Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Relatively Speaking
Chris Campbell of Thinking Christian takes a step in the right direction with his post today. He ponders relativism as it relates to, and maps to, reality. But he assumes that this god-thing of his exists without any evidence at all. It's an interesting blind spot that he has.
[link] It seems to me that when discussing the question of whether there is a God or not it usually comes down to relativism. Those that discuss God or religions even will eventually begin to say "everyone has their own view of God, and that's ok." There is a real interesting quote at the beginning of each episode of the Discovery Channel show The Mythbusters: "I reject your reality and substitute my own," exclaims one of the shows hosts. He may or may not know it but this is the mantra of the Post-Modern world that we live in today. If I don't like the world as you describe it I can just ignore it and live in my own little world. If that world doesn't work out for me then I will just reshape it to a different view and try again.
I agree that Campbell's commentary about substituting our own "realities" for others "realities" has a valid point. Left to our own prejudices, emotions, perceptions, etc., each and every human being on this planet would not agree on the facts or the truth of anything at all.
Fortunately we have the scientific method that that we can use - any one of us! - to ferret out the facts, the truth of things, in an objective fashion that all can agree upon if they simply follow the method.
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For example, we might say, "Plymouth Rock exists." Anyone with a hand, or a set of eyes and at least two brain cells to rub together, can verify the truth of this statement by traveling to Plymouth and conducting their own set of experiments. Touch the rock, look at the rock, bang your head against the rock, etc.
Science and the scientific method is the way to avoid subjective fairy tale realities. I think that is the point of "The Mythbusters" hosts with that tongue-in-cheek statement at the beginning of their show. The point is that people will indeed "make stuff up" as opposed to actually doing the hard work required to verify the truth, to find the facts.
And yes, this applies equally well to religion in general, and Chris' religion specifically.
[link] Of course this sentiment gets applied to our views of religion and God as well. If we don't like his rules we either get rid of him or reshape him so that he has little effect in our lives. But, if He is God how can we do that. By definition a god is above all else, completely fulfilling every characteristic that he has, and certainly beyond the control of humankind. Can there be many gods in different realities, one for each person who wants to have their own unique view of things? No, again that would not make God a god. If there is someone else who is just as powerful as he is then he cannot be God just as the other god cannot be God.
There is a prior assumption here that a god exists, and if I'm reading this right, a further assumption that it is Chris' own personal flavor of god.
You see what I mean about that blind spot? ;)
[link] You see it all comes down to truth and absolutes. In all aspects of this universe we live in there are laws, or truths, that we live by. In mathematics 2+2=4, in physics e=mc2, etc... These are the laws that we have to live by because they make up the fabric of the world we live in. They are unchangeable truths. Why then should religion be any different? What do you think?
I truly hope that Chris Campbell understands that mathematics is simply an agreed-upon set of rules and conventions that we humans created to use as a tool. We made the entire thing up. This tool called "mathematics" is used to explain and describe our world and our universe - but is NOT our world or our universe. When someone refers to equations as "unchangeable truths" and "the fabric of the world we live in" it is not only silly, but it shows that they do not have a very firm grasp on what exactly the words "truth" and "math" actually mean.
Please don't misunderstand me - I do not wish to give offense to Chris. Indeed, I think that he's one of the least offensive Christians out there. However, this is a common misconception that most folks hold with regard to mathematics and what mathematics are exactly. It must be set straight or the ignorance continues.
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Relativism
Brent: We made the entire thing up? Before we "made up" 2+2=4 what did 2+2=? My point is that things like that have always been true and will always be true. There was no point when if you drop an apple it would float up on earth. Newton didn't make up gravity, it has alway existed. The same thing applies to Christianity. Men did not make it up. God and Jesus have always existed.
Stacy:
I agree that Christianity does have a lot of differing viewpoint on some non-essential things, but there are some essentials that can be agreed upon and known for sure. Those are the things that have always been just as other "unchangeable truths" in our universe.
Rationality
Hi Chris - thanks for stopping by UTI.
"2+2" didn't exist at all in that form until us human-types created the internally-consistent shared set of rules we call base-10 mathematics.
You are engaging in the mistake of equating the symbol or tool that describes or represents the fact, with the fact itself. No worries, though, as this is extremely common. It happens with congressmen and senators too. Why, just yesterday a bill to amend the Constitution to "ban" flag desecration and burning was defeated by only one vote.
How scary is that?
The senators and congressmen who voted for the amendment made the same mistake that you did with mathematics; they confused the symbol (our flag) with the thing that it represents (our country).
Wow. Those are some pretty declarative claims. "Gravity has always existed." "2+2=4 will always be true."
Are you a physicist or a mathematician?
If not, then how do you know these things? Divine revelation? Nothing is ever that certain. We can be be highly confident that the phenomenon that we call the gravitational force will not disappear tomorrow, but we cannot be certain. For one thing, we still don't know exactly what it *is*. We can see it's effects, and we can measure those effects, but what the heck is "gravity" exactly? How does it do what it does? Why does it do what it does? If we don't know the answer to those questions, then how in the name of truth can we make an absolute statement like "gravity has always existed"?
You see, that's the difference between rational people, and irrational people.
Evidence please? What is your evidence for this complete and utter bit of hogwash? Because you say so?
Sorry, Chris, not good enough.
If you want to make sweeping claims about the nature of the universe and how your invisible magical friends in the sky have "always existed", then you will have to do much, much better than just stomping your little foot and declaring that "it is TOO so!"
What does "God" mean? I maintain the the word "god" is literally incomprehensible - and those folks who claim to know what the word means are demonstrably irrational, or lying. I contend that it's all a bunch of made-up fairy-tale magic happy-land stories.
What are the facts? And to how many decimal places? Do not give me wishful thinking, pious pronouncements, or quotes from a 2000+ year old collection of sheepherd's fables and myths.
What. Are. The. Facts?
2+2=4
Just as a side note, the part about 2+2=4 doesn't really require base-10 mathematics. Rather, it requires the most basic system of numbers. In austere formal systems, you don't have any base - you just use unary, so that 2+2=4 is rendered as SS0+SS0=SSSS0 (where S stands for "successor").
In that sense, 2+2=4 has always held, indeed. But you should ask yourself why we use number theory and Euclidean geometry as our mathematical systems. After all, we could by the same token talk about permutations instead of numbers, and about hyperbolic geometry instead of Euclidean geometry. There're sometimes mathematical reasons for that, but before the mathematical abstractions of the 19th century, the only good reason was "intuition."
In plain language, it's intuition, based on a very basal form of empirical observation, that tells us that number theory applies in the real world, and that tells us that our geometry is approximately Euclidean.
Right
Just yesterday I was reading something about the "long s" that used to be used in writing for all lower-case s's that weren't at the end of a word. They look a lot like a lower-case f, as it happens. According to Wikipedia, this is the origin of the integral symbol, which was chosen by Leibnitz to stand for "summa."
The way we represent math with arbitrary symbols and words is the same we represent observations made of the natural world with math. 2+2=4, we all know what that means, in an abstract way, but more fundamentally we know it means if you have an apple and another apple, and someone else gives you an apple and another apple, you've now got apple, apple, apple, apple.
Now, this is completely different from religion being an "unchangeable truth" which in fact, I don't even know what the hell that means. It is true that there are facts associated with religion. Either god exists or he doesn't. If "he" does exist, he could be "she." Either there is only one god, or there are many. Either they reveal themselves to humans in certain ways, or they don't. Either the virgin birth happened, or it didn't. Etc. However, it makes no sense whatsoever to say "Christianity is a law that makes up the fabric of the world we live in" because you first have to define what you mean by "Christianity" because that encompasses so many "unchangable truths" that disagree with each other, you have to break it down a lot further than that.