Thursday, November 7, 2013

In The Same Boat or Rocking the Boat?: A snippet from a post-radio debate

After going on Backpack Radio last week I have been involved, on and off, with a debate that occurred on an atheist's Facebook post. The individual who posted, posted a link to the interview, and then tagged me with the phrase "In the Same Boat." He has been laboring, unsuccessfully, to prove that even based on Christian presuppositions, one cannot have certainty or a foundation for knowledge. A lot of the ensuing discussion revolved around the nature of presuppositional debates. As I said in the interview, a presupp debate is effective when one states their worldview, and then critiques the opposing worldview by its internal merits. Most of the debate was me pointing out that their critique of the Christian worldview was not an internal critique, but an insertion of their own faulty categories into the Christian worldview in order to damage it. They kept claiming I was also evaluating their worldview by inserting my own categories into it, yet without being specific as to how I was doing that. At the end of the debate they finally gave me specifics, and it was quite revealing. Apparently, the very categories of coherence and correspondence with an objective reality, they reject as a purely Christian concept, as they openly embrace an ultimate irrationalism. That is a stunning admission to the fact that atheism produces no coherence, correspondence, and has no foundation for knowledge. Below is the last bit of exchange. I decided to post it, while hiding their names, in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the presuppositional argument.

Atheist 1: Colin S, Is having an internally consistent, justified and coherent worldview of value to you? Is it a standard by which you evaluate the worth of your worldview? Yes?

Further, are you obligated to justify your worldview by my worldview's standards? No?

Cool, ya see what I did there? I just exposed your blindspot.

Because, ya see, for the same reasons you're worldview isn't susceptible to evaluation from standards in my wv, mine is impervious to evaluation from standards in yours.

What if, using your internal critique method, I don't care that my worldview is not absolutely consistent, justifies or coherent?

What if i accept philosophical dilemmas and scientific mysteries as items that actually strengthen my worldview, such that it's incompleteness allows for room for growth and awe?

I don't engage in your spitting contest. Atheists haven't dropped the ball, they firmly place it down.

CSmall: Ah. I see what your saying. Thanks for your honestly.

Atheist 2: Colin, I agree, you are operating under a number of double-standards. As Christopher has just pointed out, you are applying your own standards within your worldview to other worldviews, while claiming this is not allowed for other people. I find it rather ironic that you will go to great lengths to argue that atheists are not "incapable of comparing and contrasting comparative worldviews" - well look no further.

We have done just that. And to the point where we have exposed your own double-standards, inconsistencies and absurdities within your own worldview.

//Well, Colin, the SAME THING could be said about your assertions. You assume correspondence between your thoughts and God. You have not demonstrated that such is the case, but merely asserted it... such a claim is not axiomatic.//

"Yes, according to YOUR worldview God is something that just exists in my head."

Another dodge, and another appeal to a definition with NO justification. And I wasn't even talking about your lack of justification in terms of my worldview, I was talking about your own standards - that "assumption of correspondence" which you fail to demonstrate but merely assert (and which you don't "know" according to your own definition of knowledge). Why is it you can say this to other people while being guilty of THE VERY SAME THING?

There are a few simple facts we both share regarding our 'abilities' and the 'conditions' of our epistemologies within our worldviews:

1. we are both 'stuck' on the receiving end of a stream of information, whether that be sensory data from the external world, or a "revelation" directly from a deity.

2. we are both fallible, yet we both rely heavily on our senses and experiences to form our worldviews.

3. we both must assume certain axioms in order to experience and make sense of the external world (the world at the other end of the stream of information), and we both cannot "get behind", or "justify" those axioms.

The problem is, while you are raging war with non-Christians for not being able to justify certain axioms, you yourself are hiding behind a baseless claim of "absolute certain knowledge".... with no ultimate justification of your own, other than a viciously circular argument. Instead of admitting this, you tap dance around the questions and continue to beg the question with every response.

CSmall: "We have done just that. And to the point where we have exposed your own double-standards, inconsistencies and absurdities within your own worldview."

Actually you haven't done that at all. You have failed to critique my worldview from the inside out, and I have taken care to break down how that is so. Never once have you brought a charge against me that I was misrepresenting your worldview in its metaphysic or epistemology. I called you a logical positivist once and you denounced that charge. I wasn't satisfied with your explanation on how you aren't LP, but I dropped the label. However, when you speak like an empiricist, I critique you as one. Most of my answers have been on the defensive of you inserting your own assumptions in my worldview. I have seen a few accusations, but no specifics, of what exactly I was inserting from my worldview into my critique of yours... Until Christopher posted above....

Christopher just stated that he basically doesn't care if his worldview is incoherent and not correspondent with reality. If that is what you are saying as well, and if you are claiming that the general category of correspondence and coherence is something that only exists in my worldview, and thus cannot be applied to yours; then the conversation is over. You have conceded that intelligibility and rationality are only possible if my worldview is true, and that the under currents of such things (ie coherence and correspondence) have no place in your worldview.

"Another dodge, and another appeal to a definition with NO justification. And I wasn't even talking about your lack of justification in terms of my worldview, I was talking about your own standards - that "assumption of correspondence" which you fail to demonstrate but merely assert (and which you don't "know" according to your own definition of knowledge). Why is it you can say this to other people while being guilty of THE VERY SAME THING?"

We've gone over this before. I explained the difference between my axiom, and yours. My axiom (God) is self-sustaining and under girds the axioms and preconditions necessary for human predication, ontologically and not arbitrarily. Your axioms aren't axioms and need outside entities and realities in order to justify themselves, so they aren't a proper starting point for knowledge. Furthermore, you are an inherently mental creature who knows through verbal constructs. Yet you believe that reality is made up of non-mental realities (matter) which cannot engage in verbal communication. The problem there is that one needs to know something about the basic nature of reality, before they can investigate particulars or more specific information about it. We need to know what reality is, before we can know how we can know it. In other words, we need revelation about reality, from an outside source, before we can begin predicating. Your problem is that what you believe reality to be outside of yourself is fundamentally incommunicable and disjointed from what you are as a thinking, human subject. What follows from that is that reality cannot come to you and verbally express it's nature to you so that you can know, or even define it (matter is defined as "stuff"), and thus truly know it or begin predicating about it. So you're two problems are, your axioms aren't axiomatic, they implicate outside realities to justify themselves; and also what you say reality is, is fundamentally different from what you are, causing a fundamental epistemological problem that further estranges you from correspondence.

In contradistinction, the Christian will say that knowledge and reality begins with, and comes from the self-contained Trinity, who is self-existent and not referential to any other reality than Himself, and whose very ontological properties provides a foundation for human reason and sense experience to be justified sources of knowledge in their appropriate spheres. Furthermore we are made in God's image and likeness, and are thus "like him" at a finite level, particularly when it comes to our mental life. So therefore, there can be revelation or communication from His mind to ours pertaining to his own nature, the nature reality which he made, and the nature of ourselves.

Atheist 1: Colin, thanks for your understanding. Would love to chat sometime. PM me if interested.

Atheist 1: //Christopher just stated that he basically doesn't care if his worldview is incoherent and not correspondent with reality.// Mostly yes

//If that is what you are saying as well, and if you are claiming that the general category of correspondence and coherence is something that only exists in my worldview, and thus cannot be applied to yours; then the conversation is over. You have conceded that intelligibility and rationality are only possible if my worldview is true, and that the under currents of such things (ie coherence and correspondence) have no place in your worldview.// No

That is where you are crossing over from internal critique to external critique. Correspondence and coherence exist in atheist worldviews, but a fetishized obsession with absolute correspondence and coherence is not valued. That absolute value may exist in your worldview, whereas it's relative cousin exists in ours.

CSmall: So what does that mean? How does that play out?

CSmall: And to help you clarify your thoughts here, from my perspective that sounds like: "Okay, okay, no we are not totally irrational and we don't reject correspondence and coherence totally. Rather, we believe there is correspondishness and coherenceness out there somewhere along with truthiness." It seems you don't want to loose those category now, but are leaving them open ended and vague so that if someone wants to interact with you about it, it will be like hammering jello to a wall. Not to be derogatory, but that is how it sounds. So what do you mean?

Atheist 1: Oh no, I think we're all irrational. Seriously.

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