From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Sep 6 18:32:15 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 800C237B400 for ; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:32:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from directvinternet.com (dsl-65-185-140-165.telocity.com [65.185.140.165]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E933D43E72 for ; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:32:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nwestfal@directvinternet.com) Received: from Tolstoy.home.lan (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by directvinternet.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g871UqGd045063; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:30:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nwestfal@directvinternet.com) Received: from localhost (nwestfal@localhost) by Tolstoy.home.lan (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) with ESMTP id g871UqfG045060; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:30:52 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: Tolstoy.home.lan: nwestfal owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:30:52 -0700 (PDT) From: "Neal E. Westfall" X-X-Sender: nwestfal@Tolstoy.home.lan To: Giorgos Keramidas Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? In-Reply-To: <20020907002242.GC15779@hades.hell.gr> Message-ID: <20020906181354.C44831-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, 7 Sep 2002, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On 2002-09-06 11:16 +0000, Neal E. Westfall wrote: > > Without a reliable supernatural revelation from God, no arguments, > > reasoning, science, ethics, human freedom, etc. would even be > > intelligible. The preconditions of rationally arguing anything > > require objective standards of logic and ethics which are only > > intelligible on a theistic worldview in which God reveals those > > objective standards through supernatural revelation. > > Care to elaborate on that? Certainly! Although that is exactly what I have been doing all along. > Because you seem to be implying that logic > and ethics can not exist without the existence of something > supernatural. Correction. Logic and ethics are meaningless without objective standards, and objective standards are impossible without appealing to something, well, *objective*. "Objective" means that it comes to you from the outside, externally, i.e. "not subjective". So immediately the opinions of men are eliminated. What is left? Can man invent objective standards? Well, no, because then they wouldn't really be "objective" would they? Can objective standards just exist "out there" somewhere? Even if they could, you could never know what they were. Everybody could claim to know what the objective standards are, but that would just lead us right back to subjectivism, with everybody claiming their own "objective" standards. So if there even is a such a thing as "objective" standards, they are going to have to be revealed to us in some way by an entity that truly *is* objective. That is, this entity has "all the facts" that can be known, i.e. is "omniscient." Moreover, this being, in order to enforce His objective standard, would have to be able to enforce His will, i.e., He would have to be "omnipotent." Well, you should be getting the point by now, but if not, feel free to continue to ask questions. Neal To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message