Secular people start with the faith that they can trust their sensory experience. Religious people start with conceptions of the divine. Yet, after each starting point, both seek to proceed in a rational logical manner.
This is one of the false moves of Christian apologetics. Religious people start with faith in their sensory experience as well. Fetuses don’t “start with conceptions of the divine”, and there is no concept of “the bible” or “the koran” to have faith in without faith in sensory experience.
Religious folks start from sensory experience as well, but at some point they start overriding sensory experience and the methodology they use with it with religious commitments. I suppose they’re not alone in that, and not the worst. “There is a man in the sky who will punish/reward me depending on whether I obey him” is only wrong, and not “not even wrong”.
Having said that, in my experience Christians are more rational than most where their “concepts of the divine” do not intrude, and this fellow is doing “God’s work” in trying to bring a conscious commitment to rationality to Christians.
Could be much worse than that. I’m sure babies don’t start with a Bayesian prior which assigns some probability to induction working, but nor do they start with object permanence. That may be a conclusion.
Mm, that doesn’t rule out a hardwired conclusion (a question which might be hard to formalize) which always occurs given the development of the brain. In principle, I suppose, we could isolate babies and show them a lot of videos or holograms inconsistent with object permanence.
You know I have actually not read that in Christian apologetics. I believe its there but in the context of this article it came out of discussion with Gleb.
It’s part of popular christian apologetics here in the US.
For example, if you watch the Hitchens vs. Theist debates for Hitchens’ book tour of ‘God is not Great’, one of the standard theistic moves was “you start from faith in your unjustified foundations, and we start from ours”. Douglas Wilson was a good example of that.
Religious folks start from sensory experience as well, but they start rationalizing rationalizing from concepts of the divine
Not sure what you meant by the italicized rationalizing and repeating it there, can you expand on that?
Having said that, in my experience Christians are more rational than most where their “concepts of the divine” do not intrude, and this fellow is doing “God’s work” in trying to bring a conscious commitment to rationality to Christians.
Yup, this is one of the reasons I’m glad Caleb is participating in Intentional Insights—he’s a great bridge across the secular-religious divide in bringing rationality to Christians.
Not sure what you meant by the italicized rationalizing and repeating it there
Repeating was a typo, and rationalizing wasn’t the best term to use. I didn’t know what I meant. I was being snarky and not thinking too hard. I’ll try again.
This is one of the false moves of Christian apologetics. Religious people start with faith in their sensory experience as well. Fetuses don’t “start with conceptions of the divine”, and there is no concept of “the bible” or “the koran” to have faith in without faith in sensory experience.
Religious folks start from sensory experience as well, but at some point they start overriding sensory experience and the methodology they use with it with religious commitments. I suppose they’re not alone in that, and not the worst. “There is a man in the sky who will punish/reward me depending on whether I obey him” is only wrong, and not “not even wrong”.
Having said that, in my experience Christians are more rational than most where their “concepts of the divine” do not intrude, and this fellow is doing “God’s work” in trying to bring a conscious commitment to rationality to Christians.
Could be much worse than that. I’m sure babies don’t start with a Bayesian prior which assigns some probability to induction working, but nor do they start with object permanence. That may be a conclusion.
I think object permanence as a conclusion is demonstrable—babies learn that, first google check says at 8 months.
On a prior on induction, neurons are be doing something to develop. I wonder if some of that something somewhere looks like induction. I’d guess so.
Mm, that doesn’t rule out a hardwired conclusion (a question which might be hard to formalize) which always occurs given the development of the brain. In principle, I suppose, we could isolate babies and show them a lot of videos or holograms inconsistent with object permanence.
You know I have actually not read that in Christian apologetics. I believe its there but in the context of this article it came out of discussion with Gleb.
That? I don’t know what you’re referring to.
I’ll assume the quote I included.
It’s part of popular christian apologetics here in the US.
For example, if you watch the Hitchens vs. Theist debates for Hitchens’ book tour of ‘God is not Great’, one of the standard theistic moves was “you start from faith in your unjustified foundations, and we start from ours”. Douglas Wilson was a good example of that.
Not sure what you meant by the italicized rationalizing and repeating it there, can you expand on that?
Yup, this is one of the reasons I’m glad Caleb is participating in Intentional Insights—he’s a great bridge across the secular-religious divide in bringing rationality to Christians.
Repeating was a typo, and rationalizing wasn’t the best term to use. I didn’t know what I meant. I was being snarky and not thinking too hard. I’ll try again.