The devil & the deep blue sea

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Anonymous said:


We have plenty of experience with snakes. We also have plenty of experience with the biological requirements that is required to produce human speech.

Snakes don't meet these requirements. Not even close.
Snakes are deaf, they can't hear sound, thus they can't learn language. Snakes don't have a brain large enough to produce lanaguage, and snakes have no voice apparatus.

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Anonymous is a textbook example of an intellectually challenged unbeliever—incapable of addressing himself to anything other than a straw man argument.

I already went into the identity of the “serpent” in Gen 3. Anonymous simply ignores all that and chooses to tilt at windmills instead.

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If you want to claim some mythical creature spoke to your mythical first woman, who was made out of the rib of the mythical first man who was made out of mud...please call it something else...the word "snake" is already in common use in our lexicon.

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This is simply illiterate. The frame of reference is not the common usage reflected in “our” lexicon, but the Hebrew lexicon—as well as intertextual motifs in the Pentateuch and beyond.

And this has nothing to do with faith. It’s a matter of disinterested exegesis, regardless of whether you feel committed to the results of your exegesis.

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Anonymous said:

Hey Steve,

I can see your point when you say Loftus has brought up the issue of necessity. Not that I disagree with what he's said, but I think what he's said could be misunderstood to mean he is referring to logical necessity. Let me explain.

The law of gravity is something known through induction. Our experience and all tests we are aware of indicate that if you drop an apple it will fall. That's our universal experience.

So if you were to tell me that you released an apple and it sat suspended in the air (assuming there were no extra causes of it, such as an upward blast of air or magnetics), in that case it is fair to say that this goes against what induction tells us can happen.

That's the sense in which Loftus said that induction tells us this doesn't happen. We've seen gravity work a billion times. It's never failed us. But then you could respond and say "Just because it's been true a billion times and in all observable instances, this doesn't prove that the laws couldn't change at some point." Sure. Gravity isn't a logical necessity. That's the nature of scientific claims known through repeatable experience. This is induction. Your answer is known with a certain probability.

By claiming Loftus has committed a fallacy you suggest that he's doing deduction by implying that he's saying his conclusion follows with necessity. He's not saying that. He's simply saying that it's so unlikely as to be virtually certainly false. But we're open to your contrary evidence. Show us an apple suspended in midair and we'll consider rejecting the law of gravity.

Jon

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This anonymous commenter is not to be confused with the other anonymous commenter. Jon draws intelligent distinctions and poses intelligent questions.

By way of reply:

1.I’m not especially interested in trying to exegete or gloss the comments of Loftus. I've responded to what he said the way he said it.

It isn’t worth my while to spend a lot of time on what he may have meant to say.

You’ve improved on his formulation. This may or may not be what he intended to say all along.

Why don’t we confine ourselves to what you think are the pertinent issues, in your own words, rather than getting sidetracked on his communication skills, for which I’m not responsible.

2.I regard natural laws as descriptive, not prescriptive or proscriptive.

3.I assume the same causes yield the same effects. But another cause can supervene to yield a different effect.

Let’s take a real life example. I have a friend who unwittingly purchased a haunted house. While he lived there he witnessed various paranormal phenomena, including levitation.

My friend happens to be a philosophy prof. with a doctorate from Oxford. So he’s a very credible witness.

4.Do I believe him? Yes.

Does this mean I reject the “law of gravity”? No. All other things being equal, the law of gravity will remain in force. But if you modify the underlying conditions, then that will modify the resultant conditions.

5.Or let us go back to your earlier example of leprechauns. Why don’t we believe in them? For a couple of reasons:

i) In part because we have no evidence for their existence.

ii) Yet the deeper reason is not the absence of any particular evidence for the existence of leprechauns, but whatever general evidence is feeding into a worldview according to which nothing like a leprechaun either would or could exist.

6.However, we don't have a unilinear relation between the evidence and our worldview.

For what we count as evidence will also be affected by our worldview. Hence, there’s a dialectical relationship between the evidence and our conceptual scheme.

7. And what kind of evidence is feeding into a worldview? Different kinds.

i) There’s empirical evidence. But this reduces to appearances.

The empirical evidence is filtered through our senses. And what we believe about our senses is also filtered through our senses.

What we believe about the brain is filtered through the brain.

ii) Beyond the percept is the percipient. The mind which an observer brings to the observable phenomena. That makes its own independent contribution.

We are more than cameras, passively registering an external stimulus.

iii) But neither (i) or (ii) will give you an intersubjectival glimpse of the real world. The only thing which could do that is divine revelation.

***QUOTE***

Ted said:

But to date, I've not seen any evidence to support his supernaturalism. Instead, I see rhetorical games, sly evasions and snide condescension.

***END-QUOTE***

1.Notice that Ted doesn’t identify my “rhetorical games” or “sly evasions.”

But given a choice, a sly evasion is certainly an improvement over a clumsy evasion.

2.As the archives will abundantly show, I (as well as my colleagues) have entered a great deal of evidence for supernaturalism into the public record.

If Ted wants a specific answer, he should pose a specific question.

3.Also, can anyone remember the last time that Ted ever presented any evidence for his naturalism?