tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714522.post3570489634708470799..comments2024-03-27T09:11:00.450-04:00Comments on Incinerating Presuppositionalism: RazorsKiss on the Christian God as the Basis of Knowledge – Part 7: Rival EpistemologiesBahnsen Burnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11030029491768748360noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714522.post-77136169598281428452009-08-26T11:35:14.241-04:002009-08-26T11:35:14.241-04:00Hi MM,
Thanks so much for sharing the link to Ber...Hi MM,<br /><br />Thanks so much for sharing the link to Bernstein's review of R. Stark's book. I haven't had a chance to read it all, but it looks fantastic from what I saw. I have some of Bernstein's lectures and have enjoyed them very much. It's good to see something in print!<br /><br />Also, thanks for posting the 'faith in reason' argument. I will burrow into these soon hopefully.<br /><br />Regards,<br />DawsonBahnsen Burnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11030029491768748360noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714522.post-3431124972027663972009-08-25T19:22:07.880-04:002009-08-25T19:22:07.880-04:00If you have time I would read the other comments p...If you have time I would read the other comments posted by his readers. One of them bases his argument that reason is incomplete on the all too frequent claim that induction is logically unsound:<br /><br />"Ultimately, to believe almost anything beyond "I am", you must rely on some belief in something unprovable, i.e., that the universe has laws which hold over all space and all time. This may seem obvious (as with any common sense), but can you prove that, say, the law of gravity will hold tomorrow? You cannot. You can merely state that the law of gravity has always held in all the cases we have observed in the past."<br /><br />Another reader posts this:<br /><br />"The rational part of my faith is an inference from a combination of material evidence and nonmaterial experiential evidence. Though materialists rule nonmaterial experiential evidence out of bounds, I rule it as fully in bounds, and I condemn them for their arrogance and willful ignorance in refusing to admit into evidence such universally acknowledged experiential facts as the existence of human consciousness."<br /><br />When these theists use the expression "non-material experiential evidence" they are referring to consciousness I believe. They view consciousness as non-material and thus as supernatural. So to them, it seems, that consciousness is partly a faith based process. <br /><br />Auster further says:<br /><br />"the very premises on which science is based are not themselves provable by science, and that science depends on non-falsiable assumptions. Therefore the attempt some have made to exclude from knowledge all non-falsiable assertions is false."<br /><br />In one sense, I think Auster is right here in that science is based on non-falsifiable assumptions - namely the Objectivist axioms. Now that I think about it, it seems that Auster is in agreement with RK that the axioms are supernatural in origin. <br /><br />Anyway, the argument "faith in reason" is a dangerous one and I bring it to your attention so that if you chose to blog on it you can dissect it with you skilled epistemological scalpel. Auster's post will give you a good sense of more Thomistic Apologetic arguments offered for faith.<br /><br />end of post 2<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />MMmadmaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14375140131881725965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714522.post-39973320005848991082009-08-25T19:20:36.691-04:002009-08-25T19:20:36.691-04:00Faith in reason - comment 1
Also, I have follow u...Faith in reason - comment 1<br /><br />Also, I have follow up information on the question I posed to you a few posts back. I asked you if you have ever written on the religious claim that a person must have "faith in reason." I have encountered this claim a few times in the past from either Christian apologists (Rodney Stark is one) or from religious conservatives but I could not find any one commenter that made a well reasoned argument. <br /><br />So I went to a popular conservative blogger that often blogs on the failure of "materialists" to account for "spiritual realities" and properly account for a "rational approach to faith." Sure enough, there is very recent blog post which deals exactly with this subject. I'm not going to hot link to it because these PaleoCons are nuts and I want to spare you the headaches so I will break up the link:<br /><br />http://www.amnation(dot)com/vfr/archives/014054(dot)html<br /><br />Remove the "dots" and replace them with actual dots (.).<br /><br />The questioner asks Auster to give a definition of faith. Auster goes on to say that "belief in the absence of evidence" is a "materialist" and "rationalist" answer. He gives his answer which seems to argue from the Thomistic perspective that rational inference leads to the logical conclusion that a transcendent realm exists. Here is a portion of his answer:<br /><br />"So if faith has a good definition, it can't just be "belief in the absence of evidence." There has to have been something real there that made us believe in the first place. The problem is that spiritual things are not simply "there," like a physical object. We apprehend things about them, each moment we apprehend something different, or we stop apprehending anything. But the point is that there is or has been an apprehension of a reality, and we don't see it all, yet we've seen enough of it that we believe in its truth and we stay loyal to that truth. Faith is a committed relationship with something we partly see, but don't completely see. Having seen enough of it to believe that it is true, we maintain that relationship, the orientation of our selves toward that thing."<br /><br />End of post 1madmaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14375140131881725965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714522.post-12415053296816875872009-08-25T18:57:22.841-04:002009-08-25T18:57:22.841-04:00Dawson,
This was an excellent discussion of the e...Dawson,<br /><br />This was an excellent discussion of the epistemological grounding of knowledge. I don't know if you have read it but Andrew Bernstein dealt with something similar in his criticism of Rodney Stark's deceptively titled book 'The Victory of Reason' which is dedicated to the argument that Christianity is the source of the West's greatness. The section entitled "Philosophy" gives a comparison of Christianity's fundamental premises and the rational premises which are needed for science to exist. Stark was making similar arguments to the ones made by RK.<br /><br />http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/tragedy-of-theology.aspmadmaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14375140131881725965noreply@blogger.com