Comments | tsunamisama: I Have Overcome the World

tsunamisama

I Have Overcome the World

Nov 11, 2010 22:25

Once I wandered far o’er lofty hills, with Paradise my quest ( Read more... )

Comments 9

. anonymous January 8 2011, 22:25:11 UTC

Hi, this isn't a comment on your blog post per se, but I was watching one of your youtube videos and I had a question for you regarding your "omnipotent deceit" video. If you were to formulate an argument against your own argument of omnipotent deceit, what would you say? As far as I'm seeing it, it's a pretty strong argument against theism. Well done, seriously. I'm actually really interested in philosophy in terms of wanting to know what the truth is.
I had another question for you, what major religions have you studied in depth?

also, it's been ages since you posted a video on philosophy on youtube!!! You really add to the community.

Re: . tsunamisama January 8 2011, 22:40:40 UTC

The best arguments against the omnipotent-deceit argument, while still maintaining some variant of theism, are either to argue that God cannot, by definition, deceive (i.e., it is not in the nature of God to deceive), or else, to argue that God is not omnipotent. Those are the only theistic refutations I can conceive. It's also possible to make a pragmatic argument and say that if God can deceive, it's impossible to know whether or not we're being deceived, but there is no apparent deceit and if there were, our ability to apprehend it is irrelevant, so we're justified in assuming what God reveals is true for our purposes. (I would object to that last on grounds that pragmatic approaches to epistemology run against the teachings of virtually every major religion ( ... )

Re: . anonymous February 8 2011, 23:43:51 UTC

Sorry about that! I don't have facebook or twitter or livejournal or openID. Call me a social recluse

Thanks for answering by the way. Looking forward to the videos. Are they going to be on the same topic of disproving theistic worldviews?

-Anonymouse

Re: . tsunamisama February 16 2011, 10:07:14 UTC

Future videos will continue to be about dialogue and tension between secular and theistic worldviews. I expect some refutation stuff, but also some common ground stuff.

Epistemology anonymous February 25 2011, 21:43:54 UTC

Looking forward to it. I believe in God by the way :P but lately have been feeling like I really need to justify my beliefs and confirm (or not, who knows!) them to be true (or false ( ... )

Re: Epistemology tsunamisama February 25 2011, 23:07:19 UTC

No worries as to the length. I'm always happier when folks explain more completely rather'n less ( ... )

Re: Epistemology tsunamisama February 25 2011, 23:07:28 UTC

Last but not least, you say that when you try to get away from God, you feel unpeaceful. Having spent most of my life as a Christian, I can definitely sympathize ( ... )

anonymous February 27 2011, 19:27:09 UTC

It definitely hasn't put me off :P. Thanks for answering. I've been looking into neuroscientific and biochemical (my field of study) explanations etc for our hard-wiring. Andrew Newberg has interesting pieces of research on this topic. I'll look out for the author you mentioned ( ... )

anonymous February 27 2011, 19:35:43 UTC

My teachers used to talk about stuff like this in psychology class, the talk from Michael Shermer reminds me of those times. Thanks for the tip :)