Circular reasoning

Well, we were. I'm really making a claim of self-authentication, and I'd like you to explain the logical reasons why you reject it. I'm making a self-authenticated claim to never ever being wrong and to possessing all realms of reality.What are the logical reasons you reject these self-authenticated claims? Not at all. I'm taking your word for the things you say you believe. When I read your mind, I'll let you know. (First, I'll make a self-authenticated claim to be able to read minds.) What character? What works? What "external sources"? Be specific.And if you're now making a claim of collective contribution, are you now retracting your claim that self-authentication is necessary and sufficient proof of authority? Pretend I don't know what that word means and explain it logically. I'm not making a claim of being a teapot. That would be "self-teapot-ing." I'm making a claim of being the ultimate authority, and my support for this claim is that I'm making the claim. "Self-authentication." What are your logical reasons for rejecting these self-authenticated claims on my part?

If you like, we could trade lists. I'd quote all the points I made that you didn't respond to, and you quote everything you said to me that I didn't respond to. Wanna bet whose list would be longer?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

Quoting from the OP in this thread: Curiously, this reminds me of the title in another currently active thread in the "Miscellaneous Topics" section here at EvC: "Creationists think Evolutionists think like Creationists." Here is Pauline, who avows a firm belief in some version of a Christian God ("the one true" version, obviously) as an ultimate authority, and **surprise!** "people of most commonly held worldviews" think the same way as Pauline (but are asserted to have different "things/persons" as their "ultimate authority"). Yup, a very familiar theme.I guess that (in Pauline's assessment) atheism and agnosticism do not count as "commonly held worldviews": I'm fairly confident that the notion of an "ultimate authority" is utterly meaningless and useless to agnostics and atheists (not that I'm an authority on this, of course, but I can certainly speak for myself, and I have seen evidence that others agree with me on this).Honestly, Pauline, if you want to assert that I recognize and acknowledge some "ultimate authority", you might find personal comfort in that (because it is consistent with your own way of thinking), but you would be wrong.As for trying to rationalize as non-circular the belief that God is the ultimate authority because God's word (the Bible) says so, I guess this snippet from later in the thread comes closest to the heart of the issue: Um, no, that's not right. I certainly never "realized" anything of that sort. What are the particular things that God "does"? How is it determined that God "does" these things?If you're talking about the "miracles" described in the bible, those don't count, because to the best of my knowledge, that stuff is all just mythology and allegory, having no basis in observable evidence (e.g. no evidence of a global flood, or tower of Babel, or ...)If you're talking about the "everyday miracles" (biological reproduction, "natural beauty", earthquakes, volcanoes and all that), I'm sorry, but there's no direct indication of divine agency for any of that; it all happens as a result of discernible physical causation, in accordance with recognized physical laws (some of which are not yet fully understood, but we are making progress on that).If you're talking about souls, redemption, salvation, afterlife and so on, well, these all actually end up being poorly defined terms referring to nebulous concepts whose existence in reality is open to question, to say the least. There's no actual, reliably observable demonstration of God doing anything here -- just bare assertions involving abstract and imaginary notions.In any case, I have always found it both puzzling and telling that so many irreconcilable versions of religious practice are based on "the one true God" as the "ultimate authority". The main problem here is not the circularity of the reasoning -- it's the flat-out, plain-obvious falseness or vacuousness of the claims, and the demonstrated lack of any honest and earned authority founded on objective, empirical grounds.Indeed, just accepting the notion (and any given assertion) of "ultimate authority" is itself the root cause of a serious problem (well, many serious problems, actually), and it should have been abandoned long ago. "Contingent authority" is good enough.Edited by Otto Tellick, : (simplified the grammar in the last paragraph)

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Sorry, but if creationism is going to tell me where the Universe came from and how it came to be, it must also explain EVERYTHING about everything.Sauce for the goose is sauce for the propaganda.

Pauline writes:

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Some but not all atheists declare science to be the ultimate authority.

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Really? Who? Can you give me one name? I don't know any atheists who claim science to be the ultimate authority.After all, one of the big points about science is that it is quite likely that everything you think you know about everything is wrong. That's how science progresses: You make observations that seem to contradict prediction. You devise tests to make the observations more accurate and possibly come up with something completely new due to the fact that you just proved something to be wrong.It's why we went from Aristotelian to Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics.How do you justify a claim of "science is the ultimate authority" when the very nature of science is to claim that it is not authoritative? The best that we can ever hope for from science is that our model is accurate and consistent with known observations.Again with the kinematics. Newtonian physics is wrong. At every level. However, the reason we still teach it is that for everyday scenarios, the error term is so small that it requires extremely sensitive equipment in order to detect it.That doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. No matter what it is that we find, that doesn't change the observations that we've made.The closest we can come to "authoritarianism" in science is the insistence that observations are real and thus must be accounted for. When we switched from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics, objects didn't suddenly move forever rather than coming to rest. Instead, we came to the realization that the reason why they come to rest is not because rest is the "natural state" of objects but rather that there is a force, friction, that is bringing the object to rest. When Newton was working on his theories of gravitation, apples did not suddenly hover in mid-air waiting for him to figure it out so they could start moving the way he said.No, observations are always there. They are the bare facts. Anything new you come up with has to take them into account and explain them. It may be that there was something we couldn't see that was involved and thus, our understanding was wrong, but that doesn't mean that the observation was false: Just that the description of what happened needs to be changed.

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Prepare to answer this, those of you who hold science as the ultimate authority.

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Again, just who are these people? I don't know a single person who claims science is the ultimate authority. They all know that science specifically insists that it isn't authoritative, that it will always be lacking in completeness due to the fact that we cannnot observe everything.

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although certain atheists place science under this category. So, for those of you who do count science as the ultimate authority: why is that? For those atheists who don't, why is it not?

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Who? Who are these people who claim science is the ultimate authority? Can we get one name?

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In light of this, it seems to me that this 'circular reasoning logical fallacy' though certainly valuable intrinsically, is being misused by atheists as a ad-hominem tool on most atheist-christian debate arenas for neither is it well thought out by them nor is it applicable to a Christian worldview.

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It seems to me that you are using an argument of false equivalency as an ad hominem tool against atheists.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you\'ve lost yours doesn\'t mean you can use mine.

Pauline writes:

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You do realize that God does things to show how He is the ultimate authority after claiming it , right?

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Then you do realize that your god admits he is not the ultimate authority, right?Hint: Is it good that the man is alone?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you\'ve lost yours doesn\'t mean you can use mine.

Well, evidently, your witlessness is preventing you from making any sound judgment. Do you even understand what self-authentication involves? If you want to pronounce yourself ultimate authority, you might as well type "iefgeirznviuzkyrgaldui", it would make no difference to anybody around here, UNLESS, you also substantiated your claim. That is self authentication. Like I said earlier, calling yourself a teapot doesn't make you one. Show us how you are a ultimate authority.For you to interpret the OP to mean that 'calling your self authority' = self authentication is appallingly ignorant. Self authentication is demanding your rights AFTER you have shown the world who you are. Proving yourself without authentication is useless and authenticating yourself without proving who you are is arrogant and empty. These aren't self-authenticated claims, my dear. You just blew some smoke, that's about it.Let me ask you, what exactly have you authenticated? Nothing. You've self authenticated....nothing. You claim to be perfect. You claim to know all the answers to everything. You've done nothing to demonstrate these qualities and THEN, prematurely "self-authenticated" yourself. Thinking might help too. I have no idea why you want this. But anyway,Faith is passionate belief. Faith is believing what you don't see and the reward of faith is seeing what you believe. Read the Bible.Whether or not the Bible god is ultimate authority is not the point of this thread. No clue why this thread is being drifted. But what can I do? It goes where you all take it.... What kind of a moron would isolate the burden of proof from the claim of self-authentication?You seem to have this idea that self-authentication is just claiming X. Not so at all. Claiming X after demonstrating your rights and reasons to claim X. I am not talking about big names. I am talking about the average person who has little exposure to spirituality who seems to think the science has the answers to all our questions, thanks to falsehood spreading atheists. These people are lured into falsehood by vibrant atheists who pretend like science does indeed have all the answers we need to live. You do not realize how sad it is when atheists talk about God not existing simply because science seems to tell us He doesn't (so far). Why would science be given the luxury of answering a spiritual question unless the same people think it is some kind of higher authority? You must have missed the part where I acknowledged this fact in my OP.Not every atheist/agnostic stays true to his worldview, does he? Quite a few of them look to some object and find an ultimate authority in it. It is human psychology. They might not aware of doing this but it certainly comes across in their words, and worldview. Problem is, they ignorantly try to force science and rationality (and therefore man) to answer questions that are beyond their realm. And when they don't have answers from their trusted authorities, they also buy into the falsehoods about faith, God, and spirituality.

Sure. Me being perfect, basically, such that I'm the highest authority available when it comes to my own authority.Well, I am. You can believe this because I told you so - I self-authenticated. I'm not making a claim to being a tea-pot. I'm making a claim to being an "ultimate authority", and you've made it clear that you believe in self-authentication when it comes to ultimate authorities.Just not when I do it. I'm asking you for the logical basis that explains this apparent inconsistency. I'm making a claim of authentication. Can you explain the logical basis by which you reject it, or can't you? Sure they are. I made them, and I authenticated them myself. Self-authentication. Sure. As far as you know, all that is true. What's your logical basis for rejecting those claims? If what you believe in exists you can see it whether you believe in it or not. Existence is independent of belief. You, apparently. But I have demonstrated those rights. I'm perfect, and I know everything. I've self-authenticated those claims.From what logical basis do you reject those claims? Please be specific. Right now you won't even admit to rejecting them, you're just calling me names and getting emotional. I don't want your emotional case, I want your logical case.

I have never met an atheist who claims science disproves the existence of god. That would be just as stupid as a theist saying the bible proves god exists.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Amen brother. Preach the Gospel.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

(My emphasis above.)Please let me know if I am correct in interpreting this to mean that:A) Science is self-authenticating (because it can always "demonstrate the rights and reasons to claim X").B) Religion is not self-authenticating (because it cannot "demonstrate the rights and reasons to claim X")*.*Of course, if a religion ever strays into an area where it can demonstrate the rights and reasons to claim X, then it must be agreeing entirely with science on that point.

I'm happy to tell you that it's clear to me, and to plenty of others, that science provides ample evidence counter to the existence of most formulations of "God."

Yes evidence against, but not proof as would be if science was a "higher authority." Since science does not deal in proofs, my statement stands.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

crashfrog,Self-authentication is not calling yourself something. You think it is, but its not.I don't care if you call yourself the ultimate authority without showing me how you are.If you really are a perfect, ultimate authority- your authority is enough reason for everyone to accept you. I can't acept you on the basis of what people say, it is always on the basis of what you say. That is called self-authentication. If you haven't demonstrated your character qualities, then I have no reason to acept your claim. Claim all you like, it won't matter UNTIL you have demonstrated your character qualities that give you a right to be the ultimate authority. (calling yourself one doesn't count) Once you have demonstrated who you are and your reasons and rights to be called the ultimate authority, THEN self-authenticate yourself.

What I think it is is the fallacy of begging the question, but we're not talking about what I think, we're talking about the logical basis by which you accept a claim of self-authentication from Christians but not from me. I have shown it, by asserting it. Can you explain the logical basis by which you reject this claim? But I have demonstrated them. I've demonstrated them by asserting them. I've self-authenticated my character.Can you explain the logical basis by which you reject this claim?