From: Brian Holtz [Brian.Holtz@sun.com] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 9:58 AM To: Brian Holtz Subject: Re: JH: The Design Argument "Paul Filseth" wrote: > > And do you > > worry at all that you'll seem to be disingenuously ducking the issue > > by stubbornly claiming [..] > > You just said "disingenuous" one time too many. I apologize if my frustration at being unable to understand your position caused me to be harsher than I should have. Let me rephrase the question as: "are you saying that millenia of philosophical debate has been about a concept (deity) that is too ill-defined (and undefinable?) to justify taking a position?" > If I don't > satisfy your standards, go talk to somebody who does. You meet my standards just fine. To review, my questions on the table are: Is a clear definition of 'supernatural' impossible (or, equivalently for our purposes, that supernaturality is by proper definition impossible or oxymoronic)? Is there a conceivable case in which something exists and has observable consequences and is the best explanation for those consequences and would be considered by most people to be a "deity"? What is the closest case you could imagine to the traditional human monotheistic notion of a deity? What lexicographic or other evidence is there that the standard usage of 'existent' (and related words be/real/actual) bottoms out as anything else than causal relatedness? Note that this doesn't require that English speakers recognize that 'existence' bottoms out as 'causal relatedness'. It merely requires that every accurate description of what speakers mean by 'existence' bottoms out (perhaps indirectly) as 'causal relatedness'. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net