From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 4:35 PM
To: Paul Filseth
Subject: pro literature re: supernatural


> > > > article that demonstrates that the debate is meaningless?
> >
> > I've never seen
> > such a journal article, never seen a citation of such, and
> > instead have seen many journal articles that would presumably be
> > required by editors and peer reviewers to deal with such a
> > demonstration if it existed.
>
> [this] doesn't actually have any bearing on the merit of
> your definitions

It bears on the merit of *any* definition, since your position
appears to be that the notion of God or supernaturality is
oxymoronical or meaningless. Articles that treat these notions
as non-oxymoronical and meaningful stand in prima facie opposition
to your position.

> > it wouldn't motivate me to rehearse for you how the issue came
> > to be a matter of settled scholarship.
>
> It sounds like you didn't bother to tell him Bible scholars'
> _reasons_ for believing there was a Q source. Typical.

It sounds that way because that's precisely what I said. :-)
If somebody disputes the moon landings or the Q source theory
or any other matter of settled scholarship, it will indeed
be "typical" of me to not invest my time educating that person.
The fact that I thusly value my time in no way increases the
credibility or validity of the case opposed to the settled
scholarly consensus.

> All that matters is whether you can expose flaws in our arguments
> against your definition.

That is indeed what mostly matters, and I have indeed 
rebutted all such arguments. But I for one would
be worried if the consensus of mainstream scholarship appeared
to assume that my position is obviously wrong.

> Suppose somebody claims that the first letters of the chapters
> of the King James version of Leviticus spell out "Shakespeare is God".
> What you're arguing, in effect, is that looking isn't the appropriate
> way to test that theory

Your analogy obviously does not capture our situation.
Suppose people (viz., professional philosophers) act
in a way that appears to assume that supernaturality is well-defined
enough in its ordinary dictionary definition to argue whether it
exists. What I'm arguing is that other people who disagree with
that assumption should find discomfort NOT ONLY in my demonstrations
that it is well-defined BUT ALSO in the apparent existence of the
assumption among so many people trained and incentivized to
detect and expose such allegedly false assumptions.

--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net