Based on your last letter, I worry that we might have been talking at
cross purposes for much of the discussion. I wrote:
><<Further, this does not address the problem of whether there is a God. That
>requires a leap of faith that is not subject to proof. I do not accept
>it as a given.>>
You replied:
>As I've stated before, the evidence for God's existence is another subject.
>The irrationality of naturalism is only one bit of data "in the pan," as it
>were, as we balance the scales on the reasonableness of viewpoints. We have
>been accepting God as a given only in the context of this discussion.
I see that part of the problem is that I had not been accepting God as a
given throughout this discussion. I don't think one can judge the
reasonableness of a viewpoint until one judges the reasonableness of the
underlying presuppositions that form the viewpoint.
[...]
>Russell's second argument was anticipated (and dealt with) by Aquinas. The
>moral law flows from the nature of God, but comes THROUGH God's will [fiat].
>But God's will is always SUBJECT to his nature. So one can easily say that
>God IS good, and that his fiats are subject to that goodness. Bert was not
>in the same league, philosophically, as Tom.
Hmmm. I've heard that Russell was very respected in the philosophy of
mathematics and symbolic logic. But he could be deficient elsewhere.
Still, I hope you appreciate my point (and Ayer's) that while one is
not prohibited from rolling "goodness" or similar standards into
the definition of God, this makes it difficult to determine if that
criterion has been met. At this point, all one is left to say is that
God's will is simply God's will -- which I don't dispute. But this leaves
us with the possible problem that whatever God wills, no matter whether
we think it is good for us, we must except as good. It's possible, but
I don't see it as necessarily true. Further, as you may expect, I do have
a problem with relying on divine revelation (such as to Moses) to provide
the details.
I don't know. It seems to me that justifying one's actions as divine desire
is akin to passing the buck to a source that makes the ultimate justification
obscure or difficult to assess. For example, if God were to ask one to take
a knife and kill one's son, then on the basis of the above definition, we
would be forced to assume that this was a good and moral command. Further,
if revelation includes a series of commands that we not self-evident or
externally justifiable, I think they would be hard to accept.
[...]
><<This would blow away many branches of mathematics if true. They have
>been using infinite series for years [Calculus would never look the same.]
>Therefore, I disagree with point #2 as well.>>
>
>Conceptually, one can use infinite sets. But the point of the argument, if you
>read the syllogism once more, is that an ACTUAL infinite cannot exist as a
>series of events in TIME [essential in any argument about actuality]. I don't
>believe David Hilbert has been refuted in this.
I'm not sure either. I suspect that "time" and causality might have
been very "strange" within the first moments of the big bang. And before
this universe appeared? I don't know what time "means" before then.
Some clarifications:
I wrote:
><<These people [Hamas] feel they are at war with the state of Israel. They do
>not feel that they are murdering people without reason. Their
>leaps of faith have lead them to think that killing mobs of people
>is morally justified....People who do not accept one's religious or moral
>beliefs are not responding to "reason"? This really doesn't follow and I
>worry that this assumption could lead to the marginalization of others'
>beliefs.>>
>
>Wow. It doesn't follow that one should accept arguments that are more
>reasonable than others? That one should not accept the logical over the
>illogical? Then why are we spinning our wheels? Let's just consign philosophy
>to the realm of opinion and be done with it!
>
>Once again, I think you are committing the fallacy of asserting that beliefs
>cannot be evaluated on the basis of reasonableness. That is false. That's why
>we're engaged in this discussion in the first place. [...]
Actually, I do believe that beliefs can be evaluated on the basis of
reasonableness, with the caveat that "reasonableness" can be a slippery
criterion (But then, what else do we have?). I suspect that a lot of
this "reasonableness" comes from the common viewpoints (common biology?)
that we all share.
Let me put it another way -- and please don't take this confrontationally.
Do you propose that people who do not accept a particular personal God
are being unreasonable?
><<Racial equality under the law is disputed? Redress perhaps, but not
>the abolition of the Jim Crow laws.>>
>
>I never said that about racial equality. Please don't leave people with the
>wrong impression. My remarks about equal rights were CLEARLY aimed at your
>assertion about women's rights. Here's my full passage:
>
><<As to the first, there is still a lot of dispute about the morality of these
>so-called "rights." The massive split in current feminism is demonstrative of
>this.>>
>
>As you can see, this was directed at feminism. Please be more careful about
>the quotations!
Sorry for my misreading.
><<I certainly do not think that this
>is improper or wrong to do: everyone who chooses to live must make leaps
>of faith. However, I think it is a error to suppose that everybody will
>land on the same place.>>
>
>And I think it is perfectly reasonable to demonstrate to people when they
>are leaping into a fire, and when they are leaping into a living room.
I suspect that it is not always so obvious.
Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)