Advertisement
Do you agree with Duns Scotus that the existence of God can be known through natural knowledge (revelation or theology in Mid. Europe) or William of Ockham who said that God can only be know through faith? Why?
posted by:
|
Unsubscribed |
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 9:15 AMAll systems of thoughts ( math, religion, science, philosophy) are grounded on a belief. Both Scotus' -- that the existence of God can be known through natural knowledge -- and Ockham's -- that God can only be known through faith -- are grounded on a belief. When I wake up in the morning and I accept that I exist in a real world instead of being a brain-in-a-vat having delusions, that is a belief. There are certain beliefs that can be justified, but then, this brings up the question of what is a justified true belief (jtb)? Even this conundrum cannot be explained adequately, though one can give reasonable arguments for a jtb, which indicates that any concept pushed to its limits will show blurry lines.
Just my two cents... -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 1:28 PMI concure-
I would take it as a matter of faith that something as apparently non-quantifiable as the existence God as seen though nature – as a matter of faith…
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 3:24 PM>>>>All systems of thoughts ( math, religion, science, philosophy) are grounded on a belief>>>>
What is the basis of belief?
I'm confused because your answer is so vague that you really didn't say anything at all. Help me out here. I can accept an emphatic answer because, minimally, it is a personal belief. But tell me, specifically, how you came to this conclusion on beliefs in absentia of a criteria or that a criteria is just another belief, of another belief, ad infinitum.
-
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 4:30 PMIn math, we have axioms... self-evident truths, which are grounded in belief. No one is expect to "prove" that a mathematical point has no dimension, or a line has no width, etc. In religion, you either believe in God or you don't... there is no proof for either case. Your choice is a leap of faith. In philosophy, whether you are a realist, an idealist, an empiricist, or some other philosophical brand, you need a starting point, whatever that is, which you will accept as your core value. In science, you believe that the universe is knowable and that humans can develop models that will explain its inner workings.
All system of thoughts must have a starting point -- a set of self-evident truths that one accepts as such -- and that constitutes a belief. Otherwise, the alternative is that your reasoning will become circular. -
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 4:36 PM>>>In religion, you either believe in God or you don't... there is no proof for either case.>>>>
Okay, so you agree with Ockham. Believing or not believing in God starting point is faith. Faith in believing in God or faith in not believing in God. Did I get you right? -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 5:48 PMThe gist of my earlier post was that both are starting from a belief position. Now, personally, yes, I do side with Ockham.
But to say that one can reach (believe?) God through revelation and reason is also a valid position, one grounded in that belief. Though whoever accepts that position has in addition the task to demonstrate the validity of that assertion in the sense that anything that has to do with reason must show other attributes, such has logical, consistent,etc. simply because the word 'reason' implies many different thing. Ditto for the word 'revelation'. -
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 6:06 PM>>>>In religion, you either believe in God or you don't... there is no proof for either case. Your choice is a leap of faith.......All system of thoughts must have a starting point -- a set of self-evident truths that one accepts as such -- and that constitutes a belief.>>>>
Okay I was confused because it you said that all systems of thought have a starting point. And since you separated Ockham & Scotus philosophical contentions of whether or not someone can know God through natural knowledge, it complicates the question.
1. Faith is the starting point for religion
2. belief in God is a self-evident truth
3. not believing in God is a self-evident truth
4a neither belief can be proven
4b believing in God or not believing in God require a leap of faith
Therefore, in the system of thought for religion, believing in God or not believing in God are both self-evident truths arrived by a leap of faith.
Doesn't this violate the Law of Non-contradiction? -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 8:24 PMOnly if one would adopt both positions. In reality, no one does that -- you will either adopt the position that God exist OR the position that God doesn't exist. Once you have made your choice -- your leap of faith -- you will argue accordingly. That is why an atheist and a deist can never agree, no mattter what arguments are put forward in backing their starting position. Their starting positions are mutually exclusive. In the end, they can only agree that they disagree. -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 8:52 PMAnd, to add one more note to my last post, sadly, more often than not, one side will mock the other side since as they argue and this leads nowhere -- that is inevitable -- tempers will flare, insults will be thrown, and the final end is usually mockery.
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 9:08 PMApparently you know something about these "systems of thought" that I don't.
But I will say this, Hegel is boring.
Okay, so this "red herring" we're going down is finally running out of steam. Can I ask you, if in the end they only agree that they disagree, would that be considered a faith based agreement? Something akin to an a priori faith based belief that has no grounding on any coherence whatsoever by either party and winds up being meaningless gobbledygook?
I myself maybe guilty of this. -
-
This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 9:14 PMHummm.. the idea that they will agree to disagree is a conclusion born out of my personal experience + other observations, and not from some a priori faith based belief. And "...winds up being meaningless gobbledygook" is a good description of what usually happens in many of these heated exchange that populate online forums. However out of chaos, one can forge some order, never give up. LOL.
-
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sat, September 16, 2006 - 10:27 PM(yawn) so is your "experience + observations" regarding "heated" not a leap of faith but is based on some other criteria that is "foreign" to the system of beliefs that is normative for religion. What system of belief does "experience + observation" fall under and what criteria permits one to employ other forms of analysis other than the ones designated for the said "system of beliefs". It rather sounds arbitrary.... -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sun, September 17, 2006 - 6:07 AMIt sounds arbitrary, but what choices do we have? Take math for instance. We start out with axioms -- self-evident truths -- that we accept arbitrarily. From that starting point we built theorems. Perhaps what we then built is just an illusion, but we can add other arbitrary notions, for instance, that our senses don't deceive us, which leads right up into empiricism and the scientific method, all the while we can always adjust our initial starting point -- I'm thinking here Euclid's fifth postulate which was revised in the 19th century which led to non-Euclidean geometry and Einstein's theory of relativity. From the beginning of time, our human minds proceeded in that way: Starting points that are arbitrary and accepted on faith, then build on that, and adjust as new realities come to our awareness. From the stone age to satellite communication, we have done pretty well I would think.
Just my two cents
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Sun, September 17, 2006 - 12:36 PMExperience + observation falls under a belief also. I believe that my experiences and my observations have taught me some lessons. Perhaps that belief is also just an illusion, and that those lessons were also either illusions or the wrong lessons. There is never any certainty in any belief we hold. Maybe those beliefs are only hypotheses to start with. Regardless, I can always choose to change those beliefs or choose not to change them. Our mind is wired up to think the unimaginable. I can also belief that with ideas maybe I can figure out how the universe works. Probably some genius during our ancestor caveman period held that belief -- that with ideas, one could learn about the world and passed that on to the next generation. Out of the stone age, after thousands of years, now we send satellites into outer space so that we can communicate at the tips of our fingers. You just need to believe.
-
-
Unsu...
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Mon, September 18, 2006 - 8:25 PM<<<<It sounds arbitrary, but what choices do we have? Take math for instance. We start out with axioms -- self-evident truths -- that we accept arbitrarily.>>>>
Most definitely it is self-evident that what you believe grounds a belief is arbitrary is the correct one.
Unfortunately, what you have provided as an answer to a seemingly long tangent, and what may fearfully be something you cannot see, is that you are digging deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of epistemological subjectivism.
So to pull atleast myself from this dark mire, I will provide for you an alternative view to the criteria for a justified true belief. Simple put: coherence. Coherence is the criterion of truth. (I can elaborate later). -
-
Re: SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?
Tue, September 19, 2006 - 6:39 AMThere is nothing within the definition of coherence which makes it impossible for two entirely different sets of beliefs to be internally coherent. The inevitability of a conflict between these two sets leads to Foucault's notion oonthe role of power and knowledge and Huntington's clash of civilization. OOPS, I just open a whole can of worms here...
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
