DNB
Christian
You talk way too much!
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Evidence of the Non-Physical
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
DNB
Christian
Fail!
Hidingfromyou
Member
Theology is make-believe to justify make-believe. Not a single new piece of knowledge has ever been produced by theology. Not one. It's entirely worthless as a discipline.
Theology is just metaphors for believers about the nature of reality. Utterly useless for nonbelievers and utterly useless at presenting evidence based arguments.
DNB
Christian
Evil defies rationale. Therefore, man has a spirit.
Sheldon, you need to be more perceptive.
DNB
Christian
How absurd, where would one even buy food for a unicorn?
DNB
Christian
Maybe you don't understand the arguments?
Hidingfromyou
Member
DNB
Christian
What's so hard to understand or accept about either the teleological or cosmological arguments? They're based on elementary reasoning, which science substantiates.
Hidingfromyou
Member
DNB
Christian
Who's talking about novelties?
Hidingfromyou
Member
You replied to me, informing me that I might be ignorant of theological arguments. The post you replied to stated that theology cannot produce new knowledge.
Because you replied to my post, which stated that theology cannot produce new knowledge, and because you informed me that I might be ignorant, I invited you to provide me with a theological argument that produces new knowledge.
If you agree with me that theology cannot produce new knowledge, then you have no need to present a theological argument that purports to present new knowledge.
DNB
Christian
I said comprehension, not oblivion???
Hidingfromyou
Member
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
They're not hard to understand, just obviously unsound (at least all the version I've seen are).
Again, (in my experience) this is simply wrong. Every single version of either I've seen, either makes basic logical mistakes or rests on highly questionable premises.
By all means, do feel free to post some version of an argument that you think is valid (either here or in another thread) and I'll tell you why it fails, or be surprised.
Just to name one counter-example that renders such an absurd and extreme claim as the one you make above (my goodness, I'm not a believer or an historian but a scientist and even I know the the debt we physicists owe to the "theological physics" of the early modern founders from Galileo and Descartes through Newton and beyond), we can point to e.g., the action principle.
The action principle was initially introduced via theological justifications for theological reasons on a theological basis about the perfect nature of god, first by Maupertuis and then in a more modern form by Euler. It is at the core of modern theoretical physics, particularly those that form our most fundamental theories (e.g., the standard model) but also classical mechanics, optics, non-relativistic quantum mechanics (especially the path integral formalism), relativistic quantum mechanics, many-body physics, etc.
To take just one example of a modern, purely theoretical physics monograph for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers in axiomatic quantum theory and algebraic quantum theory (and QFT more generally), and a standard reference in this and related fields, we have the following:
"The belief that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds, or that God gave laws of nature optimally designed to achieve an end, has provided through centuries an inspiration to fundamental physics. It brought a teleological element which has been extremely fruitful but which, in spirit, appears to be quite opposed to the principle of locality."
p. 39
from Haag, R. (1996). Local Quantum Physics: Fields, Particles, Algebras (2nd Ed.) (Theoretical and Mathematical Physics). Springer.
Note that this teleological nature remains and remains in particular problematic because we no longer accept the theological principles upon which it was based when it was introduced (well, I don't, and even for physicists who are believers I've yet to meet one talk about the action principle in theological terms other than when referring to its historical development). The influence of this theological argument, especially in the form Euler presented it, is a clear counter-example of your claim. This is true despite the fact that I don't know of any physicists who accept that the principle should be understood theologically (although its teleological nature bothers many), as is born out in the text by Cushing:
"Euler maintained the theological view of Maupertuis and held that phenomena could be explained not only in terms of causes but also in terms of purpose. He believed that, since the universe was the creation of a perfect God, nothing could happen in nature that did not exhibit this maximum or minimum property. In Euler's program all the laws of nature should be derivable from this principle of maximum or minimum. The fact that Newton's second law of motion was deduced from such a principle lent great support to this claim. This was the beginning of the use of variational principles that are common in physics today (but without the theological trappings)."
p. 167
Cushing, J. T. (1998). Philosophical Concepts in Physics: The Historical Relation between Philosophy and Scientific Theories. Cambridge University Press.
I'm not sure it qualifies as a an argument from ignorance fallacy, but rather is something closer to the "plain non sequitur" case. And even that is generous of you.
