They Are Going After The Churches:

[The Thinker]

There you go again! Taking by faith that you were determined to believe the correct thing in this instance!

What faith? I have evidence and this is proven by my ability to get things right, which if I couldn't do at all, I would be dead. And yes, it is the case that we have to be right in order to survive. Higher level mammals do have to have accurate senses in order to survive.

Of course you are blind!

So I tell you this, and testify to it in the Lord: You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts.

How is that evidence that I am blind to your evidence? You either have evidence that you can show me, or you don't. So where is your evidence? Or just admit you have no evidence, and believe on faith. That will save us some time.

And are you kidding! You are just begging the question again, that you know that you were correctly determined to understand logic and evidence! Sheesh!

We've already when over this months ago. No one can know for sure whether their senses are capable of being accurate, you must grant that as a basic belief, then you can work out evidence using them. But this doesn't allow you to just grant anything as a basic belief. You can't grant Godzilla as a basic belief, or something incoherent, like LFW, those are demonstrably false. So we are not on the same boat. You believe in Christianity and LFW on faith, and both of those things are incoherent.

[seer]

What faith? I have evidence and this is proven by my ability to get things right, which if I couldn't do at all, I would be dead. And yes, it is the case that we have to be right in order to survive. Higher level mammals do have to have accurate senses in order to survive.

Nonsense, most animals survive just fine with any working knowledge of logic or logical principles. And that is what I am talking about, what we are talking about - concepts, propositions and ideals. And AGAIN you are missing my point. I'm saying that you can not logically justify knowledge (i.e. deductively demonstrate). What you did here again, is merely appeal to experience - that is not logical justification.

How is that evidence that I am blind to your evidence? You either have evidence that you can show me, or you don't. So where is your evidence? Or just admit you have no evidence, and believe on faith. That will save us some time.

Again, how can can I prove the color red to a man born blind? You should intuitively acknowledge your Creator as you intuitively acknowledge your personal experience of the world. Obviously you have a serious mental defect.

We've already when over this months ago. No one can know for sure whether their senses are capable of being accurate, you must grant that as a basic belief, then you can work out evidence using them. But this doesn't allow you to just grant anything as a basic belief. You can't grant Godzilla as a basic belief, or something incoherent, like LFW, those are demonstrably false. So we are not on the same boat. You believe in Christianity and LFW on faith, and both of those things are incoherent.

Really Thinker back to the "bald assertion" of basis beliefs? How long have I been with you!

[The Thinker]

Nonsense, most animals survive just fine with any working knowledge of logic or logical principles. And that is what I am talking about, what we are talking about - concepts, propositions and ideals. And AGAIN you are missing my point. I'm saying that you can not logically justify knowledge (i.e. deductively demonstrate). What you did here again, is merely appeal to experience - that is not logical justification.

I'm talking about much more than formal logic, I'm talking about accurate senses, seeing things clearly, judging distances, having memory of direction, where to find stuff, all that is necessary to survive. And basic logic, like knowing that if you have 2 objects and you take one away, you will have 1 object is also necessary and some animals have it. So I have plenty of evidence my experiences are capable of being accurate.

And as far as logically demonstrating knowledge, I did that long ago:

I only have to argue that it is logically possible for me being determine to believe A is true, and A is actually true. We already agreed that there is no way for us to know our beliefs are true 100% of the time. My premises could be just as deductive, for example:

Let's say A = adding one rock to one rock leaves me with two rocks. I take one rock, add it to another rock. I get all this data from my senses of sight and my brain processes that data and I am determined to conclude that adding one rock to one rock leaves me with two rocks. The sight of one one rock being added to one rock determined my brain to believe that A = adding one rock to one rock leaves me with two rocks. That is a physical and logically deductive mathematical proof that does not require induction. Now if you say that I can't know for sure whether my belief in A is true you will be violating your claim that "I never asked you to demonstrate with 100% certainty.

Again, how can can I prove the color red to a man born blind? You should intuitively acknowledge your Creator as you intuitively acknowledge your personal experience of the world. Obviously you have a serious mental defect.

That's complete nonsense and proves you are believing on faith. Intuition is not good evidence. There is no good evidence of a creator and you know it -- that's why you have to believe on faith. And we already have scientific evidence that we tend to believe things that aren't there. It's known as the sensed-presence effect: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...esence-effect/

And the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf

So your "intuition" is already debunked by science.

Really Thinker back to the "bald assertion" of basis beliefs? How long have I been with you!

What bald assertion? If I don't grant my senses then I can't even say you exist. In that case it would be perfectly reasonable for me to murder you because you don't really exist. You really don't know jack about science or philosophy.

[firstfloor]

I'm saying that you can not logically justify knowledge (i.e. deductively demonstrate). What you did here again, is merely appeal to experience - that is not logical justification.

But knowledge IS what is acquired through experience and education - a product of being in the world. What has logic got to do with it? Logic is about abstract reasoning, is it not? - which could in principle go on in empty space - having discovered it in the real world.

[Tassman]

Still waiting for what? I believe we make choices based on conscious rational deliberation. If you, like Thinker, don't, fine.

You said in your #853 that: NEVER attempt justify the logically incoherent nonsense you spout yourself, other than inserting an occasional line from scripture, which proves nothing.

[Tassman]

Well you don't know that at all, but the point is, it is all determined. Nature determined us to be religious, period. You could have certainly had all of the above qualities without religion.

finding them in our fellow mammals suggests that they run deep in our brain biology and did not come about because of moral reasoning or religion.

So again, if you and Thinker are correct nature has massively deceived mankind.

There is nature and there is mankind...a component of nature. They are nota part of nature, not outside of it.

[JimL]

Sin makes us irrational in many instances, just look at yourself.



Original sin.

Well if original sin is why people get things wrong, then how do you explain the original sin itself?

[JimL]

Then Jim everything you just said was determined by the laws of nature, so how do you know those laws did not cause you to believe a falsehood, to believe a falsehood to be true. Please tell me how you came to this conclusion with out conscious deliberation. And remember you can't use such deliberation for an explanation.

Irrelevant. How do you know that your conscious deliberater was not caused to believe a falsehood? You know truth from falsehood for the same reason that the unconscious deliberater, aka the brain, knows. If your belief is false, then the data will show your belief to be a false whether you came to that data consciously or unconsciously.

[seer]

Well if original sin is why people get things wrong, then how do you explain the original sin itself?

Free will.

[seer]

Irrelevant. How do you know that your conscious deliberater was not caused to believe a falsehood? You know truth from falsehood for the same reason that the unconscious deliberater, aka the brain, knows. If your belief is false, then the data will show your belief to be a false whether you came to that data consciously or unconsciously.

That doesn't follow if I could consciously decide or discover. I could consciously decide based on pros and cons whether to have that second piece of cake or not. I would not be determined apart conscious knowledge. And no, if you were determined to believe a falsehood to be true you would have no recourse but to believe it - your conscious understand would play no roll in the discovery of truth or telling you if you were actually right or wrong.

[seer]

There is nature and there is mankind...a component of nature. They are nota part of nature, not outside of it.

That is just stupid Tass, if we are determined by the antecedent laws of nature then nature and nature alone created us to be religious. Created us to massively misunderstand. So what has nature deceived you about?

[seer]

I'm talking about much more than formal logic, I'm talking about accurate senses, seeing things clearly, judging distances, having memory of direction, where to find stuff, all that is necessary to survive. And basic logic, like knowing that if you have 2 objects and you take one away, you will have 1 object is also necessary and some animals have it. So I have plenty of evidence my experiences are capable of being accurate.[

And as far as logically demonstrating knowledge long ago

Utter nonsense Thinker, you never squared that circle. I did not say that you could not be determined to believe a truism, I asked you to go from being determined to believing that A is true to A actually being true. It was a question about particular beliefs, not the general question about whether we could in theory ever be determined believe a truism. And my original point remains, you can not logically justify knowledge (i.e. deductively demonstrate) you have to revert to subjective experience like you did above. But that is completely circular. I mean you can not even use your conscious function to discover or confirm facts since that has no role in discovering or confirmation.

What bald assertion? If I don't grant my senses then I can't even say you exist. In that case it would be perfectly reasonable for me to murder you because you don't really exist. You really don't know jack about science or philosophy.

You can subjectively grant what you please, but it remains that the whole "basic belief" ideal is no more than an assertion. It certainly is not grounded in deductive logic. Anyway, I'm done. It was real.

[The Thinker]

Free will.

But free will is incoherent and self-refuting. Not only that, science refutes it. So what's your real answer?

[The Thinker]

Utter nonsense Thinker, you never squared that circle. I did not say that you could not be determined to believe a truism, I asked you to go from being determined to believing that A is true to A actually being true. It was a question about particular beliefs, not the general question about whether we could in theory ever be determined believe a truism.

And I answered that. I gave you a non-inductive truth that I was determined to believe that I can know is true.

And my original point remains, you can not logically justify knowledge (i.e. deductively demonstrate) you have to revert to subjective experience like you did above. But that is completely circular. I mean you can not even use your conscious function to discover or confirm facts since that has no role in discovering or confirmation.

What I showed above is how my senses can allow me to know a deductive truth. If you want to claim I cannot use any sensory data at all, then that cancels out pretty much all data. The only thing that would be allowed is pure thinking absent from any sense data, which in principle could logically deduce certain mathematical truths.

And conscious function is the only thing that allows you to discover confirmed facts you idiot. It doesn't have to be causal in order to do this. You need to make a logical argument to show why it must be causal in order to allow you to discover facts. You've done no such thing.

You're still stuck on the idea that determined to believe A means you can never know A is true. But you never outlines a theory of knowledge to show how one can know anything. Hence you're begging the question.

You can subjectively grant what you please, but it remains that the whole "basic belief" ideal is no more than an assertion. It certainly is not grounded in deductive logic. Anyway, I'm done. It was real.

The basic belief is an assumption, and one that cannot be proved. There is no way to prove deductively that your sense data is 100% accurate. But just because you cannot prove your senses are not 100% faulty, that doesn't mean you get to just assume anything on faith is true. This is your pathetic attempt to justify your faith based religious beliefs because you have no evidence.

[JimL]

That doesn't follow if I could consciously decide or discover.

So, your brain can unconsciously decide or discover just the same.

I could consciously decide based on pros and cons whether to have that second piece of cake or not.

So, your brain can unconsciously decide based on pros and cons whether to have that second piece of cake or not as well.

I would not be determined apart conscious knowledge.

Well of course you wouldn't be determined if your belief of an existing independent consciousness, or ghost, were true, but the evidence suggests that your belief is false.

And no, if you were determined to believe a falsehood to be true you would have no recourse but to believe it - your conscious understand would play no roll in the discovery of truth or telling you if you were actually right or wrong.

Whether some fact is true or not has nothing to do with whether or not it is arrived at consciously.