re: #630 radcap

The fundamental problem with the video is that it assumes its viewers accept logic to be superior to faith. In other words, it presumes there is no ‘alternate’ means of knowledge (ex ‘divine communication’); it presumes that ‘this world’ is properly the object of cognition; it presumes the senses are valid perceivers of ‘true’ reality; etc etc. Many do not hold to these premises. Many explicitly reject them. And many MANY more implicitly reject them. That is why, for instance, the identification of an argument being ‘self-contradictory’ - ie absurd - will not be seen as objectionable by many. For them, that is precisely the basis on which they accept it - ala “credo quia absurdum”.

In other words, the video is essentially preaching to the choir. And though it does so quite lucidly, it never addresses the metaphysical or epistemological premises which make the appeal to logic valid - and the appeal to faith invalid. To actually make a case to those who already accept faith (and consequently have accepted ideas on the basis of faith rather than logic) it is those premises which must be challenged and refuted. Without that, as some commenters have already noted, this video can be viewed as simple (and ‘offensive’) proselytizing by ‘priests of logic’ .

Put simply, the appeal to logic is not going to work UNTIL one validates logic and invalidates any supposed ‘alternative’ - including faith.

Those who reject logic itself place themselves in the untenable position of not being able to argue for or against anything, because it is by means of logic that all sound and valid arguments proceed.

And, as has been noted before, faith can only obtain in the absence of evidence; the moment evidence is proferred, one is no longer speaking of faith, but of (probable and provisional) knowledge.

Thus you objection fails, on both logical and empirical grounds.

Plus, those who reject the veracity of sense perception reject their own histories, because it is only on the basis of the validity of sense perceptions that one’s own ancestors were able to avoid extinction via starvation, predation or natural dangers existent in their landscape, and survive long enough to continue the process of surviving long enough, in an unbroken reproductive chain, to produce oneself. Otherwise, environmental selection would have long hence taken its fatal evolutionary toll.