Seriously, you don’t understand how analogies work. Stop pretending that you do.
Were you intending to illustrate the argument I was making against the EAAN? Because, if so, you did a great job there.
Yes, I did.
Yes, I have alredy acknowledged that. Now, deal with the part where I explain why that doesn’t matter.
Sorry, do you think the EES proposes non-natural explanations???
The problem is you are very stupid, and don’t understand what you are arguing against or even what the words you write mean. Sorry, but I have to be blunt.
I swear this has been discussed here many times. Rather than contribute to yet another digression, see if you can look it up. To avoid confusion, I’m referring here to libertarian free will.
He doesn’t get the written word, it seems to me. The list of things written in plain English he just outright fails to parse correctly is growing at a geometric rate (to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2).
You were actually saying survival should result usually in valid perceptions, see above in my previous response to you. I agree that validity of reasoning is the more important of the two issues, though.
For one thing, as I just said to Rumraket, we all insist on reason coming from reason, when we evaluate what people tell us. And then we are asked to make an exception to this, when we examine the foundation for the validity of our reason! It would seem odd, to abandon what we seem to consider so crucial, when we examine such foundations.
But I’m talking about something more fundamental, you seem to be addressing whether our reasoning can be considered good enough to use for our purposes.
I did, actually, with the help of someone here, I quoted him.
But it clearly demonstrates that essentialism is wrong.
No, I’m pointing out that this is a principle we all recognize, when we consider what someone tells us. Is their statement due to unreasoning, irrational causes? If so, we always reject it. I do not extend this to all causes and results, that would be essentialism.
Not at all! I insist on a fundamental reason to believe a theorem, as in needing a proof. But theorems are not some sort of essential quality somehow. A fundamental reason is a needed basis for important claims, like the validity of reason.
Well, I did, actually, mentioning him calling such a view “chronological snobbery”, though I didn’t do any further quotes.
Well, that’s fine, I don’t know what this has to do with human reasoning, though.
I think you did, actually, an inconsistent essentialist is not really an essentialist.
Um, I would call that an unsubstantiated claim. Why are they irrelevant?
I’m not claiming that, though. I do assume people know what I mean by a nonreasoning cause.
You can if they one is due to unreasoning causes, and the other is a nonreasoning cause. We recognize an nonreasoning cause in disordered thinking, and therefore reject it.
Well, I agree! But tree-rings are not causing conclusions, so your analogy is not apt. We make arguments, and form conclusions based on tree-rings, and everybody accepts such reasoning, because it’s our reasoning, we are the source, the tree-rings are not directly causing it.
Continual pain forever would not be desirable, I think we can all agree on that. I’m willing to do without further reward, for that. And my point is that in the Christian view, there is reason for suffering, reward being one of them, refining being another. I’m certainly not saying the only reason for pain is so we can be glad when it stops.
No, that is not my view, either. But improved reasoning would be appreciated.
I agree that making a single exception doesn’t make sense. Just Lewis’ point, actually.
Well, Darwin was concerned about that. Haldane pointed it out. Lennox and Lewis and Chesterton all concur. I could mention H.G. Wells, the historian, too, he wrote a piece Chesterton referred to, called “Doubts Of the Instrument”, meaning the brain. Would you say all these thinkers are making some sort of absurd declaration?
I’ve given a number of reasons it’s a problem, I’m wondering why you think I have given no reasons for this.
No, I don’t claim this!
But how do you know this? A deranged man’s reasoning suits him just fine, his logic is in fact, usually flawless, but it’s still based on irrationality.
But as I’ve said, a bridge is good if it’s worked well enough so far, but that doesn’t mean we won’t examine its foundations. So pragmatics doesn’t supply a foundation.
We do indeed have to start with reason as an axiom, but just taking refuge in a possibility, doesn’t seem to be a good landing place. And we can’t allow disproving the validity of reasoning, even if we assume it at the start! Starting with a bunch of premises, if you reach a contradiction, that’s a bad result.
Only as I keep saying, we all recognize this principle, when we evaluate what people tell us. If we see their reasoning has a nonreasoning cause, we reject it. Every time. So we have a warrant to trust our reasoning, if it comes from a reasoning cause. And we have reason to discount our reasoning, if we conclude it is the result of an unreasoning process, and if our current thoughts are just the entire and direct result of the movement of atoms in our brains.
Why do you think I don’t know this? Both of these are actually well-known, especially if you read apologetics, as I have.
But God signed the book! By that I mean the prophetic books, there is nothing like this anywhere else. Such as all the Messianic prophecies, over 300 of them, or the prophecy in Daniel 2 of the kingdoms that would succeed Babylon, which is still holding up, and cannot be postdated, and where several rulers have tried to dominate this area (the Ottomans, Hitler) and this would have overturned the prophecy, and they failed. See Isaiah 41:22-24 for God’s challenge about telling the future, it’s his signature in his book. And then there is John 7:17, where Jesus issues a challenge, if we will to do his will, we will know if what he says comes from God, or whether he is making it up.
And the claim that there was a real person named Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a Roman cross, is established outside the Bible by various sources, no credible historian disputes this now, look it up! For example, the Jewish Gamarra, a source hostile to Christianity, says Jesus was a sorceror, which is evidence that he was a real person, and did miracles.
Yes, actually, I was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse some years ago, I could check my pulse any time, and detect extra beats. Then some time after that, I went to a meeting where someone mentioned healing for my condition, I went up for prayer, and just this previous year I was told “You don’t have mitral valve prolapse”! Both times, for the diagnosis and the confirmation I don’t have it, they did the ultrasound, they did the Holter monitor, and so on.
Well, yes, I got confirmation from another doctor just a month ago that heart valves don’t just get better on their own. I’ve had a number of rather dramatic healings! And a number of people have been healed recently at work, including me as well! So yes, I believe there is a living God, I recommend seeking him. Or the prayer, “If you are real, reveal yourself to me”…
Not at all. I evaluate an argument on its merits, not its source be it authority or madness. For instance, your argument fails on its merits, apart from its apologetic motivations.
Sure. But don’t you need occasional pain to enable you to appreciate rewards? That’s what you said before. Why should this need suddenly cease in heaven, and for eternity?
Sure, but there’s no reason to believe that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe that if there’s a reason here on earth, the same reason wouldn’t apply in heaven.
Of coursse it’s not your view, but what gives you warrant to believe it isn’t true?
Your description of Lewis’s argument is that you must make a single exception, and only that. Maybe you described it wrong?
No, I’m saying that “various people said this” is not an argument for this being true. So again, why is this a problem?
No, you’ve given one “reason”, your think about not believing what a crazy person says. That’s it.
Why not? Was he incapable of it? Why would a benevolent creator fail to give us good perception and reason?
I don’t think that’s true. But we have already assumed as an axiom that our reasoning and perception work well enough to make discussion possible. This must be assumed regardless of the cause of existence.
True enough. But natural selection is a foundation, and it predicts that, for example, optical illusions will be found as long as they don’t cause problems most of the time. What does divine creation have to say about optical illusioins?
Not sure what you mean by that. Your position relies on the claim that a natural origin of thinking beings is not a possibility. It it is instead possible, your objection disappears.
Fortunate, then, that we haven’t reached a contradiction.
No, you have it exactly backwards. We evaluate what people say on its own terms, and if we see that it’s nonsense, we reject it and infer from it that they aren’t very good at thinking. Present case, for example. I know nothing of your mental state except what you post, and its nonsensical nature leads me to reject it. I then conclude, after a lot of it, that you are not good at reasoning. What I don’t do is reject what you say because I know you aren’t good at reasoning. Why, you could even from time to time say some true things, speaking hypothetically. And I would be wrong to reject those true things even though you are otherwise full of nonsense.
Sorry, no. Again, backwards. Nor does this thing comparing speech to a human mind and a human mind to God make a valid analogy. And as has been pointed out before, you are using “unreasoning” as an umbrella term to refer to causes as different as insanity and natural selection, which are not in any way comparable.
But we don’t. Your “principle”, which you keep repeating, is both backwards and inapplicable.
I think you don’t know this because you have made a number of ignorant statements about both PE and the standard narrative. I would suggest that scientific publications would be a better guide to both of these than your creationist apologetics. Again, you might start with Eldrege and Gould 1972.
Don’t really want to get very deep into this digression. I’ll just snort derisively and pass on to something else.
Congratulations. One wonders why prayer isn’t a standard medical technique if it works so well. Does it work for missing legs too?
The defender of the EAAN would likely respond that what your are describing is not “reasoning” but somatic response. Such responses are not what are at issue in the argument. Plantinga accepts that evolution can create a mind that will reliably move Paul a safe distance from the hungry tiger. What he disputes is whether it is likely that the underlying beliefs that produce this behaviour are true. The (reasonable) assumption here is that a polychaete worm does not have anything like a belief.