> And I am lost at what you are looking for. You struggle with definitions
> of words, you presume to know my view. Honestly this discussion is not
> getting anywhere.
Pim, I really don't think it is I who is "struggling" with
definitions. I am merely asking you to define your terms because I
believe that words have meaning and without such clairification, true
communication is impossible. You throw out words such as knowledge and
understanding and attach to them definitions other than those commonly
associated with them. Since you have habitually attached out of the
ordinary definitions to common words, I find it necessary to make the
requests that I have.
As for my presumption of your view, I have twice sought clarification
concerning your views on materialism as well as your justification for
your assertions about the extent of our knowledge and to date you have
not replied.
As far as this discussion not getting anywhere, I can see why you might
think that but I ll have to disagree with you. Perhaps this discussion
has not gone where you would have liked, but it has gotten somewhere.
It has demonstrated that you hold to a worldview or conceptual framework
that neither comports with itself nor with human experience. The
outlook you have presented makes knowledge, as it has most commonly been
defined, impossible since we cannot know that anything is true. But of
course, that statement itself is a truth claim for which I would like
you to offer support. Your reductionistic reasoning leads to radical
skepticism (of which you seem certain). You are fond of writing of the
knowledge derived from observation but according to the theory of
knowledge you have proposed, one cannot even know that he/she is
observing something unless and until science confirms it. I know that I
am looking at the clock on my wall right now and that I am perceiving it
as reading 2:35. However, since that is not a scientific claim, I can't
really say that I know that, can I? I only believe that I am looking at
my clock. That belief is of the same order as my belief in God since no
one else can scientifically prove what I am perceiving at any moment.
Keithp: Christians understand that the world is the product God's
creative
act because they have agreed that this is factual.
Pim: But there is no scientific foundation to their claim. As such
their claims
remain truely subjective and the truth remains truely rigid.
It is neither based observation nor theory. It is a belief inspired by
an
acceptance of something that cannot be observed and whose existance is
accepted beyond any doubt. No observations, no falsification, no theory.
Nothing but an acceptance of 'truth'.
Once again you suggest that our knowledge is limited to what is capable
of being observed. Once again I ask you how you know this. Is this a
scientific conclusion or rather does it fit better in your category of
"faith"?
The intellectual and philosophical arbitrariness and absurdity that you
consistently wind up in as you deny the Christian worldview, is part of
the evidence you seek in its favor.
Keith