Quote:
|
Originally Posted by DChristopher It seems to me that "what I see with my own eyes" should be trusted in either of our systems: on the one hand, if there is no God, then my senses are all I have. On the other hand, if there is a creator-God who is Good, then he created my senses...which basically constitute the ONLY way I can interact with the physical world. |
But you have no justification for trusting what you see with your own eyes, if you do not presuppose the objective revelation of God which
says that it is trustworthy. Without a knowledge-giver infallibly revealing that your senses are basically accurate, you have utterly no epistemic basis for assuming so. It could be the case that your senses are completely inaccurate; or even that the association you make between the mental event of "seeing" and the physical event of light entering your eyes is a false one. Perhaps you only
appear to have eyes. Perhaps you are not physical at all. It is surprising that atheists are so heavily materialist/naturalist, affirming the physical and reducing the mental to mere abstractions of physical events, when in fact the only thing they
know is that
mental events, and
not physical ones, occur. You have no rational reason to believe in physical events whatsoever, except your own assumption of it, which is simply question-begging.
Quote:
If you and I disagree, we can't debate, argue, compromise, empathize, or interact at all--you just fall back on, "I'm right because my knowledge comes from God, and yours doesn't."
Even if I agree with you one EVERYTHING, except I take a slightly different interpretation of one doctrinal point from the Bible, STILL we are at an impasse because we will both insist on having God's knowledge directly imparted.
|
Why? You seem to be assuming that God's sovereignty precludes communication, which is obviously not the case. You are equivocating between the mechanism of belief-acquisition (the metaphysic), and the study of those beliefs (the epistemology). It is quite possible for God to impart false beliefs as well as true ones—for example, your belief that he does not exist. These beliefs can be rationally evaluated (ie, they can be examined and seen to be logically inconsistent in some way) so that we can determine their truth. We may have little in common in terms of our axioms, but we are nonetheless able to communicate, which fact presupposes at least logical laws in common between us.
Quote:
Ex: Water falls on my head. I (therefore) think, "water just fell on my head. Now I'm wet, and I will stay wet unless I get a towel. I wonder why water fell on my head, when I'm sitting in a dry room with a ceiling above me...? (etc.)"
Looks to me like a physical event triggering a rational one.
|
You are considering the topic only superficially. For example, you say that water falls on your head;
therefore you think such-and-such. But what caused you to think this? The water drop, in and of itself, certainly has no power to cause thoughts in your mind, so there are probably several assumptions about causality implicit here which you have not clarified—and none of them is necessarily rational.
But more basically, I was referring to the notion of evolution; or, more generally, the notion of rational processes taking place in a purely naturalistic world. You see that physical events give rise to other physical events, but when it comes to abstract things like logic you are without explanation. Logic is clearly not a physical thing, and yet it is nonetheless unequivocally necessary and inviolable. It is universal to everyone, and thus is clearly not "created" by anyone within their own mind. It obviously isn't a mere convention, since a convention by definition could be otherwise and can be changed—if we try to think of logic like this it immediately reduces to self-refuting incoherency. Logical laws are something which we all perceive in the same way, and are evidently universal principles which we apprehend. Thus they constitute a kind of basic, universal knowledge. But we know that knowledge entails a mind—and universal knowledge entails a universal mind.
A naturalistic worldview denies the existence of a universal mind and supposes that logical laws are merely the results of physical processes. It assumes that thought is merely some kind of abstraction of the physical. But the physical, by definition, is physical and does not permit abstraction in such a way. You cannot speak of mental events in terms of physical events without losing all explanatory power and invoking some kind of mystery—the very thing that atheists, in their supposed rationality, are so eager to avoid. The very rationality which they claim to uphold is the very thing they are unable to explain, and which is totally incongruent with their beliefs about the world.
Quote:
|
You don't get to add your own axioms to mine to show mine aren't consistent!
|
I don't need to. Your axioms
are internally inconsistent. The supposition of rational processes without a rational agent from which they stem is itself inconsistent. You rely upon logic, yet you are unable to account for it.
Quote:
|
Why do you claim that you understand the way you come by your beliefs, and others don't?
|
Consider my points above. A knowledge of how we come to beliefs relies upon a knowledge of what logic and consciousness is, its origin, and the causal relationships which it entails. You have none of these things. I do, since the Bible infallibly explains them.
Also, you didn't answer my question:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bnonn Quote: |
Originally Posted by DChristopher For instance, it is necessary, to me, to assume that what I see, basically, really happened. Denying this axiom would lead to all sorts of silly and unnecessary contradictions. | Such as what? |