Lord, Lunatic, or Liar - False Dichotomy?

[JimL]

Yes. Or at least a 'largely accurate' description.




Exactly. And that is the whole point of Lewis' argument here. He wants to show that people who accept more or less the Bible's depiction of Jesus can't have their cake and eat it too.

Here's part of Lewis argument:

{posted up-thread by Paprika}

Lewis is showing that such people (plenty of them around in his day, and even nowadays there are people who pay lip service to the Bible but reject Jesus as God) are simply being inconsistent.

I think you missed my point Max. Since Jesus is not the author of the Gospels, then it makes no sense to ask the question of him. The question of whether or not what is in the gospels was written by truth tellers or liars can only be asked of the authors of those gospels themselves. In other words its not whether or not you believe the words and acts of Jesus, its whether or not you believe what the Gospel writers wrote about this Jesus. Were they telling the truth? You don't, and can't know that. Were they lying? You don't, and can't know that either. If you believe that the Gospels are truth, literal truth, then for you, Jesus, the charactor they wrote of, could neither be a lunatic nor a liar, and he would have to be, for the believer at least, Lord. To those of us who do not believe the Gospels to be true then the question as to whether Jesus was Lord, Lunatic, or liar doesn't even make sense. People can like certain aspects of the Gospels without believing the charactors within it, such as Jesus, or the claims made about them to be true.

[JohnnyP]

No, you missed the point. It is not about peer review alone or even mostly. It is about testing nature. Nature always has the last word and it is in the sense you mean infallible. If you cannot test nature directly the next best thing is mathematics but a mathematical proof alone is not definitive.

Testing nature to determine laws of nature may imply that such laws are infallible, but what happens if those laws can be broken, how then is it ultimately more infallible than anything else if testing may continue to yield new results indefinitely? Testing nature would seem to be as much a never-ending process as our quest for God, with final conclusions unknowable within anyone's lifetime. -For one tiny instant, physicists may have broken a law of nature

[shunyadragon]

Testing nature to determine laws of nature may imply that such laws are infallible, but what happens if those laws can be broken, how then is it ultimately more infallible than anything else if testing may continue to yield new results indefinitely? Testing nature would seem to be as much a never-ending process as our quest for God, with final conclusions unknowable within anyone's lifetime. -For one tiny instant, physicists may have broken a law of nature

Careful Our Laws of Nature are our approximation of how nature works, not infallible, and subject to change if more information becomes available to justify such a change. This actually is what happened when we went from Newtonian physics to Quantum Mechanics Physics. No quest for God here. It s best that science avoids such ventures.

[firstfloor]

Testing nature to determine laws of nature may imply that such laws are infallible, but what happens if those laws can be broken, how then is it ultimately more infallible than anything else if testing may continue to yield new results indefinitely? Testing nature would seem to be as much a never-ending process as our quest for God, with final conclusions unknowable within anyone's lifetime. -For one tiny instant, physicists may have broken a law of nature

[Paprika]

nature itself is infallible

Could you please elaborate on this? What do you mean by this?

[firstfloor]

Could you please elaborate on this? What do you mean by this?

[Paprika]

In your previous post you said that "nature itself does not have laws". Now you speak of "its laws of motion". Isn't this a contradiction?

[shunyadragon]

In your previous post you said that "nature itself does not have laws". Now you speak of "its laws of motion". Isn't this a contradiction?

Yes, nature itself does not have laws. Our natural laws, as well as what may be described as 'its laws of motion' are human constructs of science which are approximations of how nature actually works.

[firstfloor]

In your previous post you said that "nature itself does not have laws". Now you speak of "its laws of motion". Isn't this a contradiction?

[Paprika]

]The regularity exists, for example, because every electron is exactly the same.

How do we know that?

[shunyadragon]

How do we know that?

for many years, every time we have measured it, by many different ways, it is always the same. Some things in science are more certain than others. Particular measurements can be very certain, but on the fringes of theory like with Quantum Mechanics, we are on the cutting edge of theory and research, and things are less certain. Natural Laws that describe the ultimate behavior of matter and energy are still open for revision.

[firstfloor]

How do we know that?

The laws forbid the contrary and the laws are validated in experiments. This is the synthesis I mentioned above. The theory is called the Standard Model of particle physics.

[shunyadragon]

The laws forbid the contrary and the laws are validated in experiments. This is the synthesis I mentioned above. The theory is called the Standard Model of particle physics.

I would not use the word 'forbid' here, it is too anthropomorphic. Yes measurement such as these are repeatedly validated by experiments.

[Paprika]

The laws forbid the contrary and the laws are validated in experiments. This is the synthesis I mentioned above. The theory is called the Standard Model of particle physics.

From my reading, it appears that indistinguishability is not a result of the laws but an assumption. Scientists observed some electrons having certain intrinsic physical properties, and proceeded by assuming that these are the only intrinsic physical properties, and that all electrons that exist - the quantity being many orders higher than what has been observed - share the same properties. This assumption was then extended into field theory.

[firstfloor]

If you want a good introduction to the historical development of modern physics from steam engines to quantum mechanics I would suggest this course:
http://www.aip.org/history/syllabi/modern.html
You can find the audio lectures in iTunesU under UC Berkely or History 181B. The lectures are presented in the wrong order in iTunesU so use the website for guidance.