Richard Dawkins's definition of "Faith" ....

Originally posted by lucifershammer
No, because there is no logical or necessary connection between an event or a fact and a reaction. Put another way, events/facts do not have intrinsic causal powers.

Neither does a face.

How do you analyse the expression"His face annoys me" in terms of agent-causation?

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I don't claim that the rebuttal of event causation is of the constructive kind that simultaneously demonstrates/proves agent causation. However, because agent causation is the best known alternative and because agent causation does not suffer from the criticisms of event causation, I think one is nevertheless led to it.

The point is that Hume's sceptical argument is NOT a rebuttal of event-causation; there are arguments against it that apply whether one thinks event causation is a valid type of causation, or not.

Similarly one could say that the sceptical argument is equally troublesome for those who explain causal relationships through agent-causation (i.e. all we experience when I choose to lift my arm is a correlation between an intentional mental episode and a physical effect). The fact their is, in your view, a logical connection doesn't change that fact, but merely ignores it or pushes it to one side. One could argue that certain theories that find room for (or are based on) event-causation, such as counterfactual theories, do precisely the same.

Originally posted by dottewell
Neither does a face.

How do you analyse the expression"His face annoys me" in terms of agent-causation?

Causality isn't an analysis of expressions, but an analysis of reality. In my previous post in response to this question, I pointed out that (in this case) Darvlay's cause isn't the immediate cause of your annoyance -- there are intermediate entities involved which are omitted in the expression you cite.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Numerous times in the Bible there are references to being able to see all of the Earth from a single point, or to see a particular tall object from anywhere on Earth. These references are inconsistent with a spherical Earth.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

Like Satan showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world? I suppose there's some wiggle room--he could have flown him around the globe.

Originally posted by dottewell
The point is that Hume's sceptical argument is NOT a rebuttal of event-causation; there are arguments against it that apply whether one thinks event causation is a valid type of causation, or not.

I didn't get that. Could you rephrase, please?

Similarly one could say that the sceptical argument is equally troublesome for those who explain causal relationships through agent-causation (i.e. all we experience when I choose to lift my arm is a correlation between an intentional mental episode and a physical effect). The fact their is, in your view, a logical connection doesn't change that fact, but merely ignores it or pushes it to one side.

On the contrary, it explains precisely why, for instance, when your arm is tied down and the intentional mental act is not followed by the physical effect you are able to identify that your earlier thoughts about the causality involved between the mental act and the physical effect were not wrong, that there is a completely different factor at play here.

In a similar fashion, the scientist who sees a leaf moving this way and that in the wind does not think that his earlier views on the theory of gravitation are wrong -- but that there are other factors at play here. Such insights are not possible in an event/regularity theory of causation (c.f. Cartwright, 1983).