Coggins7 wrote:God, whether capitalized or not, is a word. What that word means is subject to vast degrees of interpretation. Many people would have us believe that not only do they know what the word god means, but that they also know what this god wants. The people who make this claim ultimately default to the wholly empirical position that their subjective witness is the standard by which this the definition of god can be known as can the personal will of this being.
Did you just here say that the subjective witness is an empirical claim?
As in an experiential claim.The offer is then made that an equally potent subjective experience may stand as evidence for the same definition.
Not in LDS theology. The witness is never claimed to be evidence for anything. Those without it are invited to experience it for themselves, but are not expected to accept the witness of another as "evidence" As indicative of something, yes, but my claims to knowlege are not understood to be evidence that those claims are true.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the King Follet discourse and all its attending concepts are stripped of any evidentiary basis. The spiritual witness is not evidence. An experience, as such, is not evidence to the individual self (due to the fallibility of the human interpretive faculty) nor to others.I will show throughout my posts here that this unlikely scenario is not only highly improbable but effectually impossible due to the inherent fallibility of human nature, regardless of the supposed nature of the infallibility of a god, which is generally inferred by the definition proffered by the authors of said definition.
Very well, and I will take the position that your cardinal point, that of human infallibility, though obviously true and pedestrian, is, as a general metaphysical mediating principle (the manner in which you have used it before) self negating, as it must logically pertain to your own claims of human infallibility. Or, in other words, if human claims are always suspect, then blanket claims of human fallibility are themselves suspect as general claims.
Agreed. Thus ALL human claims, including those wherein the individual believes to have received an undeniable witness ALL fall under the umbrella of uncertainty. Again we agree that uncertainty is the common element of our experience, including the interpretation of internal experiences.Those who have dared to define the term "god" have frequently been able to control the masses through their definition. This authorship of the term "god" bequeaths authority to the authors by fiat of those who want to believe the definition. A DE - FINIT - ION is "of the finite" and therefore does a poor job of describing the infinite which is what a definition of "god" attempts to do. The result is a paradox.
Who has been able to control "the masses" through what means is an interesting topic, but not particularly relevant to the concept of testimony.
True enough.
Paradoxes are not amenable to certainty.
No? But can we not be certain that they are paradoxes?
Can we? Uncertainty seems to be the commonality in both of our arguments. Therefore it would be better to deal in probabilities, not certainties.It may also be argued that god cannot fail to communicate her nature to the fallible creature. This is potentially true. But it is also true that a fallible creature cannot fail to fail unless she ceases to be fallible. And if she ceases to be fallible only for the period of communing with god, she must then return to her fallible state and therefore return to the possibility of failing to comprehend the infallible communication. The only way the fallible creature can comprehend the infallible communique is to remain infallible with regard to the communique. The paradox rears its ugly head again. The fallible creature can never be certain, it must simply have faith and believe--which is a choice. The paradox is not amenable to certainty on this point. Thus the argument for permanently knowing the definition of the infinite is debunked.
This argument promises more than it delivers. This is really a complex series of inferences, predicated on some unmentioned assumptions, that is masquerading as a deductive argument, which, if followed to its conclusion, would be unassailable. However, key assertions being made here, such as that a fallible being, even if receiving infallible communications, must return to fallibly, and hence, garble the infallible communication, are pure assumptions about aspects of both human and divine nature and power that involves the argument, as stated, in deep question begging. The invitation of the Latter Day Saint to "come and see" for yourself, is intended, quite frankly to plow through questions such as this that really cannot be fleshed out in a purely philosophical manner and go directly to the source. One says "very well, I'm going to see for myself if this infallible being can make contact with an infallible being and whether or not that being can communicate with me in a manner that, while not removing general fallibility from my nature, in essence relegates it to background noise within the confines of direct communicaiton of the Spirit of God to the intelligence of a child of God".
Your claim that you are receiving a direct communication from the Spirit of God is based in your belief that you can infallibly know that you have received a direct communication from the Spirit of God. You would like to claim that you have solved this inherent paradox by cutting a gordion knot with you spirit witness claim, but are you certain that there are not other explanations for your experience? If you claim certainty, you claim infallibility. Are you infallible?
I assume only that human beings are fallible. The probability of this is very high. The nature of a reality which is described as god can only be claimed if an infallible communication can be had between fallible humans and god. Is god infallible? How do you know it? Can you claim certainty that god is infallible? If so, you are making a claim about yourself first and your conception of "god" second.
Are you claiming that it is wrong to assert that humans are fallible. Is that a logically inconsistent claim? Amantha needs really, to define the bounds, conditions, and dynamics of human infallibility such that we could get a better handle on why she thinks it looms as such on overwhelming and unmallable mediating principle in the spiritual realm, a realm she does not believe in but, and by definition cannot claim to understand, but for the sake of the argument, must meet LDS half way on.
I claim that humans are fallible. You claim to infallibly understand a "mediating principle" which originates "in the spiritual realm." Which claim needs to have its bounds, conditions and dynamics defined? The highest probability is that you believe you understand the experience, which you characterize as mediated by a spiritual arbiter, because your culture provided you with the terms and ideologies which led you to interpret your experience in this way. This is true because you cannot infallibly know that you have interpreted your experience correctly.
Let the reasonable person decide.There is no definition of the infinite. There is only an infinition of the infinite.
Here are the dictionary definitions:
1. Having no boundaries or limits.
2. Immeasurably great or large; boundless: infinite patience; a discovery of infinite importance.
3. Mathematics.
1. Existing beyond or being greater than any arbitrarily large value.
2. Unlimited in spatial extent: a line of infinite length.
3. Of or relating to a set capable of being put into one-to-one correspondence with a proper subset of itself.
Involved in all of these is the idea of a vast space or term, but one that has a leading edge, or point, that is expanding and will continue to expand forever, without limit. This is different from the concept of eternity, in which there are no leading edges at all, and no extremities either past or future.