georgeob wrote between bites of a raw potato:
Quote:On the other side of the argument, it is wrong for Blatham to fault you for a lack of objectivity, while implicitly claiming it for himself, as he did in this rather elegant sentence.
blatham wrote:
If you hold, as does Adele, that certain elements of your faith are true a priori and true absolutely (God created the universe, Jesus is divine and the Bible is the Revealed Word) then you immediately forfeit any claim to epistemological objectivity. Only one conclusion is available to you - there was a Designer and He is God. All other conclusions and all hypotheses/evidences pointing elsewhere MUST BE false, ipso facto. The universe WILL and MUST, inevitably, demonstrate the truth of your assumption regarding this Creator.
Atheism is just as much a faith in an a priori and absolute principle as is evangelical Protestantism, and its effects on the presumed objectivity of the holders, the same.
george...you capitalist running dog Irish swine
As incontrovertibly evidenced
here, the enviable quality of 'elegance' is not limited to sentence construction alone.
Once again, we find you piloting dangerously astray. Perhaps your neck is craned habitually to port from the weight of that old albatross carcass.
Where a fundamental proposition is held as absolutely true and without possibility of being false, then it must be considered that objectivity [noun: judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices] is absent. You seem to have this notion in good grasp and I give you a comradly pat on the buttocks for that.
However, you go on to suggest that my stance places me in the same category. Yet, even after all these years of semi-profitable discussion, I have yet to clarify my actual stance to you, or to anyone here. Let me procede to do that now. I don't have a stance (though with those new pants, I'm tempted). I'm waiting to make that decision. You are familiar, I know, with Voltaire's deathbed statement when asked by the attending priest whether he was now finally prepared to renounce the devil and Voltaire replied, "This is no time to be making new enemies."
I have no investment towards faith or against faith. The question is of little interest to me and will in any case be sorted out in due course. If, the next time my heart stops beating, I am moved to finally adopt a stance, you shall be one of the first to know.
