My Beliefs- GDR

I note that you didn't answer the question.A world class authority on Christianity is the Pope, do you therefore accept his arguments from authority?

Bruce Metzger wad a leading Bible scholar and a Presbyterian Minister. You can see how she deals with his expertise in message 292 this thread.Her attitude to experts is as biased and tainted as everything else she posts.

No, I would regard only Protestant authorities as acceptable authorities on Christianity. I never said ALL authorities are acceptable. Some appeals to authority are not valid. So what, some are. That was my point.

Bruce Metzger is an unbeliever in the Bible as God's supernatural word. His "scholarship" is evil and fraudulent because he attacks the authority of God's word, and so is his "Presbyterian ministry" evil and fraudulent. Authorities I recognize are Bible believers and there are plenty of those. I do not have to accept all supposed authorities as valid authorities in order to say as a principle that arguments from authority are not invalid as such.Bias describe any position that takes sides, such as the position that accepts Metzger's "modern scholarship" over orthodox Protestant scholarship. Of course I'm biased. So are you.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Haha. "Those authorities that I find acceptable are acceptable"You don't think there might be a teeny weeny fallacy here?Appeals to authority of the type GDR used - he said something along the lines of 'a lot of clever people believe in God - are fallacious. Full stop.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

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Bruce Metzger is an unbeliever in the Bible as God's supernatural word. His "scholarship" is evil and fraudulent because he attacks the authority of God's word, and so is his "Presbyterian ministry" evil and fraudulent

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In other words he rejects the unbiblical doctrines of your cult and so you react with hate and slander.

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I do not have to accept all supposed authorities as valid authorities in order to say as a principle that arguments from authority are not invalid as such.

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But Bruce Metzger is a valid authority and if you truly believed your own defence of arguments from authority you should give his views a fair chance instead of rejecting them out of hand with hatred and falsehoods. This is how you prove it is you who has no interest in the truth.

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Bias describe any position that takes sides, such as the position that accepts Metzger's "modern scholarship" over orthodox Protestant scholarship. Of course I'm biased. So are you.

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It takes rather more bias for you to maintain your position than it does for me to maintain mine, as you demonstrate again and again.

Thanks for the thoughtful post.I know this is repeating what I have already said but let’s just look at the basic aspect of life. Our world was formed about 4.5 million years ago. Some time after that the very first cell came into existence. Some day science may be able to show us in a lab how a cell can be formed from base elements. In other words science may be able to tell us how life began or more accurately how life could have begun.If science is successful in creating life it is not evidence as to whether or not the process that created life began mindfully or mindlessly. As to whether life comes from intelligence or chance is a matter of opinion. I agree that the first cell could have been formed incrementally over a long period of time, even though we all know how complex one living cell is. Aside from irreducible complexity Paley still had a point. A living cell is extraordinarily complex. In the end we can make our own determination, but it is my contention or opinion if you like, that it is more reasonable to conclude that intelligence and not chance is the cause of life coming into existence. Neither belief is evidence based in the sense that you define evidence.I would make the same argument for evolution. Evolution is an incredible complex process that brought us from single celled life to sentient life. We understand a great deal about the process but, again we have no evidence to tell us whether or not the process was initiated by intelligence or chance. It is a matter of opinion, and I personally have concluded that the intelligent root cause is more reasonable. I agree that we cannot truly judge the morality of another human. We can look at someone's actions and conclude that an individual acted morally as his actions appear to be moral,l but still we can't be inside his head to know whether the action was truly moral or not.For example a man is standing beside a river and he sees someone out in a strong current obviously drowning. He jumps in and is able to rescue the man but he himself drowns in the process. On the surface this appears to be a highly moral act that took great courage, and we make an assumption about the morality of the man.What we don't know is that the man was standing beside the river as he was about to jump in and commit suicide. In reality what looked like a highly courageous and highly moral act becomes something quite different.Our individual morality is something that makes us what we are. It is not an emotion. It is simply a major part of our character.

You selectively pulled out a quote from what I wrote and then lampooned it. Frankly I expected more than that from you.I am not appealing to authority to suggest that I am correct. I simply said that what I believe isn't something that I have dreamed up on my own from "reasons of subjective preference, personal comfort, etc.". My opinions have been formed by reading the views of others far more knowledgeable than myself. I also pointed out that there are brilliant people who disagree and I have considered their views as well. I did not suggest that just because people with great minds agree with me that it makes me right.

I’m not saying that it is supernatural. I am saying it is non-physical. I agree with all of that except when you say that morality is subjective. What constitutes a moral action or a societal moral code is subjective, and changes from culture to culture but the motivation for what we do is a constant. Morality is either selfish or unselfish in varying degrees. See my reply to Rahvin.

Can you explain the difference?I'm not sure what non-physical means - I contend that morality is physical because it takes place in a physical organ, the brain, and uses physical means which we can see and measure - electrochemical transmission. Well actually it's neither - it's simply an emotion that controls behaviour.Here's a summaryhttp://www.wjh.harvard.edu/...neWJH/Greene-CogNeuroIV-09.pdf

How do you know philosophy has failed? Philosophy isn’t like science. Science deals essentially with the repeatable or with physical evidence. In the end maybe science can, although I have my doubts explain everything that there is to know but at least for the time being science has its limits and so if we are going to form opinions on things like human behaviour we still I have to come at it on philosophic grounds, knowing that the answers can’t be absolute or proven. Actually the idea that science is the only field of study that can bring illumination to our world is a philosophical POV. I’m glad that you now agree that it is a state of mind but I do not accept that morality is created by electrochemical interactions. I would say that the electrochemical interactions are the result of the thoughts partially formed by our morality. You make these assertions that are just plain wrong. You simply keep pointing to natural processes and then make your assumptions that the natural processes do not come about from intelligent origins.

As far as science is concerned Tom is in the same category as the IPU and Bigfoot etc.In terms of being the cause of observable phenomena Tom isn't even in the running because there is nothing whatsoever to suggest Tom even exists and every indication that Tom is a human construct. The evidence tells us that successfully replicating genes are as responsible for moral behaviours as they are for lungs or toenails.Why would we ask if Tom is responsible for morality any more than we would ask if Tom is responsible for toenails? Scientifically speaking thoughts are brain activity. Whilst you may find that subjectively unsatisfactory is there any concrete reason to consider this scientific conclusion wrong?

Double post deletedEdited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I think that you are out of your depth here. Both thoughts and brain reactions to moral dilemmas are neural responses - ie electrochemical. You're not allowed opinions on this.

I’m not at all sure I can. It wasn’t good terminology. The point I was ineptly trying to make is that I think that morality is something that Tom has instilled in us so that it becomes a natural part of our though process. As to how or when that happens I haven’t a clue. Appealing to authority? That is a technical article and so I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the jargon but in reading through it, it continuously makes the point about behavioural changes due to damaged or diseased brains. There is no doubt that damage, disease, drugs etc can alter human behaviour and human thought processes. It is really no different than breaking my leg affects my ability to walk.The fact that behavioural patterns change does not mean that the individual does not have an underlying morality that represents the true nature of that person.Actually we are all mentally dysfunctional. It is just a matter of degree.