You are partially correct.

Posted by blue on June 21, 1998 at 00:13:09:

In Reply to: useless progression... posted by David Stephens on June 20, 1998 at 11:40:43:

: 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).

You are being quite condescending.
I assumed I made up this progression. It's interesting you claim it is so common.

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.

This is partially true. When I was a skeptic, this progression could not convince me. So you need to focus upon each step and see if it is true. Look at others' conclusions and see if they make more sense than your.

: You don't actually follow the progression yourself,

Sure I do. Whenever I hear any comments from those with differing views, I immediately see where in this progression they fall. It is rare to find surprises.

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.

You can do that with any progression in which you have a verifiable end result. Matter became ordered into life because we see life. No, you cannot assume that ordering matter will produce life unless you see life. Matter forms all sorts of non-living things as well. I fail to see your point. Having never seen life, could you prove life to exist? Of couse not.

: 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.

This is again partially true, in that their may be multiple paths at each step. But then you follow each path and find the true one. If there are no faults, you have A candidate for Truth.

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).

Then we have to analyze this assumption and see if it makes as much sense as whatever assumptions we may have made at this same point. Did we assume something we should not have? This is a good technique for evaluating your faith vis-a-vis others.

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.

Exactly. And I would then need to see where his progression differs from mine and find which, of either of us, has found Truth.

: 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.

This is diatribe.

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