[Vision2020] Beastiality and Incest

[joekc at adelphia.net]

Doug,

You are just plain wrong. You do an injustice to the concepts of faith and knowledge by saying such things. I could talk about this all day but here are just a few comments.

1/ Wittgenstein claims that a person knows that a proposition is true if he is "ready to give compelling grounds" for that proposition (On Certainty, section 243). Your view is based on your conviction that we can't give compelling grounds for everything. Both Wittgenstein and I would agree. I believe that there is a world that exists apart from my experiences of it yet it is hard to see what compelling grounds for such a claim would look like, for grounds for the existence of the world appear to involve my experiences of the world.

Where you err is in thinking that all beliefs that are not based on "compelling grounds" are equal -- all are instances of faith -- but they are not.

2/ If my son believes in Santa Claus because he doesn't know any better is that the same as your faith in the existence of God? From your comments it seems that it is. No wonder most atheists think that theists are idiots! According to your suggestion, faith is a kind of igonorance.

3/ I have faith that my wife is not cheating on me. Do I know that she is not cheating on me? Not really. In fact, to try to prove that she is not cheating on me would compromise my trust and faith in her, wouldn't it? I don't know whether my neighbor's wife is cheating on him, either. But do I have faith that my neighbor's wife is not cheating? No. I don't think about her much at all. 

Faith concerns love and trust and hope and none of these are feelings that I have toward my neighbor's wife nor toward the world apart from my experience of it.

Here then are three distinct things which you classify as one kind of thing -- faith: my son's belief in Santa Claus, my belief that my wife is not cheating on me, and your belief in a world beyond your senses.

--
Joe Campbell

---- heirdoug at netscape.net wrote: 

=============
Chas,

You answered well. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there is no God
just as you are willing (while hoping) to accept that the sun will not 
rise
(actually the earth rotates but that is a different cosmology). You 
have
one thought that you made that is not as accurate as your others. You
say that "this isn't entirely based on faith" and yet it is based on 
faith.
All of the choices that you make each moment are based on faith.
Just as mine are. Some are of a true faith or a false faith.

Keep up the good work

Doug!

-----Original Message-----
From: Chasuk <chasuk at gmail.com>
To: heirdoug at netscape.net <heirdoug at netscape.net>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com; deco at moscow.com
Sent: Fri, 5 May 2006 22:08:46 -0700
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Beastiality and Incest

On 5/5/06, heirdoug at netscape.net <heirdoug at netscape.net> wrote:

> What is the evidence for your knowledge claim that the sun will show
> itself tomorrow morning?

I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow, and I am perfectly
willing to accept that it will not (whilst hoping that it will). 
However, for
pragmatic reasons, it is convenient to proceed living my
life as if I know that it will rise. Of course, I am assuming a
non-demonstrable causal-chain, but this isn't entirely based on faith,
as I have accumulated a history of prior observations.
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