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Originally Posted by roachboy
so the problem dawkins is getting at is not about one view being rational and the other not being rational--it is a conflict over axioms.
if that is accurate, then it seems stupid to cast it as if there was a conflict over who gets to call themselves more rational.
it looks to me like the debate between will and filtherton above is repeats this question of conflict over axioms: both can assimilate the same kind of information into their respective positions without internal contradiction. so both are generating arguments that are true from within their respective frames. the problem with it is--again, like with dawkins--that the real argument is not about the applications of their respective frames, but about the axioms that shape them.
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You hit the nail on the head. It depends on the axioms, i've been trying to get there but i got sidetracked. Something about wolves.
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2. what i have never understood from within christianity at least is how it is that folk who believe manage on the one hand to maintain that god would be infinite while human understanding is finite while at the same time maintaining that they can know anything about this god--which they dont and, according to their own theology, cant--what they know about is what they imagine the word "god" refers to.
these relations are fundamentally different from each other.
in this, contemporary protestant--particularly of the fundy variety--is about the least sophisticated, least interesting imaginable variant of christianity. the logic of even this finite understanding/infinite god thing would seem to me to lead you to a state of unknowing--to negative theology or nominalism. according to the axiom that structures this religious game, you cannot KNOW.
the problem with this is that it wont function if you create a church and want that church to perform social regulation functions.
so the problem, really, seems to be that there are churches which perform social regulation functions, because it is in the creation of churches as institutions which exercize social control that the trade-off between conceptions of this god character happen.
so, christian types, let's be internally consistent and disband all churches.
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Well, such things depend on the particular church in question. Some fit the description outlined by you above and some don't.