You have entered in your discussion very deep – but I would like to add here something new. Perhaps from the “surface”.

First I would say to Michael Bumbulis – and add to your page: http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis/
there is one of the major Christian scientists missing on your page – Michael Faraday. (Am I right?)

Michael is also representing the scientists, whose person and “essence of thinking” is perhaps closest to my model and theory of victorious scientific thinking.

I am sorry but there is not yet much in English on my pages

http://www.latvus.com

Mainly just an intro of my book of 500 pages “Why is science Western?” In my theory – like with yours – there is Jewish-Christian worldview the basic – beginning with ideas of Augustine, Basil and Philoponus.

I am jus t collecting the material for the second part of my theory – which (seems to me) you not much discuss about – tha Dark Ages. Why we lost our leading role (since the Hellenic start) to the Muslims – to another Monotheistic group of victorious thinkers.

Päiviö Latvus

Thanks for the response.

Re: whether or my critiques are concerned with style/presentation or something more . . .

Definitely something more.

Here’s the deal: It appears from both your title and your opening that you are arguing for the claim that a theistic worldview is NECESSARY for acquiring knowledge.

On the face of it, that appears to be a full-on crazy claim.

Doesn’t mean it’s false. It just means you better have darn good arguments supporting the claim.

To get there, you would likely need to make the following moves:

1. Raise the philosophical problem of knowledge acquisition. (e.g. formal deductive logic doesn’t appear to generate new knowledge.) This is a big issue in an of itself. You need to show that contrary to intuition, our normal mechanisms for acquiring knowledge (deductive logic, inductive logic, empirical observation, etc.) don’t actually produce new knowledge. Obviously, this can’t be right; so how is it that we DO acquire new knowledge? What allows this to happen?

This is a huge, huge deal. I’m barely intelligent on the issue; so I’m not much help. But I will say that how you define ‘knowledge’ is critically important here. Too weak a definition, and the rest of your arguments will fall into the philosophical wastebasket of ‘trivially true.’ Too novel a definition and you won’t get buy in from readers for the rest of your arguments. Too strong a definition and you may handcuff yourself going forward.

2. Demonstrate that epistemological systems that do not presuppose theism fail to solve (1).

BIG Note: Make SURE you stay on target and argue that naturalistic epistemological systems fail to solve (1)–NOT that they fail in general. You’re trying to solve (1). That’s it. Nothing else. That’s a big enough project on its own.

Also, you need to demonstrate (and this is INCREDIBLY important) that the fact that the systems do not presuppose theism is SUFFICIENT for their failure.

3. Show that an epistemological system that has theism as a necessary component does not have the same limitations as (2).

You’ll likely need to define the necessary criteria for what counts as an theistic epistemological system here.

4. Show that not only is (3) true, but it’s ALSO the case that certain theistic epistemological systems actually solve (1).

Those moves are much, much, much, much easier said than done. Again, I’m not saying you can’t do it, but I will say that it would be an extraordinary achievement. The upshot is that you’d functionally be offering an argument for the existence of God. You’d show that someone HAS to believe in God if they believe that acquisition of knowledge is possible (which they obviously do).

It’s far, far easier to point out WHAT you need to do than it is to show HOW to do it. I wish you the best in trying, but if I were you, I’d get some opinions from some real scholars (rather than just a PhD-to-be like me) as to whether or not this is a viable project. I just can’t see how this could work, but if you can make it happen, you’d certainly be a legend. Far smarter people than I should be consulted on the project’s viability before you sell out to making it a dissertation topic.

That’s my 2 cents with a 2 cent discount.

Peace,

Jay

Sorry for not responding until now (I hope you actually get this).

This is merely a piece of what I hope to one day be a bigger work. I do plan on turning this into a dissertation at some point (God willing I get accepted into a PhD program), but for now will settle for what I have (and will make some editions).

Your critiques are the first ones I’ve run into, however, that do hold up. However, it seems your critiques are more against my style and presentation than against the actual concept. If I am mistaken on this, let me know.

Maybe it would be better for me to define what I mean by Theism first…or maybe turn around and show that, as an epistemic system, naturalism simply cannot work, but theism does work as a viable alternative.

Let me know what you think.

Chapter IV of “Life, Tomorrow’s Comprehension”

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog.....#038;p=372

Science-Informed “Theism”, And Religion

There is no more competition between science and faith than between science and arts or science and tourism.

Science is systematized knowledge, whereas faith, arts and tourism and a host of other matters are components of culture, where culture is a ubiquitous biological entity of ALL organisms regardless of size or complexity, selected for survival as the sum total of reactions to and exploitations by the genome of the out-of-cell environments, sensed by the OCM, outer-cell-membrane of the genome, where this OCM is simply and plainly a multi-purpose organ of the in-cell resident communal organism, the genome.

(1) Science-Informed “theism” (SIT)

- Science’s “theism” is An (therefore not The) unknowable undefined source of the energy that constitutes the unknowable undefined Universe.

- The unknowability of the source of cosmic energy, which is also life’s matrix, leaves the choice and promotion of our purpose in life to be derived solely from our cognition.

- A term needs to be drawn for a concept and practice of deriving humanity’s purpose and course of life. The term should not be related to theism or religion because SIT is NOT founded on faith-belief, and SIT’s ethics code is founded on rational commitment and dedication to Life’s inherent characteristic, which is cooperation for survival.

(2) Religion, Scientifically

a. Religion, A Human Evolution Definition

From a posting of mine in an evolution discussion forum, written and meant with complete respectful sincerity, at

http://forum.physorg.com/index.....ntry286766

“A religion is a human artifact for survival of a specific human cultural phenotype, comprising cultural tool-kit and technique ascribed by its adherents to be of higher esteem and benefit than other human cultural survival plans”.

b. Sincerely thinking so

Wondering if religious persons who also “accept” science would accept this definition, even with steady unwavering respect and commitment to their religion. IMO such acceptance would contribute respect to religion and to religious persons.

3. Major Conceptual Hierarchies

- Religion is a progeny of culture, culture being a biological entity, like
- Technology is a progeny of science, like
- Biology is a progeny of life’s evolution, like
- Universal Evolution is a progeny of Energy.

4. Uniqueness Of Science Among Human Artifacts

During the recent several centuries in the course of human history Science has been evolving at an accelerating rate as a provider of convincing, ever closer approaching, approximate models of the real world.

We understand that Science is just one of the components of our Culture, our package of capabilities to observe the environment, react to it and exploit it for our satisfaction and survival.

Yet there is a distinct, even if still small, growing spreading tendency to accept the findings of evolving Science with ever increasing respect and appreciation, especially in the realms of all forms and types of technology and of life disciplines.

The crucial 21st century question facing humanity is how much further and into which additional disciplines may or should Science be welcome and adopted by society at large, with what hopes and with what expectations.

Dov Henis

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog.....8211;?cq=1

2. You say: “Therefore, in order for one to be rational in one’s epistemological system, one must first be theistic in one’s metaphysical system.”

That is an unbelievably strong claim. Do you really mean to say that any epistemological system that has atheistic (or at least non-theistic) metaphysical assumptions is IRRATIONAL?? Really??? Not just ‘it has problems’ or ‘theism answers the problems better than atheism’ but ‘irrational’??

If that is in fact what you mean, keep in mind that that claim does not follow from your premises.

For your conclusion to follow deductively from your premises, your argument would have to be something like this: (and keep in mind that your conclusion is a deductive inference, not an inductive one. no ‘probablys’ floating around in the conclusion.)

1. An epistemological system (ES) based on naturalistic metaphysical assumptions (NMA) must have a mechanism for the acquisition of knowledge by people.

2. JTB is the only mechanism available to an ES based on NMA.

3. JTB is false.

4. An ES based on NMA cannot have a knowledge acquisition mechanism (from 2 and 3).

5. An ES based on NMA is impossible. (from 1 and 4)

6. It is irrational to believe impossible things.

7. It is irrational to believe that an ES based on NMA is possible. (from 5 and 6)

But even then, your original conclusion wouldn’t follow. All this shows is that believing in an ES based on NMA is irrational. You then have the harder job of showing that the only metaphysical assumptions upon which a rational ES can be built are theistic ones.

But there are metaphysical assumptions that are neither naturalistic nor theistic (deism, for instance. and yes, I’m interchanging ‘atheistic’ and ‘naturalistic’ bc I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re doing. I don’t think there’s a problem with either of us doing so.).

Plus, even though your argument would have to head out in the general direction I outlined, it doesn’t. And even if it did, the argument I’ve outlined is bad.

I have no idea what (1) even means. I just rearranged your words. I’m not sure why a mechanism is necessary for any ES.

And (2) is just plain false.

All that to say this: Your claim is way, way, way too strong given your reasons for making the claim. It doesn’t follow from your premises and getting it to follow from any set of true premises would be extraordinarily difficult.

On the plus side, if you managed to pull it off, you would have no trouble getting tenure.

I’d love for it to be true. Really, I would. But I don’t see how you can get there from where you’re starting.

Some quotes from the section headed “Warranted Christian Beliefs” (my emphasis, in all cases): -

“The whole of Christian knowledge relies on the idea that GOD CREATED man in a certain fashion”

“The concept of truth… is that which is presupposed and independent of human verification…Truth comes to humanity through GOD’S REVELATION IN SCRIPTURE”

“The above shows that, TO CHRISTIANITY, God imparts truth onto man. Christians BELIEVE that God created man with a mind capable of understanding, placed that mind in a proper environment, designed the mind to be aimed toward truth, and finally provided a statistical likelihood of discovering truth. Christianity’s philosophical system allows for and relies on warrant because of its view of revelation (both natural and supernatural). There can be little doubt that Christianity fits into the only valid epistemological system and, therefore, is rational.”

Surely, all any of these statements are saying is that “if Christianity is true, well hey, that means that Christianity is true!”? Sure, if everything stems from God, then God is the source of everything, including knowledge (and cute puppies, and homosexuality, and malaria mutations and everything else… or not, because of free will??), but everything hinges on pre-supposing that God does indeed exist.

The only warrant that I can see in operation here is the warrant to believe Christian doctrine.

I did a few posts on the Transcendental Argument a while back:

http://contra-gentes.blogspot......eries.html

[They're at the bottom.]

That’s the problem with natural selection though. It (the theory…I did not mean it to be an entity) is only concerned with explaining how all human actions relate to survival. This bites into how it cannot fit within warrant.

For a more detailed explanation, I’d suggest you read the last two chapters of “Warrant and Proper Function,” by Alvin Plantinga.

That is an EXCELLENT observation, one that I hadn’t considered. Naturalism relies on nominalism, which would mean there is no dualism.

Junkyard,

Right, I’m saying this is HOW our minds work. In other words, one wouldn’t have to train one’s mind to work this way – it already does. I’m merely providing the explanation.

As for naturalism, you’re right, I used the word “might” because I’m discussing a possible world. I’m saying that in a possible world it is rational to conceive that it would be wrong to rape in all situations whereas naturalism would teach it is okay. This shows that it is possible, in theory, for naturalism and truth to contradict each other.

As an addition, under naturalism can we say that rape is ever wrong? I would say that if a person can justify that the rape led to survival, or enhanced survival (or the furthering of his genes), then it can be justified under a naturalist mindset (since naturalism is concerned with survival). Human experience (common sense), however, tells us that rape is always wrong. The two are at odds, so which is true?

Example: It might be truthful that it is wrong to rape women, but if the human race gets down to 300 people due to a catastrophe and women are not willing to mate, then natural selection would say it is then acceptable to rape women.

Natural selection is a description of what happens in the world, it is not a moral system, or an entity that desires survival. Someone who believes that the continuation of the human race is to be valued over the wishes of the individual females involved would say that rape is acceptable in that situation, but “natural selection” does not care. So that example is unlikely to make the point you’re trying to make with it for any reader who is familiar with what natural selection is.