I make no claims to be an expert on the majority of subjects. Yet you dont need to be an academic or a certified religious scholar to know truth. You dont have to believe things that are false, counter-factual, the opinion of one or more persons, traditional, or supposedly scientific. You must understand and weigh arguments for yourself. Taking things based upon human authorities is something that has historically proven unsound in finding out the way things are in the present world we inhabit. I find that most people do think that there are absolutely sound sources which they call valid sources. Unfortunately humans are universally plagued with deep-seated biases and prejudices that cloud critical thinking. Emotions can also betray your ability to think clearly and draw sound, testable conclusions. There is knowledge gained by human faculties of sense and thought, and there are truths revealed by God. You dont have to agree with me on that, but in my experience (subjective, but still relevant) Gods revelations of truth to mankind as revealed in the Bible are universally, absolutely, and empirically true. You must be able to take the Scriptures into proper account before you can make a reasonable judgement about their truthfulness. Atheists, in general, only know the Bible from afar and take shallow (often irrelevant) interpretations and set up and knock down straw-man arguments. We humans do not know how or where or why the first life began. We dont have a workable mechanism to us an explanation to describe the diversity and complexity of life on earth. Darwins idea of natural selection of organisms upon random mutations over millions of years is not a viable explanation. Science has discovered much about life as it is and was, but the most important questions are NOT answered. Richard Dawkins Mt. Improbable is Mt. Impossible for science today. There are different kinds of knowledge and they are not all derived from human authorities, human reason, or the scientific method. I value all the aforementioned as gifts of God upon His creature, mankind. Appeals to authority are out of control among most people. The only authority in which I place full trust is God - and still I must open my heart and mind to what He is telling me through His Word and the Holy Spirit that He sends to dwell within the being of each one who places His Faith in Jesus Christ, God the Son, at confession and repentance of personal sin and acknowledgement of the authority of the Holy Godhead. Inductive vs Deductive Reasoning en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic or logical deduction or, informally, top-down logic,[1] is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion.[2] Deductive reasoning links premises with conclusions. If all premises are true, the terms are clear, and the rules of deductive logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true. Deductive reasoning (top-down logic) contrasts with inductive reasoning (bottom-up logic) in the following way: In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached from general statements, but in inductive reasoning the conclusion is reached from specific examples. (Note, however, that the inductive reasoning mentioned here is not the same as induction used in mathematical proofs - mathematical induction is actually a form of deductive reasoning.) _________________________________ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority Fallacious examples of using the appeal include: * cases where the authority is not a subject-matter expert * cases where there is no consensus among experts in the subject matter * any appeal to authority used in the context of deductive reasoning.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 07:56:52 +0000
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