Posted by David Stephens on June 20, 1998 at 11:40:43:
In Reply to: No, we still don't agree. posted by blue on June 20, 1998 at 01:46:00:
I'm going to respond to you in two posts because I think we've gone off track and are well on our way to cycling back through covered territory. I believe this post is a dead end. See my other post for the continuation of the subject.
The rest of this post deals with explaining why this "intellectual progression" you present is a waste of bandwidth and time. I've explained this "intellectual progression" to christians a hundred times, but I'll explain it once more for you (I'm not quite sure why this useless fallacy is so popular). Basically this isn't any sort of intellectual progression. It isn't any sort of experiment in logic or reason. It's simply a profession of your faith. It's not convincing in the slightest to anyone other than Christians who already share your faith.
You don't actually follow the progression yourself, rather it's created directly from your faith (although backwards). If you take your faith in the bible as the Word of god, the progression creates a single path 'progression' in reverse: you have faith in the bible, so it must be how god communicates with man. Since you have the bible, god must want to communicate with us. And god must exist since you have his communication. You find the progression makes sense because you can traverse it in either direction due to your faith. Basically your progression is nothing more than an extended example of "begging the question" fallacy.
Following your progression forwards honestly and logically creates an infinite number of possibilities at every step--there is no "progression" here, rather only digression and the uselessness of infinite possibility. If you allow an arbitrary person to follow your progression from the top, it merely maps out their faith. For example, a Deist might answer: we were created by a god, the creator perhaps does desire contact with us, but only via his creation and the sciences, and it's up to us to study reality to find his communication in nature (some deists might stop after the 2nd step answering god doesn't wish to communicate with us directly). An Atheist stops after the first step claiming there is no evidence or reason to go to the next steps. An Islam could use your progression and argument that his god exists and his scriptures are the "best candidate" for communication.
If you must use this sort of faith promoting rubbish would you try to keep it confined to the church pulpit. I'm sure this progression works when you're "preaching to the choir", but here you have a different audience.
[ Follow Ups ] [ Exmormon.org- Honest Inquiry Message Board ] [ FAQ ]