I don’t mean to interrupt your conversation, but I think the trinity is in a class all its own. Heaven and hell, young earth, etc. stretch the imagination, but the trinity is simply impossible IMO. It’s like saying 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. I’m curious how Plantinga reconciles that belief with logic.
I am not answering the post. Just adding thought about your comment on trinity. Trinity comes from the Gnostic religion. It stands for:
The one.
The intellect.
The soul.
Together they form a (cloud, mist, a light) of knowledge. Don’t ask.
When the church took the Gnostic teachings of Jesus they did not like the Gnostic thought and tried to change the meanings. That’s where we are today.
Dom1978 Post #77
Have you ever tried to get that one cow or horse that got away from the heard when you were trying to get them in the pen? The harder and faster you chased it the more it ran away from you. But if you left it alone, it would come back and try and get into the pen to be with the heard.
That’s the feeling I get about these guys. They want to be out there and have you chase them. When evolution beat creation, they came back around with a new form of creation so you would continual chasing them.
But as Doug suggested, the main focus of philosophy of religion is about whether God exists, and not about whether Christianity is true or whether scripture is divinely inspired. So as long as they keep their personal Christian beliefs out of it, I guess their views about the existence of God can now be respected, whereas at an earlier time even their belief in God would have been considered irrational.
I agree. Even today you can’t believe half of what you read in the newspaper. So it would be a big mistake to try and judge the people of the past. I try and keep in mind that they were smart and if they did something it was for a reason. And like today, most of the time it had to do with money.
Just to make it clear, when I say that Plantinga is irrational to believe in the trinity and hell, I mean that his reasons for believing these things are bad reasons. He believes in these things because they come from scripture and the Christian tradition, but there is absolutely no good reason to believe that the Bible is divinely inspired or that the early church fathers were divinely inspired when they came up with these doctrines.
And the same goes for things like the idea that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine at the same time. It’s not really necessary to go into the logic of it all and try to figure out whether this doctrine can somehow be made logically coherent. All I would say is that it’s irrational to believe something like this that you find in scripture or tradition in the first place. If we had good reasons for thinking that everything the Bible and the early church councils said was true, then OK maybe it would be rational to believe these doctrines, but we don’t have any good reasons. Plantinga believes these doctrines for exactly the same reasons that a fundamentalist Muslim believes their doctrines, and in both cases it’s irrational and should have no place in philosophy in my view.
So here’s a little thought experiment: Imagine that we really did have good reasons for thinking both the Bible and the early church councils to be divinely inspired. Imagine that the Bible made lots of incredibly precise and accurate predictions about the future, and that the councils knew about all sorts of science that they couldn’t possible have known about at that time. So, given that the Bible and the church councils seem to have some kind of divine or higher power behind them, it may be rational to believe what they have to say about hell, the trinity and Jesus.
But of course this is not the situation we find ourselves in, and so both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are irrational to believe their doctrines based on what’s been passed down through scripture and tradition.
Your view is the same as Wikipedia’s. And your OK.
Note, when I read anything from the bible, I use the internet and get at least four interpretations from the different bibles. It is almost a waist of time to try and use “reasoned argument" with the bible. When did the church say the NT was finished, 1960 something.
Your idea that POR should work together with other disciplines like history. I think is the answer.
Now that I have said that. I got to say.
I believe the bible is correct in a lot of its statements.
I just don’t think the statements are being read correctly.
When you read a statement in the Gnostic form you can get an entirely different meaning.
And a lot of the bible was written in Gnostic. I see that as a major problem.
For example. Son of God.
How do most people interpret that statement?
In Gnostic we are all the son of god.
And Jesus got into a lot of trouble in Israel when he tried to teach that thinking and he had to defend himself in court.
The Gnostic Jesus said he was just a man. And the son of god in his religion, as many was.
But there are different sects of Gnostic and some went different directions and it is not easy to understand which ones to use.
Point being is that the ideas of the bible were not a bunch of far fetched ideas that people believed. They were turned into far fetched ideas by the church in a systematic method of control sometime after the teachings of Jesus.
Have you ever heard of the footnote bibles. They were used by the church when they went out to see how the people were responding to the gospels. They would write notes in the sides or the footnotes to make changes to help in the message.
So here's a little thought experiment: Imagine that we really did have good reasons for thinking both the Bible and the early church councils to be divinely inspired. Imagine that the Bible made lots of incredibly precise and accurate predictions about the future, and that the councils knew about all sorts of science that they couldn't possible have known about at that time. So, given that the Bible and the church councils seem to have some kind of divine or higher power behind them, it may be rational to believe what they have to say about hell, the trinity and Jesus. But of course this is not the situation we find ourselves in, and so both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are irrational to believe their doctrines based on what's been passed down through scripture and tradition.IMO most Christians would say the primary purpose of the Bible is not predicting the future or teaching science. So you ought to use different criteria in your thought experiment such as does Christianity improve society, personal happiness, and so forth. It is somewhat rational to think the Bible might be telling the truth about heaven if people who believe the Bible about more practical matters such as personal behaviour have found it to be true.
So here's a little thought experiment: Imagine that we really did have good reasons for thinking both the Bible and the early church councils to be divinely inspired. Imagine that the Bible made lots of incredibly precise and accurate predictions about the future, and that the councils knew about all sorts of science that they couldn't possible have known about at that time. So, given that the Bible and the church councils seem to have some kind of divine or higher power behind them, it may be rational to believe what they have to say about hell, the trinity and Jesus. But of course this is not the situation we find ourselves in, and so both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are irrational to believe their doctrines based on what's been passed down through scripture and tradition.IMO most Christians would say the primary purpose of the Bible is not predicting the future or teaching science. So you ought to use different criteria in your thought experiment such as does Christianity improve society, personal happiness, and so forth. It is somewhat rational to think the Bible might be telling the truth about heaven if people who believe the Bible about more practical matters such as personal behaviour have found it to be true. I'd rather it told the truth about practical matters such as wheter the sun can be stopped in the sky (speaking of science), among countless other things it's been shown to be wrong about. I'll leave out the virgin birth for now. L.
So here's a little thought experiment: Imagine that we really did have good reasons for thinking both the Bible and the early church councils to be divinely inspired. Imagine that the Bible made lots of incredibly precise and accurate predictions about the future, and that the councils knew about all sorts of science that they couldn't possible have known about at that time. So, given that the Bible and the church councils seem to have some kind of divine or higher power behind them, it may be rational to believe what they have to say about hell, the trinity and Jesus. But of course this is not the situation we find ourselves in, and so both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are irrational to believe their doctrines based on what's been passed down through scripture and tradition.IMO most Christians would say the primary purpose of the Bible is not predicting the future or teaching science. So you ought to use different criteria in your thought experiment such as does Christianity improve society, personal happiness, and so forth. It is somewhat rational to think the Bible might be telling the truth about heaven if people who believe the Bible about more practical matters such as personal behaviour have found it to be true. We can't really say the Christian tradition must be divinely inspired because it produces social stability and personal happiness and turns people's lives around, getting them off drugs or alcohol or whatever, The reason for this is that other religions like Islam, Mormonism and Scientology also seem to do all of these things. And we also can't say the Bible must be divinely inspired because it moves people, is so beautifully written, changes lives etc, since many other books do these things too. That's why I chose the criteria of amazing predictions and astounding knowledge for divine inspiration, and indeed this is why many fundamentalist Muslims and Christians use these criteria. They know they need to try to find something that's unique to their tradition.
We can't really say the Christian tradition must be divinely inspired because it produces social stability and personal happiness and turns people's lives around, getting them off drugs or alcohol or whatever, The reason for this is that other religions like Islam, Mormonism and Scientology also seem to do all of these things. And we also can't say the Bible must be divinely inspired because it moves people, is so beautifully written, changes lives etc, since many other books do these things too. That's why I chose the criteria of amazing predictions and astounding knowledge for divine inspiration, and indeed this is why many fundamentalist Muslims and Christians use these criteria. They know they need to try to find something that's unique to their tradition.How do we know all those religions aren't divinely inspired? Each religion claims to be the only true religion, but maybe they are wrong about being unique and divinely inspired in other areas that matter more? Most Christians are aware that the entire package of Christianity contains many mistakes, but they overlook these mistakes because they don't want to risk losing the truths of Christianity in the process of extracting the mistakes. It's like the parable of the wheat and the tares: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+13:24-30&version=NKJV So if Christianity helps Plantinga in real ways then isn't he being rational to accept some harmless non-falsifiable lies as part of the package? (I don't know if this is rational by the philosophical definition, but isn't it understandable?)
I am coming to the conclusion that Church leaders are monetary inspired and preachers and ministers are divinely inspired whereas the general population is Belief driven. Sort of the Sheppard and his flock.
I liked the cow analogy Mike.
I think that what I’m more concerned about by refusing or limiting certain dialogue in philosophy is that this is precisely the modern method for many people to actually keep their views alive in some respects. I am referring, in particular, to the idea of not giving platform for other people to even present altering views. I was noticing how the NRA uses this very effectively, for instance, in order to prevent dissident ideology from affecting them. Notice how frustrating it is for investigative reporters to attempt to get interviews with anyone who has severe argumentative fault should they be challenged? The lack of being able to get sincere answers tend to leave people with an inability to logically justify a proper rationale for certainty of conviction.
The main justification for the Miranda rights was due to the idea that one who is not given notice for charge is being abused by being punished (through detainment) by what is not known. The power of purposefully ignoring someone I think can be more harsh than direct physical assault because you can at least have a chance to defend yourself directly than to have someone harm you indirectly without you being able to see where it’s coming from.
I’m certain most of us can relate to this. I am personally still finding discomfort with a recent breakup in a relationship almost two years ago now because I don’t know why we broke up and she won’t tell me. It makes you try to fill in the blanks with all the various endless possibilities and never any certainty. I’d rather be told directly even the most shallow and unjust reason for our breakup than nothing at all.
And this is what I think is harmful about closing the door to even the most ridiculous logic or rationale from other people by closing or limiting particular discussions. I think we need to elevate it as a duty to respond to others in all areas of formal dialectic. This is an emotional reason, among others, I don’t support using falsification as a justification to rule out non-scientific or pseudo-scientific discussions that some feel should be used as a means to weed out apparently futile positions.
I am coming to the conclusion that Church leaders are monetary inspired and preachers and ministers are divinely inspired whereas the general population is Belief driven. Sort of the Sheppard and his flock.Do you mean the preachers feel they are guided ad hoc by the Holy Spirit and the lay people are guided by teachings?
Yes, you say it so much better than I can. A certain % of people get that inter-body connected feeling and become preachers. If everyone got it then we would not need the preachers to teach.
We can't really say the Christian tradition must be divinely inspired because it produces social stability and personal happiness and turns people's lives around, getting them off drugs or alcohol or whatever, The reason for this is that other religions like Islam, Mormonism and Scientology also seem to do all of these things. And we also can't say the Bible must be divinely inspired because it moves people, is so beautifully written, changes lives etc, since many other books do these things too. That's why I chose the criteria of amazing predictions and astounding knowledge for divine inspiration, and indeed this is why many fundamentalist Muslims and Christians use these criteria. They know they need to try to find something that's unique to their tradition.How do we know all those religions aren't divinely inspired? Each religion claims to be the only true religion, but maybe they are wrong about being unique and divinely inspired in other areas that matter more? Most Christians are aware that the entire package of Christianity contains many mistakes, but they overlook these mistakes because they don't want to risk losing the truths of Christianity in the process of extracting the mistakes. It's like the parable of the wheat and the tares: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+13:24-30&version=NKJV So if Christianity helps Plantinga in real ways then isn't he being rational to accept some harmless non-falsifiable lies as part of the package? (I don't know if this is rational by the philosophical definition, but isn't it understandable?) If you want to say that all the world's religions are divinely inspired, and that God is trying to communicate with human beings in many different ways, then that's an interesting view, but it's some kind of New-Age religion, and it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. The fundamentalist Christian philosophers I object to are all exclusivists. That is, they think that the Bible and the (official) Christian tradition alone are divinely inspired. It's this view that I consider to be irrational.
If you want to say that all the world's religions are divinely inspired, and that God is trying to communicate with human beings in many different ways, then that's an interesting view, but it's some kind of New-Age religion, and it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. The fundamentalist Christian philosophers I object to are all exclusivists. That is, they think that the Bible and the (official) Christian tradition alone are divinely inspired. It's this view that I consider to be irrational.I'm not sure how you are defining irrational. In my opinion, belief in the Great Pumpkin is more rational that belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn (bless Her holy hooves) who is simultaneously invisible and pink. Belief that Christianity is the only divinely inspired religion is comparable with belief in the Great Pumpkin, but belief in the Trinity is comparable with belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. (I guess the Christian philosophers distinguish between person and substance, but I suspect the followers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn might have similar ways to finesse the irrationality.) Almost every Christian denomination officially believes in the Trinity, so liberal Christians should not be spared. On the other hand, belief is not binary 0 or 1; it is a real number 0 through 1. The more irrational concepts might not be strong beliefs, so we shouldn't automatically declare the believer to be irrational for accepting them as part of a package deal.
Everything that has been divinely inspired has been rational.
Time and knowledge or better divinity makes them irrational.
Point being, Ancient people were just as smart and rational as we are today.
Of course I am talking mainstream.
Sorry, Mike, but one can’t really assume that earlier people were as smart and rational as present ones. First, if we recognize changes in organisms which benefit them in the environment more than their peers will usually allow them to procreate more effectively, then those humans who are more able to deal with life will probably produce more offspring. If the ability to think is of value, then we might guess that the average IQ has been moving up. albeit very slowly, over the last few thousand years.
Second, while reason is valuable, it has to be based on facts. We know vastly more now than we did a few millenia ago. Therefore, we are likely to be far more effective in our thinking than they were.
Occam
I agree with Mike that the rationality of people in the past was relatively similar to today. I clearly understand evolution’s power to create change in genetics, and as well, believe that it is possible some of these changes may be able to enhance our capabilities to think, but I’m not so trusting that complex particular thought processes during only a few thousand years have altered our capability to reason any better. People still to this day rarely choose a mate based on the quality of intelligence. It is more often that we choose mates based on either practical criteria or emotions alone.
I think that religious thinking in ancient times was not necessarily originated in irrational thinking. It was for the desire to make real logical sense of reality and practical considerations that initiated concepts that were likely of a secular mind-set that began the structures of what later became more formalized as religion.
Please notice that I said albeit very slowly. I certainly wasn’t claiming major advances, just suggesting that an absolute statement may not be quite correct.
My main point was the second, that it doesn’t matter how intelligent or rational one is, if one doesn’t have the data so they can start their logical reasoning with valid premises, they aren’t going to be very successful at reaching accurate conclusions.
Occam