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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois
From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Pots and Pans
Message-ID: <548@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Dec-84 16:51:05 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.548
Posted: Mon Dec 10 16:51:05 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Dec-84 04:26:05 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 204


>>>My, you must be in on something that the rest of the world isn't. I have
>>>no complaint if these are your own beliefs, but to make a statement that
>>>this is FACT is going just a little too far! Not all the world accepts
>>>these facts, and I see no reason they should. These are beliefs, not
>>>facts. Each person has their own beliefs. Facts are undeniable truths.
>>>The two are not the same, and I don't see any reason to try to say that
>>>ones own beliefs are factual, except to simply better his argument.
>>>   [ANDY BANTA on Ken Nichols]

>> Prove it.  Turn your own argument on itself and see how much you
>> believe it.  [PAUL DUBOIS]
 
> [Rich Rosen]
> This is typical of the style of argument coming of late from religious
> believers.  Despite the fact that others have shown repeatedly that the
> way Paul and other believers obtained their "knowledge" is very faulty
> indeed, he still feels the need to claim the absolute truthfulness of
> his "knowledge".  Paul wants us to believe that his beliefs are facts.
> He obviously believes them to be.  He asks us to "turn this argument on
> itself".  In countless articles, we have shown that the inverse argument
> doesn't hold water:  what it always boils down to is that 1) religious
> believers have been shown to take unwarranted leaps of faith based on
> their own wishful thinking and preconception of how they would like the
> world to be and 2) the basis for the acquired "knowledge" that led them to
> make these leaps of faith is rife with unreliability stemming from faulty
> patterning.

Rich Rosen has demonstrated to my satisfaction that he disagrees
with me, and that's all.  However, he has also demonstrated, to his
*own* satisfaction, that he has shown the complete lack of basis in
reality of my beliefs.  The magnitude of this accomplishment should
not be underestimated.  It is, in general, very difficult to
convince Rich of anything.  :-)

Concerning wishful thinking and presuppositions:  Rich continually
brings these up, wishfully presupposing that my beliefs are based on
the way I wishfully presuppose the way I would like the world to be.
Such an argument must *always* fail in my case:  Before I became a
Christian, I was content.  (At least I thought I was - I found out
afterward that my "contentment" was a poor substitute for the peace
of God - but I certainly had no motivation to change my beliefs
because of any thoughts about the way I wished the world to be.)  I
have state this in previous articles.  Since Rich seems not to be a
careless reader, I am not sure why this argument is directed my way.
Perhaps the postings never made it to his site.

Notice also how Rich shoots himself in the foot here where he starts
talking about "unreliability stemming from faulty patterning":  one
of the bases for reliability of a phenomenon, in Rich's thinking, is
that it be repeatable.  But a pattern is, after all, highly
repetitive.  How then can it be faulty?  If it can't be, there are
no faulty patterns.  If it can be, repeatability is no criterion for
reliability.

>>>It irks me when other people try to
>>>push their God on me. Why should I believe in their God? If I have my
>>>own, and don't have any complaints, nobody has to "save" me from
>>>anything. There is nothing of danger out there, I don't need to be
>>"saved" from some terrible "burning" that is going to happen when I die.
 
>> There's a rather loud assumption in that last statment.  See previous
>> comment.
 
> Needless to say, Paul feels he is NOT making "loud" assumptions.  He knows
> the facts.  Just look at the rigorous analysis he did to get them.

Needless to say, Rich can set up a straw man with the best of us.  I
didn't deny making assumptions (even loud ones).  Nor do I deny it
now.  Rich's comments here are gratuitous - simply rattling pots and
pans in the kitchen to make noise.  My point was that certain
questions were being answered by begging them.  That point was, and
remains, true.

> "Excuse you" is right.  (Perhaps "Pardon you for breathing" would be more
> appropriate... :-)  You don't know, you wish for.  You presuppose.  You
> assume.  Your beliefs are full of "non-knowing".  The path through which
> you obtained your "knowledge" can be shown to be full of presumptive holes
> along the way.

I'm devastated.

The path through which I obtain my knowledge can be shown to have
been contested by one Rich Rosen.  That's all.

> Translation:  perhaps because Paul has been led to believe that god says that
> we need to be changed.  Your beliefs and reality are very far apart, Mr.
> Dubois.  I say this because of the way in which you obtained them (frought
> with potential error) and because of how much they differ from what we know
> of reality, and because one can easily see how much of them are simply rooted
> in wishful thinking.  Make enough assumptions about the world (there must
> be justice, there is an ultimate good/evil dichotomy that is well-defined,
> humans are low and filthy and there is something better than us to show us
> what filth we are), all based on WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE, and, if
> these things are indeed correct, you may well be right, since I can see
> no other conclusion to draw from these premises other than that there
> IS a god as you describe.  Only what is the basis for your believing
> these premises?  Please be specific.

s/frought/fraught/p

Rich's attacks on what I believe are so far from what I believe that
it is difficult to know what to say here.  I can only conclude that
his comments derive from what he wishes I believed so that he can
bring up his standard lines about wishful thinking and faulty
patterning.

>>>we don't want to be like you? What if we are happy the way we are? I
>>>think I'd feel pretty miserable if my one purpose in life would be to
>>>make other people believe like I do. If they believe something
>>>different, and I can't prove them wrong, why should I interfere? You
>>>can't prove your position is right. You obvously feel that you are
> 
>> Can you prove your own position?  Hardly.
> 
> Thus, Paul's is right.

Twist and shout.  I didn't say that, now did I?

>                         Part of religious belief seems to manifested in a
> childish wish for order.  Rationally, based on the fact that there are
> billions of people with billions of personal interests in the world,
> there cannot be an absolute good and evil (see my previous article).  But
> it would be better if there WAS, thus you assume there is one.  It would be
> better if the universe was run on principles of justice and controlled by
> a benevolent deity, but there's no reason to believe that OTHER THAN THAT
> YOU WISH IT TO BE SO.  Paul here chooses a position that says "yes, there is
> an absolute right and wrong, a universal good and evil, a controller in
> charge of things determining and judging fairly" clearly for one reason.
> Because he'd like to see the universe that way.  As opposed to systems of
> rational belief that perceive no such absolutes, no such claims to absolute
> truth.  Paul would rather live in a world with such absolutes.  So he makes
> them up. (Or uses pre-made-up ones.)

Not being very original, I use pre-made-up ones...

Anyway, if a wish for order is childish, then Rich has again
destroyed the very basis upon which he determines reliability of
evidence.  There goes the other foot.  Better get the crutches out,
Rich?  (How about religion - that's a good "crutch", right?)

He also destroys the basis upon which he wishes to criticize my
position:  no absolute right/wrong means that there is no standard
by which my position can be said to be better or worse than Rich's
(or at least no standard which I can be expected to accept).
Really, "better" and "worse" become meaningless.  So why, Rich, do
you bother to blast my statements?  Emotional release?  Do I
threaten your beliefs? :-)

>>>right. Why can't we just say "I'm OK, You're OK", and leave it at that.

>> Tell it to God.  He will say to you, just as He did to myself and
>> Ken, "I'm OK, you're not."

> You must have a pretty low opinion of yourself to 1) say that to yourself and
> 2) believe that a deity would believe that too.  This negative Christian
> mindset permeates our culture and reinforces these beliefs of unworthiness,
> so it's no wonder people like Paul hear god saying those things---it's more
> wishful thinking.

Rich speculates about my beliefs again.  Saying that man is lost and
under God's judgment without Christ's redemption is not the same as
saying that man is a zero.  I don't have a low opinion of myself.
Man is made in the very image of God.  We are both, Rich and I,
everlasting.  There is nothing trivial or low about that, in my
view.  But one need not have a low opinion of oneself to recognize
that the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man places man lower
than God.  Even so, I don't go around in sackcloth and ashes,
wailing and beating my breast.  Not *all* the time, anyway! :-)
Praise God, the Lord Jesus Christ has set me free from sin and
death!

Also, I fail to understand how it is "wishful thinking" to make up a
God who would say not "you're ok", but "you need to be changed."

> Your morality is far from meaningless.  On the contrary, it has very vivid
> meaning:  it encompasses all the assumptions I have described in this
> article, about the unworthiness of humanity, about the need for an absolute
> arbiter of good/evil to exist, etc.  Unfortunately, whether or not any
> such deity ever existed or spoke to anyone, it is clear that the essence of
> the morality involved is to reinforce the presumptions I have mentioned.
> A rational minimal morality says one thing, in fact it says exactly what
> Jesus is supposed to have said:  human beings are free to do anything that
> doesn't harm another human being.  Why have anything on top of that?  Did god
> say so, or do YOU want it to be so?

"Why have anything on top of that?"  What!  Why have *even* that?
(Rationally speaking, that is.)  Zero is less than one, so a
rational minimal morality consists of zero propositions, i.e., does
not exist.  To suppose it does is mere wishful thinking, Rich.
Besides, those "billions of people with billions of personal
interests" can hardly be expected to share your morality consisting
of "one thing".  This follows from your *own* logic.


"I will praise thee O Lord, in the midst of mine enemies"


-- 
Paul DuBois		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois

"I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live:  I will sing
praise to my God while I have my being."
					Psalm 104:33