Creationists

Post Reply New Topic

There can be no impartial judge of which religion is the "best" or most "true", because everyone has been raised in a culture that worships one or another of them. So everyone has basic unconscious assumptions about reality programmed into them by their culture, and such assumptions influence one's judgement.

So, for example, if one is to discuss with a Christian whether Jesus Christ or Buddha is a more profound spiritual teacher, the Christian will make his decision based on a set of values that is Christian. As Alan Watts pointed out, this is like the judge and the advocate being the same person, and you wouldn't want that if you were in a court of law, would you? What you could reasonably say is you might find a particular religion suits you better than another, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is the best for everyone else.

In general, religions are emotional mind sets with little perceptive validation desired or even possible. No doubt they have been responsible for both extreme beneficent and immensely horrible actions but the main objection I have to them is their denial of the necessity for perceptive validation underlying their convictions and frequently a violent reaction to any attempt to make this validation a requirement for clear thinking.

If a belief cannot be true or false, its value is essentially indistinguishable, with each having the same value.



A warranted belief, under Plantinga's reformed epistemology entails a truth value.



Firstly, way to mine the wiki page for objections. The 'great pumpkin objection' (GPO) has been mostly mooted by Plantinga himself. The objection is best summed up by Dr. Glen Peoples (referring to the GPO as put forward by Dr. Keith Parsons):

'But look at the way this line of reasoning works: Plantinga has offered an account which, if true, would make theism properly basic. Parsons says that some other people have offered an account of theism which, if true, would make theism not properly basic. Therefore we should doubt that theism is properly basic, and hence we should doubt that it’s true.'

It is the part where they say; 'and hence we should doubt that its true' where they commit the genetic fallacy. If however, the question is one of warrant, then the argument is akin to stating 'there can be false beliefs, therefor beliefs are unwarranted'. It also assumes that voodoo is a warrant belief and I think I would counter that within Reformed Epistemology, there are defeaters for beliefs and Voodoo would have a few. Further it assumes that any belief, that cannot be formulated upon the lines of traditional foundationalism (already roundly criticized and rejected, since the measures used by traditional foundationalism are not themselves justifiable under the criteria set by its own measures) cannot be warranted. The assumption is that, failing the measures of traditional foundationalism, anything is justifiable which is huge question begging in favor of traditional foundationalism. Given that reformed epistemology contains rigorous defeaters, its just not a good objection.

Just for clarity; Plantinga's position is not that religious belief has warrant, but rather that under certain circumstances, religious belief can have warrant.

A good popular discussion of the GPO, for those intereseted.
http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress ... objection/



His criticism was essentially that even false results were useful, even if they did not conform directly to instramentalism and he regarded it this as being unnecessarily restrictive.

Popper, Karl, (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Hutchinson

The acrobatics of tossing in authorities with no indication of why these authorities are significant and what their reasoning might be is an amusing game but basically empty of content and therefore neatly unassailable.

Alvin Plantinga is the author of reformed epistemology, the free will defense and basically the modern godfather of religious philosophy.
Keith Parsons is an atheist, a bit hit and miss, but often intelligent (though his formulation of the GPO is dead; he has been around so long that many of his arguments have gone by the wayside, some are good though but people have trouble distinguishing).
Karl Popper is as ruveyn said, one of those thinkers everyone takes seriously.
Glen Peoples is a kiwi philosopher and a quite active apologist in the trans-tasman arena, though I would not support his views on annihilationism.

I appreciate the references but that only specifies my problem a bit. An argument involves more than mentioning an authority and his blank acceptance or denial of a viewpoint. It's a matter of presenting the actual reasons for the conclusions and how they apply.

I am not making an appeal to authority. I gave my reasons in my previous posts. I take the lack of specificity to be a result of attempting to jam large topics into forum posts.

Unfortunately, open references to old posts does not clarify anything and if you cannot distill cogent specific points to counter specific objections I don't feel responsible for not comprehending what you are trying to convey.

Can you be more specific in your complaints?

Here is one of your assertions.
It is the part where they say; 'and hence we should doubt that its true' where they commit the genetic fallacy. If however, the question is one of warrant, then the argument is akin to stating 'there can be false beliefs, therefor beliefs are unwarranted'. It also assumes that voodoo is a warrant belief and I think I would counter that within Reformed Epistemology, there are defeaters for beliefs and Voodoo would have a few.

What is a genetic fallacy?
Warranted seems to mean justified. What within Reformed Epistemology denies voodoo as justified and why should I accept that?

@Sand

A genetic fallacy is a fallacy in which one concludes that due to the other side putting forward a bad arguement that what they are saying is not true.

As to Voodoo, reformed epistemology is dependent on God acting as an agent. Islam, Judaism etc function in a similar way. In Voodoo, as far as I am aware, does not work in the way Plantinga is talking about.

Right.Thanks, that's a bit clearer but curious that what you call a genetic statement has nothing to do with genetics, it's merely false. Why not merely call it false?

Evidently I'll have to look up why voodoo doesn't function Plantingatically.

I have no idea why the genetic fallacy is called what it is.... Anyone? I am interested.

Typical Greek adjective < genetEs [bad transcription but last I tried the form gabled it] father / ancestor; hence - consider the source.

Might make more sense if *gennetic < Gk gennEtEs "parent" - but being filtered through centuries and Latin not a big deal.

So genetic = genetic [pertaining to parentage], but travelling through different universes of discourse.

Well, I've looked up Plantinga and read a part of one of his papers and he seems to me to amazingly unconvincing for someone so respected. Of course this brief brush with his thinking should not be taken as a serious challenge so I will look into the stuff more deeply. But I am not encouraged.Voodoo, so far, does not seem to be a concern.

Genetic refers to the initial state of an entity. The fallacy is to assume the initial state determines all later states uniquely. Which is not true.

ruveyn