If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

Dear Coyote,Thanks for the input, hope you stay and chat awhile. This is a very funny statement; I had a nice chuckle over it.The thing that struck me is how would you know that there was no black cat?If, presumably, the place was pitch black and no one had a flashlight, the lights were out and no one had night vision goggles on; those who believed that there was a black cat down there would have just as much evidence as those who believed there was no cat. That’s like saying Tall people can touch their nose with their index finger (I mean no disrespect to Tall people; I am one).It’s like Du, people in general can convince themselves of anything; after all, the easiest person to fool is ‘yourself’.But hay, thanks for the quote anyway; it’s always good to have a laugh or two.God Bless,
JRTjr

If you don't have any evidence of there being anything in the room, then why jump to it being a black cat? Why not a red fox? Or a brown otter?Given that you are just guessing that its a black cat, the odds of you being right that it is a cat, and even more specifically a black one, are small enough to consider you most likely to be wrong.

You love chasing your tail, don't you? You should try EvolutionFairyTale. They love that kind of argument over there.Doubt doesn't mean never making a decision. It means never being over-sure of your decisions. At some point you have to decide whether your decision is working. IF absolute truth was in effect, it wouldn't make any difference whether we acknowledged it or not. However, you have not established yet that there is such a thing as "absolute truth" beyond trivial definitions such as "black is black and white is white". it may be "absolutely" true that black can not be white but is that a useful truth?

Perhaps your question could be rephrased as saying that if a Deity existed (my default, not yours) would such a Deity be useful in regards to human development. Some think that humans are best left alone in order to fulfill their destiny and maximize their potential. In other words, what is useful truth?Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

The God of the Bible can't seem to make up His own mind about that. He's always saying He's there for you but when it comes time to move the furniture He's out of town.As Billy Graham put it, "God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is 'no'."I can do that too: I promise you a million dollars. (The cheque is in the mail.)

Dear Catholic Scientist,Thanks for joining the fray, You’re absolutely right; as a matter-of-fact, I would be willing to venter that the odds would be roughly even (in our hypothetical scenario) that there would be a black cat, no cat, other cat or even a dog in the same strange basement.Which, of course was my point, the sentence made no since at all.Hope you stay while and chat,
JRTjr

Dear Ringo,Always a pleasure hearing from you. It is great to see that you can acknowledge that what I’m pointing out is circular logic; however, you may want to check out our previous correspondence and see who came up with this everything should be doubted hypostasis to see who is the one actually chasing their tail. ;-} I absolutely agree; of course, this is just the opposite of ‘doubting everything’.At some point you have to decide this is true and/or that is faults; to ‘doubt everything’ is to not accept anything as true. This sounds eerily familiar, u, ya, now your repeating what I said: You can hold on to the idea that ‘the Law of Non-Contradiction’ is somehow ‘trivial’, that’s your prerogative; but don’t expect me to treat it as anything less than paramount.The ‘Law of Non-Contradiction’ underpins all of Science (including Theology); this is one of the tools we (should) use to reason out what is ‘true’ and what is error. If I find something that I think is ‘true’ (will call it ‘A’) to be in contradiction with something else I accept as ‘true’ (let’s call that ‘B’) then I have to figure out if:

1. ‘A’ is ‘true’, then ‘B’ must be wrong.
2. ‘B is ‘true’ then ‘A’ must be wrong.
3. or both ‘A’ and ‘B’ are wrong.

I don’t know; if you buy a can of White paint at the store, and when you get it home and open it and it turns out to be Black paint, you thing that may make a difference?I have already shown you two other ‘real world’ instances of how ‘the Law of Non-Contradiction’ works from examples you gave me. You may want to go back and re-read those.I hope this helps,
JRTjr

Terrible example of the point you try to get across.What is called 'white' by humans is light with a range of wavelenghts of light reflected from the paint. What we call black is a lack of humanly detected wavelenghts not being reflected from the paint.Luckily we can test wavelenghts by measuring them! I think you should rethink it.A. ‘White ’ is ‘true’, then ‘Black’ must be wrong.
B. ‘Black' is ‘true’ then ‘White ’ must be wrong.
C.or both ‘White’ and ‘Black’ are wrong.Add D, E , F and GD: Both 'White' and 'Black' are right.
E: Maybe both are wrong.
F: Maybe both are right in some instances and both wrong in some instances.
G: Maybe both are wrong and there's another answer.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

No it isn't. Doubting everything continues after we make a decision. Asking yourself if the decision was a good one is doubt. Exactly. Something is "true" only if it works in the given situation. It might not work in another situation, so it is "false" in that situation. I don't expect anything from you. That's not a case of black is white; it's a case of black being mistaken for white.That's why we should doubt everything. Does the can labeled White really contain white paint? I doubt it. If I didn't, I'd just stick a brush in it and slap it on the wall without checking. So show us some examples of "absolute truth" that don't depend on the Law of Non-contradiction.

Dear Ringo,Great hearing from you again, hope you are well. We haven’t been able to get passed the Law of Non-Contradiction because you keep contradicting your own statements. And what gets me is; you recognize that what you’re saying is circular reasoning because you accused me of ‘chasing my tail’ when I was pointing out the ridiculousness of ‘Doubting Everything’.Again, I am afraid I must point out that, you seam awful sure that you’re right about ‘Doubting Everything’; which, of course, is a contradiction in and of itself.God Bless,
JRTjr

Dear Pressie,Thanks for joining the conversation, hope you stay a while. Actually, if you think about it, your point about what ‘White’ and ‘Black’ are makes my point even more valid.a range of wavelenghts of light reflected from the paint could not, in the same way or at the same time be a lack of humanly detected wavelenghts not being reflected from the paint One ‘is’ reflected light, the other is light ‘not’ being reflected. Let’s see here:‘E’ and ‘G’ are covered under ‘C’.‘D’ is self-contradictory; and therefore obviously wrong.‘F’ fits in the frame work of ‘A’ through ‘C’ because in those instances where ‘White’ would be ‘True’ ‘Black’ would be wrong; and in those instances where ‘Black’ would be ‘True’ ‘White’ would be wrong; and then there would be those instances where both ‘White’ and ‘Black’ would be wrong.Good try Pressie, at least you’re thinking.However, you have to watch out for those contradictions. This is what I’m trying to get through to Ringo.Hope to hear from you again soon,
JRTjrEdited by JRTjr01, : Sorry, corrected 'F' to 'G' in my fourth paragraph. {Starting off with : 'Let’s see here:'}

So, JRTjr01, you forgot about G?

No, if the odds of those things are roughly evenly at zero, then the sentence makes perfect sense.The theologians are wondering things like how many toes the cat has, or how long its whiskers are, or whether or not it has claws.Since they're pondering about something that they are most likely wrong about even existing, then they're not going to be any help."Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there."

You may be missing the subtlety but there's no contradiction. I say you're chasing your tail because your reasoning is circular. Everything you say is based on the assumption of absolute truth. I've already explained why it isn't. Let me try again:When we form a hypothesis about anything, we automatically doubt that it's correct. That's why we call it a hypothesis instead of The Truth. When a hypothesis passes our testing, we become more confident that it approaches "truth". However, we are always testing our hypotheses. We are never completely sure that our theories are The Truth. We always doubt their perfection.People like you, who believe in Absolute Truth, are wrong so often because you don't doubt your conclusions enough.So can you, once and for all, give us any examples of "absolute truth" that are not trivial? I doubt it.

Thanks for the info; I made the correction.