Relative thinking

The Guardian ^ | 18 Nov 04 | Richard Lea

[riri]

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[r9etb]

your little logical trap designed to ensnare atheists and agnostics into admitting that they are immoral slime.

Not at all my intent (as you probably know). What I'm doing is simply pointing out the logical difficulties facing so-called "objectivist" philosophies. I do enjoy the give-and-take, but have yet to see (and do not expect to see) a convincing and logically sound defense of objectist philosophy.

Unfortunately for you however, I have thought about this quite a bit too. We are not going to convince each other and since I dislike repeating myself, I am going to give it a rest.

Your choice, certainly. All I can say is that your arguments need a bit of work, as they all reduce to various forms of moral relativism.

Who made it then?

Let's look at this by analogy. We are posting messages back and forth, and from this each of us concludes, not that other of us is a "human construct," but rather that the other of us actually exists. Note that, given our text-only interface, you have no way of actually proving that I really exist (see Turing Test), but the act of communication is sufficent to give us confidence of the other's existence (if not actual characteristics).

In the same way, I am confident that God has communicated with me, in various ways. As such, I infer His existence in much the same way that I infer yours.