The worst thing about Mormonism

[_dartagnan]

Schmo obvioulsy has issues with the English language. I provided several valid definitions for the verb "to know." By definition, I know God exists. He has no argument against it. All he can do is assert it isn't true and to declare me a moron for saying it. That's his best response!

It drives him nuts that I can legitimately claim to know something he doesn't believe to be true, so he has to give in to name-calling since that is all he has left.

Well, fine Shmoe. Kids will be kids and all that jaz, but don't expect anyone to believe you're taking the "intellectual" high road over me when this is all you have to fall back on.

You're an embarrassment to atheists, if not yourself.

[_Jersey Girl]

dartagnan

I know God exists. I don't know the details about God but I know God exists.

What is your evidence for God?

[_EAllusion]

Schmo obvioulsy has issues with the English language. I provided several valid definitions for the verb "to know." By definition, I know God exists.

The old standard definition of knowledge in philosophy is justified, true belief. This has been the case, more or less, since Plato. As it turns out this isn't without fault. Look up Gettier problems if you want to get a sense why this doesn't quite work. However, it still works in day-to-day circumstances just fine. If your belief isn't true, then you don't "know." I just don't think it is necessary to quibble over technical definitions and am happy to think that you think you know God exists. Big deal. But Schmo likely wasn't going this route anyway. He likely was using "belief" and "know" in terms of certainty. To believe is to weakly support truth; to know is to approach absolute certainty. Since he doesn't think one can know God in the sense of having rock-hard justification, that's why he claims you can't know God and would be a fool to claim otherwise. Meh. I think these are highly unproductive uses of those terms. Indeed, I'm not sure we can know anything given the how strict the criteria is to know in this sense.

[_Some Schmo]

Schmo obvioulsy has issues with the English language. I provided several valid definitions for the verb "to know." By definition, I know God exists. He has no argument against it. All he can do is assert it isn't true and to declare me a moron for saying it. That's his best response!

It drives him nuts that I can legitimately claim to know something he doesn't believe to be true, so he has to give in to name-calling since that is all he has left.

Well, fine Shmoe. Kids will be kids and all that jaz, but don't expect anyone to believe you're taking the "intellectual" high road over me when this is all you have to fall back on.

You're an embarrassment to atheists, if not yourself.

Let me try to explain this to you in really small words so that maybe the message will penetrate that tiny, primitive blob of jello you call your brain.

I don't have issues with the English language. I tend to bend to its will rather than trying to make it bend to mine. Given that it's a means of communication, it's more important to me to use words in a sense that most people understand them, not according to a definition that suits my own agenda.

If someone started going off saying that gravity doesn't exist, or that it made things fall up, do you think I'd waste my time debating them? Why would I bother? If a person doesn't bring basic common sense to the table, there's no point to trying to convince them of anything. You think the rules of this forum somehow dictate that I should dispute your "argument" but the fact is that you're a lost cause. Your "argument" isn't worthy of contention. It's not even debatable. How does one argue that a circle is round with someone claiming it has four sides? Most people consider the roundness of a circle as a given.

And for this reason, all I can do is point and laugh. You want to regard this as a signal that you've somehow "won the debate" when in fact all it means is that you're a crackpot who's been dismissed appropriately as a crackpot.

Besides, you're such a sad little panda, and I'm just trying to cheer you up. Explaining to you how you're wrong wouldn't help that.

[_Chap]

Schmo obvioulsy has issues with the English language. I provided several valid definitions for the verb "to know." By definition, I know God exists. He has no argument against it. All he can do is assert it isn't true and to declare me a moron for saying it. That's his best response!

It drives him nuts that I can legitimately claim to know something he doesn't believe to be true, so he has to give in to name-calling since that is all he has left.

Well, fine Shmoe. Kids will be kids and all that jaz, but don't expect anyone to believe you're taking the "intellectual" high road over me when this is all you have to fall back on.

You're an embarrassment to atheists, if not yourself.

I am glad to see that dartagnan has adopted a more cheerful looking avatar.

Because he has started to look a bit less angry. I would like to make some suggestions for his thinking pleasure. Dartagnan's response to Homer Simpson (hiding behind the screen name 'Some Schmo', and who has now made a typically incompetent and Homer-like attempt to conceal his real identity by a belated avatar change) is based, is it not, on definitions of words like 'know' or 'knowledge' that he finds in a dictionary. On that , I would like to comment:

1. That argument will only persuade those who are so over-awed by the prestige of the lexicographer, that they are willing to join dartagnan in promoting him from his actual role of trying to capture the constantly changing usage of words in short phrases (which is all you can fit into a dictionary) to the role of a philosophical arbiter who tells us how we ought to think.

2. Quite a lot of people whose thinking ability dartagnan probably respects more than that of Homer (no disrespect from me in that direction, though ...) do not base their conclusions on definitions found in dictionaries. Socrates talked a lot, and (many would say) very perceptively, about what words meant - but there simply weren't any dictionaries to distract him or his interlocutors in his day and age. What Socrates did was to prompt people to systematic reflection on how they used words, and what they meant by them. If dartagnan will try that with "know" "knowledge", "believe" and "belief" he will find that he has more fun and persuades more people than if he just hits them over the head with a dictionary and yells "I am right, by definition".

3. Modern examples of the kind of reflection I am talking about can be found in many places. One kind I know a little bit about was done by people like A.J. Ayer: see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayer/#5, or for Ayer's own words, the first chapter in his relevantly-titled book The Problem of Knowledge.. This characterisation of his position from the Stanford site is pretty fair, and saves me typing out stuff:

In The Problem of Knowledge (1956), Ayer defended a context-based account of knowledge that had as its essential ingredients that some claim, p, counted as knowledge for a person, A, iff ["iff" = "if and only if"] p was true, A was sure that p, and A had, in the relevant context, ‘the right to be sure’ about the truth of p. The contextual element is apparent in the discussion after Ayer outlines what is required to have the ‘right to be sure’ in the mathematical case. One avenue to knowledge in this case lies in the ability of the agent to provide a proof of the relevant proposition. In the case of perception, or memory, it is clear that it is impossible to possess such a proof, so a more relaxed standard is required. To state in general how strong the backing needs to be for a believer to have the right to be sure that their belief is true is not possible; doing so would require drawing up a list of conditions “under which perception, or memory, or testimony, or other forms of evidence are reliable.” (1956, p. 32.) Ayer thought this would be too complicated a task, if at all possible. The ‘correct’ standard to set for claims to knowledge is to be decided pragmatically, on grounds of practical convenience. The skeptics ploy of setting an impossible standard, one requiring the impossibility of error, should be resisted, as one has the right to be sure even where error is possible.

Obviously Ayer's suggestion about what should be counted as knowledge is not given to us from Sinai, or even from Joseph Smith, and we don't have to accept it. Many have argued against his position. But I think it still has a lot going for it as a summary of how reflective people tend to use that word, especially that bit about knowledge involving having "a right to be sure". Ayer did not try to set up any universal rule to help us decide what having "a right to be sure" meant in every context, but suggested that we should be pragmatic about it.

On that pragmatic basis, I have asked dartagnan, in effect, what gives him "the right to be sure" that God exists. He explicitly states that he cannot give us any coherent answer to that. I therefore feel on reasonable ground in saying that it is not at all clear that dartagnan can be said to "know" as opposed, say, to merely asserting, that a deity of some kind exists. And indeed, I do not see that anybody has ever succeeded in publicly demonstrating that he or she has "a right to be sure" about the answer to a question of that kind.

If I was to drop the high-falutin' stuff about dead academics, and come down to couple of examples from everyday life, our problem is illustrated by the distinction we would probably all make between these two examples of claims to knowledge:

A: I know he is the murderer
B: But how can you be sure?
A: I saw him pull a gun and shoot the guy through the head.

A: I know what horse will win the 3:30 race.
B: But how can you be sure?
A: Trust me, I just know.

(In the second case, let us assume that A is not a 'race-fixer' who dopes horses or bribes jockeys, in which case he might well have a clear "right to be sure".)


dartagnan's claim to knowledge seems to fall under the second category. It seems to me that as Mr Spock might have said "It's not knowledge as we know it, Jim".

[_Some Schmo]

Unless God spoke to their soul in a way which was unmistakable for anything else. I wouldn't call that obnoxious.

You wouldn't call it obnoxious because you actually think this is possible. Most others think that voices in your head is indicative of, at the very least, a troubled mind.

by the way, I wouldn't put many people into this camp. Most that say "know" believe. So I guess you'd have to pick and choose who you trust based on other indicators. Get's tricky, doesn't it?

Regards,
MG

People should say what they mean, especially on matters like this. Using the words "believe" and "know" interchangeably doesn't do yourself, the listener, nor the language any favors.

And by the way, I would never place my trust in someone based on what they say anyway. What they do is far more indicative of their trustworthiness.

[_Some Schmo]

...to Homer Simpson (hiding behind the screen name 'Some Schmo', and who has now made a typically incompetent and Homer-like attempt to conceal his real identity by a belated avatar change)

Good post, but I'm curious about this. How was changing my avatar to Joe Montana and then back to a different picture of Homer an attempt to conceal my real identity (and an incompetent one at that?) Do you believe you know who I am because of this?

Just wondering what you were thinking here.

[_Chap]

...to Homer Simpson (hiding behind the screen name 'Some Schmo', and who has now made a typically incompetent and Homer-like attempt to conceal his real identity by a belated avatar change)

Good post, but I'm curious about this. How was changing my avatar to Joe Montana and then back to a different picture of Homer an attempt to conceal my real identity (and an incompetent one at that?) Do you believe you know who I am because of this?

Just wondering what you were thinking here.

Sorry. Ineffectual attempt at a joke. I really liked seeing Homer on-screen, and I was sorry to see him replaced by a football player I did not have the same affection for. I was pretending you were Homer, trying to pretend he was a guy called 'Some Schmo' but in Homer-like fashion revealing his identity by choosing a picture of himself as an avatar. Lame, I know - but I am glad you like the substantive part of my post.

And thank you for bringing Homer back.

[_mentalgymnast]

Unless God spoke to their soul in a way which was unmistakable for anything else. I wouldn't call that obnoxious.

You wouldn't call it obnoxious because you actually think this is possible. Most others think that voices in your head is indicative of, at the very least, a troubled mind.

They can be. But not necessarily so. Again, it gets a bit tricky to know/understand the difference...especially when evaluating/judging someone else. You can only go on what you know and experience. And I agree with you...if someone claims to hear voices or receive visitations from other worldly beings or whatnot, it is good to evaluate the fruits/outcomes that result over the long haul from those purported visitations.

There are many, are there not, that would agree that the fruits of the LDS church are good. Yea, even white and delightsome to the soul. To some extent, it seems that Joseph Smith's visitations and voices in the head should be evaluated accordingly.

Regards,
MG

[_Some Schmo]

Sorry. Ineffectual attempt at a joke. I really liked seeing Homer on-screen, and I was sorry to see him replaced by a football player I did not have the same affection for. I was pretending you were Homer, trying to pretend he was a guy called 'Some Schmo' but in Homer-like fashion revealing his identity by choosing a picture of himself as an avatar. Lame, I know - but I am glad you like the substantive part of my post.

And thank you for bringing Homer back.

Ahh, ok. That makes sense.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the resistance I've gotten over not having Homer for an avatar. Thanks for your comments!

They can be. But not necessarily so. Again, it gets a bit tricky to know/understand the difference...especially when evaluating/judging someone else.

Given that the voices people hear rarely agree with each other, I tend to think that they are simple manifestations of a person's own overactive and persuasive imagination. In the strictest sense, you're right; I don't know for sure that there's not a god who has spoken to certain people. However, keeping the big picture in mind, it really belies common sense, unless one decides that god is an inconsistent, malevolent a-hole who likes to confuse the crap out of people.