Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[appolose]

Final-Fan said:

Well, it just has to be hypothetically possible, not actually possible. 

And, well, you can't have it both ways.  Agreeing to call it "personal absolute knowledge" won't make me happy if you follow it up with "but it's also universal absolute knowledge" which defeats the point. 

So:  this, combined with all you've said, only gives me the following impression: 
A supernatural being could invade Person A's mind and cause him to believe something without any speck of doubt in the world that X is true.  (Revelation)  Person A absolutely knows it.  And, having done this, the same supernatural entity COULD NOT do the same to Person B but give him absolute certainty in not-X because it would violate the definition of truth. 

Unless you're just saying that A could never conceive of such a thing happening to B because it would violate his own absolute certainty. 

Well, it just has to be hypothetically possible, not actually possible.

 

Well, by my meaning of truth, it’s never hypothetically possible for a contradictory reality to occur. In short, because contradiction is meaningless. What the hec is a married bachelor?

 

And, well, you can't have it both ways.  Agreeing to call it "personal absolute knowledge" won't make me happy if you follow it up with "but it's also universal absolute knowledge" which defeats the point. 

 

    I was merely trying to understand your terms in a way that didn’t contradict my meaning of truth. If I absolutely know the world is round, it doesn’t matter if someone tells me they have absolute knowledge that the world is flat. I, apparently, know otherwise and so they obviously do not have absolute knowledge of this. I cannot believe them. There’s no use in asking “well, but what if they do have absolute knowledge though?”… that’s just repeating the contradiction to me. It’s not a problem to consider this fellow does not have absolute knowledge, but is only saying he does.

    The thing is, we already understand this outside of this specification of revelation. If a person contradicted you about the roundness of the world you’d see him as wrong no matter how much he tells you he’s absolutely positive about it. Whatever we got our “confidence” in this from, we simply realized he contradicted it and that’s means he’s wrong. And we didn’t even engage in a debate about epistemology with the fellow lol. Revelation is no more ‘dogmatic’ or obstinate than that.

 

    To the last scenario you brought up, yes, again because of language we’re able to arrange good English words into nonsense. It’s not merely that Person A is unable to doubt what absolute knowledge he has and ‘cannot conceive otherwise’. It’s that this scenario already states something nonsensical to my use of the term ‘absolute knowledge’ (that is, truth). Person A knows the truth that the earth is round and Person B knows the truth that the world is flat. Might as well say, the earth is flat and round. That’s meaningless to me. Adding a supernatural entity into the mix with ‘lots of power to screw with people’ doesn’t do anything but distract from that point. I can’t call truth, not truth – it’s meaningless – saying “hypothetically’ still doesn’t give it any meaning.