Faith Without Reason (A Response to Richard Dawkins, et al)

[ShrimpMaster]

JRichard, I will expand on my objections a little more so we have clarity...

Universal Sanction is not an adequate criterion for properly basicality because:
1) if for instance, there was a belief held in a specific region by 100% of the population and this belief was not universally sanctioned. Then the rest of the worlds population was destroyed - this would render this new belief as universally sanctioned. This is absurd to consider that some beliefs should be properly basic because they 'happen to be'.
2) Sennet does not conclude that rational intuition, introspection, perception and memory beliefs exhaust all of the types of beliefs that can be properly basic.
3) This relates to #1 and #2.... When we talk about whether or not a belief satisfies the pragmatic skepticism condition of universal sanction we actually don't have any idea what this means. When you say 'theism does not satisfy the pragmatic skepticism condition because atheists get along fine with theistic beliefs'... Well, you get along fine according to who? You don't have a relationship with God. Why do you think you get along fine? This criteria is not conclusive and it really depends on 'fine according to who?'. You might be able to survive, but fish survive without memory beliefs. Are you about to say that this is only essential to humans? Once again, an ad-hoc explanation. Further, if you make it based on some cognitive standard, then we certainly don't have any agreement, because a conclusion of Plantinga's model is that atheists are cognitively handicapped.

FYI, these three points should be taken together. Please do not reply to them individually...

Here we see the relativism of universal sanction. Theism can be said to be universally sanctioned because if theism is true, then atheists are cognitively handicapped. In the case of the above counterexample we have a group of individuals that after 'culling' the population end up as the majority. The only thing that stops a segment of the population from declaring their belief as universally sanctioned is majority opinion, which is an arbitrary criteria...

Regarding your objection that Plantinga's defense is trivial... The problem is that atheism cannot be said to be arrived at rationally. This is Plantinga's argument against naturalism. You also brought up the Great Pumpkin objection again. Here was the response I gave to shunydragon:

Excerpts taken from rightreason.org

In reply to your objection that "Plantinga's defense doesn't actually convert de jure objections to de facto objections, since it involves and ad hoc re-definition and strawman of what Christianity is committed to". Plantinga is meant to provide an intellectually defensible model of how Christian belief is warranted if true. This point is worthless, because he was not meaning to imply that knowledge of his model is required for salvation.

I never said that evolution cannot select for true beliefs. In fact, I clearly stated the opposite numerous times... I was saying that evolution does not select for necessarily true beliefs. For instance, the belief that 'my cognitive faculties are reliable'... P.S. I am using necessary in relation to pragmatic indispensability. This may be an interesting side discussion, so if you know how evolution selects for that, then please do tell.

I also did not intend to say Plantingas argument concludes evolution does not produce necessary truths. You are just distracting from the main discussion. Slightly tiring, because it is not a huge deal. The rest of what I said was still valid and on point with Plantinga's argument...

False. Your claim makes no sense. Do you really think that all theists need to do is show that it's possible for an evolutionary naturalist to be wrong? Do you think that suffices for a defeater? If so, then I have a defeator for theism right here... it's possible that theism is false.

No, you are confused again... I was showing that there is no intellectually defensible account of naturalism. I actually explicitly stated that naturalism can be true, yet the belief in naturalism would not be warranted given Plantinga's criteria.

Yes, it's possible for natural select to select for a false belief, just like it's possible that a deity is deceiving theists into having a whole bunch of false beliefs. The mere possibility of that is not a defeater for theism nor evolutionary naturalism, anymore than the fact that it's possible that the universe began 5 minutes ago serves as a defeator for Big Bang cosmology. Showing that "X is possible" is only a defeator for positions that claim that "X is necessary". And evolutionary naturalism has never been committed to the claim that 1 is a necessary truth. To say otherwise is to strawman evolutionary naturalism.

Now you are just harping on one mistake I made. Plantinga's argument is still cogent...

Evolution is more likely to pick up on the belief, the more rounds of selection that belief goes through. Furthermore, evolution can select for reliable cognition that results in more than true beliefs than false beliefs, even if evolution didn't select for a particular belief that results from such cognition. Thus a particular "less important belief" (as you call it) might be more likely to be true in virtue of being produced by a reliable cognitive system that was selected for by evolution, even if that particular "less important belief" was not itself selected for.

Right, evolution is a process that is taking place right now. What is the probability your beliefs are true at the current stage in evolution?

[shunyadragon]

I never said that evolution cannot select for true beliefs. In fact, I clearly stated the opposite numerous times... I was saying that evolution does not select for necessarily true beliefs. For instance, the belief that 'my cognitive faculties are reliable'... P.S. I am using necessary in relation to pragmatic indispensability. This may be an interesting side discussion, so if you know how evolution selects for that, then please do tell.

I also did not intend to say Plantingas argument concludes evolution does not produce necessary truths. You are just distracting from the main discussion. Slightly tiring, because it is not a huge deal. The rest of what I said was still valid and on point with Plantinga's argument...

Your argument for a model now includes an argument against Naturalism, using a failed argument against Naturalism misusing the science of Evolution, and by de facto an argument for the existence of God. Therefore you are no longer just arguing for an 'IF true' model for the possibility that Christianity is a true belief.

There is a distinct problem here concerning the use of Evolution in Plantinga's arguments. There is no conceivable way Evolution can select for true beliefs, nor necessarily select for true beliefs in terms of religious beliefs, nor demonstrate whether God exists or not, nor whether Naturalism is true or not. Your foolish example of 1+1=2 is not in any way a 'belief' in the context of Plantinga's argument against Naturalism. To propose Evolution selects for true beliefs in Plantinga's argument, Design and the necessity of a Designer must be true or demonstrated by a falsifiable hypothesis, and this argument has failed miserably. The Discovery Institute has failed to demonstrate any falsifiable hypothesis concerning Design being remotely possible.

[Jichard]

JRichard, I will expand on my objections a little more so we have clarity...

Universal Sanction is not an adequate criterion for properly basicality because:
1) if for instance, there was a belief held in a specific region by 100% of the population and this belief was not universally sanctioned. Then the rest of the worlds population was destroyed - this would render this new belief as universally sanctioned. This is absurd to consider that some beliefs should be properly basic because they 'happen to be'.

Once again, universal sanction is not about the number of people who hold a belief. You've been told this before, yet you still keep asking as if it is about the number of people who accept a claim:

"Second, universal sanction is not a poll of how many people accept a claim. See here for further discussion of what universal sanction is:
Wunder, Tyler. "Warrant and Religious Epistemology: A Critique of Alvin Plantinga's Warrant Phase.""

2) Sennet does not conclude that rational intuition, introspection, perception and memory beliefs exhaust all of the types of beliefs that can be properly basic.

Already addressed this:

"It shifts the burden of proof over to you, to actually show that theistic belief is properly basic. That's importance because beliefs don't get to be properly basic by fiat; otherwise, one could label any old absurd belief as properly basic and use that to dodge criticism of the belief (as per the Great Pumpkin objection and the charge of epistemic relativism). One instead needs to provide some reason for treating a belief as properly basic. Universal sanction provides such a reason. But neither you nor Plantinga provide a reason for treating theistic belief as properly basic. So that means we have no reason to treat theistic belief as properly basic."

So once again, universal sanction provides a justification for treating various types of beliefs as properly basic. Until you provide such a justification for taking the class of theistic beliefs as properly basic, there is no reason to treat theistic belief is properly basic.

3) This relates to #1 and #2.... When we talk about whether or not a belief satisfies the pragmatic skepticism condition of universal sanction we actually don't have any idea what this means.

Once again, the issue is not whether a particular belief is pragmatically indispensable. It's whether the class of beliefs is pragmatically indispensable. And it's pretty clear what it means for a class of beliefs to be pragmatically indispensable. I pointed this out to you before:

"Universal sanction is not about whether a particular belief is pragmatically indispensable. It's about whether the class of beliefs of which that belief is apart is universal sanctioned. And with that point in mind, it becomes clear that a memory belief is universally sanctioned, since the class of memory beliefs is universally sanctioned. Wunder makes this very point. For example:

"""

When you say 'theism does not satisfy the pragmatic skepticism condition because atheists get along fine with theistic beliefs'... Well, you get along fine according to who?

According to, for example, modern psychology.

Anyway, you're again using you "according to who" question, even though that's irrelevant. The issue here isn't who makes the claim; the issue here is whether the claim is true/false, unjustified/justified, etc.. And given that, my claim is pretty well justified: atheists can get on pretty fine in their lives. That's one reason, for example why atheism is not classified as a mental disorder. That's in contrast to, for example, someone who thinks they are dead or someone who thinks that they cannot die no matter what they do (Cotard Delusion). A person with that delusion is going to have massive problems getting on in life.

You don't have a relationship with God. Why do you think you get along fine?

Because I'm able to get along in life just fine. I have productive relationships, can perform normal tasks like feeding myself and attending classes, I can interact with the outside world to perform my goals, I can reason about stuff using the evidence available to me, etc.

This criteria is not conclusive and it really depends on 'fine according to who?'.

Again, no it doesn't. Your "according to who" point is irrelevant, as I went over above.

You might be able to survive, but fish survive without memory beliefs.

We've been over this with your comparison of frogs and humans: if you're going to talk about an organisms who's behavior is causally influenced by beliefs (ex: a human), than you shouldn't be making analogies to organisms that lack beliefs or who's beliefs don't causally influence their behavior. So I don't know why you're comparing fish to humans, if you don't think fish have beliefs.

Are you about to say that this is only essential to humans? Once again, an ad-hoc explanation.

It's not ad hoc, since universal sanction cannot apply to organisms that don't have beliefs. What you're doing is ridiculous as saying that your account of "functional wings" is ad hoc, since your account does not apply to humans. That statement is ridiculous since humans don't have wings, so it makes no sense to apply the account to them. Similarly so here: you've given no reason to think that fish have beliefs. So it makes no sense to apply universal sanction to fish; since universal sanction applies to classes of beliefs. It therefore makes no sense for you to object to universal sanction by saying that universal sanction does not apply to fish.

Further, if you make it based on some cognitive standard, then we certainly don't have any agreement, because a conclusion of Plantinga's model is that atheists are cognitively handicapped.

Plantinga wouldn't dare say that atheists are cognitively-handicapped. Please don't place your own personal prejudice against atheists into Plantinga's mouth. He's much too good of a philosopher for that, and I have too much respect for him to let you get away with that without comment.

FYI, these three points should be taken together. Please do not reply to them individually...

I'll respond to them in any way I please. Anyway, It makes sense for me to respond to your points individually, since each point makes individual mistakes, where these mistakes are not fixed by appeal to the other points.

Here we see the relativism of universal sanction. Theism can be said to be universally sanctioned because if theism is true, then atheists are cognitively handicapped.

First, theism does not imply that atheists are cognitively handicapped, anymore than naturalism implies that theists are cognitively handicapped. Having a false belief (or lacking a true belief) does not entail being cognitively handicapped.

Second, the extended A/C does not entail that the class of theistic beliefs is universally sanctioned since (as explained above) atheists can get along in life just fine even though atheists lack this class of beliefs.

In the case of the above counterexample we have a group of individuals that after 'culling' the population end up as the majority. The only thing that stops a segment of the population from declaring their belief as universally sanctioned is majority opinion, which is an arbitrary criteria...

Once again, universal sanction is not about the number of people of who accept a belief.

Regarding your objection that Plantinga's defense is trivial... The problem is that atheism cannot be said to be arrived at rationally. This is Plantinga's argument against naturalism.

First, Plantinga's argument does not imply that "atheism cannot be said to be arrived at rationally". Instead, the argument is meant to show that that it's not rational to accept both naturalism and that one's cognitive processes result, in part, from naturalistic evolution together. So that argument has no effect on atheists who are non-naturalists, or atheists who don't accept naturalistic evolution.

Second, Plantinga does not aim to show that atheism is irrational. After all, he's fully aware of some of the arguments one can use to arrive rationally at atheism. And Plantinga thinks the bar for rationality is rather low, such that quite a number of ridiculous positions can be counted as rational. So it'd be no surprise for Plantinga if atheism could be arrived at rationally. Wunder notes as much:

"I think another part of the reason is that he [Plantinga] came to be dissatisfied with the focus of debates in religious epistemology on justification and rationality. I think he came to be convinced that these sorts of epistemic statuses were such that they were very easy to achieve on behalf of just about anything."

Third, I already pointed out some of the flaws in Plantinga's argument against evolutionary naturalism.

You also brought up the Great Pumpkin objection again. Here was the response I gave to shunydragon:

Already addressed that multiple times. For example:
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...341#post230341
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...788#post226788

In reply to your objection that "Plantinga's defense doesn't actually convert de jure objections to de facto objections, since it involves and ad hoc re-definition and strawman of what Christianity is committed to". Plantinga is meant to provide an intellectually defensible model of how Christian belief is warranted if true. This point is worthless, because he was not meaning to imply that knowledge of his model is required for salvation.

You missed my point there. You're claiming that Plantinga's position shows that one cannot make a de jure objection to Christianity without making a de facto objection to Christianity. My point was that your claim was false, since Christianity is not committed to something like the extended A/C model and thus Plantinga would not be able to claim that one is committed to a de facto objection to Christianity when one rejects the extended A/C model.

You also misunderstood my point about "salvation". I brought that point up, in response to you claiming that Christianity is committed to something like the extended A/C model. I pointed out that if you were right on this, then one would need to accept something like the extended A/C model in order to be Christian. And since being a Christian is a pre-condition for being saved on Christian theology (assuming that one lived after Jesus' time, as opposed to being someone like Moses), than that means accepting something like the extended A/C model is required for salvation. But that's absurd; that's not a requirement for being a saved Christian. So you were wrong when you claimed that Christianity entails something like the extended A/C model.

I never said that evolution cannot select for true beliefs. In fact, I clearly stated the opposite numerous times... I was saying that evolution does not select for necessarily true beliefs. For instance, the belief that 'my cognitive faculties are reliable'... P.S. I am using necessary in relation to pragmatic indispensability. This may be an interesting side discussion, so if you know how evolution selects for that, then please do tell.

I already addressed this in my previous posts. You haven't supported your above claims. For example, you haven't shown that evolution can't produce pragmatically indispensable beliefs. In fact, that statement of your's makes no sense. Why wouldn't evolution select for beliefs that enable an organism to get along well in the organism's interactions with the environment?

I also did not intend to say Plantingas argument concludes evolution does not produce necessary truths.

You said that evolution could not produce necessarily true beliefs:

"Like I stated previously, evolution can produce true beliefs, but why would they be necessarily true? I am certain you would be a lunatic to argue that evolution can produce necessarily true beliefs."

I showed that was wrong, using a counterexample:

"For example, evolutionary processes can result in organisms that belie[ve] that "1 + 1 = 2"."

You are just distracting from the main discussion. Slightly tiring, because it is not a huge deal. The rest of what I said was still valid and on point with Plantinga's argument...

No, it actually wasn't, for the reasons I explained in my previous post.

False. Your claim makes no sense. Do you really think that all theists need to do is show that it's possible for an evolutionary naturalist to be wrong? Do you think that suffices for a defeater? If so, then I have a defeator for theism right here... it's possible that theism is false.

No, you are confused again... I was showing that there is no intellectually defensible account of naturalism. I actually explicitly stated that naturalism can be true, yet the belief in naturalism would not be warranted given Plantinga's criteria.

No, what you actually wrote was this:

"Like I stated previously, evolution can produce true beliefs, but why would they be necessarily true? I am certain you would be a lunatic to argue that evolution can produce necessarily true beliefs. This is all the theist needs to show in order to have a defeater for the acceptance of naturalism."

So your claim was that all theists needed to show was that it was that the beliefs produced by evolution were not necessarily; that is: it was possible that the beliefs produced by evolution are false. And that's ridiculous, as I pointed out.

Now you are just harping on one mistake I made. Plantinga's argument is still cogent...

You've yet to show Plantinga's argument is cogent. In fact, you haven't even fairly represented his argument yet. You've instead conflated his argument with false claims you've made.

Right, evolution is a process that is taking place right now. What is the probability your beliefs are true at the current stage in evolution?

Depends on the beliefs. Some of my beliefs are more likely to be true than are others, for reasons I'll now explain (these reasons also explain why your question is misguided).

When you calculate the probability of "X", you almost always do go given some background information Y. For example, if I say:

the probability that my coin flip comes up heads; given that this is a fair coin with two sides, where one side is heads and the other is tails, and...

then "my coin flip comes up heads" is X, and "given that that this is..." is the Y on which that X is calculated.

Given this, if you wanted to determine the probability that a belief of mine is true, then you'll need to specify the background information relevant for that probability; that is: you'll need to tell me Y. Of course, Y will need to include the evidence for my belief, if there is any, since that evidence is relevant to how likely it is that my belief is true. For example, if my belief is that "monkeys exist", then Y will include my evidence for the existence of monkeys. Given this, Y will be different for different beliefs, since different beliefs often have different evidence in support of them. Yet you seem to be overlooking this point. You instead, seem to think that you can do determine the probability that my beliefs are true, simply by looking at evolution, without bothering to include the evidence in support of my beliefs; that is: you act as if Y only includes evolution. And that makes no sense.

[ShrimpMaster]

Your argument for a model now includes an argument against Naturalism, using a failed argument against Naturalism misusing the science of Evolution, and by de facto an argument for the existence of God. Therefore you are no longer just arguing for an 'IF true' model for the possibility that Christianity is a true belief.

There is a distinct problem here concerning the use of Evolution in Plantinga's arguments. There is no conceivable way Evolution can select for true beliefs, nor necessarily select for true beliefs in terms of religious beliefs, nor demonstrate whether God exists or not, nor whether Naturalism is true or not. Your foolish example of 1+1=2 is not in any way a 'belief' in the context of Plantinga's argument against Naturalism. To propose Evolution selects for true beliefs in Plantinga's argument, Design and the necessity of a Designer must be true or demonstrated by a falsifiable hypothesis, and this argument has failed miserably. The Discovery Institute has failed to demonstrate any falsifiable hypothesis concerning Design being remotely possible.

[seer]

You are just confused.

You are also the master of the understatement...

[Adrift]

You are also the master of the understatement...

Its gotten to the point where I can't hardly be bothered to reply to shunya anymore. I seriously think he either has reading or cognitive issues. I'd love to ignore him completely, but he has a tendency to take threads off topic with his barely coherent posts.

[seer]

Its gotten to the point where I can't hardly be bothered to reply to shunya anymore. I seriously think he either has reading or cognitive issues. I'd love to ignore him completely, but he has a tendency to take threads off topic with his barely coherent posts.

I suspect it is an age thing - early signs of dementia?

[Adrift]

I suspect it is an age thing - early signs of dementia?

Sadly, I think that's very plausible. Totally off topic, my grandfather (in his 80s) has been suffering mental issues from old age for a number of years, and was practically comatose, but has made an amazing recovery from the introduction of two new things in life, an ipod with a set of headphones with his favorite music, and just a little bit of exercise. My mother and I got the idea about the ipod from this amazing documentary:

It's simply fascinating how powerful music is. He's not the same man he was even just a few months ago. He's now a lot more like the man I remember many years ago.

Sorry, totally off topic.

[seer]

It's simply fascinating how powerful music is. He's not the same man he was even just a few months ago. He's now a lot more like the man I remember many years ago.

Sorry, totally off topic.

My mom and all her sisters suffered from Alzheimer's, I wished I knew about this - I have heard that the music thing can work wonders.

[shunyadragon]

I am not confused at all.

The point is you addressed the issue of Plantinga's argument against Naturalism in justifying that Naturalism cannot be a properly basic belief. Claiming JRichard and I brought it up does not change the issue. Simply based on Plantinga's model Naturalism cannot be excluded as a properly basic belief. You are the one that has further tried to exclude Naturalism from consideration using the argument.

Plantinga's model also did not include the necessity of sensus divinitatus as a premise of his model.

Based simply on the model, how would you propose excluding Naturalism as a proper 'basic belief' without bringing in these outside arguments and issues?

[Jichard]

You didn't actually show that what I said was false. And I already showed how trivially easy it is to apply Plantinga's defense to atheism, naturalism, and a myriad of other positions. Here it is again:

"First, Plantinga's defense is trivial, and can be employed in defense of almost any position. All one has to do is include an epistemic claim as apart of one's position. For example, an atheist could employ Plantinga's defense by doing the following:

1) define your atheis[m] as including epistemic statements like the following: I came to my atheist position in a rational way, such that I can justifiably lack belief that God exists
2) then note that if anyone makes a de jure objection to your position, then they are also making a de facto objection as well, since they would be denying your epistemic statement [from point 1]

One could even do the same for belief in the Great Pumpkin's existence; just include epistemic claims like the following: I came to my belief in the Great Pumpkin in a rational way, such that I can justifiably belief in the Great Pumpkin. Then note that if anyone makes a de jure objection to your position, then they are also making a de facto objection as well."

[Jichard]

I suspect it is an age thing - early signs of dementia?

Sadly, I think that's very plausible.

It's despicable of both of you to talk about shunyadragon like this, especially if you're not going to give him the courtesy of responding to what shunyadragon wrote.

I've come to expect this type of behavior from seer, since seer's been habitually dishonest in his responses to both me and other people. But I hadn't expected to see that from you Adrift, given what little I'd seen of your posts.

Ah well. At this, I should no longer be surprised to see some Christians failing to live up to the standards of the religion they claim to follow. I should know better by now.

[Adrift]

I think it's fairly despicable of both of you to talk about shunyadragon like this.

I've come to expect that from seer, since I've seen him be habitually dishonest in his responses to both me and other people. But I hadn't expected to see that from you Adrift, given what little I'd seen of your posts.

Ah well. At this, I should no longer be surprised to see some Christians failing to live up to the standards of the religion they claim to follow.

I . . . honestly don't care what you think of me, or what you think of Christians in general for that matter (I imagine like many of the antitheists on this forum, you didn't have a glowing view of Christians to begin with). I don't even know who you are. Don't think I've even ever replied to you before. I do know who shunyadragon is though, and I know that he's been very confused for a very long time. seer and I are far from the only two people on this forum to notice his general lack of comprehension and coherency. I think it's sad, and frustrating.

[Jichard]

Certainly, it would help if the frogs believe that the flies are a food source - this does not mean that they do. Like I stated previously, evolution can produce true beliefs, but why would they be necessarily true?

They don't need to be necessarily true. That is a strawman you're running, if you think that's Plantinga's argument. Plantinga is not claiming that the following is a necessary truth:

1: if a belief is selected for, then the belief is true

Instead, it suffices for the belief to be more likely to be true, the more rounds of selection that the belief makes it through.

Please read Plantinga's presentation of his argument and some of the literature that sprung in response the argument. No one peer-reviewed commentator I've seen (including Plantinga) says that his argument involves claim 1 being a necessary truth. No one. Instead Plantinga's argument is read in at least one of two ways: that evolutionary processes are unreliable when when it comes to producing true beliefs (this is often called the process interpretation of Plantinga's argument) or that evolutionary processes are no more likely to produce true beliefs than beliefs (this is often called the probabilistic interpretation). These two interpretations are equivalent to one another, if "reliable process" just means "a process that produces more true beliefs than false ones"). In any event, neither interpretation involves claim 1 being a necessary truth.

I am certain you would be a lunatic to argue that evolution can produce necessarily true beliefs.

You're playing loose with language here. Do you mean that evolutionary processes cannot result in organisms with necessarily true beliefs? If so, then you're wrong. For example, evolutionary processes can result in organisms that belief that "1 + 1 = 2". Or maybe you instead mean that I would be lunatic to claim 1 above is necessarily true? If so, your claim suffers from the problem I noted above; namely: you're strawmanning Plantinga's argument and claim 1 does not need to be necessarily true in order for an evolutionary naturalist to defend their position.

Ah, this takes me back to undergrad, when I got that from reading papers like this:

"A User's Guide to the Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism"
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2773...?acceptTC=true

"Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating, and cannot be rationally accepted. I distinguish between two different ways of understanding this argument, which I call the "probabilistic inference conception", and the "process characteristic conception". I argue that the former is what critics of the argument usually presuppose, whereas most critical responses fail when one assumes the latter conception. To illustrate this, I examine three standard objections to Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism: the Perspiration Objection, the Tu Quoque Objection, and the "Why Can't the Naturalist Just Add a Little Something?" Objection. I show that Plantinga's own responses to these objections fail, and propose counterexamples to his first two principles of defeat. I then go on to construct more adequate responses to these objections, using the distinctions I develop in the first part of the paper."

I highly suggest reading that paper, ShrimpMaster. It's very informative, and should help in fairly characterizing Plantinga's argument against evolutionary naturalism (as opposed to your mischaracterizations of Plantinga's argument). It should also help in getting clear on the "probabilistic interpretation" and "process interpretation" I mentioned in my above post.

If you can't get a copy of the paper, then the following blogpost is a useful substitute:

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/2008/...irza_eaan_and/

[JimL]

I . . . honestly don't care what you think of me, or what you think of Christians in general for that matter (I imagine like many of the antitheists on this forum, you didn't have a glowing view of Christians to begin with). I don't even know who you are. Don't think I've even ever replied to you before. I do know who shunyadragon is though, and I know that he's been very confused for a very long time. seer and I are far from the only two people on this forum to notice his general lack of comprehension and coherency. I think it's sad, and frustrating.

Adrift, thats a lot of malarky and you know it. It is very obvious that shunya is just as informed on the issues being discussed here as are you. The problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that just like everyone else here on tweb, on ocassion he doesn't articulate his point with perfect clarity as if he were writing an essay. But anyone with a modicum of intelligence can comprehend what he is saying. What you and seer do is to take advantage of those occasions and demean him for it in order to make yourself feel better about not being able to refute his arguments.