[Vision2020] Deep in the Matrix a Voice is Heard Whispering...

[Ted Moffett]

Deep in the matrix a voice is heard whispering...

Doug Jones is playing a "gotcha" game with Wayne Fox by pointing out that if 
anyone holds any principles to be certain and true, these principles become 
their "religion," that they cannot ultimately defend any more than any other 
"religious" point of view, especially if they are a skeptic like Wayne Fox. 
Therefore they are not standing on any ultimate ground of reality from which 
to assert their principles are superior to other "religious" principles.

I am not trying to make logic a "God," but merely pointing out that the 
tools of logic do work in the "real" world to get things done.  If it works 
and keeps working, the empirical evidence indicates the logic is correct.

Like what is happening right now in this computer.

The application of the tools of logic are everywhere.  We rely on them every 
day and they work as expected mostly.  Is logic a perfect system with no 
flaws or uncertainties or unsolved riddles?  Of course not.  No "God" is 
asserted here, in the sense many people think of an all powerful, all 
knowing, all good being or power.

But if we say that Doug Jones religious beliefs do not have to follow Wayne 
Fox's "God" of logic, then
Doug Jones might explain, for example, how the computer Doug Jones uses 
every day that is based on the tools of modern logic and mathematics, works 
as reliably as it does?

Or is Doug Jones going to say his computer really works according to special 
logical rules Doug Jones believes in, that are different than Wayne Fox's 
logical rules?

Or is it that the logic of computers and the logic of Doug Jones's 
Trinitarianism are in separate "universes," that do not follow each others 
logical rules?

I am waiting for that special "Trinitarian" computer programmed by the 
alternative set of logical rules that Doug Jones believes in, that refute 
the absolute grounding of Wayne Fox's logical rules in the "real" world, as 
expressed in computers.

There is no doubt that computers function according to logical and 
mathematical rules that are a part of the tradition of logic that Wayne Fox 
references in his arguments about logic, evidence and truth.

So therefore, I conclude, Doug Jones thinks his computer is an expression of 
that false "God" of modernity, "logic and mathematics?"

May the wrath of the logical computer Gods crash his system!

Ha!

Ted

>From: "Doug Jones" <credenda@moscow.com>
>To: "'Vision 20/20'" <vision2020@moscow.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] News Article, Mental Illness, Fixation of  Belief 
>Discussion
>Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 08:56:05 -0400
>
>Wayne Fox again:
>
>The statements in religious creeds are knowledge claims and subject to
>the same tests and criticisms that other knowledge claims are.  Internal
>logical consistency is the most basic of those tests.
>
>I’m more than willing to let this thread die (and I have answered
>Wayne’s “dilemma” in at least five different ways), but I still find it
>humorous that Wayne is so quick to see all others as rabidly religious
>and fantasizing, but refuses to give us a reason for believing that
>Reason is the supreme authority, even when his own relativism about
>logic undermines it. I have never seen anyone as rabid in refusing even
>to consider challenges to his god. Certainly none of the religious
>people of any faith that I know act that narrowly and rabidly. Wayne’s
>continuing appeal to Reason as a neutral arbiter is like a Muslim
>insisting that the Koran “is the most basic test” of truth of all other
>faiths. When you ask Wayne why, he just cites his Koran again. Not very
>enlightening or profound. Just rabid. And yet he’s the expert on mental
>illness. Very odd and unreflective, this secular fundamentalism.
>
>No one ever asked him to believe contradictions, just to provide an
>argument for why his particular god should unquestioningly rule the
>others.  Wayne just keeps pounding the table that his god is god.
>Question authority, I say. All of them.
>
>Doug Jones
>
>
>
>

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