@Thomas,
Thomas wrote:
joefromchicago wrote:I never said that intellectuals are only those people who believe in those things that are provable. I'm not sure how you arrived at your comically distorted view of my position, but there you are.
In your response to Robert, you tied your concept of "absurd" to evidence and logic, or rather the absence thereof. In your original post, you suggested that people who hold absurd beliefs thereby disqualify themselves from being intellectuals.
Yep. What's your point?
Thomas wrote:But the examples I gave aren't just metaphysical events. They are physical claims, provable by physical tests if they had occurred. For example, there is a Christian church in Jerusalem that claims to have the sarcophagus in which Jesus was buried. If a forensic archaeologist examined it and found DNA evidence that the human who lay in there had no biological father, that would decide the case. (And she would know what DNA evidence to look for, because virgin births are common elsewhere in nature.) Religions make absurd physical claims all the time --- it's their very absurdity that makes them "miracles" --- and their theologians defend them as truth.
As Hume pointed out, just because things always happen one way doesn't mean they'll always happen that way in the future. If a devout Christian says that Jesus died and was resurrected, we can scoff and say "that doesn't happen," but the Christian would simply reply that "it
can happen if you're Jesus." Again, per Hume, we can say that it is highly unlikely, but we can't say it's impossible. Now, if the Christian were to hold that Jesuses are subject to the same physical laws as everyone else, yet contends that the Jeez still died and was resurrected,
that would be absurd because it is internally inconsistent. But as long as the Christian maintains that physical laws are suspended for Jesuses, their claims are metaphysical and can't be proven or disproven. At most, like Hume, we can say that we're unconvinced.
Contrast that to the absurd beliefs that Paul Ryan holds. He says, for instance, that cutting taxes raises revenues. He's not, however, relying on some divine intervention to provide the mechanism for this process. He doesn't say "cutting taxes raises revenues because Jesus will provide everyone with high-paying jobs." No, he relies on the normal rules of economics, despite mounds of evidence to show that he's wrong. He's being internally inconsistent, therefore, to say that economics works this way when all of the evidence upon which economics relies says that it doesn't. And because his position doesn't work
according to the premises that Ryan himself accepts, I think we're entitled to label that position "absurd."
Thomas wrote:Because thinking is the defining trait of intellectuals, I would disqualify Paul Ryan for not having expressed a single original thought that engages my intellect in any way. Sometimes, he appeals to emotions ("we owe our children a balanced budget" or "look at my mom, she likes my Medicare plan, too"). Sometimes, he copies and pastes thoughts from Ayn Rand's novels. Either way, he shows no evidence of having done any intellectual work, and that's why I wouldn't call Ryan an intellectual.
As to your doctor, I would not disqualify her on account of her UFO stories as long as the thoughts she expresses on medical topics are engaging and thought-provoking. In other words, when people qualify to be intellectuals, I would never disqualify them for holding absurd beliefs.
Or, in other words, you disagree with the premise of my initial post. That's fine, I have no problem with that. But you could have saved us a whole lot of time and effort if you had said so earlier.
