Dear visionaries,
Stan responded, “But consider the case of a murder colony . . . the law in the USA would NOT allow such conduct.” Unless, to take one obvious example, the murder colony is called the bombing of Dresden.
Stan also said:” “He would have to fight against and oppose almost all wars the USA has conducted or is now conducting!” Why the exclamation point? Of course I oppose “almost all wars” the US has been involved in. Not all, but almost all.
And then he said: “My statement that I wanted “honest debate based on facts and logic” was not a statement of an ethical ‘absolute’ but merely an expression of my belief that this approach gets the best results.”
Best results according to whom? By what standard? Best results according to Zen? Best results according Microsoft? Best results according to Plato? Without a transcending arche, you are reduced to saying that you don’t know what road we are on, where it goes, or how much gas we have, but that if we take the next right, in “my personal opinion,” we will get the “best results.”
“Let’s use facts and logic.” Okay, and here is a good place to start. Why is the invisible logical rule against affirming the consequent binding on anyone? Why is modus ponens the way in which you and your descendants after you are commanded to walk? People get what they want by appealing to logical fallacies all the time. They don’t get the same results by disregarding the law of gravity. And speaking of the “best results” that obtain through obeying gravity, why should we even care about these best results? Who died and left the pragmatists king? Why is the nihilist wrong when he pitches himself off a high building?
Your relativism is a universal acid, and however you try,l you cannot keep it from dissolving everything. The unexamined epistemology is not worth living.
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.