Because, if man made God, there is no religious content - the only interpretation is going to be cultural and regional, not guided by any actual truth (since it's all hypothesised to be a fiction).

If God is, in fact, real then it is possible that some religious text actually contains some factual information upon which all can agree.

Not to keep score or anything, but let us note that this is - yet again, and as predicted - a post with ZERO shreds of new evidence. Instead we have had you attempt to (rather incorrectly) guess what you think my worldview is by misinterpretating a range of statements and despite me explicitly refraining from suggesting any. But this is completely irrelevant. If it is true that my standards of evidence and my worldview is entirely riddled with holes (despite your inability to actually identify them) then that is my problem. But this in no way prevents YOU from presenting what YOU think is the most compelling evidence and trying to persuade me of the superiority of your own worldview and how your presented evidence fits in with that (or maybe you will argue that needing evidence is a bad thing for some reason!). Perhaps you will present evidence that I have never though of before and my worldview is currently unprepared to deal with it. That would be great! But until you actually present something more, all this attempts to instead deflect and deflect as you incorrectly guess at my worldview is entirely moot. Present your evidence, or I am entirely correct to say that no more than "children misbehave" has been presented and I can stand firmly by the initial statement.

So I will address the rest, because it is fun to see you twist and struggle, but there is not a single relevant word in it:

Indeed, I was noting precisely this difference between the two different senses you have written out. For the former (objects falling) I noted that there is plenty of observations of this phenomenon that would be available millenia ago for people to note that this phenomena - which we call gravity - does indeed exist. You seem to want to label this phenomenon "objects falling" but the rest of the word labels this phenomenon "gravity". Now that we have a phenomenon, we want to try and explain it which is what people like Newton and Einstein did, or, at least up to a limited nonreductionist sense. But they did come up with theories that predict its behavior with remarkable specificity, something your "original sin" theory of children misbehaving gives (as of yet) no specificity. The theories of gravity that we have have very good explanatory power for the phenomenon they are trying to explain, which is precisely why we give a lot of credit to them and very little to yours.

What do you think the ontological status of "good and evil" is? As I say, your "big" post was very poor outside of giving the kinds of terminology that treated it as some lauded, universal, transcendent concept, as to what these actually are. I agree that the CONCEPT of good and evil "exists" and that this concept has been prevalent throughout cultures. But that doesn't mean good and evil themselves "exist" in some other sense to which we can have a "fundamental belief" about their existence. Much like we have a concept of a deity (although it at times has noncognitivism problems but no matter) and that concept "exists". But that doesn't imply that the deity itself exists.

The problem is this. In your big post you suggested that if one DID have a fundamental belief in good and evil then your deduction of original sin would seem valid and if they didn't have this belief then it would not. So what exactly do you mean by this, what is this "fundamental belief" that you are holding here and in particular what is its ontological status. Is it, say, a fundamental truth of the universal, or is the ontological status of normative claims different or any number of similar questions? I don't quite know what you think of these things, but it definitely seems you want to give this concept a lot of import that just doesn't seem justified from my perspective.

Sorry, can you rephrase, I am a bit lost as to what you mean here.

I maintain that the most basic cosmological facts about the universe seem reasonable to include in the word "worldview" as commonly used and as described by your quotes, and doubly so if you are getting to include things like a "fundamental belief in good and evil" in your worldview. It isn't JUST that of course (did I ever suggest that?) but I don't think it unreasonable to say that is part of it. But who cares? If you want to have a tighter definition that restricts including such basic facts about the structure of our universe we live in then great. I am not trying to present a worldview in any way so if you think I am being too loose that is great and, as I already told you, we can strike it from the record.


It isn't "two concepts", it is much better to think of it as a range, if you will. As you said, and I endorsed:
What I am happy to neglect from colloquial conversation without qualifying up front is that I will ignore very poor evidence like "fairy rings are evidence for fairies". So I will say "there is no evidence for fairies". Now if you want to stop and say "hold on! there is some evidence for fairies, fairy rings" I am more than happy to jump to the qualification that I am looking for something a tad bit more convincing than that. This is what happened in this conversation. I made a colloquially valid comment. You are welcome to misinterpret it and it isn't unimaginable that someone could. So I immediate qualified that I was indeed wanting something better than fairy rings are evidence for fairies. You have simply imagined this "switching of gears", it just plainly did not happen. You interpreted my original statement the way YOU wanted to, not as it was meant, and then despite the immediate and repeated qualifications over and over you are insisting to this moment that there was some big switching of gears. Sorry, bud, you made that up (and this is far from the first time that has happened).


The point was to show that there are indeed multiple models of evolution. Evolutionary psychology is a SUBFIELD - although its research may be distinct - of the broader study of evolution and undoubtedly there are many different models of various aspects in evolutionary psychology as well. So your charge for me to defend the idea of multiple models seems to be ridiculous because of course there are, unless you thought every single person studying anything to do with evolution had no model more sophisticated than "natural selection". But this tangent is really very very far away. The point is that "evolution" in general, and its various subfields in specific, is a domain in science and has specific theories of how it works in certain situations exactly as various theories of gravity or anything else does.

I think you might be confusing methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. As in, when we study evolution we study it under the methodological assumption that there is no god of the gap that explains, say, the jump between two transition fossils and we assume that evolution was indeed responsible. Of course we have not come even remotely close to explaining everything yet, not even close. But none of this is "fundamentalist". I suppose you could call the philosophical naturalist - who asserts that god does not exist - "fundamentalist" but it would be very weird to call philosophical positions "fundamentalist".


Great example! I am a FTOC fundamentalist. And a general relativity fundamentalist. And an evolution fundamentalist. Because you told me a strict adherence to basic ideas made one a fundamentalist, and I certainly have that for these things. And is it not the case that you have a strict adherence to your fundamental belief in good and evil? So you are a fundamentalist by this incredibly loose sense of the word that drops its normal religious connotations and applies to someone who believes in a scientific theory. Sorry, but evolution is a scientific theory like gravity and I just simply don't view it any differently than I do the other and no matter how much you try and shoe horn me into being an "evolution fundamentalist" but not a "gravity fundamentalist" that shoe just ain't gunna fit.

there are two sides, firstly why if religion was not true we would expect religious diversity. The simplest answer is that we expect diversity amongst most things humans do. But we can do a step better, namely there are several common reasons why people seem to believe religions such as a fear of death, answers to the questions of purpose and the origin of the universe, among other things. So we would expect different religions to have an afterlife story or an origin story. But it doesn't make a difference to the movivation whether that origin story comes from a drop of blood or clay so those kinds of differences would undoubtably occur but the basic motivations for an origin story would be a commonality. And this is what we observe: religions have often common elements in their major themes (good and evil as Aaron mentions is another commonality although specific instantiatuons of whether homosexuality, say, is evil varies even if the general concept remains). And, as observed, we would expect things like the piousness or strength by which people believed their religions to be similar across different religions. We could go on, but unless contested I think we can say there is good grounds to expect the kind of diversity we observe.

On the flip side, why would we expect religious homogeneity if one religion were true? Well many religions posit a deity that manifests to considerable extent in this universe. They do things like give "personal experiences" and "answer prayers" and divenely inspire specific books and have voices through specific people on earth. In other words, a lot of manifesting. I would expect, if one religion is true, there to be an overwhelming asymmetry in the experiences between someone that actually experiences the correct manifesting god vs one who merely claims to have experienced a made up god. With thousands of years to go by, and such dominance of having a god on your side doing all this manifesting, I would expect there to be some asymmetry between the religions that one could actually see instead of it seeming to be overwhelmingly a product of geological location with different regions believing different deities.

I don't know why you would expect a divinely inspired book to have such a plethora of widely different and contradicting interpretations, perhaps you can elaborate on why we expect this if it was true. Unless it is something vacuous like "all books will be interpreted differently, and the fact that it was divinely inspired doesn't change this one iota".

But note this is all, as I previously openly admitted, not much more than an intuitive test of reasonableness. I don't much care for theological prognostications, in large part precisely because of the diversity of interpretations. Some atheists will also say things like "I would not expect an all loving god to cause earthquakes that massacre huge numbers of children". This is much like that, the statement seems quite reasonable but that is about all one can say and it is going to be pretty poor at best I think. And things like these are quite far from why I personally am an atheist, which is because of the dirth of evidence.

When have we ever really agreed on the interpretation of factual information in within society? It does not matter how factual something is, it still requires the interpretation of flawed beings.

I have to say again, this is exactly what we would expect if the bible were true. So it can hardly be evidence for God being man made. At best it is a push.

As I pointed out to Bunny, all evidence/facts must first be interpreted by fallible/fallen beings. So the fact that everyone is looking through a different lens means you will undoubtedly get different pictures. The bible is explicate in the fact that we are fallen and come from an imperfect nature so it logically follows that we will have an imperfect pictures of God.

How many religious people have you spoke to? I have spoke to many and it is usually very easy to figure out what their actual hangups are, and it does not have to do with ambiguity in the text.

No need to pretend. It's openly acknowledged that we're both keeping score in our own games.

Yes. It is your problem.

This is a very short loop, and I'm surprised that you haven't recognized it yet.

A) Present your evidence. <Evidence presented>
B) Claim that evidence was not presented. <Concept of evidence challenged>
C) Admission that there may be problems with the concept of evidence.
B) Claim that evidence was not presented.
C) Admission that there may be problems with the concept of evidence.
B) Claim that evidence was not presented.

'Round and 'round we go!

Even though the observations existed for millenia, the word "gravity" was not applied to the phenomenon until the mid-1600s or so, and that's actually a word that meant something else for a couple hundred years before then. Aristotle certainly did not call it gravity, nor did his concept of the observation of falling objects fit the description you've suggested.

Furthermore, the claim the "the rest of the [world] calls it gravity" shows again your worldview bias. It's like you can't even conceive of a viewpoint other than your own. Let's take some random third-world country. Do you think that when stuff falls down over there that they call it "gravity" (or some word that carries an equivalent scientific connotation)?

Despite your objections, the "observation" is of falling objects, not of gravity. "Gravity" is not a phenomenon. Gravity is that which causes the phenomenon. The phenomenon itself consists of objects falling. It's not really that complicated, but I suppose if you don't really know what's going on that it's the type of error one might make.

We don't need ontological status for this one. All we need is to have the term to be understood. We don't have the an ontological status for "consciousness" yet we agree at least in broad terms that it exists and that people possess it. We don't even have an ontology of "gravity." Are we talking about particles? A spacetime framework? Who knows?

Not *would* but *could*. And what is understood was broken down into a series of steps which walked you through the types of observations one would make to reach a conclusion that is parallel to the theology of original sin.

Well, as best as I can tell, you have a "fundamental belief" that nothing I say is justified from your perspective, so I'm not surprised that you're raising meaningless objections.

It means pretty much what it says. In order for one to agree with the described experiences, one does not need to hold any specific concept of good and evil, as long as the concepts of good and evil that are used resemble the generally understood concepts that have been held at many points in history.

Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. The problem is that you don't actually understand worldview, which is why you're stuck with your broken concept of evidence.

There are multiple models of biological evolution.

There is NO general field of study called "evolution." This is not to say that evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary linguistics are unrelated. But they are related by the PHILOSOPHY of their approach (the framework in which their studies are understood), but not related by SCIENCE. They share a common outlook, but do not share methodology.

The thing that you are calling "evolution" is NOT a single scientific field of study. Have you noticed that the word "evolutionary" is an adjective, not a noun? That's because evolutionary biologists are studying biology, evolutionary psychologists are studying psychology, and evolutionary linguists are studying linguistics. None of these groups are studying "evolution" proper. The term "evolutionary" is a marker for something more like a philosophical outlook.

This is just LOL-bad funny. You really don't have any idea what you're talking about. The methodological naturalist does not need to assume that evolution did anything. Only the fundamenalist evolutionist does.

Ummmmm... yeah. FTOC is not a "basic idea" nor is "General relativity." And you're not holding to either one strictly. You're really just making yourself look stupid by trying to avoid the fact that you are a fundy-evolutionist. See above! You included evolution as part of your concept of what an methodological naturalist would assume. Evolution has NOTHING to do with methodological naturalism, even within biology. All the methodological naturalist cares about is the study of those phenomena which have natural causes.

Nope. It has to do with how one understands the concept of "strict adherence." Simply holding a belief to be true is not an indicator of "strict adherence." You can admit when you don't know what you're talking about. It's not hard.

No, this is how you framed it:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=152

You claimed something MUCH stronger than merely an intuitive test of reasonableness.

Two problems. Firstly, you will notice that step A only happened once. It isn't a loop where you keep presenting new evidence and it keeps getting presented. You have offered "children misbehave". That is it. There is no loop here, this seems to be the only piece of "evidence" that you are willing or able to articulate. Do you have more? If so, what is it? I have been trying to get you to say something - anything - more along the lines of step A. You have yet to do so.

Secondly, you have completely ignored the key part that resolves the B) and C) "loop". Namely, I have explained that me having problems with my standards of evidence or worldview is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT when it comes to you presenting the best evidence that you have and the standards of evidence or worldview that you have which means the evidence you present is compelling and justifies your conclusions. This is why I explicitly refrained from talking about my standards of evidence because I did NOT want a tangent into my standards. It is unnecessary. So I asked you to present your evidence - yes, more than just the single instance of A) - without it. Instead, you refuse to present more evidence and did the exact opposite about talking about the standard I never presented as you incorrectly guess at what it is and mischaracterize it. Not that this is surprising that you would get it wrong, since I didn't articulate it, but it is surprising that you are trying to do this irrelevant thing.

As to your silly tangents:

Look this is just a minor linguistic point; we both agree that there is a distinction between the phenomenon and the explanation for it. I am just noting that it is common to use the word "gravity" to describe the phenomenon itself and so bolded is false. Indeed, first line from googling "gravity": "Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract each other with a force proportional to their masses". And no, I didn't "have" to do this, I did it to show you you are wrong.

Your other objections are silly. Noting that the majority of the world DOES label this phenomenon gravity in no way implies I can't conceive of a different worldview, that is an idiotic non sequitur. And yes other people in other countries and other times might not call it gravity, but they still have access to the basic of the phenomenon - the phenomenon that things fall to the ground - that we call gravity.



Unless you want to go all solipsistic, we can nonetheless we can certainly agree that there is some phenomenon out there (you don't want to call it gravity, sure). Is there a phenomenon out there of good and evil? You have a "fundamental belief" in this.....thing? A property of the universe? I agree that there is a concept of good and evil just like there is a concept of a god, but I don't see any reason to think good and evil or a god actually exist. Your little (very bad) walk from this fundamental belief to original sin seems to be entirely vacuous if the fundamental belief that grounds it is just a concept people have in their heads. And yes, there may be ontological questions about many things (or all things even), but it seems like you have not gotten over even the most basic of humps necessary of whether this fundamental belief of yours is something that actually exists in any meaningful sense that you could define outside of being just a concept people have that may have no connection to reality.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the issue it is quoting, it is just a generic flame (and wrong to boot).


lol wut. It is much more than just the philosophy of the approach (although yes they share that too, not that sharing a philosophy makes one a "fundamentalist") the study of things like evolutionary psychology are intimately connected as the mechanisms by which evolution occurs are the types of mechanisms by which changes in our psychological makeup occur as well. From wiki: " So you see quite clearly that EP is subfield. Of course, subfields can often be, for practical purposes, quite distinct. As an algebraic topologist, my subfield of mathematics may be very different from your subfield (which is what again if I haven't asked you?). A shared philosophical approach, and a similar grounding in the fundamentals of mathematics, but quite likely a very different daily experience. But suppose none of this was true. EP is entirely distinct from EB and there are zero relations. So? That doesn't make me a fundamentalist. That would just be how it is. Outside of pointing out that you are wrong, what is the relevance of this bizarre tangent?


Lol. But I think evolution IS sufficiently basic and strictly hold to it in ways I don't any other scientific idea? I simply think of evolution as a scientific theory just like any other so it is ridiculous to call me a fundy-evolutionist and not a fundy-every-other-scientific-and-philosophical-position-I-holdist. And at the same time that you are making this ridiculous assertion about me, you are pretending that your "fundamental beliefs" in good and evil do NOT satisfy the "basic" and "hold to strictly" conditions. Dude you are just making stuff up.

No. The assumption of methodological naturalism is that there is not gods jumping in doing things, not that any specific scientific theory is true. This might be getting into dangerous territory given your confusion about gravity, but as it turns out one can use the word "evolution" to denote BOTH the phenomenon of changing biological characteristics of populations over time AND various theories that explain this phenomenon. Back in darwin's day it was the "theory of evolution by natural selection". So the methodological naturalist is saying that this phenomenon has purely natural causes and there is no gods doing it. From the start the methodological naturalist does not assume evolution, but now we do accept this theory given the preponderance of evidence. As such, we say that questions like "why do I have an appendix" are, in principle, explainable by evolution even if we don't know the exact way that works just as we assume that the orbit of pluto is explanable by gravity even if we don't have the measurements to know exactly how that works. But none of this implies any form of fundamentalism.

It is probably time, btw, for you to state what your views are on evolution.

Okay so we agree on one side of it. As for the other (and, admittedly, this does depend on ones specific theological views so if this is not your view that is fine because not all make such claims) there is an asymmetry. Not everyone is looking at the same picture with different lenses because the picture is asymmetric due to the differences in how the god manifests. So someone reading the bible is reading something that is divinely inspired. But someone reading the Koran is not. People will claim that god personally revealed himself to them and informed them of very specific things, but for other religions these people are just inventing that this experiences happened. Now of course some of the sort of more weak deism persuations will say that lower case god reveals himself to everybody and that is interpreted through there local religions, which is fine, so it only applies to someone who believes there is an asymmetry in manifesting.

And yes I don't think most christians base their beliefs on a strict intellectual reading of the bible.

Arithmetic textbooks.

Incidentally, Aaron's explanation for the geographical localization of religious belief was not what Jibninjas suggested (that we expect this for everything, and religion is no different with different people observing the same thing through different lenses), it was one of acknowledging the kinds of manifesting asymmetries I think christianity espouses:

Nope. You've even referred to the appropriate post in multiple places. Perhaps this stands as clear evidence that your concept of evidence is so broken that you cannot even understand what has been presented.

That is one massive sentence. And it's relevant insofar as your broken concepts seem to have logically prevented you from even understanding anything that has been presented. You really are, in fact, that bad at thinking.

Sure. You can call gravity a "phenomenon" but then you're clearly using conflation in order to make your argument proceed. In order to clarify, you need to invoke two distinct definitions of "gravity."

Gravity_1: The natural phenomenon of falling objects
Gravity_2: The scientific theory of the attraction of massive objects

Again, you have serious language issues. You already have two distinct definitions of evidence ("compelling" and what I'll call "other') and now you're working with two distinct conceptions of gravity. Go back and look at how you thought you would convince Aristotle of "gravity." The way you were using it back then, you had work to do. Now you're using it in a way which requires you to do absolutely nothing at all.

So I don't really care what word you use (for example, it doesn't matter that the word for "gravity" may be different in various languages), but you cannot expect your argument to carry successful intellectual content if you're not using language in a meaningful way. (I'm also going to keep pointing to the "man made God" phrasing until you finally admit that "all thoughts are man-made" is not a meaningful lens through which to understand it. The level ofi intellectual gymnastics that you employed there was completely absurd, but representative of the types of gymnastics you continue to use.)

I think you're giving it a fairly generous reading. That its proponents "suggest" that they are grounded in evolutionary biology is really a weak statement. I claim that it's the same type of "borrowed credibility" that I've noted earlier and that the reason it is "suggested" is that they are basically unable to make a meaningful scientific connection between the two fields.

But this is mostly irrelevant, unless you're also going to argue that evolutionary linguistics is grounded in evolutionary biology. I'm making the claim that what you believe about "evolution" as some grand scientific theory is wrong. It's a grand philosophical approach to questions, but those questions are not tied together scientifically.

My thesis was in analytic number theory, but the work I'm doing now is in the direction of mathematics education.

And while there are practical distinctions, there is clearly a shared logical framework. You don't need to "suggest" that what you're doing is mathematics. You can make the statement and it's non-controversial.

That sounds like fundamentalist-speak, wouldn't you agree?

I'm pointing out that your view of "evolution" as a grand scientific theory is false. Rather, there are evolutionary approaches to different scientific fields, and that they are related by philosophy and not science. Therefore, your attempts to claim "evolution" as a grand scientific theory are wrong, which implies that your attempts to characterize your evolutionary-fundamentalism as merely accepting scientific theories is also wrong.

Well, given that you've framed your LOL-tastically bad secular theory of religious diversity as "science" I guess it might actually be true that you think of "evolution" (as a grand theory that explains the entirety of human behavior) is a "scientific theory just like any other." But that would merely highlight your failure to understand science.

As noted, there's a clear universality to beliefs surrounding good and evil. They are "basic" but "hold to strictly" would require you to demonstrate the strictness of the beliefs that I hold. I note that it's not sufficient to point out that I hold such beliefs, but that there's a strictness to the way that I hold them. That is what characterizes fundamentalism in general. (If you wanted to call me a religious fundamentalist, you would have to contend with the religious connotations of the phrase, which cites very specific beliefs that must be held.)

Bolded: Huh? Methodological naturalism makes no assumption about the existence of God. It does not need to make such an assumption. It seeks to provide explanations which do not invoke God. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural...cal_naturalism

What you're describing is a metaphysical naturalism. I'll give you a hint to help you understand. "God exists" is a metaphysical claim. Why would a methodological philosophy invoke a metaphysical claim? That clearly pushes outside of its proper domain.

Underlined: Right. But you explicitly cited a specific scientific theory in your exposition.

This is why you're a fundy. You are assuming a specific scientific theory to explain observations.

(By the way, you've framed poorly because we don't "study evolution" as some grand scientific theory -- in this case, we are studying "fossils" using "evolution" as the philosophical perspective to describe the changes).

Why do you want to change the subject? Are you finding that your positions are falling apart because of how poorly formulated they are?

Sorry, can you link to this post that gives more evidence outside of "children misbehave"? I know there was a post where you tried to justify how children misbehaving indeed got you to original sin if and only if you assumed this "fundamental belief" in good and evil that you have neither defined nor justified. But I didn't see any more evidence.

So is that it? That all you got? Nothing else beyond "children misbehave" and then, hundreds of posts later, a horribly bad attempt to justify why children misbehaving was evidence given some other unjustified assumption? Nope? That's what I thought.


Did this gigantic amount of evidence get presented somewhere that I completely missed? Because until such time as all this evidence actually gets presented, there is nothing for me to not understand, no matter how bad at thinking you want to think I am. The problem is you spend vastly more time ITT trying to attack your false mischaracterizations of what you were guessing was my worldview than you did presenting actual evidence and explaining why it should be considered persuasive. You have, arguably, presented a single piece of evidence and then a very bad justification for it. Do you have anything else?



I think you probably just forgot, but the distinction you just gave is EXACTLY the one that I used in my explanation to mightyboosh that sparked this tangent line:
As in, there is a distinction between the gravity1 and gravity 2 that you outlined. There is a theory, and a theory that explains or partially explains that phenomenon. Just as there is a phenomenon of evolution and a theory that explains it. It is precisely because this is (slightly) confusing that I so carefully delineated between the two so to suggest that I am "conflating" them is nonsensical, just as your original attempt to pretend the usage of "gravity is a phenomenon" was incorrect is nonsensical.


Oh I readily admit that since it is nowhere close to what I said. You realize you are STILL completely mischaracterizing this right? I explained it to you in the last post of the other thread and you never responded. You have simply made up a completely false interpretation of my comments. The implication of the phrase - OBVIOUSLY - is that god is a false belief created by humans. But that in no implies that all beliefs created by humans are false. I would never have thought such a simple phrase could get you so very, very, very, confused. But if you want to address this (or keep bringing it up) please do so in the appropriate thread because I am more than happy to repeatedly school you on the meaning of the trivial phrase.



Oh are you talking about cultural evolution of language? Ya sure if you are talking about that then I am sure I would agree that there are many philosophical similarities but it would be indeed a distinct field. If instead you are talking instead about how it is that humans evolved language that is the way it is, then I would maintain that that is a subfield of the broader study of the evolution of life.

And yes, it could be the case that people attempting to ground evolutionary psychology in evolutionary biology utterly fail at it, just as a chemist may be completely unable to explain their results in terms of first principles from physics. But of course, most people accept reductionist thinking that chemistry is in principle reducible to physics but in practice this is most often the case and in fact the methods are so distinct that we call them their own fields in their own rights. So if you want to suggest (and I am certainly not an expert in it) that evolutionary psychology, while in principle reducible to evolutionary biology, is practically so different that it not even be called a subfield then great that is fine. But it doesn't make me a fundamentalist either way it is just a tangent to make sure we agree on the correct nomenclature.


If you are ever interested I would love a thread on this in SMT, I promise I won't debate you in it


I am still confused what it is you think I am claiming about evolution that is actually false. I think your presentation of these entirely distinct fields with only a philosophical approach is a pretty bad and there are indeed much deeper connections than you suggest, but if this is wrong it doesn't matter one iota. My guess here is that what is tripping you up is the difference between "currently explains" and "in principle explainable". I do NOT think evolution explains every detail of human life. Not even close. But I do accept the theory, on the strength of its evidence, that life on this planet evolved and as such, in principle, is explainable by whatever the processes are that resulted in this evolution.

So your "universal fundamental belief" in good an evil is not a "strict" belief and ergo you are not a fundamentalist with respect to this universal fundamental belief? I think you are playing games here. You are simultaneously trying to prop up this fundamental belief that allows you to deduce original sin while at the same time trying to pretend that you don't actually hold this fundamental belief strictly enough. And then the icing on the cake is your attempts to pretend that me believing in one of the many scientific theories that I believe in is something I hold sufficiently "strictly" and is sufficiently "basic" that I am a fundamentalist. Can we drop the pretense that you are doing anything but having fun with word play knowing full well the ridiculousness of your position here?



Indeed. The methodological naturalist is not making any truth claim, merely using an operating principle while the philosophical naturalist is asserting something about the universe. I suppose I shouldn't have used the word "assumption" because perhaps that lends the idea of a truth claim and not an operating principle (although that word was used in the wiki article you found so I don't think it is bad). Nonetheless, outside of nomenclature, I don't think there is disagreement.


Comic gold. So anybody that assumes a scientific theory is the correct explanation for an observation is a fundamentalist? I told you I was a general relativity fundamentalist because I assume that theory for the explanation of a range of observations. But yes, when you assume a theory that explains a set of phenomena is true on the strength of its evidence, if you do not have a complete set of observations that doesn't make you a fundamentalist. I may have incomplete data to predict, from GR, the motion of some planetary system with only have a little bit of evidence on. But if I believe GR is true it is entirely acceptable to find that the planetary system is indeed explainable in principle from GR, even if I can't do it, and not that magical pixies are making the planets move. Likewise, I may not have every fossil record of every species, but it is entirely acceptable to assume, if I am assuming evolution as the explanation for life on this planet, that every species evolved. That doesn't make one a fundamentalist, it means one is accepting a scientific theory.

No need to make such accusations, I asked because I was curious. The general topic of evolution is a common debate between theists and atheists, and while we are having a sort of proxy debate about it it might be informative to know precisely what your views are on the subject.

Here is Andrew Gabriel Roth's view ( Roth believes Yeshua has the divine nature, but he is nonTrinitarian ) which includes an explanation of the Aramaic word qnoma:

http://www.therefinersfire.org/yeshua_divine1.htm

Holding the Trinitarian doctrine, in and of itself, doesn't preclude anyone from entering the Olam Haba or being united with Yeshua HaMashiach through the Ruach HaKodesh.

Is the Trinity a Bible teaching? NO
Did Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity teach it? NO
Did his early apostles and disciples who accompanied him teach it? NO
Where does the word "godhead" come from?

The bible, but its translated from three greek word theios, theiotēs and theotēs as Godhead.

Each of these words are used a few times, theios is also translated divine, theiotes basically means divinity, and theotes basically means diety, or the state of being God.

Does the word "trinity" appear anywhere in the Bible? NO