Freddies Faith Is Dead

In our continued discussions, we are getting hung up on something that I wish to put to bed, and post about to reference in the future when someone says that laws are merely descriptive, not prescriptive, etc.

So it was asked of Freddies Dead, the avatar or description for a real person, "Also, what observation has led you to believe that “A” CANNOT BE both “A” and “not A” at the same time and in the same way?"

Update: At the time, his response to this question was "Here you're asking me to give a proof for a law I suspect may not actually be absolute, lol."

This question is to flush out the logical misstep of this non believer. Its also to help others understand what is actual, fact and truth. That laws by nature are not only absolute (unchanging in principle), but prescriptive.

I went on with, "You see, just the definition of that law implies prescriptiveness – (CANNOT BE, not ISN’T)"


Freddies Dead said, "So now it's language that decides whether logic conforms to reality or reality conforms to logic? lol, this just gets better and better..."

OK, so lets take this a step at a time, to work this through. Hopefully, this will solve this problem once and for all. Please work (read walk) with me here.

The term "Freddies Dead" is merely a descriptor of the reality of you, as a real person. Now, if we take away the description "Freddies Dead", does the reality of you disappear? No. I hope we agree at this point. Moving on.

So, as I understand your point, the language which describes ALL OF reality is the vehicle we use, as humans, to make sense of things, i.e reality. Still fine?

The language itself, what you term as "descriptive", denotes certain prescriptive properties to it. Certainly in the sense of grammar, spelling, and structure. To spell your name "Freddies Dead" I CANNOT use "diedfres eadd" and make any practical sense. As a Pragmatist, you should understand the prescriptive nature of the English language. There are certain rules, laws, and guidelines to follow. Someone made these laws, rules, and guidelines to follow to make sense of things.

So what you are calling 'descriptive' for reality, is in reality, using a prescriptive tool to do so.

Now, can you account for the reality of, what our language calls, laws of logic, laws of nature, and uniformity of nature?  In your world, we use what you call the descriptive term, "laws" to help us identify that reality. So the question is, how do you account for those things in reality that we are calling 'laws of logic', and uniformity of nature? In other words, order.

Photo by Noel A.Tanner

These questions leads to the whole point of FAITH. It all comes down to faith, yet again. You place your faith in science and what I think is pragmatism. Yet, science too needs to build itself on faith. We both put faith in something.

The difference is that your faith is blind, mine is not. As Bahnsen said "The non-Christian scientist may and does believe in the presence of order, but he has no warrant for doing so"

Van Til goes on to say that belief in order is not only unsupported by the unbeliever, but also contradicted by the assumption that there is nothing "behind" the events of history or "behind" the thinking of men that could provide such order; thus, everything is random ("chance").

This is why Christianity is the only rational faith. Atheists, in their blind faith, have no foundation for intelligible scientific and philosophical procedure.

The real irony is that modern science teaches that experimentation needs to presuppose the idea of an open universe (nothing precluded, no restrictions are imposed in advance). The order of nature, we are told, is what it is because of an impersonal unchanging regularity. (Cf. Morris Cohen, Reason and Nature)

Bahnsen, once again, points out, "Only the Christian theory of knowledge, based as it is upon the absolute authority of the Word of God speaking in Scripture, makes communication of any sort possible anywhere between men. Without this presupposition men would have no integrated selves and the world would be a vacuum. Without the Christian theory of being there would be no defensible position with respect to the relation of men and things. Neither men nor things would have discernible identity...History would be unintelligible...

...Unbelievers cannot bring together both order (unity) and change (diversity) in their reasoning or in their view of reality. They thereby make nonsense of both, and all arguments against God are intellectually self-defeating." ~ Van Til's Apologetic, pg 117-121