starseven wrote:I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I'd most been reading Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J P Moreland. I'd also been reading Confessions by Augustine. I'm interested hear if anyone else is reading anything by J P Moreland. I've read some of J P Moreland's Scaling the Secular City.
Mr. SmartyPants wrote:The problem with presuppositional apologetics (the only kind of apologetics that I think can carry any sort of weight) is that it presumes God as some sort of analytic a priori. We know things because God exists. Without God knowledge would not exist. It's one big lofty and baseless argument and it's completely regressive.
Mr. SmartyPants wrote:I think people like the existentialists, postmodernists, and poststructuralists did a necessary job of disproving that we have the ability to interpret or know objective truth. Like a hot knife through butter. Nietzsche goes on about how basically stupid people like Plato or Kant were (Yes he straight up insults their intelligence, lol). It's presumptious to assume that simply because we perceive what may be the subjective/form/phenomena, that doesn't exactly prove that there is an objective/essence/noumena. The bridge between signifier and signified is socially (or individually) constructed and completely arbitrary. Heck even Kierkegaard, a Christian, does the same with such intensity.
Mr. SmartyPants wrote:That's my problem with things like positivism and critical realism. And at this point it'll all regress back to a discourse on epistemology; and that's where things, at best, get shaky for them. This is why a lot of Christian apologists pull out presuppositional apologetics when it comes to epistemology because it's the best answer they have when it comes to epistemology. But I don't think it really works.
starseven wrote:The assault on ones character is a common fallacy. The point isn't to discredit a philosopher. The point is to present valid counterpoints.
The idea that there's no objective truth is rather foolish. I'd argued on these people on these grounds. You really get no where when when someone doesn't believe in objective truth. There's objective truth and unless a person is willing to accept this arguments go no where.
You have to have a valid point of reference.
It needs to be a valid logical point which can have a valid case made.
If nothing is objective then philosophy becomes meaningless conjecture.
Then reality could be anything as long as you can conform your perception to it. It's supremely arrogant assume that we are the center of our universe as the author of our own truths. Then nothing outside of us is valid or has any meaning. Then why do consider people insane when they say people are present and yet no one else perceives them.
The case can then be made whether their homicidal killer who claims people are telling him to kill yet no such person exists accept in their own mind. Then why do we consider them insane. Why do we imprison or take the lives of such people who murder people? If we say there's no objective truth and in which case why do we have laws for that matter. If reality is only within the perception individual then who's to say as a child would say that something no longer exists because we no longer see it. A child covers his eyes and says he's invisible but, everyone else can still see him. We have to move past such childish assumptions.
I've thought further on this. The real answer for those who don't believe in objective truth. The one truth that would remain stripped of everything else would be the truth of void, emptiness, and nothingness. The truth of enlightenment in such a view would be to abandon all knowledge and all constraints of reality to embrace the void. If nothing can be known then nothing should be known. Nothing then can ever be known. Why learn because nothing is known? Why live within the bounds of what you perceive as reality? Accept the void if this is your truth.
I personally believe in objective truth. There really wouldn't be any purpose or meaning without it.
It's only once they begin to see objective truth can there be any meaningful discussion. It's that otherwise it becomes a discussion of endless conjecture.
Peanut wrote:I don't think JP Moreland really goes the presuppositional route with any of his apologetics or at least he doesn't do it in Scaling the Secular City. He's more into the arguments for the existence of God. So this really isn't relevant to this thread at all. Still I like talking Apologetics so I'll give some quick thoughts about this and other things.
Doesn't work? Ryan,that test was right, you are a pragmatist.![]()
In the essay "Différance" Derrida indicates that différance gestures at a number of heterogeneous features that govern the production of textual meaning. The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force that differentiates elements from one another and, in so doing, engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies that underpin meaning itself.
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