognize those verses but many theists skip over those types
of quotes.
Mark Isaak
Supernatural miracles are evidence *against* god.
Consider: "God", in ethical monotheism, is defined not merely as a
super-powerful being, but as a being that is also worthy of worship. To
my mind, that means a being who, when creation was created, could look
at it and say, "it is good." A supernatural miracle (hereafter simply
called "miracle", but not to be confused with a natural wonder or rare
chance) is a revision to that creation, which essentially says, "oops,
it wasn't quite good enough the first time."
Furthermore, I consider a god worthy of worship would have made the
creation generally good for people. People rely on predictability --
not of everything, of course, but of a great deal, most of which is so
predictable that we take it for granted. Now add miracles to the mix,
and predictability goes out the window. Literally anything could
happen. Maybe that is how the universe works, but that is not the kind
of universe I prefer.
So if you want to convince me that an uber-being with super-magic powers
exists, demonstrate that miracles occur. Just realize that you are also
showing me that God does not exist.
John S. Wilkins
> On Sep 30, 9:21 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > studied Christian theology...
>
> It doesn't show. You are quoting Jesus Christ here, and you need to
> think about how relevant it is to the question of what kind of person
> he was.
transmitted to us. What Jesus himself may have said is moot. One cannot
presume, from an agnostic position, that these *are* the words of Jesus
nor that he had the status Christians ascribe to him, on pain of petitio
principii.
> If you stay on your anti-Christian soapbox here, without getting back
> to the issue we were discussing, don't expect me to respond to you on
> this thread any more.
I do dislike hypocrisy and cant.
> > John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
> >http://evolvingthoughts.net
>
> By the way, how has your job situation evolved? I seem to recall you
> were facing a crisis there a while ago.
>
Melbourne to take it up in ten days. Thank you for asking.
--
Ray Martinez
>
> - Show quoted text -
The fact that Wilkins quoted these verses is not in dispute. Your
belief that these verses are ignored is ridiculous. The context in
which Wilkins quoted these verses shows how incredibly stupid he is;
afterall he is a Darwinist and Agnostic (thinly veiled Atheist). Since
you too are a Darwinist and Atheist your inability to see what I am
saying is quite expected.
Ray
Greg G.
say it very well. Your thought processes are often quite transparent
and we recognize them as infantile.
You didn't refute Wilkins' argument. You attacked him. That is an ad
hominem fallacy.
Everybody knows the contradictions Wilkins' presented. Everybody knows
the shallow apologetic response to such contradictions. I suspect you
do, too, which is why you didn't bother to address the issue.
Walter Bushell
> Melbourne to take it up in ten days. Thank you for asking.
--
Ignorance is no protection against reality. -- Paul J Gans
John S. Wilkins
> On Oct 3, 8:08 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Oct 3, 12:15 pm, "Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Oct 3, 3:03 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > On Sep 29, 7:28 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> >
> > > > > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > > Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> > > > > > bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even
> > > > > > said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
> > > > > > children of God."
> >
> > > > > And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace,
> > > > > but a sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
> > > > > and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters,
> > > > > yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
> >
> > > > > Some advocate of peace...
> >
> > > > (doesn't know anything about Theology); for it surely shows in his
> > > > message.
than Ray does. But I don't know anything about God (other than the kinds
of gods that are in contradiction to the facts, which I know don't
exist). As a militant agnostic, I assert that neither does anyone else.
> > > > Ray-
> >
> > > Wilkins quoted Matthew 10:34 and Luke 14:26. A theological scholar
> > > should recognize those verses but many theists skip over those types
> > > of quotes.
> >
> > belief that these verses are ignored is ridiculous. The context in
> > which Wilkins quoted these verses shows how incredibly stupid he is;
> > afterall he is a Darwinist and Agnostic (thinly veiled Atheist). Since
> > you too are a Darwinist and Atheist your inability to see what I am
> > saying is quite expected.
> >
> > Ray
>
> Ray, everybody understands what you are trying to say but you don't
> say it very well. Your thought processes are often quite transparent
> and we recognize them as infantile.
>
> You didn't refute Wilkins' argument. You attacked him. That is an ad
> hominem fallacy.
>
> Everybody knows the contradictions Wilkins' presented. Everybody knows
> the shallow apologetic response to such contradictions. I suspect you
> do, too, which is why you didn't bother to address the issue.
more than any interpretations of the Bible) that make Jesus not a
militant, contra Jesus Christ Superstar.* However, my point here (which
was Subtile, and therefore beyond Rayray) was the what I was doing with
these out of context quotes was exactly what Peter Nyikos was doing with
the Q'uran. You can make both scriptures say whatever you wish to.
Neither the Islamic tradition nor the Christian (or more recently the
Jewish) are free of militancy and imperialism, calling on their
scriptures to justify these activities. That was my point. As to what
Matthew or Luke (or their eponymous authors) meant by these logia is
open to discussion. I think Matthew was justifying militant actions, but
Luke was not. In neither case do I think we have the ipsissima verbae of
Jesus.
* Where it was Judas, and Jesus Barabbas, following long tradition, that
were the actual militants.
Ray Martinez
escaped Greg Guarino too.
For the Record: When Jesus said if so and so does not "hate" so and
so, the quoted word is a bad translation. It should say "prefer."
It should also be noted that after cutting off the ear of the servant
of the High Priest, Jesus told Peter to sheath his sword, then healed
the man.
Ray
> Neither the Islamic tradition nor the Christian (or more recently the
> Jewish) are free of militancy and imperialism, calling on their
> scriptures to justify these activities. That was my point. As to what
> Matthew or Luke (or their eponymous authors) meant by these logia is
> open to discussion. I think Matthew was justifying militant actions, but
> Luke was not. In neither case do I think we have the ipsissima verbae of
> Jesus.
>
> * Where it was Judas, and Jesus Barabbas, following long tradition, that
> were the actual militants.
> --
Robert Camp
Robert Camp
arguments are intended to function more as positive (if not
necessitative) evidence. Consider examples of "irreducible
complexity." Rather than offered as merely the kinds of things God
might have designed, in my experience each IC structure or function is
meant to be a demonstrative example of the "natural processes are
incapable of producing this, ergo God" sort. This seems to occupy the
compulsory territory of your first inference above.
> This I'd say is not a fallacious inference. Very bad theology, and
> maybe an unwillingness to draw an inductive
> inference from past experience, but not in itself a logical fallacy
the argument is used is correct. I'm trying to think of some of the
more familiar gap assertions (flagella, abiogenesis, consciousness,
some miracles, etc.) and they all seem to me to be of the compulsory
variety. I do understand that there are some theists for whom "god of
the gaps" can be a broader sort of argument, including the assumed but
indemonstrable notion of god's inherence in natural law, but I think
it's clear that's not what we're talking about here.
> > It's about a tendency to interpret a lack of observations or
> > data as evidence in favor of the proposition that god exists. This is,
> > for obvious reasons, a mistaken assumption. "That god exists" is a
> > positive statement which requires positive evidence, not a lack of
> > evidence (unless justification can be provided for why a paucity of
> > data should be a prediction which follows from the statement).
>
> > Atheism, on the other hand, is a reaction to that proposition ("god
> > exists"). And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural is a reaction to
> > the error of reason presented by a "god of the gaps" argument. As a
> > result, finding a lack of support for some particular proposition (god
> > exists) in a dearth of data is an expression of reason, not error.
> > Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> > some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> > rhetoric.
>
> Isn't it much more simple? I've just mislead my keys. I don't know how
> it happens.
> Should I assume that i simply mislaid them, or do I give up looking
> for them because a deity might have nicked them?
arguments are that simple. But someone using the tag "atheism of the
gaps," is adding a layer of implication on top of those processes.
They purport to offer a tu quoque rebuttal, and my point is that it's
not a meaningful rebuttal because it's not really a tu quoque.
At least that's how I see it so far. I'm just playing out the hand on
this one, that's why I asked Peter to explain his meaning. It seems to
me that so far you've put the best possible face on "god of the gaps,"
but I still don't see that's there's much of value to "atheism of the
gaps" beyond "I'm rubber, you're glue..."
RLC
John S. Wilkins
> > For the Record: When Jesus said if so and so does not "hate" so and
> > so, the quoted word is a bad translation. It should say "prefer."
> >
> > It should also be noted that after cutting off the ear of the servant
> > of the High Priest, Jesus told Peter to sheath his sword, then healed
> > the man.
>
> Hear, hear!
tradition is much later and independent of the Synoptics, and I think
even less likely to contain historical words of the actual person...
it's like taking the Arthurian stories of Mallory and reading Monty
Python and the Holy Grail in that light, to avoid interpreting Arthur as
a git.
Ray Martinez
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
know that all Darwinists and Atheists hold the position, what could be
the point?
Ray (anti-evolutionist)
pnyikos
quotes since childhood, and am quite happy to deal with them. Wilkins
left the crickets chirping when I challenged him to a deeper
discussion of the first of these verses, and when I questioned him
further on the first one and suggested he didn't know what he was
talking about, he snipped this challenge in his reply.
Some "theological scholar"!
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
others say.
> Supernatural miracles are evidence *against* god.
>
> Consider: "God", in ethical monotheism, is defined not merely as a
> super-powerful being, but as a being that is also worthy of worship. To
> my mind,
>that means a being who, when creation was created, could look
> at it and say, "it is good."
meant "absolutely perfect." [Of course, Isaak gets to define
"perfect" just as Anselm and Descartes got to define "perfect" in
their variations on the Ontological Argument.]
> A supernatural miracle (hereafter simply
> called "miracle", but not to be confused with a natural wonder or rare
> chance) is a revision to that creation, which essentially says, "oops,
> it wasn't quite good enough the first time."
is that all too many of us humans are utterly tone-deaf to the music
of the spheres, proclaiming the handiwork of God. I may have a bit of
that tone-deafness myself, but I can reason beyond even the music to
the fine-tuning of our univese, the signs of Intelligent Design from
the beginning of a postulated creation.
We have seen how utterly impervious people like John Harshman are to
these things. And I would guess Isaak is one of these.
And so, to keep fully tone-deaf people like that at bay, there are the
accounts of miracles. Otherwise the poison of their tone-deafness
would slowly seep through society and may ultimately lead to a
negative answer to one of the most poignant questions Jesus ever
asked: "But when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left
on earth?"
> Furthermore, I consider a god worthy of worship would have made the
> creation generally good for people.
committed suicide? [Oh, wait, I'm forgetting how you played games
with the word "good" above.]
> People rely on predictability --
> not of everything, of course, but of a great deal, most of which is so
> predictable that we take it for granted. Now add miracles to the mix,
> and predictability goes out the window.
AFAIK there have been no authenticated miracle cures in Lourdes in
fifty years. OTOH we do have more recent miracle cures attributed by
the Vatican to the intercession of Edith Stein, Padre Pio, Mother
Teresa and John Paul II after their deaths.
In each case, the alleged miracle occurred after intense prayer for
the respective people, with their souls now ostensibly with God, to
intercede for them to God for the cure of a disease or condition
pronounced incurable by doctors prior to the prayers. For these kinds
of reported miracles, what you say next sounds downright surrealistic.
> Literally anything could
> happen. Maybe that is how the universe works, but that is not the kind
> of universe I prefer.
have said just now, or else lump the innumerable poorly documented
"cures" that are alleged all over the place with the carefully
authenticated healings I've referred to just now, pretending they are
all on the same footing.
> So if you want to convince me that an uber-being with super-magic powers
> exists, demonstrate that miracles occur. Just realize that you are also
> showing me that God does not exist.
pretending you've said something devastatingly irrefutable. [After
all, you get to define "God" in exactly the way Rolf says everyone
defines God -- in your own image.]
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
have watched how Wilkins kept the crickets chirping in one post and
then buried his head in the sand when challenged on this, know better.
[Loophole: you may be using "contradictions" in the sense many
Marxists use it, to mean "seemingly incongruous things".]
> Everybody knows
> the shallow apologetic response to such contradictions.
those responses and has relentlessly deleted everything that gives the
lie to that in his latest reply to me.
> I suspect you
> do, too, which is why you didn't bother to address the issue.
about my challenge to him.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> > Everybody knows the contradictions Wilkins' presented. Everybody knows
> > the shallow apologetic response to such contradictions. I suspect you
> > do, too, which is why you didn't bother to address the issue.
possible explanation for his attitude: he may have killfiled me.
> Actually there are sensible interpretations that are not too forced (no
> more than any interpretations of the Bible) that make Jesus not a
> militant, contra Jesus Christ Superstar.* However, my point here (which
> was Subtile, and therefore beyond Rayray) was the what I was doing with
> these out of context quotes was exactly what Peter Nyikos was doing with
> the Q'uran.
apostrophe goes] to begin with, so "exactly" is a stretch. You have
yet to argue that any quotes anyone uses from the Qur'an are out of
context.
As for Mohammad, I have not yet presented the actual cases that I was
referring to when I called him "bloodthirsty". I hope to find the
time for that tomorrow.
> You can make both scriptures say whatever you wish to.
> Neither the Islamic tradition nor the Christian (or more recently the
> Jewish) are free of militancy and imperialism,
words where I challenged you on the irrelevancy of your diatribe
against Christians in general.
> calling on their
> scriptures to justify these activities.
were doing heretics a favor by burning them at the stake and thereby
forcing them to save their souls (and their lives) at the last minute
by recanting.
And even they were not thinking deeply enough about the words of Jesus
in the parable of the wheat and the tares. "Don't [pull up the tares]
or you may pull the good wheat up along with them."
>That was my point. As to what
> Matthew or Luke (or their eponymous authors) meant by these logia is
> open to discussion. I think Matthew was justifying militant actions, but
> Luke was not. In neither case do I think we have the ipsissima verbae of
> Jesus.
said about those chirping crickets, I doubt that you can make a
convincing case for that.
> * Where it was Judas, and Jesus Barabbas, following long tradition, that
> were the actual militants.
nothing.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Oct 3, 7:46 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > Greg G. <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Everybody knows the contradictions Wilkins' presented. Everybody knows
> > > the shallow apologetic response to such contradictions. I suspect you
> > > do, too, which is why you didn't bother to address the issue.
>
> > Actually there are sensible interpretations that are not too forced (no
> > more than any interpretations of the Bible) that make Jesus not a
> > militant, contra Jesus Christ Superstar.* However, my point here (which
> > was Subtile, and therefore beyond Rayray) was the what I was doing with
> > these out of context quotes was exactly what Peter Nyikos was doing with
> > the Q'uran. You can make both scriptures say whatever you wish to.
Refer to my own reply to Wilkins of a few minutes ago.
> If that was your point, then I apologize. Your point seems to have
> escaped Greg Guarino too.
>
> For the Record: When Jesus said if so and so does not "hate" so and
> so, the quoted word is a bad translation. It should say "prefer."
English language.
[Somewhat related trivia: English had to import the word
"Schadenfreude" from German in order to express a sort of mirror image
of "envy."]
> It should also be noted that after cutting off the ear of the servant
> of the High Priest, Jesus told Peter to sheath his sword, then healed
> the man.
>
> Ray
all the battles and raids and threatened massacres of Mohammad and/or
his immediate successors to the fact that "the early Muslims really
were an endangered minority forced to act in self-defence." This ear-
cutting was the ONLY incident I know of a Christian doing anything
violent despite the fact that they too were an endangered minority.
And look at how Jesus reacted! Some "forced"!!
I hope to deal directly with him tomorrow.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> In article <1k8m0i2.zld20hl6h8xdN%j...@wilkins.id.au>,
>
> > I have a temporary job outside my profession for a year. I'm moving to
> > Melbourne to take it up in ten days. Thank you for asking.
>
> That's a relief. I hope it pays well and is not to taxing.
I wish him well in his personal life.
> --
> Ignorance is no protection against reality. -- Paul J Gans
is perfect protection against the reality of what I write. Hence his
statement drips with (probably unintended) irony.
[There was another well-entrenched long-time poster to talk.origins
who had the same attitude in the 1990's, perhaps even outdoing Gans,
but he seems to be gone for good. And I mean the word "good" in two
senses of the word.]
Peter Nyikos
RAM
be that he sees a rank amateur posing as a "theological scholar" or as
I suspect is just not interested in a debate.
Stanley Friesen
>On Sep 29, 10:28 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> > Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
>> > bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
>> > "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
>> > God."
>>
>> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
>> sword."
>
>essence, "My teachings, peaceful though they are, will divide people
>from each other as surely as a sword does." And that has come to pass
>countless times, including today.
>
>Wisconsin branch campus, where a professor is even threatened with
>criminal charges because the words in a provocative poster he put up
>on his door are completely misunderstood. Have you heard about this
>incident?
>
>> and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
>> also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
>have read.
usage than terminology. Hebrew (and its close relative Aramaic) lacked a
comparative, and generally used opposition to indicate relative values.
So, one possibility is that the Greek here may be an rather literal
rendering from the original Aramaic that Jesus would have been speaking.
That is, "hate" here is used as a hyperbolic expression for "love less"
(than one's love for god).
--
The peace of God be with you.
Stanley Friesen
Mark Isaak
> On Oct 3, 7:12 pm, Mark Isaak<eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
> wrote:
>> > [I lost track of who said what. It hardly matters for this post.]
>
> Exactly. You rival Gans in the way you ignore the real points of what
> others say.
>
>> Supernatural miracles are evidence *against* god.
>>
>> Consider: "God", in ethical monotheism, is defined not merely as a
>> super-powerful being, but as a being that is also worthy of worship. To
>> my mind,
>
> Watch Isaak make God in his own image next, folks.
but I label it as such. Unforgivable.
>> that means a being who, when creation was created, could look
>> at it and say, "it is good."
>
> Next follows a classic piece of false dichotomy, as though "good"
> meant "absolutely perfect." [Of course, Isaak gets to define
> "perfect" just as Anselm and Descartes got to define "perfect" in
> their variations on the Ontological Argument.]
paragraph has the slightest connection (aside from using a few of the
same words) with anything I wrote.
>> A supernatural miracle (hereafter simply
>> called "miracle", but not to be confused with a natural wonder or rare
>> chance) is a revision to that creation, which essentially says, "oops,
>> it wasn't quite good enough the first time."
>
> This is boilerplate deistic/atheistic propaganda. What it leaves out
> is that all too many of us humans are utterly tone-deaf to the music
> of the spheres, proclaiming the handiwork of God. I may have a bit of
> that tone-deafness myself, but I can reason beyond even the music to
> the fine-tuning of our univese, the signs of Intelligent Design from
> the beginning of a postulated creation.
>
> We have seen how utterly impervious people like John Harshman are to
> these things. And I would guess Isaak is one of these.
Oh, that's right. You don't like me, therefore I embody *everything*
that you disagree with.
> And so, to keep fully tone-deaf people like that at bay, there are the
> accounts of miracles.
now it is clear to me that the mud cracks that formed by my field last
week are the handiwork of God"? I would rather expect the opposite.
Mud cracks would lose their wonder if they had to compete against
genuine magical showmanship.
> Otherwise the poison of their tone-deafness
> would slowly seep through society and may ultimately lead to a
> negative answer to one of the most poignant questions Jesus ever
> asked: "But when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left
> on earth?"
>> Furthermore, I consider a god worthy of worship would have made the
>> creation generally good for people.
>
> If you don't think this is the way our world is, why haven't you
> committed suicide? [Oh, wait, I'm forgetting how you played games
> with the word "good" above.]
by the falsehood of its premise.
>> People rely on predictability --
>> not of everything, of course, but of a great deal, most of which is so
>> predictable that we take it for granted. Now add miracles to the mix,
>> and predictability goes out the window.
>
> Not if miracles are as sparse as the ones endorsed by the Vatican.
> AFAIK there have been no authenticated miracle cures in Lourdes in
> fifty years. OTOH we do have more recent miracle cures attributed by
> the Vatican to the intercession of Edith Stein, Padre Pio, Mother
> Teresa and John Paul II after their deaths.
>
> In each case, the alleged miracle occurred after intense prayer for
> the respective people, with their souls now ostensibly with God, to
> intercede for them to God for the cure of a disease or condition
> pronounced incurable by doctors prior to the prayers.
that extent, they are predictable. I doubt, though, that your
restriction on what qualifies as a miracle would meet much general
agreement.
> For these kinds
> of reported miracles, what you say next sounds downright surrealistic.
>
>> Literally anything could
>> happen. Maybe that is how the universe works, but that is not the kind
>> of universe I prefer.
>
> I predict that you will either bury your head in the sand over what I
> have said just now, or else lump the innumerable poorly documented
> "cures" that are alleged all over the place with the carefully
> authenticated healings I've referred to just now, pretending they are
> all on the same footing.
which you obviously don't want to be bothered with, so I won't bother
you with them. I'll just say that if God supernaturally cured the four
people you mention because people prayed for their cure, then God does
not deserve worship. Respect, certainly, and perhaps fear, but
definitely not worship.
>> So if you want to convince me that an uber-being with super-magic powers
>> exists, demonstrate that miracles occur. Just realize that you are also
>> showing me that God does not exist.
>
> With a mindset like that, I expect you to go merrily along your way,
> pretending you've said something devastatingly irrefutable.
way of thinking about something. Since you do not exert yourself to
consider new ideas, nothing I said applies to you.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
John Harshman
> This is boilerplate deistic/atheistic propaganda. What it leaves out
> is that all too many of us humans are utterly tone-deaf to the music
> of the spheres, proclaiming the handiwork of God. I may have a bit of
> that tone-deafness myself, but I can reason beyond even the music to
> the fine-tuning of our univese, the signs of Intelligent Design from
> the beginning of a postulated creation.
>
> We have seen how utterly impervious people like John Harshman are to
> these things. And I would guess Isaak is one of these.
proclaim the handiwork of God. You should probably explain that seeming
contradiction.
And I am either deaf to this revelation or you are hallucinating. How
can we tell which? Probably by reasoning from evidence. You seem to have
stopped responding directly to me, and now prefer to carry on our
conversation solely through making snide comments about me to others.
Once you had promised an argument for fine-tuning, for believing in a
low probability of abiogenesis, for estimates of various parameters in
your Drake-ish equation, and for various other things. So far I haven't
seen any of those things, and you no longer respond to my posts. What am
I to make of all that?
> And so, to keep fully tone-deaf people like that at bay, there are the
> accounts of miracles. Otherwise the poison of their tone-deafness
> would slowly seep through society and may ultimately lead to a
> negative answer to one of the most poignant questions Jesus ever
> asked: "But when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left
> on earth?"
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > This is boilerplate deistic/atheistic propaganda. What it leaves out
> > is that all too many of us humans are utterly tone-deaf to the music
> > of the spheres, proclaiming the handiwork of God. I may have a bit of
> > that tone-deafness myself, but I can reason beyond even the music to
> > the fine-tuning of our univese, the signs of Intelligent Design from
> > the beginning of a postulated creation.
>
> > We have seen how utterly impervious people like John Harshman are to
> > these things. And I would guess Isaak is one of these.
>
> What an odd sort of agnostic you are, one who thinks the heavens
> proclaim the handiwork of God.
tone-deafness myself, but" and apparently you misunderstood how I used
"may". I meant it in the same way I would say, "I may be a mere
layman when it comes to biochemistry, but..."
My insertion of "postulated" in the end was meant to put a different
meaning to "signs" than one ordinarily attributes to the word. I
meant it in the sense of "bits of evidence," nothing more.
[...]
> You seem to have
> stopped responding directly to me, and now prefer to carry on our
> conversation solely through making snide comments about me to others.
you, and if I had more time I would have gone back to the post from
which I snipped so much, but it will have to wait till later this
week, or possibly even next week. I administered my first hour test
of the semester yesterday, and will be giving the first to my other
class tomorrow.
> Once you had promised an argument for fine-tuning, for believing in a
> low probability of abiogenesis, for estimates of various parameters in
> your Drake-ish equation, and for various other things. So far I haven't
> seen any of those things, and you no longer respond to my posts. What am
> I to make of all that?
monopoly on me, now I am paying more attention to people I have
largely neglected. The above projects are on the back burner for now,
but perhaps I'll have time to get around to them this year. If not,
for sure in 2012.
> > And so, to keep fully tone-deaf people like that at bay, there are the
> > accounts of miracles. Otherwise the poison of their tone-deafness
> > would slowly seep through society and may ultimately lead to a
> > negative answer to one of the most poignant questions Jesus ever
> > asked: "But when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left
> > on earth?"
>
> An odd sort of agnostic, to value faith so.
all lose any meaningful hope in a hereafter. Slim though the chances
of a meaninful afterlife seem to me at present, I value what remains
of that hope very highly.
I've explained several times at length the main reason I remain a
committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
Peter Nyikos
John S. Wilkins
> the main reason I remain a
> committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
afterlife. Is that not circular reasoning?
John Harshman
> On Oct 4, 9:47 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> This is boilerplate deistic/atheistic propaganda. What it leaves out
>>> is that all too many of us humans are utterly tone-deaf to the music
>>> of the spheres, proclaiming the handiwork of God. I may have a bit of
>>> that tone-deafness myself, but I can reason beyond even the music to
>>> the fine-tuning of our univese, the signs of Intelligent Design from
>>> the beginning of a postulated creation.
>>> We have seen how utterly impervious people like John Harshman are to
>>> these things. And I would guess Isaak is one of these.
>> What an odd sort of agnostic you are, one who thinks the heavens
>> proclaim the handiwork of God.
>
> I admit I could have been clearer. I said, "I may have a bit of that
> tone-deafness myself, but" and apparently you misunderstood how I used
> "may". I meant it in the same way I would say, "I may be a mere
> layman when it comes to biochemistry, but..."
>
> My insertion of "postulated" in the end was meant to put a different
> meaning to "signs" than one ordinarily attributes to the word. I
> meant it in the sense of "bits of evidence," nothing more.
you meant.
>> You seem to have
>> stopped responding directly to me, and now prefer to carry on our
>> conversation solely through making snide comments about me to others.
>
> Now you are really overdoing it: I did a twofer yesterday involving
> you, and if I had more time I would have gone back to the post from
> which I snipped so much, but it will have to wait till later this
> week, or possibly even next week. I administered my first hour test
> of the semester yesterday, and will be giving the first to my other
> class tomorrow.
have left hanging, when you get the time.
>> Once you had promised an argument for fine-tuning, for believing in a
>> low probability of abiogenesis, for estimates of various parameters in
>> your Drake-ish equation, and for various other things. So far I haven't
>> seen any of those things, and you no longer respond to my posts. What am
>> I to make of all that?
>
> All you should make of it is that while you often enjoy a near-
> monopoly on me, now I am paying more attention to people I have
> largely neglected. The above projects are on the back burner for now,
> but perhaps I'll have time to get around to them this year. If not,
> for sure in 2012.
>>> And so, to keep fully tone-deaf people like that at bay, there are the
>>> accounts of miracles. Otherwise the poison of their tone-deafness
>>> would slowly seep through society and may ultimately lead to a
>>> negative answer to one of the most poignant questions Jesus ever
>>> asked: "But when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left
>>> on earth?"
>> An odd sort of agnostic, to value faith so.
>
> The operative word here is hope. Without some people having faith,
> all lose any meaningful hope in a hereafter. Slim though the chances
> of a meaninful afterlife seem to me at present, I value what remains
> of that hope very highly.
> I've explained several times at length the main reason I remain a
> committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
a god and all that? My sympathies. That is a difficult and convoluted
position to try to balance within.
Michael Siemon
>
> > the main reason I remain a
> > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
>
> As I understand things, it is the sole reason for believing in an
> afterlife. Is that not circular reasoning?
an "afterlife" and that (unless you go along with whatever shit
they shove your way) you won't like the result if you don't sign
on with _them_.
No evidence exists of any such thing, of course. Which poses a
problem for any kind of _evaluation_ of religious claims on that
basis.
Personally, I can cope with evaluation of claims like "the Kingdom
of Heaven is with you" or other _present_ claims. Personally, I am
(unfortunately, rather tentatively...) persuaded by things like,
"when two or three are gathered in my name, I am with you." And
"take, eat; this is my body..." That is a matter of evaluating my
own experience against what I (with some difficulty...) infer to
be the claims made about that present experience. But delusions
about "life after death" are manifold and generally useless. I
have _zero_ reason to believe that this prime selling point (pace
Nyikos) has any foundation whatsoever.
There is no "afterlife", so far as I can tell. Make of _this_ one
what legacy you wish to be known by (to any God who actually knows
all; posturing for society's opinion is likely to be futile or
counterproductive.)
John S. Wilkins
but Peter's reasons for being Catholic: It looks very like this to me:
1. There is an afterlife
2. If one is not religious (Catholic being best for this purpose) there
is no reason to think the afterlife will be worthwhile.
3. I [Peter] very much want to think the afterlife is worthwhile
4. Therefore I am Catholic
5. Therefore (because the Catholic doctrine asserts this) there is an
afterlife.
Now it may be that the afterlife is going to be horrible for everyone,
so Peter is merely deluding himself. Cthulhu rules?
Or it may be that Peter's desire to think the afterlife will be
worthwhile is simply a matter of taste - de gustibus non est
disputandum.
Or it may be that some religions are better for this purpose (why
Catholic? Why not Theravada Buddhism?).
Or it may be that there is no reason think there is an afterlife. Hence
it cannot be an independent reason for preferring to be Catholic, since
the sole ground for thinking there is one is that some religion tells
you there is (and the one to listen to is Catholicism).
As a matter of fact, I understand, the original Hebrew view of death was
that it was physical, and if God were to resurrect you, it could only be
by reconstituting your body - not an afterlife so much as a second life
(e.g., Ezekiel 37:1-14). You needed the body and the breath of life
together, not some discorporate soul.
Walter Bushell
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
<SNIP><
> How does hope of a hereafter influence the chance of a hereafter?
>
> > I've explained several times at length the main reason I remain a
> > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
>
> So you're an agnostic who wishes he could have faith, and hopes there's
> a god and all that? My sympathies. That is a difficult and convoluted
> position to try to balance within.
what is the necessity of faith?
Klaus Hellnick
> On Sep 29, 7:28 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>>> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
>>> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
>>> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
>>> God."
>>
>> And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
>> also, he cannot be my disciple."
>>
>> --
>> John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net
>> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
>
> (doesn't know anything about Theology); for it surely shows in his
> message.
>
> Ray
>
John Harshman
Walter Bushell
pnyikos
important, and I post it despite a fear that it will stir up a
hornet's nest.
On Sep 30, 3:52 pm, Mike Lyle <mike_lyle...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:28:56 +1000, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S.
> Wilkins) wrote:
> >pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >> Another bit of food for thought: Mohammed was a warmonger, whose
> >> bloodthirsty deeds are not denied by Muslims, while Jesus even said,
> >> "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
> >> God."
>
> bloodthirsty deed by Muhammad or his immediate followers.
Do you have any data to back this up, or are you just guessing?
Have you ever seen a Muslim deny the following?
[Muhammad] is known to have ordered the
assassination of several of his personal and
political enemies, including three poets who
had lampooned him -- one a mother of five
who was killed while asleep with her children. [31]
-- _The Building of Christendom_, by Warren
Carroll, copyright 1987, p. 218.
[31] John Bagot Glubb, _The Life and Times of Muhammad_, copyright
1970, pp. 195, 199, 220, 225.
--*ibid*, p. 236
See also the incidents related in _The Loom of History_ below.
>You may
> question the record, but as far as it goes it indicates that the early
> self-defence.
yesterday. [keywords: sword, ear, Some "forced"!]
The self-defense phase (which was intermittent to begin with) ended
shortly after the death of Muhammad in 632. During the time of first
four caliphs [632-661] the Muslims went on a binge of conquest rivaled
up to that time only by that of Alexander the Great, when the
shortness of time is taken into account.
[Incidentally, the interval between the crucifixion of Jesus and the
beheading of Paul was almost exactly the same and came almost exactly
six centuries earlier.]
> Whatever the balance on that score, the claim that
> Muhammad was a warmonger is a moronism worthy of the highest
> traditions of American Christian derangement.
I believe it is at least as much a secular humanist shtick. And why
"moronism" and "deranged"? Take a look at the following excerpts from
_The Loom of History_ [Harper & Brothers, 1958] by the noted historian
Herbert J. Muller, one of the co-signers of "Humanist Manifesto II":
[Mohammed] waged war against the Meccans,
initiating hostilities by raiding one of their caravans
in the holy month of pilgrimage, when war was
banned in Arabia; to justify his aggression, he
preached war against idolaters as a sacred duty
(jihad). ...
He also attacked several wealthy Jewish
communities, which had refused to recognize him
as a prophet. When one of them surrendered after
a short siege, he had its men put to death and its
women and children sold into slavery. By these
campaigns he won much booty as well as prestige;
one may suspect that it was not so much his spiritual
message as his worldly success that now drew the
Arabs to Allah. [pp. 265-266]
Try a google search for Herbert Joseph Muller; it is most enlightening
as far as him being in no way, shape, or form a Christian.
> >And yet, oddly, Jesus also said "I have come not to bring peace, but a
> >sword." and "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
> >and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
> >also, he cannot be my disciple."
>
> >Some advocate of peace...
ripping these quotes out of context and making that provocative
statement to (he thinks) teach me a lesson.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
On Oct 5, 12:33 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > the main reason I remain a
> > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
>
> As I understand things, it is the sole reason for believing in an
> afterlife.
existence of one.
I'd rather not mention them now, because they cut both ways. To turn
around a statement of which Unamuno was fond: "If there is no God, of
what use is an afterlife?"
> Is that not circular reasoning?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
things.
On Oct 5, 3:33 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> Michael Siemon <mlsie...@sonic.net> wrote:
> > In article <1k8o5r9.xtwa9an6uwtN%j...@wilkins.id.au>,
> > j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > the main reason I remain a
> > > > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > > > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
>
> > > As I understand things, it is the sole reason for believing in an
> > > afterlife. Is that not circular reasoning?
[snip materialistic spiel by Siemon]
> I wasn't addressing the question of whether there *was* an afterlife,
> but Peter's reasons for being Catholic: It looks very like this to me:
>
> 1. There is an afterlife
take my question turning Unamuno around as the only issue here], but
I'd assess the probability of even the first rather low.
> 2. If one is not religious (Catholic being best for this purpose) there
> is no reason to think the afterlife will be worthwhile.
> 3. I [Peter] very much want to think the afterlife is worthwhile
Wilkins.
> 4. Therefore I am Catholic
> 5. Therefore (because the Catholic doctrine asserts this) there is an
> afterlife.
Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more spare time.
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> And one more: Wilkins sure keeps one guessing as to what he means by
> things.
saying, it's not good just to say "you're wrong", "you're an idiot" or
"you're willfully misrepresenting me". A better approach would be to
explain more clearly what you meant.
[snip "you're wrong" and "you're an idiot"]
Glenn
"John Harshman" <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:ssqdnQLK0eH...@giganews.com...
> > And one more: Wilkins sure keeps one guessing as to what he means by
> > things.
>
> Irony meter overload. Peter, when people are wrong about what you're
> saying, it's not good just to say "you're wrong", "you're an idiot" or
> "you're willfully misrepresenting me". A better approach would be to
> explain more clearly what you meant.
>
Steven L.
"Mark Isaak" <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:j6dfhh$7kv$1...@speranza.aioe.org:
> > [I lost track of who said what. It hardly matters for this post.]
>
>
> Consider: "God", in ethical monotheism, is defined not merely as a
> super-powerful being, but as a being that is also worthy of worship. To
> at it and say, "it is good." A supernatural miracle (hereafter simply
> chance) is a revision to that creation, which essentially says, "oops,
> it wasn't quite good enough the first time."
free will.
Humans have the free will to pollute the earth with industrial wastes,
to cause global warming, to wage thermonuclear war, to launch
bioweapons, and lots of other things that are not so nice. God may not
like that outcome for His "perfect" creation. But without the ability
to create miracles, He is stuck with it.
A God that wanted his creation to remain perfect as He had intended it,
could not have given any beings in it high intelligence and free will.
Because that took the fate of God's creation out of God's hands, at
least in part.
So God would have to retain the ability to create miracles, in order to
do some "course corrections" along the way.
And in the Bible, over and over again, God has to intervene to change
the course of human history back to something He preferred. Because we
stubborn humans kept doing our own thing.
-- Steven L.
Mark Isaak
>
> "Mark Isaak" <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net> wrote in message
> news:j6dfhh$7kv$1...@speranza.aioe.org:
>
>> > [I lost track of who said what. It hardly matters for this post.]
>>
>> Supernatural miracles are evidence *against* god.
>>
>> Consider: "God", in ethical monotheism, is defined not merely as a
>> super-powerful being, but as a being that is also worthy of worship. To
>> my mind, that means a being who, when creation was created, could look
>> at it and say, "it is good." A supernatural miracle (hereafter simply
>> called "miracle", but not to be confused with a natural wonder or rare
>> chance) is a revision to that creation, which essentially says, "oops,
>> it wasn't quite good enough the first time."
>
> God gave up the "infinite goodness" of the earth when he gave humans
> free will.
good, then giving humans free will (or making any change at all) had to
have been a bad thing, relatively speaking. Why did God do something bad?
> Humans have the free will to pollute the earth with industrial wastes,
> to cause global warming, to wage thermonuclear war, to launch
> bioweapons, and lots of other things that are not so nice. God may not
> like that outcome for His "perfect" creation. But without the ability to
> create miracles, He is stuck with it.
>
> A God that wanted his creation to remain perfect as He had intended it,
> could not have given any beings in it high intelligence and free will.
> Because that took the fate of God's creation out of God's hands, at
> least in part.
"perfection", although I never mentioned it myself. I do not even
believe perfection has any meaning, except in some narrowly defined
contexts (e.g., a perfect score in bowling).
Even after replacing "perfect" with "good", I still reject your premise.
Free will is not an absolute. We are not free, for example, to will
ourselves to travel faster than light. I see no reason why a god could
not have given enough constraints on our will to keep the world good.
In fact, I see no reason to deny that God did so.
(Aside: I also believe that "free will" is a vacuous concept, but that
is an argument for another thread.)
> So God would have to retain the ability to create miracles, in order to
> do some "course corrections" along the way.
>
> And in the Bible, over and over again, God has to intervene to change
> the course of human history back to something He preferred. Because we
> stubborn humans kept doing our own thing.
is preferred. (One thing they tell us is that what is preferred is the
telling of stories.)
John Harshman
created humans with free will, but still with better morals and sense
than we have?
As a related question, is there free will in heaven? And if so, is there
necessarily sin?
John S. Wilkins
> OK, I have time for this short post.
>
> On Oct 5, 12:33 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > the main reason I remain a
> > > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
> >
> > As I understand things, it is the sole reason for believing in an
> > afterlife.
>
> Wrong. There are other reasons having nothing to do with God or the
> existence of one.
>
> I'd rather not mention them now, because they cut both ways. To turn
> around a statement of which Unamuno was fond: "If there is no God, of
> what use is an afterlife?"
Well Miguel was not necessarily an authority. If there is an afterlife,
it might be useful to those that have it, I suppose. Even if it turns
out to be a fact of nature rather than of divine intervention.
>
> > Is that not circular reasoning?
>
> It would be, but it's a strawman.
>
OK, I await your showing that.
pnyikos
can squeeze this out today and maybe a few more.
On Oct 5, 8:33 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > OK, I have time for this short post.
>
> > On Oct 5, 12:33 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > the main reason I remain a
> > > > committed Roman Catholic: I believe that religion has the best chance
> > > > of keeping hope alive of an afterlife worth living.
>
> > > As I understand things, it is the sole reason for believing in an
> > > afterlife.
figure out how this squared with some wild stabs in the dark that you
made about me in a later post. Were you understanding it as MY sole
reason for taking seriously the possibility that there is an
afterlife? [Note, I didn't ever say in talk.origins that I "believed
in" an afterllife. That expression is just too open to
misinterpretation.] It isn't, not by a long shot.
> > Wrong. There are other reasons having nothing to do with God or the
> > existence of one.
>
> > I'd rather not mention them now, because they cut both ways. To turn
> > around a statement of which Unamuno was fond: "If there is no God, of
> > what use is an afterlife?"
>
> Well Miguel was not necessarily an authority.
equation pretty close: I think few people would believe in God
nowadays if they didn't think there was an afterlife to correct all
the inequities, injustices etc. that occur in this world. The Book of
Job is a masterpiece of literature, but I don't think the superficial
message of the first two chapters combined with the last chapter
resonates with many people nowadays.
> If there is an afterlife,
> it might be useful to those that have it, I suppose. Even if it turns
> out to be a fact of nature rather than of divine intervention.
universe around us and know how to guard against some of the worst
that it can throw our way. We also know that our bodies are
reasonably able to cope with invading bacteria and viruses and with
non-fatal injuries.
Who'd want to take a chance on a "natural" hereafter about which we
know nothing? It could be pure hell for all we know, minus devils to
give it structure. A graphic account of how our present existence,
safe in the "rind" of our bodies, might contrast with that is given by
the villain in C.S Lewis's _Perelandra_.
> > > Is that not circular reasoning?
>
> > It would be, but it's a strawman.
>
> OK, I await your showing that.
in translation, like me.] It gives a very different perspective than
the usual ones on Christian apologetics, with lots of hints as to why
one might believe in an afterlife.
Sorry, that's all I have time for right now.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Oct 3, 10:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Oct 3, 12:42 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 3, 8:24 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > On Sep 30, 4:23 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
> > > > > John Harshman wrote:
> > > > > > pnyikos wrote:
> > > > > >> But more to the point: as should be clear from my last reply to Rolf,
> > > > > >> there IS evidence, and AFAIK there is a deafening silence from the
> > > > > >> skeptics of the modern-day miracles attributed by the Vatican to
> > > > > >> Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.
>
> > > > > > Are you indeed claiming that there are such miracles? What kind of
> > > > > > agnostic are you, exactly?
>
> > > > One who does not dismiss evidence without hearing from the other
> > > > side. Until that deafening silence ends, or until I witness such a
> > > > miracle myself, I have to remain in a state of suspended judgment on
> > > > this one.
>
> > > > Harshman, on the other hand, is behaving like a typical "atheism of
> > > > the gaps" devotee: as long as his nose isn't rubbed into an actual
> > > > miracle, he refuses to seriously entertain the possibilty that they
> > > > may occur.
>
> > > Not to derail your conversation, but a point of personal interest...
>
> > > I've run into this "atheist of the gaps" business a few times recently
> > > and I'm keen to know if it has any meaning beyond a silly reflexive
> > > riposte.
>
> > > Can you explain what it means to you and how you use it?
>
> > It's the atheistic counterpart of the theistic "god of the gaps."
> > It's a conviction that all unexplained phenomena can simply be
> > dismissed as something for which we just haven't found a natural cause
> > yet. Compare the following two statements:
>
> > "The Resurrection obviously didn't happen, because it contradicts
> > science."
> > "If the Resurrection happened, we will find a purely naturalistic
> > explanation for it."
>
> > The first is a typical "village atheist" remark. The second would be
> > expressive of an "atheism of the gaps" attitude.
>
> I'm not confused about how you, or others, apply it. I'm trying to
> determine if it has any meaning beyond the pejorative.
It does. See above. Did the words "simply be dismissed" go over your
head?
> The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
> works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
> reason.
Not in talk.origins, where it is all too often simply used as a put-
down. Take a look at the following post:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3ac92826f3490bb5
Here you will see ten statements peremptorily labeled "God of the
gaps" by Randy C. even though there was NO reasoning, none whatsoever,
tending in the direction you next suggest:
> It's about a tendency to interpret a lack of observations or
> data as evidence in favor of the proposition that god exists.
You also won't see that kind of thing in the post to which Randy C was
replying when he wrote that screed:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/301287fea9c0e417
Granted, Randy C. is an obnoxious twit, but he is a "useful idiot" for
the more astute regulars to make themselves look good in comparison
to. You can see this from the fact that NO ONE corrected him the way
you would have corrected him, had you been around, until I came along:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/2c01ed40cd08cfe2
And after that, the focus shifted to me and my phrase "Darwin of the
Gaps", with Randy C. continuing to get a free pass from everyone else
IIRC. But I was subjected to a barrage of criticism by other "uselful
idiots" who evidently love to use "God of the gaps" in the way Randy
C. does.
You only joined that thread almost a month later, and I see you chimed
in on a different use of "God of the gaps":
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8d4a3b1661e7925c
But I see you were laboring under the same misconception that so many
"useful idiots" labor under: you think of the whole concept of
Intelligent Design as something that is inextricably wedded to the
supernatural. It just ain't so, and I could show you about a hundred
posts of mine in which I connect it to the purely natural phenomenon
of (hypothesized) directed panspermia, a la Crick and Orgel. [NOT
Arrhenius, Hoyle, or Wickramasinghe: that's undirected panspermia.]
> This is,
> for obvious reasons, a mistaken assumption. "That god exists" is a
> positive statement which requires positive evidence, not a lack of
> evidence (unless justification can be provided for why a paucity of
> data should be a prediction which follows from the statement).
>
> Atheism, on the other hand, is a reaction to that proposition ("god
> exists").
So is agnosticism.
> And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
That could well depend on the nature of the hole. If you were to
witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
song? If so, you are no agnostic.
> Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> rhetoric.
Besides "atheism of the gaps" and "Darwin of the gaps," there is also
"Nobody of the gaps," as in,
"Nobody ever said that abiogenesis works the way you are suggesting."
... unaccompanied by the slightest hint as to a possible scenario that
would improve the odds that such a person is arguing about.
> Now, if you contend that "atheism of the gaps" is an active, not just
> reactive, bit of argumentation then I invite you to cast about for
> instances where atheists pick examples of incomplete knowledge out of
> thin air and declare, "Aha, this previously-unmentioned-by-any-theist
> gap proves there is no god!"
There is plenty of that going around in these newsgroups, though
mostly by people whose natural habitat is alt.atheism.
What is your natural habitat, by the way?
Remainder deleted, to be replied to later if necessary.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
define the phrase (and is foolishly pejorative in and of itself).
Though I doubt anyone else reading this could have missed the subtext,
I'll rephrase for clarity: "I'm trying to determine if it has any
*objective* meaning beyond your pejorative usage."
> > The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
> > works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
> > reason.
>
> Not in talk.origins, where it is all too often simply used as a put-
> down. Take a look at the following post:
above supposed to be relevant? Something can be an error of reason and
a put-down at the same time (in fact the error part kind of helps make
the put-down pertinent, don't you think?).
<snip the rest of Nyikos' self-absorbed link-fest>
> > This is,
> > for obvious reasons, a mistaken assumption. "That god exists" is a
> > positive statement which requires positive evidence, not a lack of
> > evidence (unless justification can be provided for why a paucity of
> > data should be a prediction which follows from the statement).
>
> > Atheism, on the other hand, is a reaction to that proposition ("god
> > exists").
>
> So is agnosticism.
>
> > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
even make sense without the part you snipped.
> If you were to
> witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> song? If so, you are no agnostic.
finishes,
"...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
expression of reason, not error."
So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
unobserved biological processes at work. And I would most definitely
be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
> > Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> > some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> > rhetoric.
>
> Besides "atheism of the gaps" and "Darwin of the gaps," there is also
> "Nobody of the gaps," as in,
>
> "Nobody ever said that abiogenesis works the way you are suggesting."
>
> ... unaccompanied by the slightest hint as to a possible scenario that
> would improve the odds that such a person is arguing about.
> > Now, if you contend that "atheism of the gaps" is an active, not just
> > reactive, bit of argumentation then I invite you to cast about for
> > instances where atheists pick examples of incomplete knowledge out of
> > thin air and declare, "Aha, this previously-unmentioned-by-any-theist
> > gap proves there is no god!"
>
> There is plenty of that going around in these newsgroups, though
> mostly by people whose natural habitat is alt.atheism.
>
> What is your natural habitat, by the way?
on.
Why? Is it time for your customary investigation of credentials?
RLC
pnyikos
Of course. Also the sequel, "...as something for which we just
haven't found a natural cause yet," is relevant to something you
write below.
> (and is foolishly pejorative in and of itself).
It is inherent in the way I use the term, no more and no less. I do
try not to apply it in any other way, though I admit I did get carried
away above. His statement quoted above came in a context where he had
repeatedly denied that I was providing any kind of evidence, no matter
how weak, for the reality of miracles like the Resurrection.
> Though I doubt anyone else reading this could have missed the subtext,
> I'll rephrase for clarity: "I'm trying to determine if it has any
> *objective* meaning beyond your pejorative usage."
Unless you claim that no atheist ever tried to summarily dismiss
evidence of the supernatural that consisted of accounts of miracles,
the usage is perfectly legitimate.
> > > The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
> > > works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
> > > reason.
>
> > Not in talk.origins, where it is all too often simply used as a put-
> > down. 锟絋ake a look at the following post:
>
> I'll ignore the link, if you don't mind.
I DO mind. You are running away from the everyday realities of
talk.origins, a context in which my definition of "atheism of the
gaps" is highly appropriate.
>And how in the world is the
> above supposed to be relevant? Something can be an error of reason and
> a put-down at the same time
I think you meant to say, "Something can be pointing out an error of
reason and be a put-down at the same time." Otherwise what you say
next makes no sense:
> (in fact the error part kind of helps make
> the put-down pertinent, don't you think?).
And my point was that there was NO attempt to point out any errors of
reason by the obnoxious Randy C.
> <snip the rest of Nyikos' self-absorbed link-fest>
You even snipped the first link, to which the "self-absorbed" doesn't
even qualify as a pejorative put-down: it is simply false to label it
that way:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3ac92826f3490bb5
[...]
> > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
*not* being evidence for the supernatural. Duh.
> The sentence doesn't
> even make sense without the part you snipped.
Sure it does. What you said later was just frosting on the cake:
> >锟絀f you were to
> > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > song? 锟絀f so, you are no agnostic.
>
> Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> finishes,
>
> "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> expression of reason, not error."
>
> So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> unobserved biological processes at work.
Hence the sequel in my definition, "...as something for which we just
haven't found a natural cause yet."
What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
of reason?"
> And I would most definitely
> be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
supernatural.
Are you sufficiently agnostic to endorse the "or against" part?
Continued in my next reply.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Oct 7, 2:17�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> > > some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> > > rhetoric.
>
> > Besides "atheism of the gaps" and "Darwin of the gaps," there is also
> > "Nobody of the gaps," as in,
>
> > "Nobody ever said that abiogenesis works the way you are suggesting."
>
> > ... unaccompanied by the slightest hint as to a possible scenario that
> > would improve the odds that such a person is arguing about.
Back in the 1990's I coined the acronym "SUPER" for "Speculative,
Unimagined, Posited Evolutionary Routes" for the typical treatment of
challenges to produce actual scenarios for the way abiogenesis leading
to the first prokaryotes even COULD have happened. And with "el cid"
gone, I wonder whether anyone will rise above relying on SUPERs (with
the emphasis on "Unimagined") in arguing in favor of the claim that it
all happened easily.
> Why do you have such trouble sticking to the point?
Because it is part of the realities of talk.origins, and related
somewhat to Randy C.'s performance about which you are burying your
head in the sand. Are you indifferent to almost everything that goes
on in that newsgroup?
> > > Now, if you contend that "atheism of the gaps" is an active, not just
> > > reactive, bit of argumentation then I invite you to cast about for
> > > instances where atheists pick examples of incomplete knowledge out of
> > > thin air and declare, "Aha, this previously-unmentioned-by-any-theist
> > > gap proves there is no god!"
>
> > There is plenty of that going around in these newsgroups, though
> > mostly by people whose natural habitat is alt.atheism.
>
> > What is your natural habitat, by the way?
>
> The couch, accompanied by pizza, chips and soda, with a soccer game
> on.
>
> Why? Is it time for your customary investigation of credentials?
No, of basic world-view. Your answer may or may not be highly
enligntening about that.
I gave up "my" customary investigation of credentials during my
2001-2008 posting break, and have not resumed except to poke fun at
that stuffed shirt, Richard Forrest.
Did you just make up that "your customary" off the top of your head?
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Oct 7, 7:58嚙緘m, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 7, 2:17嚙緘m, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 3, 10:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > On Oct 3, 12:42 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 3, 8:24 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sep 30, 4:23 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
<snip>
> > > > The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
> > > > works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
> > > > reason.
>
> > > Not in talk.origins, where it is all too often simply used as a put-
> > > down. 嚙確ake a look at the following post:
>
> > I'll ignore the link, if you don't mind.
>
> I DO mind. 嚙磐ou are running away from the everyday realities of
> talk.origins, a context in which my definition of "atheism of the
> gaps" is highly appropriate.
The everyday reality of t.o is that we participate in threads. In
those threads we exchange opinions, arguments, gripes, insults, and
sometimes even manage to clarify respective positions. If I want to
answer someone's question, the quickest and easiest way to do it is to
write it there, in the thread.
Don't get me wrong. Links are useful, especially for cites to
appropriate literature. And I've used them myself. But I think you
overdo them to the point of distraction and fragmentation of the
discussion. No one is interested in clicking through to multiple links
to previous, often long-winded exchanges. Who has the time, or
interest?
> >And how in the world is the
> > above supposed to be relevant? Something can be an error of reason and
> > a put-down at the same time
>
> I think you meant to say, "Something can be pointing out an error of
> reason and be a put-down at the same time." 嚙�Otherwise what you say
> next makes no sense:
>
> > (in fact the error part kind of helps make
> > the put-down pertinent, don't you think?).
The "god of the gaps" argument is an error of reason. You've asserted
that it is also used as a put-down. The point is that those are not
mutually exclusive observations.
> And my point was that there was NO attempt to point out any errors of
> reason by the obnoxious Randy C.
>
> > <snip the rest of Nyikos' self-absorbed link-fest>
>
> You even snipped the first link, to which the "self-absorbed" doesn't
> even qualify as a pejorative put-down: it is simply false to label it
> that way:
It's true that not all of the links were to your own posts. However my
use of "self-absorbed" in this case referred to your style of linking
to previous works as would an authority pointing a student to the
fruits of his golden pen - "You can find my thoughts on that subject
laid out in detail by reading my critically acclaimed..." etc. etc. No
one is here to marvel at anyone else's grandiloquence.
I don't think, at least I hope, you don't really mean it this way. But
it's an impression that's easily taken. David Ford used to annoy quite
a few around here with a similar practice.
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3ac92826f3490bb5
>
> [...]
>
> > > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> > What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
>
> *not* being evidence for the supernatural. 嚙瘩uh.
>
> > The sentence doesn't
> > even make sense without the part you snipped.
>
> Sure it does. 嚙磕hat you said later was just frosting on the cake:
Read it again, the sentence is not even complete. It depends entirely
upon the clause that followed. It boggles the mind that you could take
enough meaning from that segment to find fault with.
> > >嚙瘢f you were to
> > > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > > song? 嚙瘢f so, you are no agnostic.
>
> > Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> > finishes,
>
> > "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> > gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> > particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> > expression of reason, not error."
>
> > So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > unobserved biological processes at work.
>
> Hence the sequel in my definition, "...as something for which we just
> haven't found a natural cause yet."
You weren't asking about your definition. You were asking if my
perspective regarding "gaps" arguments (restored above) would change
under your scenario.
> What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> walked among witnesses? 嚙磕ould you still say that this was NO evidence
> for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> of reason?"
Of course I would.
All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
barely informed speculation and anxiety. Think, for a moment, about
what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
natural, not of this natural reality. Then tell me how anyone could
rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
always has been, an illogical leap.
In short, I would say the event you describe was amazing, stupendous,
awe-inspiring...even inexplicable. But the only way I could ever
entertain the existence of phenomena outside the natural universe
would be to experience it first-hand (even then I'd have to wonder at
my own sanity, I suppose).
> > And I would most definitely
> > be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
>
> Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
> who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
> supernatural.
It would be agnostic in the entirely common sense of "I proportion my
belief to the evidence." Belief in non-natural phenomena requires far
more evidence than mere incomprehensible, seemingly insoluble events.
We have plenty of evidence that such things have happened in the past
only to be explained later on.
I have sympathy for the sentiment that there can never be evidence for
or against the supernatural, but my own position is that the
incommensurability of natural and supernatural as concepts means we
cannot even conceive of what could be evidence for or against such a
thing. Any phenomenon we observe must, by definition, be natural. This
means we look for a natural explanation. To do otherwise would be
irrational.
RLC
Robert Camp
> On Oct 7, 7:58�pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 7, 2:17�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Thus my confusion that "atheism of the gaps" should be presented as
> > > > some sort of reproach. If anything, it's a clear correction of muddled
> > > > rhetoric.
>
> > > Besides "atheism of the gaps" and "Darwin of the gaps," there is also
> > > "Nobody of the gaps," as in,
>
> > > "Nobody ever said that abiogenesis works the way you are suggesting."
>
> > > ... unaccompanied by the slightest hint as to a possible scenario that
> > > would improve the odds that such a person is arguing about.
>
> Back in the 1990's I coined the acronym "SUPER" for "Speculative,
> Unimagined, Posited Evolutionary Routes" for the typical treatment of
> challenges to produce actual scenarios for the way abiogenesis leading
> to the first prokaryotes even COULD have happened. �And with "el cid"
> gone, I wonder whether anyone will rise above relying on SUPERs (with
> the emphasis on "Unimagined") in arguing in favor of the claim that it
> all happened easily.
Who says it happened easily?
The point, in answer to an in principle argument, is to offer an in
principle response. When someone argues that life must have a non-
natural origin because abiogenesis couldn't take place, the
appropriate response is to offer examples of how abiogenesis could
have taken place. On the other hand, when someone argues against
abiotic origins of life on the basis that there is no current
explanation, that's an obvious gap argument that deserves no response
beyond the observation that it is a logical fallacy.
And when someone says we should be looking elsewhere for explanations
of biological life (other than natural, earthly origins), the wholly
reasonable response is "Why?" There is neither the need, nor the
evidential warrant, for us to look for alternative explanations. If
you think otherwise, all of the obligation for making that case falls
to you.
> > Why do you have such trouble sticking to the point?
>
> Because it is part of the realities of talk.origins, and related
> somewhat to Randy C.'s performance about which you are burying your
> head in the sand. �Are you indifferent to almost everything that goes
> on in that newsgroup?
Considering the volume of posts in this group, and the time I have to
spend, I am of necessity indifferent to most of it.
> > > > Now, if you contend that "atheism of the gaps" is an active, not just
> > > > reactive, bit of argumentation then I invite you to cast about for
> > > > instances where atheists pick examples of incomplete knowledge out of
> > > > thin air and declare, "Aha, this previously-unmentioned-by-any-theist
> > > > gap proves there is no god!"
>
> > > There is plenty of that going around in these newsgroups, though
> > > mostly by people whose natural habitat is alt.atheism.
>
> > > What is your natural habitat, by the way?
>
> > The couch, accompanied by pizza, chips and soda, with a soccer game
> > on.
>
> > Why? Is it time for your customary investigation of credentials?
>
> No, of basic world-view. �Your answer may or may not be highly
> enligntening about that.
I gave you some of that in my answer to your other post. And I would
be happy to further enlighten you about any of my beliefs.
> I gave up "my" customary investigation of credentials during my
> 2001-2008 posting break, and have not resumed except to poke fun at
> that stuffed shirt, Richard Forrest.
That would be a more convincing case had I not recently seen you
asking others for their bona fides. I believe Mark Isaak was one.
RLC
pnyikos
> On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 3, 10:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > > On Oct 3, 12:42 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > On Oct 3, 8:24 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sep 30, 4:23 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > > > > The problem, as I see it, is that this is not a bit of logic that
> > > > > works both ways. The phrase "god of the gaps" refers to an error of
> > > > > reason.
>
> > > > Not in talk.origins, where it is all too often simply used as a put-
>
> > > I'll ignore the link, if you don't mind.
>
> > talk.origins, a context in which my definition of "atheism of the
> > gaps" is highly appropriate.
>
> The everyday reality of t.o is that we participate in threads. In
> those threads we exchange opinions, arguments, gripes, insults, and
> sometimes even manage to clarify respective positions.
Sure. But once you really do some reading in depth, patterns emerge.
And one of those patterns is a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no
evil" attitude towards people who misuse expressions, such as "god of
the gaps", as long as they are on the "right" side of various
debates. [And it almost goes without saying that almost all, if not
all, beneficiaries of the "three chimps" attitude are on the "right"
side of the fundamental issues.]
In fact, if you HAD clicked on the fourth link I provided, you would
have seen yourself displaying that very "three chimps" attitude
towards the obnoxious Randy C. See link below.
[...]
> > >And how in the world is the
> > > above supposed to be relevant? Something can be an error of reason and
> > > a put-down at the same time
>
> > I think you meant to say, "Something can be pointing out an error of
> > reason and be a put-down at the same time." Otherwise what you say
> > next makes no sense:
>
> > > (in fact the error part kind of helps make
> > > the put-down pertinent, don't you think?).
>
> The "god of the gaps" argument is an error of reason. You've asserted
> that it is also used as a put-down. The point is that those are not
> mutually exclusive observations.
Of course, and that also applies to the analogues which I have been
using.
> > And my point was that there was NO attempt to point out any errors of
> > reason by the obnoxious Randy C.
If you are willing to accept this, then there is no longer a need for
the link to this particular post. But I kept it in at the end of this
post, pending your reaction.
> > > <snip the rest of Nyikos' self-absorbed link-fest>
>
> > You even snipped the first link, to which the "self-absorbed" doesn't
> > even qualify as a pejorative put-down: it is simply false to label it
> > that way:
>
> It's true that not all of the links were to your own posts. However my
> use of "self-absorbed" in this case referred to your style of linking
> to previous works
The following is apparently not meant to refer to me, given your
subsequent disclaimer:
>as would an authority pointing a student to the
> fruits of his golden pen - "You can find my thoughts on that subject
> laid out in detail by reading my critically acclaimed..." etc. etc. No
> one is here to marvel at anyone else's grandiloquence.
If you HAD clicked on those links, you would have seen nothing of the
sort. Only two of those four links had *anything* by me on it, and
one of them just had me talking sci.bio.paleontology shop, followed by
Randy C. butting in.
In fact, on that one you would have seen an example of one of the
fruits of YOUR golden pen backing up the Randy C. in one of his
interminable "god of the gaps" put-downs, aimed at me out of the blue
and having absolutely nothing to do with what I had been discussing
with Harshman:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8d4a3b1661e7925c
The other post that featured something from me was an example of me
"fighting fire with fire" by countering Randy C.'s misuses with
multiple uses of "Darwin of the gaps", an expression I coined for the
occasion.
> I don't think, at least I hope, you don't really mean it this way.
Mean WHAT this way? Certainly not the text that accompanied those
four links, I hope.
>But it's an impression that's easily taken.
By whom besides you? Who else would get such impressions from someone
using links to document what he is saying?
And would even YOU get such an impression if I were on the "right"
side of such isssues as abiogenesis and atheism from your POV?
> David Ford used to annoy quite
> a few around here with a similar practice.
Careful -- Paul Gans might accuse you of starting a list. :-)
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3ac92826f3490bb5
Continued in next reply.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > > > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> > > What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
>
>
> > > The sentence doesn't
> > > even make sense without the part you snipped.
>
>
> Read it again, the sentence is not even complete.
Seemingly pointless grammatical nitpick noted.
>It depends entirely
> upon the clause that followed. It boggles the mind that you could take
> enough meaning from that segment to find fault with.
Your mind is way too easily boggled. Despite it not being a complete
sentence, it includes a completely self-contained assertion. One to
which you return with amazing force at the end of this post. [That
wasn't a complete sentence either. Make the most of it.]
> > > > If you were to
> > > > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > > > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > > > song? If so, you are no agnostic.
>
> > > Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> > > finishes,
>
> > > "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> > > gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> > > particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> > > expression of reason, not error."
>
> > > So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> > > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > > unobserved biological processes at work.
>
> > Hence the sequel in my definition, "...as something for which we just
> > haven't found a natural cause yet."
>
> You weren't asking about your definition.
So what? You gave a very nice illustrative example of the meaning of
that sequel with your "perhaps even...".
>You were asking if my
> perspective regarding "gaps" arguments (restored above) would change
> under your scenario.
> > What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> > walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
> > for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > of reason?"
>
> Of course I would.
This fits in perfectly with my definition of "atheism of the gaps,"
including what YOU called a pejorative put-down "...simply be
dismissed..."
> All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> barely informed speculation and anxiety.
Another very revealing comment. All we know of reallity is given to
us by our senses, and yet many accounts of miracles are just that:
people ostensibly reporting what their senses told them.
> Think, for a moment, about
> what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
> natural, not of this natural reality.
What's so bad about that? The supernatural has its own very "natural"
rules according to various well-thought-out forms of Christian
theology.
>Then tell me how anyone could
> rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
> most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
> technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
> always has been, an illogical leap.
>
> In short, I would say the event you describe was amazing, stupendous,
> awe-inspiring...even inexplicable. But the only way I could ever
> entertain the existence of phenomena outside the natural universe
> would be to experience it first-hand (even then I'd have to wonder at
> my own sanity, I suppose).
Another highly revealing comment.
> > > And I would most definitely
> > > be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
>
> > Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
> > who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
> > supernatural.
>
> It would be agnostic in the entirely common sense of "I proportion my
> belief to the evidence."
Baloney. Your attitude to the purely hypothetical examples I gave
bespeaks an atheism that is not all that far from solipsism.
> Belief in non-natural phenomena requires far
> more evidence than mere incomprehensible, seemingly insoluble events.
> We have plenty of evidence that such things have happened in the past
> only to be explained later on.
I suggest your understanding of science is very sketchy, if you lump
the last example I gave in with these things that you speak of in such
vague generality. Name some of them, and the difference will be
readily apparent.
> I have sympathy for the sentiment that there can never be evidence for
> or against the supernatural, but my own position is that the
> incommensurability of natural and supernatural as concepts means we
> cannot even conceive of what could be evidence for or against such a
> thing. Any phenomenon we observe must, by definition, be natural. This
> means we look for a natural explanation. To do otherwise would be
> irrational.
>
> RLC
A perfect "atheism of the gaps" response.
Peter Nyikos
Glenn
"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:5c4f76e2-da17-4521...@n13g2000vbv.googlegroups.com...
boys!"
Robert Camp
Hmm...I don't remember anything like that, so I'm going to say you're
just full of it.
Prove me wrong. Show me right here in this thread. Quote me.
I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to substantiate your
predilection for misinterpretation of motives.
> > > >And how in the world is the
> > > > above supposed to be relevant? Something can be an error of reason and
> > > > a put-down at the same time
>
> > > I think you meant to say, "Something can be pointing out an error of
> > > reason and be a put-down at the same time." Otherwise what you say
> > > next makes no sense:
>
> > > > (in fact the error part kind of helps make
> > > > the put-down pertinent, don't you think?).
>
> > The "god of the gaps" argument is an error of reason. You've asserted
> > that it is also used as a put-down. The point is that those are not
> > mutually exclusive observations.
>
> Of course, and that also applies to the analogues which I have been
> using.
No, it doesn't, because "atheism of the gaps" is not an error of
reason. But of course you're free to continue using as a put-down.
While you're at it, go ahead and jeer at others for being "rational,"
too.
> > > And my point was that there was NO attempt to point out any errors of
> > > reason by the obnoxious Randy C.
>
> If you are willing to accept this, then there is no longer a need for
> the link to this particular post. �But I kept it in at the end of this
> post, pending your reaction.
I'm not willing to accept anything that requires I spend my time
sifting through old posts in search of evidence for your
misperceptions. I've too often seen you accuse others of designs that,
as far as I could tell, were far from their intent.
<snip more irrelevant, fretful Nyikos linkage>
There's no need for the references to old injustices, perceived
slights etc. Why do you spend so much time stewing over past
squabbles? Just try to deal with the issues, in the thread where they
are discussed. I don't see why that should be so hard.
RLC
pnyikos
> On Oct 13, 11:19�am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > The everyday reality of t.o is that we participate in threads. In
> > > those threads we exchange opinions, arguments, gripes, insults, and
> > > sometimes even manage to clarify respective positions.
>
> > Sure. �But once you really do some reading in depth, patterns emerge.
> > And one of those patterns is a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no
> > evil" attitude towards people who misuse expressions, such as "god of
> > the gaps", as long as they are on the "right" side of various
> > debates. �[And it almost goes without saying that almost all, if not
> > all, beneficiaries of the "three chimps" attitude are on the "right"
> > side of the fundamental issues.]
>
> > In fact, if you HAD clicked on the fourth link I provided, you would
> > have seen yourself displaying that very "three chimps" attitude
> > towards the obnoxious Randy C. �See link below.
>
> Hmm...I don't remember anything like that, so I'm going to say you're
> just full of it.
>
> Prove me wrong. Show me right here in this thread. Quote me.
_____________excerpt, with context added at the beginning______
> > > I was referring to the old-fashioned Amphibia as in "The Age of
> > > Amphibians". Right now (see the website above) it is split up into
> > > no less than thirteen (13) clades, only one of which is the cladists'
> > > Amphibia.
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > >>> So, where do you get your information that Aves is not considered a
> > > > >>> valid taxon. It's a clade, isn't it?
> > > > >> Sure is.
> > > > > I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Chris Thompson had in
> > > > > mind.
> > > > Sure.
[Randy C.:]
> > Do you understand that ID is nothing but the "God of the Gaps" yet?
> The "God of the gaps" charge suggests that someone is using God to
> fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge of natural causes,as if
> natural causes were always adequate to explain phenomena. But
> intelligent design is not used to fill in gaps of knowledge of natural
> causes,
That is exactly what it is used for.
> but to propose that organisms are indeed designed by intelligence,
And as such one might call it a passive God of the Gaps argument in
that it covers the argument from ignorance with a supposed alternative
explanation. But that explanation is vacuous. Yes, "Intellligent
design" proposes, but it does not investigate. ID nibbles around the
edges of our understanding of particular biological phenomena, but
offers no new testable hypotheses or mechanisms of its own. There is
some room for quibble depending upon how broadly you define it, but it
is, for all intents and purposes, a God of the Gaps argument.
============== end of excerpt
from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/8d4a3b1661e7925c
The facts are simple: you saw how Randy C. came out of the blue with
his ignorant fantasies about ID:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ef6a767c2e851730?dmode=source
And yet you only corrected his correcter. You may claim total
innocence of any good will towards Randy C., but I doubt that you can
make a credible case for that.
By the way, what you wrote in that last paragraph in that excerpt was
born of ignorance. I clearly indicated what was wrong with it in the
post with the four links, but you don't seem to be interested in being
enlightened.
> I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to substantiate your
> predilection for misinterpretation of motives.
Alleged predeliction, you mean. Often alleged, yet -- can you find a
single concrete example the allegers actually made a case for in the
last decade?
[...]
> > > The "god of the gaps" argument is an error of reason. You've asserted
> > > that it is also used as a put-down. The point is that those are not
> > > mutually exclusive observations.
>
> > Of course, and that also applies to the analogues which I have been
> > using.
>
> No, it doesn't, because "atheism of the gaps" is not an error of
> reason.
It is one of a different sort than the god of the gaps; rather than
trying to argue for a cause, it dismisses the need to investigate any
alleged manifestation of the supernatural by simply claiming that it
is not and cannot constitute evidence. You have given a very striking
demonstration of it in this thread.
[snip several put-downs of unspecified actions by me, ending in a
general comment about why it should not be so hard to stick to on-
topic discussion]
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Oct 11, 4:58�pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > > > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > > > > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> > > > What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
>
> > > *not* being evidence for the supernatural. Duh.
>
> > > > The sentence doesn't
> > > > even make sense without the part you snipped.
>
> > > Sure it does. What you said later was just frosting on the cake:
>
> > Read it again, the sentence is not even complete.
>
> Seemingly pointless grammatical nitpick noted.
Hey, call me crazy, but I'm funny that way. I prefer people respond to
what I say, rather than what they want to hear.
<snip>
> > > > > If you were to
> > > > > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > > > > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > > > > song? If so, you are no agnostic.
>
> > > > Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> > > > finishes,
>
> > > > "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> > > > gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> > > > particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> > > > expression of reason, not error."
>
> > > > So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> > > > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > > > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > > > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > > > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > > > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > > > unobserved biological processes at work.
<snip>
> > > What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> > > walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
> > > for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > of reason?"
>
> > Of course I would.
>
> This �fits in perfectly with my definition of "atheism of the gaps,"
> including what YOU called a pejorative put-down "...simply be
> dismissed..."
It has nothing to do with "dismissing" anything. There never was
anything to be considered within the context of evidence for the
supernatural. It's not even a concept that has any rational meaning.
Neither atheists in general, nor myself in this particular instance,
"dismiss" evidence. Such a thing requires that there be evidence to be
considered. Until you demonstrate that there is some reason your (or
anyone else's) personal mythology should qualify as a basis for
inferring a causal linkage between natural phenomena and putative
supernatural agency, there is no rational attitude but to conclude "We
don't know enough."
It is, of course, your prerogative to call this approach "atheism of
the gaps." As I said at the start, I was just trying to see if you
could invest it with some actual meaning beyond a schoolyard retort.
So far as I can tell, you cannot.
> > All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> > fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> > barely informed speculation and anxiety.
>
> Another very revealing comment.
One can only hope you're open to revelation.
> �All we know of reallity is given to
> us by our senses, and yet many accounts of miracles are just that:
> people ostensibly reporting what their senses told them.
Okay.
> > Think, for a moment, about
> > what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
> > natural, not of this natural reality.
>
> What's so bad about that? �The supernatural has its own very "natural"
> rules according to various well-thought-out forms of Christian
> theology.
What rationale is there that should give us even a moment's
contemplation that any theology, well-thought out or not, Christian or
not, is in any way connected to a reality other than the one we
inhabit? What could possibly influence your reasoning apparatus to
believe that ancient products of an imaginative and frightened
intellect could reliably inform you about "rules" regarding the
supernatural?
The assumptions inherent in such argumentation are multiple and
staggering.
> >Then tell me how anyone could
> > rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
> > most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
> > technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
> > always has been, an illogical leap.
>
> > In short, I would say the event you describe was amazing, stupendous,
> > awe-inspiring...even inexplicable. But the only way I could ever
> > entertain the existence of phenomena outside the natural universe
> > would be to experience it first-hand (even then I'd have to wonder at
> > my own sanity, I suppose).
>
> Another highly revealing comment.
Unlike your response.
> > > > And I would most definitely
> > > > be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
>
> > > Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
> > > who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
> > > supernatural.
>
> > It would be agnostic in the entirely common sense of "I proportion my
> > belief to the evidence."
>
> Baloney. �Your attitude to the purely hypothetical examples I gave
> bespeaks an atheism that is not all that far from solipsism.
That's about as far from sensible as is my position from solipsism.
You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
you take for granted. Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
"What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
of reason?""
Sounds silly, doesn't it? The reason is it *is* silly. Despite the
fact that supernatural assumptions are so incorporated into your
worldview that you get all verklempt when someone questions them, the
truth is that for the purposes of naturalistic investigation (and
discussion) there is no qualitative difference between God and magic.
The point is that it doesn't matter if a huge booming figure of
whatever everyone thinks of as their god appears simultaneously in the
skies above every outpost of humanity across this planet, there is
still no logical warrant for connecting such an effect with non-
natural cause. No matter how far-fetched a natural explanation is
proposed it will always be preferable, to an atheist or anyone
thinking rationally, to a supernatural explanation.
> > Belief in non-natural phenomena requires far
> > more evidence than mere incomprehensible, seemingly insoluble events.
> > We have plenty of evidence that such things have happened in the past
> > only to be explained later on.
>
> I suggest your understanding of science is very sketchy, if you lump
> the last example I gave in with these things that you speak of in such
> vague generality. �Name some of them, and the difference will be
> readily apparent.
How tediously like you to begin questioning someone's capacity as soon
as you're rhetorically uncomfortable.
The example you gave will serve nicely to make the point. Let's look
at it again,
"What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
evidence for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is
"an error of reason?""
I realize that it feels to you as if this scenario is so extreme in
probability, and at the same time so poignantly expressive of a
passionately held parable, that should such a thing be witnessed it
absolutely *must* be taken as evidence for the verity of the Christian
faith in a supernatural reality.
But improbable things happen all of the time. And sometimes even
extremely improbable things happen. And how likely is it that
something extremely improbable should happen that also appears to
coincide with a religious account of supernatural phenomena? I don't
even know how to calculate it. But there are, must be, and always will
be in a law-like universe, natural explanations of natural phenomena,
regardless of how improbable (yes, this is one of the few, perhaps
only, things I take on faith...it's, y'know, science).
Consider Burkhard's quip about twin brothers. Besides being clever,
it's also a perfectly reasonable, even mundane, possible explanation
for something seemingly remarkable. As for your scenario above, how
about large scale sleight-of-hand a la David Copperfield? How about
some tasteless, odorless hallucinogenic compound in the air that
stimulates neurotransmitters and causes a dream state? Hell, how about
some alien civilization that understands our iconography cloning a
duplicate and simulating a resurrection (for whatever reason)?
It doesn't matter how looney these explanations sound to you. What
matters is that we're talking about natural explanations for natural
phenomena, rather than the casuistic category error of inferring
supernatural cause.
> > I have sympathy for the sentiment that there can never be evidence for
> > or against the supernatural, but my own position is that the
> > incommensurability of natural and supernatural as concepts means we
> > cannot even conceive of what could be evidence for or against such a
> > thing. Any phenomenon we observe must, by definition, be natural. This
> > means we look for a natural explanation. To do otherwise would be
> > irrational.
> A perfect "atheism of the gaps" response.
A predictable, and somewhat embarrassing, evasion.
RLC
Robert Camp
>
> � The facts are simple: you saw how Randy C. came out of the blue with
> his ignorant fantasies about ID:
>
>
> And yet you only corrected his correcter. �You may claim total
> innocence of any good will towards Randy C., but I doubt that you can
> make a credible case for that.
This has nothing to do with will, good or bad.
Randy C. and I differed only in the nuances of how we phrased things.
ID is substantially a god of the gaps enterprise. It's arguments
depend, to a large degree, upon "things evolution cannot explain." He
was correct, you were incorrect (accounting for the fact that at that
time I was perhaps unaware of the peculiar way you define ID to
include your perspective).
Your "three chimps" accusation assumes the truth of your position in
that thread. I didn't agree with your position, then, nor do I agree
with it now. Next time try to produce a quote that actually
substantiates your claims.
And before this goes any farther, let me be clear that I'm not going
to indulge your thread-bulging lust for whinging and wheedling over
who-said-what-when and who-did-what-to-whom. I'm already weary at
having indulged that tendency this far.
> By the way, what you wrote in that last paragraph in that excerpt was
> born of ignorance. �I clearly indicated what was wrong with it in the
> post with the four links, but you don't seem to be interested in being
> enlightened.
Not by any post of yours with four links, that's for sure.
> > I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to substantiate your
> > predilection for misinterpretation of motives.
>
> Alleged predeliction, you mean. Often alleged, yet -- can you find a
> single concrete example the allegers actually made a case for in the
> last decade?
Well, no, not yet, but let me spend multiple hours and sleepless
nights researching the archives over the last ten years so that I can
find "concrete examples" for you (yes, that was sarcasm).
Good lord, do you listen to yourself?
> > > > The "god of the gaps" argument is an error of reason. You've asserted
> > > > that it is also used as a put-down. The point is that those are not
> > > > mutually exclusive observations.
>
> > > Of course, and that also applies to the analogues which I have been
> > > using.
>
> > No, it doesn't, because "atheism of the gaps" is not an error of
> > reason.
>
> It is one of a different sort than the god of the gaps; rather than
> trying to argue for a cause, it dismisses the need to investigate any
> alleged manifestation of the supernatural by simply claiming that it
> is not and cannot constitute evidence. �You have given a very striking
> demonstration of it in this thread.
Thank you. But the problem for your perspective is you haven't
demonstrated that this approach is in any way flawed or illogical.
After you've done that, I'll change my position and agree that
"atheism of the gaps" is an error of reason.
<snip>
RLC
pnyikos
> On Oct 13, 11:41 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > > > > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > > > > > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> > > > > What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
>
> > > > *not* being evidence for the supernatural. Duh.
>
> > > > > The sentence doesn't
> > > > > even make sense without the part you snipped.
>
> > > > Sure it does. What you said later was just frosting on the cake:
> > > Read it again, the sentence is not even complete.
>
> > Seemingly pointless grammatical nitpick noted.
>
> Hey, call me crazy, but I'm funny that way.
had not snipped what I said next:
> I prefer people respond to
> what I say, rather than what they want to hear.
hole in our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural"???
Besides, this comment was mild compared to what you are claiming now--
that there is NO hole in our knowledge that could even be *conceived*
as being evidence of the supernatural.
> <snip>
>
> > > > > > If you were to
> > > > > > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > > > > > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > > > > > song? If so, you are no agnostic.
>
> > > > > Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> > > > > finishes,
>
> > > > > "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> > > > > gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> > > > > particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> > > > > expression of reason, not error."
incomplete sentence conveyed. You are claiming that the cake is an
expression of reason. This reminds me of a famous use of the
expression "reasoned rightly" by a kindred spirit of yours [see
below].
> > > > > So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> > > > > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > > > > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > > > > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > > > > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > > > > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > > > > unobserved biological processes at work.
>
> <snip>
"atheism of the gaps", which runs as follows:
It's a conviction that all unexplained phenomena can simply be
cause yet.
> > > > What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> > > > walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
> > > > for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > of reason?"
>
> > > Of course I would.
>
> > This fits in perfectly with my definition of "atheism of the gaps,"
> > including what YOU called a pejorative put-down "...simply be
> > dismissed..."
> It has nothing to do with "dismissing" anything. There never was
> anything to be considered within the context of evidence for the
> supernatural.
this particular opinion about the supernatural was the 18th century
philosopher David Hume. But Hume also undermined the whole concept of
causality by saying that all we can be sure of is "conjoined" events.
So if you combine that with his attitude about miracles, you wind up
saying that a miracle is simply something that has never before or
since been observed by a comparative handful of people to have
occurred in conjunction with the events surrounding it. Hardly a
devastating argument against miracles.
And by "a comparative handful" I mean the people about whose
observations the miracle-skeptic has enough knowledge. Hume gave a
dramatic example of what he meant when he said the King of Siam
"reasoned rightly" in his reaction on being told by an ambassador that
it gets so cold in the ambassador's country that the water at the tops
of lakes gets so hard, an elephant could walk across them.
The king's reaction was, "Up until now I have believed that you are a
truthful man, but now I know you are a liar." [or words to that
effect: I don't have Hume's exact words in front of me, but Hume's
"reasoned rightly" is an exact quote.]
And "reasoned rightly" segues very nicely into what you say next
("rational meaning"):
> It's not even a concept that has any rational meaning.
> Neither atheists in general, nor myself in this particular instance,
> "dismiss" evidence.
and cannot be evidence by the very nature of things. A more deeply
entrenched atheism would be hard to imagine.
And so, I've added alt.atheism to the newsgroups. It is obvious that
this is your "natural [Usenet] habitat" the way I use this
expression. If you aren't well known to the regulars of that
newsgroup, you should be.
pnyikos
> On Oct 13, 11:41 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > So, in answer to your question then: if I witnessed a man dying from
> > > > > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > > > > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > > > > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > > > > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > > > > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > > > > unobserved biological processes at work.
>
> <snip>
>
> > > > What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> > > > walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
> > > > for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > of reason?"
>
> > > Of course I would.
> Until you demonstrate that there is some reason your (or
> anyone else's) personal mythology should qualify as a basis for
> inferring a causal linkage between natural phenomena and putative
> supernatural agency, there is no rational attitude but to conclude "We
> don't know enough."
(wrongly, as it turned out) of using "simply dismissed" as a
pejorative. You were apparently projecting your own propensity for
pejoratives.
> It is, of course, your prerogative to call this approach "atheism of
> the gaps." As I said at the start, I was just trying to see if you
> could invest it with some actual meaning beyond a schoolyard retort.
> So far as I can tell, you cannot.
reply to this same post of yours for hints as to what "ultra-Humean"
means.
> > > All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> > > fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> > > barely informed speculation and anxiety.
>
> > Another very revealing comment.
>
> One can only hope you're open to revelation.
familiar with the expression, "dead giveaway"?
> > All we know of reallity is given to
> > us by our senses, and yet many accounts of miracles are just that:
> > people ostensibly reporting what their senses told them.
>
> Okay.
of abstract reasoning such as mathematical theorems.
> > > Think, for a moment, about
> > > what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
> > > natural, not of this natural reality.
>
> > What's so bad about that? The supernatural has its own very "natural"
> > rules according to various well-thought-out forms of Christian
> > theology.
>
> What rationale is there that should give us even a moment's
> contemplation that any theology, well-thought out or not, Christian or
> not, is in any way connected to a reality other than the one we
> inhabit?
don't let the title fool you--the book ranges over broad vistas of
philosophy and psychology in addition to theology. C.S. Lewis had
plenty to say about comments like your "dead giveaway" up there, for
instance.
And Lewis went through an atheistic period for a good part of his
adolescence and a bit of adulthood, so he had first-hand knowledge of
that particular mindset.
>What could possibly influence your reasoning apparatus to
> believe that ancient products of an imaginative and frightened
> intellect could reliably inform you about "rules" regarding the
> supernatural?
a direct answer is impossible, and I'm not going to take the trouble
to give an indirect one.
> The assumptions inherent in such argumentation are multiple and
> staggering.
> > >Then tell me how anyone could
> > > rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
> > > most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
> > > technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
> > > always has been, an illogical leap.
>
> > > In short, I would say the event you describe was amazing, stupendous,
> > > awe-inspiring...even inexplicable. But the only way I could ever
> > > entertain the existence of phenomena outside the natural universe
> > > would be to experience it first-hand (even then I'd have to wonder at
> > > my own sanity, I suppose).
>
> > Another highly revealing comment.
>
> Unlike your response.
my posts way too long, and they are already very long as is, on the
average.
> > > > > And I would most definitely
> > > > > be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
>
> > > > Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
> > > > who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
> > > > supernatural.
>
> > > It would be agnostic in the entirely common sense of "I proportion my
> > > belief to the evidence."
>
> > Baloney. Your attitude to the purely hypothetical examples I gave
> > bespeaks an atheism that is not all that far from solipsism.
>
> That's about as far from sensible as is my position from solipsism.
easilty use the premises behind your arguments to argue that you and
the whole world are only a dream he is having.
> You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
> you take for granted.
somewhere.
>Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
>
> "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> of reason?""
>
> Sounds silly, doesn't it?
"Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
but I have no idea what they are.
>The reason is it *is* silly. Despite the
> fact that supernatural assumptions are so incorporated into your
> worldview that you get all verklempt when someone questions them,
and highly stereotyped comment to boot. You obviously have no clue as
to where I am coming from.
A little hint: the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that
alt.agnosticism is MY "natural [Usenet] habitat."
Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more time.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
of mine, made almost half an hour later, appeared here in Google
Groups about half an hour ago. So I am repeating the first post, and
apologize if this results in duplicate messages.
On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 13, 11:41 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 3, 2:39 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > And an atheist's observation that some particular hole in
> > > > > > > our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural
>
> > > > > > That could well depend on the nature of the hole.
>
> > > > > What could "depend on the nature of the hole?"
>
> > > > *not* being evidence for the supernatural. Duh.
>
> > > > > The sentence doesn't
> > > > > even make sense without the part you snipped.
>
> > > > Sure it does. What you said later was just frosting on the cake:
>
> > Seemingly pointless grammatical nitpick noted.
>
> Hey, call me crazy, but I'm funny that way.
had not snipped what I said next:
> what I say, rather than what they want to hear.
hole in our knowledge is *not* evidence for the supernatural"???
Besides, this comment was mild compared to what you are claiming now--
that there is NO hole in our knowledge that could even be *conceived*
as being evidence of the supernatural.
>
> > > > > > If you were to
> > > > > > witness a man dying from scourging and crucifixion apparently
> > > > > > completely healed in less than two days, would you sing this same
> > > > > > song? If so, you are no agnostic.
>
> > > > > Let's restore the "song" you were talking about. The relevant section
> > > > > finishes,
>
> > > > > "...is a reaction to the error of reason presented by a "god of the
> > > > > gaps" argument. As a result, finding a lack of support for some
> > > > > particular proposition (god exists) in a dearth of data is an
> > > > > expression of reason, not error."
incomplete sentence conveyed. You are claiming that the cake is an
expression of reason. This reminds me of a famous use of the
expression "reasoned rightly" by a kindred spirit of yours [see
below].
> > > > > scourging and then his subsequent crucifixion I would absolutely sing
> > > > > the same "song." I would consider any "gap" type inferences to
> > > > > unevidenced, untestable, putatively supernatural agency an error of
> > > > > reason. I would question my own senses, the acumen of those who
> > > > > concluded the man was dead, perhaps even whether there were heretofore
> > > > > unobserved biological processes at work.
>
> <snip>
"atheism of the gaps", which runs as follows:
cause yet.
> > > > What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he THEN
> > > > walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO evidence
> > > > for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > of reason?"
>
> > > Of course I would.
>
> > This fits in perfectly with my definition of "atheism of the gaps,"
> > including what YOU called a pejorative put-down "...simply be
> > dismissed..."
> It has nothing to do with "dismissing" anything. There never was
> anything to be considered within the context of evidence for the
> supernatural.
this particular opinion about the supernatural was the 18th century
philosopher David Hume. But Hume also undermined the whole concept of
causality by saying that all we can be sure of is "conjoined" events.
So if you combine that with his attitude about miracles, you wind up
saying that a miracle is simply something that has never before or
since been observed by a comparative handful of people to have
occurred in conjunction with the events surrounding it. Hardly a
devastating argument against miracles.
And by "a comparative handful" I mean the people about whose
observations the miracle-skeptic has enough knowledge. Hume gave a
dramatic example of what he meant when he said the King of Siam
"reasoned rightly" in his reaction on being told by an ambassador that
it gets so cold in the ambassador's country that the water at the tops
of lakes gets so hard, an elephant could walk across them.
The king's reaction was, "Up until now I have believed that you are a
truthful man, but now I know you are a liar." [or words to that
effect: I don't have Hume's exact words in front of me, but Hume's
"reasoned rightly" is an exact quote.]
And "reasoned rightly" segues very nicely into what you say next
("rational meaning"):
> Neither atheists in general, nor myself in this particular instance,
> "dismiss" evidence.
and cannot be evidence by the very nature of things. A more deeply
entrenched atheism would be hard to imagine.
And so, I've added alt.atheism to the newsgroups. It is obvious that
this is your "natural [Usenet] habitat" the way I use this
expression. If you aren't well known to the regulars of that
newsgroup, you should be.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 13, 11:41 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Until you demonstrate that there is some reason your (or
> > anyone else's) personal mythology should qualify as a basis for
> > inferring a causal linkage between natural phenomena and putative
> > supernatural agency, there is no rational attitude but to conclude "We
> > don't know enough."
>
> "personal mythology" is a loaded expression.
for mythology if you like.
Following that, try to respond to the substance of the paragraph,
rather than taking issue with a word you dislike and ignoring
everything else.
<snip Nyikos whining>
> > It is, of course, your prerogative to call this approach "atheism of
> > the gaps." As I said at the start, I was just trying to see if you
> > could invest it with some actual meaning beyond a schoolyard retort.
> > So far as I can tell, you cannot.
>
> That is because of your ultra-Humean slant on things. See my previous
> reply to this same post of yours for hints as to what "ultra-Humean"
> means.
to say, say it.
> > > > All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> > > > fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> > > > barely informed speculation and anxiety.
> > > All we know of reallity is given to
> > > us by our senses, and yet many accounts of miracles are just that:
> > > people ostensibly reporting what their senses told them.
>
> > Okay.
>
> By the way, when I said "reality" I did not mean to include products
> of abstract reasoning such as mathematical theorems.
>
> > > > Think, for a moment, about
> > > > what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
> > > > natural, not of this natural reality.
>
> > > What's so bad about that? The supernatural has its own very "natural"
> > > rules according to various well-thought-out forms of Christian
> > > theology.
>
> > What rationale is there that should give us even a moment's
> > contemplation that any theology, well-thought out or not, Christian or
> > not, is in any way connected to a reality other than the one we
> > inhabit?
>
> C.S. Lewis wrote a whole book about the rationale, _Miracles_. And
> don't let the title fool you--the book ranges over broad vistas of
> philosophy and psychology in addition to theology. C.S. Lewis had
> plenty to say about comments like your "dead giveaway" up there, for
> instance.
what he had to say here.
> And Lewis went through an atheistic period for a good part of his
> adolescence and a bit of adulthood, so he had first-hand knowledge of
> that particular mindset.
If you think Lewis had something of value that pertains directly to my
comments go ahead and serve it up. I've read plenty of Lewis and,
despite having enjoyed the Perelandra trilogy, consider his arguments
rather naive.
> >What could possibly influence your reasoning apparatus to
> > believe that ancient products of an imaginative and frightened
> > intellect could reliably inform you about "rules" regarding the
> > supernatural?
>
> This question is so loaded with pejoratives and question-begging that
> a direct answer is impossible, and I'm not going to take the trouble
> to give an indirect one.
cover it up with such sophomoric evasion.
Maybe you think my assumption that you have a reasoning apparatus is
loaded or pejorative, I don't know. It seems hard to imagine that
anyone would quibble with a description of early (or even
contemporary) humans as "imaginative and frightened," but perhaps that
was your complaint. In any case I fail to see where there is anything
loaded or pejorative in my comments. Absent your explanation, I have
to conclude your answer is a full retreat.
> > The assumptions inherent in such argumentation are multiple and
> > staggering.
>
> "garbage in, garbage out"
response of yours is entirely content-free.
Here's what someone confident in his position and willing to consider
the issue would have said, "Okay, go ahead and explain to me what kind
of assumptions you think I'm making."
You, on the other hand, can't seem to muster much more than the
occasional watery raspberry.
> > > >Then tell me how anyone could
> > > > rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
> > > > most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
> > > > technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
> > > > always has been, an illogical leap.
>
> > > > In short, I would say the event you describe was amazing, stupendous,
> > > > awe-inspiring...even inexplicable. But the only way I could ever
> > > > entertain the existence of phenomena outside the natural universe
> > > > would be to experience it first-hand (even then I'd have to wonder at
> > > > my own sanity, I suppose).
> > > > > > And I would most definitely
> > > > > > be representing an agnostic viewpoint in doing so.
>
> > > > > Only an agnostic viewpoint in the original Thomas Huxley sense, of one
> > > > > who claims that there can never be any evidence for or against the
> > > > > supernatural.
>
> > > > It would be agnostic in the entirely common sense of "I proportion my
> > > > belief to the evidence."
>
> > > Baloney. Your attitude to the purely hypothetical examples I gave
> > > bespeaks an atheism that is not all that far from solipsism.
>
> > That's about as far from sensible as is my position from solipsism.
>
> Your position is higly vulnerable to solipsism. A sollipsist could
> easilty use the premises behind your arguments to argue that you and
> the whole world are only a dream he is having.
"proportioning one's belief to the evidence." In fact, it is a
suggestion that "evidence" has no objective meaning, similar in some
ways to your claim that unexplained phenomena can be evidence for
faith-based inference (both approaches strip the word of empirical
content).
> > You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
> > you take for granted.
>
> If you identified those alleged premises, maybe we could get
> somewhere.
Okay, let's just start with a few of those subsumed in your suggestion
that witnessing a Resurrection-like event is evidence for the
supernatural.
- You assume that it is a coherent position to connect natural
phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
This is not a rational operation, it is a leap of logic. It feels
reasonable to those who are comfortable with the dogma, but without
prior demonstration of the existence of the supernatural, it is an
assumption of conclusions.
- The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
phenomena can interact with our reality, That unexplained phenomena
(miracles) are support for anything beyond lack of knowledge, That
miracles are support for one particular dogma as opposed to others
(which essentially amounts to confirmation bias towards the dogma with
which one if familiar).
Many very respectable theists fail to question their assumptions. Many
consider themselves skeptics and critical thinkers, all the while
swimming in a rhetorical soup that assumes that reality and the
supernatural are reasonably equivalent assumptions, just waiting for
some crucial piece of evidence to finally tie them together. This is a
position justifiable on the basis of Faith, but not in the context of
an argument about empirical evidence and logical inference.
> >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
>
> > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > of reason?""
>
> > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
>
> No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> but I have no idea what they are.
"poof...it just appears (or disappears)." It doesn't mean anything to
you, thus the statement is unintelligible and the inference ("evidence
for Magic") is disjoint.
Now, guess what? Since I don't share your appreciation for Christian
doctrine my position is pretty similar. It doesn't have the same
meaning for me (it is an artifact of human imagination, not a conduit
to the supernatural), thus I don't assume that unexplained events
could stand as evidence in favor of its verity, thus the inference
("evidence for the supernatural") is disjoint.
I don't question your Faith, just your suggestion that natural reality
can substantiate it.
> >The reason is it *is* silly. Despite the
> > fact that supernatural assumptions are so incorporated into your
> > worldview that you get all verklempt when someone questions them,
>
> You are addressing a figment of your imagination, with a self-serving
> and highly stereotyped comment to boot. You obviously have no clue as
> to where I am coming from.
>
> A little hint: the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that
> alt.agnosticism is MY "natural [Usenet] habitat."
agnostic, now would be a good time to stop employing gap arguments.
RLC
pnyikos
> On Oct 17, 7:28 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Until you demonstrate that there is some reason your (or
> > > anyone else's) personal mythology should qualify as a basis for
> > > inferring a causal linkage between natural phenomena and putative
> > > supernatural agency, there is no rational attitude but to conclude "We
> > > don't know enough."
>
> > "personal mythology" is a loaded expression.
>
> It is not meant to be. Substitute ideology or philosophy or theology
> for mythology if you like.
established tracks, laid down by the likes of non-theists William
James and Hans Jonas, as well as certain strains of "unofficial"
Christian philosophy, especially by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.
There's lots to of meaty reasoning to ponder there already.
> Following that, try to respond to the substance of the paragraph,
> rather than taking issue with a word you dislike and ignoring
> everything else.
> > > It is, of course, your prerogative to call this approach "atheism of
> > > the gaps." As I said at the start, I was just trying to see if you
> > > could invest it with some actual meaning beyond a schoolyard retort.
> > > So far as I can tell, you cannot.
>
> > That is because of your ultra-Humean slant on things. See my previous
> > reply to this same post of yours for hints as to what "ultra-Humean"
> > means.
> > > > > All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> > > > > fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> > > > > barely informed speculation and anxiety.
never seen them produce credible evidence for it. Can you provide
some?
The mythology of modern so-called "primitives" is basically irrelevant
for two reasons: one, their mythology is often very separate from
their theology [G. K. Chesterton writes about that in _The Everlasting
Man_] and two, there is no good reason to think that modern-day
primitives are anything like people lost in prehistory. [ditto, on
GKC and _TEM_]
> <snip more irrelevance>
...along with an expression, "dead giveaway" that is used later on to
refer back to the just-so story of yours above.
[...]
> > > > > what such a phenomenon (the supernatural) truly means - other than
> > > > > natural, not of this natural reality.
>
> > > > What's so bad about that? The supernatural has its own very "natural"
> > > > rules according to various well-thought-out forms of Christian
> > > > theology.
>
> > > What rationale is there that should give us even a moment's
> > > contemplation that any theology, well-thought out or not, Christian or
> > > not, is in any way connected to a reality other than the one we
> > > inhabit?
>
> > C.S. Lewis wrote a whole book about the rationale, _Miracles_. And
> > don't let the title fool you--the book ranges over broad vistas of
> > philosophy and psychology in addition to theology. C.S. Lewis had
> > plenty to say about comments like your "dead giveaway" up there, for
> > instance.
>
> I can't help but notice the complete lack of anything paraphrasing
> what he had to say here.
that have to be read in toto to get the full meaning of what he wrote,
and I haven't the time to copy them out. The book is available on the
web but so far the places I've looked make you jump through hoops to
get the download.
He would usually paraphrase comments like your "dead giveaway" comment
and then spent a long time showing how gratuitous and unwarranted the
assumptions in it were. He did have a few pithy comments, including a
neat one he took from another author:
"We can call the attempt to refute theism by displaying the continuity
of the belief in God with primitive delusion the method of
Anthropological Intimidation." -- Edwyn Bevan, _Symbolism and Belief_,
Chapter II
> > And Lewis went through an atheistic period for a good part of his
> > adolescence and a bit of adulthood, so he had first-hand knowledge of
> > that particular mindset.
>
> Hooray. Of course there's no zealot like a convert.
have only a superficial idea of what it is they converted from, and
are zealots because what they converted to seems so much richer and
(2) converts who have a very good idea of what they converted from and
are zealots because they know both the strengths and (especially)
weaknesses of what they converted from. C. S. Lewis was very much in
the latter category.
> If you think Lewis had something of value that pertains directly to my
> comments go ahead and serve it up. I've read plenty of Lewis and,
> despite having enjoyed the Perelandra trilogy, consider his arguments
> rather naive.
books that I have read. It's right up there with the best of James,
Jonas, and Chesterton.
> > >What could possibly influence your reasoning apparatus to
> > > believe that ancient products of an imaginative and frightened
> > > intellect could reliably inform you about "rules" regarding the
> > > supernatural?
>
> > This question is so loaded with pejoratives and question-begging that
> > a direct answer is impossible, and I'm not going to take the trouble
> > to give an indirect one.
>
> Run away if you must, but at least have the integrity not to try and
> cover it up with such sophomoric evasion.
arguments and counter-arguments and even counter-counter arguments
don't usually settle anything. It is the counter-counter-counter
arguments and later iterations where the truth about things really
begins to emerge.
A good example was in connection with your sentence fragment that
conveyed very, very accurately (though in a somewhat understated
fashion) your core philosophy about evidence and the supernatural, but
it took about four pieces of back-and-forth, including some red
herrings that you dragged across the path, before it became clear that
I had divined the ideas behind it very well indeed.
Anyway, my point is that you have plenty of opportunity to rephrase
your question in a mature, adult way. I'm not going away.
> Maybe you think my assumption that you have a reasoning apparatus is
> loaded or pejorative, I don't know. It seems hard to imagine that
> anyone would quibble with a description of early (or even
> contemporary) humans as "imaginative and frightened," but perhaps that
> was your complaint. In any case I fail to see where there is anything
> loaded or pejorative in my comments. Absent your explanation, I have
> to conclude your answer is a full retreat.
self-whitewash ignores the fact that you explicitly alleged that (all)
current beliefs in the supernatural are "ancient products of"
allegedly imaginative and frightened INTELLECTS. Not even emotions,
for goodness sake--you accuse the intellects themselves of being
clouded by fear.
> > > The assumptions inherent in such argumentation are multiple and
> > > staggering.
>
> > "garbage in, garbage out"
> > > > >Then tell me how anyone could
> > > > > rationally prefer mythology, no matter how pervasive, over even the
> > > > > most far-fetched of natural explanations (e.g., sufficiently advanced
> > > > > technology appearing to our eyes as magic). The inference is, and
> > > > > always has been, an illogical leap.
pnyikos
> On Oct 17, 7:28 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
> > > you take for granted.
>
> > If you identified those alleged premises, maybe we could get
> > somewhere.
>
> Well, it's about time...
>
> Okay, let's just start with a few of those subsumed in your suggestion
> that witnessing a Resurrection-like event is evidence for the
> supernatural.
>
> - You assume that it is a coherent position to connect natural
> phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
violate all known biological and/or physical laws. Not just those
known to the "primitives" but to ourselves. And please keep in mind
that by "evidence" I don't mean "compelling evidence," I mean to
include also "very weak, tentative evidence." As they say in the
Army, "We go with what we've got."
Also, since you seem to have a great repugnance for the concept, I'd
better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
finite in extent." The supernatural could well have its natural home
in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
[...]
> - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
> phenomena can interact with our reality,
defined above.
> That unexplained phenomena
> (miracles) are support for anything beyond lack of knowledge, Thatmiraclesare support for one particular
canonizations, etc. is incidental to the documentation that
accompanies these things, and that documentation is all I care about
here.
<snip digression>
> > >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
>
> > > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > of reason?""
>
> > > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
>
> > No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> > "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> > prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> > the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> > but I have no idea what they are.
>
> Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> "poof...it just appears (or disappears)." It doesn't mean anything to
> you,
of the word. And there's not much "poof" about Jesus walking around,
conversing with people, eating their food, etc. after his death, such
as is claimed in the Gospels. Yes, they also claim a few sudden
appearances and disappearances, but those aren't my main concern--they
are incidental to the large claim of someone dead having apparently
come back to life.
[...]
> > >The reason is it *is* silly. Despite the
> > > fact that supernatural assumptions are so incorporated into your
> > > worldview that you get all verklempt when someone questions them,
>
> > You are addressing a figment of your imagination, with a self-serving
> > and highly stereotyped comment to boot. You obviously have no clue as
> > to where I am coming from.
>
> > A little hint: the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that
> > alt.agnosticism is MY "natural [Usenet] habitat."
>
> Wonderful. Now here's hint for you: if you think you might be an
> agnostic, now would be a good time to stop employing gap arguments.
how far you will go and still claim that something is NO EVIDENCE
WHATSOEVER for the supernatural. And I am far from finished with that
line of sussing; for one thing, I don't think the word "evidence" has
exactly the same meaning for you as it does for me.
My next post will take that line a bit further.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
This is my third and final reply to this post.
> The point is that it doesn't matter if a huge booming figure of
> whatever everyone thinks of as their god appears simultaneously in the
> skies above every outpost of humanity across this planet, there is
> still no logical warrant for connecting such an effect with non-
> natural cause.
me of something in _Miracles_, by C.S. Lewis:
"One of the things that held me back from Supernaturalism was a deep
repugnance to the view of Nature which, as I thought, Supernaturalism
entailed. I passionately desired that Nature exist `on her own.' The
idea that she had been made, and could be altered, by God, seemed to
take from her all that sponaneity which I found so
refreshing. ..." [first page of Chapter 9, "A Chapter Not Strictly
Necessary]
Almost a full page later he starts to get to the point:
"At every stage in the writing of this book I have found my idea of
Nature becoming more vivid and more concrete. I set out on a work
which seemed to involve reducing her status and undermining her walls
at every turn: the paradoxical result is a growing sensation that if I
am not very careful she will become the heroine of my book. She has
never seemed to me more great and more real than at this moment. ...
And then halfway down the next page:
"To say that God created her is not to say that she is unreal, but
precisely that she is real. Would you make God less creative than
Shakespeare or Dickens? What He creates is created in the round: it
is far more real than Falstaff or Sam Weller. The theologians
certainly tell us that He created Nature freely. They mean that He
was not forced to do so by external necessity."
> No matter how far-fetched a natural explanation is
> proposed it will always be preferable, to an atheist or anyone
> thinking rationally, to a supernatural explanation.
God that created the universe also takes an interest in it, enough of
an interest to make His presence known from time to time, yet not so
much of an interest as to ruin our feel for the spontaneity that C.S.
Lewis found so refreshing in his earlier years. [See above.]
> > > Belief in non-natural phenomena requires far
> > > more evidence than mere incomprehensible, seemingly insoluble events.
> > > We have plenty of evidence that such things have happened in the past
> > > only to be explained later on.
>
> > I suggest your understanding of science is very sketchy, if you lump
> > the last example I gave in with these things that you speak of in such
> > vague generality. Name some of them, and the difference will be
> > readily apparent.
> The example you gave will serve nicely to make the point. Let's look
> at it again,
>
> "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> evidence for the supernatural, since to claim that it was evidence is
> "an error of reason?""
>
> I realize that it feels to you as if this scenario is so extreme in
> probability, and at the same time so poignantly expressive of a
> passionately held parable, that should such a thing be witnessed it
> absolutely *must* be taken as evidence for the verity of the Christian
> faith in a supernatural reality.
[...]
> But there are, must be, and always will
> be in a law-like universe, natural explanations of natural phenomena,
this particular 19th Century belief in natural laws, but I'll just
remind you that the paradigms of modern day science have to do with
description, not some metaphysical idea of "laws" that prescribe
phenomena.
> regardless of how improbable (yes, this is one of the few, perhaps
> only, things I take on faith...it's, y'know, science).
>
> Consider Burkhard's quip about twin brothers. Besides being clever,
> it's also a perfectly reasonable, even mundane, possible explanation
> for something seemingly remarkable.
fingerprints, irises, and teeth. I'm postulating a case of someone
passing all such tests for being the same identical person that was
witnessed to die, and to be cremated, and his ashes to be scattered.
You see, you have said that you could not conceive of ANYTHING being
evidence for the supernatural, and so I am quite free to bring up such
hypothetical scenarios.
> As for your scenario above, how
> about large scale sleight-of-hand a la David Copperfield?
at least forty days from all angles, in all kinds of lighting, by
numerous people not all under such influences as you describe next.
> How about
> some tasteless, odorless hallucinogenic compound in the air that
> stimulates neurotransmitters and causes a dream state? Hell, how about
> some alien civilization that understands our iconography
of people? cloning is hardly a promising avenue to fool those ways:
> cloning a
> duplicate and simulating a resurrection (for whatever reason)?
order indeed.
> It doesn't matter how looney these explanations sound to you. What
> matters is that we're talking about natural explanations for natural
> phenomena, rather than the casuistic category error of inferring
> supernatural cause.
paragraph of yours below is a rational justification for that claim?
> > > I have sympathy for the sentiment that there can never be evidence for
> > > or against the supernatural, but my own position is that the
> > > incommensurability of natural and supernatural as concepts means we
> > > cannot even conceive of what could be evidence for or against such a
> > > thing. Any phenomenon we observe must, by definition, be natural. This
> > > means we look for a natural explanation. To do otherwise would be
> > > irrational.
> > A perfect "atheism of the gaps" response.
> A predictable, and somewhat embarrassing, evasion.
lines: "Your last three sentences constitute what seems to me a
sophist's play on the word `natural', disguised as logic."
Predictable, because entirely appropriate.
And calling what I wrote an "embarrassing evasion" shows how highly
you think about that apparent play on words.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 17, 7:28 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Until you demonstrate that there is some reason your (or
> > > > anyone else's) personal mythology should qualify as a basis for
> > > > inferring a causal linkage between natural phenomena and putative
> > > > supernatural agency, there is no rational attitude but to conclude "We
> > > > don't know enough."
>
> > > "personal mythology" is a loaded expression.
>
> > It is not meant to be. Substitute ideology or philosophy or theology
> > for mythology if you like.
>
> "personal" is still misleading. Most of my philosophy follows well-
> established tracks, laid down by the likes of non-theists William
> James and Hans Jonas, as well as certain strains of "unofficial"
> Christian philosophy, especially by C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.
> There's lots to of meaty reasoning to ponder there already.
comments. A point which continues to be ignored.
> > Following that, try to respond to the substance of the paragraph,
> > rather than taking issue with a word you dislike and ignoring
> > everything else.
>
> <snip snide remark by Camp>
I would have made to someone who does that kind of thing infrequently.
<snip>
> > > > > > All we "know" of "the supernatural" is what short-lived, fearful,
> > > > > > fallible humans have come up with over several thousand years of
> > > > > > barely informed speculation and anxiety.
>
> The above is a just-so story that is a favorite of atheists, but I've
> never seen them produce credible evidence for it. Can you provide
> some?
to provide, evidence that we have several varieties of theologies that
purport to document supernatural events? It's hard for me to imagine
how that might be in dispute. If, on the other hand, you're worried
about "barely informed speculation and anxiety" then just ignore that
part. It's not important to the point.
The point is that we have nothing but what others of our kind (flawed
as we all are) have related to us to call "knowledge" of the
supernatural. I'll emphasize once again that I do not mean to diminish
the importance or value of anyone's Faith. My argument is about
legitimate scientific inference. As far as I can tell, there is
nothing essential to the Abrahamic religious stories or other
established theological doctrines that distinguishes these accounts as
deserving of more empirical consideration than the less accepted
creation stories that we readily dismiss. Would you credit a
stranger's account of having seen three brothers walking along a shore
create a man and a woman from two trees with having witnessed evidence
for the reality of Norse mythology?
> The mythology of modern so-called "primitives" is basically irrelevant
> for two reasons: one, their mythology is often very separate from
> their theology [G. K. Chesterton writes about that in _The Everlasting
> Man_] and two, there is no good reason to think that modern-day
> primitives are anything like people lost in prehistory. [ditto, on
> GKC and _TEM_]
humans are a lot like earlier versions, but that's an irrelevant
digression. All you need to agree with is that humans are now, and
have always been fallible, to understand the larger argument, which is
that it is illogical to presume that religious stories about what they
considered to be supernatural events bear any realistic connection to
some putative non-natural reality. There are simply many, many more
parsimonious explanations available to those employing critical
thinking.
For those, on the other hand, who are looking for something other than
natural evidential confirmation of such things, there is Faith, and
that has a value all its own.
<snip>
mistaking glib for pith (i.e., pith doesn't dismiss legitimate
questions, it addresses them).
<snip a lot>
I've snipped a huge amount, the rest of the post in fact. I consider
it unfortunate because I thought there was plenty there worth
discussing. In my view, you spend an inordinate amount of time
derailing the discussion with links and self-reference and complaining
and discussion of trivial side issues.
I'll go ahead and assume you don't share this view.
From here on, any comments of mine that you address substantially I'll
respond to in kind. But I have no wish to continue up any more blind
alleys.
RLC
Robert Camp
> On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 17, 7:28 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
> > > > you take for granted.
>
> > > If you identified those alleged premises, maybe we could get
> > > somewhere.
>
> > Well, it's about time...
>
> > Okay, let's just start with a few of those subsumed in your suggestion
> > that witnessing a Resurrection-like event is evidence for the
> > supernatural.
>
> > - You assume that it is a coherent position to connect natural
> > phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
>
> No. Only those phenomena [why call them "natural"?] that seem to
> violate all known biological and/or physical laws. Not just those
> known to the "primitives" but to ourselves. And please keep in mind
> that by "evidence" I don't mean "compelling evidence," I mean to
> include also "very weak, tentative evidence." As they say in the
> Army, "We go with what we've got."
issue.
The obvious question is, do you dispute that there have been plenty of
historical examples of phenomena "that seem to violate all known
biological and/or physical laws" which were subsequently explained?
Yes, this one (the Resurrection example) seem of a different class to
you and a lot of other people, but that presumes there's some
threshold of probability past which it becomes okay to say, "Well,
that's just way too coincidental."
There is no such threshold. We're not talking about comparative
likelihood, we're talking about incommensurable epistemological
categories. And gap argument remains a gap argument regardless of the
perceived probabilities involved. Your gap arguments here, along with
the implication that they can be construed as evidence for
unobservable, untestable (supernatural) agency remain an
unsubstantiated assumption.
> Also, since you seem to have a great repugnance for the concept,
anxieties onto others thing. Someone said elsewhere that you're not
very good at interpreting motives. I have to agree.
> I'd
> better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
> the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
> apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
> finite in extent." The supernatural could well have its natural home
> in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
> perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
which closely resemble religious doctrine. It is with that that I have
been taking issue.
> > - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
> > phenomena can interact with our reality,
>
> Our reality just might include realities outside our universe, as
> defined above.
> > That unexplained phenomena
> > (miracles) are support for anything beyond lack of knowledge, Thatmiraclesare support for one particular
> > dogma as opposed to others
>
> I've kept our discussion free of that kind of talk; what I said about
> canonizations, etc. is incidental to the documentation that
> accompanies these things, and that documentation is all I care about
> here.
The basal scripture, or the part about witnessing of miracles?
> > > >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > > > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > > > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
>
> > > > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > > > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > > > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > of reason?""
>
> > > > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
>
> > > No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> > > "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> > > prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> > > the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> > > but I have no idea what they are.
>
> > Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> > "poof...it just appears (or disappears)." It doesn't mean anything to
> > you,
>
> Wrong. It is YOUR meaning that is important here, not my own meaning
> of the word.
you thought you heard. In this case the part above was just the
preamble to my point which followed (and which you snipped), repasted
below,
"Now, guess what? Since I don't share your appreciation for Christian
doctrine my position is pretty similar. It doesn't have the same
meaning for me (it is an artifact of human imagination, not a conduit
to the supernatural), thus I don't assume that unexplained events
could stand as evidence in favor of its verity, thus the inference
("evidence for the supernatural") is disjoint."
quibbles you imagine to be important?
<snip irrelevancies>
> > > >The reason is it *is* silly. Despite the
> > > > fact that supernatural assumptions are so incorporated into your
> > > > worldview that you get all verklempt when someone questions them,
>
> > > You are addressing a figment of your imagination, with a self-serving
> > > and highly stereotyped comment to boot. You obviously have no clue as
> > > to where I am coming from.
>
> > > A little hint: the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that
> > > alt.agnosticism is MY "natural [Usenet] habitat."
>
> > Wonderful. Now here's hint for you: if you think you might be an
> > agnostic, now would be a good time to stop employing gap arguments.
>
> What you seem to think of as my employing them was me just sussing out
> how far you will go and still claim that something is NO EVIDENCE
> WHATSOEVER for the supernatural.
you feel you've discovered a critical inconsistency.
Now what you need to understand is that I am offering an argument. I
said as much in several of my comments. It's true that I don't see how
there can be any kind of evidence for the supernatural. I cannot
imagine a datum or observation that we are equipped to understand and
interpret as being supportive of that concept. I believe it is an
illogical category conflation that results in an incoherent argument.
My position on this is distinctly agnostic in that it is provisional
(like my position on virtually everything). I go only as far as the
evidence takes me (and it doesn't take me to supernatural phenomena).
If you can show me an error in my reasoning I will be happy to
reconsider my position.
> And I am far from finished with that
> line of sussing; for one thing, I don't think the word "evidence" has
> exactly the same meaning for you as it does for me.
RLC
pnyikos
century, this is a pointless exercise, because we have gotten
incredibly far with understanding our universe since medieval times.
It's like saying, "Do you dispute that there have been lots of
examples of chess openings of the 14th century that have since been
shown to lead to hopeless positions for one side or the other?"
> Yes, this one (the Resurrection example) seem of a different class to
> you and a lot of other people, but that presumes there's some
> threshold of probability past which it becomes okay to say, "Well,
> that's just way too coincidental."
>
> There is no such threshold. We're not talking about comparative
> likelihood, we're talking about incommensurable epistemological
> categories.
look at our universe as a whole. The following begins to clarify the
issue:
[snip side issue to be dealt with later if necessary]
> > I'd
> > better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
> > the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
> > apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
> > finite in extent." The supernatural could well have its natural home
> > in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
> > perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
what I mean by the supernatural and what I mean by the natural are
"incommensurable epistemological categories"? There is even
speculation about a "multiverse" from which new universes are born,
perhaps in the form of black holes in the multiverse. Why would you
disqualify ALL phenomena in advance as being evidence, say, for a
personal entity in the main part of the multiverse manipulating things
in our universe on certain occasions?
Why is speculation about space aliens being responsible for the
Resurrection, for instance, allowable while this other possible
explanatioin is not?
> Fair enough. You also appear to include in that definition phenomena
> which closely resemble religious doctrine. It is with that that I have
> been taking issue.
> > > - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
> > > phenomena can interact with our reality,
>
> > Our reality just might include realities outside our universe, as
> > defined above.
>
> True enough, but irrelevant to the point.
relevant--relevant enough, at least, to deserve a rebuttal.
> > > That unexplained phenomena
> > > (miracles) are support for anything beyond lack of knowledge, Thatmiraclesare support for one particular
> > > dogma as opposed to others
>
> > I've kept our discussion free of that kind of talk; what I said about
> > canonizations, etc. is incidental to the documentation that
> > accompanies these things, and that documentation is all I care about
> > here.
>
> I don't understand what it is to which "documentation" refers here.
> The basal scripture, or the part about witnessing of miracles?
miracles of which I wrote are all dated from less than half a century
ago, and are claimed to have been scrupulously documented. These
concern the canonizations of Edith Stein, Padre Pio, and Father Damien
of Molokai, and the beatification of John Paul II and Mother Teresa.
Have you ever read anything in e.g. _The Skeptical Inquirer_ alleging
the inadequacy of the documentation?
>
>
> > > > >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > > > > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > > > > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
>
> > > > > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > > > > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > > > > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > > of reason?""
>
> > > > > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
>
> > > > No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> > > > "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> > > > prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> > > > the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> > > > but I have no idea what they are.
>
> > > Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> > > "poof...it just appears (or disappears)."
"Magic?" If not, you haven't addressed the issue of why you said,
> > > you,
>
> > Wrong. It is YOUR meaning that is important here, not my own meaning
> > of the word.
>
> You need to stop chopping up my comments so you can respond to what
> you thought you heard.
"that's just the point, isnt' it?" which I cannot even fathom until
you explain what you mean by "Magic" with a capital M.
In this case the part above was just the
> preamble to my point which followed (and which you snipped), repasted
> below,
>
> "Now, guess what? Since I don't share your appreciation for Christian
> doctrine my position is pretty similar. It doesn't have the same
> meaning for me (it is an artifact of human imagination, not a conduit
> to the supernatural), thus I don't assume that unexplained events
> could stand as evidence in favor of its verity, thus the inference
> ("evidence for the supernatural") is disjoint."
is something silly about claiming that something is evidence of
"Magic."
Anyway, if you claim to be an agnostic, you need to keep an open mind
about whether the universe was created by a purposive agent, or is
being manipulated by one. Claiming that such an idea is just an
"artifact of human imagination" hardly sounds like keeping an open
mind to me.
So far, in fact, you've been coming across to me as an atheist who is
impervious to any kind of reasoning about whether there is a God or
not.
> Can you please try to address the substance of what I say, not the
> quibbles you imagine to be important?
remarks is. But as you can see, I'm trying to make a dent in the
subsequent point you made.
Remainder deleted, to be replied to if it seems appropriate.
Peter Nyikos
Mark Isaak
[I hope you don't mind my interrupting here.]
> On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp<robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 17, 7:28 am, pnyikos<nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp<robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> You don't even realize the huge and completely unwarranted premises
>>>> you take for granted.
>>
>>> If you identified those alleged premises, maybe we could get
>>> somewhere.
>>
>> Well, it's about time...
>>
>> Okay, let's just start with a few of those subsumed in your suggestion
>> that witnessing a Resurrection-like event is evidence for the
>> supernatural.
>>
>> - You assume that it is a coherent position to connect natural
>> phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
>
> No. Only those phenomena [why call them "natural"?] that seem to
> violate all known biological and/or physical laws. Not just those
> known to the "primitives" but to ourselves. And please keep in mind
> that by "evidence" I don't mean "compelling evidence," I mean to
> include also "very weak, tentative evidence." As they say in the
> Army, "We go with what we've got."
>
> Also, since you seem to have a great repugnance for the concept, I'd
> better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
> the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
> apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
> finite in extent."
first paragraph, you defined it in terms of known laws. In the second,
you defined it in terms of all universal laws. The two sets of laws are
as different as night and day. (That cliched simile is deliberate; if
all laws are analogous to what we could see in full light, known laws
are analogous to what we can see in the dark with a few candles.)
> The supernatural could well have its natural home
> in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
> perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
>
> [...]
>
>> - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
>> phenomena can interact with our reality,
>
> Our reality just might include realities outside our universe, as
> defined above.
part of our reality. If it is part of our reality, that *makes* it part
of our universe.
>> [sizable snip]
>> "poof...it just appears (or disappears)." It doesn't mean anything to
>> you,
>
> Wrong. It is YOUR meaning that is important here, not my own meaning
> of the word. And there's not much "poof" about Jesus walking around,
> conversing with people, eating their food, etc. after his death, such
> as is claimed in the Gospels. Yes, they also claim a few sudden
> appearances and disappearances, but those aren't my main concern--they
> are incidental to the large claim of someone dead having apparently
> come back to life.
life do not violate any laws of nature, known or not. True, a human
corpse returning to life after three days at room temperature would
violate known laws, but that is not what we have. We have only stories,
and the stories are purely natural. I have tens of thousands of other
stories of impossible things on my bookshelves.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
pnyikos
wrote:
>
> [I hope you don't mind my interrupting here.]
the same person.
> >> phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
>
> > No. Only those phenomena [why call them "natural"?] that seem to
> > violate all known biological and/or physical laws. Not just those
> > known to the "primitives" but to ourselves. And please keep in mind
> > that by "evidence" I don't mean "compelling evidence," I mean to
> > include also "very weak, tentative evidence." As they say in the
> > Army, "We go with what we've got."
>
> > Also, since you seem to have a great repugnance for the concept, I'd
> > better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
> > the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
> > apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
> > finite in extent."
>
> You just defined "supernatural" in two very different ways.
the background.
> In the
> first paragraph, you defined it in terms of known laws.
count as *evidence* for the supernatural in our eyes.
> In the second,
> you defined it in terms of all universal laws.
our universe so that no one could confuse it with "all universes".
And by "all universal laws" you mean laws for all universes, don't
you?
> > The supernatural could well have its natural home
> > in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
> > perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
perhaps very diffferent from those that our universe is following.
> > [...]
>
> >> - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
> >> phenomena can interact with our reality,
>
> > Our reality just might include realities outside our universe, as
> > defined above.
>
> If something is outside our universe, then, by definition, it cannot be
> part of our reality.
beyond our present means of detecting them, is our reality.
> If it is part of our reality, that *makes* it part
> of our universe.
begging the question--unless you acknowledge that a God outside our
universe (who may even have made our universe) could make things
happen that seem to violate basic physical laws--but that these
miracles become part of our universe by definition of terms.
> >> [sizable snip]
> >> Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> >> "poof...it just appears (or disappears)." It doesn't mean anything to
> >> you,
>
> > Wrong. It is YOUR meaning that is important here, not my own meaning
> > of the word. And there's not much "poof" about Jesus walking around,
> > conversing with people, eating their food, etc. after his death, such
> > as is claimed in the Gospels. Yes, they also claim a few sudden
> > appearances and disappearances, but those aren't my main concern--they
> > are incidental to the large claim of someone dead having apparently
> > come back to life.
>
> One point you are neglecting is that the stories of Jesus coming back to
> life do not violate any laws of nature, known or not. True, a human
> corpse returning to life after three days at room temperature would
> violate known laws, but that is not what we have. We have only stories,
> and the stories are purely natural.
By the way, Mr. Camp is under the impression that I once asked for
your credentials. But the way I've always interpreted the concept, it
involves X making some statements for which he is not providing
independent evidence, but only his/her own authority, and Y asking
what background he has that would lend any credence to X's claims.
That is not the case with you. My inquiry as to your line of work was
born of an impression that you are a humanities person at heart -- a
deconstructionist one at that. Your treatment even of scientific
issues seems to have a decided deconstructionist bent, as though you
enjoy playing around with scientific or quasi-scientific concepts
(like "universe" and "reality", and "the stories are purely natural"
above), but your treatment seems remote from the sort of attitude a
researcher in science would manifest.
And so, though science may be your source of livelihood, it does not
seem like a naturalist's attitude towards the world around us has much
traction in the depths of your heart.
> I have tens of thousands of other
> stories of impossible things on my bookshelves.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Oct 18, 5:00 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > For this second half, I have added alt.religion.christian.roman-
> > catholic because of the mention of miracles in connection with three
> > recently canonized saints of the Roman Catholic Church and two recent
> > beatifications, one of John Paul II and one of Mother Teresa.
And so we are up to 5 newsgroups; the most complete thread is in
talk.origins.
> > On Oct 18, 1:25 am, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 17, 8:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > That unexplained phenomena
> > > > > (miracles) are support for anything beyond lack of knowledge, That
> > > > canonizations, etc. is incidental to the documentation that
> > > > accompanies these things, and that documentation is all I care about
> > > > here.
> > > I don't understand what it is to which "documentation" refers here.
> > > The basal scripture, or the part about witnessing of miracles?
>
> > ago, and are claimed to have been scrupulously documented. These
> > concern the canonizations of Edith Stein, Padre Pio, and Father Damien
> > of Molokai, and the beatification of John Paul II and Mother Teresa.
>
> > Have you ever read anything in e.g. _The Skeptical Inquirer_ alleging
> > the inadequacy of the documentation?
>
> but you didn't mention that),
Belief in the alleged Medjugore apparitions has been strongly
discouraged by the bishop in whose diocese Medjugore falls. So the
Roman Catholic Church and The Skeptical Inquirer are more or less on
the same page on this one.
> but surely you aren't willing to claim
> that the above examples constitute anything other than possible
> accounts of unexplained phenomena?
If the accounts are accurate, I most certainly DO maintain that they
constitute (rather weak, I admit) evidence for the intervention of
supernatural entities in our universe.
Before we go any further, I think it best to explain where I stand on
these matters, and why.
The three main alternatives that anyone who cares about ultimate
questions are, as I see it:
which of the following three alternatives
mentioned is the most likely.
1. Our young [1] tiny [2] universe [3] is all there is or can be.
2. A super-powerful being created this universe.
3. There is a mind-boggling, perhaps infinite number of universes.
Notes:
[1] less than 15 billion --milliard to Europeans-- years old
[2] had only that much time to expand from something that, at the time
of the Big Bang, was smaller than a galaxy
[3] also known as "our space-time continuum".
The fine-tuning of various constants such as those mentioned by
Professor Rees in [4] below makes Alternative 1 less likely than
Alternative 2 IMHO, even without bringing miracles into the picture,
although the smart money is on Alternative 3.
Minor variations on Alternative 1, such as the existence of a mere
10^500 universes, don't appreciably alter this assessment.
[4] http://www.ichthus.info/BigBang/Docs/Just6num.pdf
I myself think the odds on Alternative 3 beat the odds of Alternative
2 more than 100 to 1, and that takes into account all claims of
miracles. But since I do not rule out Alternative 2, I do count
claims of miracles as (very weak, since I myself have not witnessed
any of them) evidence for the existence of the supernatural.
> In any case, this takes us far afield from the issue, which is the
> appropriate agnostic position on the possible explanation of
> "miracles" (unexplained phenomena) by way of inference to the
> supernatural.
You are watering down the term "miracles" to where it is useless for
our discussion. Please stick to my definition--phenomena that violate
all the known laws of nature. And keep in mind that physicists have a
remarkably good idea of what the fundamental physical laws are.
Hell, UFO's by very definition are "unexplained phenomena" but to call
the ones of which I have seen accounts "miracles" would be ridiculous.
> [repeated from above] by way of inference to the
> supernatural.
According to you, the appropriate agnostic position is to utterly
refuse to count them as any kind of evidence, no matter how very
weak. You reaffirmed that in your post at the end of yesterday.
There, you tried to explain why it is admissible to regard miracles
(in my sense of the word) as evidence of otherwise undetected space
aliens but inadmissible to regard them as evidence of supernatural
beings, such as a creator of our universe.
pnyikos
> On Oct 18, 5:00 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Oct 18, 1:25 am, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 17, 8:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > > > > > > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > > > > > > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
> > > > > > > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > > > > > > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > > > > > > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > > > > of reason?""
> > > > > > > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
> > > > > > No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> > > > > > "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> > > > > > prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> > > > > > the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> > > > > > but I have no idea what they are.
> > > > > Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> > > > > "poof...it just appears (or disappears)."
>
> > "Magic?" If not, you haven't addressed the issue of why you said,
> > > In this case the part above was just the
> > > preamble to my point which followed (and which you snipped), repasted
> > > below,
> > > "Now, guess what? Since I don't share your appreciation for Christian
> > > doctrine my position is pretty similar. It doesn't have the same
> > > meaning for me (it is an artifact of human imagination, not a conduit
> > > to the supernatural), thus I don't assume that unexplained events
> > > could stand as evidence in favor of its verity, thus the inference
> > > ("evidence for the supernatural") is disjoint."
>
> > is something silly about claiming that something is evidence of
> > "Magic."
>
> "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats."
supposed to be silly. After all, in my last sentence I said "aren't",
nor "are".
> But what if I was? There is a lexicon of sorts of magical stories, and
> you've offered a taste of one possible "parable" just above. What if I
> said that your death/rebirth scenario so closely matched a well-known
> sorcerous account that I was forced to consider it evidence for magic?
That would depend on whether there is any kind of eyewitness evidence
for the putative event, and to what sort of agencies the sorcerer
attributed it. If he claimed to have divine or even demonic help, I
would class that as a miracle, despite the use of the word "sorcerer".
> Would you credit this rationale just as you appear willing to do for
> an inference to a Christian explanation?
Sure, as evidence of some sort, subject to the above qualifications.
> Try not to get hung up on the capital letters or the word "silly." The
> point was that an inference which to you seemed profound ("evidence
> for the supernatural") was to me empirically empty, just as to you
> "evidence for Magic" was similarly empty
"just as" presupposes that you didn't have the foggiest idea of what
*I* meant by the supernatural at the time you made the comment. Is
that actually the case?
> (it doesn't matter that I
> actually consider it empty as well). In being willing to accept
> natural events as evidence for non-natural agency you are, in my
> opinion (and as I've said before), committing a huge category error.
> It is a leap that is not reflective of an agnostic perspective.
I hope my post where I talk about David Hume in detail makes it to
talk.origins this time. I'll hold off commenting on this statement of
yours until you've had a chance to see it.
> Rather, it seems to me that you are disposed to view the Christian
> inference as legitimate because of your familiarity and comfort with
> the relevant canon.
legitimate to the degree appropriate to the evidence. I hope my first
reply to this post made that clear.
> > Anyway, if you claim to be an agnostic, you need to keep an open mind
> > about whether the universe was created by a purposive agent, or is
> > being manipulated by one. Claiming that such an idea is just an
> > "artifact of human imagination" hardly sounds like keeping an open
> > mind to me.
>
> any more than I need to keep an open mind about the possibility of a
> universe created by Winnie the Pooh or from the foam in my kid's
> bubble bath.
I don't see how you can make obviously silly comparisons like this,
and claim that all beliefs in the supernatural are "ancient products
of an imaginative and frightened intellect" on the one hand, and claim
to have "respect" for what you imagine to be my "Faith" on the other.
How do you reconcile these statements?
>(You may not see these as equivalent options, but I'd
> again suggest that is due to your inner preference for one particular
> narrative over another.)
The "particular narrative" I have in mind has a lot of documentation
attached to it, and I view it through agnostic eyes in this thread, as
my first reply to this post should make clear.. Since you seem to
think the documentation worthless as evidence of the supernatural, I
suppose the two narratives are equally credible to you.
But then we come to this:
> That kind of open-mindedness is really just
> credulousness and I think it's excessive and imprudent. What I need to
> do is remain receptive to evidence and logic
But you have discounted all evidence in the supernatural. Period. Do
you really think pure logic could possibly lead anyone living today
to believe in it? AFAIK the only candidate for a logical argument
that anyone deems even worth dealing with these days is the Anselmic,
a.k.a. Ontological Argument, and I don't know of any philosopher since
Descartes who took it seriously for more than a few minutes.
> and be willing to follow
> either without any prejudice other than the assumption that the
> universe doesn't lie to us.
>
> There are likely nearly as many versions of agnosticism as there are
> agnostics, but I think simply proportioning one's belief to the
> evidence, and going no further, is a reasonable basis for such a
> perspective.
> > So far, in fact, you've been coming across to me as an atheist who is
> > impervious to any kind of reasoning about whether there is a God or
> > not.
>
> spurious.
Both the Anselmic Argument and Descartes's own argument ("our concept
of infinite could only come from an infinite God") are spurious
IMNSHO. Got any other ideas as to what reasoning might work?
<snip retraction of accusation. Thanks.>
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
> On Oct 19, 12:59 am, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 18, 5:00 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On Oct 18, 1:25 am, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 17, 8:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > >Think of it this way: every time you're tempted
> > > > > > > > to think of something as possible evidence for religious supernatural
> > > > > > > > realms, substitute "Magic." Here's an example,
> > > > > > > > "What if the person were cremated, and his ashes scattered, and he
> > > > > > > > THEN walked among witnesses? Would you still say that this was NO
> > > > > > > > evidence for Magic, since to claim that it was evidence is "an error
> > > > > > > > of reason?""
> > > > > > > > Sounds silly, doesn't it?
> > > > > > > No, because I don't know what meaning you are attaching to the word
> > > > > > > "Magic" with capital letters. You obviously aren't referring to
> > > > > > > prestidigitators pulling rabbits out of hats. You've obvously loaded
> > > > > > > the word down in your mind with all kinds of pejorative connotations,
> > > > > > > but I have no idea what they are.
> > > > > > Well, that's just the point isn't it? I'm talking about magic, as in
> > > > > > "poof...it just appears (or disappears)."
>
> > > Was that supposed to be a complete explanation of what you mean by
> > > "Magic?" If not, you haven't addressed the issue of why you said,
> > > "Sounds silly, doesn't it?"
>
described it ("poof...") it appears to have no relationship to
anything we understand about the natural world. Yet you are willing to
accept putative evidence (something taken as support for the verity of
a thing) for magic before you can even determine if there is any
warrant for assuming a connection between it and the reality which the
"evidence" occupies?
> > Would you credit this rationale just as you appear willing to do for
> > an inference to a Christian explanation?
>
> Sure, as evidence of some sort, subject to the above qualifications.
> > Try not to get hung up on the capital letters or the word "silly." The
> > point was that an inference which to you seemed profound ("evidence
> > for the supernatural") was to me empirically empty, just as to you
> > "evidence for Magic" was similarly empty
>
> "just as" presupposes that you didn't have the foggiest idea of what
> *I* meant by the supernatural at the time you made the comment. Is
> that actually the case?
you suggest. "Just as" is meant to analogize the lack of empirical
content in the respective examples.
> > (it doesn't matter that I
> > actually consider it empty as well). In being willing to accept
> > natural events as evidence for non-natural agency you are, in my
> > opinion (and as I've said before), committing a huge category error.
> > It is a leap that is not reflective of an agnostic perspective.
>
> I hope my post where I talk about David Hume in detail makes it to
> talk.origins this time. I'll hold off commenting on this statement of
> yours until you've had a chance to see it.
> > Rather, it seems to me that you are disposed to view the Christian
> > inference as legitimate because of your familiarity and comfort with
> > the relevant canon.
>
> legitimate to the degree appropriate to the evidence. I hope my first
> reply to this post made that clear.
it.
> > > Anyway, if you claim to be an agnostic, you need to keep an open mind
> > > about whether the universe was created by a purposive agent, or is
> > > being manipulated by one. Claiming that such an idea is just an
> > > "artifact of human imagination" hardly sounds like keeping an open
> > > mind to me.
>
> > I don't think that I need to keep an open mind about that possibility,
> > any more than I need to keep an open mind about the possibility of a
> > universe created by Winnie the Pooh or from the foam in my kid's
> > bubble bath.
>
> I don't see how you can make obviously silly comparisons like this,
> and claim that all beliefs in the supernatural are "ancient products
> of an imaginative and frightened intellect" on the one hand, and claim
> to have "respect" for what you imagine to be my "Faith" on the other.
> How do you reconcile these statements?
respective religious narratives comparatively and in an environment
that privileges none. I don't think of any of them as holding any more
insight into some non-natural reality than does Winnie the Pooh.
Don't misinterpret the correlation here. I'm not suggesting that the
Winnie the Pooh stories offer a lexicon of moral instruction and
cosmological explanation in any way comparable to, say, Catholic
dogma. I'm merely suggesting a similarity in how I view the act of
remaining open to those possibilities.
I respect people's Faith. I don't agree with it, but as long as it
doesn't make the category mistake of seeking empirical verification I
think it's an honest endeavor.
> >(You may not see these as equivalent options, but I'd
> > again suggest that is due to your inner preference for one particular
> > narrative over another.)
>
> The "particular narrative" I have in mind has a lot of documentation
> attached to it,
> and I view it through agnostic eyes in this thread, as
> my first reply to this post should make clear.. Since you seem to
> think the documentation worthless as evidence of the supernatural, I
> suppose the two narratives are equally credible to you.
> But then we come to this:
>
> > That kind of open-mindedness is really just
> > credulousness and I think it's excessive and imprudent. What I need to
> > do is remain receptive to evidence and logic
>
> But you have discounted all evidence in the supernatural.
that such a thing can exist. Once someone explains to me how it's
possible for natural observations to evidence the supernatural, I'll
be ready to evaluate possible examples.
> Period. Do
> you really think pure logic could possibly lead anyone living today
> to believe in it? AFAIK the only candidate for a logical argument
> that anyone deems even worth dealing with these days is the Anselmic,
> a.k.a. Ontological Argument, and I don't know of any philosopher since
> Descartes who took it seriously for more than a few minutes.
>
> > and be willing to follow
> > either without any prejudice other than the assumption that the
> > universe doesn't lie to us.
>
> > There are likely nearly as many versions of agnosticism as there are
> > agnostics, but I think simply proportioning one's belief to the
> > evidence, and going no further, is a reasonable basis for such a
> > perspective.
>
> > > So far, in fact, you've been coming across to me as an atheist who is
> > > impervious to any kind of reasoning about whether there is a God or
> > > not.
>
> > You are wrong. I'm entirely open to any such reasoning that isn't
> > spurious.
>
> Both the Anselmic Argument and Descartes's own argument ("our concept
> of infinite could only come from an infinite God") are spurious
> IMNSHO. Got any other ideas as to what reasoning might work?
RLC
Mark Isaak
> On Oct 18, 6:36 pm, Mark Isaak<eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
> wrote:
>> On 10/17/11 8:19 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>>
>> [I hope you don't mind my interrupting here.]
>
> Not at all. It was getting a little tedious, always conversing with
> the same person.
>
>>> On Oct 17, 12:53 pm, Robert Camp<robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> - You assume that it is a coherent position to connect natural
>>>> phenomena, explained or otherwise (miracles), to supernatural cause.
>>
>>> No. Only those phenomena [why call them "natural"?] that seem to
>>> violate all known biological and/or physical laws. Not just those
>>> known to the "primitives" but to ourselves. And please keep in mind
>>> that by "evidence" I don't mean "compelling evidence," I mean to
>>> include also "very weak, tentative evidence." As they say in the
>>> Army, "We go with what we've got."
>>
>>> Also, since you seem to have a great repugnance for the concept, I'd
>>> better tell you that by "supernatural" I simply mean "not governed by
>>> the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
>>> apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
>>> finite in extent."
>>
>> first paragraph, you defined it ["supernatural"] in terms of known laws.
> That was the non-definition; it had to do with what might legitimately
> count as *evidence* for the supernatural in our eyes.
and like particles in others, it clearly violated all known laws. So
there you had unimpeachable evidence for existence of the supernatural.
But wait. Not long after that, the set of known laws changed to include
wave/particle duality. The evidence for the supernatural went poof --
not because the evidence changed or was called into question, but simply
because textbooks got rewritten.
I submit that *any* designation of supernatural will necessarily follow
a similar evaporation of meaning. It is only supernatural so long as it
is new, unexpected, and probably disputable. Once it has become proven
to a reasonable degree, once it has become familiar and established
fact, it becomes, ipso facto, natural. When we find an exception to the
law, we change the law. Even if the phenomenon is a single event, once
that event is accepted to have happened, the laws change to accommodate it.
The only exceptional cases where we do not revise the law are those
cases of questionable credibility. For example, we do reject the
impossibility of faster-than-light travel because someone from rural
Oklahoma reported being taken to the Pleiades and back in a UFO. Note
that the reason we do not revise the law is not because we think
something supernatural happened; it is because we think it quite likely
that the evidence is not reliable to begin with. Eventually, depending
on how the evidence stacks up, all of these cases will fall into the
case of "natural" (if the evidence is reliable) or "bogus" (if it
doesn't). The term "supernatural", at best, is a waiting area until the
evidence is evaluated.
>> In the second,
>> you defined it in terms of all universal laws.
>
> No, only the ones governing OUR universe. I even gave a definition of
> our universe so that no one could confuse it with "all universes".
> And by "all universal laws" you mean laws for all universes, don't
> you?
>
>>> The supernatural could well have its natural home
>>> in another universe, perhaps infinite in both extent and time, and
>>> perhaps even be responsible for having created this one.
>
> And that universe would presumably be following its own laws, laws
>>> [...]
>>
>>>> - The above assumption contains others: That non-reality/supernatural
>>>> phenomena can interact with our reality,
>>
>>> Our reality just might include realities outside our universe, as
>>> defined above.
>>
>> If something is outside our universe, then, by definition, it cannot be
>> part of our reality.
>
> Not the way I use it. The whole of reality, including universes
> beyond our present means of detecting them, is our reality.
>
>> If it is part of our reality, that *makes* it part
>> of our universe.
>
> If you adhere strictlly to our universe, then this becomes a case of
> begging the question--unless you acknowledge that a God outside our
> universe (who may even have made our universe) could make things
> happen that seem to violate basic physical laws--but that these
> miracles become part of our universe by definition of terms.
it means "everything". "All universes" means "this universe", and vice
versa. "Outside our universe" means there is exactly zero chance that
it could matter to us.
I missed your definition, but from context I gather that your universe
does not include currently unknown phenomena that might impinge on us
later. That's fine; I acknowledge that there are such unknowns. If
your definition is more nuanced than this (as I suspect is the case),
please clarify.
>>>> [sizable snip]
>> life do not violate any laws of nature, known or not. True, a human
>> corpse returning to life after three days at room temperature would
>> violate known laws, but that is not what we have. We have only stories,
>> and the stories are purely natural.
>
> This sounds like a claim that the stories are fiction.
fictional elements. Is this claim under dispute?
> [snip digression]
>> I have tens of thousands of other
>> stories of impossible things on my bookshelves.
>
> Almost all of them fiction, and never meant to be anything else, no?
different accounts of people returning to life, are or were sacred to
the people who told them.
pnyikos
family activities, so I might not get to post again until Monday.
I hate to go incommunicado just as this thread seems to have revived
as a matter of interest to more than two people, but I shall return.
On Oct 19, 3:41 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
case where we simply had theories as to the nature of light, and the
evidence fit neither of those theories, so it was necessary to treat
it as a wave under some circumstances, and as a stream of particles
under others, while admitting that we had no good concept as to what
light "really is like."
In a sense that is still the case today. The quantum theory allows us
to make predictions, but the ding-an-sich, to use Kant's term, is
something physicists have largely given up trying to conceptualize.
Ditto the structure of the atom.
Anyway, even before the quantum theory, physicists could predict that
light would behave in such and such a way under various circumstances
with which they were familiar.
> So
> there you had unimpeachable evidence for existence of the supernatural.
false dichotomy here.
[...]
universe this way, you force all but the most stubborn or unflappable
theists into making a statement that is emotionally repugnant to them:
"One part of the universe -- God -- created the rest of the known
universe."
But such formulations don't faze me. I am beyond even being fazed by
Hume's "shocker": the universe being spun from the belly of an
infinite spider."
>"All universes" means "this universe", and vice
> versa. "Outside our universe" means there is exactly zero chance that
> it could matter to us.
>
> I missed your definition,
happened when you re-entered this thread:
-----------------begin excerpt----------------
>I simply mean "not governed by
> the laws that govern OUR universe, the space-time continuum which
> apparently started a mere 13 or so billion years ago and is very much
> finite in extent."
> but from context I gather that your universe
> does not include currently unknown phenomena that might impinge on us
> later.
Our universe may include many phenomena as unexpected as quasars were
when they were first discovered. But it does not include any creator
of our universe, if there is such an entity.
By the way, I take this "Senior Moment" of yours as further evidence
that you are a humanities person at heart.
Peter Nyikos
Mark Isaak
> NOTE to readers: I am now on our Fall break, and that means lots of
> family activities, so I might not get to post again until Monday.
>
> I hate to go incommunicado just as this thread seems to have revived
> as a matter of interest to more than two people, but I shall return.
it, you chose to respond with insults to the less important parts of my
post. So, like I say, I'm done.
Mark Isaak
impossibility ...".
> that the reason we do not revise the law is not because we think
> something supernatural happened; it is because we think it quite likely
> that the evidence is not reliable to begin with. Eventually, depending
> on how the evidence stacks up, all of these cases will fall into the
> case of "natural" (if the evidence is reliable) or "bogus" (if it
> doesn't). The term "supernatural", at best, is a waiting area until the
> evidence is evaluated.
>
pnyikos
insults [see below]. Which is it?
> >> So
> >> there you had unimpeachable evidence for existence of the supernatural.
>
> > Very, very weak evidence at best.
clarified my definition of "miracles". See my reply to "deadrat" this
morning as to why
> > You seem to be laboring under a
> > false dichotomy here.
> > [...]
>
> What you snipped there was 99% of my thesis.
concrete item you put on the table. The rest was so general, and so
pedestrian, that there seemed no point in going into it. Without
concrete items to back it up, all it makes sense for me to say is "I
disagree that this is the way all things can be expected to go."
> Instead of responding to
> it, you chose to respond with insults to the less important parts of my
> post.
above.
By the way, I was also pressed for time; did you miss my announcement
at the top?
> So, like I say, I'm done.
Peter Nyikos
Steven L.
"Robert Camp" <rober...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9dc62658-3f80-4627...@k2g2000yqh.googlegroups.com:
You keep asserting (without providing any evidence) that religion is
just the product of frightened minds, a purely emotional response of
lower brain centers.
And your implication is that you, a creature of pure reason from the
planet Vulcan, are beyond all that and superior to all that. It's
condescending and it's insufferably arrogant.
And it's unncessary. You can be as critical of religion as you please,
without insisting that those people of faith are fearful and without
reason.
None of us have anything to prove to you.
-- Steven L.
Robert Camp
> "Robert Camp" <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9dc62658-3f80-4627...@k2g2000yqh.googlegroups.com:
>
> > On Oct 17, 7:28�am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On Oct 13, 10:50 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 13, 11:41 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 11, 4:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 11, 11:42 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > On Oct 7, 7:58 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > On Oct 7, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > >What could possibly influence your reasoning apparatus to
> > > > believe that ancient products of an imaginative and frightened
> > > > intellect could reliably inform you about "rules" regarding the
> > > > supernatural?
>
> > > This question is so loaded with pejoratives and question-begging that
> > > a direct answer is impossible, and I'm not going to take the trouble
> > > to give an indirect one.
>
> > Run away if you must, but at least have the integrity not to try and
> > cover it up with such sophomoric evasion.
>
> > Maybe you think my assumption that you have a reasoning apparatus is
> > loaded or pejorative, I don't know. It seems hard to imagine that
> > anyone would quibble with a description of early (or even
> > contemporary) humans as "imaginative and frightened," but perhaps that
> > was your complaint.
>
> The implicit put-down of other humans who have faith is my complaint.
>
> You keep asserting (without providing any evidence) that religion is
> just the product of frightened minds, a purely emotional response of
> lower brain centers.
thing, as if it were nothing but. I haven't implied that, nor do I
believe it.
My comments refer to the fallibility of human experience and
intuition, and how those limited capacities were responsible for all
sorts of credulous explanations of natural phenomena. This is not a
put-down of humans (I'm one of those, for god's sake), regardless of
what you mean by "other." It is an attempt at recognizing the place of
religion in human history.
> And your implication is that you, a creature of pure reason from the
> planet Vulcan, are beyond all that and superior to all that. �It's
> condescending and it's insufferably arrogant.
inference of such motives on my part. What you need to ask yourself is
why you can read an argument unconcerned with anything but reason and
logical evidential connections and come up with such an irrelevant,
and somewhat hysterical, conjecture.
> And it's unncessary. �You can be as critical of religion as you please,
> without insisting that those people of faith are fearful and without
> reason.
leaping to conclusions notwhithstanding.
> None of us have anything to prove to you.
otherwise.
Perhaps cites to my supposed transgressions might shed some light?
RLC