Absolute Truth

[apothanein kerdos]

spblat,

First, thank you for the recommendation.

I think you are right. But I think I am willing to accept that emotions and morality are completely subjective. We've batted this ball back and forth before, but what makes preferences over murder different from preferences over ice cream is that most people agree that the murder conversation is more important.

And if I remember correctly, you admitted that you could not adequately deal with this problem posed to your belief system. The reason is it doesn't allow for cultural anomalies that allow for murder...and this is simply accepting a basic term for culture. If I really wanted to, I could go in and ask you to define what a "culture" is - is it the overall structure of a nation, is it the subsets, or is culture just related to the family unit?

The point being, when you work from a non-absolute basis, you lack a strong foundation. Just like my analogy, if you try to build a building without a strong foundation, the building will collapse. Likewise, if we begin to build a belief system around that which is uncertain, our belief system will ultimately collapse, either under scrutiny or in practice.

They cannot be explained to your satisfaction via naturalism, but you cannot prove that they will never be explained to the satisfaction of an impartial third party (if such a person can be found). And I am content for these topics to remain in the upper story, awaiting a connection to the ground floor.

The point of naturalism is to prove things by using our senses. The problem is, emotions, love, and all other aspects can't be tested. We can find the parts of the brain that might control them, might hamper them, etc, but this does not actually show how they originate within the brain. In other words, if I come to a dam, does this mean I have found the source of the river? Does it mean I have found where the water comes from? Not at all - it merely means I have found the controlling agent for the source. Scientifically, we can prove that the brain functions as a "dam" for emotions, love, and morality, but we cannot prove that any of these items originate out of the brain.

This, of course, causes quite the problem for the naturalist. As Sartre, an atheist, stated, the first philosophical problem is that something exists. What this means is we can look at our human experience and realize that there is more to man than chemicals and DNA. Sartre, and many other naturalists, realized that if they accepted naturalism completely, man would become nothing more than a machine. This syncs up with what scientists call the "ghost in the machine" - man has qualities and attributes that cannot be scientifically explained. Sartre, realizing this (along with Camus), began to develop existential philosophy for atheism. It required the follower to reject the naturalistic world and live above it. The problem with this is that it relies solely on a leap of faith, not relying on scientific inquiry for why we should reject the naturalistic world - in other words, it is atheism without naturalism.

It is my firm belief that atheists have to accept one or the other and cannot accept both. Though both will begin with naturalism (the world came about without purpose), they will eventually branch off. The question is, can either adequately solve the problem of man?

As we saw, naturalism eventually collapses on itself. But what of atheistic existentialism? As we saw at the beginning of the post, it still lacks an absolute beginning for morality. That is to say, even if it tells us to reject that we are a machine and live as though we are more, it still lacks a justification to do so, or more importantly, a justification to levy its morals upon others in society.

This is my "lower story" world view, and I freely acknowledge that I hold this view a priori. Will you claim otherwise for your lower story? Will you claim that your willingness to accept the Bible's truth on the basis of faith and revelation is any more grounded than my reliance on naturalism?

The problem with your worldview, as I pointed out, is it eventually turns on itself. Humanism eventually betrays itself, because it cannot allow for a priori thought. Though it was begotten out of philosophy, it eventually destroys the philosophical field of knowledge. You state that the world is known by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. This, however, works in that order:

I observe what I think is an ant -----> to be sure it is an ant, I test it in a laboratory ------> based on my findings, the evidence shows this is most likely an ant

This might seem workable to you, but I must ask - how is this belief scientifically proven? How can you prove humanism through observation, experimentation, and rational analysis (based on what is before). Without going into a long dissertation, the summarized version is, "You can't." In other words, humanism fails to meet its own criteria. There are indicators of if a philosophy is true or not - if it is self contradictory (the most telling one), if it cannot be applied to the real world, or if it fails to meet its own criteria (there are others, but these are the main three). In other words, humanism cannot be proven by what it requires and what it believes - if man truly functioned as humanism says he does, then man would have never discovered or thought of humanism.

As for what I believe, I do believe that I have more of a solid foundation than any other thought system. I believe all Christians do. I would also venture to say that Jews and Muslims have more of a solid foundation than Hindus or Buddhists (but not as strong as Christians). I would say that Hindus and Buddhists have a weak foundation, but it is not nearly as weak as atheists and agnostics. In other words, in terms of discovering an absolute foundation for ethics, strength would rest in the theists first (with Christianity on top), in the polytheists second, and the naturalists last.

I invite you to open a topic challenging me on the Christian worldview. I would have no problem explaining it to you, but it would need its own topic.

[undone]

42. The solution is 42.

A reference to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.....

[tdrehfal]

Yes, most everyone wants to learn the absolute truth. Depending on what you want to believe determines which text book you read. In either case, the reader will likely be convinced.

That's not a search for absolute truth. That's just looking for someone to tell you what you want to hear. If you want to search for truth, you will not turn a blind eye

to evidence that contradicts what you want to believe. You must, however, try to VERIFY everything that you read. You can't just pick up a book called The God

Who Was Never Ever There Even if He Appeared To You Right Now and Told You So, And He Can't Exist Just Trust Me On This I Know You Want to Hear This, and

then say that it's some sort of scholarly work. That's just tickling your ears.