Best answere I have heard on this forum!
But he didn't answer your question at all. All he said, basically, was, "if you start with the same premises as me, you should end up at the same conclusion as me". I mean, I'm not going to spend 3 hours trying to decipher that whole post, but here's the first paragraph...
Why be a Christian? Because the worldview of the agnostic, anti-theist, or secularist is a worldview that presupposes the autonomy of individual human beings under the unprovable mantra "Man is the measure of all things."
So basically his argument is that fallible man cannot be the "measure of all things," but that fallible man can interpret and try to contemplate the will of infallible God, who is the "measure of all things". This does not remove fallible, "autonomous" human beings from the equation, it merely changes their function. But either way you slice it, you still have autonomous people, inclined (and indeed one might say required) to err, making judgments about what is right or wrong. The rest of his post shows this. Why be a Christian rather than a buddhist? He judges it to be the right way. Why be a Christian rather than an agnostic? He judges it to be the right way. No matter how you slice it, fallible man judged among the gods/religions, deciding which one he thinks is correct. This is the epistemological issue that no Christian can overcome, because there simply is no valid answer for them to give.
If religionists are intellectually honest, they will say "
I think such-and-such a religion/god/belief is right". Of course, that would cut the legs out from under certain other claims that they want to affirm. This is basically the issue with Christianity, though. It makes wonderful sense, if you don't actually look at it from the outside. Once you accept her premises as true, she can maneuver every which way, and eventually will contort herself enough to where you are satisified enough. And of course, if you dare to look at her from without, well then you are just one of those silly non-believers that think that man is the measure of all things. They ignore that only the perspective has changed, and in either case people must decide for themselves.
However, with this axiomatic or basic belief one cannot derive people's actual behaviors and values, such as their belief that nature is uniform and rational, that the past will resemble the future, that there are any moral codes beyond the will to power, and ultimately that there is any purpose or meaning at all in life.
My morality does not consist of affirming Rand's view of self-interested morality or Nietzsche's will based morality, or anything similar. This argument is based on the completely flawed argument that without God, there would be no morality or no ability to truly understand. Of course, it is difficult to disprove this belief if you are already starting with the premise that God does, in fact, exist. And his statement seems possible, at least on the surface, if you begin from a theistic viewpoint. However, if begin from a neutral or non-theistic viewpoint, you can see that religion really has very little to do with morality. Whether I am a Christian or not, whether I believe in God or not, I would not rape a 10 year old girl. It is wrong. I don't need to be a Christian to know that it is wrong. And it is not wrong just because a supposed God says so.
The theist can offer rebuttals to this, but tellingly, he cannot offer rebuttals from outside his own belief system. All his arguments are circular, and require you to accept a priori his premises. It's just that, living in the west, most people already
do hold to his premises. But elsewhere (e.g., among Taoists in Tawain or China) this type of argument would make absolutely no intellectual inroads. Christians accept arguments like this because it seems intuitive: but it is only intuitive because you have already bought into the premises. But the premises that you've bought are rotten.
In other words, any worldview that posits autonomy reduces itself to absurdity and nihilism when carried to its logical conclusion. Logic, reason, science, and any form of judgement themselves become absurd and unintelligible.
This is nothing but sophistry. His argument is, "it's illogical, because I say it is". Or probably more accurately, "it's unintelligible because I read Kant/Fr. Seraphim Rose/someone else, and can use fancy words to say that it is unintelligible, so long as these darn non-believers don't point out the strawman that I'm erecting."
Ime goin ta go kill miself now, sense its all meaningles (I'm a nihilist and unintelligible, don'tya know?)
