Dr. Greg Bahnsen touches on the Problem of Induction here.
In December 1993 Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen debated atheist lawyer Mr. Edward “Eddie” Tabash. As far as I know this video is not available elsewhere on the internet (although there are poor audio recordings on You Tube).
I will be posting the entire debate in segments on my blog. If you wish to purchase the full-length version, please contact Covenant Media Foundation.
***
In this episode Dr. Bahnsen makes his opening statement. Here are highlights:
- The atheists live inconsistent lives
- Atheists will presuppose human dignity by attending a friend’s funeral then later affirm that human life is no different than an animal
- Atheists are primitive in their thinking
- Atheists do not have a workable worldview
- Evolutionists have an irrational worldview that life spontaneously erupted
- Atheists are unable to answer the tough questions of philosophy
- Atheists work hard to hide their intellectual poverty from themselves and others
*
*
View original post 16 more words
Math Is Christian 
Bahnsen is the man!
Bahnsen doesnt even understand what the problem of induction is! and his ‘attepmt” to solve this imagneary problem of his own construction makes it even worse that he commits begging the question AND fallacy of the stolen concept at the same time!
Tony, is there a premise to go with any of these conclusions? What makes you think that this Ph.D. in philosophy, to whom the problem of induction is very important, doesn’t understand the problem of induction?
Bahnsen begs the question and commits the fallacy of the stolen concept when he tries to claim only Christianity can solve such a problem, as well he the standard interpretation of Hume that Bahnsen accepted, Hume is supposed to have shown that probabilistic are unjustified. However, it is open to question that Hume held this modern view. A detailed analysis of Hume’s works has shown that by “probabilistic argument” Hume meant a certain type of deductive argument (Stove, 1966). Hume believed that all such arguments presuppose the uniformity of nature, but he did not attempt to show that probabilistic arguments in the modern sense are unjustified. Thus, appeals to Hume prove very little about whether inductive, that is, probabilistic arguments, are justified.
Even if Hume was talking about what is now called induction, other philosophers have argued that the traditional problem of induction — why it is rational to use induction– is a pseudo-problem that should be dissolved, not solved. Some philosophers have maintained that the traditional problem of induction is based on a linguistic confusion (Strawson, 1966, Edwards, 1965). If we carefully consider what we mean by “rational”, we will see that denying the rationality of induction is nonsense. More recently, it has been argued that by using unproblematic principles of probability inductive skepticism can be reduced to absurdity (Gemes, 1983). In other words, according to this argument, the position of inductive skepticism cannot be coherently formulated. If valid, these arguments show that inductive skepticism is a view that does not deserve to be taken seriously. Bahnsen does not answer these general arguments against inductive skepticism. Indeed, he does not seem to be aware of them. Moreover, Russell’s skepticism about inductive arguments has also taken some heavy pounding. Philosophers have pointed out confusions in the very passages from Russell’s writing that Bahnsen cited with approval (Wills, 1965; Edwards, 1965).
Must go tutor now; will get back to you later…
Tony, it’s certainly true that one cannot argue against the Inductive Principle without assuming it, but what are we to make of that fact?
Do we own the Inductive Principle in a way such that God doesn’t exist, or in a way such that God does exist? (It’s one or the other; God says that all know Him. Ro 1.21) Certainly God would be the context and transcendental for induction, and not induction for God, since God would do similarly for other central beliefs such as morality, laws of logic, laws of mathematics, etc.
If we own the Inductive Principle in a way such that God doesn’t exist, what do we have?
We have a problem. The Inductive Principle really doesn’t comport with atheism. The atheist believes, according to the Inductive Principle, that there is an ultimate regulating force in the universe, and according to his atheism, no ultimate regulating force in the universe. So for him to win induction is to win a contradiction, to win “nonsense.”
If we own the Inductive Principle in a way such that God *does* exist, we not only have a way to relate components of our worldview, induction with the rest of the rich Christian worldview, but we have an explanation for induction (beyond a critique of inductive skepticism): God reveals in his written revelation that the future will be like the past (Noahic covenant Gen 8-9), and so we are to live, love, work, build, and enjoy life.
again here is the problem you are begging the question and your are commiting the fallacy of the stolen concept when you try and use genesis 8:22 to account for induction. As well like i said, inductive skepticsm can be reduced to absurdity so there is no problem for an athiest to account for the uniformity of nature.
“according to his atheism, no ultimate regulating force in the universe”
again a strawman against athiesm about “random chance”
Well, I wasn’t using Gen 8.22, I referenced in passing the entire Noahic covenant, and it’s not fallacious to appeal to the revelation of the infinite, personal, all-knowing, all-controlling, self-attesting, self-contained, self-revelatory Creator God as a reason to believe that events are particulars for some universal.
It’s nice to have the self-refutation of the inductive skeptic in hand, but conjoined with atheism your overall project, resting on a self-contradiction, fails.
And how is “according to his atheism, no ultimate regulating force in the universe” a strawman? Are you a materialistic determinist? If you are a Randian, and I’m betting that you are, I doubt it.
” but conjoined with atheism your overall project, resting on a self-contradiction, fails”
no it doesnt fail, the reality cannot be not uniform because it cannot help but be this way
“it’s not fallacious to appeal to the revelation of the infinite, personal, all-knowing, all-controlling, self-attesting, self-contained, self-revelatory Creator God”
its not fallacious but it is fallacious to assume that god is uniform to prove that god is uniform
TJ: “…the reality cannot be not uniform because it cannot help but be this way.”
CJ: Now, that’s circular.
TJ: “…[CJ:] it’s not fallacious to appeal to the revelation of the infinite, personal, all-knowing, all-controlling, self-attesting, self-contained, self-revelatory Creator God”
its not fallacious but it is fallacious to assume that god is uniform to prove that god is uniform.”
CJ: It would be if that were what I was doing, but it wasn’t.
ou seem misunderstand the actual problem of induction – it is not the circular relationship between induction and the ‘uniformity of nature’ but a concern about a logical connection between a sample and a population. No one uses the UON to justify induction.
3) your attempts to ‘solve’ the ‘problem of induction’ by arguing for an assumption of uniformity of ‘god’ (the implication of presuppositionalism) therefore do not even address the actual ‘problem’, seeing as the UON isn’t used to justify induction in the first place! Furthermore, the UOG argument leads to even greater problems than using the UON to justify induction.
4) Finally, they fail to grasp that it is a mistake to presume that a failure to provide an adequate justification for induction leaves us without any grounds to rely on induction other than ‘faith’: The fact one cannot provide a justification for a system doesn’t imply that one cannot know that the system is useful. A child is unable to prove that his name is his name; does this mean that he is without any grounds for holding that his name is his name? Knowledge and justification are two different philosophical concepts. The Problem of Induction relates to philosophical justification.
So many errors in one bad argument. Let’s roll up our sleeve and begin
We get the following quotes from Van Till:
“It is fatal to try to prove the existence of God by the ‘scientific method’ and by the ‘appeal to facts’ if . . . the scientific method itself is based upon a presupposition which excludes God.”
and…
“Our argument as over against this would be that the existence of the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs. But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world.”
This is not a rational grounds for justification, it is an appeal to magic. It does nothing to actually provide a justification, it merely asserts that there is one. One might as well say that there is a council of twelve, universe-creating elves ™” who create uniform universes. This universe being an example of their handiwork. That “accounts” for the universe being uniform just as cogently as does positing the Christian God: in other words, its just a label – a magic word – abracadbra- without any content behind it. “Goddidit”
Next, there is an utterly unsupported assertion contained with statements like these: “the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature.” It is the presumption that the uniformity of nature needs to be “accounted for.” In other words, the implication is: “without a God, a universe wouldn’t be uniform.” But precisely on what basis is such an assumption made? Exactly what experience, or special insight, does the author have of universes forming, that give
him the grounds for sneaking in the implicit assumption that Universes without a God are not uniform? How many “non-uniform,” “un-created” universes has he been privy to, on which to derive his assumption?
The answer would be “none.” So where does this assumption come from? The error has two sources: the first, a confusion between being able to doubt a claim and unseating a claim. To bring a claim into doubt is not a grounds for unseating the claim on it’s own. To confuse the ability to doubt for the ability to unseat is to commit the ‘fallacy of arguing to uncertainty.”
The next source for the error comes from the presupper’s utter confusion as to what Hume’s problem of induction actually is – which in turn stems from the fact that most people using this argument have never actually read Hume’s Enquiry into the Human Understanding. So let’s correct this second here: Whether or not there is a satisfactory philosophical justification for induction, there is nothing within this ‘problem’ that grants anyone an epistemic grounds to suppose that induction cannot work without a ‘god’ to sustain it.
So we have two amateurish errors here born of a basic ignorance of logic: an assumption that providing a ‘label’ answers a problem and the unwarranted assumption that a lack of a satisfactory justification for induction somehow grants the theist epistemic grounds for holding that induction cannot be justified without turning to a deux ex machina: a ‘supernatural’, nature-sustaining ‘god’.
Now that we understand the level of ignorance behind presupper’s misunderstanding of Hume is, let’s continue:
The Presupper’s Misunderstanding of the nature of the Problem of Induction
The presuppers protest they have a firm epistemology (theory of knowledge, which means they must have a theory of what knowledge is, how they “know” things, and the scope of knowledge). But when they fling the “problem of induction” in the face of the atheist, as if our worldview leaves it problematical while theirs offers a solution, the presupper reveals a naive understanding of the problem. They believe their solution; that God purportedly tells them nature will remain uniform – operate today as it did yesterday – justifies induction. In this they tend to mix up the problem of justifying a belief in the Uniformity of Nature (UN) with the problem of Induction itself (the latter being more of a logical/practical problem).
This much is true: Inductive inferences aren’t much good if nature is not uniform, because if it’s not, a principle you discovered via past experience couldn’t give you insight to future experience (because there would be no uniform pattern to experience either future or past). So this leads to one other knock against induction – it needs the UN to work, but can not itself justify a belief in the UN. How can we know nature will remain operate tomorrow as it did today?
Well, if we say “because it has been uniform in my experience so far” you are using induction to establish the uniformity of nature. The problem is of course that you are simultaneously presupposing nature is uniform in order to make the inductive argument that nature is uniform. So you are stuck in circular question-begging (in the classic understanding of this “problem”).
But the presuppers assert they have an epistemological answer to the dilemma: The Christian presupp asserts that they needn’t rely on question-begging induction to infer nature is uniform; their ‘god’ has given them the knowledge that nature is uniform through revelation and has promised it will remain so. Therefore, says the presupper, “in my world view I know nature will remain uniform via means other than induction, which means the UN is not established by question-begging assumptions. As well, the UN also justifies inductive reasoning. Thus my use of induction as a tool of gaining knowledge about the world is justified – something you can not say about your inductive inferences.”
Two main problems start here. It starts with the fact that If the Christian adduces Hume’s problem of induction as a real epistemological problem that needs a solution, then the Christian binds himself to solving the problem. However, the Christian has shot himself in the foot because he does not have a solution to the problem.
Here’s why the Christian’s proposal for establishing induction on God’s promise of the UN is insufficient:
1. This is to actually ignore the fundamental “problem” of induction actually is (this is, if you are going with Hume, and some of those who followed, e.g. Popper, Russell etc). The Uniformity of Nature is necessary for induction but it is not a sufficient justification of inductive inference, therefore, the circularity problem is actually a moot issue, seeing as the assumption of a uniformity of nature could never solve the problem in the first place. That is precisely why modern philosophers do not rely on it as a ‘solution’ in the first place.
The actual knock against induction is that there is no valid logical “connection” between a collection of past experiences and what will be the case in the future. The classic “white swans” example serves: the fact that every swan you’ve seen in the past was white means simply that: every swan you’ve seen has been white. There is no logical “therefore” to bridge the connection “all the swans I’ve seen are white” to “all swans are white” (or “the next swan I encounter will be white”).
As Hume pointed out, it may be our habit to make such leaps, and it may have so far been fairly useful to do so up to now, but there is no actual logical justification for doing so. We just do it (use make inductive inferences, from past experience to universal statements of knowledge) based on habit.
As Hume and others point out, this being the case, how can such an inductive inference from a bunch of past observations to universalizing “all swans are white” or predicting the future “the next swan I see will be white” count as knowledge? **
This epistemological quagmire is something that even the Uniformity of Nature simply doesn’t solve. So if a presupper who has seen all white swans proclaims inductively: “All swans are white.” ask:
“Really, does that count as knowledge? How do you know that?”
To which he’ll answer…????….
If the presupper is going to say: “Well, all the swans in my past experience were white – I’m using induction, justified by my world view. I can use induction because my God promises nature will remain uniform, and therefore be intelligible to me.”
Then say: “So?… Remember the problem of induction? There is no logical connection between having seen a bunch of white swans and your unwarranted logical leap to “all swans are white.” Here you go, I will grant you “Nature will remain Uniform.” Now…how does that justify your statement of knowledge that “all swans are white?”
Christian: “Well, all the swans I’ve seen so far are white so…”
“Yes….”?
Christian: “So, I’m making an inference to “all swans are white.”
Which is logically unsupported. And that’s what Hume was saying as anyone who’s actually read him already knows..”
“THAT’s the fundamental Problem of Induction (as opposed to the problem of logically establishing the uniformity of nature) . Yes induction presupposes the uniformity of nature, but while necessary, the UN is hardly sufficient to justify inductive inferences epistemologically. When the next swan turns out to be black, it shows your statement “all swans are white” had no more “knowledge” content then the same words coming out of my mouth. And you can justify calling it “knowledge” no better
than I can. What you’ve done is presupposed nature to be uniform, but not in fact justified any particular inductive inference you may wish to make (and that includes ANY inference, whether you are inferring all swans are white, or doing science and inferring from past experience gravitational computations that you are attempting to apply to future experience).
“So, in fact, the fundamental epistemological challenge has not been met by your Christian presupposition. Your purported “knowledge” that the world remains uniform provides no solution to the very problem of induction you lobbed at us atheists: the fundamental epistemological problem being “How do we know that we know something?”
And an even more fundamental problem for the Christian Presuppositionalist:
2. The Christian protests that atheists have no non-question-begging grounds upon which to argue the Uniformity of Nature (UN), and yet the Christian ignores he is in precisely the same situation. The Christian has been promise that nature will remain uniform by God, which means the Christian’s belief in the Uniformity of Nature is hung upon…you guessed it…the Uniformity Of God (UOG).
If God is not uniform from one moment to the next, then He can hardly be relied on as the source of Uniformity in Nature. But how does one know that God will remain uniform tomorrow as today? Uh-oh, you aren’t going to rely on what God said or did in the past to infer how He’ll act in the future, are you? ‘Cause, you know, that would be using induction – the very reasoning you are trying to justify. Same as if you appeal to any “inner experience” of God or whatever. Whenever you are appealing to something that happened “yesterday” (or now) to make a knowledge statement about tomorrow (or universalizing to that which you have not observed), you are making an inductive inference, and therefore begging the question you are supposed to be answering.
Simply take the “problem of induction” argument for the UN and insert the UOG instead, and you end up with precisely the same question-begging assumptions. Of any Christian who claims induction is justified by their God, ask how they justify the Uniformity Of God without question-begging…and watch them squirm. I’ve never, ever, once seen a Christian presuppositionalist do anything but ignore, flail, or just run away from this problem.
And if the Christian retreats to “Well, that’s my point really, we all have our presuppositions….” then he’s being disingenuous, because he’d made a challenge to atheist reasoning that the Christian himself can not meet. So why adduce the problem of induction, as if it were some sort of “gotcha” for atheists but not for Christians in the first place? (Let alone the unwarranted puffing of chests with which the Christian flings the POI at the atheist).
And the atheist can point out that for adressing the problem of induction, the presupposition of the Uniformity Of God (or that God isn’t lying etc) in fact holds no more epistemological value – does no more epistemological “work” – than the simpler presupposition that Nature is Uniform. BOTH presuppositions appear to set the necessary (if not sufficient) rational for induction, but one (God) is infinitely less parsimonious (and parsimony is vital to creatures like us with limited knowledge/time spans, who thus have limited resources in being able to gather useful beliefs. A non-parsimonious approach to adding layers of explanation opens the Pandora’s box to an infinity of logical possibilities, which we simply do not have the time or mental resources to handle). Not to mention that, in having to swallow the “pill” of the Bible whole in their presupposition, they behave inconsistently – on one hand saying their presupposition justifies reason, logic and evidential reasoning, then in the next breath ignoring any application of those tools when they show the bible to be in error.
So…Christian presuppositionalists not only do not solve the fundamental issues of induction; they typically don’t even seem to understand what they are dealing with when they wield that particular “weapon” carelessly, as so many of them do.
It is particularly ironic that for presuppers to adduce Hume’s Problem Of Induction, given that it lands them skewered on the same dilemma.
The Christian “solution” is “God told me (via the biblical revelation) that he promises to uphold the general uniformity and intelligibility of nature.”
In doing this the Christian believes he has at once justified induction (because our inferences will be made against a universe that will act uniformly) AND avoided the essential problem of induction because their conclusion about the Uniformity Of Nature is not based upon induction; but upon revelation. They have a “third way” of knowledge, unacknowledged in our world view, which “solves” such epistemological problems.
But…even accepting this as true for the sake of argument…. they don’t solve it! They’ve just slipped the problem back a step. The Christian has simply predicated the Uniformity Of Nature on the Uniformity Of (a) God (who will purportedly uphold the uniformity of nature). You ain’t gonna have any uniformity of nature if the God upholding it isn’t uniform Himself. So we can ask the same question to the Christian about the foundation for their belief in the uniformity of God: Leaving aside, for a moment, the insurmountable ontological problems with the ‘god’ term, on what non-question-begging grounds can you justify your expectation that God will keep his promise, or that God will be as he is tomorrow as he was yesterday?” You run into the same meta-problems that follow from using the uniformity of nature argument!*
On the same argument used by the presupper, the conclusion is inescapable: they can’t do so. They ARE appealing to induction whether they refuse to acknowledge it or not.
In addition, simply appealing to “revelation” as some form of knowledge distinct from empirical, sense-based inference doesn’t work, because the “problem of induction” is one of logic and reason – not one restricted to inferences based upon materialistic sense-input. In other words, it asks “what justifies an inference from past experience to future experience. And revelation is just one more form of experience. Whether the Christian encountered God’s “revealed” claims in an old book, or whether he even wishes to claim God beamed an experience of revelation right into his mind…the same question is begged: “On what grounds do you have the expectation that your experience of God means that God will be the same tomorrow as it was today?”
If he simply retreats to “Well, part of my presupposition is that God is immutable” or something simluar, then he has still failed to justify or solve the problem of induction – he’s just “presupposed” it away. He has offered no more rational justification than anyone else who holds the mere expectation that nature will remain uniform – the very expectation he says secularism fails to justify! And since the
Christian’s God claim does absolutely no more epistemological duty than the mere presupposition that nature is uniform, he can hardly claim it’s necessity. And we all tend to (as a matter of habit) presume nature will remain uniform anyway.
You don’t think we know about “population and sample”? I teach/tutor statistics. There are many characterizations of the Problem, including “population and sample.”
Who said the Uniformity of Nature is used to justify induction?
“4) Finally, they fail to grasp that it is a mistake to presume that a failure to provide an adequate justification for induction leaves us without any grounds to rely on induction other than ‘faith’:
“Reliance” is faith.
The fact one cannot provide a justification for a system doesn’t imply that one cannot know that the system is useful….”
Exactly. You can’t provide reasons for induction, but you know it must hold, because—even though you “suppress the truth”, God has shown it to you and you believe it. Romans 1.
[Ostensibly quoting Van Til:] “Our argument as over against this would be that the existence of the God of Christian theism and the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs. But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world.”
This is not a rational grounds for justification, it is an appeal to magic. It does nothing to actually provide a justification, it merely asserts that there is one. One might as well say that there is a council of twelve, universe-creating elves ™” who create uniform universes. This universe being an example of their handiwork. That “accounts” for the universe being uniform just as cogently as does positing the Christian God: in other words, its just a label – a magic word – abracadbra- without any content behind it. “Goddidit”
No content? The infinite, personal, all-knowing, all-controlling, self-attesting, self-contained, self-revelatory God has revealed Himself in 66 books worth of content about His being and works. These provide a perfect context for believing that the future will be like the past.
It is the presumption that the uniformity of nature needs to be “accounted for.”…
Only if you want to do philosophy. Otherwise, it’s ok to be arbitrary. But then, be quiet.
…In other words, the implication is: “without a God, a universe wouldn’t be uniform.”
Without God, there is neither account nor warrant for believing in the uniformity of any possible or the actual world. Without an ultimate world uniform-making force, there’s no reason to believe in the uniformity of the world.
…The error has two sources: the first, a confusion between being able to doubt a claim and unseating a claim. To bring a claim into doubt is not a grounds for unseating the claim on it’s own. To confuse the ability to doubt for the ability to unseat is to commit the ‘fallacy of arguing to uncertainty.”
So we have two amateurish errors here born of a basic ignorance of logic: an assumption that providing a ‘label’ answers a problem and the unwarranted assumption that a lack of a satisfactory justification for induction somehow grants the theist epistemic grounds for holding that induction cannot be justified without turning to a deux ex machina: a ‘supernatural’, nature-sustaining ‘god’.
No and no. The first “amateurish error” is about the strawiest straw man I’ve ever heard and was addressed above.
As far as the second is concerned. I’m not saying that. I’m saying we have the answer, and you don’t. (By grace we have the answer.) That’s different.
So this leads to one other knock against induction – it needs the UN to work, but can not itself justify a belief in the UN.
Didn’t you say UN was necessary for induction?
[TJ’s caricature of CJ:] “in my world view I know nature will remain uniform via means other than induction,… As well, the UN also justifies inductive reasoning.
No and no. If UN be acceptably defined, induction is God’s means of warranting UN. The second clause you’ve stuffed into my mouth is just a flat “No.”
1. This is to actually ignore the fundamental “problem” of induction actually is (this is, if you are going with Hume, and some of those who followed, e.g. Popper, Russell etc). The Uniformity of Nature is necessary for induction but it is not a sufficient justification of inductive inference, therefore, the circularity problem is actually a moot issue, seeing as the assumption of a uniformity of nature could never solve the problem in the first place. That is precisely why modern philosophers do not rely on it as a ‘solution’ in the first place.
Fine.
The Christian protests that atheists have no non-question-begging grounds upon which to argue the Uniformity of Nature (UN), and yet the Christian ignores he is in precisely the same situation.
Ben said the same thing in the “Futility” comments. No, as in that conversation, the Christian, aware of the charges, answers them.
But despite denials elsewhere, you now appear to admit futility, as Ben did.
But how does one know that God will remain uniform tomorrow as today? Uh-oh, you aren’t going to rely on what God said or did in the past to infer how He’ll act in the future, are you? ‘Cause, you know, that would be using induction – the very reasoning you are trying to justify.
Indirectly…more directly would be to rely on what God did in the past to infer what He’ll do in the future…
God speaks. We accept all of God’s Word the Bible on authority. We find that charges against God’s wisdom prove to be foolish, including this one. It’s not a problem if you consider what the Christian worldview is.
Of course we rely on induction during the whole process. But the Christian position is that God superintends the entire process, including the inducing. Ro 1.21; and (for Christians) Westminster Larger Catechism 67: “Q. 67. What is effectual calling? A. Effectual calling is the work of God’s almighty power and grace,273 whereby (out of his
free and special love to his elect, and from nothing in them moving him thereunto)274 he doth,
in his accepted time, invite and draw them to Jesus Christ, by his Word and Spirit;275 savingly
enlightening their minds,276 renewing and powerfully determining their wills,277 so as they
(although in themselves dead in sin) are hereby made willing and able freely to answer his
call, and to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed therein.278
Of any Christian who claims induction is justified by their God, ask how they justify the Uniformity Of God without question-begging…and watch them squirm.
(Strange use of third person plural…even beside the grammar error…)
Defined acceptably (possible if it refer to the Christian doctrine of God’s immutability), the “Uniformity of God” as you call it and induction are both warranted by His Word: no question-begging. No “squirming.”
And the atheist can point out that for adressing the problem of induction, the presupposition of the Uniformity Of God (or that God isn’t lying etc) in fact holds no more epistemological value – does no more epistemological “work” – than the simpler presupposition that Nature is Uniform. BOTH presuppositions appear to set the necessary (if not sufficient) rational for induction, but one (God) is infinitely less parsimonious (and parsimony is vital to creatures like us with limited knowledge/time spans, who thus have limited resources in being able to gather useful beliefs
The first claim is untrue. There’s a LOT more that God has revealed which we need for a workable philosophy. Just consider one characterization of the Problem of Induction: warranting that the future will be like the past. One must be able both to distinguish one thing from another (e.g. “the future” and “the past”), as well as to account for some things’ being “like.” The problem of particulars and universals must be solved.
But the conjunction of UN and “no God”, of “there’s an ultimate regulating force in the world” AND “there’s an ultimate regulating force in the world”, that’s not workable.
Your “limited knowledge/time spans,…limited resources” is the problem. As I say in the “Futility” post, “given any belief which might be encompassed by such a worldview [as yours], we finite humans (as unaided with respect to our finitude) cannot account for any fact outside our limited sphere of knowledge and control, which fact may represent a defeater for that belief. So, on the assumption of the denial of the Christian worldview, knowledge of any kind is unwarranted. Any objection to the Christian worldview is a non-starter. Christianity, with its omniscient, self-revelatory God, is the only worldview with a chance to be sufficient. And it is.”
A non-parsimonious approach to adding layers of explanation opens the Pandora’s box to an infinity of logical possibilities, which we simply do not have the time or mental resources to handle).
Exactly. Knowledge cannot be warranted except by the revelation of One who is unlimited in knowledge and time. He has unlimited time and “mental resources….”
It is particularly ironic that for presuppers to adduce Hume’s Problem Of Induction, given that it lands them skewered on the same dilemma.
If you agree that you are skewered on this dilemma, you should “keep silent.”
In doing this the Christian believes he has at once justified induction (because our inferences will be made against a universe that will act uniformly) AND avoided the essential problem of induction because their conclusion about the Uniformity Of Nature is not based upon induction; but upon revelation. They have a “third way” of knowledge, unacknowledged in our world view, which “solves” such epistemological problems.
No. False caricature (or “straw man.”) Again, God uses induction in his sovereign controlling of the process of knowing.
Leaving aside, for a moment, the insurmountable ontological problems with the ‘god’ term, on what non-question-begging grounds can you justify your expectation that God will keep his promise, or that God will be as he is tomorrow as he was yesterday?” You run into the same meta-problems that follow from using the uniformity of nature argument!*
Yes, stepping out of my worldview and into yours, I would have the same epistemological problems you do.
Again, God reveals Himself to be faithful and covenant-keeping; we accept it on authority.
In addition, simply appealing to “revelation” as some form of knowledge distinct from empirical, sense-based inference…
It’s not distinct. God uses “empirical, sense-based inference.”
…doesn’t work, because the “problem of induction” is one of logic and reason – not one restricted to inferences based upon materialistic sense-input. In other words, it asks “what justifies an inference from past experience to future experience. And revelation is just one more form of experience. Whether the Christian encountered God’s “revealed” claims in an old book, or whether he even wishes to claim God beamed an experience of revelation right into his mind…the same question is begged: “On what grounds do you have the expectation that your experience of God means that God will be the same tomorrow as it was today?”
That question would only be begged if we abandon the Christian worldview to answer the question. Of course, standing in your worldview, it is question-begging; standing in the Christian worldview, it isn’t.
Tony, you have the entire Christian worldview at your disposal, at which to take (futile) shots. It’s time to tell me more about your worldview. What flavor atheist are you? Objectivist? Materialist?
“It would be if that were what I was doing, but it wasn’t.”
actually CJ it is what you are doing because you are tactically assuming that God will always remain uniform to prove that nature will always remain uniform as after all how can god be the basis for the uniformity of nature if he is not uniform from one moment to another?
“Now, that’s circular”
so are you saying that basic reality is illogical?
“In your atheistic worldview, basic “reality” is illogical.”
we have been through this reality must be logical no matter what
“God revealed himself such that a *later* philosophical problem would be solved (or would be a non-problem for the Christian).”
you are still begging the question when you are trying to justify the uniformity of god
See my long reply to your long post above.
so again you are assuming the uniformity of god to prove the uniformity of god . by the way you are forgetting the fact that you are still commiting the fallacy of the stolen concept
” Of course, standing in your worldview, it is question-begging; standing in the Christian worldview, it isn’t. ”
wrong again you are begging the question. you are assuming that god will always be the same to prove that god will always be the same. “God revealed it to be wont cut it” and so wont your ridcule and insults (but this is expected for a presupptionalist to act this way)
“Tony, you have the entire Christian worldview at your disposal, at which to take (futile) shots”
sorry buddy, the only one who is futile here is YOU, you know you have lost as you cannot justfity the uniformity of god but you are too proud to admit so
“Knowledge cannot be warranted except by the revelation of One who is unlimited in knowledge and time. He has unlimited time and “mental resources….””
and you cannot know if this knowledge is from a being who is unlimited in knowledge and time unless you yourself are omniscient
“Again, God reveals Himself to be faithful and covenant-keeping; we accept it on authority.”
again you are assuming god to be faithful and covenant-keeping to prove he is faithful and covenant-keeping you just keep pushing the problem back but you cannot solve it
“Of course we rely on induction during the whole process. But the Christian position is that God superintends the entire process,”
once again you are assuming induction works to prove induction works
“Defined acceptably (possible if it refer to the Christian doctrine of God’s immutability), the “Uniformity of God” as you call it and induction are both warranted by His Word: no question-begging. No “squirming.”
yes question begging, yes squirming, its what you are doing right now
“Exactly. You can’t provide reasons for induction, but you know it must hold, because—even though you “suppress the truth”, God has shown it to you and you believe it. Romans 1.”
i have i told you its axomatic, (uniformity of nature) due to the impossiblity of the contary, it HAS to be axomatic due to the fact that any attempt to use a deity like yours to justify induction will commit the fallacy of the stolen concept AND beg the question
“you now appear to admit futility, ”
no i admit your worldview is filled with futility, like your weak attempt to justify the unifomity of god
and you know what the best part is? you just retreated to “Well, part of my presupposition is that God is immutable” then you have still failed to justify or solve the problem of induction – you just “presupposed” it away.you has offered no more rational justification than anyone else who holds the mere expectation that nature will remain uniform – the very expectation you say secularism fails to justify!
“It’s time to tell me more about your worldview. What flavor atheist are you? Objectivist? Materialist?”
only if you admit that you are the only one here that is being futile with your god of the gaps, but no in all seriousness i would have to say i am very simpathetic towars the objectivist view
Tony, I am not arbitrarily assuming an attribute of God, contrived so that I can use it to solve a philosophical problem; God revealed himself such that a *later* philosophical problem would be solved (or would be a non-problem for the Christian).
In your atheistic worldview, basic “reality” is illogical.
[I see that you have an extremely long post out there (in which, skimming it, I see are some misconceptions of my position) to which I can’t reply (I don’t even have time to read it) before I go and work all day; I will get to it when I can.]
Hello there. Long time no see.
In your atheistic worldview, basic “reality” is illogical.
I would suggest that you do not assume such a thing, but rather ask if this is so. In my particular atheistic worldview basic reality is all right with logic. A god into the picture though, would renter the whole thing nonsensical, which is a good reason to suspect that gods are imaginary. Non-existent.
Your worldview, however, assumes that the axiomatic demands justification (but a magical, by all-standards imaginary being does not), but in order to make such demand you need the axiomatic to be true in the first place, which makes the demand self-refuting. You said it yourself above. In my worldview, we don’t accept self-refuting demands, and we discover the axiomatic nature of such things exactly because a question against them is self-refuting (the question refutes itself by questioning it;s own basis). See? No imaginary beings necessary.
As per your imaginary “justification,” it does not solve anything because it requires the very thing that it is supposed to justify before it could even pretend to justify it. Therefore your position and presupposition is nonsense. It is your worldview that contradicts logic, not mine.
Please read for understanding. Last time you answered without comprehending what all this meant.
Best,
-Physics
Physics, see replies to both of your posts below.
you are referring to your responses to me are you not? at anyrate they still don’t seem to answer his/her claims
My culpa.
No and no.
TJ: “so again you are assuming the uniformity of god to prove the uniformity of god . by the way you are forgetting the fact that you are still commiting the fallacy of the stolen concept”
CJ: God speaks in His Word. He breathes out a comprehensive worldview. I accept it on authority. This includes that he is immutable. How is that “assuming the uniformity of god to prove the uniformity of god”? (The form of this question is exactly the same as about how later you claim that I am “assuming god to be faithful and covenant-keeping to prove he is faithful and covenant-keeping”; it’s a common move for you.) Also, please explain how I am “commiting the fallacy of the stolen concept.”
You also call that “question-begging.” Are you saying that for me to stand within my Christian worldview with its presuppositions–as opposed to your anti-Christian worldview which presupposes that Christianity isn’t true–that I am begging the question as to whether God is immutable? I’m trying to wrap my mind around how that could be question-begging…Are you saying that I made up the Christian doctrine of the immutability of God in order to prove that it really is in the Bible?
“Ridicule and insults”, Tony? Please help me…I’m not sure what I said to offend you…
TJ: “CJ: ‘“Knowledge cannot be warranted except by the revelation of One who is unlimited in knowledge and time. He has unlimited time and “mental resources….””’ TJ: “and you cannot know if this knowledge is from a being who is unlimited in knowledge and time unless you yourself are omniscient.”
CJ: So you agree that your beliefs would be unwarranted on the assumption of the falsity of Christianity?
I don’t have to be omniscient if the One who is ominscient, and not only reveals Himself, but also that the revelation actually gets through.
TJ: “CJ: “Of course we rely on induction during the whole process. But the Christian position is that God superintends the entire process,” TJ: ‘once again you are assuming induction works to prove induction works'”
CJ: What’s clear is that you are doing that. A way we’re different on this issue is that we Christians are able to put induction into a broader context which is sufficient for induction, i.e. to account for it. In your worldview, the context actually militates against induction, since at the same time you are trying to establish an ultimate force regulating the world, you deny the existence of an ultimate force regulating the world.
TJ: “CJ: “Defined acceptably (possible if it refer to the Christian doctrine of God’s immutability), the “Uniformity of God” as you call it and induction are both warranted by His Word: no question-begging. No “squirming.”” TJ: “yes question begging, yes squirming, its what you are doing right now.”
CJ: Uh, okay, I’m “squirming.”
You still haven’t dealt with my answer to the charge.
TJ: “CJ: “Exactly. You can’t provide reasons for induction, but you know it must hold, because—even though you “suppress the truth”, God has shown it to you and you believe it. Romans 1.”” TJ: “i have i told you its axomatic, (uniformity of nature) due to the impossiblity of the contary, it HAS to be axomatic due to the fact that any attempt to use a deity like yours to justify induction will commit the fallacy of the stolen concept AND beg the question”
CJ: I’m still waiting for you to deal with my answer to your latter charge.
As for your inconsistently communicated desire to justify induction by Objectivistic axiomaticization, the problem is that the rest of your worldview “militates against induction, since at the same time you are trying to establish an ultimate force regulating the world, you deny the existence of an ultimate force regulating the world.”
TJ: “and you know what the best part is? you just retreated to “Well, part of my presupposition is that God is immutable” then you have still failed to justify or solve the problem of induction – you just “presupposed” it away.you has offered no more rational justification than anyone else who holds the mere expectation that nature will remain uniform – the very expectation you say secularism fails to justify!”
CJ: I didn’t emptily “presuppose” the Problem away, I accepted God’s Word on authority, and have no problem of induction. His Word represents a detail-rich, concrete worldview which is successful in this and many other ways. By contrast, you would have an empty axiom to justify induction, except that the rest of your worldview is in conflict with the axiom.
The old but catchy “god of the gaps” canard is used to lend credibility to the idea that Christians arbitrarily claim that God solves any philosophical problem with which they’re confronted, as if these solutions aren’t actually proper to the Christian worldview as God revealed it in Scripture. But atheists never show that they aren’t; in fact, they are. The Christian just has better materials with which to work in constructing his philosophy. The atheist? He has “limited knowledge/time spans,…limited resources.” Not a good place in which to be for one who is trying to provide comprehensive philosophical answers.
The old but catchy “god of the gaps” canard is used to lend credibility to the idea that Christians arbitrarily claim that God solves any philosophical problem with which they’re confronted
Of course they do!
as if these solutions aren’t actually proper to the Christian worldview as God revealed it in Scripture. But atheists never show that they aren’t; in fact, they are.
They aren’t proper of the Christian worldview, and there’s no such thing as revelation. I have read those passages used as excuses for presuppositionalism, and they don’t mean what presuppositionalists want them to mean. Not only that, they contradict other parts of the Bible. So, it’s mere eisegesis. You guys put that meaning into the text. For example, this god lies, this god kills, this god changes it’s mind, this god gets angry, this god made the earth with pillars, and, if that weren’t enough, this god was not very good at creating, since his creation fell at the first sin. That condemns the whole of humanity to be sinful, and it’s only hope to be the sacrifice of a god. A bloody one at that. Not very intelligent and not very convincing from an omni-whatever god. Unless this god is perfectly evil.
But let’s put it this way. The worst amend presuppositionalists would admit that we all can use reason. OK then. Let’s start there. Suppose you convinced me that the self-refuting demand for a “justification” for logic is truly required. OK, let us suppose that we need that. How do we discover such source? Easy, if there’s a justification, that justification cannot be nonsensical. If we check the Bible and it;s myths, it’s filled with contradictions and nonsense. It’s filled with conflicts with what is discovered in science. OK therefore the god of the Bible (or gods of the Bible, give and take some theologian after another, some part of the Bible and another) cannot be the justification for logic.
You see? But no, you won;t put that to the test because it is your presupposition, But I don’t take presuppositions like that for granted. They come with way too much baggage. If you were able to demonstrate that those demands for justification had merit, which would require you to demonstrate so without using them as a basis for the demonstration (good luck with this), you would still be too far from convincing me that your worldview solves anything. You would still be unable to demonstrate that my worldview is illogical. There’s a difference between illogical and incomplete. Yours would be illogical to its core (using nonsense to justify sense!). Mine incomplete at worst. So what? And this is why the best you could hope for your presupossitionalist approach to be a god-of-the-gaps fallacy. because you think that “incomplete” is wrong, and you prefer to fill in that gap with your god even though it’s nonsense.
I hope that clarifies things and that now you understand why it;s a god-of-the-gaps fallacy.
Again, please, understand the whole.
Best!
-Physics
P.S. By the way. I am certain that your god is false for many reasons. One is your claim that this god has revealed to you that I believe that it exists. Since I am certain that I don’t, and that I have had no revelations from this god, I know with certainty that your particular version of the Christian God is false. It does not matter if your presupposition is that I know this god. What matters is that I know such thing to be false. What matters is that your god is to me exactly the same as any other gods, like Odin or Zeus or Venus or that Volcano. See? I know this will not convince you, but at least let’s you know what I think every time you claim that I know your god. I know your god to be a fantasy, and the only effect of your claim is to make me certain.
P.S.P.S. I don’t know if I have time to come back, but I hope some readers will be able to reason on what I said. Carefully please! Aim at understanding first, then you can demolish it as much as you want, but first make sure that you’ve truly got it.
Physics (hereafter, “P”): “CJ: “Tony, I am not arbitrarily assuming an attribute of God, contrived so that I can use it to solve a philosophical problem; God revealed himself such that a *later* philosophical problem would be solved (or would be a non-problem for the Christian). In your atheistic worldview, basic “reality” is illogical. [I see that you have […]
P: Hello there. Long time no see.
CJ: Hello, P.
P: CJ: “In your atheistic worldview, basic “reality” is illogical.”
I would suggest that you do not assume such a thing,…
CJ: No question is prior to the question of God’s existence; belief or rejection of Him is a transcendental for all other beliefs. The rejection of God is the rejection of the only kind of force which can maintain that reality as we have known it, which includes laws of logic; without this kind of logic-preserving force, logic wouldn’t be preserved; there would be no reason for it to be preserved even for one minute, let alone indefinitely.
P: “but rather ask if this is so. In my particular atheistic worldview…”
CJ: What is your particular atheistic worldview? You’ve always been evasive about this.
P: “…basic reality is all right with logic..”.
CJ: This is the first of many knowledge claims. How do you know that? (Consider this challenge to be repeated over and over throughout. I would appreciate it if you would deal with this challenge just this one time. Nevertheless, I indulge you for the time being….)
(As a Christian, standing within the Christian worldview, I say…) Yes, but can you *account* for its being all right? “Basic reality” makes no sense independent of God’s existence. It needs a worldview. Van Til: “In our theory of reality the most important thing to maintain is that God has reality of Himself. We hear much about “ultimate reality.” God is our ultimate reality. As such He must be eternal; everything temporal is derived. As such He must be completely self-conscious; everything not completely self-conscious is derived. As such He must be self-sufficient; everything not self-sufficient is derived.” Again, “No question is prior to the question of God’s existence; belief or rejection of Him is a transcendental for all other beliefs.” But you’re going to say…
P: “…A god into the picture though, would renter the whole thing nonsensical, which is a good reason to suspect that gods are imaginary. Non-existent.”
CJ: You presuppose the non-existence of God as you say that in pretendedly neutral fashion. Furthermore, why should “sensicality” be preserved with no sensicality-preserving force such as God? No reason, which is why you haven’t offered one.
P: “Your worldview, however, assumes that the axiomatic demands justification (but a magical, by all-standards…”
CJ: …by most anti-Christian standards…
P: “…imaginary being does not), but in order to make such demand you need the axiomatic to be true in the first place, which makes the demand self-refuting. You said it yourself above. In my worldview, we don’t accept self-refuting demands, and we discover the axiomatic nature of such things exactly because a question against them is self-refuting (the question refutes itself by questioning it;s own basis). See? No imaginary beings necessary.
CJ: I agree, no imaginary being is necessary; the real God is necessary.
The problem for the axiom for you is that everything else in your worldview militates against it. At the same that you affirm the existence of an ultimate, universe-regulating force, you deny the existence of an ultimate, universe-regulating force. Again, if induction can be characterized as including the belief that the future will be like the past, you need a non-arbitrary consistent standard by which things are differentiated (e.g. “the future” and “the past”), as well as such a standard by which distinct things can be said to be “like” in the relevant sense, i.e. your worldview must deal successfully with the problem of particulars and universals. In virtue of what are distinct things distinct? In virtue of what are like things like? How do you with your worldview deal with the problem of particulars and universals?
P: “As per your imaginary “justification,” it does not solve anything because it requires the very thing that it is supposed to justify before it could even pretend to justify it. Therefore your position and presupposition is nonsense. It is your worldview that contradicts logic, not mine.”
CJ: Weren’t we talking about warranting induction?
P: “Please read for understanding. Last time you answered without comprehending what all this meant.”
CJ: How so?
[second post]
P: “[CJ: ]as if these solutions aren’t actually proper to the Christian worldview as God revealed it in Scripture. But atheists never show that they aren’t; in fact, they are.
They aren’t proper of the Christian worldview, and there’s no such thing as revelation. I have read those passages used as excuses for presuppositionalism, and they don’t mean what presuppositionalists want them to mean.
CJ: Please back up that claim.
P: “Not only that, they contradict other parts of the Bible. So, it’s mere eisegesis. You guys put that meaning into the text. For example, this god lies,…”
CJ: No.
P: “…this god kills,…”
CJ: So?
P: “…this god changes it’s mind,…”
CJ: No. God sometimes speaks of His own will as people would (Geneva Study Bible: “(b) When the Scripture attributes repentance to God, it is not that he does contrary to that which he has ordained in his secret counsel: but when he threatens it is a calling to repentance, and when he gives man grace to repent, the threatening (which ever contains a condition in it) takes no place: and this the scripture calls repentance in God, because it so appears to man’s judgment.”) We should expect this, given the size of the Bible and its many genres, according to the usage and literature of its readers over the millennia. Context is always key, it explains this so-called “change of mind” and gives the reason. eg Jer 18.11: “11 Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.”’”. In no way do these verses cause one standing in the Christian worldview to doubt as to the fore-ordination of God’s secret sovereign will. There is no contradiction in the Christian worldview.
P: “…this god gets angry,…”
CJ: Not in a sinful or petty way, obviously.
P: “…this god made the earth with pillars,…”
CJ: Figurative language, anyone?
P: “…and, if that weren’t enough, this god was not very good at creating, since his creation fell at the first sin….”
CJ: The earth is still good in the Christian worldview. To us, life is good.
P: “… That condemns the whole of humanity to be sinful, and it’s only hope to be the sacrifice of a god. A bloody one at that. Not very intelligent and not very convincing from an omni-whatever god. Unless this god is perfectly evil….”
CJ: This is not an example of standing within the Christian worldview and showing an internal problem. None of this is.
P: “But let’s put it this way. The worst amend presuppositionalists would admit that we all can use reason. OK then. Let’s start there….”
CJ: We all use reason because we all believe in God. We Christians do so admittedly, and you do so even though you don’t admit it. You “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Romans 1. But you’re not going to “start there”, you’re going to jump right into your anti-Christianity, presupposing the Christianity would be false in order to say…
P: “Suppose you convinced me that the self-refuting demand for a “justification” for logic is truly required. OK, let us suppose that we need that. How do we discover such source? Easy, if there’s a justification, that justification cannot be nonsensical. If we check the Bible and it;s myths, it’s filled with contradictions and nonsense. It’s filled with conflicts with what is discovered in science. OK therefore the god of the Bible (or gods of the Bible, give and take some theologian after another, some part of the Bible and another) cannot be the justification for logic.””
CJ: (Again, none of this is an example of standing within the Christian worldview and showing an internal problem.) I never demand “justification.” At times I will demand warrant. What I really want with respect to logic or mathematics is an account. I want you to put the idea of laws of logic into a context in which they make sense. In your worldview what is there to make anything act in a lawlike fashion? Physics, are you a physicalist? Are you a materialist?
P: “…Again, please, understand the whole.
Best!
-Physics
P.S. By the way. I am certain that your god is false for many reasons. One is your claim that this god has revealed to you that I believe that it exists. Since I am certain that I don’t, and that I have had no revelations from this god, I know with certainty that your particular version of the Christian God is false. It does not matter if your presupposition is that I know this god. What matters is that I know such thing to be false. What matters is that your god is to me exactly the same as any other gods, like Odin or Zeus or Venus or that Volcano. See? I know this will not convince you, but at least let’s you know what I think every time you claim that I know your god. I know your god to be a fantasy, and the only effect of your claim is to make me certain.”
CJ: Again, according to Romans 1, you suppress the truth. How can you know for sure that you’re not suppressing the truth? You can’t.
P: “P.S.P.S. I don’t know if I have time to come back, but I hope some readers will be able to reason on what I said. Carefully please! Aim at understanding first, then you can demolish it as much as you want, but first make sure that you’ve truly got it.”
CJ: Blogs don’t work that way. I know mine doesn’t. If you don’t have time to come back, you shouldn’t be debating. Of course, you shouldn’t anyway, since knowledge claims, predications, and language uses are unwarranted in your worldview.
My two cents’ on the “problem” of induction: it’s only a problem if you hanker after absolute certainty that, say, the Sun will rise tomorrow morning. I, along with Russell, don’t see any reason to believe that there’s a logical string of words that will ever give us this absolute certainty. But I, unlike Russell, don’t let that bother me: I’ll just continue to watch the Sun rise, day after day. It was quite nice this morning, a deep red, just starting to rise far enough to the North that it’s visible from our front door.
It’s revealing that those who think the Problem of Induction is a serious problem are usually theists, philosophers, mathematicians… in other words, those who regard strings of words and symbols as binding on the real world. I think rather that the real world is binding on theism, philosophy, and even mathematics. Just my humble opinion.
cheers from sunny Vienna, zilch
Cheers, Scott!
Yes, they are only…philosophers…who deal with the Problem of Induction; it’s a philosophical problem. Those like Russell who don’t want to deal with it are wanting to avoid doing philosophy at that point.
The whole post is very Russellian; he has an amazing way of–as a brilliant man–missing the most obvious irony. “The real world is binding on theism, philosophy, and even mathematics” is a “string of words and symbols” which would “bind the real world.”
He is very certain that you don’t need certainty. Not if you don’t want to do philosophy, but then, shut your mouth, BR.
CJ,
There’s no irony, just complete and utter misunderstanding on your part. You put the cart before the horse.
“The real world is binding on theism, philosophy, and even mathematics” is not a “string of words and symbols” which would “bind the real world.” It’s a string of words and symbols that describe the relationship between reality and our conceptualizations as dependent on such reality. describing is not the same as binding. My words could not change reality one bit. No string of words could change reality one bit. No matter how well or how bad I describe the dependence of our conceptual frameworks on the real world, the real world remains unaffected. So please. What good does your rhetorical comebacks do other than reveal that you defence of the Christian worldview requires rhetorical play to compensate for its nonsensical nature?
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
“The rejection of God is the rejection of the only kind of force which can maintain that reality as we have known it, which includes laws of logic; without this kind of logic-preserving force, logic wouldn’t be preserved; there would be no reason for it to be preserved even for one minute, let alone indefinitely. ”
there we go again with your questio begging, we have been through this the only thing that preserves logic is existance which always exists, trying to tack on God is just absurd
“Blogs don’t work that way. I know mine doesn’t. If you don’t have time to come back, you shouldn’t be debating. Of course, you shouldn’t anyway, since knowledge claims, predications, and language uses are unwarranted in your worldview”
more question begging plus trotting out refuted claims
Tony, I address this in my reply to your most recent post.
“No question is prior to the question of God’s existence; belief or rejection of Him is a transcendental for all other beliefs. ”
okay yeah you just refuted yourself with this statement you are saying that god can exist without reality, but guess what if that was true than god would be illogical and cannot exist
TJ: CJ: “The rejection of God is the rejection of the only kind of force which can maintain that reality as we have known it, which includes laws of logic; without this kind of logic-preserving force, logic wouldn’t be preserved; there would be no reason for it to be preserved even for one minute, let alone indefinitely. ”
there we go again with your questio begging, we have been through this the only thing that preserves logic is existance which always exists, trying to tack on God is just absurd”
Tony, I’m still waiting for you to work out the conflict in your worldview between the “no God” commitment and the “ultimate world-regulating force (induction) existence” commitment, necessary for the language used to argue on this blog.
“Question-begging”? I think you might have the wrong fallacy that you want to charge here (not that you can make any of them stick). Existence is conceptually subordinate to and dependent upon, but chronologically equally ultimate with, God. (So, no, I am not saying, as you charge, that “god can exist without reality.”) Existence is what it is because of the consistency it has with God’s character. The same is true of laws of logic. Tony, what exactly are laws of logic in your worldview?
But again, you need a lot more than those for a workable worldview. You need a mind (not to mention the unity of the person) that can use those laws. You need an account of how those necessary laws correlate with contingencies in the world. Why should they?
You (still, you were confronted with this earlier and didn’t deal with it) need a basis on which to distinguish things and in virtue of which to say things are “like.” In other words, you need to “tack on” a lot more for a workable worldview.
TJ: CJ: “Blogs don’t work that way. I know mine doesn’t. If you don’t have time to come back, you shouldn’t be debating. Of course, you shouldn’t anyway, since knowledge claims, predications, and language uses are unwarranted in your worldview”
more question begging plus trotting out refuted claims
CJ: “Question begging”? How?
I missed it. Where was the “refutation” to the following?
“CJ: Your “limited knowledge/time spans,…limited resources” is the problem. As I say in the “Futility” post, “given any belief which might be encompassed by such a worldview [as yours], we finite humans (as unaided with respect to our finitude) cannot account for any fact outside our limited sphere of knowledge and control, which fact may represent a defeater for that belief. So, on the assumption of the denial of the Christian worldview, knowledge of any kind is unwarranted. Any objection to the Christian worldview is a non-starter. Christianity, with its omniscient, self-revelatory God, is the only worldview with a chance to be sufficient. And it is.””
Tony, please work out your problem with induction described at the top of today’s post, as well as a problem of language, say, the following one, in order to continue arguing on this blog: how do you explain the miracle of the unity of a person, his nonphysical thought, his codification of that thought into nonphysical symbols, their reference to objects in the world, the correlation of those nonphysical symbols with physical means of transferral to another mysteriously unified person, his receipt–in a chance universe–of the SAME symbols, his nonphysical decodification of symbols, resultant MEANING in his mind?
Hello fellow teacher,
I think you failed to understand my point(s). Maybe not. But here I will point to yet another inconsistency, or inconsistencies. I have only one in mind now, but as we progress we might find a few more. The main one is this:
You want Christianity to be judged from a Christian stance. You don;t want an objective stance, but a Christian one. Yet, you pretend that you can judge my worldview from the stance of your worldview. How come? How does that make sense? Why do you first talk as if atheism and Christianity could be judged objectively on the basis of their self-consistencies, whereby those consistencies would be based on some objective problem (I would hope, though your “objective” problem is fallacious), but then change the rules and don;t want Christianity to be judged objectively. Ah, but I have to accept your judgement of my worldview from your standpoint and beliefs? Is Christianity so badly incoherent that its only hope is not to be judged in an objective way?
I have to go now, But I will come back to elaborate.
Best,
-Physics
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
Hi again,
Before I go. Maybe I can leave you thinking about this single point. But think about it, OK? Don’tt haste to answer:
It is objectively nonsensical to ask for a justification for logic.
Proposing that logic requires justification is self-refuting because in order to claim that logic requires justification you have to use logic. Can you find a way to pose this “problem” without logic? Since you can’t, then the “problem” does not exist. The most it does is prove that logic does not require anything, let a lone a justification. Logic is fundamental. In my worldview, we don;t pretend that something that’s fundamental requires justification. Therefore my worldview is self-consistent, and quite happy with logic.
Think about it before answering. I know that you will bring a different “problem,” bit I will show you that the problem is as self-refuting as this one for attacking it’s very roots. A problem that attacks its very roots points to the fundamentals, and I will show you that even your god, if it was not nonsensical and it could therefore exist, would require these fundamentals to be true before being able to claim that it is the source of those fundamentals.
-Physics.
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
CJ,
You said:
Of course, you shouldn’t anyway, since knowledge claims, predications, and language uses are unwarranted in your worldview.
My answer:
Nope. As I said, knowledge claims, predications and language uses are quite all right in my worldview. Remember. You are failing to check my worldview from its standpoint. Yours is completely useless and dependent on mine before you can even try and refute anything. Unless, of course, your worldview accepts any nonsense as long as said nonsense is part of your worldview. But that makes your worldview, again, useless to support anything, let alone logic and reason. “Logic and reason cannot come but from The Christian God!” Can’t be, logic and reason show that this and that about the Christian god is nonsense! “Nah, you’re failing to judge my worldview from a Christian standpoint!” But then you’re implying that in your worldview nothing is nonsensical if the nonsense is part of your worldview. It is only nonsensical if it’s not. Therefore you have to renounce logic and reason in order to just stand there, yet you feel as if you have any right to judge other worldviews from that very nonsensical stance. Do you really not see the huge contradiction implied in that? Really?
Best,
-Physics
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
“CJ: Again, according to Romans 1, you suppress the truth. How can you know for sure that you’re not suppressing the truth? You can’t.”
I sure can. I know that I;m not suppressing anything in unrighteousness because the claim is believed, by you and others, to come from a being that is clearly nonsensical. Since a nonsensical being cannot exist, the claim is false.
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
“At times I will demand warrant. What I really want with respect to logic or mathematics is an account. I want you to put the idea of laws of logic into a context in which they make sense. In your worldview what is there to make anything act in a lawlike fashion? Physics, are you a physicalist? Are you a materialist?”
In order to demand warrant you rely on logic. In order to demand an account you require logic. So, again, the demands, whatever they are about, require the very thing you want to have a warrant and accounts. Warrants and accounts require logic. So demanding them for logic is absurd. Pretending that for logic to work it requires something is absurd because before anything could “account” or “warrant” logic, logic would have to obtain. What part of this are you not understanding?
I’m not a physicalist or a materialist (physicalism is the new form of materialism, so the question is redundant). I’m a whateverworksist. So, if Christianity wash’t absurd you would have a shot of converting me. But the absurd can never be proven to be true, and therefore you cannot succeed. All you have left, given the absurdity of sour worldview, is this rhetorical play called presuppositionalism. Nice set of tricks, but tricks nonetheless.
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
I said: “…basic reality is all right with logic..”
“CJ: This is the first of many knowledge claims. How do you know that? (Consider this challenge to be repeated over and over throughout. I would appreciate it if you would deal with this challenge just this one time. Nevertheless, I indulge you for the time being….)”
You indulge me for the time being? Nice tactics. When confronted with the problems of your absurd worldview just ask “how do you know?” and refuse to confront your absurdities. As I said, presuppositionalism is mere rhetorical trickery. Thanks for exemplifying CJ.
I know that basic reality is all right with logic, because the opposite would be absurd. Can you prove that basic reality is not all right with logic? Yes or no? (I bet that you will avoid answering this and instead make more absurd demands and claims.)
Remember. You have to stand on my worldview. In my worldview we have no problem of induction. We have no need to answer absurd demands. Therefore my worldview is self-consistent. As per your worldview, you demonstrated that it doesn’t account for anything, because you will never be able to prove that logic requires your god without having logic at the foundation, making your god dependent on logic rather than the other way around. If you were consistent in the slightest you would judge your circularities the same way you judge other worldviews. But consistency is not part of the game. You privilege your worldview for no other reason but it being your worldview. Why shouldn’t other do exactly the same? Your god answers nothing without actually being viciously circular. Without being fallaciously circular. Only you will refuse to admit to this, while trying to have everybody else comply with s standard that you will never be able to fulfil yourself. What’s left then of your rhetoric other than being obviously absurd? Presuppositionalism is the admission that Christianity is so absurd that it;s only refuge in tricks. Tricks that ale the most intelligent Christians into desperate absurdity sprouting machines. Quite good at that, but absurdity machines nonetheless.
Best,
-Physics
Physics, please see my reply to this and your other posts below.
Sorry for the many typos. Forgot to disengage the autocorrect. I’m done for a good while. I know, I know, “if you can’t come back don’t blah blah blah.” But what’s left for you to answer but repeat your absurd claims?
I hope you find reason before this apologetic steals all of your wit, honesty, and intelligence. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that reason will make you an atheist (it;s not automatic). I mean that reason will show you the absurdity of presuppositionalism. That you have engaged in mere rhetorical trickery and then you’ll be free to worship your imaginary being without remorse. After all, engaging in tricks is inconsistent with your worldview. Isn’t it? Free yourself man.
All the best,
-Physics.
P: You want Christianity to be judged from a Christian stance. You don;t want an objective stance, but a Christian one.
CJ: Only One with God’s attributes can possibly be objective. He is outside our experience; he alone can be that “ideal observer” that some philosophers invoke.
Humans can’t be “objective”; God’s Word tells you that you know Him, and you reject that from the start. You are not objective or neutral.
P: Yet, you pretend that you can judge my worldview from the stance of your worldview. How come? How does that make sense? Why do you first talk as if atheism and Christianity could be judged objectively on the basis of their self-consistencies, whereby those consistencies would be based on some objective problem (I would hope, though your “objective” problem is fallacious), but then change the rules and don;t want Christianity to be judged objectively. Ah, but I have to accept your judgement of my worldview from your standpoint and beliefs? Is Christianity so badly incoherent that its only hope is not to be judged in an objective way?
CJ: It’s just the opposite. My critique of your worldview is internal to your worldview. If not, please give an example.
Sometimes, you attempt an internal critique of Christianity, but sometimes…
Remember this?
P: Proposing that logic requires justification is self-refuting because in order to claim that logic requires justification you have to use logic. Can you find a way to pose this “problem” without logic? Since you can’t, then the “problem” does not exist. The most it does is prove that logic does not require anything, let a lone a justification. Logic is fundamental. In my worldview, we don;t pretend that something that’s fundamental requires justification. Therefore my worldview is self-consistent, and quite happy with logic.
</em>…
More P: “Suppose you convinced me that the self-refuting demand for a “justification” for logic is truly required. OK, let us suppose that we need that. How do we discover such source? Easy, if there’s a justification, that justification cannot be nonsensical. If we check the Bible and it;s myths, it’s filled with contradictions and nonsense. It’s filled with conflicts with what is discovered in science. OK therefore the god of the Bible (or gods of the Bible, give and take some theologian after another, some part of the Bible and another) cannot be the justification for logic.””
“CJ: (Again, none of this is an example of standing within the Christian worldview and showing an internal problem.) I never demand “justification.” At times I will demand warrant. What I really want with respect to logic or mathematics is an account. I want you to put the idea of laws of logic into a context in which they make sense. In your worldview what is there to make anything act in a lawlike fashion?”
P: In order to demand warrant you rely on logic. In order to demand an account you require logic. So, again, the demands, whatever they are about, require the very thing you want to have a warrant and accounts. Warrants and accounts require logic. So demanding them for logic is absurd. Pretending that for logic to work it requires something is absurd because before anything could “account” or “warrant” logic, logic would have to obtain. What part of this are you not understanding?
CJ(new): The challenge of my post was ignored. You can claim that your worldview is “all right with logic”, saying, like anyone else could, that you need logic to be skeptical of logic. But if the rest of one’s worldview militated against this conclusion, is everything really “all right” with this worldview? Take the Buddhist. The Buddhist can say, “my worldview is ‘all right with logic,’ because that you need logic to be skeptical of logic.” But for the Buddhist this doesn’t work because of other beliefs he has. He believes that all is one, which means that there’s no ultimate difference between being logical and not being logical. He can mouth the axiom, but his worldview is not all right with logic.
As I challenged Tony, so now I challenge you, Physics: “…what exactly are laws of logic in your worldview? But again, you need a lot more than those for a workable worldview. You need a mind (not to mention the unity of the person) that can use those laws. You need an account of how those necessary laws correlate with contingencies in the world. Why should they?”
P: I’m not a physicalist or a materialist (physicalism is the new form of materialism, so the question is redundant). I’m a whateverworksist. So, if Christianity wash’t absurd you would have a shot of converting me. But the absurd can never be proven to be true, and therefore you cannot succeed. All you have left, given the absurdity of sour worldview, is this rhetorical play called presuppositionalism. Nice set of tricks, but tricks nonetheless.
CJ: Ah, pragmatism. “Whatever works.” But by what standard is it judged that one thing “works” and another thing “doesn’t work”?
BTW one who says that Christianity “would have a shot of converting” him is presupposing the falsity of Christianity a priori; he presupposes that he doesn’t already know God, but according to Christianity, he does. So Christianity really never had a shot of converting him. He is never going to arrive at Christianity presupposing its falsehood.
…
Trying to address the other issues you raised in your flurry of posts, I indeed “indulge you for the time being”: that wasn’t mere rhetoric or a “trick”, that’s my worldview. You don’t deserve to be indulged because you can’t make sense of so many elements of rational discourse, but you are indulged because your futility is only “in principle.” If you could be consistent with your espoused worldview, total chaos would ensue, but because you know God (but suppress the truth in unrighteousness Ro 1.18), you are able to engage in rational discourse, etc…
You claim about me that “you will never be able to prove that logic requires your god without having logic at the foundation, making your god dependent on logic rather than the other way around.” God’s ultimate rationality requires even the skeptic of logic to depend on logic, but this doesn’t require the dependence of the infinite, personal, all-knowing, all-controlling, all-conditioning, self-attesting, self-contained, self-revelatory Creator God upon logic. (“Can you prove that basic reality is not all right with logic? Yes or no?” No because basic reality—is there any other kind?—is all right with logic: both are what they are because of God’s character.) Laws of logic are divine thoughts in the Christian worldview (which is the only way to do justice to the concept of laws of logic and avoid subjectivism), so how can God depend on logical laws?
P: logic and reason show that this and that about the Christian god is nonsense! “Nah, you’re failing to judge my worldview from a Christian standpoint!” But then you’re implying that in your worldview nothing is nonsensical if the nonsense is part of your worldview.
CJ: Ironically, that criticism (about nonsense) can only be made while standing in an anti-Christian worldview. We Christians reject nonsense. Our worldview is rational. The only rational one.
P: “The real world is binding on theism, philosophy, and even mathematics” is not a “string of words and symbols” which would “bind the real world.” It’s a string of words and symbols that describe the relationship between reality and our conceptualizations as dependent on such reality. describing is not the same as binding. My words could not change reality one bit. No string of words could change reality one bit. No matter how well or how bad I describe the dependence of our conceptual frameworks on the real world, the real world remains unaffected.
CJ: I agree. The reality of the ultimate state of affairs can’t be affected by the words of finite humans. I said that *those* words *would* bind the real world i.e., would if they could. They can’t so, they won’t.
They would if the ultimate state of affairs weren’t as it really is i.e., as God has planned it. Those words would change it.
This is a remark I make standing in my own worldview. It’s not an internal critique. It’s effective if I am right about God; ineffective if not. So, this issue depends on the greater issue about God’s existence.
Scott was saying that “philosophers” and their ilk are different from others in this regard. Well, that’s a philosophy.
Actually, we all agree about the “binding” issue (formally).
“CJ: Again, according to Romans 1, you suppress the truth. How can you know for sure that you’re not suppressing the truth? You can’t.”
P: I sure can. I know that I;m not suppressing anything in unrighteousness because the claim is believed, by you and others, to come from a being that is clearly nonsensical. Since a nonsensical being cannot exist, the claim is false.
CJ: P, you will appreciate this *internal* critique of your worldview. On *your own worldview* you can’t know for sure that you’re not suppressing the truth. Given any belief (e.g. that truth is not being suppressed) which might be encompassed by such a worldview [as yours], we finite humans (as unaided by revelation with respect to our finitude) cannot account for any fact outside our limited sphere of knowledge and control, which fact may represent a defeater for that belief. So, on the assumption of the denial of the Christian worldview, knowledge of the absence of the suppression of truth is unwarranted.
P: If you were consistent in the slightest you would judge your circularities the same way you judge other worldviews. But consistency is not part of the game. You privilege your worldview for no other reason but it being your worldview. Why shouldn’t other do exactly the same? Your god answers nothing without actually being viciously circular. Without being fallaciously circular.
CJ: What do you mean by “consistent”? You mean “consistent by the standards of the autonomous man.” But that presupposes that man is autonomous, that he can think anything rightly without thinking God’s thoughts after Him. But that is anti-Christian, and of course, your presuppositions will determine your conclusions (as presuppositions always do): “Your god answers nothing without actually being viciously circular. Without being fallaciously circular.” So, like everyone else, your presuppositions are determining your conclusions. You call that being “circular.” So you are “circular.”
If this be the meaning of “circular”, everyone is circular. The difference is that our circle can make sense of induction, logic, knowledge, morality, etc, and your circle destroys those things.
All the best, Physics.
” Only One with God’s attributes can possibly be objective. He is outside our experience; he alone can be that “ideal observer” that some philosophers invoke.”
no even with omniscience you cannot be objective
” But for the Buddhist this doesn’t work because of other beliefs he has. He believes that all is one, which means that there’s no ultimate difference between being logical and not being logical. He can mouth the axiom, but his worldview is not all right with logic.”
nice one! straw man attack against Buddhism, … Buddhism is not a form of pantheism
“Humans can’t be “objective”; God’s Word tells you that you know Him, and you reject that from the start. You are not objective or neutral.”
let me fix this for you God cannot be “objective” , Go is not objective or neutral, and you just don’t want to except that, the very definition of “God” would disqualify him from being objective
” You need an account of how those necessary laws correlate with contingencies in the world. Why should they?””
because it exists, if something exists it must correlate with contingencies in the world
“We Christians reject nonsense. Our worldview is rational. The only rational one.”
once again this begs the question, if you rejected nonsense then you wouldnt have made such a silly assertion
and the statement “chance” universe is nothing more then a strawman attack against athiesm
Tony, the last time I addressed you, I wrote: “I’m still waiting for you to work out the conflict in your worldview between the “no God” commitment and the “ultimate world-regulating force (induction) existence” commitment, necessary for the language used to argue on this blog.”
Well, I’m still waiting.
I also wrote, “But again, you need a lot more than [laws of logic] for a workable worldview. You need a mind (not to mention the unity of the person) that can use those laws. You need an account of how those necessary laws correlate with contingencies in the world. Why should they?”
You answered a different question: “because it exists, if something exists it must correlate with contingencies in the world.”
Not everyone agrees. Some deny necessities. Some (possibly some objectivists?) deny contingencies. Most do hold to the correlation you posit. I do. But I want “an account of *how*” it does. *How* do necessities like laws of logic correlate with the contingencies of the world without a God to superintend the correlating? (The correlation is necessary for the use of logic on blogs like this one.) Please deal with this question, not a different question.
Further, do you mean “exist” in such a way that God exists, or do you mean “exist” in such a way the God doesn’t exist? The “God question” conditions everything. Again, existence is conceptually subordinate to and dependent upon, but chronologically equally ultimate with, God. Existence is what it is because God’s character is what it is.
I also wrote, “You (still, you were confronted with this earlier and didn’t deal with it) need a basis on which to distinguish things and in virtue of which to say things are ‘like.’”
Again, you didn’t deal with it.
Three other ignored challenges:
But you did feel the need to chime in in response to my argument to Physics that one’s worldview doesn’t necessarily *account* for logic just because he can refute skepticism of logic:
For some reason, you felt the need to defend Buddhism (why do atheists tend to do that?): “nice one! straw man attack against Buddhism, … Buddhism is not a form of pantheism.”
If you’re going to use sarcasm against me on my own blog, at least refrain from misrepresenting what I said. Who said anything about pantheism? Do they not believe that all is one?
Again, Tony, what *are* laws of logic in your worldview?
TJ: CJ: “Humans can’t be “objective”; God’s Word tells you that you know Him, and you reject that from the start. You are not objective or neutral.”
let me fix this for you God cannot be “objective” , Go is not objective or neutral, and you just don’t want to except that, the very definition of “God” would disqualify him from being objective
I think you are taking “objective” and “neutral” as synonymous. No, obviously God is not neutral about the question of His own existence. But yes, the infinite, transcendent God is objective in a way finite humans can’t be.
TJ: CJ: “We Christians reject nonsense. Our worldview is rational. The only rational one.”
once again this begs the question, if you rejected nonsense then you wouldnt have made such a silly assertion and the statement “chance” universe is nothing more then a strawman attack against atheism
If by “begs the question” you mean that presuppositions determine conclusions, then yes. It’s not really the right way to say it, because it seems to imply that there’s a fallacy here someplace. My point is that, contrary to the possible position that Christians admit to nonsense or irrationality within our own worldview, we reject nonsense.
Hypocritically, your anti-Christian presupposition is determining your conclusion of Christian nonsense and Christian “silliness.” Such determination is unavoidable, but then you point the finger at Christians.
Your final comment is strange in that you accuse me of building a strawman, and then just leave it there, not showing how it’s a strawman. If you hold to some kind of (naturalistic?) determinism (as opposed to “chance”) please say so.
I count six significant challenges that have been put to you. Please answer them in order to continue to dialogue on this blog. Take them one at a time if you like. It’s better that way, anyway. That’s how I intend to deal with Physics. Trading long posts, in which people can pick and choose what they want to address and what they want to ignore, inflated with sarcasm and ad hominems, is not likely to get us far any time soon. Just deal with the first one.
CJ,
How could I possible start explaining my worldview to you if you will not even try and be objective about it? How if you won’t give satisfactory answers to your own “challenges”?
I answered your challenge, you just don’t want to see it. By the way, I’m no buddhist, and I have asked you repeatedly not to tell me what my worldview is, but to ask. You are far off out there taking nonsense about it, claiming that it is nonsense, yet, you stand in a completely nonsensical one. How does that help at all?
[Truncated according to the purpose explained below–CJ.]
Physics,
Above I wrote (to Tony): “Take them one at a time if you like. It’s better that way, anyway. That’s how I intend to deal with Physics. Trading long posts, in which people can pick and choose what they want to address and what they want to ignore, inflated with sarcasm and ad hominems, is not likely to get us far any time soon.”
So although you have six posts in the queue—an outburst of arguments mixed with insults and emotion at 12:52 am, 1:09 am, 1:29 am, 1:33 am, 1:35 am, and 2:27 am one night/morning—we will bite off the first little piece and attempt to nail down our differences, so that the two positions can be seen and evaluated more clearly.
P: CJ,
How could I possible start explaining my worldview to you if you will not even try and be objective about it?
…as if objectivity were possible for humans. Any phenomenon whatsoever will be interpreted differently by two people with different worldviews. Because of the scope of theism, both theism and its negation condition the interpretation of every possible phenomenon.
However, one can put himself on his interlocutor’s position for argument’s sake.
Then, if I misunderstand what you’re saying, explain how.
P: How if you won’t give satisfactory answers to your own “challenges”?
Explain how I’m failing to give “satisfactory” answers to my own challenges.
P: I answered your challenge, you just don’t want to see it.
What does that mean? Here’s the chronology:
The applicability of any logical fact to reality depends on the worldview which encompasses it.
P: “By the way, I’m no buddhist, and I have asked you repeatedly not to tell me what my worldview is, but to ask. You are far off out there taking nonsense about it, claiming that it is nonsense, yet, you stand in a completely nonsensical one. How does that help at all?”
If you can read
and get from that that I’m calling you a Buddhist, you really need to rethink how you read the things I write. And this from someone who ostensibly thinks he is being objective. I know you’re not a Buddhist; I used the Buddhist as an illustration. See that “one’s” there? That’s in the third person, not the second person. It’s about him, not you.
You say to ask. I have asked, and you said you’re a “whateverworksist.” Fine. You seem to be trending objectivist. You’re not a Buddhist.
Possibly I’m wrong. Okay, Physics, what’s your worldview?