The idea or the person

Originally posted by moonbus
mb: "... the truth of a claim is prior. I say meaning is prior. If you don’t know what something means, you don’t know what would be true if it were true;
fg: I say gibberish you speak, convey meaning you do not. "

It is necessary to know what a proposition means before its truth-value can be evaluated. That is elementary. That is why I say that meaning is prior to truth.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Oh, good grief.

Yes, before ascertaining is a proposition is true you must first understand that proposition.
[sufficiently to be able to assess it's truth value]

However I was taking it as read that when someone says/asks/proposes something you don't
understand that your first question is some variant of "what? I didn't understand that" repeate ...[text shortened]... how to achieve it.
etc etc...

Otherwise you are just wasting my, and everyone else's, time.

Originally posted by RJHinds
We have the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium that have been said to be the burial cloth and face cloth of Christ as reported in the New Testament and scientists have not been able to prove otherwise and don't know how the image of the scourged and crucified man got on the cloth. The overwhelming evidence points to it being authentic.

That would be enough ...[text shortened]... k into the truth of the New Testament and the resurrection of Christ as being true and valid. 😏

Originally posted by DeepThought
The overwhelming evidence is that the Shroud of Turin dates from when it appeared in history which was the 14th Century. Believe what you want, but the evidence does not support your claim.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that statement - although the simile at the end is entertaining. Given a collection of symbols and rules to manipulate them one can generate statements like ¬PvP which don't have any particular meaning but are nevertheless true, in the sense that if P is given any meaning the resultant meaningful sentence will be true. ...[text shortened]... th before meaning. So I'm hoping you'll expand a little on what you mean by "meaning is prior".

gf: <<Propositional knowledge is defined as a "Justified, True, Belief" [I include the Gettier condition in the justification]
If you cannot prove a proposition to whatever sufficiently high standard is relevant or required then you do not know that that proposition is true.
Therefore you cannot know [or claim to know] what you* cannot prove. >>

I'm glad you mentioned Gettier; that narrows the field of discussion down to a manageable range. Are you familiar with Cavells's addendum to Gettier's definition ("I would believe it if it were true" )? It became necessary because examples cropped up which fulfilled Gettier's conditions and yet did not qualify as knowledge. So, just to make sure we're both on the same page here, Gettier's defintion (with Cavell's proviso) applies only to propositional knowledge of the form "NN knows that p" where "p" is an empirical proposition about some fact in the world which is capable of being empirically verified. Something like "It is raining." And, yes, we assume that it is not about you personally being able to verify this or that particular proposition; it is about verifiability in general and in principle. I don't expect you personally to be able to verify that the interior temperature of the sun is above 500 degrees Kelvin, for example--I'll grant you that without argument.

"Which is how science generally works"-- yes, of course, but religion does not work that way. And that makes all the difference. Oddly, you and RJH are much closer than either of you would care to admit. You both tend to view Biblical statements as literal and factual, as the sort of thing which could be verified scientifically. The slight difference between you is that he thinks the evidence for those statements is strong and you think the evidence is weak.


gf: "Oh, good grief. Yes, before ascertaining if a proposition is true you must first understand that proposition."

Well, that's the whole ball of wax right there, getting the meaning right. I'll give you an example: if someone says "It's raining cats and dogs" do you say it is false because there are no felines or canines dropping out of the sky? Of course, not. You recognize that the statement is not literally meant, and therefore not literally true either. It is a figure of speech. It is circumlocution for "It is raining hard," which could be empirically verified (given some arbitrary standard how many ml of rain per sq.meter of ground surface counts as hard). Something similar applies to a lot of the statements in the Bible and sacred literature generally; sane, mainstream Christians have long since abandoned the idea that everything in there is literal and factual, because it was not meant that way. One has to get the meaning right first, before running off half-cocked trying to validate it by scientific means. The bit of Genesis about the world's having been created in six days is allegorical, not geological--every sane mainstream Christian (including the Vatican) has denounced the young earth hypothesis as ridiculous. The young earth hypothesis is an example of what goes wrong when one tries to read the literal factual (knowledge that p is the case) into something which was never meant that way. Knocking over RJH's position doesn't count; he's a straw man.

gf: "you cannot KNOW anything that you cannot justifiably prove. This is Absolutely and definitionally true."

No, it isn't. Your concept of knowledge is too narrow. It blots out many things which people do demonstrably know without being able to prove or needing to prove. It blots out knowing how, for example. Knowing how to swim or ride a horse or knowing one's way to the post office is not something which one can prove by arguments. One also knows where one's limbs are; this ability can be demonstrated on command (unless intoxicated), but is not provable by arguments or evidence. One also knows what one was going to say before one was interrupted. One can demonstrate such abilities on command; philosophers commonly make a distinction between demonstrations, and proofs based on arguments or evidence. The distinction is not trivial, and ignoring it does not make it go away. Knowing the characters of the people close to you (whether they love you or respect you and so on) is also knowledge which cannot be proven by arguments or evidence (the attempt to prove such a thing by citing evidence leads to a silly sort of behaviorism, whereby people don't really have feelings, they only exhibit behavior, like automatons). If someone asks "Do you know so-and-so?" it is perfectly correct to answer "Yes" and if someone challenges you to 'prove it' it is perfectly correct to answer "We have been neighbors for ten years. We're friends." No further proof is required. This does not rule out the possibility of being duped sometimes.

gf: <<I didn't say there was no meaning. I said their[sic] was no value [that cannot be replicated or bettered by secular means/groups/people].
I also said that truth still matters, and that wibbling about 'meaning' doesn't change that.
You can find a holy book as meaningful as you like, but it still matters if it's claim and values are true and valid. >>

Once you admit that value matters, then you take the discussion out of the domain where Gettier's definition ('knowledge that p is the case' ) applies, and Gettier would have been the first to agree. Because "p" is then no longer a fact in the world which is capable of being empirically verified.

Examples: "God created the world (whether it took six days or six billion years)", or "Evolution really happened, but it is guided by God"--which is the sane mainstream Christian position. The world's having been created by some Being outside the universe is not a fact in the world and therefore does not fall under Gettier's definition. Gettier would have been the first to agree, because the proposition that the world was created by God is not an empirically verifiable proposition that p is the case.

Get your mind round the idea that not all beliefs are rationally grounded, nor need they be. You probably believe in the law of causality. That is not rationally grounded. One observes causes and one observes effects, that is, one observes events before and one observes events after, but one never observes causality. The so-called law of causality is a supposition based on habit. Yes, the assumption of the law of causality does real work in science, but science cannot prove the law of causality--it presupposes it.

DT: "Christianity becomes pretty meaningless if Jesus is not the Son of God. Buddhism still retains relevance even if there is no cycle of death and rebirth. Also I think moonbus was giving examples that were not to be taken as exhaustive."

Yes, thank you for that. I readily grant that if Jesus did not really literally factually exist, but is an ahistorical allegory for some sort of Jungian archetype, then the bottom drops out of Christianity. Christianity without a real savior isn't Christianity; it is Judaism for gentiles.

I also readily grant that Jesus's existence, could it ever be sufficiently evidenced, would still not by itself be grounds to embrace the Christian religion and accept Jesus as personal Lord and savior. I quite agree with gf on that point. Existence does not imply worship-worthiness. Muslims, for example, accept that Jesus really existed but do not worship him. So here is a case where Gettier's definition does no philosophical work; truth does not compel belief because something else takes precedence over truth.

sonship: "The epistles are full of practicality." I don't doubt that.

Originally posted by moonbus
"Which is how science generally works"-- yes, of course, but religion does not work that way. And that makes all the difference. Oddly, you and RJH are much closer than either of you would care to admit. You both tend to view Biblical statements as literal and factual, as the sort of thing which could be verified scientifically. The slight diff ...[text shortened]... s that he thinks the evidence for those statements is strong and you think the evidence is weak.

but religion does not work that way.

Originally posted by moonbus
The bit of Genesis about the world's having been created in six days is allegorical, not geological--every sane mainstream Christian (including the Vatican) has denounced the young earth hypothesis as ridiculous. The young earth hypothesis is an example of what goes wrong when one tries to read the literal factual (knowledge that p is the case) into something which was never meant that way. Knocking over RJH's position doesn't count; he's a straw man.

Christians recognize Genesis and the six days of creation as historical and do not recognize the Vatican as authoritative over all Christians nor are their opinions infallible, since they have been wrong in the past. Anyone that would rely on the apostate Roman Catholic Church for all Christian truth is ignorant of church history in my opinion.

Originally posted by RJHinds

Christians recognize Genesis and the six days of creation as historical and do not recognize the Vatican as authoritative over all Christians nor are their opinions infallible, since they have been wrong in the past. Anyone that would rely on the apostate Roman Catholic Church for all Christian truth is ignorant of church history in my opinion.

😏

HaleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by moonbus
every sane mainstream Christian (including the Vatican) has denounced the young earth hypothesis as ridiculous.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I read moonbus's post carefully, it's an interesting post and I recommend it to anyone reading. Nowhere in it did he make the comment in your quotation. What is more there are no edits and so his post has not been changed. Assuming it was not your intention to misrepresent him you should state where your quotation was from, so that no one will think you were trying to misrepresent him.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Apparently, you did not read his post carefully. I did not wish to reply to everything he said. So when I saw RJH and straw man, I felt I needed to replay to what led up to that portion only. So I deleted everything before and after that from his post so I could just hone in on what made him use my name in vain. 😏

The bit of Genesis about the world's having been created in six days is allegorical, not geological--every sane mainstream Christian (including the Vatican) has denounced the young earth hypothesis as ridiculous. The young earth hypothesis is an example of what goes wrong when one tries to read the literal factual (knowledge that p is the case) into something which was never meant that way.

Christians recognize Genesis and the six days of creation as historical and do not recognize the Vatican as authoritative over all Christians nor are their opinions infallible, since they have been wrong in the past. Anyone that would rely on the apostate Roman Catholic Church for all Christian truth is ignorant of church history in my opinion.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Moonbus said:[quote]The bit of Genesis about the world's having been created in six days is allegorical, not geological--every sane mainstream Christian (including the Vatican) has denounced the young earth hypothesis as ridiculous. The young earth hypothesis is an example of what goes wrong when one tries to read the literal factual (knowledge that p is ...[text shortened]... n rather than deliberately misquoting in the mistaken belief that people do not read long posts.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Actually that is not true at all.

I do not think that the bible is or was meant to be true, or was meant to be read literally.

BUT...

If you are going to claim that it is/was inspired/written by an actual god, then I get to treat it
like it was thus written and I get to go verify it's claims/morality against objective standards
and it only m ...[text shortened]... fore determining truth.
I say, whether or not something is true, changes the meaning and value.

Religion doesn't work. period.

Originally posted by RJHinds
That so-called misquote is my quote of myself, numbnuts. 😏