Comment by prometheus76 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prometheus76 | Hacker News Reader

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You've asked some very big questions that would require some unpacking to even start to answer, because there are a lot of assumptions and presuppositions and hidden definitions just in the first question of wondering about evidence with regard to supernatural things.

This might feel like a cop-out on my part (and it probably is, because I am at work), but the best response I can give to you is that if you really want to try to understand the issues you raise from a Christian perspective, "Miracles" by C.S. Lewis is probably the most succinct way I could answer your questions. He takes on the problems with nihilism and naturalism in a straightforward, but thorough manner.

I didn't read it until far into my journey back to Christianity, but he addresses the issue better than anyone else I've read.

I will leave you with one little thing that always goes around in my head when I'm talking with a nihilist or naturalist, however. "There is no absolute truth" is an absolute-truth claim, which means the whole foundation of that world view is based on a self-contradiction. That might not bother you, but it started bothering me when it was pointed out.

>"There is no absolute truth" is an absolute-truth claim, which means the whole foundation of that world view is based on a self-contradiction

This is mere sophistry and the phrase does not mean what you think it means. There is no contradiction here.

The phrase is almost always used when comparing/contrasting different schools of philosophies/religions to emphasize that while within the worldview proposed by each of them they may posit absolute truths, outside of their framework there is nothing i.e. the phrase itself has no meaning. There are two different frames of reference at play here.

James Tartaglia in his book (referenced in my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32920232) points out that our inability to make sense of reality from the outside in (i.e. Nihilism/no meaning) does not prevent us from giving meaning to reality from the inside out (i.e. as it is lived via any chosen philosophy/religion). The distinction is very important since it resolves a seeming contradiction i.e. how can life be both meaningless and meaningful at the same time?.

We were just sharing things thay helped us and the things that helped us differred, I'm glad you found something that helped you with despair.

At no point did I claimed there is no absolute truth. There is absolute truth, if you cannot rectify that I hold both positions intellectually without contradiction than there is no room for an honest meeting of the minds.

Many people do get poisoned in their ability to reason through others arguments because of overeager pattern matching after they are exposed to the field of christian apologetics and other sub-academic fields (in terms of rigour of logic) that tend to strawmanning.

Christian mysticism is a way of kicking the can down the road in a way that feels better but is more tied to an embrace of epistemological and emperical uncertainty than truth grounding.

Mysticism is a way of accepting the unverifiable unknown based on external authority statements.

It tends to subvert more truth than it embraces, it's why so many christian thinkers have written against it, when christian theists have spent so much time rebutting the traditional view (which I'm not sure if you hold) I'm not sure what I can add, since I can't speak to the details of how you hold your particular beliefs and what they are.

I say this as someone who has not only read C.S. Lewis extensively (I do hate when argument falls to these types of handwaving appeals to authority) but also better (though less popular because they were academic and didn't speak/write often for popular audience like he did during ww2) christian thinkers like Alvin Plantiga, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and frankly even Francis Schaeffer.

I wish you all the best, and again, you don't have to be right or have "grounded beliefs" for me to be happy that you have overcome despair and are living a more joyful life, I'm glad you found something that lifted you out. Calling myself a nihilist is a dead end for the discussion you seem to want to engage in though.

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