To the Standing For Truth video Evolution is Useless | Professor David McQueen I, Ken Ammi, commented as follows, after which discussions ensued:
If Atheist evolution is true then it collapses any universal imperative to adhere to truth and so it self-defeating on a conceptual level.
H H:
Word salad.
Redefine Living:
H H Tell me, at a fundamental level, how can you determine what is true? Does natural selection select for truth and falsity or survivability?
H H:
Redefine Living natural selection selects for advantageous traits to fit the environment. So you’re asking is if what is true is advantageous in an evolutionary context. The answer is no, they’re not related. Truth is a property of propositions, meaning it is heavily dependent on the information and frame of the context provided. I can live my entire life believing that the earth is flat, and it would have no impact what so ever on my survival prospects. All that matters is that I make enough correct choices with my remaining energy and activities to off set any false apprehensions I may have.
Redefine Living:
H H If Truth to you is based on information and context, then you can never know if you have all the information and all the context, therefore you can never ultimately access truth from your not-God worldview. Tell me, what is your fundamental axiom for determining what is “true”? If “truth” is determined by considering evidence, would you propose that your reasoning is that which is fundamental? Please respond.
I would appreciate if you do not edit your responses once you have posted them.
H H:
Redefine Living Im glad you chose the axiomatic route, because it keeps things kinda simple without getting into things like truth by definition, or epistemic truths. Truth by proposition is more interesting in my opinion anyway. You seem to already have a decent grasp of what I’m talking about, so I’ll agree that because one can never be absolutely certain of the quality of facts or have a complete picture including all relevant facts, one can neither be certain to have access to any absolute truths. The raven paradox or the black swan paradox are exercises designed to explore the nature of the facts available that nit pick and challenge the conclusion or proposed truth.
Also, wod you rather read a post full of grammatical and spelling errors? I think you can tolerate an edit here and there.
Redefine Living:
H H Because I am not your English teacher, I’m not interested in grammatical or spelling errors. So as you have acknowledged, nothing can ultimately to be true, but what you fail to acknowledge is that this is only a problem from within your position. From your position, “knowledge” comes from an open system where anything can be true and therefore nothing can be true because truth is only arbitrary from within your system. When you use the word “truth” from your system and then attempt to apply it to truth from my system where I can have objective truth, it is a false equivocation. From my position, I am in a closed system with only one source of truth, that source of truth is objective.
- If God exists, objective truth exists.
- Objective truth exists.
- Therefor God exists.
H H:
Redefine Living then you have to ask yourself how you know if you’re position, the facts available are complete, and your perception and mental faculties are objective enough to derive am absolute truth, or or a useful one.
Ken Ammi:
H H My experience has been that terms such as “Word salad” are an Atheist diversionary tactic when the Atheist finds themselves incapable of replying and so seeks to sidestep the issue and runs away. The fundamental issue is that on Atheism, truth is accidental, as is our ability to discern it, there’s no universal imperative to adhere to it, nor to demand or expect others to adhere to it.
H H:
Ken Ammi word salad is an informal adjective describing a lack of comprehensible verbiage. If you suspect that someone doesn’t have a response other than “word salad,” it’s likely because what you said isn’t making sense, or even sounds like it could in some context.
Ken Ammi:
H He As I noted, I was relaying “My experience.”
Now, “If Atheist evolution is true” the concept of it being true would imply that there’s no universal imperative to be concerned about whether it’s true since on that view truth would be accidental, as would our ability to discern it, there’d be no universal imperative to adhere to truth, not to expect/demand others adhere to it.
Thus, it would “then it collapses any universal imperative to adhere to truth” ergo, “it[’s] self-defeating on a conceptual level” since the very concept collapses ontology and epistemology as universal imperatives.
H H:
Ken Ammi except we do have evidence for evolution, and that evidence is compiled into a theory.
You’re arguing backwards as if evolution is just an idea to be weighed on purely philosophical grounds, when it’s a scientific theory that is judged on the evidence, and how others perceive that evidence. It’s literally just changing the discussion to avoid having the discussion.
Ken Ammi:
I see. Well, it seems that you are misreading me. My issue is not (at least not at this point) to doubt that “we do have evidence for evolution…it’s a scientific theory that is judged on the evidence” so it’s not “literally just changing the discussion to avoid having the discussion” but is about applying
The video is titled, “Evolution is Useless” and I initially noted, “If Atheist evolution is true then it collapses any universal imperative to adhere to truth and so it self-defeating on a conceptual level” which I then elucidated.
In other words, let’s grant that it’s 100% not demonstrable fact that “we do have evidence for evolution…it’s a scientific theory that is judged on the evidence,” etc. the question that begs is: why believe it? Why accept evidence? Why base our views on evidence? Why base our views on truth, reality, facts, etc.?
Why, on Atheism, ought we to do those things in a universe wherein there’s no universal imperative to do any such things?
Thus, I’m not arguing backwards but am actually starting with step one.
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Well, that ended the discussion.
For more details, see my relevant books.
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