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emsby
Skeptic Friend
76 Posts |
 Posted - 02/27/2008 : 13:43:37
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I'm blatantly stealing this gem from a friend of mine who's much smarter than I. I think it's great. Keep in mind the guy is a theist, and a pretty devout one at that. Enjoy.
It is my earnest belief that were Creationism to be true we would be, quite literally, at a loss for words.
Young Earth Creationism requires of you the belief that actually all of the masses of evidence we have that the earth is very old is simply wrong, that actually there is near universal error amongst those who have studied it, and that many observable processes have an arbitary point at which they no longer apply, contrary to all common sense. But this is too much. By which I mean, the acceptance of Creationism requires a skepticism so great that actually one can no longer have any reason to believe that the words one uses actually bare any relation to whatever it is you wish to convey. What's more, you'd have no guarantee of the fact that the logic of your thoughts was in anyway coherent. In order to doubt you must at least be certain of these linguistic facts in order to consider ones doubts and communicate them to others, but I'd say this is no more certain than the sheer multitude of evidence which points to the universe being A) far older than 6000 years and B) created in a vastly different manner to the 6 day hypothesis. Am I more certain that my thoughts and language accurately convey things (that, say, I am not insane and deluded) than I am of the fact that there is not universal error among scientists caused by a conspiracy of the facts, as it were? I think not. This, I consider, is the linguistic disproof of Creationism - The doubt it requires of you in order to accept it cannot coherently be maintained.
This is why the initial folk reaction to such things as the fossil records (Put there by Satan to test us) simply could not hold. It would very easily fall victim to the linguistic disproof - I simply don't have a worldview which can accomodate millions of years of history fabricated and yet a language certain enough to entertain the thoughts. What's more, I would consider everything that AIG and such people do to actually be an attack not on the physical sciences, but rather an attempt to defend against this disproof. They seek not necessarily to replace the evolutionary model (although they do of course wish to do so, you will frequently find them making such claims as: When 2 scientists look at the same evidence, they can come to different conclusions or "Evolution is just a theory, here's another") but rather to provide an alternative world view whereby Creationism can actually be spoke of - in essense, to make it plausible enough to even discuss rather than to actually demonstrate its purpoted truth to anybody.
This enterprise even requires of them the positing of some absurd international conspiracy of the intelligentsia: But absurd as it is, I can see why given what I've said above - if there was no conspiracy, and there really was just honest near universal error, then actually the very notion of error collapses. If it was the case that actually we've been this radically wrong about the age of the universe, and are so because the evidence is just fundemantally deceiving, then what on earth does it mean to be deceived? What is "true" and "false" in such a world where correspondence with the facts actually leads to error!?
Essentially, I think a lot of the greatest absurdities of Creationist attempts to make their case result from the fact that if they didnt posit such things it would be impossible to speak of Creationism. It would collapse under it's own skepticism. |
Good stuff.
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Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I. |
Edited by - emsby on 02/27/2008 14:28:48
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 14:19:50 [Permalink]
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Emsby.....
Your friend speaks eloquently, logically and persuasively. I, for one, would be interested in his exposition of the reasons that he is a devout theist! I think we (the forum) could have an interesting conversation with him, as he is obviously not a mindless babbling fundie, much less a creationist!
Some of the most fascinating and challenging religion conversations I have had in my life were with Jesuits, and Jesuit trained Catholics. For those that enjoy high-level intellectual tag, you can't beat a highly educated, devout, well-spoken and resourceful Believer as an opponent!
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emsby
Skeptic Friend
76 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 14:27:08 [Permalink]
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bngbuck...
| Some of the most fascinating and challenging religion conversations I have had in my life were with Jesuits, and Jesuit trained Catholics. |
Same here! When I was a young whippersnapper of an atheist, I had very angry ideas about the Catholic church, mostly because I'm a bit of a feminist and wasn't crazy about their ideas on birth control and abortion. But my friend, the one who wrote this and is a devout Catholic, has shown me how logical, consistent and intelligent the Catholic church can actually be. He laughs at me for often saying "I love the Catholic church because they are willing to jump through theological hoops in order to remain logical and consistent."
And yes, he is good for some great religious debate. He actually has a membership here... his name is "The Death of Achilles." I've made him aware that I plagiarized him here, so he may very well join us. Let's hope so!
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Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I. |
| Edited by - emsby on 02/27/2008 14:28:01 |
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The_Death_Of_Achilles
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 17:31:39 [Permalink]
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| Cheers Emsby, but the thing is I'm not actually getting any criticism when actually I think there are some grave errors in that post. I will post my problems on the Pit then C&P them here. |
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The_Death_Of_Achilles
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 17:54:50 [Permalink]
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I've come to believe I was actually way off in that post, and it's getting a lot of undue praise. Not that I dont appreciate it, I just think I've made some serious errors and it would have been nice had the Creationist crowd pointed this out themselves.
The_Arrow_Of_Paris says:
What utter giberish! A greater collection of equivocations, non-sequitors and question beggings I have never seen. What's more your whole style is flippant, do you suppose yourself to be witty?
I assure you, you're neither witty nor possessed of any skill in debate. Let's reason together - if indeed you're capable of such a feat. What's more, you'd have no garuntee of the fact the logic of your thoughts was in anyway coherent. In order to doubt you must at least be certain of these linguistic facts in order to consider ones doubts and communicate them to others, but I'd say this is no more certain than the sheer multitude of evidense which points to the universe being A) far older than 6000 years and B) created in a vastly different manner to the 6 day hypothesis. Am I more certain that my thoughts and language accurately convey things (that, say, I am not insane and deluded) than I am of the fact that there is not universal error among scientists caused by a conspiricy of the facts, as it were? I think not. This, I consider, is the linguistic disproof of Creationism - The doubt it requires of you in order to accept it cannot coherently be maintained.
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The Linguistic Disproof, then, runs as such in Logical Form: "If Creationism is absurd and wrong, then it is wrong and absurd". Well, I'm sure the Pit feels fortunate to have you Achilles. No doubt they could never have made such leaps of reason themself - You have added nothing which does not require somebody to already be convinced of Creationism's error. Worthless, in essense.
The first two arguments are pure question begging, they may well be correct but since they require you to already accept Creationism they are utterly useless to anybody who wishes to correct those fallen into the error of Creationism - at least, error as you assume it to be. As of such, this whole argument becomes irrelevent, and nothing anybody should consider. At most it convinces people: The absurd is absurd and at least it does nothing.
| What is "true" and "false" in such a world where correspondence with the facts actually leads to error!? |
How did such equivocation not get seen through! Not only have you performed your usual question begging and assumed that the conspiricy of the intelligensia is a delusion (do you suppose it easy to get easy to get funding while supporting a theses as controvertial as Creationism?) but you then go on to use the word "fact" in such a deceptive way and add much polemic strength to your weak argument. If Creationism is correct, then clearly the facts point to Creationism! Anything which suggests otherwise is a misreading of the facts - how could their be any facts which conflict with Creationism if Creationism was the fact of the matter?
What's more, even accepting your absurdity of an argument as valid -- say goodbye to Quantem physics (could anything be further from common sense?) and in fact any process of reasoning which isnt in accord with the man on the street - or are you the arbiter of what is and is not a valid inference of "common sense" now?
Deceptive nonsense - typical of what one would expect of a wannabe-atheist such as yourself! |
Well, how would I respond to my Creationist friend? I think I would say that the last paragraph only highlights the difficulties language faces when dealing with Creationism. THe things we'd normally call "facts" simply cant be "facts" in a Creationist universe: But basically nothing can. On the first point, however, what is there to say?
I suppose I would wish to say that I'm not question begging in that the reason I cannot give Creationism the "fair hearing" is that the very conclusion of this argument renders it impossible. But, erm, that is question begging. So, what can I say? What's more, as (loathe as I am to credit her! [laugh]) Chx made me realise: This argument is far too wide. |
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Lambchopsuey
New Member
14 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 19:09:32 [Permalink]
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The_Arrow_Of_Paris says:
That's hot.
 <- This doesn't look like a yawn to me. It looks like someone performing a particular act on an invisible penis. And swallowing. |
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The_Death_Of_Achilles
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 04:24:40 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Lambchopsuey
The_Arrow_Of_Paris says:
That's hot.
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Yeah, see what I did there, with the "arrow of paris" for "death of Achilles" eh? Eh? ... I'll get my coat. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 22:43:20 [Permalink]
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Embsy.....
The discourse between TDOA and TAOP is fascinating, and with the side comment of LCS thrown in, it becomes titillating! Unfortunately, the context is not at all clear from these glimpses of a fencing match between the amazingly self assured Arrow person and your rather modest, yet apparently quite competent friend Achilles. I rather lost the sense of it.
I still would like Achilles to respond to my question in this Forum.Your friend speaks eloquently, logically and persuasively. I, for one, would be interested in his exposition of the reasons that he is a devout theist! I think we (the forum) could have an interesting conversation with him, as he is obviously not a mindless babbling fundie, much less a creationist!
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A intellectually capable theist would be a joy to engage with here. All of the Theistic True Believers here are incompetent nutcase fundies of one coloration or another! |
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The_Death_Of_Achilles
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2008 : 10:58:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Embsy.....
The discourse between TDOA and TAOP is fascinating, and with the side comment of LCS thrown in, it becomes titillating! Unfortunately, the context is not at all clear from these glimpses of a fencing match between the amazingly self assured Arrow person and your rather modest, yet apparently quite competent friend Achilles. I rather lost the sense of it. |
Firstly, thank you, and sorry for the late reply - but I hope you know that actually both TDOA and TAOP are both me. I'm not sure if you picked up on it (I made it more explicit in the other forum) but yeah that's self criticism. Thanks for the compliments to both of my split personalities though 
A intellectually capable theist would be a joy to engage with here. All of the Theistic True Believers here are incompetent nutcase fundies of one coloration or another!
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And now I worry that having been built up so much I shant be able to offer anything like what's expected of me! What can I say as of to why I believe? It is a question I have been giving much thought recently, however my thoughts have taken a rather linguistic turn really and what I've been trying to consider (Or, rather, read up on the considerations of others more competent than myself! - I'm not normally this modest, but honestly the utter failure of my argument from the OP genuinly dented my confidense in my ability to come up with good argumentation of my own. It was meant to be my crowning glory  ) is whether it makes any sense to say anything about God.
The emphasis is there, because I'm starting to move very strongly away from what I once belived (I am now and always have been a Catholic, and the Catholic Church of all Churches says a lot about God), but it has not entailed a drop of my strong intuitive (and I wouldnt call it emotional, for I genuinly dont feel any particular emotional so much as intellectual affinity for the idea) belief in God. Now, I am very much aware that there is no reason to suppose that one's intuitions correspond to anything in reality, but normally convincing myself of that is sufficient to make the intuition go away. In this case it has not been, and I maintain it is not rational to delude oneself into believing what one does not actually - in one's heart of hearts so to speak - affirm as true. Or, in this case, if I simply cannot, for some pyschological reason or perhaps because of some mystic intuitive power of mine, make my affirmation of the faith in God go away, I should not delude myself into thinking that it has.
So, where does that leave my religious faith? Well I was impressed by the sentiment expressed by Wittgenstein which ran as such | He likened the ritual of religion to a great gesture, as when one kisses a photograph. This is not based on the false belief that the person in the photograph will feel the kiss or return it, nor is it based on any other belief. Neither is the kiss just a substitute for a particular phrase, like "I love you." Like the kiss, religious activity does express an attitude, but it is not just the expression of an attitude in the sense that several other forms of expression might do just as well. There might be no substitute that would do. The same might be said of the whole language-game (or games) of religion, but this is a controversial point. |
But, of course, that entails | If religious utterances, such as "God exists," are treated as gestures of a certain kind then this seems not to be treating them as literal statements. |
And I'm not really sure what that entails. If I dont know that, do I know what it means? And if I dont know what it means, can I agree with it?
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| Edited by - The_Death_Of_Achilles on 03/03/2008 10:59:20 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2008 : 11:45:10 [Permalink]
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DOA, at least you recognize that the evidence for god's existence is primarily in your head. That is, the strongest reason you have for maintaining your theism is that it feels intuitively correct. This strongly suggests, to me anyway, a psychological origin for the entire concept of a deity. It "feels" correct the same way that it "feels" we live on a flat Earth--a strong illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. While recognizing this may not make your desire to believe in god disappear (anymore than recognizing the irrationality of tapping door handles makes the impulse vanish for OCD sufferers), it must certainly rob the god hypothesis of some of its power to persuade.
| I maintain it is not rational to delude oneself into believing what one does not actually - in one's heart of hearts so to speak - affirm as true. Or, in this case, if I simply cannot, for some pyschological reason or perhaps because of some mystic intuitive power of mine, make my affirmation of the faith in God go away, I should not delude myself into thinking that it has. |
No, I agree that you should not delude yourself into thinking that your belief in god has disappeared simply because you cannot find any strong arguments to support it. However, you should not use that as an excuse to keep it either. Intellectual honesty requires that we abandon bad ideas, no matter how personally compelling we may find them. No matter how intuitively correct I find the impulse to believe that the straight road I travel tapers into a point, I must remind myself that parallel lines do not converge, and my senses are confounded by an illusion of perspective. I do not deny my impulse to believe an untruth, but neither I do not allow that impulse to overcome sound reason.
After all, we all have an ethical and moral imperative to hold the most reasonable beliefs.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 03/03/2008 12:29:54 |
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The_Death_Of_Achilles
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2008 : 12:41:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
That is, the strongest reason you have for maintaining your theism is that it feels intuitively correct |
This is a problem for me, but honestly one I have no means of correcting. I am often the subject of my friends mockery for being overly rational, in that I refuse to feel things which they think it self evident that people should feel in normal discourse (envy and/or anxt with respect to former partners of my partner, for instance) because I see no reason to. Yet it utterly breaks down. What gives first, intuition or reason? Well, if I had some directly contradictory statement then I imagine reason would have it in the bag - but normally in all but cases of extreme skepticism simple lack of reason is enough to knock down intuition, but this time it simply isnt doing it. I genuinly have no idea about how to go on.
| I do not deny my impulse to believe an untruth, but neither I do not allow that impulse to overcome sound reason. |
And if it were such that I had some principle whereby I could assure myself either that my intuitions were sound (and I think that in some common sense cases, "There are other minds" or "There is a world" then intuition overcomes the lack of reason ever capable of coming up with clever skeptical arguments - contrary to what some very clever men, Plantigna for instance, feel I dont think that the existence of God is in this realm, although I intend to read "God and Other Minds" to be fair to his case) or that reason should over come it (for instance in your case of the seeming appearences vs the dictates of reason being directly contradictory) I'd be fine. I could decide it one way or the other. I dont.
If this post was convoluted (and it was) it's because the thoughts it represents are clear at all. |
| Edited by - The_Death_Of_Achilles on 03/03/2008 12:41:59 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2008 : 12:55:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by The_Death_Of_Achilles
And if it were such that I had some principle whereby I could assure myself either that my intuitions were sound (and I think that in some common sense cases, "There are other minds" or "There is a world" then intuition overcomes the lack of reason ever capable of coming up with clever skeptical arguments - contrary to what some very clever men, Plantigna for instance, feel I dont think that the existence of God is in this realm, although I intend to read "God and Other Minds" to be fair to his case) or that reason should over come it (for instance in your case of the seeming appearences vs the dictates of reason being directly contradictory) I'd be fine. I could decide it one way or the other. I dont.
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But there is such a principle. It's called pragmatic skepticism. Make as few assumptions (leaps of faith) as possible to remove oneself from the tar pit of solipsism, but no more.
It may not be perfect, but it seems to work the best (in terms of producing valid and verifiable results) of any system I've seen.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Creationism Collapses Language
