Truth v. Fact - Page 4

Oh...I just got that...haaa....OUCH!

Yeah - it's just a coincidence that His way is identical to yours right

Quite fortunate really. Lucky you.

Actually not at all. But...we digress...even further.

I don't think we have been digressing at all - we are discussing matters peripheral to facts and truth. Of course they are peripheral and to a literalist mind the link may well be obscure....but now I [b]AM[/i] digressing....

But you raise an interesting point - on what issues do you disagree with God then?

None.

That doesn't mean my ways and his ways are the same.

What I mean is that I don't always do things the way that I believe God would do them or want me to do them. The first might be a limitation of my capabilities (relative to God), and the second is my sinful and disobedient nature. Hopefully the latter will get better over time. I try anyway.

Nor does it mean that I understand all of his ways. I don't. I am (getting more) comfortable with the mystery.

I believe in the revelatory nature of scripture and assume that if God has revealed himself to have done something in a certain way (e.g., bring animals to Noah) I don't say..."Well, if it was really God, he would have done it differently." I assume that I might not fully understand the how and why.

Because the existence of a god can not be proven through a logical investigation. Therefore, faith in a god is inherently and by definition illogical and irrational. The very definition of this kind of faith is that it doesn't "does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." You are trying to weasel the beliefs you hold through faith into the realm of logical proofs, and it just can't be done because you can't reason from thought to being.

Logic proofs are not equivalent to faith-based beliefs, and people who form beliefs around logical proofs and material evidence inherently do not share the logical faults of those who form beliefs around faith.

So, yes, beliefs based on faith are inherently and by definition illogical. Whether they are unreliable depends on whether you rely on material evidence and logic or imagina...er, faith.

Yes. I know that.

And so it is with the non-existence of God.

\

Which is why discussions that assume either are inherently illogical and invalid reasoning. Note that attacks on illogical and invalid arguments dependent on invoking a god have absolutely no need whatsoever to have as a premise the assumption of the nonexistence of a god.

Actually it is not.

edit - this is in response to your pre-edit statement that others have made the same mistake you have by assuming in the existence or nonexistence of a god (I'll have to remember to quote you next time to beat the edit):

So? The primary issue here is that you are trying to equate faith and logical reasoning when they are in fact opposites by definition.

In addition, whether someone making the "ark is physically impossible" argument believes in a god or not is inconsequential to the argument he has made, which is based on logic and material evidence. In contrast, your argument wholly depends on an illogical, unprovable, faith-based premise. Your argument is inherently illogical and invalid reasoning.

By definition it is invalid reasoning.

Absolutely not!

I merely stated that the existence or non-existence of God is a faith decision.

Logical reasonings and deductions can proceed from either of those (faith-based) presuppositions. As in "if God exists, then..." or "if God does not exist, then..."


Well key phrase in your statement is "physically impossible". I did not contend that it could be completely and naturalistically explained.



No and no.

"If the earth is really a giant porcupine and the stars are its farts, then..." If it's all based on an invalid premise, then it's invalid reasoning.

See...now we are getting somewhere. You are actually challenging the presupposition. Very good. Nice progress.

You believe that the presupposition taht God exists is invalid. Fair enough. I believe that the presupposition that God does not exist is invalid.

1) stop using your imagination to conjure up erroneous arguments that you then attribute to others and argue against.
2) pay attention to points already covered.

Your argument is invalid because it relies on an unprovable premise. Arguments that demonstrate the lack of valid reasoning in your beliefs need not even touch the issue of god other than to show that your premise is invalid and unprovable.

So you do not begin with the pre-supposition that God does not exist. Fine. But you cannot call the process illogical just because someone does begin with that presupposition.

You can say, "I don't think that X is a logical deduction from that presupposition", or "I think the presupposition is invalid."

Sure you can, because reasoning based on an invalid premise is by defintion illogical and invalid reasoning. You can speculate about anything your imagination dreams up, including an planet-sized procupine farting out stars, but it inherently has no validity until you can provide a logical proof for the premise.

But you have to start with finding some way to disprove or challenge the presupposition other than something like "only a nutjob loonie" would believe that presupposition" or the more "respectible" version..."that presupposition is invalid, now let's move on".

And the reasoning to get from presupposition X to deduction Y is a seperate thing. The presupposition can be true and valid and the reasoning used to get to the deduction is illogical, and vice-versa...the presupposition could be untrue or invalid, but if it were true, then the reasoning used to arrive at a certain deduction is logical.

Oh well, it's not my job to remediate your thinking.

We're finished. Have all the fun you like.

Sure, but the impossibility of logical proofs of god is well established and has centuries of philosophical investigation behind it. Long story short, you can't reason from thought to being and all proofs of god require that invalid leap at some point.

You're not really using your the above definition of faith, however. In practice, it would appear that your faith is a "firm belief in something for which their is a great deal of contrary evidence, but which I will believe in anyway, imagining as many miracles and bizarre coincidences as it takes, and I will assume that even if I can't answer a troubling question, then there must simply be an answer or explanation that someone hasn't yet discovered, because, above all, the thing I believe in must be true."

Of course, I know you'll claim that believing in evolution is somehow exactly the same thing, that evolutionists swallow just as much wild coincidence "on faith", etc., etc.

But it's not the same thing. Why? First of all, let's start with the difference between if something happened, and how it happened.

Creationists and IDers often point to calculations (quite refutable, but we'll set that aside for now) which say the odds of this protein forming or that organelle forming by chance, etc., etc., are so astronomical that to believe in such things is nothing more than another kind of faith, a wild leap in the face of logic and probability, a leap made only to help one cling to a Godless view of life.

Regardless of how improbable it might seem to you, however, that natural selection alone could produce the complexity of life, it's important to realize that such a mechanism is proposed to explain how evolution might have occurred, not if evolution occurred.

An aside about the use of the word "theory", from something I read recently which I think put this wonderfully: A "theory of gravity" is not a theory about if gravity exists or not. Gravity is taken as fact. A theory of gravity is a theory about the how and why of gravity, a search for the mechanisms of gravity, not a proposal for gravity's already-established existence.

The available biological, geological and paleontological evidence establishes as strongly as possible, by any practical meaning of the word "fact", that the occurrence of evolution is a fact. The theory of evolution at this point in the history of science concerns the mechanism or mechanisms of evolution, not the mere occurrence of evolution. Natural selection is by far the best contender for a mechanism, but there's nothing to stop you from contemplating, should you be so inclined, a little Divine Intervention (or alien even intervention) here and there to push things along in the right direction.

If you wished to not merely contemplate, but assert Divine Intervention, that would fit the definition you provided for an act of faith. At least such an act of faith would not require the denial of a mountain of contrary evidence. For most scientists, the truth of such an assertion isn't so much denied as it is simply dismissed as superfluous, unnecessary, and lacking in explanatory or predictive value.

When it comes to Noah's Ark, however, there's nothing at all in the way of physical evidence which comes together to point towards the very specific and detailed story in the Bible, or even the very broadest of brushstrokes from the story, aside from "big floods have happened" and "many separate cultures tell (very different) flood stories". It's fairly obvious, in fact, that in many, many ways the great body of available physical evidence goes totally against the occurrence of the Biblical Flood.

Can you struggle against all of this evidence, trying to work backwards from evidence to the desired story? Sure. Can you find hopeful scraps of evidence here and there look like they might either support your story, or, at the very least, poke holes in the competition? Sure. Can you propose enough miracles to cover up any problems? That's easy.

In the end, however, you're accepting or creating wild explanations not only to support an unfounded story, but in order to deny a wealth of contrary evidence, settling instead for anything which, in the most impractical philosophical sense, can be deemed "possible", as long as it can prop up your belief. On the other hand, no matter how much you wish to claim that those who don't accept the Flood are also just "going on faith", they've got plenty of hard data to back up their denial of the Flood. The situation is hardly symmetric.

In fact, since denying the Flood and accepting evolution are not the same thing (although, yes, they often go together), you would simply be attempting guilt by association if you attempt to use your belief that evolution is a wild leap of faith to say that Flood deniers are guilty also of a similar wild leap of faith when they deny the Flood.

Denying the Flood depends not in the least on accepting the "crazy" notion of evolution. Such a denial stands quite well on its own without resort to the most-attacked aspect of evolution -- the reliance on random mutation.

I know how you love my analogies ...

Imagine one of the classic murder mystery puzzles: someone is found murdered in a room, a room locked from the inside.

You might have to come up with some pretty fanciful ideas to explain how the murder occurred, but you still know there was a murder, or as some stories would have it, a very bizarre suicide. At the very least, you have a very dead body to explain somehow. If your ideas get wild, it's only in an effort to explain the known facts.

Noah's Ark is more like this: You walk into a pretty normal, un-amazing looking room, and suddenly declare "A tall, red-headed male financial analyst was murdered here!". Maybe you think you remember a bad dream you had about this room, maybe the room fits something you remember from a Tarot card reading... who knows.

Q: Could you be right?
A: Sure, anything is possible.
Q: Why are there no blood stains, no signs of struggle?
A: Maybe the murderer cleaned up all of the evidence... and, hey! Look at this picture on the wall. It's a little askew! That could be a sign!
Q: How come no one in this neighborhood has been reported as missing?
A: Maybe the victim wasn't from around here. Maybe the victim kept to himself. Maybe people know, but are too scared to speak.
Q: How do you know the victim was male?
A: It was in my dream.
Q: How do you know the victim was tall?
A: It was in my dream.
Q: How do you know the victim was red headed?
A: It was in my dream.
Q: How come we can't find any red hairs in the room?
A: Like I said, it looks like the murderer did a good clean-up job.
Q: This isn't a financial office, there's nothing on this computer in here that looks like anyone was looking at financial reports, no paperwork or briefcase were left behind. If I ask how you know it was a financial analyst who was killed, you're going to say "It was in my dream" again, aren't you?
A: Uh, yes.

I know the whole "I'm not going to second guess God" routine, and that that's your way out of, "Well, why wouldn't God just make the people and animals he didn't like vanish?". But isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Shouldn't the story seem Godly first, before being ascribed to God, rather than being asserted as Godly from the start, and then not questioning how God does things?

Isn't it at all odd to you that God's unquestionable ways are not only round-about, not only sound an awful lot like an old goatherder story, but that his ways are downright conspiratorial when it comes to hiding the evidence of His acts, to the point of not only destroying evidence, but to the point of leaving so much misleading evidence, or letting Satan get away with planting misleading evidence all over? Are you willing to write all of that off as a "test of faith"?

As much as you want to characterize your unwavering devotion to the story of Noah's Ark as "no different" from someone simply denying the story, your belief is categorically different from mere disbelief in the same story, different enough to require such a disconnect from reality (especially when you don't have ignorance as an excuse) that, going back to my earlier point, I'd characterize it as a kind of mental disorder. Commonplace? Yes. Can be lived with by people who seem to function more or less normally in other ways? Yes. But still (yes, in my personal view) a disconnect from reality and a dysfunctional way of thinking I'd call crazy.

A quote from the link I gave above:

There's an important distinction I'd like to make here, and it very much gets to the issue of where I start to consider a belief system "crazy".

Faith can be nonlogical -- that is, it is not derived from logic, but it does not in anyway run contrary to logic.

All logical chains of reasoning ultimately must be rooted in a foundation of nonlogical postulates. The only constraint logic places on a set of postulates is that they not be mutually contradictory. Freed from the religious and spiritual baggage often tied to this popular expression, it could be said that the need to choose fundamental postulates which have no logical support is why "you've got to have faith in something".

Faith becomes illogical when it goes beyond being nonlogical to the point where it runs contrary to logic and (to the extent that we share the postulate of accepting some sort of consistent, common world which is more or less revealed to us by our senses) runs contrary to available evidence. That's the kind of faith which none of need, the kind that veers off into la-la land pretty quickly.

Chris,

do you follow the link Shetline gave? Very informative, much more so, in my opinion, then your links.

Regards,

David

This is extremely good.

An extract:

Protestant fundamentalists, for example, claim that they read the Bible in the same way as the early Christians, but their belief that it is literally true in every detail is a recent innovation, formulated for the first time in the late 19th century. Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge.

And there's more cool shit.

Great article.

The point about the Qur'an is very valid - if you have ever heard the call to prayer from a minaret then this is how the Qur'an is designed to be experienced - it is primarily a vehicle of sound. The words are secondary to this and the effect of the sound on the consciousness is the main thing.

This was well-known in the past and part of a science all of it's own. It also existed in Christianity to a very similar and highly developed degree - the great Cathedrals such as Notre Dame in Paris are designed purely for the experience of such sounds which are in-built into certain hymns.

A Middle Eastern Priest once demonstrated to me the similar principle of the Lord's Prayer - it is intended to be recited in Aramaic on a constant monotone which sounds almost like a digeridoo and it does indeed make you feel very, very odd to hear it.

Of course Christianity and Islam have all but forgotten these amazing arts now and just cling lamely to their literalist interpretations - it's all they have now, sadly.

Yup, that's Karen Armstrong, and it's either an excerpt or it's based on her book "The Battle for God." She's a former nun who has also written some books on Islam. There's a reading group at my church that read it a few months ago. They may be in a minority, but there are American Christians who agree with her perspective.

She's a Muslim - do they know that?

I didn't know that, but I wasn't in that group. I know it wouldn't bother these folks in the slightest.

When did she convert?

I'm not sure - I was told this by a student at my University and found it difficult to believe, I heard it from someone else too but I have no other verification of it.

Yeah, I think it's not true. She has written a number of book about Islam, and spoke out a lot after 9/11 against anti-Muslim prejudice, but as far as I know, after she left the RC Church, she hasn't gone to any other. I don't know for sure though.

She's a good writer though - apparently she had her Phd thesis rejected and just kept writing anyway.

Did you read her book on Buddha?

The only one I've read is the History of God one. Her books aren't difficult by any means, but for BRussell's fun reading, they're a little more information-dense than, say, the Pagels books we were talking about in the other thread.

Chris,

you disappoint me! I (we) did the courtesy of reading the links you posted in support of the Ark, and yet it appears that you have not returned the favour by reading the counter-argument links.

The technical arguments (or 'facts' as you refer) are fairly conclusive, to my eyes at least. It seems that one of the major Ark supporters in matters technical was a guy called Woodruffe (apologies for maybe spelling his name incorrectly - I am not going back to check). Many of his facts turn out to be either false or easily challenged that the whole argument he puts forward is seriously flawed.

Still, as the writer puts it, God may well have organised a flood a multi-millenia ago, and then covered up all physical traces of it, as well as organising things so it looks like no such event took place. Would seem a bit pointless...........

Regards,

David

Almost the weekend -- here's a quickie.

On the flood, two points:

It's 16,000 animals, and the numbers work for 16,000 animals. Also, since we can cross lions and tigers, camels and llamas, whales and dolphins, zebras and horses, the number of 'kinds' could begin to be reduced to a much smaller number.

Second point: That this rigorous vetting of the flood account is coming from people who insist on an argument from ignorance to 'prove' the creation of things like the bacteria flagellum, I find this really intellectually dishonest. Once you run and hide to the extent that an evolutionist has to --- live without any proof whatsoever, can't even put genetic pathways on paper -- you couldn't possibly begin to wince about the possibilities of getting a guy on a boat for a year with 16,000 animals.

Which goes back to a reoccurring theme: the Biblical account isn't lacking, except that is the only possibility that can't be true, because of certain 'authority issues', and not because you materialists can't handle perpetual impossibilities as the source of all order.

Noah's a walk in the park, now get me a genetic pathway that definitively builds a bacteria flagellum. Ah, but that's really not the point, is it?

OK, so I am naive.

Ah, yes, the scathing 'argument by emoticon', technique.

What?

I'm struggling to uderstand what you mean - are you saying that I think the biblical account is wrong because I prefer to believe physical evidence? Did you read the link given by Shetline where fossil and rock geology evidence refutes the occurrance of a global flood?

I ask again the same question that Chris hasn't answered - why, if you believe elements of the bible are meant to be figurative, have you chosen to believe the Ark is true?

It isn't sensible to believe that even if God decided to do it, only, and only Noah (and a few relatives) was considered worthy of saving. Every goatherd in the middle of nowhere, tending two goats and an olive tree - pow - gone.

It's truly bizarre thinking.

David

Did you mean 'Life' above? Scientists, to the best of my knowledge, have always conceded that their knowledge on how inert chemicals came to have 'life' is incomplete. I'll even concede the possibility that there is a God that said 'let there be life'.

But now our pathways diverge big time. Humans did not start out as we are now - plenty of evidence to suggest how we developed - so I ignore the Adam and Eve story from a literal perspective and accept it as an image.

I thought scientists HAVE put genetic pathways on paper, showing similarities between members of the same species.

For your Ark story to be true, and to have worked, God had to work on so many levels, ranging from keeping the thing afloat, getting the animals on board from across the globe, feeding the animals, cleaning them, stopping them fighting.......endless list.

And not an emoticon in sight.

David

The arguments on 'evidence' can be argued indefinitely. For every argument, there is a counter argument. The evidence for a worldwide catastrophe is overwhelming. This isn't about evidence. There are case studies that have been done that make a very solid case for the feasibility of the Ark. There is no denying this fact.

I'll make this even clearer for you: you can't apply the same standards you would apply to Noah, to the origins of life -- or my example of the flagellum. People who intellectually live and die by appeals to an argument from ignorance, expose their inconsistencies of thought, and with it the irrational desire to make universal negative statements about what may or may not exist.

This has nothing to do with evidence. That has everything to do with what you idealistically wish to be possible.

The feasibility studies handle most of this. Also, you're running a little shallow on -- "across the globe", that assumes that you know what the globe looked like at that time.

Well we do....it was less than 4000 years ago remember?