Facsimile 3 wrote:I'm going to resurrect some old posts of mine and see if it makes my position a bit more clear.
Human beings since before Geico commercials have been taming their environs by means of mastering arts that would protect them from the instability in the changes in nature. These practical crafts were associated with the menial. During this same time men were also trying to appease nature to work for their fortune by ritual and beliefs in metaphysical powers. To escape from the uncertainty of a changing and at times harsh world they conceived of an unchanging external reality where perfection meant perfect because it would not change. Fast forward to the time of the Greeks where we have a lot of slaves doing menial tasks and a class of well to dos who had lots of time to ponder and we get the division of the practical and reason in Philosophy and Science. Math is taken from the external reality of perfection only accessible through reason and everything else sort of just followed with Plato. Keep in mind that understanding of the natural world was viewed in the same way as religion and philosophy (as being derived from reason, no experiments needed, from the perfect external reality). The Catholic Church just kind of hijacked this immaterial external reality. Slaves and machines did the practical work and the Philosophers spent their time pondering how great the external reality was; that it had no practical application for man was just part of it being above the fallen world we live in. Empiricism still made the error of assuming that external reality exists not in the immaterial like the Rationalists, but in the natural world.
The natural sciences broke away with the method we have been talking about here on this thread (Scientific method). All the other fields are still lagging behind. Religion isn't anymore depreciated because of the Scientific Revolution, it only gets dragged through the rocks when it hangs onto archaic, threadbare concepts taken from an outdated system of Philosophy that really offers no solutions for the world we live in today. In fact, most of the problems we are experiencing in the modern world are because Science is so far ahead of the other fields.
What a load of rubbish. You, mfb, and Oxygenadams must be great entertainment for each other over on MAD.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Darth J wrote:I agree that it's a stupid statement, but it's what I taught people as a missionary. As did every missionary I served with and every missionary I have ever known.
Maybe people should stop saying "I know" or claiming to have a "testimony." Do you agree?
I'm sorry I was a bit a pill to you last night. Picking the no on your questionnaire and making you go through all the work to back it up with many GA quotes.
I agree with how MFB answered your questionnaire on whether or not the Church teaches that there is such a thing as absolute, objective truth, but I picked no because the Church does not formally teach any kind of epistemology or ontology. And I seriously doubt you were teaching it either on your mission (but then again I might be wrong, perhaps you were veering from the discussions to grace your investigators with your knowledge of ontology and epistemology).
DCP buys into contemporary fundamentalist apologetics almost to a t with the exception of where traditional Mormon thought diverges with evangelical thought. And not necessarily even then to be frank. There are other apologists with him, like Bill Hamblin. The essay that is at the heart of this thread feels sleep-written by an evangelical fundamentalist if you just x out the Mormon parts. I've read variations of that so many times from them that I could see the script play out well in advance the first time I read it.
A lot of the other apologists seem to buy ideas that continually deemphasize our ability to really know anything or aim to create parity of justified belief between just about anything. A lot goes wrong in those efforts and I hesitate to categorize them in any philosophical tradition because in most cases it's too confused for that, but I guess it's vaugely pomoish.
However, there is a wrinkle in Gad's comment. Fundamentalists are notorious for engaging in selective radical skepticism when it suits the argument at hand. One day they are shadowboxing with postmodernists by attacking them evil "relativists" and the next day they are using what amounts to relativism as a get out of bad position free card. You see it in creationist writing all the time. I actually think that state of affairs describes a fair amount of people at MADB - a bunch of fundamentalists nerfing the notion of truth and relativizing ethical judgment if and when it suits them.
Of course, what's going on with people like Ben McGuire is different than that and that's the other "category" of apologists I think Gad was referring to. For them, it's obviously more complicated than that. But while Ben wouldn't say he's advocating radical skepticism (who would?) I think it's accurate to say his views do collapse into relativism. So I guess I agree with Gad if you allow for the hyperbole in the comment.
Facsimile 3 wrote:I'm going to resurrect some old posts of mine and see if it makes my position a bit more clear.
Human beings since before Geico commercials have been taming their environs by means of mastering arts that would protect them from the instability in the changes in nature. These practical crafts were associated with the menial. During this same time men were also trying to appease nature to work for their fortune by ritual and beliefs in metaphysical powers. To escape from the uncertainty of a changing and at times harsh world they conceived of an unchanging external reality where perfection meant perfect because it would not change. Fast forward to the time of the Greeks where we have a lot of slaves doing menial tasks and a class of well to dos who had lots of time to ponder and we get the division of the practical and reason in Philosophy and Science. Math is taken from the external reality of perfection only accessible through reason and everything else sort of just followed with Plato. Keep in mind that understanding of the natural world was viewed in the same way as religion and philosophy (as being derived from reason, no experiments needed, from the perfect external reality). The Catholic Church just kind of hijacked this immaterial external reality. Slaves and machines did the practical work and the Philosophers spent their time pondering how great the external reality was; that it had no practical application for man was just part of it being above the fallen world we live in. Empiricism still made the error of assuming that external reality exists not in the immaterial like the Rationalists, but in the natural world.
The natural sciences broke away with the method we have been talking about here on this thread (Scientific method). All the other fields are still lagging behind. Religion isn't anymore depreciated because of the Scientific Revolution, it only gets dragged through the rocks when it hangs onto archaic, threadbare concepts taken from an outdated system of Philosophy that really offers no solutions for the world we live in today. In fact, most of the problems we are experiencing in the modern world are because Science is so far ahead of the other fields.
What a load of rubbish. You, mfb, and Oxygenadams must be great entertainment for each other over on MAD.
Oh Gad, you are so good with the little quips, but never put yourself out there far enough in discussion to ever really be vulnerable to any kind of attack. You remind me of a child who dips their toes into the pool and maybe their foot at most. But look how quick you are to make fun of how the people in the pool are swimming. You are fun to have around.
I'm sure out there in the world wide web there is another message board where you actually build things and edify and that your contributions here are just a shadow of that.
If you were to put a gun to my head, I suppose I would endorse a correspondence theory of truth. Tomorrow I might endorse a coherence theory of truth. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, and I'd need more education than I currently have to feel confident in developing one.
However, I have read a fair amount of C.S. Pierce writings and I think I understand his views reasonably well. Of all the pragmatists I've read, he's easily my favorite. As a practical matter, his ideas on truth aren't going to get you to any different opinions on whether one is warranted in being a Mormon or the truth any other mundane factual matter. I feel like I'm listening to a bunch of homeopaths asking, "Yeah, but what is truth, really?" in response to papers showing homeopathy is clinically no better than a placebo, originates in prescientific magical concepts, and is wildly implausible theoretically given what we know about biology and chemistry.
EAllusion wrote:DCP buys into contemporary fundamentalist apologetics almost to a t with the exception of where traditional Mormon thought diverges with evangelical thought.
Well, I certainly don't disagree with you on that point, EA.
It is precisely at such points of relevant divergence that DCP shoots himself in the epistemological foot. If I recall correctly, DCP at one point announced he was pursuing a writing project anent the resurrection that was self-consciously derivative of the Craig/Habermas school of evidentialism. Craig's presentation, for example, assumes the general textual reliability of New Testament (and rightly so), which is something I've never seen a Mormon apologist argue for in any consistent manner.
(Craig I can take or leave; Habermas I like, if only for his genuinely endearing--and I think endearingly genuine--"golly-shucks" sort of presentation. Just to be clear: that's Gary Habermas of fundamentalist Liberty University fame; home also to erstwhile Dean of Liberty's seminary, the lying liar who lies and then lies about lying, Dr. Ergun Caner. A mixed bag, to be sure.)
Facsimile 3 wrote:I kind wish people would address it instead of talking about how we went to a different LDS Church or about how 1+1=2 renders it inconsistent.
I brought up a different LDS church because all to often some apologists start saying the church doesn't teach that, or I was never taught that, even though it is clear that they do. So yes many times I wonder what church they were attending.
I knew DCP was enamored with the Craig/Habermas style of argument for the historicity of the resurrection, but I didn't realize he was working on a book (?) defending it.
One of my favorite ways of talking about this style argument when I have is that it works better for aspects of LDS history. That's a reductio ad absurdum for the evangelical audience that I almost exclusively see using those arguments. I think DCP agrees and sees that kind of argument as leading to a general apologetic for what those faithful Mormon pioneers marched sometimes to their death for. I mean, one of Craig's main arguments is that early Christians believed Jesus rose from the dead, going so far as to sacrifice their lives for that belief, and this is inexplicable unless Jesus really rose from the dead. They couldn't all be nuts or liars, right?