> >The request to elucidate your standards still stands though,
JP.
> >
> >How can you tell the answers to the above questions are "no"?
>
> Greg - re: my post to Evan (guess you didn't read it)
Not before I'd sent out that post.
> , by general purpose
> observations of commonplace knowledge (or as Evan extended it
to include)
> 'the scientific method'.
Well, there you go. That wasn't so hard was it?
> There is no magic secret or deep philosophy here.
No, of course not. Like I said earlier, I could have guessed your
answer and Evan did guess it. Evan sort of screwed up *my*
rhetorical strategy, though, by explaining and "debunking"
reliance on scientific method to explain everything before you
admitted that it was your standard for explaining everything.
> PLEASE note - PLEEESE! - as I said to Ev, **OBVIOUSLY**, YES I
TOTALLY 100%
> AGREE, THAT ... with any opinion, observation, discussion,
assertion,
> obviosity, Widely Acepted Fact, or opinion, ONE CAN, of course,
immediately
> point out that (*) the scientific method has shoddy
foundations,
[etc. other reasons snipped]
> As I mentioned to Evan, this is - of course - wholly correct.
But does it
> really achieve much? Does it achieve much to answer EVERY
assertion,
> obviosity or for that matter conversation with "A-Ha, but as we
all know
> induction, observation, certainty, awareness, experience and
reality are
> pretty much bunk".
Nope. It achieves very little. And, in case you hadn't noticed,
nobody has been doing that or arguing for thet in this thread.
Alternate question: what is achieved by evaluating EVERY
assertion by the 'scientific method' (or some other loosely
defined rationalist set of principles). Note, please, that I'm
not saying we shouldn't evaluate MANY assertions with the
scientific method (i.e., your favorite Santa Claus example). The
question is why we should apply it to EVERY assertion.
> Again, I beg your thoughts on, a certain level of
appropriateness in
> answering a question. If someone asks you "whats the smallest
prime over
> 100, I'm engineering this bridge ... ?" or "did someone go poof
and make
> life on earth, I want to make some decisions about how to live
.. ?" ... OF
> COURSE ---- OF COURSE -- you can answer "well knowlegde
is
> meaningless and I'll show you all these philosophical and
mathematical
> reasons why the answer .. well, hell, there ARE no answers ...
" You can
> answer that ANYTIME. But the answers are 101 and no.
Those are the answers only if you accept 'scientific method' as
the only possible way to answer questions. Why should we accept
it as such? Note (again) that I'm not arguing we shouldn't accept
it in MANY situations--just asking why we should accept it in
EVERY situation. Or, more specifically, why we should accept it
as a standard for evaluating the answer to Tony's kid's original
question "What's the reason we're here?"
> But my discussion with you would be, why an 'elucidate your
standards'
> response here?
Well, (again) from my *very first* post in this thread:
: Unfortunately (and contrary to your position), there is no
: absolute answer to that question. You say there is no meaning.
: The Pope says there is a meaning. The debate then becomes not
: whether there is a meaning or not, but whether your standards
for
: defining meaning are better than the Pope's. If we accept your
: standards (as yet undefined), then you're right. If we accept
the
: Pope's standards (fairly well defined in any catechism course),
: then the Pope's right.
:
: Since there exists different standards for answering that
: question, most liberal thinking parents want to encourage their
: childrent to examine the variety of standards and come to
: decisions about belief on their own (rather than merely
: submitting them to narrow-mindedness like your atheistic
: fundamentalism). That's a good enough reason for Tony and Mike
to
: do more than shake their kids by the shoulders and yell, "It's
a
: cruel world, punk, and you're in it all alone!" even if it
: happens to be true there is no meaning.
Since I've been arguing from the start that this is an issue of
standards, not of "certain knowledge," I've repeatedly asked you
to clarify your standards so we could then ask the question (that
has already been asked by Evan and myself) "Why should we accept
your standards as the superior choice when answering the question
Tony's child raised?"
But Evan said it far more succintly (as usual):
: Given the lack of external arguments for why one form of
inference or
: belief is better than another, there's no simple way to say
that religious
: people are stupider.
Which, basically, is what you've been trying to assert is
"obvious."
-- Greg Ritter gritter@felix.vcu.edu ritter@urvax.urich.edu http://www.urich.edu/~ritter