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Our memories come from previous information (see, hear, feel, etc).Because what we see, hear and feel all contribute information that matches our memories.
As I quoted 'I think theerefore I am.
Since information (methods of perception, etc.) starts at our brains, everything after that is a conclusion drawn from said information.
Here are a few things I would say everyone would have to presuppose, in order to even have the conversation. If you disagree, please explain why:
1) Stating any preexisting truths, facts or exclusions, first came from your brain.
2) Superimposing something is comes from your brain.
3) You can't "know" something, prior to being aware of it, and if you are, you are making unsubstantiated claims.
4) Referencing something, after the fact, is of little value since you've already arrived at your position.
5) Issues ("how do you know what you know?", etc) do not offer any solutions, but create problems outside the framework we are dealing with. Talking about what we don't/can't know gets us no closer to an answer of a question. Unanswerable questions are useless.
Seeing as how this poses a circular problem, as far as a truth goes, any positive position arrived at is equally possible as any other.
How is it possible that a Christian belief can be held as truth, given this?
Information exists, literally, before our brains take it in. But, for all intents and purposes, it does not prior to receiving it."Information starts at our brains"? I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying all information that exists only does so once our brains take it in?
Saying there is something that exists above or over (whether-you-know-it-or-not type stuff) cannot be a valid answer. That concept still started from your brain.1.) Stating a truth requires first that you are aware of it. Obviously, yes.
2.) I would respond to this point if I could decipher what you wrote...
Agreed.3.) How would one make an "unsubtantiated claim" about something of which one is unaware? If one is unaware of a fact, one cannot make any comment on it.
Post hoc rationalization. Coming after a the thing in question has already been established.4.) What does "referencing after the fact" mean, exactly? After the fact of what?
If you asked where does consciousness come from and I responded with, "Consciousness first interacts with the light of acceptance. From there, it comes from the continuity of incredible possibilities, depending on exponential timelessness", I'm sure you'd find that less than helpful.5.) What "framework" are you talking about? How does one talk about what one does not know? If one does not a know a thing, it seems to me one cannot talk about it.
The above help?If we are going to have a conversation about a specific thing/idea, responses that jump outside our range of knowledge offer no value. I don't see the circular problem you've tried to pose. This is likely because your five points are rather ambiguous. Can you clear up your language and meaning a bit? Thanks.
Information exists, literally, before our brains take it in. But, for all intents and purposes, it does not prior to receiving it.
Saying there is something that exists above or over (whether-you-know-it-or-not type stuff) cannot be a valid answer. That concept still started from your brain.
Post hoc rationalization. Coming after a the thing in question has already been established.
I put "prediction" in this category.
If we are going to have a conversation about a specific thing/idea, responses that merely muddy the waters offer no value.
Therefore, we need to have a basic baseline and framework to have conversations.
The above help?
I'm afraid this sounds like you're contradicting yourself. I agree with you that information exists independent of our brains. Saying, then, that it doesn't makes you sound confused. Besides, how would I come to know any fact if it existed only after I apprehended it?
People apprehend new knowledge all the time - at least, I do. This new knowledge has existed regardless of my being aware of it. It had to have existed this way, or I would not have been able to apprehend it. Given that this is so, I don't see why we can't talk of things that exist independent of our understanding. Many, many things exist in such a realm.
How do you distinguish between a "post hoc rationalization" and new light coming to a matter as one thinks on it and investigates related data?
But what one may find murky another may regard as entirely clear. On what basis, then, do you determine what does and doesn't "offer value" in a particular discussion?
Well, if nobody wants to have any meaningful discussion, we need to have a baseline and framework for how we go about things.Of course. How do you decide what the framework or baseline should be? Why should anyone else agree to meet your framework or baseline?
Since information (methods of perception, etc.) starts at our brains, everything after that is a conclusion drawn from said information.
okay... but you have already violated your first rule!1) Stating any preexisting truths, facts or exclusions, first came from your brain.
You can't "know" something, prior to being aware of it, and if you are, you are making unsubstantiated claims.
Referencing something, after the fact, is of little value since you've already arrived at your position.
So skepticism always collapses on itself due to the fact that it assumes knowledge and criterion that it then says we can't gain.Issues ("how do you know what you know?", etc) do not offer any solutions, but create problems outside the framework we are dealing with. Talking about what we don't/can't know gets us no closer to an answer of a question. Unanswerable questions are useless.
We get all information from our senses. Your brain is at the center of all your input, from those senses.Entertaining! We have had versions of skepticism since Socrates, and Descartes is germane to your assumptions, but few philosophers hold to skepticism these days.
Google foundationalism and it will help.
okay... but you have already violated your first rule!
How do you, "Know," perception starts with your brain?
You just hand us that presupposition without fulfilling any of your rules.
See the last comment. Your statement is self-refuting. For a recent scholarly treatment of the problem see Roderick Chisolm "The Problem of The Criterion."
Such as your referencing you assumption that all perceptions starts at our brain.
So skepticism always collapses on itself due to the fact that it assumes knowledge and criterion that it then says we can't gain.
Please justify you initial presupposition based on your own set of rules.
P.S. Some theists have had at least a freshman-college-level understanding of epistemology
I cannot see of a way to know or believe or have a thought about anything, without that coming from my brain.
Repeating a belief no matter how many times does not add warrant. What is the justification for your claim? Using your own knowledge criterion.We get all information from our senses. Your brain is at the center of all your input, from those senses.
Well, I'm at work and can't respond to all of that easily.Why would I believe my senses or yours? Were we design by someone to have perfect or even reasonable sensorial comprehension of the external world given atheism/naturalism.
Why would random mutation focused on survival of the fittest lead to survival or the most epistemically-accurate. Or truth? The brainiacs would get eaten by the football squad every time it seems.
Alvin Plantinga has dealt with this idea in his, "Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism."
Repeating a belief no matter how many times does not add warrant. What is the justification for your claim? Using your own knowledge criterion.
This is not a word-game here.
This is why skepticism does not last long in any culture. It just raises the bar for what we call knowledge. The content of knowledge doesn't actually go up or down.
Again see Foundationalism for more info.
Assume your mom has passed away. Also we might destroy all records of your mom's existence. Say in a fire or series of fires. Although you had a rich experience of your mother, if someone ask you to prove that the person in a picture was you mom how might you do that. There is no one living to confirm you claims. No records.
Point is that experience or a posteriori claims may be enough to warrant beliefs. In fact every day we can hold Cartesian skepticism up against millions of facts. The data of the surrounding world that allows up to operate in same. Billions of pieces of grass everyone of which we can pluck, and they will smell of chlorophyll, and appear green rather than purple or black, they will be able to be torn. The fact that a few times in the billions, we misperceive, doesn't mean we can't properly perceive most of the time.
Reply after you have reviewed some of the material I proposed and I would be glad to engage and see how you respond.
I'll address basic questions:
"Why would I believe my senses or yours?"
You wouldn't. How are you aware of these senses or what they even are to believe?
I feel if I go over all that you have said, we'll have a debate inside a debate, etc.LOL. That reply is a non-sequitur.
I am not talking about the private nature of ones qualia.
I am asking for justification of you presupposition.
However, I get that it may take a few days or longer to engage the material I suggested and that is no problem.
I would rather engage these ideas at a high level than in an off-the-cuff manor anyways. Just reach back out when you get a chance.
Thanks.
So, it seems that faith is the key. Faith in what (part), exactly?
Thanks.So in the continnum of religious faith that is the Christian Church there is a line that runs through from Jesus, the Apostles, the Church, and eventually to me.
On some level I need to trust that which has communicated to me these things, which includes my parents, other Christians who have been part of my religious formation, as well as the various historic witnesses: that would include historic Christian writings, the historic Creeds, as well as the Bible itself. That faith that these things are reliably communicating something true, which goes back to the historical Jesus and His earliest followers. Thus it is a faith that happens all along that line, that faith includes that historic writings of the Church are to be reliable, faith that what these things are saying about the Apostles and Jesus are reliable, and that what I encounter as the apostolic teaching is reliable, etc.
In the Apostles' Creed we read, "We believe ... in one holy catholic Church" the Nicene Creed likewise says, "We believe ... in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church". Thus to believe in the Church is an article of faith, and to believe in the Church is nothing other than to believe that this historic assembly of believing members confessing together one and the same Jesus is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic:
One, for Jesus has only one people, comprised of all the baptized faithful of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Holy, sanctified in Christ as a holy people whose identity has been found through Jesus.
Catholic, an indivisible body made up of many members.
Apostolic, comprised of and built upon the faithful reception and teaching of the ancient apostles.
And this one, holy, catholic, and apostolic assembly of Christian people has been entrusted and has safeguarded the faith since the beginning, which I now receive in good faith--even in spite of the many problems which it has faced both external and internal such as schisms and persecutions.
To believe in the Church is to believe that God faithfully has continued to communicate the Word given at the beginning in and through Christ and who is Christ.
-CryptoLutheran
The scenario deals with you just finding yourself in that situation, not whether you should or not accept the premises of it. It is what it is. You are where you are.Why should we adopt a skeptical view of knowledge demonstrated by OP's premises?
In 2013, 99 of the Top university philosophy departments from around the world were surveyed (over 900 professional respondents replied).
Only 4.8% held skepticism to be true!
If professional philosophers soundly reject the OP's a priori assumptions (even though philosophers are over-represented as a class holding to atheism), why should we accept them?
https://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP.pdf
Hello,
Think of it this way:
Instead of, "One of the things I've always found puzzling is the acceptance of deities"
I would say, "One of the things I always find puzzling is the denial of evidence found, to believe in God."
The law of Causality, the law of Biogenesis, the first and second laws of Thermodynamics, are all laws that rule in favor of a supreme being. These are laws that world agrees upon, yet they "deny" that there is a God.
With all the technology we have today, no one can yet still prove that non life can create life. Dead matter cannot create living matter
Also, on top of scientific evidence,
the bible has been found historically accurate and of the centuries upon centuries upon centuries of time the bible has been written,
it is not contradictory of itself one little bit. People have tried to bring evidence of its contradictions but have been found wrong. It doesn't contradict at all with all the men that wrote in all the centuries of separation between them. This brings you to who the real author behind the scenes is, God (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
What evidence ?
Why would there have to be a god, the laws we understand are not laws in legal terms, they are merely how we describe what we see.
What is non life exactly, and what is 'dead' matter, is there a difference ?
Which evidence do you speak of ?
So, do you believe in a 7 days creation, people who lived to be nearly 1000 years old, unicorns,and floods that covered the highest mountain on Earth ?
And just because it mentions historical events (many of which are unproven) does not mean it's supernatural claims are in fact true. Any more than because London exists and Dick Whittington existed, and his descriptions of what life in London at the time is correct, means that his cat stories are true.
Actually the denial of many of the contradictions are nothing more than torturous attempts to twist logic and often appeal to the old 'god can do what he wants' or 'his ways are not our ways' reasoning.
Of course to ask anyone to adopt these is firstly to bear the burden of evidence of a god in the first place.
Greetings,Well, kind of like a book for example, you need to read the introduction and then you get into the meat of the story after the intro.
Before you post a separate quote to something I jot down like "what evidence?" at the very beginning of my post, why don't you read the entire post first to see the evidence I explain.
I am not forcing these laws to say there is a God, I use them because the world agrees to the laws definition. The definitions in which proves a higher being behind the scenes from what we know in science, etc.
I know they are not legally binding definitions, but like from what you said, "they are merely how we describe what we see." and what we see is why the world agrees upon the laws very definitions. This is "ungetaroundable" as a friend of a friend once said.
These laws on which the world agrees upon mind you, are very relevant as evidence. If you did indeed understand what these laws are stating, then it should be clear. If not, I understand why you are brushing this under the rug. If you do understand and are trying to brush it aside, that in itself would be denial, knowing what it says yet turning a blind eye at this truth, to push it off as nothing. No, you don't get to do that. This is a relevant case that you tried to sweep away as nothing, knowing that you cannot explain it.
Honestly, I shouldn't have to explain this. I'm sure you already know. Just in case you really just do not know, dead matter/non-living is the same. I basically repeated myself on that part using two different words with the same meaning.
What is the meaning? Well, a good example is rocks. Using that example of rocks, nothing has ever started off as a rock (dead matter/non-living) and then became an ape (another example). Nothing non-living, ever begot living. Nothing of dead matter (rocks as an example) ever begot a living organism.
This simple fact alone debunks atheism/evolution just in itself.
again, you have to read on further to see the evidence I speak of. Why do you waste your time with this kind of quote reply? You clearly responded to it later just like you did previously.
Dick Whittington also wasn't inspired by the Holy Spirit like the men who jotted everything down in the bible.
Many of which ARE proven as well like Sodom and Gomorrah, of a supernatural event that had happened there.No volcano's around, an area that should not have sulfur (brimstone) has sulfur just in those specific locations, found to be the destruction of those cities. This is just one case of many.
Your trouble stems from the fact that since you are "uncertain" that a God exists, how would you ever believe that God's power could indeed create the earth, heavens, and life, in just 7 days. Or even flood it up over the highest mountains. Obviously, I would not see in converting you just on the miracles explained in the bible, however, I use the events and historical aspect of the bible to aid in showing you the evidence for God. One example being that the writers, centuries apart from each other, speak of the same things without contradictions.
Anyone who has spotted what they thought was a contradiction, has been found in error. This is fact. No logic twisting. This statement you made could actually be placed back at you as people doing everything they can to try to disprove God, so they "twist logic" with their "torturous attempts" to say God is not so.
I never said in this thread that "God can do what He wants" or "His ways are not our ways", but since you bring it up, God could indeed do as He wishes. However, even though He could do as He wishes, He would not break His covenant and promises He made with us.
I never placed the burden of evidence in your lap friend. I brought forth the evidence that you thought you could brush off as nothing. You haven't.
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