How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?[W: 192]

[Adagio]

Well, the diallelus is not exactly the same as the regress problem, though they are related. You keep on talking about circular reasoning, so diallelus seems a more accurate term.

The circular reasoning fallacy will always come up when infinite regress takes place. There is no way of stopping that without an appeal to authority which is circular reasoning. The diallelus term doesn't change that. Webster defines the term: Definition of DIALLELUS
: a reasoning in a circle

According to this argument, any proposition requires a justification. However, any justification itself requires support. This means that any proposition whatsoever can be endlessly (infinitely) questioned, like a child who asks "why?" over and over again.

We call this the entailment thesis in epistemology. Knowledge entails belief.

I know. You're describing a closed system. However, some theorists deny that knowledge is closed under entailment, and the issue remains controversial. The arguments against closure include the following:

The argument from the analysis of knowledge: given the correct analysis, knowledge is not closed, so it isn't. For example, if the correct analysis includes a tracking condition, then closure fails.

The argument from nonclosure of knowledge modes: since the modes of gaining, preserving or extending knowledge, such as perception, testimony, proof, memory, indication, and information are not individually closed, neither is knowledge.

The argument from unknowable (or not easily knowable) propositions: certain sorts of propositions cannot be known (without special measures); given closure, they could be known (without special measures), by deducing them from mundane claims we known, so knowledge is not closed.

The argument from skepticism: skepticism is false but it would be true if knowledge were closed, so knowledge is not closed.

This idea (closure) is intimately related to the thesis that knowledge is closed, since, according to some theorists, knowing p entails justifiably believing p. If knowledge entails justification, closure failure of the latter might lead to closure failure of the former.

Precisely what is meant by the claim that knowledge is closed under entailment? One response is that the following straight principle of closure of knowledge under entailment is true:


SP: If person S knows p, and p entails q, then S knows q.

The conditional involved in the straight principle might be the material conditional, the subjunctive conditional, or entailment, yielding three possibilities, each stronger than the one before:

SP1: S knows p and p entails q only if S knows q.

SP2: If S were to know something, p, that entailed q, S would know q.

SP3: It is necessarily the case that: S knows p and p entails q only if S knows q.

However, each version of the straight principle is false, since we can know one thing, p, but fail to see that p entails q, or for some other reason fail to believe q. Since knowledge entails belief , we fail to know q. A less obvious worry is that we might reason badly in coming to believe that p entails q. Perhaps we think that p entails q because we think everything entails everything, or because we have a warm tingly feeling between our toes. Or as you described, when it rains, my knee aches. Therefore rain entails aching knees.

Well, I don't know about the severe part, but the fact that it holds up to testing is what convinces me that it's right. That I'm convinced it's right is another way of saying I believe it.

Do you think that a theory is accepted simply without relentless never ending testing? I think we have a different view on belief in a theory and accepting a theory conditionally. When you believe something, do you entertain the possibility that you could be wrong? Or do you believe it dogmatically? Can your own beliefs be changed by new knowledge? If your own beliefs come into conflict with the truth...which do you accept? The truth, or do you hold to a belief demonstrated as false?

Not all beliefs are unsupported. You seem to be confusing antecedent and consequent. That knowledge entails belief, it doesn't follow that belief entails knowledge. Most people have a pretty powerful intuition that we can't claim to know something that isn't true. But this doesn't mean that there aren't true beliefs.

Of course. People believe in God, without empirical proof. People have all kinds of beliefs that they cannot demonstrate. I get that. But that's metaphysical and not the realm of science and the material world. I don't rest anything on intuition. And I reject the premise that knowledge entails belief for reasons stated above.

You seem to have a very odd view of religion as well. I would say this is pretty obviously false. But feel free to argue for it.

You think it odd and "obviously" false? Why? Explain. What is the religion based on? What is the authority of the religion and how does it avoid circular reasoning to justify itself? I don't think it's odd, nor is it obviously false. Explain to me why you think it is.

It's a simple thought experiment. Being able to entertain counterfactual situations, and drawing inferences about what would obtain, is a primary tool of abstract reasoning.

It's an example of inductive reasoning. The term "inductive reasoning" refers to reasoning that is "bottom up." Inductive reasoning takes specific information and makes a broader generalization that is considered probable, allowing for the fact that the conclusion may not be accurate. But you take it further. In your example not only are you offering a "wild guess" but you then make the claim that the "wild guess" turns out to be true, but you offer no way of determining that except by saying it turns out to be true. Who says it's true? Then you say it doesn't matter if it can't be demonstrated because that doesn't change the "fact" that it's true. So I'm supposed to accept your premise that without any conceivable way to testing that, the inference that it's true...makes it true? Seriously? There are Pink Unicorns on Venus. It's true, it's just a wild guess on my part and it can't be demonstrated as true, but it's true anyway. As a thought experiment, it falls on its face.

In this case, it's simply stipulated that he's correct. It doesn't matter whether this can be demonstrated or not, because we're evaluating a conditional: if he is correct, does he have knowledge?

You can't simply stipulate something absurd and expect it to be an arguing point. I completely reject the premise that it's reasonable to accept that stipulation. It does matter. I think I've already explained this before but a wild guess is not knowledge of anything whether you hit the mark or not. We make inductive predictions everyday. We take specifics (asteroids) and they lead to a general statement ( there are many in the solar system) but we cannot claim knowledge of how many there are based on a wild guess let alone one that could ever be demonstrated as true. That's the problem with inductive reasoning. You can't search every square inch of the universe to make a universal claim to the number of asteroids or planets or stars. You would need to do that deductively and you have no way of determining what that number would be.

"If Chamberlin hadn't followed a path of appeasement, World War II might have been averted." There's nothing wrong with saying that.

That's right. There is nothing wrong with it. It's possible. However it would be wrong to say Chamberlin took a path of appeasement, and that caused the war. The war may have likely happened regardless of Chamberlin.

But it's foolish to say "Ah, but Chamberlin did follow a course of appeasement, so why are we supposed to assume otherwise?"

Because you're only taking Chamberlin into account, and not Hitler. Whatever Chamberlin did or didn't do, it's not logical to assume that it made any difference to a mad man like Hitler. It's pretty clear that he had his own agenda in mind. Do you think that any kind of paper with Chamberlin would have changed a single thing that Hitler wanted to do? I seriously doubt that a piece of paper would have stopped him.


?

Am I saying something that could only make any sense if we test it a few thousand times under laboratory conditions? Of course not...

Getting up for a drink of water to satisfy your thirst is hardly the same thing as testing a scientific theory. However a few things you know.
1. If I am thirsty, then I need water
2. There is water at the sink
conclusion: water from the sink will ease my thirst.

At this point, does he have knowledge about the balls in the urn? Most people say no, but note: he has a true belief.

The answer is No. His belief has nothing to do with it. How do I know that? Test him. He has a lucky guess and that doesn't translate into Truth regardless of any belief. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That doesn't make the clock accurate.

 

[afr0byte]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

Also, you are reading in "theism" when it could have been pantheistic, panentheistic, a number of ways of describing God's existence, none of which are an explicit or implicit reference to religion, obviously.

No, he's not misquoting. Stating their is a God is a theistic statement. Hence a-theist.

Whether people here "reject that premise", as you say, is irrelevant, as the topic of the thread is how God's existence gives life meaning. That some who are atheists reject that premise is, though understandable, does not at all mean the premise isn't true.

The point is that this is a debate forum. You don't get to, assuming you're actually here to debate (as opposed to just decreeing something as the truth), just declare your premise true and then expect others to blindly follow it.

God and religion are, obviously, not the same thing.

Nope, but belief in a God is at least spiritual even if you don't want to call it religious, for whatever reason.

Attacking others and their accurate statements

Clearly he disagrees with you. You're not the decider.

 

[Ontologuy]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

No, he's not misquoting. Stating their is a God is a theistic statement. Hence a-theist.

You're apparently misperceiving what he said, as your reply here doesn't make sense in light of the exchange he and I had.

The point is that this is a debate forum. You don't get to, assuming you're actually here to debate (as opposed to just decreeing something as the truth), just declare your premise true and then expect others to blindly follow it.

Again, you missed the point of logic I made when I presented that agreeing or disagreeing with a statement in no way determines its accuracy.

No matter how many people disagree with a statement in no way validates the statement as false.

Nope, but belief in a God is at least spiritual even if you don't want to call it religious, for whatever reason.

Spirtuality and religion are, again, two different things, and that is why I don't want to misuse words.

That should be .. obvious.

The degree of spirituality inherent or required to experience God is also not at issue here.

Clearly he disagrees with you. You're not the decider.

Clearly you're simply being argumentative, about absolute nothings, merely defiantly taking opposition with whatever I state simply for the sake of doing so.

Quite telling .. obviously.

 

[Adagio]

The man is just making an observation. He looks in the urn, and sees there are five balls there. Upon doing so, he gains the knowledge that there are five balls in the urn.

I could look into an urn and see that there are five balls inside it. And of course I have obtained knowledge that there are 5 balls. I can count them. There is no wild guess or anything popping into my head to tell me that prior to counting them. What's your point?

even though he did happen to have a true belief

Having a true belief, does not make the belief true. His belief doesn't matter. What matters is the number of balls in the urn. That is demonstrably true. He may have demonstrated that he made a lucky guess, but that's all. If his true belief is an accurate representation of the Truth then he could do it consistantly.

just consider the corresponding Moorean assertion. What sense could we make of him saying,
after he observed how many balls there are, something like: "Now I know that there are five balls in the urn, but dad gummit, I just don't believe it!"

You're creating a series of hypothetical situations to force fit a justification for foundationalism. I would make no sense of him saying anything. What if he guessed there were 5 balls and there turned out to be 6. Then he'd be wrong, and no matter what his true belief was it wouldn't change the fact that he was wrong. Most likely he'd say..wow. Lucky guess. Maybe I can to the same thing with the Lottery.

The reason this seems irrational is because a belief is, or implies, a dispositional state. Both before and after observing the number of balls, he is disposed to assent to the proposition "there are five balls in the urn."

Didn't you already state that he looked into the urn and saw 5 balls? "Once he observes the number of balls, he then has good reason to believe there are five balls. Now, he has knowledge." That is demonstrably factual knowledge. Belief is not required. True or otherwise. I see a glass on a table. I don't have to suspend disbelief. Faith doesn't enter into it. I can demonstrate it. It is factually true. Dispositional and occurrent belief concerns the contextual activation of the belief into thoughts (reactive of propositions) or ideas (based on the belief's premise). Once again your are appealing to foundationalist thinking. The belief is based on a premise yet to be determined as true.

what changed between the time before and after he made the observation? Most philosophers think that he now has something like justification for his belief. In ordinary circumstances (Gettier examples aside), this makes the difference between knowledge and true belief.

Most philosophers?? I'd say you're wrong about that. Knowledge is demonstrable. It survives empirical tests. True belief doesn't make the belief true.

You seem to be deriving all of this from this: "In a notion derived from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as "justified true belief". The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true. That is straight out of Wikipedia. I don't know if you're using that as your source, but it wouldn't be the first time I disagreed with Plato. I think the Republic gives evidence that he was a bit of a crank.

In taking a close examination of Plato, we see that to Plato, there was no natural sense on how men ought to live, education was to be the key to the construction of a better society; from that the “educated” would arise the elite to rule society. Plato thought it essential that a strict threefold class division be maintained. In addition to the rulers, the Philosopher-kings, there were
to be “Auxiliaries” (soldiers, police and civil servants) and the “Workers” (the rest of us).

Plato’s view of society was pinned by the belief that philosophers are capable of knowing the absolute truth about how to rule society and thus are justified in wielding absolute power. Such a view is in striking contrast to that of his principal teacher, Socrates (469-399 BC), who was always conscious of how much he did not know, and claimed superiority to unthinking men only
in that he was aware of his own ignorance where they were not.

Putting it mildly, Plato’s view was that we are ineradicably social, and that the individual person was not, and could not, be self-sufficient. In fact, Plato offered up humans like so many animals that could do nothing for themselves unless they had constant and detailed direction from those who were to be their leaders:

“... And even in the smallest manner ... [one] should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals ... only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently ... There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this
world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” (The Republic.)

I'm not a fan of Plato.

Well, maybe. Let's say for now that I agree.

There is no maybe about it. If the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be Infallibly true.

"As for the rest of what you wrote, as I've mentioned before, philosophy is my profession. I don't need a lesson in basic logic.

You do if you don't understand that much.

Wait a minute--we're not talking about justificationism. we're talking about justification. Deduction is a kind of justification. Based on the stuff you wrote about deduction it seems you could be forced to agree.

I believe I addressed this earlier. Now you're claiming that deduction is a "kind of" justification. That is wrong. The real problem is that the assumption of the truth of a statement cannot justify anything. If you have to assume the truth of your premises in order to justify your conclusion, then you might as well assume the conclusion itself. Deductive arguments entail their conclusions and inductive arguments do not. And entailment, I agree, is crucial. But entailment is not enough for justification. It pertains, instead, to validity, or formal implication, which is an entirely different thing. A valid deductive argument entails its conclusion. But it cannot justify its conclusion unless we are certain that its premises are true. Can our belief that the conclusion of an inductive argument is false ever force us to question the truth of its premises? The answer is ‘No’. Inductive arguments are one and all invalid. The falsity of their conclusions is entirely consistent with the truth of their premises. And this means that inductive arguments, unlike their deductive counterparts, could not justify their conclusions even if we were certain that their premises were true.

Deductive arguments force us to choose between the truth of their conclusions and the falsity of (one or more) of their premises. Inductive arguments do not. This, in and of itself, does not show that anything is true or false. But if an argument is deductively valid, then we simply cannot, without contradicting ourselves, deny its conclusion unless we also deny (one or more of) its premises. In this way, deductive arguments enable us to exercise critical control over our scientific debates.

Justification should never be our primary concern. It's always secondary. The logical conclusion of a deductively valid argument, is the evidence for the justification. A justification is an explanation that defends an argument. If that defense points to a logical conclusion then you have your justification. However, nothing justifies itself for it's own sake. And yes...even Popper would agree that a deductively valid argument provides a justfication or explanation for why the argument is valid. An appeal to authority however is not deductively valid. And foundationalism does that in spades.

 

[Adagio]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

"More broadly" is often a spin-euphemism for in violation of the rules of reason.

If atheism incorporates a belief in souls and before/after -life, then it is a religion.

If it does not, then it is not.

My understanding of atheism is that it's really just a rejection of the existence of God .. but there indeed could be more to it than that: Atheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That wasn't a quote by that you used. It was from another poster that I quoted. However atheism is simply the non-belief in dieties of any sort. I don't know any atheists that claim "belief" as part of their world view.

 

[Adagio]

As I said before, if there is a set of beliefs to which one firmly believes, it is a religion, with or without the inclusion of a higher power. (Wiki is not the best source for definitions)

That's a pretty loose definition of religion. However since atheism doesn't incorporate a belief system it's not going to qualify under that definition. I'm not using Wiki to respond to this. This is pretty fundamental. I do see where you are going though. A set of firm beliefs may share some aspects of a religion, however that wouldn't make them a religion. I have no firmly held beliefs in anything. Beliefs must be justified by an appeal to an authority of some kind (usually the source of the belief in question) and this justification by an appropriate authority makes the belief either rational, or if not rational, at least valid for the person who holds it. However this is a requirement that can never be adequetly met due to the problem of validation or the dilemma of infinite regress vs. dogmatism.”

 

[Adagio]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

Most of your assertions here are absolutely false.

:roll: Yes of course. Why would I expect any other response.

Religion is defined by the presence of both a belief in souls and a belief in before/after -life. Without these two, whatever you're talking about is not a religion

According to who's definition? Yours? Religion:noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe

4.A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
5. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion

I've looked for a definition that corresponds to what you said. I dont find it. Basically you're building your argument around a definition to fit your idea. It's an inductive reasoning effort, and if fails. It's the same thing that any idealogue might do. The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you’ve looked at any of the evidence. You’ve got to mold the evidence to give you the answer that you’ve already decided you have to have. So you redefine religion to fit your ideological leanings.

Since the atheism - theism scale is only about God or the lack thereof, maybe with an agnostic center, it doesn't explicitly or implicitly speak about souls or before/after -life. Thus I most certainly did not give a religious response in talking about God.

Of course you did. Several times. "This is how God's existence gives life meaning.",

I would like to hear others present how they experienced God's existence to give life meaning.

,

"Without that from God, those completely on their own are merely and truly simply a lost mind in a sea of confusion".

Attempting to redefine Religion to suit your ill-defined purpose, while at the same time talking about God is nothing but an attempt at obscurantism.

Also, you are reading in "theism" when it could have been pantheistic, panentheistic, a number of ways of describing God's existence, none of which are an explicit or implicit reference to religion, obviously.

I'm very familiar with Pantheism and if that's where you're going, then we probably don't have an argument. I'm far more pantheistic than anything else. Nature works it's way's. That's really all that matters to me.

Whether people here "reject that premise", as you say, is irrelevant, as the topic of the thread is how God's existence gives life meaning. That some who are atheists reject that premise is, though understandable, does not at all mean the premise isn't true.

The problem is that you haven't given any reason to accept the premise. You haven't demonstrated why it should be. For one thing, you haven't defined God. What do you mean by God? What is the reference point you're using?

And your statement that I've told people they hate God is a blatantly false statement, as I never said anyone here hates "God". Those who posted in a way that revealed their obvious hatred for religion, I simply reflected the fact of that back to them and asked them why they hated religion.

No it isn't a false statement. Observe: "You've made it clear in all your responses to me that you hate religion, maybe a specific religion or religion in general". and this, "You've posted clear examples of that hatred, and you've said so in so many ways." and this: "So instead of denying that you hate religion", these are absurd charactorizations on your part. It's also a pathetic baiting tactic which doesn't serve your argument well. When you use "loaded language" by asking "why do they hate religion" you are assuming the truth of your question. It's an very obvious debate techique that is like asking a person that you disagree with over politics, "Why do you hate America?" It's a weak and very obvious question begging epithet. The fallacy is committed either when an arguer attempts to use loaded words in place of an argument, or when an arguee makes an evaluation based on the colorful language in which an argument is clothed, rather than on the merits of the argument itself.

God and religion are, obviouslly, not the same thing.

All religion is based on authority and that authority is God. We have one person here saying that a deeply held belief IS in fact a Religion and that includes philosophy, and even atheism. ( I would disagree with that...and did) That would mean that a deeply held belief in God IS a religion. And according to a dictionary definition that would be true. Perhaps you differ with him on that. You differ with the dictionary. But I would also ask where the concept of a soul or afterlife comes from? In fact..where does a concept of God come from? What is the authority for that?

Better and to the point would be for you to state whether you believe in God or you don't, and if you do, then tell how God's existence gives life meaning for you.

Define what you mean by God, and I'll tell you. I can tell you that I don't require a supernatural being to provide meaning to my life.

Attacking others and their accurate statements, as you have done here, is simply off-topic .. and the [W: 192] at the end of this thread's title makes it clear that the powers that be want this thread to stay on-topic.

There is no personal attack on you. Your statements aren't accurate, and that's where the debate is. There is nothing off topic about that.

 

[marywollstonecraft]

I think the point is that there is meaning, and it is left to us (curious beings that we are) to explain the existence of meaning. One might be inclined to separate something like linguistic meaning from the "meaning of life," but it seems there are some similarities in the two concepts--similar enough to make it plausible to suggest that if there is the first kind of meaning, there probably is the second kind. Now...I don't think this is a knock-down argument by any means. But I think it does need to be dealt with fairly.

I don't think it really matters. we make our own meaning from life. of course, that meaning is influenced by experiential factors, including culture and sets of religious beliefs we may grow up with/adopt ... but essentially, we make our own meaning of life, the universe etc.

 

[afr0byte]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

You're apparently misperceiving what he said, as your reply here doesn't make sense in light of the exchange he and I had.

No, but it makes sense in the light of the exchange he an I had, on this thread, about your claims.

Again, you missed the point of logic I made when I presented that agreeing or disagreeing with a statement in no way determines its accuracy.

No matter how many people disagree with a statement in no way validates the statement as false.

I never said such a thing. I implied that you can't take for granted that people will blindly accept your premise. Just because you think it's true also DOESN'T make it true, either. That's the point.
You often beg the question.

Spirtuality and religion are, again, two different things, and that is why I don't want to misuse words.

That should be .. obvious.

By my definition, and the dictionary definition that Adagio posted (so, THE definition), it was religious. My point with the spiritual comment was that your post about God at the very least wasn't secular, which is what most people expect when someone says a post isn't religious, obviously.

Clearly you're simply being argumentative, about absolute nothings, merely defiantly taking opposition with whatever I state simply for the sake of doing so.

Quite telling .. obviously.

No, this is a debate forum. It's pretty normal for people to call people out on what they've said. THAT should be obvious.

 

[Ontologuy]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

Most of your assertions here are absolutely false. :roll: Yes of course. Why would I expect any other response. According to who's definition? Yours? Religion:noun 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. 2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion. 3. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe 4.A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.5. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion I've looked for a definition that corresponds to what you said. I dont find it. Basically you're building your argument around a definition to fit your idea. It's an inductive reasoning effort, and if fails. It's the same thing that any idealogue might do. The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you’ve looked at any of the evidence. You’ve got to mold the evidence to give you the answer that you’ve already decided you have to have. So you redefine religion to fit your ideological leanings. Of course you did. Several times. "This is how God's existence gives life meaning.", , Attempting to redefine Religion to suit your ill-defined purpose, while at the same time talking about God is nothing but an attempt at obscurantism. I'm very familiar with Pantheism and if that's where you're going, then we probably don't have an argument. I'm far more pantheistic than anything else. Nature works it's way's. That's really all that matters to me. The problem is that you haven't given any reason to accept the premise. You haven't demonstrated why it should be. For one thing, you haven't defined God. What do you mean by God? What is the reference point you're using? No it isn't a false statement. Observe: "You've made it clear in all your responses to me that you hate religion, maybe a specific religion or religion in general". and this, "You've posted clear examples of that hatred, and you've said so in so many ways." and this: "So instead of denying that you hate religion", these are absurd charactorizations on your part. It's also a pathetic baiting tactic which doesn't serve your argument well. When you use "loaded language" by asking "why do they hate religion" you are assuming the truth of your question. It's an very obvious debate techique that is like asking a person that you disagree with over politics, "Why do you hate America?" It's a weak and very obvious question begging epithet. The fallacy is committed either when an arguer attempts to use loaded words in place of an argument, or when an arguee makes an evaluation based on the colorful language in which an argument is clothed, rather than on the merits of the argument itself. All religion is based on authority and that authority is God. We have one person here saying that a deeply held belief IS in fact a Religion and that includes philosophy, and even atheism. ( I would disagree with that...and did) That would mean that a deeply held belief in God IS a religion. And according to a dictionary definition that would be true. Perhaps you differ with him on that. You differ with the dictionary. But I would also ask where the concept of a soul or afterlife comes from? In fact..where does a concept of God come from? What is the authority for that? Define what you mean by God, and I'll tell you. I can tell you that I don't require a supernatural being to provide meaning to my life. There is no personal attack on you. Your statements aren't accurate, and that's where the debate is. There is nothing off topic about that.

Okay .. you're an atheist.

Your tendency to be defiantly oppositional to anything that's remotely related to God is obvious.

That you clearly have "issues" with religion is also obvious.

My guess is that you've experienced attack from various sources in your life regarding your atheism.

Quoting a dictionary reference to all the ways the word religion is used is simply not definitive.

Reality remains that I read in the late seventies where at that time all of the worlds religions gathered in a regular-recurring conference to, among other things that particular conference, create a truly definitive criteria of the word "religion". They concluded, unanimously, that to be a religion, a philosophy/belief-system must incorporate both of the tenets of a belief in souls and a belief in before and/or after -life. A tenet of God was simply not required to make a religion a religion.

And, that makes perfect sense .. or else the U.S. would be governed by a religion because we print "In God We Trust" on our money, an absurd notion.

Now .. you've posted that God's existence doesn't give you the experience of meaning.

The fact that you must keep arguing and arguing on the matter makes me think you're experiencing insecurity about your "position".

 

[Ontologuy]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

No, but it makes sense in the light of the exchange he an I had, on this thread, about your claims. I never said such a thing. I implied that you can't take for granted that people will blindly accept your premise. Just because you think it's true also DOESN'T make it true, either. That's the point. You often beg the question. By my definition, and the dictionary definition that Adagio posted (so, THE definition), it was religious. My point with the spiritual comment was that your post about God at the very least wasn't secular, which is what most people expect when someone says a post isn't religious, obviously. No, this is a debate forum. It's pretty normal for people to call people out on what they've said. THAT should be obvious.

Like Adagio, you continue to be argumentative over absolute nothings and contentions that are non-existent .. and I get the impression I'm standing in for others in your past.

You've admitted you're an atheist.

Okay .. I wouldn't expect you to find meaning in God's existence. I'm fine with that.

But you keep harping on things in a way that makes me wonder if you too have been harassed by people in your past for being an atheist and that you're a bit insecure about your atheism.

 

[afr0byte]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

Like Adagio, you continue to be argumentative over absolute nothings and contentions that are non-existent .. and I get the impression I'm standing in for others in your past.

You've admitted you're an atheist.

Okay .. I wouldn't expect you to find meaning in God's existence. I'm fine with that.

But you keep harping on things in a way that makes me wonder if you too have been harassed by people in your past for being an atheist and that you're a bit insecure about your atheism.

I guess you obviously don't care to debate. No, I've never been harassed for being an atheist. I don't live anywhere that's particularly religious. It seems like you're trying to use that claim as a defense mechanism, obviously. As far as meaning in God's existence. We haven't established that a God exists, so of course I don't find meaning in something that doesn't exist (afaict).

 

[Ontologuy]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

I guess you obviously don't care to debate.

There's nothing to debate .. as your insecurities about your atheistic position are simply obvious.

No, I've never been harassed for being an atheist. I don't live anywhere that's particularly religious.

Well something from your past must have butted heads with you regarding your atheism, or else you wouldn't be so obviously defensive about it.

Please be genuine and explain what it was.

It seems like you're trying to use that claim as a defense mechanism, obviously.

You are projecting, obviously. :lol:

Seriously, I don't care if you're an atheist.

Yet you take exception to my experience of God giving life meaning.

Please tell me why you take such an exception to my experience that God gives life meaning.

As far as meaning in God's existence. We haven't established that a God exists, so of course I don't find meaning in something that doesn't exist (afaict).

"We" can't establish that God does or doesn't exist.

I experience that God exists and gives life meaning.

You, on the other hand, deny the existence of God in atheistic fashion.

Thus, you and me, "we", will never be able to "establish" anything in the matter -- we will simply continue to disagree. Does that not make sense?

You seem to think that the human mind can make that establishment.

It can't.

Discerning the existence of God comes from the human heart, not the human mind.

 

[afr0byte]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

And, that makes perfect sense .. or else the U.S. would be governed by a religion because we print "In God We Trust" on our money, an absurd notion.

That doesn't logically follow that acknowledging the religious nature of most of the country would require use be governed by religion. It was a group of Christians that originally wanted statements about God on our coins, btw: Congressional Serial Set - Google Books.

The fact that you must keep arguing and arguing on the matter makes me think you're experiencing insecurity about your "position".

He's arguing because he disagrees with you. You apparently choose an ad hominem as a defense, though.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

I don't think it really matters. we make our own meaning from life. of course, that meaning is influenced by experiential factors, including culture and sets of religious beliefs we may grow up with/adopt ... but essentially, we make our own meaning of life, the universe etc.

I think there are two distinct questions to be asked here. The first has to do with specific meaning, and it seems to me your reply deals adequately with that. By "specific meaning," I, er, mean the specific meanings that words, symbols, etc. take on. It's obvious that we could have used a different word to mean what "tree" means, and also that the word "tree" could have meant something else, or might not even have existed at all (though, see F. Saussure and C.S. Peirce for some interesting observations on this--the case isn't quite so simple).

I'm not sure your reply is adequate to handle the question of general meaning, which I would take to be: why is there meaning at all? There clearly is. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that must necessarily exist. It also doesn't seem to be inherent in nature. So where does it come from in the first place?

That question is not so easy to answer, and it leads to a lot of very weird speculation by philosophers and cognitive scientists who have tackled it. You may have heard of the "hard problem" of consciousness, which was popularized largely by David Chalmers. The general problem of meaning, often thought to be equivalent to the problem of intension, is just as hard as the hard problem. That is to say, no one even knows what a naturalistic solution would look like. We don't have any idea how to even begin thinking about how to think about it.

 

[afr0byte]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

There's nothing to debate .. as your insecurities about your atheistic position are simply obvious.

Obvious defense mechanism.

Well something from your past must have butted heads with you regarding your atheism, or else you wouldn't be so obviously defensive about it.

Please be genuine and explain what it was.

No, there's nothing in my past. I am being genuine. Otherwise I wouldn't have said there's nothing in my past before.

Yet you take exception to my experience of God giving life meaning.

No I've never taken exception to God giving your life meaning. I took exception to you trying to redefine that belief as something non-religious. Obviously that's why we've been talking about it.

"We" can't establish that God does or doesn't exist.

I experience that God exists and gives life meaning.

Discerning the existence of God comes from the human heart, not the human mind.

Thus you've proved that you're being religious (which isn't a bad thing, necessarily), at least from an objective/outsiders perspective.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

The circular reasoning fallacy will always come up when infinite regress takes place.

That seems implausible. How would you argue for such a point?

There is no way of stopping that without an appeal to authority which is circular reasoning.

You keep saying this, but it seems false. At this point, I think it's up to you to provide some kind of convincing reason to believe that the only kind of proposition capable of stopping an infinite regress is an appeal to authority.

I know. You're describing a closed system.

You'll have to clarify here. This makes little sense to me. I was talking about the entailment principle, which just goes:

(x)(Kxa->Bxa)

That is, for all x, if a knows x, a believes x.

However, some theorists deny that knowledge is closed under entailment, and the issue remains controversial.

You seem to be talking about closure under entailment. That would be stated:

(x)((Kxa & (x=>y))->Kya)

That is, for all x and y, if a knows x and x entails y, a knows y.

Contrast these two principles. They're not the same at all.

I think the closure principle is pretty obviously false. But it's also obviously got nothing to do with what I was talking about.

But this bit is interesting:

Since knowledge entails belief , we fail to know q. A less obvious worry is that we might reason badly in coming to believe that p entails q...

You've been arguing this whole time that knowledge is not the same thing as belief. I'm curious what account you would give of entailment that does not rely on particular or general identity. I assume you read what you copied from the SEP before posting it...

Do you think that a theory is accepted simply without relentless never ending testing?

Of course. We accept some theories now that were formulated at a finite time in the past. Therefore, we accept theories without "never ending" testing.

But this is beside the point at hand.The topic of discussion was that I know relativity theory is true, and also I believe relativity theory is true. I'm convinced it's correct, which is another way of saying I believe it's correct. What has your question got to do with that?

I think we have a different view on belief in a theory and accepting a theory conditionally. When you believe something, do you entertain the possibility that you could be wrong? Or do you believe it dogmatically? Can your own beliefs be changed by new knowledge? If your own beliefs come into conflict with the truth...which do you accept? The truth, or do you hold to a belief demonstrated as false?

It depends. I can think of a few beliefs that I would never change, under any circumstances. But those beliefs are a very small set. Most of my beliefs are open to revision.

And I reject the premise that knowledge entails belief for reasons stated above.

What reasons are those? I've seen no argument that the entailment principle is false.

You think it odd and "obviously" false? Why? Explain. What is the religion based on? What is the authority of the religion and how does it avoid circular reasoning to justify itself? I don't think it's odd, nor is it obviously false. Explain to me why you think it is.

Here's what you wrote:

Religions are closed systems requiring belief. They require the suspension of disbelief. They don't require justification and are all authoritarian. The belief is based on itself as it's own authority. So religions are examples of circular reasoning.

There are five claims being made. All suffer from a lack of clarity, though I think I more or less get what's being said. Here the claims are separately stated, along with my comments:

1. Religions are closed systems requiring belief.

Not all religions are closed systems; indeed, very few are. Also, many religions require belief only in a limited and uninteresting sense. The Buddha, for instance, instructed his disciples to never trust anything he said and subject it to skeptical doubt, only accepting once the disciple had justified in his/her own experience the truth of the principle.

But more importantly, it doesn't seem right to say that religions require belief. I'm not even sure what this would mean. Some demand belief, but this isn't the same thing. Just as critically, however, many people come to believe in a particular religion, without any recognizable attempts at brainwashing, or etc.

2. They (i.e. religions) require the suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is a phrase associated with how we read fiction--we know it's fiction, but we allow ourselves to ignore that point so that we can be affected emotionally. I seriously doubt that very many religionists know or believe their religion is a fiction. Therefore, there cannot be a suspension of disbelief.

3. They don't require justification and are all authoritarian.

I think this probably means that religions fail proper justificatory tests. If they don't require justification, then their claims are basic. In any case, you'll have to state what justificatory tests are supposed to be relevant here, before I can comment further.

Not all religions are authoritarian. In fact, most are not.

4. The belief is based on itself as it's own authority.[/quote]

Again, simply not true. How would a belief be an authority, anyway?

5. So religions are examples of circular reasoning.

While it's true that most religions have some reasoned component, this is typically not the core of the religion. So because they are not examples of reasoning, a fortiori they can hardly be examples of circular reasoning.

It's an example of inductive reasoning.

If you're talking about either the asteroid or the balls in the urn example, no, that's not inductive reasoning, except in the loose sense that I know by experience that there are things like asteroids, balls, urns, etc.

Who says it's true? Then you say it doesn't matter if it can't be demonstrated because that doesn't change the "fact" that it's true. So I'm supposed to accept your premise that without any conceivable way to testing that, the inference that it's true...makes it true? Seriously? There are Pink Unicorns on Venus. It's true, it's just a wild guess on my part and it can't be demonstrated as true, but it's true anyway. As a thought experiment, it falls on its face.

I'm afraid you continue to miss the point. No one, least of all me, is claiming that there is an actual room somewhere with a guy and five balls in an urn. There may or may not be. I'm saying, suppose that plus a few other things were true. What would follow from that?

Again, this is just an example of reasoning that people use to good effect every day. If I go to the store right now, I could buy a can of soup. That's true, regardless of whether I actually go to the store or not. If I punch a large granite boulder, I'll hurt my hand. That's true, regardless of whether I actually punch a large granite boulder. If it is raining, the street is probably wet. That's true, regardless of whether it's raining or not. If something is a triangle, it has four sides. That's false, in all cases, since if the antecedent is true, the consequent is false.

Pull down your basic logic textbook and open it up to the section where conditionals (aka material implication) are introduced. Take a careful look at the truth table. A conditional is true on any line where the antecedent is false, regardless of whether the consequent is true or false. The only time a conditional is false, is when the antecedent is true, and the consequent false.

In the ball/urn example, that's exactly what we have. The antecedent is true, and the conclusion false. That's the point--the man doesn't have knowledge, even though he does have a true belief.

You can't simply stipulate something absurd and expect it to be an arguing point.

So long as it forms the antecedent of a conditional statement, sure I can. Why can't I? Not only can I do so, I can do so with logical force. So can you. So can anybody.

I think I've already explained this before but a wild guess is not knowledge of anything whether you hit the mark or not.

OK--I'm not arguing otherwise. In fact, I'm arguing that it's not knowledge. In other words, I agree with the above quoted statement. That's the point of the examples I've been giving, where, if you notice, someone makes a wild guess, which they believe, that happens to be correct, but it doesn't count as an instance of knowledge.

The problem you involve yourself in by admitting this is that your options are pretty limited now for trying to avoid the necessity of justification in some broad sense. You could unveil some brand new definition of knowledge that has nothing to do with true belief, but I doubt you'll get very far with it. If you lack a fully-formed and well-thought-out alternate definition of knowledge, then you are forced to accept justification in some broad sense...unless you'd like to just be inconsistent.

He has a lucky guess and that doesn't translate into Truth regardless of any belief.

I don't think you understand some of that stuff you posted earlier in the thread about validity, truth, and soundness.

Here's the proposition under question:

"There are five balls in the urn."

The only thing that's relevant to whether that's true or false is whether there are five balls in the urn, or not. If there are, it's true, regardless of whether someone believes there are or not.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I could look into an urn and see that there are five balls inside it. And of course I have obtained knowledge that there are 5 balls. I can count them. There is no wild guess or anything popping into my head to tell me that prior to counting them. What's your point?

I'm curious whether you're actually this unfamiliar with what are usually called in the vernacular "hypothetical situations." Your replies so far are so widely off the mark I'm starting to become pessimistic that you'll ever come to understand the point, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with it. The objections you raise don't make any sense at all.

Having a true belief, does not make the belief true.

There's no quantifier here, and so no scope boundaries to transgress. The definition of "true belief" is a belief, expressed as a proposition, which is true.
Again, the belief "there are five balls in the urn" is true just in case there are five balls in the urn.

If his true belief is an accurate representation of the Truth then he could do it consistantly.

You're confusing something like natural law or some ongoing hidden variable with what's important about the example. I posit no factor of any kind that guarantees the man's guesses would be right. The example needs only that one particular guess, which the man happens to believe, is correct.

Ernest Sosa likes to give examples in terms of archery. Imagine an archery contest in which two contestants, Jane and Thomas, are down to the final shot. Jane is ahead on points, so she only needs to hit the target. If she does, Thomas will need a bullseye to win. He's tired and knows he cannot do it. Jane hits the target. Frustrated, Thomas nocks an arrow and fires carelessly, not even aiming at the target. Just as he does so, a gust of wind happens to blow by and the arrow, which otherwise would have missed the target by ten feet, happens, by a huge stroke of luck, to hit the bullseye. Thomas wins. But is his win deserved? That is, is his win due to his skill, or just an incredible stroke of luck?

Obviously, the latter. Out of a thousand similar situations, it is unlikely that Thomas would have hit the bullseye. The point of this example is to show that we value skill. It's not enough, in our assessment of the two archers, that Thomas' arrow hit the target. Even though he wins the contest, we're inclined to think Jane is more adroit.
Similarly, the guy who makes a wild guess, and who comes to believe that guess, does not have knowledge. It takes something else to give him that, and most philosophers think of that something else as akin to justification.

You're creating a series of hypothetical situations to force fit a justification for foundationalism.

Not really. I am creating some hypothetical situations to show that it's hard to avoid at least the general argument for foundationalism. I don't think it's possible to create a hypothetical situation to "force fit" anything, however.

I would make no sense of him saying anything. What if he guessed there were 5 balls and there turned out to be 6. Then he'd be wrong, and no matter what his true belief was it wouldn't change the fact that he was wrong. Most likely he'd say..wow. Lucky guess. Maybe I can to the same thing with the Lottery.

Why is any of that relevant? I'm talking about the situation after he observes there are five balls.

A Moorean assertion is any assertion of the form "P, and I do not believe P."

Since we cannot know what is false, to make a knowledge claim entails a truth claim. If I know, for instance, that it's raining outside, I'm saying it's true that it's raining outside.

So when the man says (again, after he has looked to see there are five balls in the urn) "I know there are five balls in the urn, but I just don't believe it!" he's making an unintelligible statement. Knowledge entails belief.

That is demonstrably factual knowledge. Belief is not required.

Of course it is. Again, consider the Moorean assertion once he has acquired this "demonstrably factual" knowledge.

True or otherwise. I see a glass on a table. I don't have to suspend disbelief. Faith doesn't enter into it.

Who said anything about faith? I suppose in some pedestrian sense, I have faith in what I see. But it need not be religious faith.

Dispositional and occurrent belief concerns the contextual activation of the belief into thoughts (reactive of propositions) or ideas (based on the belief's premise). Once again your are appealing to foundationalist thinking. The belief is based on a premise yet to be determined as true.

I'm curious how the bolded bit follows, in any way, from the italicized bit. You seem to be going to the SEP, or in this case, wikipedia, and copying and pasting bits of text that look relevant, without taking the time to understand them.

You seem to be deriving all of this from this: "In a notion derived from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as "justified true belief". The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true. That is straight out of Wikipedia.

I do not use wikipedia as a source for anything other than old movie quotes or other such topic.

The JTB account is usually traced to Plato; I have read both the Theatetus (and the Meno) in which the JTB account is developed. However, up until 1963, the JTB account was the standard account of knowledge. It's still thought that it's broadly correct, though we must obviously, post Gettier, tweak what "justification" means.

I don't know if you're using that as your source, but it wouldn't be the first time I disagreed with Plato. I think the Republic gives evidence that he was a bit of a crank.

Wait a minute...so the fact that you don't like his social and political philosophy means you not only disagree with his account of knowledge, but also with any other philosopher who holds some similar idea, regardless of how they might arrive at those ideas? That seems unduly harsh.

There is no maybe about it. If the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be Infallibly true.

Prove it.

I believe I addressed this earlier. Now you're claiming that deduction is a "kind of" justification. That is wrong. The real problem is that the assumption of the truth of a statement cannot justify anything.

This seems to be a non-sequitur.

I'm curious: what do you think justification--not justificationism--is? Do you think it's something other than a process whereby we come to have good reason to take a proposition as true?

Justification should never be our primary concern. It's always secondary. The logical conclusion of a deductively valid argument, is the evidence for the justification. A justification is an explanation that defends an argument.

Given that you think this, I have a hard time understanding why you think deduction isn't a kind of justification. If I post a deductively valid argument, such as:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

and I'm asked to defend it, all I will do is detail why the logical structure preserves truth from premises to conclusions. But this is doing nothing other than explicating the deduction itself. The deduction from the premises to the conclusion is a de facto justification of the conclusion. The same can be said for all other sound deductive arguments.

 

[marywollstonecraft]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

I think there are two distinct questions to be asked here. The first has to do with specific meaning, and it seems to me your reply deals adequately with that. By "specific meaning," I, er, mean the specific meanings that words, symbols, etc. take on. It's obvious that we could have used a different word to mean what "tree" means, and also that the word "tree" could have meant something else, or might not even have existed at all (though, see F. Saussure and C.S. Peirce for some interesting observations on this--the case isn't quite so simple).

interesting you refer to trees. how do we define what a particular thing should be classified as/described as? I grew up knowing there was something called a palm tree, but scientifically, it is not a tree. in at least one language I know of, a palm tree isn't a tree either.... why? what is it about that culture that gives it a different meaning?

Also, we know the sky is blue, but why is it described as "bronze" in homer? why is there no blue in a number of languages when it clearly DOES occur in nature? how does our culture shape the meaning we ascribe to things, and how does that shape our thoughts and influence what we think is "meaningful" in our lives?

Is what I consider "meaningful" the same as what a male of the same vintage and cultural background would consider to be so? Is it the same as a younger woman from the same background? Is it the same for me now as it was twenty years ago?

All I know is that while there may be some common threads and there will be aspects that are constant, the twists and turns life takes causes you to re evaluate some things ....

I'm not sure your reply is adequate to handle the question of general meaning, which I would take to be: why is there meaning at all? There clearly is. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that must necessarily exist. It also doesn't seem to be inherent in nature. So where does it come from in the first place?

That question is not so easy to answer, and it leads to a lot of very weird speculation by philosophers and cognitive scientists who have tackled it. You may have heard of the "hard problem" of consciousness, which was popularized largely by David Chalmers. The general problem of meaning, often thought to be equivalent to the problem of intension, is just as hard as the hard problem. That is to say, no one even knows what a naturalistic solution would look like. We don't have any idea how to even begin thinking about how to think about it.

I used to think about that but eventually I decided it didn't really matter. I just realized that I could never know the answer.

maybe I just became more shallow as I became older, but I really don't feel that letting go of trying to understand the impossible has taken meaning from my life, or made me less of a person.

 

[Adagio]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

Okay .. you're an atheist.

Ok. I'm an atheist.

Your tendency to be defiantly oppositional to anything that's remotely related to God is obvious.

Clearly you read only your own posts and not those of others. I've been more than clear on my opposition to foundationalism in any form throughout this thread. I don't pick on God. It's foundationalism itself that I have opposition to.

That you clearly have "issues" with religion is also obvious.

Yes. Once again they are all foundationalist. Having studied your encyclopedia or world religions yourself, as I have, you should know that.

My guess is that you've experienced attack from various sources in your life regarding your atheism.

Beep! You guessed wrong. I pay no attention to the belief systems of others unless they attempt to impose those beliefs through legislative means.

Quoting a dictionary reference to all the ways the word religion is used is simply not definitive.

And so you make up your own definition of the word to suit your theories? I'm afraid that doesn't work when you simply redefine a word to skirt the issue. There is no definiation from any reliable source that defines it as you do. Defining terms is essential to a meaningful debate. So we use a common and accepted source, which I have done.

Reality remains that I read in the late seventies where at that time all of the worlds religions gathered in a regular-recurring conference to, among other things that particular conference, create a truly definitive criteria of the word "religion". They concluded, unanimously, that to be a religion, a philosophy/belief-system must incorporate both of the tenets of a belief in souls and a belief in before and/or after -life. A tenet of God was simply not required to make a religion a religion.

Try telling that to a Shiite Muslim. Or did they miss the meeting? Almost sounds like the Council of Nicea. So they all wanted to come up with a criteria as the basis for the word Religion? And who made up this world conference of theists? What religions were represented that all shared this same view unanamously? There is a problem in your criteria. I"m not sure which is more important to you Truth, or your beliefs. For me truth is a priority.

Truth is demonstrable” logically entails that “truth is not determined by humans”. If you hold that “humans decide about the truth” then you can’t hold that “truth is demonstrable.” These are mutually contradictory ways of viewing the world. To make it clearer we could instead say, “truth is determined by human judgment” or “truth is determined unequivocally by demonstration.” Not only are these two ideas incompatible, as truth is a value we as humans place on certain ideas or viewpoints, it makes no sense to say it can be determined by demonstration. It is determined by humans.

It certainly might be helpful to discuss how we made a particular value judgement. We might discuss certain consequences of holding or not holding the value. However as it is a value, it is determined by human judgement, not any particular demonstration. So there can be no basis or criteria or standard. Otherwise that would be to remove the human element from this. Truth is determined by humans, not criteria or standards or bases. Moreover, a criteria cannot be its own criteria. Again, it is an issue of responsibility. Even assuming you have a criteria you think is adequate, how did you determine that? Are you responsible for that judgement, or is the criteria responsible? Merely claiming a standard or a criteria or a basis does not help one to demonstrate the truth of values. Instead, it creates a certain amount of hypocrisy. If we claim a basis gives us truth, we then are making the implicit claim that truth requires bases. But then it is plainly obvious our own basis lacks a basis, as it cannot be its own basis. By claiming truth must be demonstrated by bases we undermine our own moral integrity. A similar case might be made for the Christian who says that miracles support his faith in God. Is that not hypocritical? After all, faith is faith. It does not require proof. Similarly, from a Christian perspective, if a person is “good” because he wants to go to heaven, is he not being “bad” as he is pursuing selfish ends. While I think that one can be willing to question “humans have values”, and therefore hold the position non-dogmatically, I don’t think that the notion that “humans have values” is logically compatible with “values are determined by demonstrations.” And that is exactly what your clerics were attempting to do. They were looking to demonstrate Religion as a value that they imposed upon it without ever demonstrating the value as universally true. And considering that they were dealing with a metaphysical belief, they are once again looking toward a foundation to support that belief. So what supports the foundation?

And, that makes perfect sense .. or else the U.S. would be governed by a religion because we print "In God We Trust" on our money, an absurd notion.

And this makes sense to you? :roll: The one thing has nothing to do with the other. The National Reform Association whose primary mission was to amend the Constitution of the United States to "declare the nation's allegiance to Jesus Christ," to "indicate that this is a Christian nation," and to "undeniably" put the "legal basis" of the land on "Christian laws, institutions and usages." the Association formally petitioned Congress to amend the Preamble of the Constitution so as to read:

"We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves, our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Fortunately, the "Christian amendment" never succeeded in obtaining either approval of Congress or any state. the National Reform Association continued its efforts into the 20th century when it still had registered lobbyists up to the late '50s. The NRA attracted eminent men into its ranks in 1863; a Supreme Court Justice [Strong], a couple of Pennsylvania governors [Geary and Pollock], Harvey of Kansas, Stewart of Vermont and the Commissioner of Public Schools of Rhode Island to name a few.

Pollock, who became Director of the Mint, figures largely in placing the motto "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins. What those who advocated the "Christian amendment" could not do overtly with the support of the electorate, was accomplished covertly, through the determination of one of their members.

Since the Act of 1837 proscribed any mottoes other than those enacted, Pollock and his pals slipped in a seemingly innocuous amendment to the Act in the form of "An Act in Amendment of an Act entitled, 'An Act Relating to Foreign Coins and the Coinage of Cents at the Mint of the United States,' approved February twenty-one, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven," was passed by Congress on April 22, 1864.

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of American in Congress assembled, that, from and after the passage of this act, the standard weight of the cent coined at the mint of the United States shall be forty-eight grains, or one tenth of one ounce troy; and said cent shall be composed of ninety-five per centum of tin and zinc, in such proportions as shall be determined by the director of the mint; and there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the mint a two-cent piece of the same composition, the standard weight of which shall be ninety-six grains, or one fifth of one ounce troy, with no greater deviation than four grains to each piece of said cent and two-cent coins; and the shape, mottoes and devices of said coins shall be fixed by the director of the Mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury; and the laws now in force relating to the coinage of cents and providing for the purchase of material and prescribing the appropriate duties of the officers of the mint and the Secretary of the Treasury be, and the same are hereby, extended to the coinage provided for."

Pollock now had carte blanche to Christianize our coins. He minted 26+ million two-cent pieces with his motto. Next came "An Act to authorize the Coinage of Three-Cent pieces, and for other Purposes," passed by Congress on March 3, 1865, Section Five of that Act being:

And be it further enacted, That, in addition to the devices and legends upon the gold, silver, and other coines of the United States, it shall be lawful for the director of the mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, to cause the motto 'In God We Trust' to be placed upon such coins hereafter to be issued as shall admit of such legend thereon."

And there you have it.

Now .. you've posted that God's existence doesn't give you the experience of meaning. The fact that you must keep arguing and arguing on the matter makes me think you're experiencing insecurity about your "position".

I'm responding to your assertions. That's all. I think we've already determined that your thinking on these matters is grossly mistaken. I'm not the one that needs to defend a belief irrationally. That would be you. You're faced with the foundational problem of Infinite regress vs your dogma. I'm not. That's a black hole without an escape. In order to justify your belief you'll need to resort to circular reasoning and appeals to authority, and that authority is still going to need a basis. So, I think when it comes to insecurity, you'll need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

 

[Adagio]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

That seems implausible. How would you argue for such a point?

It's pretty easy. You teach philosophy don't you? Surely you've run into this problem.

You keep saying this, but it seems false. At this point, I think it's up to you to provide some kind of convincing reason to believe that the only kind of proposition capable of stopping an infinite regress is an appeal to authority.

I'm not sure why this confuses you at all. If you want to avoid infinite regress you must accept the authority of the foundation without any justification. You tell me that you teach philosophy at a major universisty, and you seem to not understand this? Foundationalism is a view about the structure of justification or knowledge. The foundationalist's thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. A little reflection suggests that the vast majority of the propositions we know or justifiably believe have that status only because we know or justifiably believe other different propositions. We can point to almost anything that we are aware of for an example. So, for example, I know or justifiably believe that Jesus was crucified, but only because I know or justifiably believe (among other things) that various historical texts describe the event. Arguably, my knowledge (justified belief) about Jesus death also depends on my knowing (justifiably believing) that the texts in question are reliable guides to the past. Foundationalists want to contrast my inferential knowledge (justified belief) about Jesus with a kind of knowledge (justified belief) that doesn't involve the having of other knowledge (justified belief).

But all of our knowledge of Jesus came to us through another source. Our knowledge of him is justified by the Bible. When did you first learn of the person Jesus? It didn't float into your head. When you were young you were told about him and every reference to him came from Biblical texts. So the Bible is what justifies Jesus existence. That becomes your theory of rationality which justifies Jesus existence. Imagine you have a theory of rationality.

How did you decide about this theory? As this is your meta-theory, it can not judge itself in terms of rationality. Any *positive* argument in regards to rationality cannot judge itself without creating a circular argument.

For example:

A: Why are you rational?

B: Because I listen to God.

A: How do you know that listening to God is rational.

B: Because God told me.

That’s circular.

A more complex but equally fallacious type of circular reasoning is to create a circular chain of reasoning like this one:

“God exists.”
“How do you know that God exists?”
“The Bible says so.”
“Why should I believe the Bible?”
“Because it’s the inspired word of God.”

It is a circular argument appealing to the authority of the very thing being used to justify itself. In order to avoid infinite regress the foundation MUST be it's own authority. I believe it...because I take it on its own authority. Appeals to authority are circular. The authority is being used to justify itself as its own authority based upon its own claim of being an authority.

Suppose I claim to be justified in believing that Fred will die shortly and offer as my evidence that Fred has an untreatable and serious form of cancer. Concerned, you ask me how I discovered that Fred has the cancer and I respond that it is just a hunch on my part. As soon as you discover that I have no reason at all to suppose that Fred has the cancer, you will immediately conclude that my whimsical belief about Fred's condition gives me no justification for believing that Fred will soon die. Generalizing, one might suggest the following principle:

To be justified in believing P on the basis of E one must be justified in believing E.

Now consider another example. Suppose I claim to be justified in believing that Fred will die shortly and offer as my justification that a certain line across his palm (his infamous “lifeline”) is short. Rightly skeptical, you wonder this time what reason I have for believing that palm lines have anything whatsoever to do with length of life. As soon as you become satisfied that I have no justification for supposing that there is any kind of probabilistic connection between the character of this line and Fred's life you will again reject my claim to have a justified belief about Fred's impending demise. That suggests that we might expand our Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ) to include a second clause:

Principle of Inferential Justification:
To be justified in believing P on the basis of E one must not only be (1) justified in believing E, but also (2) justified in believing that E makes probable P.

If all justification were inferential then for someone S to be justified in believing some proposition P, S must be in a position to legitimately infer it from some other proposition E1. But E1 could justify S in believing P only if S were justified in believing E1, and if all justification were inferential the only way for S to do that would be to infer it from some other proposition justifiably believed, E2, a proposition which in turn would have to be inferred from some other proposition E3 which is justifiably believed, and so on, ad infinitum.

In order to avoid the infinite regress, at some point the foundation must become its own authority, and that results in a circular argument for its own justification.

I hope this answers your question.

 

[Adagio]

Re: How does God(s)'s existence give life meaning?

That is, for all x, if a knows x, a believes x.

What justifies a's knowledge of x?

That is, for all x and y, if a knows x and x entails y, a knows y.

What you're describing here is a "given". That we know x as a given. The whole doctrine of the given is designed to end the regress of justification, to give us secure foundations for the rest of what we justifiably infer from the given. But to make sense of making inferences from the given the given must have a truth value. In order to accept your equation it is assumed that we know x. What justifies that knowledge in the first place? What is the authority that justifies our knowledge of x? The theory is flawed because it requires us to accept unjustied belief as its own justification. Since that is the point we are arguing over, I'm supposed to accept this without justification??:roll: Why would I do that?

I'm curious what account you would give of entailment that does not rely on particular or general identity

Give me an example of what your talking about.

Of course. We accept some theories now that were formulated at a finite time in the past. Therefore, we accept theories without "never ending" testing.

Then I'd say that your unfamiliar with science and how it works. If that were true, Einstein would never have questioned the physices from the past. All scientific theories are constantly challenged. How do you think we advance our knowledge? Orthodoxy is the enemy of knowledge. The only reason any theory is accepted today is because it hasn't yet been demonstrated as false. That doesn't mean that it won't be tomorrow. Science is not a closed system. It's open ended. Religions are examples of closed systems. They reason from the Top-down. They begin with a premise and then look for things that justify the premise as verification. Science doesn't work that way. It looks for things that falsify the premise. It only takes one valid contradictory statement to disprove a universal claim. And that is non-stop in the scientific community. Otherwise we may still be using leaches as a cure to illness.

The topic of discussion was that I know relativity theory is true, and also I believe relativity theory is true.

I know that 2+2=4. It doesn't require belief or faith. If somebody asks me to answer that problem, I don't say "I believe the answer is 4". I can demonstrate the truth of the equation. It's demonstrably true. I accept relativity and basic math until something can demonstrate that either of those things are false. You may "believe" this, but your belief isn't necessary to the truth of the equation. It's a secondary consideration and irrelevant to the truth of the matter.

It depends. I can think of a few beliefs that I would never change, under any circumstances. But those beliefs are a very small set. Most of my beliefs are open to revision.

Then if you can think of a few, and it's a small set...what are they? I asked you this: "If your own beliefs come into conflict with the truth...which do you accept? The truth, or do you hold to a belief demonstrated as false?" Are you telling me that you would hold to the belief in the face of contradicting evidence? You're describing dogmatism. I find that strange for a philosophy teacher, but you do seem to be dogmatic on your adherence to foundationalist concepts. I understand that most of your beliefs may be open to revision. Which ones aren't? I would charactorize myself as one who never cuts off an argument by resorting to faith, or irrational commitment to justify some belief that has been under severe critical fire; one who is committed, attached, addicted, to no position.

What reasons are those? I've seen no argument that the entailment principle is false.

I listed them. Did you not read what I posted? What your speaking of is the Epistemic Closure Principle. we can always enlarge our knowledge base by accepting things that are entailed by (or logically implied by) things we know. The set of things we know is closed under entailment (or under deduction or logical implication), which means that we know that a given claim is true upon recognizing, and accepting thereby, that it follows from what we know.

Here (again) are the problems:

The argument from the analysis of knowledge: given the correct analysis, knowledge is not closed, so it isn't. For example, if the correct analysis includes a tracking condition, then closure fails.

The argument from nonclosure of knowledge modes: since the modes of gaining, preserving or extending knowledge, such as perception, testimony, proof, memory, indication, and information are not individually closed, neither is knowledge.

The argument from unknowable (or not easily knowable) propositions: certain sorts of propositions cannot be known (without special measures); given closure, they could be known (without special measures), by deducing them from mundane claims we know, so knowledge is not closed.

The argument from skepticism: skepticism is false but it would be true if knowledge were closed, so knowledge is not closed.

Not all religions are closed systems; indeed, very few are.

The 3 major religions certainly are. I would regard buddhism more as a philosophy but I'm sure others would argue otherwise. Many types of Buddhism, for example, are effectively or explicitly a-theistic, either rejecting gods or simply not bothering with them in any fashion. Although Buddhism is perhaps the best known atheistic religion, there are others, such as Jainism and some mystical forms of Hinduism. Unlike most other religions, Chinese religion does not have a creator God. There is no God transcendent and separate from the world and there is no heaven outside of the universe to which human beings would want to go for refuge. I don't know of a religion that doesn't have some foundational structure or doctrine that serves as the authority or basis for itself. Can you give me an example of one?

But more importantly, it doesn't seem right to say that religions require belief. I'm not even sure what this would mean. Some demand belief, but this isn't the same thing. Just as critically, however, many people come to believe in a particular religion, without any recognizable attempts at brainwashing, or etc.

What religion doesn't require belief in it's doctrine? And what does brainwashing have to do with this? People can accept or reject religions for reasons that have nothing to do with "brainwashing".

Suspension of disbelief is a phrase associated with how we read fiction--we know it's fiction, but we allow ourselves to ignore that point so that we can be affected emotionally. I seriously doubt that very many religionists know or believe their religion is a fiction. Therefore, there cannot be a suspension of disbelief.

First of all I reject the premise that this is associated with fiction. Belief in something doesn't mean that the subject is fiction. You may be attempting to "associate" it with fiction, but I reject that notion. It's purely subjective on your part. George W. Bush may tell us that Iraq has WMD, and we accept that uncritically. We suspend our disbelief when we do that. It simply means that the subject is accepted uncritically. We can go into a book store or library and find a book under history that has been totally revised to serve a particular bias that the author wants us to belief. We may accept his view as authoritative, or we may apply our critical reasoning to find that the author is promoting a bias rather than a factual account of history. I may find that his book is fictional or even based on outright lies, but the person that accepts it, is taking it at face value because it confirms what he wants as an outcome. So your anaylsis that suspension of disbelief equalling fiction makes no sense. The believer has put critical thinking on hold. He has suspended the option of disbelieving something because that doesn't serve his interest.

I think this probably means that religions fail proper justificatory tests. If they don't require justification, then their claims are basic. In any case, you'll have to state what justificatory tests are supposed to be relevant here, before I can comment further.
Not all religions are authoritarian. In fact, most are not.

What are they based on? What reason would you have to subscribe to a religion?

The belief is based on itself as it's own authority. Again, simply not true. How would a belief be an authority, anyway?

Then tell what it's based on? You keep denying this and saying it isn't true, but when I ask you for the basis you refuse to provide it. We're talking about a positive methodology for a world view. Tell me what that methodology is based on?

While it's true that most religions have some reasoned component, this is typically not the core of the religion. So because they are not examples of reasoning, a fortiori they can hardly be examples of circular reasoning.

Then tell me, what is the reason for the religion? What is its purpose? Why does it even exist? And what justifies it's claims as authoritative?

If you're talking about either the asteroid or the balls in the urn example, no, that's not inductive reasoning, except in the loose sense that I know by experience that there are things like asteroids, balls, urns, etc.

Yes, you know that there are asteroids and balls and urns, but you cannot know how many asteroids there are in the solar system. Why stop there? How about the entire universe? It's not knowable. You've offered hypotheticals that couldn't be demonstrated and then expect me or anybody else to assume that a person makes a lucky guess, and that it's true? You offer a completely irrational situation. The hypothetical assumes that this kind of thing is knowable. It also suggests that somebody or something could confirm the guess is accurate, and therefore true. Who or what would that be? Lets say that I guess there are 10 billion billion asteroids in the univers. Not one more or one less. It would require that I search the entire infinitate universe to demonatrate that I was right. I would have to prove a negative I would have to show that there are no more than 10 billion billion and the only way to demonstrate that would be to engage in an infinite search for something in order to prove it doesn't exist.

In the case of the balls in the urn, if you can count 5 balls in the urn then you can demonstrate that. There is no guess that proves the truth of a belief. Belief isn't a factor.

So long as it forms the antecedent of a conditional statement, sure I can. Why can't I? Not only can I do so, I can do so with logical force. So can you. So can anybody.

You can do anything you want, but that doesn't make your argument valid. The anticedent is the propositional component of a conditional proposition whose truth is the condition for the truth of the consequent. In "if p then q", "p" is the antecedent. You need to demonstrate P is true.

The problem you involve yourself in by admitting

I assume you are referring to YOU in the general sense, and not to me personally.

The only thing that's relevant to whether that's true or false is whether there are five balls in the urn, or not. If there are, it's true, regardless of whether someone believes there are or not.

That's what I've been saying all along. Originally Posted by Adagio: "He has a lucky guess and that doesn't translate into Truth regardless of any belief."

 

[Adagio]

Wait a minute...so the fact that you don't like his social and political philosophy means you not only disagree with his account of knowledge, but also with any other philosopher who holds some similar idea, regardless of how they might arrive at those ideas? That seems unduly harsh.

Sometimes criticism appears unduly harsh. I'm sure Plato can deal with it. His social and political views are consistant with his entire philsophy. You can't separate elements of Plato and cherry pick what you like and don't like. When you find a flaw in somebody's thinking on one subject it makes sense to investigate other positions that the person holds. If they are consistant in their thinking you'll spot it. He differed from his own teacher Socrates on the subject of knowledge. It's not a matter of "what I like" it's a matter of what answers certain questions and what only raises more.

There is no maybe about it. If the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be Infallibly true. Prove it.

You want me to prove that a deductively valid syllogism is always true? I've done this several times already.
If it is true that A = B and C = A, then it also has to be true that C = B. It has to be. There's simply no room for argument. Look at it this way:

Consider the following mathematical expression:

A = B.

C = A.

Therefore, C = B.

Now consider the same "equation" but now with concepts instead of variables or numbers:

Premise 1. All men are mortal
premise 2. Socrates is a man
conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

This is the same as the above mathematical expression:

Premise: All men(A) are mortal(B). [A is B]
Premise: Socrates(C) is a man(A). [C is A]
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates (C) is mortal(B). [C is B]

Unlike the conclusions arrived at via induction which are only probable, conclusions arrived at via deduction are guaranteed 100% true---IF THE PREMISES ARE TRUE AND INTERPRETED LOGICALLY. If the premises are true, then the conclusion Must be true. Do you take exception to this?

How about this one:

Premise1. All philosphers understand the catagorical deductive syllogism
Premise 2. ashurbanipal does not understand the catagorical deductive syllogism
conclusion: ashurbanipal is not a philsopher.

Or perhaps the Modus Tollens form: IF a person is a philosopher, then he understands the catagorical deductive syllogism
Ashurbanipal doesn't understand the catagorical deductive syllogism.
Therefore: ashurbanipal is not a philosopher.

You seem to be skeptical of the idea that If the premises of a catagorical deductive syllogism are true, then the conclusion MUST always be true. I'm skeptical of your understanding of this logical form.

 

[ashurbanipal]

interesting you refer to trees. how do we define what a particular thing should be classified as/described as? I grew up knowing there was something called a palm tree, but scientifically, it is not a tree. in at least one language I know of, a palm tree isn't a tree either.... why? what is it about that culture that gives it a different meaning?

Also, we know the sky is blue, but why is it described as "bronze" in homer? why is there no blue in a number of languages when it clearly DOES occur in nature? how does our culture shape the meaning we ascribe to things, and how does that shape our thoughts and influence what we think is "meaningful" in our lives?

Again, I think there are (at least) two distinct questions here. I suspect there's way more written on the question of how culture shapes meaning than we could possibly digest in this thread. I tend to think there's a lot more social force and feedback present in all kinds of areas we don't really notice.

I suspect something entirely different is going on with phenomenal consciousness. Briefly, I think that if we could somehow go back three thousand years and retrieve someone from the past, and bring them forward into an ordinary modern environment, they would have a very different raw experience of that environment than would we. I don't think this is merely due to social factors, though I think those do play a role. Anyway, that seems to be beyond the scope of the topic of the thread. There's a book called "Through the Language Glass" by a fellow whose name I don't recall at the moment. He had a thesis along these lines, only I think he probably didn't go far enough.

maybe I just became more shallow as I became older, but I really don't feel that letting go of trying to understand the impossible has taken meaning from my life, or made me less of a person.

Far be it from me to say otherwise.

With respect to the hard problem, there are some very bright folks who think it's simply beyond our evolutionarily endowed brain to handle the problem of conceptualizing the problem properly. While I disagree, I cannot claim to have any knock-down argument against this position.

Probably the best I could do would be something like this: taking this position seems to imply some deep defect of our conceptualizing schemas. This might be parlayed (or perhaps purloined) into a general skepticism of those schemas, with the result being that the idea becomes a general defeater of human knowledge. And this, in turn, is self-defeating.

I can see several holes in this line, and can think of some ways they'd be filled in. But I don't want to say it'd be a devastating argument by any means. It might not even be a convincing one.

My view is that we have a concept of material substance--matter--that is in direct conflict with our concepts of phenomenal consciousness, intension, and perhaps also volition, memory, and emotions. Materialism, as the dominant ontology, becomes problematic when thought about this way. It seems like a case of wanting to discard facts to suit theories.

My meta-view is that probably all our conceptual schemes will have a minimal "service-life," after the expiration of which, they will be discarded. But we cannot help, and should not refrain from, coming up with the best conceptual schemas we can muster.

 

[ashurbanipal]

It's pretty easy. You teach philosophy don't you? Surely you've run into this problem.

Not only do I teach philosophy, I've spent my life studying it. To answer your question, no, I've never run into this problem. Not once. I cannot think of a single philosopher, out of hundreds or thousands whose papers and books I have read that would think this is a problem. What you seem to be saying is this:

infinite regress=>circular reasoning

(infinite regress entails circular reasoning)

That seems pretty obviously false. An infinite regress might entail one or more paradoxes. Some particular instances of apparently infinite regresses might entail circular reasoning. But as a general claim, it's not the case that all instances of infinite regress lead to circular reasoning.

Here's a simple case: think of some number added to some other--say, 2+3. Each number is divisible by 2. So, 2+3=(1+1)+(1.5+1.5). But each of those is divisible by 2. So, 2+3=(1+1)+(1.5+1.5)=(1/2+1/2)+(1/2+1/2)+(.75+.75)+(.75+.75). And so on. This is an infinite regress. No circularity involved. It will divide forever, in a straight line. No terms will repeat; each original number is infinitely decomposable.

Another simple case would be where God2 justifies the sayings of God1, and God3 justifies the sayings of God2, and so on. Again, no circularity. It leads to all the usual paradoxes of infinity. It's totally unconvincing. But it's not circular, and doesn't entail circularity. If you want to convince me otherwise, formalize such a system and prove it.

I'm not sure why this confuses you at all. If you want to avoid infinite regress you must accept the authority of the foundation without any justification.

Do you think that authority and obvious truth are the same thing? They don't seem so to me. To stop an infinite regress of justification, I just need to think that one step in the regress is obviously true, and in no need of justification. In many cases, that requires no authority at all. Or, so say I. If you want to convince me otherwise, you'll have to post some kind of argument to show that there's not a single instance to the contrary.

The problem, I think, with doing this, is that it's self-defeating. I'll just ask you, for whatever you state as your premises, why I ought to accept those. If your conclusion is correct, you'll eventually have to resort to an appeal to authority, making your conclusion false.

Anyway, the rest of this post isn't meant to be part of a debate, so much as my attempt to show you why you're not getting very far.

Foundationalism is a view about the structure of justification or knowledge. The foundationalist's thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. A little reflection suggests that the vast majority of the propositions we know or justifiably believe have that status only because we know or justifiably believe other different propositions. We can point to almost anything that we are aware of for an example.

OK, I might be inclined to agree with this...

So, for example, I know or justifiably believe that Jesus was crucified, but only because I know or justifiably believe (among other things) that various historical texts describe the event. Arguably, my knowledge (justified belief) about Jesus death also depends on my knowing (justifiably believing) that the texts in question are reliable guides to the past. Foundationalists want to contrast my inferential knowledge (justified belief) about Jesus with a kind of knowledge (justified belief) that doesn't involve the having of other knowledge (justified belief).

And this, though I question the choice of example.

But all of our knowledge of Jesus came to us through another source. Our knowledge of him is justified by the Bible. When did you first learn of the person Jesus? It didn't float into your head. When you were young you were told about him and every reference to him came from Biblical texts.

Well, this is not true. Not every reference. Indeed, not even most of them.

So the Bible is what justifies Jesus existence. That becomes your theory of rationality which justifies Jesus existence.

Uh, what? I don't see the connection between a belief that the Bible may justify Jesus' existence (do you mean, justifies a belief in Jesus' existence?) and a theory of rationality.

How did you decide about this theory? As this is your meta-theory, it can not judge itself in terms of rationality.

Why not? I don't need a theory of numbers to know that 2+2=4. Similarly, I don't need a theory of rationality to be rational. Rationality just seems to be a faculty. If I develop a theory of it, I just need it to comport with all my observations about that faculty, and I can use that faculty to judge whether it does so.

Any *positive* argument in regards to rationality cannot judge itself without creating a circular argument.

This seems false. Again, one way to escape this is to say that rationality is an ability. You might then create fancy-looking arguments to show all kinds of things, rather in the way that Zeno "proved" a runner could never cross a finish line or an arrow could never kill a soldier. But no one will, or should, take your argument seriously.
I think rationality is a capability or faculty, similar in some respects to virtue. It's grounded in existence as a human being, and requires no propositional foundation of its own, any more than does any other human faculty.

I recommend a book by a fellow named John Grecco called "Putting Skeptics in Their Place." He spends a great deal of time talking about this.

It is a circular argument appealing to the authority of the very thing being used to justify itself. In order to avoid infinite regress the foundation MUST be it's own authority.

Again, I dispute this point, and have seen no reason to move. Indeed, so far, I haven't seen you address the point at all. Foundations, in order to be foundations, require no authority, no justification, no anything. Foundations possess just this property. As you say above, foundationalists distinguish inferential knowledge from foundational knowledge. You're attempting to treat foundational knowledge as inferential knowledge, without producing an argument that you should be able to do so. This begs the question.

Now, you may think there are no genuine foundations. You could take that position against the foundationalist without begging the question. You could say something like "I agree that a foundational proposition, if one existed, would not require justification. But in fact, one does not exist." And this would be a way to deny the foundationalist thesis.

But I don't think you'll get very far with that line, for what should be obvious reasons. The foundationalist will just start asking you why she should accept anything you assert as true. You'll either end up in an infinite regress (which you can't do, per your arguments above) or you'll end up claiming, at some step along the way, that it's just obviously true--in which case, you've just made a foundationalist claim yourself.