Responding to Howard’s intimation that man can never arrive at certainty without permission from his ‘creator’, BSmith5044 wrote:

I am 100% certain that the sun will ‘rise’ tomorrow (definition of ‘tomorrow’ includes the concept day and hence, daylight, therefore sun). I have NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the sun will ‘rise’ tomorrow - not even the pesky 0.0000001% of doubt that others seem ready to concede. Not me.

Reality will prove me right or wrong, as reality is the final court of appeal in all claims. But until tomorrow actually comes, my knowledge of the principles involved - an earth upon which I now sit, rotating on its axis while revolving around the sun, giving us here on earth the perspective that the sun is ‘rising’ - is sufficient standard to achieve certainty on this point. (Actually, the sun does not ‘rise’ - the earth merely rotates on its axis; it’s a matter of perspective at this point.)

Now some might object to my unwavering certainty on this issue, saying that I do not allow for the possibility that ‘things might change’. I have no evidence that this ‘possibility’ exists, and until I do know of any evidence that ‘things might change’, I do not count it as a legitimate factor in arriving at my conclusion. Until I have any reason to think that the earth’s orbit and rotation have changed, I have no reason to suspect that this relationship of the earth to the sun will change. At this time, I have no reason to suspect this, and therefore my certainty remains valid.

Whether I am here tomorrow or not to see the sun ‘rise’ is another question. The fact of the earth rotating and revolving around a sun is not contingent on my existence. The sun will ‘rise’ and ‘set’ with or without me. This is objective reality.

Now, I don’t know if anyone participating in this debate really has any doubt or not that the sun will ‘rise’ tomorrow (I could contest by saying ‘if the sun did ‘not’ rise, how can you say it is ‘tomorrow’, etc., but then that gets into semantics....). What I have noticed, though, regardless of the subject at hand, is people’s reaction to the assertion of a certainty, especially if this certainty is arrived at without the ‘aid’ of a ‘god’. The concept certainty belongs to epistemology, the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and man’s means of achieving and validating it. This branch of philosophy, along with metaphysics (the study of existence, reality and nature), is central to the issues of this debate. We have not heard very much from the religionists of the forum in the way of explaining their biblical foundations for their proposed epistemology (whatever they would like to call it; I call it mysticism, and I’ve explained why I call in this in numerous posts in the past).

Howard and other Christians have declared on numerous occasions that their Bible - which they call the ‘Word of God’- is their standard of knowledge and truth. Thus, they are saying that the Bible offers the only epistemological viewpoint that they consider plausible in dealing with reality, if I understand their statements correctly. What I would like to ask, is: How does the Christian find the Bible to be an adequate standard of knowledge?

We already know that the Bible’s asserted ‘means’ of knowledge, mysticism and faith, is antagonistic to sense-perception, reason and axiomatic concepts such as ‘existence’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘identity’, which means that biblical epistemology stands in contradiction to objectivity (Howard himself noted in a recent post that "no one observes facts or events objectively" - I take it as self-evident that he includes himself in this generality, and that this remark is of Christian origin by inference). This antagonism is taken directly from the Bible as a primary source, as I have indicated in earlier posts. Thus, the Christian rejects any system of epistemology which is based on sense-perception as a means of gathering information, and reason and logic as a means of validating knowledge claims (the concept ‘reason’ and its method Logic are not taught in the Bible). What, then, does the Bible offer in place of sense-perception and reason?

If the Bible is the only standard of truth, how does the Christian use this standard in his ‘present’ life in the task of validating knowledge? If the Bible is the source of knowledge, then how does the Christian arrive at knowledge pertaining to, say, computers, which did not exist in biblical times and are not mentioned at all (I have not seen any chapters or books in the Bible that offer any instruction in Excel or Microsoft Word, so I’m assuming that the Christian either does not consider these things as ‘truth’ [i.e., they do not exist], or the Bible must give some kind of system of guiding principles by which the Christian will be able to validate the fact that Excel and Microsoft Word indeed exist, and that he is able to learn them somehow without appeal to sense or reason, which are worldly and therefore are an abomination to his God.)

There is no reference to automobiles in the books of the Bible, either, yet many Christians in America today in fact own and know how to operate automobiles. How can this be if the Bible is the source of all knowledge? How in fact does the Christian reading this document account for his knowledge of the English language, when the Bible makes no effort to instruct the believer in the rudiments of the language, such as grammar, syntax, vocabulary, conversation, colloquialisms, etc.??? If the Bible is said to be the source of all knowledge, why is it lacking in so much knowledge that the present-day Christian relies on a day to day basis???

Obviously, as none of these things are contained in the Bible, the Christian must reassess his statement that ‘the Bible is the source of all knowledge’ and re-phrase his premises to state that ‘the Bible is the source of all principles of knowledge’, which means that the Christian should be able to glean from its pages the means of knowledge-claim validation, so that the present-day Christian - whose own name does not even appear in the "good book" - can proceed to acquire and validate new knowledge. My question is, then: WHAT ARE THESE PRINCIPLES THAT THE BIBLE ASSERTS IN PLACE OF SENSE-PERCEPTION, COGNITION, REASON AND LOGIC???????

Questions related to this fundamental issue which come to mind immediately, assuming that the Bible offers a complete epistemology fit for man, include:

1. Does the Bible offer man any axiomatic concepts as the foundation for his metaphysical and epistemological philosophy? (Yes/No)
2. If ‘yes’, how does the Bible define axiom, and what are these concepts that the Bible offers? (Fill in the blank.)
3. How does the Bible define concept? (Fill in the blank.)
4. What does the Bible have to say about concept-formation???? (Fill in the blank.)
5. How does the Bible define knowledge? (Fill in the blank.)
6. How does the Bible define truth? (Fill in the blank.)
7. What is the means by which man is able to gather knowledge and information, according to the Bible?? (Remember: It can’t be sense-perception. Fill in the blank.)
8. Does ‘biblical epistemology’ offer a view of abstractions? (Yes/No)
9. If ‘yes’, how does the Bible define abstraction? (Fill in the blank.)
10. If ‘yes’ to #8, how does the Bible teach man to form abstractions? (Fill in the blank.)
11. Does the Bible define the concepts thinking, ideas, reason, logic, objectivity, subjectivity? (Yes/No; Fill in the blank.)
12. What does the Bible offer as a standard for validating knowledge claims? (Fill in the blank.)

(These are just the questions I have listed at this time. There are many more that I have to ask, but will leave the Christian with these at this time.)

If the Bible can stand on its own as offering man a complete system of epistemology, all these questions should be able to be answered by direct citation to the Bible exclusively. Please give book, chapter and verse for all answers to the above questions. Please do not cite any secondary sources, such as Papal edicts, Baptist sermons, or quotes from ‘Christian philosophers’. These secondary sources should be completely necessary if the Bible can stand alone in its presentation of a complete system of epistemology.

If the Christian complains that these questions are ‘unfair’ because the early Hebrew priests did not develop their epistemology in such explicit terms, then he cannot claim that the ‘system’ offered by the Bible is either complete or adequate for man.

I look forward to hearing from any Christian who has the courage to address the issues I have raised in this post.

Tindrbox

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