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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: cosmicforce who wrote (4398)2/2/2001 2:07:36 PM
From: TimF  Respond to of 82486
 
My argument is that no matter how remotely you view Earth, the observer is always using THEIR frame of reference. Even if you would call that frame of reference "GOD", I could argue that God could have a bigger God that is outside of Him and he'd have now way of knowing it. Therefore, His absolutes are just relative to His Heavenly frame of reference.

I suppose the response to that (if you are basing an opinion on the existance of an extrinsic set of moral priniples on the existance of God which I am not), is that whatever the biggest God outside of all the other gods). Personally while I believe in God I my beliefs in certain moral ideas are more strongly held, and more fundimental to my outlook on life then my belief in God. If I was 100% convinced that God exists, but that he was evil I would see no reason to support or worship him except perhaps the purely selfish one of trying to keep such a powerful being from causeing very bad things to happen to me.

This logical problem of where you set your anchor seemed to me an obvious refutation of the principle of extrinsic truth and morality because this assertion implies walls that we have no reason to believe exist except in our minds.

IMO we also have no reason to believe they do not exist either. Any belief in this area is more intuitive then logical. It is a building block that we can use to build our logical understanding of the universe. Logic is a very useful tool but it can not prove anyhting without making certain assumptions. One of those (usually unstated) assumptions is that logical principles actually have any truth and that they have some meaning in the real world. I would share this assumption but I don't think any one can prove it. (In fact how could you prove it without logic and if you accept logic to prove logic you are making a circular arguement). Another unstated assumption is that the sensory information actually gives us some idea about what the outside world really is like. I make this assumption. I would guess that you do as well so we don't have to debate it, but it we should recognize it as an unproven assumption.

Tim