Recently in the comments section of his post The Center is Not as Safe as You Think It Is, Man of the West proposed a series of questions, probably rhetorically, that deal with issues that he thinks one cannot truly be moderate about (i.e. cannot ride the fence). The questions dealt with the age of the Earth, evolution, abortion, homosexuality, and taxes. I answered the questions and was subsequently told that I was wrong on all of them.
Amazingly these are questions that answers are completely opinion based. Sure the science related questions you can get data to back your opinion, but there are those who will not believe that data no matter how conclusive it is. Other than that, ones opinions on homosexuality, abortion, and taxes are just that: opinions. Sure I have my opinions on these issues and what I think is right and wrong, but unlike knowing that the answer to 2 + 2 is 4, these answers are not definitive facts. Yet people often treat them like they are.
Here are the questions MOTW asked and my answers –
Young earth or old earth? Old.According to MOTW, I am “Wrong. On every point.” It doesn’t bother me at all that we disagree on these matters and it doesn’t bother me that MOTW thinks that I am wrong. Heck I think that he is wrong, but I also know that these are our opinions based on our experiences, worldviews, faiths, and personalities. He and I are both pretty set in our ways and I doubt that either of us would change the other’s opinion on these matters, but I know that I would listen to his thoughts and reasoning that brought him to hold this opinion and I am confident that he would show me that same courtesy; sadly though I suspect that we are in the minority. I will listen to and consider the validity of any idea or opinion before embracing or dismissing it. I know that MOTW will respectfully listen to my thoughts and opinions but I’m not sure if he ever considers the possibility that I might be “right.” This is not a slight or an attack on him, just an observation based on our interactions (and please don’t think that I think that my opinions are better than his because I don’t; I have a lot of respect for MOTW and how he handles himself online; even though he and I disagree on many things I still think he is a good guy who is very intelligent and extremely well read).
Creationism or evolution? Evolution
Abortion: murder or not? If it is prior to the third trimester, it is not murder. It is really, really bad and should be avoided at all costs, but it is not “murder” until the fetus is developed enough to survive outside of the womb.
Homosexuality: moral aberration or genetically determined? Genetically determined, usually. But it is not a moral aberration.
Taxation: robbery by government? God-ordained means of financing a God-ordained institution? Or the cost of the social contract? Cost of the social contract.
There are those who see their opinions and beliefs as facts. That is good in that these people are firm in their convictions but bad in the simple truth that their opinions are not facts. It would do us all some good to openly and honestly consider the opinions of those that we disagree with and have the humility to recognize that their opinions could be “right.”
33 comments:
This MOTW calls himself a "presuppositionalist."
Wikipedia states that "Presuppositionalism...claims that apart from presuppositions, one could not make sense of any human experience, and there can be no set of neutral assumptions from which to reason with a non-Christian."
(Translation: talk to the hand.)
MOTW extends the philosophy beyond religion to matters of non-religious opinion by connecting them with his own unalterable religious presuppositions.
Therefore, be not dismayed when you find that you will never alter his suppositions about worldly matters, either.
He and I are both pretty set in our ways and I doubt that either of us would change the other’s opinion on these matters, but I know that I would listen to his thoughts and reasoning that brought him to hold this opinion and I am confident that he would show me that same courtesy...
Well, yeah, but that's 'cause we're adults, unlike, as far as I can tell, about eighty percent of the blogosphere.
And Clem, you have a lot more work to do to understand presuppositionalism, if you can go from "apart from presuppositions, one could not make sense of any human experience" to "MOTW extends the philosophy beyond religion to matters of non-religious opinion."
I don't think you quite "got it" from the Wiki article, even though it was there, plain as the nose on your face from the sentence you quoted. In essence, to the presuppositionalist, there is no "beyond religion." As Abraham Kuyper put it, there is no part of the universe, no part of creation, about which Jesus Christ does not say, "This is mine!"
I'm not sure if appalled is the word I'm thinking of but I am a bit concerned that he told you flat out that you were wrong. Perhaps he meant that he THOUGHT you were wrong?
I mean, for instance, how can anyone claim for a fact that they know how old the earth is. I have my opinion but I was not there when it was formed so I can not know for sure. No matter how much science tells me.
And personally, I think homosexuality is morally wrong but I do not know for a fact that it's not some sort of genetic defect (yeah i said defect) that causes it.
In any case, there is a lot of gray area in the universe in my opinion and for someone to come out and say someone else's opinions on issues that are of a gray nature are wrong, in my opinion, is just as wrong.
Exactly. In your worldview, nothing is "beyond religion." Is science at variance with your suppositions? Then it is simply wrong. Period.
It's your life, believe whatever you want, but don't be surprised if few find your point of view compelling.
Is science at variance with your suppositions?
Is it? Care to take a swing at that one?
Well, let's see...
Let's assume the universe is, say, 6000 years old, give or take a millenium.
Then the Andromeda galaxy, considered by astronomers a close neighbor galaxy at a mere 2.5 million light-years distance, is a bit of a puzzle.
If the speed of light is constant (an extremely reasonable assumption based on measurements done so far,) then God or some deceptive agency must have planted all those light waves at a distance only 6000 light-years from Earth, just to fool us into thinking the universe is big and old.
Or the universe could be some sort of a magical light-speed prism that somehow provides a view from Earth of relative distances between galaxies that, despite consistently appearing to be on the order of millions and billions of light-years, are actually only a measly few grand light-years.
Grant you, either is possible, and no doubt many other theories could be concocted.
I am confidant that we have only begun to probe the mysteries out there, and indeed our working assumptions could prove to be false or incomplete.
But there is little reason to twist both the universe and logic into a pretzel to support the 6K world, unless you are absolutely wedded to the idea that the Bible is both interpreted correctly as claiming a 6K age, and if so, inerrant in its claim.
MOTW, what is your explanation of this, given the certainty of your presuppositionalistic position?
I thought you could do better than that.
Grant you, either is possible, and no doubt many other theories could be concocted.
I am confidant that we have only begun to probe the mysteries out there, and indeed our working assumptions could prove to be false or incomplete.
I wonder if you could possibly take longer to say that you don't actually have a clue about the matter yourself! Makes me wonder why you bothered to choose this for your question. But to answer it, I'd say that there are two possibilities that intrigue me: one is Sandia Laboratories research physicist Russell Humphrey's hypothesis that he wrote about in Starlight and Time. That one is available cheaply and you may find it interesting. It is only a hypothesis and even the author doesn't insist on it, merely throws it out as a possibility. The other is one that you alluded to, although I don't philosophically weight it the way you did: it is the idea that there is no reason, given a God with sufficient power to make the universe in the first place, for Him not to make it possible for us to see the stars! It's not a question of Him "fooling us" into believing the universe is old, it's a question of what approach an omnipotent being would take in creating it. You might as well ask if God, in creating, say, mature trees instead of acorns in the first week, was trying to "fool" Adam and Eve into believing that the universe was decades old.
It's actually not a very good criticism when you stop to think about it more than a few seconds, is it? And considering that you admit yourself that you don't have the answer?
Try again?
I will, thank you.
Perhaps you will find of interest this article about the expert you choose to represent your point of view. It was featured on a creationist web site, Reasons To Believe:
http://tinyurl.com/2cpn4aw
A few excerpts for your consideration, but, please, read it all in context for a full understanding. (Boldface added by me for emphasis.)
"The author, Dr. Humphreys, is not formally trained in general relativity or cosmology theory, and his initial article and book acknowledged the tentative character and possible falsity of the new proposal. He also solicited, publicly and privately, feedback from Christian physicists who did have formal training in these disciplines. Starting even before the appearance of Starlight and Time and continuing to the present, such feedback has been forthcoming, and, to our knowledge, it has been uniformly critical of the theory. In fact, Starlight and Time and related writings by Humphreys exhibit profound misunderstandings of relativity theory and cosmology. Humphreys’ theory is irremediably flawed. It is very unfortunate that these writings have been so widely distributed in the young-earth community and have misled so many Christians."
"In early 1995, RTB assembled a team of qualified physicists to analyze the mathematics of the theory. In retrospect, it is apparent that this analysis, which was performed in early- to mid-1995, was the first thorough review the mathematical aspects of the theory had ever received, notwithstanding the theory's initial presentation in a nominally peer-reviewed forum, the International Conference on Creationism(ICC). This review led to the preparation of a number of documents which RTB has been distributing on request since mid-1995 and to the publication of a brief but thorough rebuttal of Starlight and Time in a young-earth publication in September, 1995. Despite this rebuttal, the subsequent rejection of Starlight and Time by the ICC8 and further rebuttal, this time by a young-earth writer, published in another young-earth publication, Humphreys has continued to insist that his model is valid."
"To our knowledge, not one person competent in general relativity and cosmology theory who has examined Starlight and Time has given a "pass" to this theory. Despite the lack of expert corroboration of his work, Humphreys continues to insist on the validity of his demonstrably false theory."
"Four years after the original publication of Starlight and Time, Humphreys has abandoned all the central arguments of that hypothesis. All that remains is a skeleton, consisting of the idea of a bounded universe and a phrase, 'gravitational time dilation.' The disproof of the original central arguments of Starlight and Time is not difficult. Dr. Humphreys' recent abandonment of the central physical arguments of his original proposal shows that these physical arguments were not well-thought out and were not adequately reviewed by experts in relativity theory and cosmology prior to their dissemination in the church."
Re your other idea:
"The other is one that you alluded to, although I don't philosophically weight it the way you did: it is the idea that there is no reason, given a God with sufficient power to make the universe in the first place, for Him not to make it possible for us to see the stars!"
Well, sure. If an all-powerful chimpanzee is posited, the conclusion that he will bring tremendous quantities of bananas into existence is all but inescapable.
In other words, if we ignore any concern with the actual existence of said superchimp and his powers, then we may find many other exciting corollaries to wow us.
Discredited pseudoscience and a tautology? That's what you lead with? Tsk, tsk.
Well, Clem, I did tell you that even Dr. Humphreys didn't insist on his model, nor do I; just tossing that one out as an interesting idea. Now, as to my other answer being tautologous, I have to admit to being confused.
I understood your question to be, more or less, "If God created the universe more or less 6000 years ago, how come we can see stars that are millions of light-years away?"
Then even you said it was possible, given a God, that He could have created it in such a way as for us to see the stars--your only objection to this possibility at the time being that you thought it was necessary that God would be trying to fool the human race into thinking the universe was very old by doing so.
Now you object to my answer that this is indeed possible, only that it makes no sense to assume that God was being deceptive in the process--apparently on the grounds that you don't want to assume an all-powerful God? In other words, your question is now, "How could your all-powerful God have done this--assuming, of course, that he's not all-powerful?"
Actually, I'm not at all sure that I'm the one who's confused!
With respect, Otter, your answer is classically Emergent: when you start taking up issues such as, say, abortion--noticed you left that one out, I did--and then slide right on over to the "gray areas" argument, it really looks strange.
How gray an area is life or death, Otter?
Look, it's very simple. The classic mistake made by darn near all Emergents is to refuse to admit that human beings can actually know anything--their argument is generally along the lines that even if Scripture is infallible, human beings are not, and therefore, we cannot know anything, not for sure, even though Christ Himself says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (Interesting exercise, should you care to pursue it: search your Bible software for "know" and find how many times the Bible talks about human beings being held responsible for knowing something. If it is so objectionable for someone to say he knows something, why is man held accountable for failing to act on what he knows?) But no one is talking about knowing something as God knows it, Otter, that is, from the perspective of omniscience. All we are talking about is knowing something in the ordinary manner in which human beings know something. You know how to drive to work, you know how to cook oatmeal, you know the names of your children,and you know all of these things the same way: via reasonably clear and convincing evidence, the denial of which would be unreasonable, or on the good and sound testimony of those who were there. When I said that Dave was wrong--Lord have mercy, in this very post, Dave made it clear that he didn't have a problem with me saying that he was wrong, why on earth would you?--I was not claiming the omniscience of God Himself, merely that, on those same grounds--clear and convincing evidence, the sound testimony of others who were in a position to know--he was wrong.
I'll give him this, though: he's more perceptive about the nature of the questions I asked than you are being: they were rhetorical, off the top of my head, intended only to illustrate that there are some issues where there is no reasonable "middle ground." You seem not to have understood this, and prefer to point out--correctly but irrelevantly, at least to the point I was making--that it is possible for homosexuality to be both morally wrong and genetically determined (though there is no evidence of any such thing that is not tainted with the heavy spectre of investigator bias).
It's kind of ironic, Otter. You know, one of the grand-high poobahs of Emergent, Tony Jones, visited me in another blogging incarnation, and left two comments. The first consisted of one word. Care to guess what it was? I quote:
"Wrong." And that, from a man who says that truth is defined in community. Emergents never have a problem telling me that I'm wrong--often, for saying that someone else is wrong. Go figure!
Let me ask you this, Otter, and see how you come out: would you say that you know Jesus Christ is the savior of anyone who puts his faith in Him, and that opinions to the contrary are wrong?
I did not bring up the abortion issue because I did not feel that I needed to. This being Dave's blog, he knows full well my where I stand on that issue. I'm not sure if you read my blog or not but if you do, you would know exactly where I stand on the abortion issue. I should not have to explain myself on that one again.
There is no gray area when it comes to abortion. Abortion is murder, pure and simple. However, I also believe that the death penalty is wrong.
And I don't think that just because your questions were rhetorical does not mean that I'm not perceptive about them. I understood fully that YOU think on some issues there is no middle ground. I respectfully disagree. As does Dave (I am assuming here though so if I am wrong Dave, I apologize). If you are not okay with someone disagreeing with what you have to say, that is all on you.
And to call the point I was making about homosexuality irrelevant is...well, I don't know what it is but it wasn't irrelevant. I was making a point on that particular issue.
I'm not talking about things like "knowing how to drive to work" or "knowing the names of my children." Those type of things are irrelevant to the post we are discussing. Dave posted about specific issues and I was commenting about those specific issues.
I do not think that anyone can really know how old the earth really is. As far as I know, there is nobody alive today that was alive when the earth was formed. So we can't really know for sure. In my opinion, earth science is all guess work.
The point I am trying to make here is that even though you think some of these issues, be them examples or whatever, rhetorical or not, are black or white and I disagree.
I understand that Dave said in this very article he did not mind you saying that he was wrong. Why does it bother me? Good question. It bothers me because in my opinion its disrespectful. Only God Himself knows everything. Not you. Not me. Not Dave. Not some biased scientist who claims to be in a position to know. Only God. To tell someone as a matter of fact that they are wrong, again, in my opinion is disrespectful because it makes the assumption on you that you know everything. And you don't. No disrespect intended.
Sure, Jesus said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Personally I think this particular quote is taken out of context here. I don't think that Jesus was talking about all of the mysteries of the universe. In my opinion, this is the problem with a lot of biblical scholars. Taking particular verses out of context and using them for their own means. I'm not saying that this is what you are doing intentional but I think that in the particular instance, that particular verse is taken out of context.
The one thing that interested me about your response here though is how much time you spent talking about Emergents. If you want to talk about something being irrelevant, there it is.
Why so much talk about Emergents in your response toward me? I never claimed to be Emergent? I have, however, in the past, read some Emergent books. Some things I agree with, some things I don't. But I, myself am not Emergent. So Tony Jones said you were wrong. No disrespect intended here but, I don't care. I don't speak for Tony Jones and he doesn't speak for me.
However, if you are comparing what I have to say to the philosophy of the Emergents, then okay. But don't assume that I, myself, am Emergent. I'm not. I don't put a label on my faith.
And to answer your final question. Is Jesus Christ the savior of anyone that puts their faith in Him? Yes.
Oh, dear. It seems we all (but MOTW) have egg on our faces. Dave is wrong, Otter is unperceptive and I'm confused.
I don't put much stock in the "theories" about light speed I flippantly tossed out. "Possible" is not the same as "probable" or "coherent" or even "sensible." Apparently, you find them more convincing than I do.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and every time we have looked, light speed is 300KM/sec. By far, that is the least parochial, least ad hoc, most consistent and convincing answer I know of. Sorry it points to the universe being much older than 6K years, MOTW.
Partial answer, Otter. Are opinions to the contrary wrong?
I have to admit ignorance on this one dude.
The reason that I did not answer that part of the question is, quite honestly, I did not understand the question completely.
I know I'm coming across as a complete moron here but could you perhaps re-word that part of the question for me?
Wow…there’s a lot going on here, which is fantastic by the way.
MOTW asked: Let me ask you this, Otter, and see how you come out: would you say that you know Jesus Christ is the savior of anyone who puts his faith in Him, and that opinions to the contrary are wrong?
There is absolutely no way of knowing for a fact that one opinion or the other is “right” or “wrong.” That’s kind of the point that I was trying to make. You believe that anyone who doesn’t put his/her faith in Jesus is damned to swim in a lake of fire but that is your opinion based on the Bible. There are no facts that can back this opinion up. Sure there is scholarship and conclusions that have been drawn but none of which are hard facts.
The simple fact is that the Bible is a collection of stories that were handed down in the oral tradition for hundreds of years and accounts of the days of Jesus written down years after his death. For all intents and purposes the Bible is no different than the works of Homer, the Vedas, or Grimm’s Fair Tales. The only difference is that there are a large number of people who believe that the Bible is hard facts and that simply is not the case. In my opinion.
I think the big problem that Otter had with your original statement MOTW was that you stated I was wrong as if I’d missed a question on a math test. Had your stated that you thought I was wrong or that you thought my opinions were wrong, then the connotation is completely different. And in a lot of ways, that was the point of this post.
Clem said: Oh, dear. It seems we all (but MOTW) have egg on our faces. Dave is wrong, Otter is unperceptive and I'm confused.
I hate to admit it MOTW, but Clem is right on this. The perception at least is that we are all wrong, about things for which there are no hard facts, and you are the only one who is right. This is often the problem I have with people who are evangelicals and apparently with presuppositionalists. There is no humility in their opinions. No intellectual admittance that they could be wrong. But let me be clear…this is not solely a Christian problem. I know of atheists, anarchists, leftists, and Muslims, just to name a few, who are all guilty of this type of behavior. Fundamentalists, fanatics, and zealots of all stripes harbor these types of unrelenting opinions and only really differ on the name that they propose to support, be it Christ, science, government, or Allah. All of it is silly and intellectually dishonest. Heck, to borrow a phrase from earlier, I’d go so far as to call it a mental or genetic defect but then I wouldn’t be entirely honest either. While it is a funny phrase that is good for getting someone’s attention it is pointless and doesn’t further the conversation. I don’t think a fundamentalist is anymore defective than a homosexual or my one-handed self (even though technically I am defective).
There are certain things that just cannot be proven and for those things we have our faith. But one person’s faith is no better or worse than someone else’s and that is why this world is not the clean cut black and white that the fanatics like to think it is.
And for the record, I am not calling you, MOTW, a fanatic or a zealot. I think it would be safe and fair to say that you are a fundamentalist but I don’t see you are someone who has gone off the edge of the cliff of reason.
I'm not going to have time to answer everything in any detail, so I'll make this short and as to the point as I can:
Clem:
light speed is 300KM/sec...Sorry it points to the universe being much older than 6K years, MOTW.
It will come as no surprise that I disagree. It points to nothing of the kind. It points to your presuppositions. That is, if you presuppose the non-existence of a deity to Whom lightspeed is not an insuperable barrier, then the universe is most likely very old. If you don't, well...is isn't necessarily any such thing.
It seems we all (but MOTW) have egg on our faces. Dave is wrong, Otter is unperceptive and I'm confused.
I have to admit, Clem, that I am chastened and cut to the quick, really, by this remark, at least, coming from you, for it is clear to anyone reading your comments what a model of rectitude and humility you are personally.
Otter, Dave: Before going any further, let me state this: if I did not have any respect for you, I would simply ignore you. I have better things to do with my time than engage idiots.
Dave, you state what I already thought was the case:
Had your stated that you thought I was wrong or that you thought my opinions were wrong, then the connotation is completely different.
Now, gents, you'll forgive me for putting it this way, I hope, but it appears that for you:
"I think you're wrong"=a humble disagreement of opinion, whereas
"You're wrong"=a disrespecful claim to godlike omniscience.
I wonder how your math classes must have gone in school. Apparently, you either got all the answers right, or the teacher disrespected you every so often.
Personally, I've been married for over 22 years; I have a teenage daughter, as well. I do not go for more than 18 hours, as a rule, without being told I am wrong about something. I've never seen it as an issue. You cannot get past the age of ten without realizing that, on almost any subject you care to name, probably billions of people think you're wrong.
So? I don't mean to wound anybody's feelings, gents. On the other hand, if I'm convinced you're wrong, why wouldn't I say so? You are both grown men; you can handle disagreement.
Otter, scripture I cited was only one of many that I could have, each serving the same purpose, at least in this case, whether you think it irrelevant or not: to show that scripturally speaking, it is possible for men to know something. Know, not think, not feel. Know. And if you know something, it follows that you likewise know its negation is false. You know A is A to be true (this is the first move in classical logic); you therefore automatically know that A is not A is false.
Or, more simply, Scripture, through that verse and many like it, shows that you can know something to be true and its negation to be...
wrong. There is nothing arrogant or obtuse in saying that someone is wrong. It is perfectly within the normal range of human experience.
The question elicits answers which necessarily imply certain corollaries. If you say that you know Jesus is the savior, it therefore follows that you know the negation/s--Jesus is not the savior, might not be the savior, might not be the only savior, etc.--are wrong. If you cannot say that opinions to the contrary are wrong, then, it is tantamount to saying that you don't actually know Jesus to be who He said he was.
It was a deliberate attempt to put you in a position where you either had to say that some people are wrong--in which case, why your beef with what I had to say?--or confront the reality that you don't actually know that Jesus is the savior. Since I know perfectly well that you're not likely to say that you don't know Jesus to be the savior, you would have most likely fallen into the verbal/logical trap. You got out of it by asking me to explain it--not a bad move. :)
More later, if I get time. I'm outta lunch break.
Okay, let me put it another way to you then.
I "believe" Jesus to be the Savior.
Do I know 100% without a doubt that the statement 'Jesus was the Savior' is a fact? No, I don't. I am probably in the 90-99% area but not 100%.
Is there a chance that I could be wrong about that? Yes. There is a chance.
I certainly hope that I am right but I won't know 100% for sure until I have passed and eventually meet my maker.
Opened up the 'puter one last time to get directions, and what do I find?
Okay,Otter, what do you do, then, with John: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Is John wrong? Is it not possible to know?
Hmmm.....is it possible NOT to know?
I would have to say...yes. It is possible.
But take that coming from a person whose faith is not necessarily a rock and not from someone saying the the Apostle John is wrong. To be honest, I'm still working on it myself. I wish I could say my faith was pretty solid but over the course of the past year or two, I have to admit that it has been a little shaky.
For everyone else reading this, by the way, that scripture comes from 1 John 5:13. :)
MOTW said: I wonder how your math classes must have gone in school. Apparently, you either got all the answers right, or the teacher disrespected you every so often.
That is completely different. There are hard fact, right and wrong answers in math. Math is not religion.
MOTW – Is it at all possible for Jesus to be the savior for some but not all?
Otter – I know you pretty well I think and I don’t see you as having a shaky faith at all. Sure you may have doubts about specific doctrines and creeds but I don’t see that you have any doubt in your belief in God or Jesus. In fact the fact that you are able to separate your intellect from your faith to admit that you could be wrong, to me speaks volumes about your intellectual honesty and humility.
Just to clarify for MOTW, who said:
"Then even you said it was possible, given a God, that He could have created it in such a way as for us to see the stars--your only objection to this possibility at the time being that you thought it was necessary that God would be trying to fool the human race into thinking the universe was very old by doing so."
I called it "possible" in only the most rhetorical sense; I consider this the most miserably weak hypothesis imaginable. The world might as well have been created one second ago as easily as 6K or 13 billion years ago, by any kind of deity you wish to posit, if you take this seriously. What use has it other than to dismiss any reasonable thinking about our universe?
Along the same line, maybe we are living inside a virtual reality, which might be marginally more plausible, still a total "Hail Mary" in the absence of evidence or any approach to finding any.
(If we experienced consensual visual glitching, or if when we opened a random Dickens volume, we read a message directed specifically at ourselves, for example, we might consider that evidence of being in such a condition.)
Something is lacking or amiss with one's ratiocination to find the so-called "Omphalos hypothesis" a viable or persuasive argument. It's an exercise in imagination (and not really that great an exercise.)
In short, as Rabbi Natan Slifkin observed, "...if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?"
Hmmm. You know, Clem, maybe you have a point about my ratiocination; it's clearly not running along the same lines as yours.
As far as I can tell, all you've done is find longer ways to say, "I don't think God would do it like that."
Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (or worldview) depends upon his not understanding it."
Wait, wait, don't tell me; your comeback is "The Lewis quote is a two-edged sword."
Presuppositionalism strikes me as an air- and light-tight box. It's unlikely to ever have traction among more than a handful of people who are susceptible to its radical and authoritarian "charm."
Now to be fair, atheists have their share of authoritarians. Authoritarianism knows no one philosophy or religion. It rears its ugly head in the extremes of all of them.
An a-theist is one with an absence of belief that a deity or deities exist.
You may be referring more to anti-theists, who are actively opposed to belief in the existence of any deity.
A Baptist is actively opposed to belief in all deities except his own, and thus may be closer aligned to anti-theism than an atheist.
MOTW, whatever I might think of his extreme (from my point of view) positions, has been willing to lay them out for all the world to see. Out of fairness, maybe I should do the same.
First off, I do indeed lack belief in any deities.
Second, I don't have the confidence in my own faculties that would make me presume that I could distinguish an authentic deity from the fireworks display of a superior alien culture.
After all, we ourselves possess technologies that could frighten human cultures of the past into a belief in our godhood.
I am confidant that if MOTW were confronted by a magnificent display of power by a being purporting to be Vishnu (but actually a superior alien putting on a show for us), he would have no problem labelling him a false god.
But what if instead, we were faced with a similar display by a being purporting to be the Abrahamic God? Would we or should we question His veracity? And if His/Its power were sufficiently great, would it make any difference? What if the "display" were instead, a shared deep inner feeling of peace? Should/could we trust it?
Third, I probably am somewhat anti- the most virulent (from my perspective) forms of religion. However, I tend to see religious belief not so much as a thing unto itself, but more as an expression of human nature.
Let me try to explain what I mean by that.
You may have seen the YouTube sensation, "Snowball," a cockatoo with an obvious sense of rhythm.
Interestingly, highly intelligent animals such as chimps and dogs just don't seem to have rhythm in their repetoire. It is theorized that the birds' ability to speak may be key. To be able to speak, the bird's brain needs to be able to handle the timing of sounds and relationships between the sounds, as humans are able to do.
Thus, if this speculation is correct, our musical sense might well be a by-product of abilities we developed for other reasons, such as communication and survival. Plus, music might have its own survival value in the way it unifies a group in emotion and coordinated activity.
Another aspect of human development is this: we must know so much to survive in this world that historically, we haven't had the luxury of questioning much of what we are taught by our parents. In order to survive, we need to take much for granted in order to get on with the business of living.
We see that most people adopt the religious values of their culture. You rarely see a Southern Baptist-raised man become a Hindu, though it does happen.
So we seem to have a strong bias toward belief in what we are taught by our parents (or a parental figure.)
I speculate that this bias also makes us collectively prone to the creation and propagation of religious beliefs.
Much more could be said about that idea, but it illustrates the notion that religion isn't mere dogma, rulebooks and intellectual elaborations so much as it is an expression of human nature (perhaps analogous to the development of music.)
I could, as John Lennon urged, imagine no religion. What if somehow all religious belief disappeared from the world?
I suspect what would happen is that spontaneously new forms of religious belief would emerge (new to those amnesiac humans, anyway) and begin to compete with each other, probably violently.
So what does all this opinion make me in terms of labels? I would have to say I am an agnostic, one who believes that the truth value of claims about the existence or non-existence of most proposed deities is unknown or unknowable (with the caveat that some of them are so obviously the product of elaborate wishful thinking that I assign them a lowered probability of existence.)
I am also an atheist in the sense that I lack belief in any deities.
I would describe myself as a "weak" anti-theist, in that I look at religion as a factor in human culture somewhat negatively on the whole. But I also keep in mind that it seems to be a by-product of human nature and thus cannot be considered in isolation from its origin.
Lastly, I am comfortable with not having the "certain" knowledge of all things that a MOTW claims, because I do not believe it can be achieved so easily and without reference to the world we find ourselves in.
To wind this up, I would as soon study the arcane doctrines of presuppositionalism as I would study Babylonian astrology. It's of historical interest only.
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