Same fallacy repeated. Just referring to it as ridiculous doesn't make it so. The premises are true, the logic sound,thus the proof stands.. Once you establish a valid atheistic epistemology, you may show my proof to be ridiculous rather than merely asserting it.

(05-08-2014 09:12 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  Same fallacy repeated. Just referring to it as ridiculous doesn't make it so. The premises are true, the logic sound,thus the proof stands.. Once you establish a valid atheistic epistemology, you may show my proof to be ridiculous rather than merely asserting it.

I apologize, I didn't realize I was being trolled. Well played sir.

(05-08-2014 05:26 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  This is especially true in regards to naturalistic atheism, which on one hand wants to assume that nothing exists outside of the material world, and then on the other hand wants to assign qualitative values to things like human reason, ethics, love, hate, beauty, free will, etc., as if these things were somehow exempt from the impersonal laws of nature.

You sound like you just got out of Seminary 101 and have set off to change the world with a copy of the Bible in one hand and a copy of Lewis' Mere Christianity in the other.......

I know plenty of people who don't believe in god who behave very nicely, and am aware of a bunch of people who at least claim to strongly believe in salvation who sure don't act like anyone is watching.

You know damn well that atheists can be moral (of which I am distilling your examples for ease of posting and typing, I could just of easily typed ethics etc etc...) and so it's demonstrably untrue that one needs belief in a deity to be moral. I believe Man invented God, and in doing so, gave Him all our attributes, including our sense of human morality. So in using your absolute logic, then God. Is. Dead.

Even as far back as The Republic, Plato suggests that we should be just not because a deity or scripture commands it but because unjust behavior causes internal disharmony. In practice, for most people the true answer to "where does your sense of right and wrong come from?" is "my parents and my peers" and other aspects of how I was raised. Hell, as our ancestors sense of morality was beneficial to survival, it can be seen as a product of scientific evolution. The rules are there because they work for large groups of near-strangers living together.

Now I'm not debating how atheists measure or come about to their morality as I think most atheists, given their moral similarity to theists, are shaped by fundamentally religious moral beliefs by a human society that puts great importance on religion.

But there is zero reason that morality cannot be based off of reason, human solidarity, the desire to limit suffering, the desire to conform with social norms, enjoying natural beauty, falling in love, sheer pragmatism or utilitarianism, a belief in the fundamental equality of all individuals, or avoiding negative consequences.

However I imagine that for people like you who have been raised with religion, it becomes very hard to separate one's own individual personal development and moral growth from all that powerful religious training. You simply can't imagine encountering and learning to practice those values outside a religious context or without religious training. As such, God. Is. Alive. So in imagining your life without the structure provided by religious tradition and authority, you'd clearly imagine a life without any moral guidance at all.

And, I am genuinely happy to say, you'd be wrong.

Personally, I find my lack of faith to be liberating. This is not meant to be a slight towards believers. I have no wondering why a god's plan is screwing me. There is no wondering what I did wrong, why I deserved it, why my prayers weren't answered, etc. Everything that happens in my life is the result of the actions I've taken prior to this moment, with a healthy amount of randomness thrown in.

Anywho............

(05-08-2014 04:53 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:50 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:48 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:46 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:41 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  I didn't choose my family. God did.

How did god choose your family?

He put me in it. (In fact, nothing happens without God's Providence, including my next breath. My family has nothing to do with that.)

How did he do that? Did he specify which sperm won the race?

He sure did. Like I said, " nothing happens without God's Providence". This can be proven my the absurdity of the opposite:

To explain further, Proving the existence of the Christian God is easy. It's child's play. The proof is easy to logically demonstrate because all unbelieving worldviews are based upon the unjustifiable assumption that the human mind is capable of meaningful activity outside of the creative attributes and providence of God. This is especially true in regards to naturalistic atheism, which on one hand wants to assume that nothing exists outside of the material world, and then on the other hand wants to assign qualitative values to things like human reason, ethics, love, hate, beauty, free will, etc., as if these things were somehow exempt from the impersonal laws of nature. Therefore, we may prove God's existence as follows:

P1: If the human mind can obtain meaningful knowledge, then God exists, since God is the precondition of human knowledge.

P2: The human mind can obtain knowledge.

Conclusion: God exists.

If your argument rests on a false premise, your conclusion is wrong. You've created a syllogism that's internally consistent, but your first premise is based on an assumption:

Quote:all unbelieving worldviews are based upon the unjustifiable assumption that the human mind is capable of meaningful activity outside of the creative attributes and providence of God.

How can you justify this statement? You certainly didn't do so in the following sentences.

I often find myself strolling through campus on a beautiful day (every day is beautiful here, regardless of weather..if you catch my drift) or at some sporting event where we pull off a miracle win. I thank God all the time that I'm one of the blessed who gets to live life as a Pirate .

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  You sound like you just got out of Seminary 101 and have set off to change the world with a copy of the Bible in one hand and a copy of Lewis' Mere Christianity in the other.......

Never been to seminary. In any case, I'll treat this as a a backhanded compliment as opposed to what likely is, an ad hominem.

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I know plenty of people who don't believe in god who behave very nicely, and am aware of a bunch of people who at least claim to strongly believe in salvation who sure don't act like anyone is watching.

You know damn well that atheists can be moral (of which I am distilling your examples for ease of posting and typing, I could just of easily typed ethics etc etc...) and so it's demonstrably untrue that one needs belief in a deity to be moral.

You need to read a little closer. No one suggested otherwise. My argument is that atheists do act moral inspite of their atheism. They do act as if there is something more to human behavior than genetic and epistemological determinism (I'm assuming that you are a materialistic atheist. There are actually different kinds, ie. Buddhism, A.C Doyle's weird spiritism, etc.). That's the problem. Atheism cannot even define what morality is apart from the Christian worldview, much less the freedom of the human machine to fulfill any moral obligation. To quote Richard Dawkins, "“DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

However, before we even get to the ethical issues, we need a valid atheist epistemology. How does the unbeliever justify knowing anything?

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I believe Man invented God, and in doing so, gave Him all our attributes, including our sense of human morality. So in using your absolute logic, then God. Is. Dead.

Please justify this faith assertion using "my absolute logic". I don't see any logic here, and certainly no answer to my proof.

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Even as far back as The Republic, Plato suggests that we should be just not because a deity or scripture commands it but because unjust behavior causes internal disharmony. In practice, for most people the true answer to "where does your sense of right and wrong come from?" is "my parents and my peers" and other aspects of how I was raised. Hell, as our ancestors sense of morality was beneficial to survival, it can be seen as a product of scientific evolution. The rules are there because they work for large groups of near-strangers living together.

You need to decide, are you a pragmatist, a utilitarian, or a metaphysical naturalist? Pick one and go with it. (Either way, all fail miserably to account for morality, much less knowledge itself, per my original argument).

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Now I'm not debating how atheists measure or come about to their morality as I think most atheists, given their moral similarity to theists, are shaped by fundamentally religious moral beliefs by a human society that puts great importance on religion.

Are morality objective, or is it merely an invention of religion? How does that square with the first three theories that you offered up?

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  But there is zero reason that morality cannot be based off of reason, human solidarity, the desire to limit suffering, the desire to conform with social norms, enjoying natural beauty, falling in love, sheer pragmatism or utilitarianism, a belief in the fundamental equality of all individuals, or avoiding negative consequences.

This is why we can't jump the gun to the moral argument, because atheism still hasn't established a valid epistemology. In metaphysical naturalism, is it useless to try to separate religion, ethics, reason, and knowledge. All are merely the by-products of impersonal natural laws.

(05-08-2014 11:11 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  However I imagine that for people like you who have been raised with religion, it becomes very hard to separate one's own individual personal development and moral growth from all that powerful religious training. You simply can't imagine encountering and learning to practice those values outside a religious context or without religious training. As such, God. Is. Alive. So in imagining your life without the structure provided by religious tradition and authority, you'd clearly imagine a life without any moral guidance at all.

And, I am genuinely happy to say, you'd be wrong.

Personally, I find my lack of faith to be liberating. This is not meant to be a slight towards believers. I have no wondering why a god's plan is screwing me. There is no wondering what I did wrong, why I deserved it, why my prayers weren't answered, etc. Everything that happens in my life is the result of the actions I've taken prior to this moment, with a healthy amount of randomness thrown in.

Anywho............

Not really a logical argument, but more of a biographical one. The feeling of being "liberated" is quite subjective. I've been liberated from metaphysical naturalism. As I pointed out, by using that as a starting point, one cannot justify the knowledge of anything, ethics or otherwise.

(05-08-2014 11:53 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:53 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:50 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:48 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-08-2014 04:46 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  How did god choose your family?

He put me in it. (In fact, nothing happens without God's Providence, including my next breath. My family has nothing to do with that.)

How did he do that? Did he specify which sperm won the race?

He sure did. Like I said, " nothing happens without God's Providence". This can be proven my the absurdity of the opposite:

To explain further, Proving the existence of the Christian God is easy. It's child's play. The proof is easy to logically demonstrate because all unbelieving worldviews are based upon the unjustifiable assumption that the human mind is capable of meaningful activity outside of the creative attributes and providence of God. This is especially true in regards to naturalistic atheism, which on one hand wants to assume that nothing exists outside of the material world, and then on the other hand wants to assign qualitative values to things like human reason, ethics, love, hate, beauty, free will, etc., as if these things were somehow exempt from the impersonal laws of nature. Therefore, we may prove God's existence as follows:

P1: If the human mind can obtain meaningful knowledge, then God exists, since God is the precondition of human knowledge.

P2: The human mind can obtain knowledge.

Conclusion: God exists.

If your argument rests on a false premise, your conclusion is wrong. You've created a syllogism that's internally consistent, but your first premise is based on an assumption:

Quote:all unbelieving worldviews are based upon the unjustifiable assumption that the human mind is capable of meaningful activity outside of the creative attributes and providence of God.

How can you justify this statement? You certainly didn't do so in the following sentences.

Finally, someone deals with my actual argument.

First, I would point out that there is really no "neutral" territory. One is either going to start their worldview approach with God, or with "no God", ie, "human autonomy". One could argue that both positions are an "assumption". However, my assumption can be validated by the lack of a viable alternative. The Christian epistemology is based on God's creative attributes and His Providence. He created the human mind and gave it a fruitful connection with the created order. Secularism has attempted to establish many different epistemologies (Empiricism, Rationalism, Idealism, and even pure Skepticism). Not only do they all fail to justify human knowledge, but they can't even get out of their own way.

To put this in the form of a logical syllogism, I'll use a reductio ad absurdum in order to avoid the charge of circular reasoning:

Prove A: God is the Precondition of Human Knowledge.

Step 1 ~A: (Assume the opposite of what we are trying to prove): God is NOT the Precondition of Human Knowledge
Step 2 (~A--> B): If God is NOT the Precondition of Human Knowledge, then knowledge can be justified in a godless universe.
Step 3 (~B): Knowledge CANNOT be justified in a godless universe (Contradiction!)
Step 4 (~ ~A): It is not the case that God is NOT the Precondition of Human Knowledge. (Modus Tollens on 2 and 3)
Step 5 (A): --> God is the Precondition of Human Knowledge. (Law of negation.)
Q.E.D.

The result, I'll stand by my premise that without God, we cannot know anything until proven otherwise.

Of course, one could always object to my P2: The human mind can obtain knowledge, but where would that put us?

I stand by what I said.

Good luck to you. You seem like you have a lot you want to figure out in life.

(05-09-2014 08:15 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I stand by what I said.

Good luck to you. You seem like you have a lot you want to figure out in life.

Good luck to you. Everyone has to figure things out. It is part of our creaturehood.

Regardless, I hope we can agree that this is not a minor issue. At the very least, I hope to get you (and others) to view metaphysical naturalism with the same skepticism as you do Christianity. If I can at least do that, my goal is accomplished. Anything beyond that is not within my power to do.

TAG is so ridiculous

(05-09-2014 08:47 AM)UM2001GRAD Wrote:  TAG is so ridiculous

Ah. This is a new sort of fallacy that has suddenly appeared in the age of social media. It's sort of a brain child of the old Argumentum Ad Vericudium. We can call it the "post-a-link-and-run" fallacy. It goes like this:

Your argument is wrong and here is a link

http://you are wrong.com

Therefore you are wrong.

Bye.

It's also closely related to the aforementioned argumentum ad lapidem.

Or, perhaps UM2001GRAD would like to deal with my actual argument and demonstrate how ridiculous it is.

Not to mention that the article has no clue about TAG. Best to stick with what I offered.

(05-09-2014 08:55 AM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 08:47 AM)UM2001GRAD Wrote:  TAG is so ridiculous

Ah. This is a new sort of fallacy that has suddenly appeared in the age of social media. It's sort of a brain child of the old Argumentum Ad Vericudium. We can call it the "post-a-link-and-run" fallacy. It goes like this:

Your argument is wrong and here is a link

http://you are wrong.com

Therefore you are wrong.

Bye.

It's also closely related to the aforementioned argumentum ad lapidem.

Or, perhaps UM2001GRAD would like to deal with my actual argument and demonstrate how ridiculous it is.

Not to mention that the article has no clue about TAG. Best to stick with what I offered.

So it's YOUR argument?

(05-09-2014 09:05 AM)UM2001GRAD Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 08:55 AM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 08:47 AM)UM2001GRAD Wrote:  TAG is so ridiculous

Ah. This is a new sort of fallacy that has suddenly appeared in the age of social media. It's sort of a brain child of the old Argumentum Ad Vericudium. We can call it the "post-a-link-and-run" fallacy. It goes like this:

Your argument is wrong and here is a link

http://you are wrong.com

Therefore you are wrong.

Bye.

It's also closely related to the aforementioned argumentum ad lapidem.

Or, perhaps UM2001GRAD would like to deal with my actual argument and demonstrate how ridiculous it is.

Not to mention that the article has no clue about TAG. Best to stick with what I offered.

So it's YOUR argument?

It's the one I presented. (Not saying that I invented it as I have my influences. Regardless, the soundness of the argument does not rest upon who presents it.

So far, this has been an interesting thread. Any possibility of keeping it that way?

(05-09-2014 09:09 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  So far, this has been an interesting thread. Any possibility of keeping it that way?

Hope so.

(05-09-2014 09:12 AM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 09:09 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  So far, this has been an interesting thread. Any possibility of keeping it that way?

Hope so.

In an attempt to honor Lord Stanley's request, I won't continue the argument any further except to say that the link isn't there for you. There would be no persuading you that you are wrong since you have invested so many years in the argument. The link is there for others looking for a way to understand the weakness of christian presuppositional tactics.

(05-09-2014 09:38 AM)UM2001GRAD Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 09:12 AM)ODUBB35 Wrote:  

(05-09-2014 09:09 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  So far, this has been an interesting thread. Any possibility of keeping it that way?

Hope so.

In an attempt to honor Lord Stanley's request, I won't continue the argument any further except to say that the link isn't there for you. There would be no persuading you that you are wrong since you have invested so many years in the argument. The link is there for others looking for a way to understand the weakness of christian presuppositional tactics.

That's fine. I will simply point out that the link does not address the argument that I put forward, does not accurately portray a Christian view of natural law, uses the "wishful thinking" argument to support logic as a necessary axiom, and does nothing the patch up the aforementioned holes in materialistic atheism. When one begins to complain about the "tactics" of an argument as opposed to the argument itself, that's a concession of defeat.

In any case, I'm willing to let my argument stand on it's merits. Any further attempts to simply write it off as ridiculous without demonstrating it as ridiculous need not be addressed. I think I've adequately answered that charge.

Out of curiosity, since you've invested years in this argument I assume you'll know, what is to stop someone from lifting "knowledge" out of the argument and inserting anything else?

I'm sure you'll do a fine job of addressing my last question, and I'd like to add another if you don't mind. What is to stop someone from lifting "God" (and I assume you mean the christian god as understood by your faith) and inserting any other entity believed to be the author of all things?

Here are ten religious entities that are eerily similar to Jesus Christ, but pre-date him.

It's quite possible, even probable, that the Christian Bible was based off of other entities that came before Jesus is said to.

http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/