Monday, April 28, 2008
Same old error
The elites, both left and right, continue to make the same obvious and elementary logical error.
They're showing it off right now in the context of Wright's "God damns America" statement; they did the same thing when Falwell and Robertson made similar claims about the heavenly cause of 9/11. (Though I'm pretty sure Wright's list of American sins is not identical to Falwell's list!) And the elites continue to commit the same stupid error in discussing Intelligent Design.
If you're going to speak in secular, scientific and logical terms, you simply CANNOT say that a Reverend is wrong when he claims America is damned for one reason or another. You CANNOT say that Intelligent Design is impossible.
When you say that ID is impossible, you're stating with certainty that an untestable proposition is false. If the proposition is outside the realm of science, you are not allowed to say "It's false", nor can you say "It's true". You are only allowed to say "It's untestable at the moment."*
When you say that Wright or Falwell is WRONG, you are saying (1) that God exists and (2) that YOU are uniquely blessed with perfect knowledge of God's motives and actions. By making those claims, you are getting into exactly the same room as the Revs.
Worse still, you're claiming to know the mind of God without any resort to Scripture. The Revs can and do point to passages in the Old Testament to justify correlating our sins with God's judgment. Even though this still doesn't belong in pure logic, it is at least a logical and syllogistic progression from basic belief in scripture to a specific conclusion. (The Bible says that these sins will lead to damnation; I believe the Bible is true; these sins are occurring now; therefore I believe these sins have caused our damnation.)
When you say "I don't think God could do that", or when you say "the God that I know wouldn't do that", you're only using your own FEELINGS to justify a statement about the mind and motives of God. This is not only doubly illogical, it's narcissistic.
= = = = =
* I say "at the moment" because over the centuries some questions of cosmology or human perception, once thought to be permanently metaphysical, have turned out to be mundanely physical. ¶ 12:21 PM
They're showing it off right now in the context of Wright's "God damns America" statement; they did the same thing when Falwell and Robertson made similar claims about the heavenly cause of 9/11. (Though I'm pretty sure Wright's list of American sins is not identical to Falwell's list!) And the elites continue to commit the same stupid error in discussing Intelligent Design.
If you're going to speak in secular, scientific and logical terms, you simply CANNOT say that a Reverend is wrong when he claims America is damned for one reason or another. You CANNOT say that Intelligent Design is impossible.
When you say that ID is impossible, you're stating with certainty that an untestable proposition is false. If the proposition is outside the realm of science, you are not allowed to say "It's false", nor can you say "It's true". You are only allowed to say "It's untestable at the moment."*
When you say that Wright or Falwell is WRONG, you are saying (1) that God exists and (2) that YOU are uniquely blessed with perfect knowledge of God's motives and actions. By making those claims, you are getting into exactly the same room as the Revs.
Worse still, you're claiming to know the mind of God without any resort to Scripture. The Revs can and do point to passages in the Old Testament to justify correlating our sins with God's judgment. Even though this still doesn't belong in pure logic, it is at least a logical and syllogistic progression from basic belief in scripture to a specific conclusion. (The Bible says that these sins will lead to damnation; I believe the Bible is true; these sins are occurring now; therefore I believe these sins have caused our damnation.)
When you say "I don't think God could do that", or when you say "the God that I know wouldn't do that", you're only using your own FEELINGS to justify a statement about the mind and motives of God. This is not only doubly illogical, it's narcissistic.
= = = = =
* I say "at the moment" because over the centuries some questions of cosmology or human perception, once thought to be permanently metaphysical, have turned out to be mundanely physical. ¶ 12:21 PM
