(Humour, Marsilio.)

Gosh. Well, let’s ask Aaron what he meant when he first used the term.

Hey, Aaron…what did you mean when you said “empirical evidence”? I thought I understood, but Marsilio doesn’t. Could you clarify?

“Have you read Jacques Maritain’s The Degrees of Knowledge?”

Nope. I just finished the collected short stories of Henry Kuttner, though. Pretty darn good.

Far from it. What you’ve asserted is that all monotheists are Fideists. Your difficulty comes from the loose phrase “exercise of faith” and the loose use of the word “evidence”.

My dear fellow, surely you’re not talking about me? Angry? Good heavens. This is fun.

Quite. I was, however, rebutting Aaron’s erroneous assertion by illustrating that, contrary to his belief, “persons of faith” have in fact claimed empirical evidence of God’s existence.

I look forward to any argument or evidence you or he advance to dispute that.

Plato’s Meno is always my model for socratic discussion. Those who get angry in response say more than they know.

“Persons of faith” throughout history have always had, in their membership, people who held incorrect or erroneous notions. As well, the Christian world is no longer strictly Catholic and, hence, one has to be quite familiar with the historical development of Christian Doctrine to understand the movement in philosophical understanding of the questions.

You didn’t, however, attempt to answer the equivocation and many people would assume that “empirical” meant discerning God with the five senses — a notion that Aquinas would find, for example, impossible.

You are quite correct. In fact, I don’t imagine that many who is not a Jesuit postulant would want to take them. It’s not the content I’m referring to, though, but the process, as an exercise in applied psychology.

I suggest beginning with the term Nature, first. I have to disappear for a few hours to torture some heretics, rob some widows of some alms and oppress non-theists at the shopping mall.

In the meantime, I suggest beginning with either the Greek “phusis” and perhaps the Latin “Natura”. You can find an excellent etymology in CS Lewis’s Studies in Words Chapter 2 - Nature.

Have fun.

With your permission, I’d like to just return your attention to the actual statement I made. I corrected Aaron’s erroneous assertion that no “persons of faith” had claimed empirical evidence of God’s existence.

Is that your view?

I have the entire text right in front of me and find it hard to believe that anyone who is not a Christian would want to take them.

Now, Marsilio…don’t confirm the popular image of pedants as being absolutely humourless. If you like, I shall adorn any remarks whose intent is primarily humorous with a cue to assist you. ( humour ). Thus.

“Are you saying, then, that a miracle is contrary to the laws of nature?”

Well, there are range of definitions, stretching from the common usage (e.g., a surprising event, like the Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup ( humour )) to the enormous set of theological definitions. You asked me to define the sense in which I was using the word, and I did. You seek further clarification, and I will pleased to elaborate, if you’ll clarify what you mean by “laws of nature”.

Yes. Most readers reading would not have the time or inclination to journey far into the Philosophy of Religion (which is what your discussion is) and start reading Aristotle, Aquinas and Hume to answer a question that is of far less importance than many others of a more pressing nature on a political blog.

That said, though, the most accessible treatment for anyone interested, who is a theist, is CS Lewis’s book Miracles and a book by Victor Reppert extending his Argument from Reason.

So, since Lewis studied Hume while at Oxford and specifically quotes his Treatise of HUman Nature in Chapter 13 “On Probability” of Miracles, I would like to know if you have read the book or attempted to engage any of his arguments.

I would also like to know if you believe that a Miracle is contrary to the laws of nature, being scrupulously careful with your use of the word “contrary” from medieval logic.

A coincidence is not a miracle, as even the most elementary analysis would show.

Are you saying, then, that a miracle is contrary to the laws of nature?

You asked me to define “miracle”. I did.

You asked me to provide a source for my assertion. I did.

Was there anything else you wanted me to define?

Since Aquinas had a different definition of Miracle (his Summa Contra Gentiles) from David Hume, then, you had best clarify whose causation model you prefer — since Hume had a very different causal model than do Aristotelians.

This ground has already been well trod by others, so I’m unclear as to why you’re invoking Hume’s name to state, in a roundabout way, that you are a philosophic materialist who denies the existence of the supernatural a priori.

Following a (forgive me) leaden three paragraph attempt to impress the peanut gallery, you (using the royal “we”, for some reason) ask for clarification of two terms: empirical evidence and miracle.

As for the first, you had best ask Aaron, who introduced it into this debate.

As to the second, I mean, in this context, a suspension of the natural operation of the universe through the agency or will of God.

I think he’d like you to review certain key works of religious epistemology such as John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, explicate the moderate realist philosopical psychology that Aquinas develops from Aristotle’s De Anima and then explains how Newman developed his epistemology by brilliantly extending an undeveloped area of Aristotle’s original lines of thought.

After you’re finished with that, perhaps you could explain why you side with the Scottish Empiricist school and how your understanding of Kant’s Categories puts you at odds not only with Aristotle’s Categories but with certain implicit assumptions of certain Scottish/English empiricists.

As an extra homework assignment, you might choose to review Newman’s other seminal work An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine but I’d rather see you discuss CS Lewis’s apologetic treatise Miracles and the further development of those lines of thought in Victor Reppert’s “CS Lewis’s Dangerous Idea - In Defense of the Argument from Reason.”

Either way, we’re most curious about the use of the terms “empirical evidence” and “miracles” and what your original sources are for your assertions.

Aaron, Which definitions would you like me to clarify?

Question 12, with 13 subparts is How Is God Known By Us?

http://www.hackettpublishing.c.....sFG24pM%3D

You obviously need to get your definitions right.

Anon, I was quite serious about the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises. They’re still an integral part of the Novitiate training for Jesuits, and anyone curious about how someone can be spiritually re-programmed in thirty days: it’s one of the most acute exercises in practical psychology ever devised, and applicable to pretty much any body of belief.

And I’m still waiting to read your basis for calling him insane.

Dalton, I realize that verbal fireworks are important to folks like you. After all, your concerns are entirely superficial, and you are easily impressed by the facile. Sorry to disappoint, but then again, the truth requires no adornment, and only the shallow demand it.

The “Spiritual Exercises” compiled by St. Ignatious of Loyola set out a systematic program for achieving a “mystical” revelation. It is remarkable in that it anticipates many of the approaches formalized by psychologists centuries later and used for behaviour modification, “brainwashing”, and programming/deprogramming cultists.

Then I challenge you here - conduct this empirical experiment: make the decision in your mind that Jesus is who he says he is in the Bible, and that the Bible is true. I believe you have the rational capacity to do this. Follow Jesus’ teachings and trust in the truth of his claims for one month, forsaking your atheist stance. Attend a church, seek out fellowship with other believers, and forsake what the Bible calls “sin”.

My hypothesis is that you will, empirically, experience confirmation of the faith you practice for that month. I believe you will meet Jesus in a spiritual experience that will change your life. Do you have the empirical, analytical mind to conduct this experiment, or are you just all talk about “giving all religions a chance”?

Umm…it’s actually quite a common premise among Catholic theologians, and articulated by not a few Popes. If I were you, Aaron, I wouldn’t venture too far into theological discussions in the future.

Accidents of history; since the Romans had so much sway over most of the “civilized” world, that translated into a greater acceptance of the ideas that they ended up adopting and promoting (one of which ended up being your particular superstition). Christianity itself ended up subsuming and including so many aspects of other superstitions (”virgin births”, blood sacrifices, resurrection, yadda, yadda, yadda) that it’s ludicrous to claim that it is in any way “special”. That’s not to say that it’s a “bad” way to live (as a conservative libertarian, I treat others the way I would like to be treated, simply because it’s easier to get along and I hope that that behaviour is returned). However, that’s a LONG way from believing in an imaginary invisible man in the sky. If Constantine had chosen ANOTHER superstition to believe in, or if the Council of Nicea had voted any differently, you would just as easily be believing in a different superstition (and doubtless, be claiming that it’s the “infallible word of god”).

Off hand, I can’t think of one; those that I have had any doubts about, I was able to research and experiment on.

I don’t know. You’re talking to the wrong kind of Protestant here. What I do know is that it’s not evidence of God’s existence. Suggestive and hard to ignore, to be certain, but not evidence in the way that Anon would think of it.