[quote]kamui wrote: Addition is not a phenomenon. It doesn’t “happen” on its own.
It’s an operation. a specific kind of human action. And it has some rules, which define that the result of the operation 2+2 IS 4. No matter what.
If you fail to “find” 4, the only conclusion is that you failed to operate properly.
not that “the rule is false”.[/quote] Yes, “addition” is utterly inexplicable in strictly human terms and is yet an utterly unbreakable metaphysical truism that is also utterly binding all day every day for everybody. This is the laughable hypocrisy of true agnosticism. Do as I say not as I do on the grandest scale possible.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:<<< your faith is supposed to scoff in the face of logic. >>>[/quote] There you go again. Faith, which is what every epistemology is, is the foundation of human logic. Yours, Cryogen,s and Kamui’s too. It’s only a question of what in. You have been designed in the derivative image of a super-logical God. Your mind CANNOT form so much as a single intelligible fraction of a thought without axiomatic reference to and dependence upon your designer. HE made sure of it.
You cannot prevent it no matter how hard you try and boy do you ever. This is called “sin”. Adam and Eve tried it first in the garden. It was the most monumentally disastrous failure of all time. Man is neither allowed nor capable of making his own decisions. He functions correctly only when in self conscious voluntary submission to the God who is alone qualified and authorized to instruct him in RIGHTeousness.
The trouble is that sin has broken this image of God in man. NOT eliminated, but broken it. He now, being a chip off of ol father Adam’s block, hates his designer and spends every second of his life attempting to escape moral accountability to Him with endlessly morphing versions of intellectual/philosophical/semantic rebellion, which all reduce in the end to the exact same single and simple thing. "I will decide, ME ME ME whether there is a God and if so what kind I’ll allow Him to be". Sinful autonomous man in all his vainglorious self worshiping self delusional idolatry.
What’s amusing is that I haven’t found one single unbeliever, ever, who can tell me how and why 2+2=4, but they have no problem advancing entire schemes of alleged science as if they actually have any reason whatsoever in and by their sinful autonomous selves for believing ANYTHING. Which the honest ones simply affirm. They tell me straight up: “well we can’t REALLY KNOW anything”.
However, as that proud owner of the very first Tiribulus “Hallelujah Worthy Bullseye” award, Groo, has himself quite rightly affirmed: “At the very least I ACT like I know things for certain. Everybody does” (paraphrase). He did not know at the time that with that absolutely true and honest statement he was delivering himself firmly into the hands of an ultra conservative Christian lunatic. I am duty bound to occasionally remind him.
Cryogen, the bottom line is you are living breathing and thinking in a natural and metaphysical universe of certainty and logic at the epistemological level provided to you by your creator God. Your using that against Him is criminal and because of who this life of crime is against, it is no less fatal than that of Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Geoffrey Dahmer, Osama Bin Laden, the Newtown shooter or anybody else. One bite from a piece of fruit in defiance of the command of almighty God was all it took to corrupt every last human being descended from our first father.
The solution is being born again into the last Adam, Jesus Christ. (1st Corinthians 15)
Imagine a young man guilty of torturing, raping and murdering another man’s family… in Texas. The husband and father tells the court, “not only do I not want this man to pay for these crimes, but I will go the electric chair in his place and I do hereby adopt him as my son and bequeath to him my forgiveness, my name, my house and all my my riches”. That is a pathetically deficient legal representation of what God the Father has done for man in Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this most glorious and gracious exchange of life for death God makes us partakers of His very mind and nature as the apostles Peter and Paul respectively tell us. (2 Peter 1:4 and 1 Corinthians 2:16) We are thereby declared right before Him and spiritually and intellectually and morally equipped to begin learning how to live in this new life and shed the old one. This is called “progressive sanctification”. THEN we can KNOW not only how and why 2+2=4, but how and why to interpret heliotropes, gametes chromosomes and genes, along with every last other particle of data we will or ever could stumble upon.
According to what you mean by “proof”? No, I cannot prove this to you any more than you can prove to me how and why 2+2=4 for all the reasons I have just said. In and by himself man CANNOT prove ANYTHING. Thank God he doesn’t have to be left in and by himself. Some rather observant and especially informed folks may accuse me of simply Christianizing Kant’s divide here. (I actually can’t believe nobody’s ever done this) No. It’s exactly the opposite. Immanuel Kant paganized his God’s epistemology. There is a foundational and eternal life and death difference.
[quote]kamui wrote:I really hope that Cryogen is not another postmodern relativist.
I’m feeling lonely sometimes. [/quote] How many post modern absolutists do you figure there can be? He hasn’t thought any of this through. Professor Pinhead at Atheist State University handed this kid a plastic gun with an orange muzzle and now he thinks he’s an invincible special forces guy.
[/quote]
Immanuel Kant actually made it so the ethics of Christianity can be coherent. Doing the right thing, FOR THE RIGHT REASON. Rather than doing the right thing out of fear, or cowardice, or convenience. Immanuel Kant brought integrity to ethics that otherwise, don’t really care what is in your heart when you do the right thing, only that you do the right thing.
If God gave us logic, or perhaps created the universe where this particular logic is, then it makes sense to do what we can to understand logic, to better understand God. It’s been put forward by philosophers that perhaps this is the best world God could have created, and the best logic God could have created.
The way you talk about logic and righteousness is as if God has a monopoly on these things as well. I suppose in an alternative logic, it would make sense to rape your children and murder your parents, and that would be righteous… This is what you are saying is it not?
Since God has dominion over what is right and wrong, he could decide to do such, and it would be wholly right. Mystery sure is a funny thing. I prefer logic.
I acknowledge the fact that “Tirib’s God” is indeed an answer to 99% of these “very correction questions”.
And i won’t say the same about Thor, Ra or the God of most christian theologies.
That’s why you can’t easily and contemptuously disprove his God in the same way you easily and contemptuously “disprove” Thor or Ra.
Also, i confirm that there is an eternity in the remaining 1%.
Quite litteraly.
[quote]
Hey Kamui. Have you ever thought about making a thread about how you discovered your questions and answers? Sometimes the journey is just as interesting if not more so![/quote]
Well, i rarely think about making threads. Let alone threads about me, myself and I.
Maybe i could write something about some of my philosophical encounters and some of my encounters with philosophers (it’s not always the same thing).
Or some kind of tutorial : “How to learn philosophy in french universities, and make it through with your sanity barely intact”.
[quote]kamui wrote:
That’s why you can’t easily and contemptuously disprove his God in the same way you easily and contemptuously “disprove” Thor or Ra.
[/quote]
I’d be interested to see you easily “disprove” Thor.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:<<< Edit: consider this my attempt at rekindling our argument; I’ve tried to go back to the probability question but I find it too bogged down in semantics and peripheral minutiae to be worthy of our devoting our energies to it.[/quote] Poppycock. You’re a smart guy. You have given yourself headaches (figuratively) workin that line of thought every way possible. It’s ok to just say you don’t have an answer. I will not gloat and belittle you. Actually I would rather respect that.
[/quote]
Well, you either know me very well or you happened to stumble by chance upon the one foolproof way to ensure that that particular argument continues. An answer will follow later in the day.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:<<< Edit: consider this my attempt at rekindling our argument; I’ve tried to go back to the probability question but I find it too bogged down in semantics and peripheral minutiae to be worthy of our devoting our energies to it.[/quote] Poppycock. You’re a smart guy. You have given yourself headaches (figuratively) workin that line of thought every way possible. It’s ok to just say you don’t have an answer. I will not gloat and belittle you. Actually I would rather respect that.
[/quote]
Well, you either know me very well or you happened to stumble by chance upon the one foolproof way to ensure that that particular argument continues. An answer will follow later in the day.[/quote]
WELL!!! I never…
[quote]kamui wrote:[quote]Fletch said:
Hey Kamui. Have you ever thought about making a thread about how you discovered your questions and answers? Sometimes the journey is just as interesting if not more so![/quote]Well, i rarely think about making threads. Let alone threads about me, myself and I.
Maybe i could write something about some of my philosophical encounters and some of my encounters with philosophers (it’s not always the same thing). >>>[/quote]No it’s not LOL!!![quote]kamui wrote:
Or some kind of tutorial : “How to learn philosophy in french universities, and make it through with your sanity barely intact”.[/quote] LOLOLOLOL!!! Maybe I’ll join ya with one on how to not REALLY learn philosophy at all and still be a passable Calvinist Christian philosopher. (that was a perfect opportunity for a jab. I’ll be very disappointed if all you guys miss it)
[quote]kamui wrote:<<< Also, i confirm that there is an eternity in the remaining 1%.
Quite literaly.[/quote] Yes there is my dear friend. A thing I’m sure is far more significant to me than it is to you.
This is really the problem with Christianity and capital “S” Science (as it’s been bastardized, not the more objective lowercase “s” science). Both attempt to give definitive, absolute answers, reasons (insert whatever other word you choose here) for questions to which the potential answers are neither discrete, ordinal, or continuous. These questions have answers which fall in all of these categories, depending on your perspective.
You all disagree about the nature of god. Which god? This god or That God?
If logically describing your belief helps you, you must recognize that faith in a god who created a world where logical (fundamentally mathematical) principles prevail is contradictory to the very nature of god. You simultaneously negate the value of logic and use it to support your point.
Similarly, claiming that the knowledge of “2+2=4” defines all reality is woefully mistaken. What aspect of “2+2=4” is any more fundamental than a who knows that when when the universe (the only sphere within which science is valid) collapses upon itself, he will still be with his god, because his god exists in a way that is not defined by the laws of this universe.
You are all right, and you are all wrong. Sit with your folly and revel or despair in it as you will. It really is overwhelmingly people of The Book and people of Science who attempt to foist their beliefs on others. What a silly argument.
[quote]Son_of_Man wrote:<<< You are all right, and you are all wrong. >>>[/quote]No wonder you think you can create things.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Yeah, the omni properties of god that we tend to discuss in Philosophy of Religion are Omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and all good.
They can’t all be true, I.E. God cannot do logically impossible things like make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it or make a square circle. But, so what if you can’t make or do things that are logically impossible? If God is around and is all good, but not omnipotent, then who cares? He’s still the most powerful thing around (if he exists).
[/quote]
False. The fact that logically impossible things “cannot” be done does not necessarily make God not omnipotent. You should read more Plantinga, he describes the flaws in that jump. [/quote]
I LOVE Plantinga! If you read, what I posted, I’m saying exactly that. Logically impossible things are things that make no sense. He’s arguing about the definition of omni, I’m saying who gives a shit if God gives up only logically impossible things, like pooping and not pooping at the same time? Making Pi=1+1 without any special values of 1, making a square circle. These are things we can’t even make sense of in our minds, we aren’t even capable of making sense of a square circle. 
Hope that clears up my point, I thought it was made quite clear. Go ahead, imagine a square circle… Now, imagine the Universe being formed via big bang, or just popping into existence? You CAN imagine those, but you CANT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT A SQUARE CIRCLE IS.
So to Aragorn and brother Chris, I’m saying I think the problem of evil isn’t such a problem. Rather, all the suffering and ubiquitous nature of evil on the planet brings into question whether God is all good, or omniscient, which are much more bothersome than not being able to do logically impossible things.
And btw, what a classy man Professor Alvin Plantinga is. The illustrious gent has my complete respect and more than holds/ held his own against the 4 horseman.
Nice little piece from him.
So again, I bring up not that there is evil in the world, but the scale of it. This is the real problem of evil. That, “God is asleep.” [/quote]
Well sir, then i stand corrected. I read your original post not as thoroughly as i should have then, as it sounded like you were saying something different. In any case, i am glad you like Plantinga! He is an intellectusl giant and classy gent as you said
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]Son_of_Man wrote:<<< You are all right, and you are all wrong. >>>[/quote]No wonder you think you can create things.
[/quote]
You continue to use words and logic to support your argument, but any argument against your idea of god is invalid because it is logical. Your response to everything boils down to “because I’m right”.
I can also speak in veiled aphorisms: Denying your power does not make you humble, just foolish.
[quote]kamui wrote:
Sounds great!
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:[quote]Fletch said:
Hey Kamui. Have you ever thought about making a thread about how you discovered your questions and answers? Sometimes the journey is just as interesting if not more so![/quote]Well, i rarely think about making threads. Let alone threads about me, myself and I.
Maybe i could write something about some of my philosophical encounters and some of my encounters with philosophers (it’s not always the same thing). >>>[/quote]No it’s not LOL!!![quote]kamui wrote:
Or some kind of tutorial : “How to learn philosophy in french universities, and make it through with your sanity barely intact”.[/quote] LOLOLOLOL!!! Maybe I’ll join ya with one on how to not REALLY learn philosophy at all and still be a passable Calvinist Christian philosopher. (that was a perfect opportunity for a jab. I’ll be very disappointed if all you guys miss it)
[quote]kamui wrote:<<< Also, i confirm that there is an eternity in the remaining 1%.
Quite literaly.[/quote] Yes there is my dear friend. A thing I’m sure is far more significant to me than it is to you.
[/quote]
hmm
i’m not sure about that.
I do think that “we feel and know by experience that we are eternal”. To borrow Spinoza’s words.
This is extremely important and significant to me. Especially when morality is concerned.
(In my eyes, morality start and end when we realize that each and every of our irreverisble actions have eternal consequences.)
But that’s another story.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
That’s why you can’t easily and contemptuously disprove his God in the same way you easily and contemptuously “disprove” Thor or Ra.
[/quote]
I’d be interested to see you easily “disprove” Thor.[/quote]
The best way to disprove a pagan god is do it with a pagan mind.
The real question is not “is Thor real ?” but “even if he is real, is Thor a god worthy of worship ?”.
The very fact that Thor’s worship has been so easily destroyed by a small bunch of priests and monks who believed in the weakest of the weak gods of the Far South proves that the correct answer to the above question is a resounding “nope”.
without the shadow of a doubt.
His Hammer did nothing against their words. So, forget him.
hmm
i’m not sure about that.
I do think that “we feel and know by experience that we are eternal”. To borrow Spinoza’s words.
This is extremely important and significant to me. Especially when morality is concerned.
(In my eyes, morality start and end when we realize that each and every of our irreverisble actions have eternal consequences.)
But that’s another story. [/quote]Forgive me sir for my in-artful and somewhat thoughtless manner of expression. I did not mean to say that morality means more to me than it does to you or that you disbelieve in transcendent ramifications for moral behavior. No. I was referring to the fact of my belief in a personal judgement with eternal consequences. My view does however have consequences for you that yours does not for me. I meant no condescension or disrespect.
I was laughing out of genuine humor too. Not out of derision if it came across that way.
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
but again your faith is supposed to scoff in the face of logic.[/quote]
Sigh I thought I responded to this Bertrand Russell mischaracterization of faith that wasn’t held by the majority of Christians for the last 2000 years but gets ignored.[/quote]
Mischaracterization of faith?
You sure you got Bertrand Russell pegged down right? - YouTube
When Bertrand Russell goes about his explanations, his dialogue is about what the Church put forward in response to some simple arguments against God, like the first cause, which were all shot to hell, many at much earlier times by folks like David Hume. So it’s not Russell’s characterization of faith, it’s the church’s characterization of faith, and the evolution of the faith of the Church, because the nature of faith has changed with time in response to these logical arguments and counter arguments, the Church losing on every single front when it came to proving gods existence through faith. Not my words, not my goal, that’s what the Church did, and those were their endeavors at the time…
Think about this, if the Church defined faith a certain way, and thought they had arguments which proved God’s existence, then who was fucked up? And, is what we call faith today just some bastardization of what it was in the past?
Really, have the integrity to think about it and be honest with yourself. It’s the Church that mischaracterized faith, because they/ you all have what I, and Bertrand Russell define as faith.
I think this is a good piece for Tirib to listen to as well about natural law, it’s around 10 minutes in. It’s in a sense gods meta reasons. If God designs reason, then what possible reason would he have to do anything at all? What reason does he have to be good? He could just as well be evil. What reason did God have to make us all? For what reason is he all good? Seems like God has to answer to reason as well on some level, the thing that’s mysterious about this to me is the temporal aspect. If God is outside of time, I think Kamui talks about the 1% being infinite, but these are some really strange, silly places we have to explore to keep the integrity of God together.
Character of Christ, at 22ish minutes in… Something Christians haven’t been doing since the time of Christ, and probably the most important aspect of Christianity. Give to the poor, give to the poor, or you are not Christ like.
Well he certainly is an articulate speaker and I can see where Richard Dawkins gets many of his arguments and positions from and at times I can sympathize with him on certain issues such as Christians not living up what they claim to be.
However many of his arguments are bad, on his first cause argument he doesn’t deal with the most well known work on the first cause i.e. what Aquinas and Leibniz had done on it and attacks a strawman mainly the premise “that everything has a cause” which they never asserted and his lack of distinction between necessary and contingent is quite telling in his question “what caused God?” is just like the question what “taste does the color blue have?” or “to whom is the bachelor married to”?
He lived before a time when the inductive evidence from science had strong support for the beginning of the universe and if he wishes to attribute no cause to its beginning I’m not one to say that he can’t but it certainly isn’t logical.
In his critique of natural law has intermediate aspects which my answer to his response on the first cause and the moral law will address mainly the designation between contingent and necessary from the first cause.
In his Moral law critique, he brings up Euthyphro Dilemma. Thing is in Christian doctrine(this might rustle Tirib’s jimmies if I don’t make myself clear) there are certain properties God has necessarily has or else he isn’t God. The laws of Logic and the moral Law are as they are by necessity and they couldn’t be any other way, however they have their ontological basis in God’s nature and not anterior to God in some platonic realm where forms such as kindness, love make no sense since they are inseparable from person hood nor could God deny his nature and lie and sin.
His critique of Christians not obeying Jesus’s words does has some force but it does nothing to show Christianity is false including his use of genetic fallacies with Freudian arguments. He also takes Jesus out of context in many occasions in the Gospels especially when he says “Do not Judge lest ye be Judged” Ill let Tirib explain that one. Have you ever heard taking the bible for what it’s worth? Well genre counts a lot given that the gospels are Greco-roman bio.
Given my analysis of his bad argumentation and how he has made a straw man concerning a few things in christian doctrine its not unreasonable to say that he mischaracterized what the majority of Christians have meant by faith throughout its history although he may have been responding to a movement in Christianity that started in the late 1800s know as the great awakening which emphasized the heart over the mind.
Your definition of faith isn’t what Tirib takes it to be and I highly doubt its what KingKai takes it to be given that he should know the semantic meaning and range of the word used for faith in the bible “pistis”.
Knowledge can be by acquaintance or propositional and most people would say their knowledge of God isn’t on the basis of any argument but rather by experience(acquaintance). This doesn’t mean that they will say they can’t possibly be mistaken but any argument to say they could be mistaken about their experience can be said of there experience of the external world as well and thus their belief in constitutes a properly basic belief just as their belief in the external world.
This is why for Plantinga Basic belief constitutes knowledge for the one who has it. I perceive a pecan tree in my front yard, is it broadly logically possible that I could be mistaken about it sure but knowledge I have of it.
I also listened to the whole thing which completed while I was working here a few minutes ago, right before I read brother Joab’s post. i agree that this was not very forceful at all and there were straw men and bible butchery at (almost) very turn. As well, I agree that the horrible example of most of those calling themselves Christians, which is today worse than ever, is, while a true report, also an invalid ad hominem argument. I am firmly convinced that the testimony of ancient Israel soundly typifies the church age. A very large visible body of people with a perpetual very small remnant of actual covenant people who have actually been redeemed to Himself. Shoot, I just got a call. Gotta go for now.
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
Well he certainly is an articulate speaker and I can see where Richard Dawkins gets many of his arguments and positions from and at times I can sympathize with him on certain issues such as Christians not living up what they claim to be.
[/quote]
Style over substance says I. People not acting right has little to do with whether a belief is wrong, right, correct or incorrect.
I think bad is kind. They are terrible. His counter aruguments are counter arguments to things that don’t exist. He clearly has no idea what the cosmological arguments are saying. That or he is deliberately misrepresenting them. In the end, his counter argument is a counter argument to something that’s not being argued in the first place. I cannot figure why. He is either deliberately being dishonest figuring his readers will have traveled down the atheist road far enough, that when they are exposed to the actualities of it, they are merely dismissive and uninterested. Or he doesn’t actually know it. Either way, I can see little point of his claims if he isn’t willing to deal with them in an honest way.
What he says, we say, we don’t say. We’re not concerned with ‘the Universe’ we are concerned with existence. What existence is, and why does it exist. And if not why, at least how. There are only finite possibilities.
He doesn’t understand that the answer cannot be circular. ‘Just is’ is not the answer…
[quote]
In his Moral law critique, he brings up Euthyphro Dilemma. Thing is in Christian doctrine(this might rustle Tirib’s jimmies if I don’t make myself clear) there are certain properties God has necessarily has or else he isn’t God. The laws of Logic and the moral Law are as they are by necessity and they couldn’t be any other way, however they have their ontological basis in God’s nature and not anterior to God in some platonic realm where forms such as kindness, love make no sense since they are inseparable from person hood nor could God deny his nature and lie and sin.
His critique of Christians not obeying Jesus’s words does has some force but it does nothing to show Christianity is false including his use of genetic fallacies with Freudian arguments. He also takes Jesus out of context in many occasions in the Gospels especially when he says “Do not Judge lest ye be Judged” Ill let Tirib explain that one. Have you ever heard taking the bible for what it’s worth? Well genre counts a lot given that the gospels are Greco-roman bio.
Given my analysis of his bad argumentation and how he has made a straw man concerning a few things in christian doctrine its not unreasonable to say that he mischaracterized what the majority of Christians have meant by faith throughout its history although he may have been responding to a movement in Christianity that started in the late 1800s know as the great awakening which emphasized the heart over the mind.
Your definition of faith isn’t what Tirib takes it to be and I highly doubt its what KingKai takes it to be given that he should know the semantic meaning and range of the word used for faith in the bible “pistis”.
Knowledge can be by acquaintance or propositional and most people would say their knowledge of God isn’t on the basis of any argument but rather by experience(acquaintance). This doesn’t mean that they will say they can’t possibly be mistaken but any argument to say they could be mistaken about their experience can be said of there experience of the external world as well and thus their belief in constitutes a properly basic belief just as their belief in the external world.
This is why for Plantinga Basic belief constitutes knowledge for the one who has it. I perceive a pecan tree in my front yard, is it broadly logically possible that I could be mistaken about it sure but knowledge I have of it.[/quote]
Good post Joab! I always like reading what you have to say.