Here is my reply to a video by Christian apologist Alisa Childers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETyzqrM3tB8
(wow, within about 20 minutes, Childers deleted this comment!)
Summary of the SurveySo on the same day I sent him the following message through his blog "contact me" page https://rscottsmithphd.com/contact-us/
We have surveyed major ethical options for what our core morals are, including:
Are they how we happen to talk?
Are they physical things? Perhaps evolutionary products?
Are they ways of behaving or moving our bodies?
Are they results of a utilitarian calculus?
Are they emotive utterances?
Are they particulars? (nominalism)
But, at least since Hobbes, I’ve argued that none of the views can preserve our core morals of murder and rape being wrong, and love and justice being good.
What Are These Core Morals?
For one, they seem to be objectively real. They seem to exist independently of us as moral principles and values. They also simply seem to be intrinsically valid, and not due to anything else (like, the consequences). That is, they seem to have an essential moral nature. Moreover, they cannot be just physical things or particulars, as we’ve seen. Instead, they seem to be a “one-in-many” – each one is one principle (or value), yet it can have many instances/examples. In sum, they seem to be Platonic-like universals.
That raises many questions, however. Earlier, I remarked that Christine Korsgaard rightly observed that it’s hard to see how such things could have anything to do with us. While she thinks people are physical, it still applies if we are a body-soul unity. Why should these abstract objects have anything to do with us? On Plato’s view, they exist in a heavenly realm of values as brute features of reality.
What makes justice and love character qualities that should be present in us? Why is it inappropriate morally for us to murder or rape? These are normative qualities, not merely descriptive. As we’ve seen, it is hard to see how we can get the moral ought from what is descriptively the case. Yet, that problem could be overcome if humans have an essential nature that makes these moral values appropriate for them, and these acts inappropriate.
Earlier, I argued that the soul as our essential nature provides a sound explanation for how we can be the identical person through change. Body-soul dualists affirm that the soul is our essential nature, and it sets the boundary conditions for what is appropriate for us. For instance, it is inappropriate for us to grow a cat’s tail due to our nature, and it is inappropriate for us to murder due to our nature.
We also saw another reason for the soul’s existence. We do in fact think and form beliefs, yet these have intentionality, which I argued is best understood as something immaterial and having an essence. Now, it is hard to conceive how a physical brain could interact with something immaterial, but that problem does not seem to exist for an immaterial soul/mind.
Moreover, why should we feel guilt and shame when we break these core morals? That doesn’t make sense if these morals are just abstract objects that are immaterial and not located in space and time. Instead, we seem to have such responses in the presence of persons we have wronged morally. Also, retributive justice doesn’t make sense if we repay an abstract principle or value. But it would make sense if a person should be repaid.
There is another explanation we have seen for the grounding of these core morals: they are grounded in God. That helps solve the question of why we feel shame when we break one of these morals. But, that also raises questions, such as: are they good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good (i.e., the Euthyphro dilemma)? Also, which God would this be?
I will start to tackle these in the next essay. But, first, there is another option for properties besides universals (realism) and nominalism. It is divine conceptualism; properties just are God’s concepts. Justice in us is God’s concept. Yet, concepts have intentionality, but virtues do not. When we think about people being just, we don’t mean they have a concept of justice (though they could), but that they have that virtue present in them. So, offhand, divine conceptualism seems to trade on a confusion.
For Further Reading
R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 12
Hello,
I would like to ask you a few questions raised in my mind after I read your "Making Sense of Morality: Where Do We Go from Here?", located at https://rscottsmithphd.com, which I read March 7, 2022.
I never seem to get a straight answer from Turek or others who try to argue that the common human repugnance toward murder and rape is more reasonably accounted for by positing "god put his laws into our hearts" than by any naturalistic explanatory mechanism.
I can ask you the questions by email or we can discuss at your blog, or wherever.
Barry
My response was:
Barry Jones0 seconds ago
Solberg and I have in the last month exchanged replies at his blog, see here.
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I have blasted Turek's reasoning to bits: He has titled his book "Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case". So I titled my rebuttal article "Stealing from Sense: Why Frank Turek Needs Atheism To Sell Books"https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/09/stealing-from-sense-why-frankn-turek.htmlWhen Turek is asked why the bible has God commanding his people to slaughter the Canaanite children without mercy, he tries to make this divine atrocity appear more morally justified in the eyes of modern western democratic Americans by saying the Canaanites were horifically immoral , to the point of burning their children to death.Yes, Dr. Turek, burning a child alive is about as horrifically evil as one can get. BUT...for several years I have publicly accused Turek of LYING about this, becausea) none of the ancient historical sources which report on Canaanite child sacrifice specify that the kids were still alive when placed in the fire , thus Turek is mistaking his own faulty subjective inference for actual historical data, andb) at least one of the ancient historical sources telling us about Canaanite child-sacrifice explicitly state that the child was killed before being placed in the fire. My article is entitled "Frank Turek's dishonesty concerning pagan child sacrifices"https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/frank-tureks-dishonesty-concerning.htmlI've also challenged the popular notion held by Turek, Clay Jones and other apologists that the Canaanites engaged in bestiality. See the above article. See my more direct challenge to Clay Jones here:https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/apologist-clay-jones-fails-to-morally.htmlIf there is no evidence to support Turek's contention that the Canaanites used fire to kill children and no evidence that Canaanites engaged in bestiality any nore than any other pagan nation, then Turek cannot justify the bible's requirement that the Hebrews treat the Canaanites more harshly than they treated other pagan nations.Turek has known for years about these challenges of mine, but for whatever reason, he refuses to respond in any manner, and he refuses to debate me.So quit telling yourself that he is a "great apologist". I welcome any Turek-supporter or Christian here to hit me with their most powerful arguments on any bible-topic. Lord knows Turek won't do it, so maybe one of his admirers can do it.I'm also the first atheist to review Lydia McGrew's new book "The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage" (Deward, 2021). My rebuttal-review hit Lydia from an angle she never expected, and I prove all she ended up doing was support the skeptical contention that the biblical promises of divine guidance for authentically born-again Christians, are false. Your purely naturalistic smarts are the only thing in existence that has any potetntial to protect you from misleading other Christians.https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-eye-of-the-beholder-lydia-mcgrew/1138856063You might say that review proved to be most embarassing to Mrs. McGrew, because she touts herself as a christian philosopher who specializes in epistemology. If anybody should have been on the lookout for where her arguments were leading, it was her. Yet she appears not to have noticed how her own logic in that book powerfully supports the skeptical thesis that says biblical promises of divine help are nothing but hot air.Christian apologists are constantly raving about Dr. Craig Keener's two-volume "Miracles:The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts" (Baker Academic, 2011) as if it is supposed to be a "game-changer" boosting the persuasiveness of Christianity by several orders of magnitude. But for years I've had posted at my blog a direct challenge to Keener (which I had sent to his email to make sure he couldn't later pretend to have overlooked it) to provide me with the evidence supporting the one modern-day miracle which he thinks is the most impervious to falsification. Not only does Keener speak Greek, he's also fluent in cricket-chirps:https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-questions-to-dr-craig-keener.htmlI also take "triablogue" to task at my blog, and yes, they too get around my rebuttals by simply ignoring me. Apostle Paul prohibited word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) and the bible presumes the use of "many words" will surely lead to transgression (Proverbs 10:19), and few modern Christians violate this biblical admonition more than Triablogue's Jason Engwer, with his out-of-control obsessively compulsive need to fill up the universe with all of the atheism-rebuttals he thinks lurk within the Enfield Poltergeist scam. If you thought Bill Clinton's "That depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is..." was the best example of absurd trifling, then apparently you know nothing about Jason Engwer or Triablogue.So please understand: if you think Christian apologetics causes atheists to piss themselves with worry about being judged by some 'god' in some afterlife, it's probably because you are refusing to take the pills your psychiatrist prescribed. Are you going to follow your doctor's orders...or shall I call 911?
As you can see, the bible at John 3:20 proves to be correct: whenever Christians come around providing arguments for God and Jesus, the atheists become mysteriously paralyzed from doing anything more than turning away, plugging their ears, closing their eyes, jumping up and down and screaming to themselves "I won't come to the light lest my evil deeds be exposed" (John 3:20) and "let the rocks and trees fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne..." (Rev. 6:16). LOL
Hello, I'm a skeptic, and here's my take on the problems raised by Mark 3:21 and John 7:5:First, numerous Christian scholars and apologists concede that Jesus' brothers did not believe in him throughout the entire duration of his pre-crucifixion ministry. Licona is representative of Geisler, Habermas and others in saying
"The preponderance of the evidence favors the conclusion that the brothers of Jesus were not counted among his followers through the time of Jesus’ execution. By all accounts, they appear to have maintained a distance from their brother’s ministry (Licona, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”, IVP Academic, 2010, p. 455).So which is more likely: Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him because they were so blinded by jealousy and/or a desire for a military messiah that they refused to apply common sense toward miracles they saw Jesus was doing, like feeding 5,000 and raising the dead?Or Jesus' brothers don't believe in him during the pre-crucifixion period because they saw a few of his "miracles" and, like skeptics at a Benny Hinn crusade, decided those miracles were fake?I take the latter since a) the brotherly-unbelief passages pass the criterion of embarrassment while the passages saying Jesus did miracles do not, so the brotherly-unbelief passages are more historically reliable than the passages saying Jesus did miracles, andb) it violates common sense to say that Jesus' family could be so shockingly dense toward their own brother who is allegedly doing these miracles ("Yes, we know that Jesus has raised back to life people who were obviously dead....but....we just want a military messiah...can't you just leemee alone!?!") LOL,b) Matthew 10 tells us that the disciples themselves also went around performing miracles including raising the dead, so that when the brothers exude unbelief toward Jesus, they are also denying the ministries of other people where such miracles are supposed to be repeated and corroborated. So the unbelief of the brothers is so shocking that it screams for something other than jealousy of Jesus' popularity, or some unreasonable biased expectation for Jesus to be a military messiah.Second, most responsible Christian scholars of today acknowledge that Benny HInn has thousands of devoted followers, yet they also insist that Hinn has never employed supernatural power, or at least cannot demonstrate it so when directly challenged to produce evidence of such. So there's nothing about the gospel passages saying large crowds followed Jesus, that mitigates the skeptical position I take, supra. We learn from the health-and-wealth gospel that large crowds can indeed be duped into thinking a miracle happened when it in fact did not.Third, If we allow the protestants' mostly symbolic interpretation of Jesus cannibalistic sounding statements in John 6:57, then the many disciples of his who stopped following him because of that saying (6:66) can only imply that Jesus had not done much more to ground his messiahship claims beyond "teaching" stuff. In other words, the "miracles" Jesus was allegedly doing, if any, were not genuinely supernatural, and many of his disciples did not believe those "miracles" successfully corroborated any of his teachings.Fourth, most apologists trifle that there's no evidence the brothers ever actually saw any of Jesus' miracles, but then you disagree with such notion by saying "John 7 implies they have seen some of his signs yet still do not believe", supra. So apparently, when skeptics like me who argue that in the collectivist honor/shame culture, Jesus' family would surely have heard back from others about such miracles, even if his family didn't start out monitoring Jesus from the beginning, we skeptics are justifying our naturalistic interpretation from the cultural realities of the day.Fifth, if we assume Jesus was god since before he was born into humanity, then we must also assume that never during his childhood, or ever in the entire 30 years that his family knew him, did Jesus ever sin. His parents and brothers during his childhood would have found this disconcerting in the least (and I seriously doubt anybody will trifle that Jesus sinned in his human nature but not his divine nature, just so they can get rid of this bit of skeptical common sense).So if Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 are true, it would appear that Jesus' family did not see anything about Jesus in their 30 years of knowing him which gave them probable cause to believe he was anything other than a normal if perhaps extroverted person.I have much more to argue, but for right now, the question is whether skeptics can be reasonable to interpret Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 the way I do, supra. I say we skeptics can indeed be reasonable that way. It isn't like my skeptical interpretation is failing to take into account any rule of historiography, hermeneutics or common sense. Yes, I deny the rule "scripture interprets scripture", as that merely presumes the truth of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, a doctrine which I along with most Christian scholars deny, a doctrine that even inerrantists cannot come to agreement on despite decades of trying within the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. barryjoneswhat@gmail.com
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Once again, I only care to reply to fundamentalist Christians and "apologists" who say skepticism toward Jesus' resurrection is always unreasonable for those who know the gospel and have seen the evidence. I obviously use Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 to argue that Jesus could not do genuinely supernatural miracles...and it's a very short walk from "Jesus couldn't do genuinely supernatural miracles" over to "God probably wouldn't ground his Second Covenant upon the words and works of a deceiver".
So the question this blog piece will be limited to is: What is it about my above-posted skeptical interpretation of Mark 3:21 and/or John 7:5, which violates any standard canon of historiography, hermeneutics, or common sense? If I am "unreasonable" to interpret those texts the way I do, why?
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Update June 27, 2021: Dr. Long responded to me, and I replied to his response, as follows:
Phillip J. Long
June 23, 2021
Thanks for your detailed response…
“First, numerous Christian scholars and apologists concede that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him throughout the entire duration of his pre-crucifixion ministry”
Agreed, this is uncontroversial.
“Jesus’ brothers don’t believe in him during the pre-crucifixion period because they saw a few of his “miracles” and, like skeptics at a Benny Hinn crusade, decided those miracles were fake?”
This is more or less the gist of the original post, which was about the people in Nazareth questioning the source of his authority to teach and perform miracles. I suspect (although could never prove) that they were convinced by the Pharisees that he was doing miracles by the power of Beelzebul.
“Matthew 10 tells us that the disciples themselves also went around performing miracles including raising the dead”
I do not see any raising the dead in Matthew 10. Matthew 10:1, he gave the authority to drive out impure spirits and heal every disease and sickness. But otherwise the point stands.
“We learn from the health-and-wealth gospel that large crowds can indeed be duped into thinking a miracle happened when it in fact did not.”
This is a great analogy (I am stealing it). I personally would play the role of a Pharisee with respect to Hinn and others and say the source of that power is not God.
“In other words, the “miracles” Jesus was allegedly doing, if any, were not genuinely supernatural, and many of his disciples did not believe those “miracles” successfully corroborated any of his teachings.”
Here is where we will disagree, since in the Second Temple Period a messiah who does not do miracles does not make sense. Jewish messianic expectations drawn from Isaiah 35:5-6 or Isaiah 61:1-2 (for example) connect healing with the coming eschatological age (blind see, deaf hear, lame, leap). Jews at the time of Jesus did not allegorize those texts, they really did expect signs from heaven. Pharisees asked Jesus for signs, and explained his power of demons as a sign he too was in league with Beelzebul.
“most apologists trifle that there’s no evidence the brothers ever actually saw any of Jesus’ miracles, but then you disagree with such notion by saying “John 7 implies they have seen some of his signs yet still do not believe”
Well, I did not know you when I wrote that, so you might agree with me . I cannot imagine the brothers not being aware of what Jesus was doing if the villagers in Nazareth knew he was doing miracles; I have no idea what would motivates an “apologist” to say such a thing.
Barry Jones
June 27, 2021
barry: “Matthew 10 tells us that the disciples themselves also went around performing miracles including raising the dead”
Phil: I do not see any raising the dead in Matthew 10. Matthew 10:1, he gave the authority to drive out impure spirits and heal every disease and sickness. But otherwise the point stands.
barry: see Matthew 10:8…”Heal the sick, raise the dead, (Matt. 10:8 NAU)
barry: “We learn from the health-and-wealth gospel that large crowds can indeed be duped into thinking a miracle happened when it in fact did not.”
Phil: This is a great analogy (I am stealing it). I personally would play the role of a Pharisee with respect to Hinn and others and say the source of that power is not God.
——Why? I see no reason to think there is anything supernatural whatsoever in Hinn’s “miracles”. He always fails when challenged to document his “healings”, and several investigative reports established that a few who got “healed” were not only never healed, but sometimes got worse.
barry: “In other words, the “miracles” Jesus was allegedly doing, if any, were not genuinely supernatural, and many of his disciples did not believe those “miracles” successfully corroborated any of his teachings.”
Phil: Here is where we will disagree, since in the Second Temple Period a messiah who does not do miracles does not make sense. Jewish messianic expectations drawn from Isaiah 35:5-6 or Isaiah 61:1-2 (for example) connect healing with the coming eschatological age (blind see, deaf hear, lame, leap). Jews at the time of Jesus did not allegorize those texts, they really did expect signs from heaven. Pharisees asked Jesus for signs, and explained his power of demons as a sign he too was in league with Beelzebul.
barry: I’m not seeing your point. Even assuming the Jews of the 1st century expected the messiah to do miracles, that doesn’t render unreasonable a theory that one such messiah was only doing fake miracles. But your point would make my argument stronger. Supposing Jesus’ brothers were also caught up in the miracle-working-messiah craze of the first century, then they were even more likely to carefully analyze Jesus’ miracles, so that their persisting in unbelief toward him reasonably implies they discovered those miracles to be fakes.
barry: “most apologists trifle that there’s no evidence the brothers ever actually saw any of Jesus’ miracles, but then you disagree with such notion by saying “John 7 implies they have seen some of his signs yet still do not believe”
Phil: Well, I did not know you when I wrote that, so you might agree with me . I cannot imagine the brothers not being aware of what Jesus was doing if the villagers in Nazareth knew he was doing miracles; I have no idea what would motivates an “apologist” to say such a thing.
barry: They say it because the further they can distance Jesus from his brothers, the less likely the brothers ever saw the miracles, and therefore, the less likely they would ever have concluded Jesus’ miracles were fake, and therefore, surely some other explanation, which doesn’t require denying the miraculous nature of his miracles, can explain that unbelief….such as the brothers being too crazed with a military-messiah expectation to use their common sense when hearing numerous reliable reports of Jesus doing miracles. I reply that this was an honor-shame society where if Jesus were doing anything that could result in shaming the family name, the family would have great interest in checking out the scandal for themselves to decide whether the actions in question were honorable or dishonorable.
But for now, what do you believe is unreasonable in using a theory of Jesus’ fake miracles to explain the unbelief of Jesus brothers? But if there’s nothing unreasonable about it, well, being reasonable to say Jesus’ brothers concluded his miracles were fake, would in turn make it reasonable to conclude that ALL of Jesus’ miracles were fake (who would trifle that only some of his miracles were fake?). And if it be reasonable to say all of Jesus’ miracles were merely naturalistic tricks of the sort that we know televangelists use to deceive thousands of people, then it cannot be unreasonable to say God would be very unlikely to premise his second covenant upon the words and works of a deceiver (i.e., the skeptical interpretation of Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 makes it reasonable to deny that Jesus rose from the dead).
originally posted September 9, 2017
My challenge to Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie
Though I am an atheist, I agreed with and replied to your blog post about how modern Christian apologetics can reduce "Christianity" to little more than a game of intellectual jousting.
In my reply, I insist that apologists Steve Hays, Jason Engwer, and especially James Patrick Holding, bear about as much spiritual fruit as a dead alligator. The passion for holines seen in the NT epistles and in 3 more centuries of patristic writings is screamingly absent from their online writings.
James Patrick Holding libeled me and I sued him, and instead of doing the Christian thing and apologizing, he hired a lawyer at great expense to himself and his followers, to get both cases dismissed on technicalities...then continued libeling me anyway, as if he was just brick stupid. Holding's claim to fame is his citing the Context Group to justify his belief that the NT authorizes Christians of today to belittle and defame anybody who publicly criticize Christianity, a position he cannot find support for in any published Christian scholar, including the Context Group, who have disowned him in no uncertain terms more than once.
I am also finishing up a book to be marketed to doubting Christians, to motivate them to not be afraid to take that last step and actually stop having faith. So since your goal is the exact opposite, perhaps you'd be interested in some discussions with me, especially since I use my blog to advertise reasons for doubt around the internet, potentially reaching the same Christians you are trying to protect.
Barry JonesAs usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.Here's a short list of matters I'm willing to discuss with apologists:1 - There are only 3 eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the NT, at best, all the rest are hearsay. And that's generously granting assumptions of apostolic gospel authorship that I am otherwise prepared to attack on the merits.2 - Apostle Paul's gospel contradicts the one Jesus preached.3 - The actions of the 11 apostles after allegedly experiencing the risen Christ indicate what they actually experienced, if anything, was something less than the "amazing transformation" lauded so loudly by apologists.4 - Because Matthew is in all likelihood not responsible for the content in canonical Greek Matthew, he and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.5 - Because John was willing to falsely characterize divine words he got by vision, as if they were things the historical Jesus really said and did, John and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.6 – John’s intent to write a "spiritual" gospel as opposed to imitating the Synoptics which he knew had already disclosed the “external facts”, argues that “spiritual” here implies something different than mere writing down of eyewitness testimony. The historical evidence that is accepted by even fundamentalists makes clear that John’s source for gospel material included visions and not just memory.7 - The NT admission that most of Paul's converts apostatized from him for the Judaizer gospel, warrants skeptics to be a bit more hesitant than Christians before classifying Paul as a truth-robot. The NT evidence against Paul's integrity is many, varied and strong.8 - Papias asserted Mark "omitted nothing" of what he heard Peter preach. Because Bauckham is wrong when saying Papias here was using mere literary convention, Papias meant that phrase literally...in which case Mark's silence on the virgin birth is not due to his "omission" of it, the virgin birth doesn't appear in his gospel because there was never a virgin birth story available for him to omit in the first place...a strong attack on Matthew's and Luke's credibility.9 - Paul's belief that Mark's abandonment of ministry justifies excluding him from further ministry work (Acts 15) will always remain a justifiable reason (assuming Acts’ historicity here) to say Mark wasn't too impressed with gospel claims, even assuming he later fixed his disagreements with Paul and wrote the gospel now bearing his name.10 - Mark's strong apathy toward writing down Peter's preaching supports the above premise that he was less than impressed with the gospel, and likely only joined himself to the group for superficial reasons. Not a good day for fundamentalists who think Mark was inspired by God to write his gospel.11 - Peter's explicit refusal to endorse Mark's gospel writing, militates, for obvious reasons, against the idea that Peter approved of it.12 - stories of women becoming pregnant by a god in a way not disturbing her virginity, are securely dated hundreds of years before the 1st century. The copycat Savior hypothesis is virtually unassailable, once the admittedly false skeptical exaggerations of the evidence are excluded, and rationally warrants skepticism toward Matthew's and Luke's honesty.13 - The failure of Jesus' own immediate family to believe his ministry-miracles were genuinely supernatural (the logical inference from John 7:5 and Mark 3:21-31) provides reasonable and rational warrant for skeptics to say the miracles Jesus allegedly did, were no more real than those done by Benny Hinn and other wildly popular religiously fanatical con artists.14 - The evidence for the specific contention that most of the apostles or earliest Christians died as martyrs (i.e., were forced to choose between death or committing blasphemy, and chose death) is furiously scanty and debatable, justifying skepticism toward this popular apologetic argument.15 - the mass-hallucination hypothesis does not require the exact same mental images to have been shared by the original apostles. Mass-hallucination need not require such impossibility any more than Pentecostals being slain in the spirit requires them to all move and talk in the exact same way before they can validly claim to have shared the same experience.16 - There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts that are not capable of reasonable harmonization.I am also willing to discuss whatever apologetics argument you think is the most clear and compelling. Intelligent Design? You'd be surprised at how easy that is to refute and how it justifies Marcion's heresy. Messianic prophecy? I'll discuss whichever one you believe is the most compelling. Atheism? I argue that "God" as believed in the Judaeo-Christian heritage is an incoherent concept, which provides all the rational warrant necessary to dismiss it just as quickly one dismisses pyramid power or telepathy. Epistemology? I advocate empiricism, namely, you cannot give a convincing argument that anybody has ever learned a fact completely apart from their 5 physical senses, therefore, believing facts never come to our minds except via one or more of our five physical senses, is about as invalidly presumptuous as believing the cars I see continue to exist after I shut my eyes.I will discuss any other topic you wish.Sincerely,
So let me get this straight: you have a history of suing people, and you are basically saying that if I don't accept, you're going to assume that you won? I'm going to save us both the trouble now, because I am not predicting a fruitful exchange of ideas. Best wishes on your future endeavors.Jonathan
As usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.
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Barry Jones