Re: Questions about the resurrection

On May 25, 1:28 pm, Mark Goodge <use...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Sun, 25 May 2008 04:57:12 -0700 (PDT), Paul Grieg put finger to
keyboard and typed:



On 24 May, 20:29, celia <c_a_b...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

When I was a student I remember a particularly obnoxious 'know it all'
going on in great detail about a certain subject to a friend of mine.
It was obvious even to me who knew little about the subject that she
wasn't the expert she was claiming to be. What I knew, and she didn't
know was that my friend really was an expert on the subject. I waited
in vain for my friend to say something but once she had gone we fell
about laughing. Please keep on about the "magical sky fairy"

It's a common move among people losing an argument to accuse the
opposition of 'lack of knowledge'. You see it all the time in reviews
of Dawkins' books by 'know it all' theologians who realise they cannot
defeat his arguments, so result in childish attacks on his personality
or (ridiculously) suggest that he cannot make philosophical comments
because he doesn't have a theology doctorate.

It's a common argument among people who have had their ignorance
exposed to accuse the opposition of having a narrow, fact-based
approach which misses the point of their argument. You see it all the
time in reactions to reviews of pop-science, pop-theology and
pop-philosphy books by "know it all" experts who are actually
qualified in the field being written about. Dawkins' defenders realise
that they can't beat the theologians at their own game, so they resort
to childish assertions that it's not knowledge which counts...

All I said was you do not have to have a doctorate in theology to have
opinions on theological and philosophical matters. I did not say, or
imply, that knowledge doesn't count. This is another tactic of the
theocrats. They can't win the arguments so they attack views of their
opponents that their opponents, actually, do not hold.

it's some
self-asserted ability to see "truth" without needing to spend any time
in the tedium of learning.

Neither Dawkins nor myself have asserted that we see "truth" without
learning. Quite the opposite. Empiricists like us believe you can only
gain knowledge through learning from experience. It's Christians who
pretend they can see truth without learning, in that God supposedly
provide them with "the truth", so they do not have to bother
performing experiments or doing hard brain work.
.

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