Dr Faupple,
As an ex-teacher I can appreciate your Q&A forum, and can better understand why I an an EX-teacher. Little people ask the hard questions.
But I intend to be a loyal subscriber of the new page with the hope of gaining some much needed intellillect.
Yuor frend,
Mack
edited for punchuashun
[ This Message was edited by: Mack.Hoover on 2002-09-24 23:35 ]
This is absolutely hilarious, Dale.
Now if any of you flippant tipplers are inclined to wonder whether Dales’s forays into philosophy and theology are based on anything more than superficial familiarity with these fields, the whistling marsupial is here to reassure you that they are. Frightening eh…
So what are your credentials Wombat? do I hear you ask? Well, sensing a regress in the wings, I’ll go for an argument from authority, even though it’s my authority that is in question. This is virtuous circularity folks. Wombats are nocturnal creatures. We hang out with owls. Some of our wisdom rubs off. Just ask the next Australian owl you meet.
Dale, you might want to place this on the announcements forum so it won’t drop off the first page so quickly.
A complete online version of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion can be found at http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm For all the kiddies.
Um… this thread isn’t perhaps related to a prior one where a certain mildly narcotic substance was declared legal in the country where the C&F board is hosted, does it?..
I don’t need narcotic substances either to appreciate Dale’s humour or to generate my own. As for the others on this thread, they’ll have to speak for themselves.
Oh, man! All them hippies on that other thread with their ropes and their dopes. I tell you what! I wouldn’t eat the brownies, if I were to visit their commune.
Man, and I had a whole batch ready made for you too Walden. Just itching to discuss the world’s religious views as they pertain to the existance of the fipple and it’s recurring impact on the One Religion theory insofar as it reduces or increases the amount of chiff you encounter via brownie saturated Cheiftan Low D airs.
(ooh man that hurt.)
There was a man arrested in Vinita for just wearing dreadlocks. They assumed he must be a Rastafarian, and thus must have marihuana.
Vinita?
There’s a Venita Oregon. Is that where you mean? I would be stunned if this were the case as it’s the home of the Oregon Country Fair. 'Course if it wasn’t in the summer time I suppose the local population is not so “rope a dope”. And still the sheer biggotry of such an arrest no matter where is infuriating, and not a little scary.
On 2002-09-27 06:23, Walden wrote:
A complete online version of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion can be found at > http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm > For all the kiddies.
And the Quinque Viae (ST I Q2 a3) of St. Thomas which I’m shocked and appalled Dale didn’t mention can be found at:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/phd/com707/5_ways.html
John
On 2002-09-27 18:41, Sean wrote:
Vinita?
There’s a Venita Oregon. Is that where you mean?
No, no, no. Vinita, Oklahoma. County Seat of Craig County. Frequently mentioned on the 90’s sit-com The Torkelsons, and one of the towns they give temperature for on ABC World News Now.
And the Quinque Viae (ST I Q2 a3) of St. Thomas which I’m shocked and appalled Dale didn’t mention
John
I thought it might be over the kid’s head.
My wife and I were flown a couple of
weeks ago to Princeton for a meeting
of ‘The Metaphysics of Human Persons’
colloquium–funded by the Pew Foundation.
We’re the token Buddhists, you see.
Some of the best Christian philosophers
were there. Awesome. Well, there was
Richard Swinburne. I tried hard
over lunch to persuade him that he
doesn’t exist (earning my
airfare). No luck, I’m afraid.
David Hume is my favorite philosopher,
I think. But he went wrong in the
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
He took the argument from design
to be an argument from analogy.
A is like B; A has some feature
so probably B has it, too.
The cosmos (or the eye or the human
body) is like a watch or machine.
The latter is a result of intelligent
design, so probably so is the former.
As Hume pointed out, this leads to
absurdity in numerous ways:
A machine is the product of a team
of fallible engineers, all of whom
die sooner or later; so probably
the cosmos is the product of a team
of fallible designers, all of whom
die sooner or later.
Worse, the cosmos (or the eye or the
human body) is even more like a vegetable
than it is like a machine. Vegetables
grow in the ground, so probably
so did the cosmos.
Devastating, if the argument from
design is an argument from analogy,
but it isn’t. It’s an example of
what’s called ‘inference to the best
explanation’ or, more obscurely, ‘abductive
reasoning.’ The idea is that we are
entitled to suppose that the best
explanation of a phenomenon that cries
out for explanation is probably correct.
The cosmos (the eye, the human body,
the watch) exhibit an extraordinary
level of organization of a means-ends
sort–e.g. the matter of the eye
is organized so that it can see.
This cries out for explanation.
The best explanation is intelligent
design.
Therefore probably there is a
designer.
Of course there might be many
desigers, but in science we
are entitled to go for the simplest
explanation, and one designer is
simpler than a team.
This argument had real force
before Darwin, because nobody
could think of any other plausible
explanation for the order of the eye,
say, other than intelligent design.
That’s one of the reasons evolutionary
theory was so alarming. The argument
is a scientific argument, you see,
so it can be weakened by new developments.
There appear to be mounting problems for
evolutionary theory, so the argument
from design isn’t dead yet.
The New Argument From Design points
out that if things had happened ever
so slightly differently at the time
of the Big Bang, there could have
been no life in the universe.
That the rate of expansion was
calibrated at precisely the
decimal it was needs explaining,
and the best explanation is
that something was trying to
create a universe in which there
would be life. ‘Let there be light!’
The Cosmological Argument can
also be construed as an abductive
argument.
Most things needn’t have
been–e.g. you and me, the earth,
the galaxy, etc. Each depends
on the agency of something else.
So there needn’t
have been anything of this sort.
There needn’t have been a material
universe.
Why then is there something rather than
nothing? Why are there things
that needn’t have been when there
needn’t have been any? That needs an explanation.
The only possible explanation is
that something that could not have
failed to be, which depends on nothing
else for its existence, had a hand
in creating things that could have
failed to be.
So, probably, there is something that
could not have failed to be, and it
played a part in creating the physical
universe.
Lately Christian philosophers argue
that no argument they give is decisive,
but that combined they have a
cumulative force, rather like
a prosecutor who argues that
the butler did it by combining
lots of different facts, none of
which is decisive alone.
I find this not at all silly,
though it certainly doesn’t look
as though whatever
created the universe, if something
intelligent did it, is particularly
nice. I guess that’s a limitation
of arguments from natural religion
–they may get
us to something powerful and very smart,
but more than an appeal
to nature is required
to get us to a loving God. Best, Jim
On 2002-09-28 14:11, jim stone wrote:
I tried hard over lunch to persuade him that he doesn’t exist (earning my airfare). No luck, I’m afraid.
He thinks, therefore he is. Still a powerful argument.
That’s what Richard Swinburne said!
That’s when I tried
to grab his desert.
There may be thoughts
but no thinker–the
Buddha taught that.
Perhaps there’s only
a stream of mental
states but no subject.
Hume thought so.
I can be indubitably
certain that I think,
Descartes said.
But it’s dubitable
that I think (I think).
Maybe there’s just the thought.
Arguably, the only certainty
in the neighborhood
is ‘There is a thought now.’
That’s what I said to
Richard S., while
edging closer to his
desert. But gee, these
Christian philosophers
are quick. People
who think they exist
have faster reflexes
than people who think
they don’t. People who
believe in souls
appear to be the
fastest of all.
I’m going over to the hemp thread for an hour or so. Then I’ll come back and read this thread again.
Jim
On 2002-09-28 14:18, Walden wrote:
He thinks, therefore he is. Still a powerful argument.
That’s Descartes, ain’t it? Great mathematician, but his ontology sucks.
The thoughts are not just processed, as in a computer, they feed into something. That something is the soul.