Round 1

From Agnostic Australian 5/14/05

Hi Brady.

Brady wrote: I wouldn't mind having a discussion with you, however I am not very good at typing and it takes me some time to think through things. So, if you like, an e-mail debate would be fine with me.

Okay. That's fine.

Brady wrote: If you would like to do the resurrection or Paul's debate that is great. If you would prefer to do the existence of God, that is fine too.

I think we may need to do the lot, if that's alright with you ;-)

Brady wrote: I think you will find that the problem with Paul and Johnny was not misunderstanding, but their rejection of inductive logic and maintaining logical fallacies.

I believe that is your misunderstanding right there ;-)

Paul did not reject inductive logic; instead, he put it in its place. Inductive logic is probabilistic. By its nature it involves subjective degrees of uncertainty in any given hypotheses. This may be expressed using probability theory, as in Bayesian
inference [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

I am agnostic. More precisely, I am a Bayesian atheist. I have very strong confidence in the hypothesis that there is no theistic god. You should take this into account in your arguments. Appealing to a god (that cannot be tested) to "explain" historical events I consider to be about as sensible as inventing the concept of "hyper-quantum-synergy" (that also cannot be tested) to explain the same events.

Therefore, I think you may first need to prove the existence of a personal, transcendent creator. I find the cosmological, ontological and teleological arguments unconvincing. Perhaps you have something else? Supposing that you could do this, you would then
need to show that your religion has divine approval/origin.

I would also like to know your epistemology of history. Specifically, on what basis do you accept as "reliable" the gospel accounts and reject as "unreliable" similar accounts within other religions.

Kind regards,

Agnostic Australian

From Brady 5/14/05

Hello Agnostic Australian,

Let's begin with the existence of God.

It is my view that the existence of God is necessary. By this I mean God cannot, not exist. You see there are only two atheistic cosmologies, Naturism and Negationism, and neither of these can support a coherent and consistent epistemology. Naturism (the cosmology of western atheism) says that nature is all that exists (i.e. our natural universe, time, space, matter energy and all that is inherent to them), there is no God. Negationism (the cosmology of eastern atheism), says that God does not exist and the universe doesn’t exist either. To these philosophers everything is illusion, there is no real existent.
Whichever one you choose, the same problem exists: the elements to form a coherent and cohesive epistemology are not there. So, we are left with the deductive problem: If atheism is true, we can know nothing; if we know anything, then atheism is false. 

The fact that atheism cannot provide an epistemology is admitted by many atheistic philosophers. Of course that doesn’t make it true. What makes it true is the
inability of any atheist to show (via deductive derivation) that their cosmology has the elements to support an epistemology. In fact give the atheistic cosmologies it is impossible for the atheist to get outside his own head. Consider the example given by
David Hume: We know that causes are not like effects. For instance, lighting a match, the flame (the effect) is nothing like the stick or the chemical or the motion that actually make up the match or the motion of lighting it. Another instance is when one drops a
bowling ball. The “THUD” sound (the effect) is nothing like the roundness of the ball or the hard surface of the ball. So, once again, as Hume points out, effects are not like their causes. Here lies the problem, if effects are not like their causes, and your perceptions are caused by the world around you, what makes you think that your perceptions (effects) are anything like the world around you (causes)? 

I think this is a good beginning for now. I would like to keep these posts as short as possible.

Let me know what you think. I would be happy to expand on these points more if you like.

Regards,

Brady