[quote]orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
pat wrote:
Let’s get down to the core of the matter, you believe there is no God and hence because of that all religion looks pretty much ridiculous, which makes sense. The real question is how you arrived at the conclusion there is no God. How do you “know”? I would assume you know because guessing really isn’t good enough. So let’s take religion totally out of the picture and tell me why you think there is no such thing as God…
I’ll take this one.
I think there is no such thing as God for the same reason I don’t think there is a flying, shit encrusted, tea cup orbiting the surface of Venus that is totally invisible and cannot be detected by any means.
Proof is the burden of the believer. One cannot prove a negative.
The burden is on the questioner. If you ask the question then you have to answer and justify it. You cannot truly know anything to actually exist. Descarte broke it down to where he could only prove existence by his awareness that something exists. Hence, the only thing he could deduce exists is awareness. Mind you he could not prove anything physical exists. We subsist on probability and likeliness, not certainty. You cannot know all the properties of any single object, physical or metaphysical.
Bottom line is that you cannot know God does not exist because you cannot sense Him with your 5 senses. Your 5 senses offer you a limited but functional reality, but surly you cannot say that if it cannot be sensed it does not exist. I have a very specific idea in my head right now, you cannot see it, feel it, taste, hear it, or smell it. You have no idea what it is and even if you did you can’t know if it exists or not. Can you prove it does or does not exist? I could be lying you know.
No, the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
You make shit up, you proof it. There is no way to prove something does not exist so your version means asking for the impossible.
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
But if you wish, I like the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Go find the argument and tell me why it is false. The argument is long and I won’t post it here because of that. It is my favorite though. It basically argues that everything comes from something where as you are arguing, or refusing to argue the point that everything comes from nothing.
God as the prime mover? Really?
There are so many holes in this, should I even begin?
“A cause” does not mean God, further, what or who caused God, then, “causation” is an a priori categorie necessary to experience anything but also very tricky because of it.
Logically, you cannot even prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, so basing an argument on causation is flawed from the start.
edit:
And if you could prove causality, which you can´t, then it would still not work because before there was our universe the idea of cause and effect made no sense.
For there to be cause and effect, if there is such a thing, there has to be a universe that allows for it, to argue that a universe must have a cause is therefore in and of itself absurd.
[/quote]
So let me get this strait. You are saying that cause and effect relationships do not exist? Hang on…I am still laughing…
OK, I think I have gathered myself. If you do not believe cause and effect relationships exist then every thing is random. If cause and effect does not exist, then neither does, science, math, history, basically no form of study exists either because all of it is based on cause and effect. That is how the universe is ordered.
There are problems with the cosmological argument, but you missed them by a mile. But hey everything is ramdom right? I am accidentally typing this. The letters are randomly appearing on my screen and just happened to be ordered in the way I want them to be, just by chance…No that can’t be, “chance” in this case, would be a cause.
LOL!!! Damn, I needed a good laugh, thanks!
I am merely saying that your “Belief” is still based on the unknown. I don’t say that “Unknowns” don’t exist…there will always be new discoveries as we develop. Religious belief just seems to be something that is taken for granted.[/quote]
Unknowns don’t exist?! Really? Do you know what is going to happen tommorow, next week or next year? Wouldn’t the future be considered and unknown? What are subatomic particles made of? Inside an atom, what occupies the space between the protons, electrons and neutron? If the universe is 15 billion years old, what happen 20 billion years ago? Why do things live and why do they die. What is “aging” exactly?..I would love to know the answer to these questions…I got a million more if you can answer these or know who has the answer…If you know the answer, I personally will submit you for numerous Nobel prizes.
[quote]pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
pat wrote:
Let’s get down to the core of the matter, you believe there is no God and hence because of that all religion looks pretty much ridiculous, which makes sense. The real question is how you arrived at the conclusion there is no God. How do you “know”? I would assume you know because guessing really isn’t good enough. So let’s take religion totally out of the picture and tell me why you think there is no such thing as God…
I’ll take this one.
I think there is no such thing as God for the same reason I don’t think there is a flying, shit encrusted, tea cup orbiting the surface of Venus that is totally invisible and cannot be detected by any means.
Proof is the burden of the believer. One cannot prove a negative.
The burden is on the questioner. If you ask the question then you have to answer and justify it. You cannot truly know anything to actually exist. Descarte broke it down to where he could only prove existence by his awareness that something exists. Hence, the only thing he could deduce exists is awareness. Mind you he could not prove anything physical exists. We subsist on probability and likeliness, not certainty. You cannot know all the properties of any single object, physical or metaphysical.
Bottom line is that you cannot know God does not exist because you cannot sense Him with your 5 senses. Your 5 senses offer you a limited but functional reality, but surly you cannot say that if it cannot be sensed it does not exist. I have a very specific idea in my head right now, you cannot see it, feel it, taste, hear it, or smell it. You have no idea what it is and even if you did you can’t know if it exists or not. Can you prove it does or does not exist? I could be lying you know.
No, the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
You make shit up, you proof it. There is no way to prove something does not exist so your version means asking for the impossible.
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
But if you wish, I like the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Go find the argument and tell me why it is false. The argument is long and I won’t post it here because of that. It is my favorite though. It basically argues that everything comes from something where as you are arguing, or refusing to argue the point that everything comes from nothing.
God as the prime mover? Really?
There are so many holes in this, should I even begin?
“A cause” does not mean God, further, what or who caused God, then, “causation” is an a priori categorie necessary to experience anything but also very tricky because of it.
Logically, you cannot even prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, so basing an argument on causation is flawed from the start.
edit:
And if you could prove causality, which you can´t, then it would still not work because before there was our universe the idea of cause and effect made no sense.
For there to be cause and effect, if there is such a thing, there has to be a universe that allows for it, to argue that a universe must have a cause is therefore in and of itself absurd.
So let me get this strait. You are saying that cause and effect relationships do not exist? Hang on…I am still laughing…
OK, I think I have gathered myself. If you do not believe cause and effect relationships exist then every thing is random. If cause and effect does not exist, then neither does, science, math, history, basically no form of study exists either because all of it is based on cause and effect. That is how the universe is ordered.
There are problems with the cosmological argument, but you missed them by a mile. But hey everything is ramdom right? I am accidentally typing this. The letters are randomly appearing on my screen and just happened to be ordered in the way I want them to be, just by chance…No that can’t be, “chance” in this case, would be a cause.
LOL!!! Damn, I needed a good laugh, thanks![/quote]
I did not say everything is random. I said that you cannot only not prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, I also said that in any specific case you cannot prove that a certain cause “caused” a certain effect.
I also said that what you call causality is a category you have within you and must logically have been there before you could experience something like causality.
The fact that you can experience causality says more about what you are equipped to experience and less about what the universe “really” looks like.
I also said that in the “place” that was before our universe, not everything must have had a cause, if indeed everything must have a cause , because such a claim can only be true, if it is true, within our universe which was not existing then, because its very origin is in question.
[quote]Perfectcircle wrote:
Give me an example of what i may believe in that i can’t prove.[/quote]
Good grief, where to start? Try this one: do you believe that time exists?
If so, try proving it.
Much of the “realities” we take for granted to be true (that, say, time not only exists, but moves in a “forward” direction) are, it turns out, far more mysterious than they appear.
Indeed, the “certainties” that we cling to in our own lives, not to mention many aspects of the universe itself, are majestically opaque, intrinsically unprovable, and (perhaps) ultimately unknowable.
The point is this: to say that religion is a bunch of “hooey” because it depends upon unprovable conjectures is a fallacious argument.
[quote]orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
pat wrote:
Let’s get down to the core of the matter, you believe there is no God and hence because of that all religion looks pretty much ridiculous, which makes sense. The real question is how you arrived at the conclusion there is no God. How do you “know”? I would assume you know because guessing really isn’t good enough. So let’s take religion totally out of the picture and tell me why you think there is no such thing as God…
I’ll take this one.
I think there is no such thing as God for the same reason I don’t think there is a flying, shit encrusted, tea cup orbiting the surface of Venus that is totally invisible and cannot be detected by any means.
Proof is the burden of the believer. One cannot prove a negative.
The burden is on the questioner. If you ask the question then you have to answer and justify it. You cannot truly know anything to actually exist. Descarte broke it down to where he could only prove existence by his awareness that something exists. Hence, the only thing he could deduce exists is awareness. Mind you he could not prove anything physical exists. We subsist on probability and likeliness, not certainty. You cannot know all the properties of any single object, physical or metaphysical.
Bottom line is that you cannot know God does not exist because you cannot sense Him with your 5 senses. Your 5 senses offer you a limited but functional reality, but surly you cannot say that if it cannot be sensed it does not exist. I have a very specific idea in my head right now, you cannot see it, feel it, taste, hear it, or smell it. You have no idea what it is and even if you did you can’t know if it exists or not. Can you prove it does or does not exist? I could be lying you know.
No, the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
You make shit up, you proof it. There is no way to prove something does not exist so your version means asking for the impossible.
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
But if you wish, I like the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Go find the argument and tell me why it is false. The argument is long and I won’t post it here because of that. It is my favorite though. It basically argues that everything comes from something where as you are arguing, or refusing to argue the point that everything comes from nothing.
God as the prime mover? Really?
There are so many holes in this, should I even begin?
“A cause” does not mean God, further, what or who caused God, then, “causation” is an a priori categorie necessary to experience anything but also very tricky because of it.
Logically, you cannot even prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, so basing an argument on causation is flawed from the start.
edit:
And if you could prove causality, which you can´t, then it would still not work because before there was our universe the idea of cause and effect made no sense.
For there to be cause and effect, if there is such a thing, there has to be a universe that allows for it, to argue that a universe must have a cause is therefore in and of itself absurd.
So let me get this strait. You are saying that cause and effect relationships do not exist? Hang on…I am still laughing…
OK, I think I have gathered myself. If you do not believe cause and effect relationships exist then every thing is random. If cause and effect does not exist, then neither does, science, math, history, basically no form of study exists either because all of it is based on cause and effect. That is how the universe is ordered.
There are problems with the cosmological argument, but you missed them by a mile. But hey everything is ramdom right? I am accidentally typing this. The letters are randomly appearing on my screen and just happened to be ordered in the way I want them to be, just by chance…No that can’t be, “chance” in this case, would be a cause.
LOL!!! Damn, I needed a good laugh, thanks!
I did not say everything is random. I said that you cannot only not prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, I also said that in any specific case you cannot prove that a certain cause “caused” a certain effect.
[/quote]
All that exists physically and metaphysically is contingent on a predecessor. If “A” then “B”, If not “A” then “B” cannot exist. I challenge you to give a single example where anything that exists, was not caused by something else. Any example will do, yes, quantum physics too.
Further, causes must necessitate their effects.
What one can experience vs. what actually is is irrelevent. The fact the “A” caused “B” to happen has nothing to do with human experience. Understand causality did not bring it into existence. Causality existed before and will exist long after us…
What you call that which is uncaused? What kind of thing is that?
[quote]orion wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
pat wrote:
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
…zactly.
I do not claim that your God does not exist. I claim that it is highly unlikely that if there is a God, he is something that is even remotely similar to your God.[/quote]
God is a great mystery in my faith. I’m quite sure most faiths hold similar views. So I guess I don’t know what you mean by “your God.”
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
orion wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
pat wrote:
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
…zactly.
I do not claim that your God does not exist. I claim that it is highly unlikely that if there is a God, he is something that is even remotely similar to your God.
God is a great mystery in my faith. I’m quite sure most faiths hold similar views. So I guess I don’t know what you mean by “your God.” [/quote]
[quote]pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
pat wrote:
Let’s get down to the core of the matter, you believe there is no God and hence because of that all religion looks pretty much ridiculous, which makes sense. The real question is how you arrived at the conclusion there is no God. How do you “know”? I would assume you know because guessing really isn’t good enough. So let’s take religion totally out of the picture and tell me why you think there is no such thing as God…
I’ll take this one.
I think there is no such thing as God for the same reason I don’t think there is a flying, shit encrusted, tea cup orbiting the surface of Venus that is totally invisible and cannot be detected by any means.
Proof is the burden of the believer. One cannot prove a negative.
The burden is on the questioner. If you ask the question then you have to answer and justify it. You cannot truly know anything to actually exist. Descarte broke it down to where he could only prove existence by his awareness that something exists. Hence, the only thing he could deduce exists is awareness. Mind you he could not prove anything physical exists. We subsist on probability and likeliness, not certainty. You cannot know all the properties of any single object, physical or metaphysical.
Bottom line is that you cannot know God does not exist because you cannot sense Him with your 5 senses. Your 5 senses offer you a limited but functional reality, but surly you cannot say that if it cannot be sensed it does not exist. I have a very specific idea in my head right now, you cannot see it, feel it, taste, hear it, or smell it. You have no idea what it is and even if you did you can’t know if it exists or not. Can you prove it does or does not exist? I could be lying you know.
No, the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
You make shit up, you proof it. There is no way to prove something does not exist so your version means asking for the impossible.
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
But if you wish, I like the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Go find the argument and tell me why it is false. The argument is long and I won’t post it here because of that. It is my favorite though. It basically argues that everything comes from something where as you are arguing, or refusing to argue the point that everything comes from nothing.
God as the prime mover? Really?
There are so many holes in this, should I even begin?
“A cause” does not mean God, further, what or who caused God, then, “causation” is an a priori categorie necessary to experience anything but also very tricky because of it.
Logically, you cannot even prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, so basing an argument on causation is flawed from the start.
edit:
And if you could prove causality, which you can´t, then it would still not work because before there was our universe the idea of cause and effect made no sense.
For there to be cause and effect, if there is such a thing, there has to be a universe that allows for it, to argue that a universe must have a cause is therefore in and of itself absurd.
So let me get this strait. You are saying that cause and effect relationships do not exist? Hang on…I am still laughing…
OK, I think I have gathered myself. If you do not believe cause and effect relationships exist then every thing is random. If cause and effect does not exist, then neither does, science, math, history, basically no form of study exists either because all of it is based on cause and effect. That is how the universe is ordered.
There are problems with the cosmological argument, but you missed them by a mile. But hey everything is ramdom right? I am accidentally typing this. The letters are randomly appearing on my screen and just happened to be ordered in the way I want them to be, just by chance…No that can’t be, “chance” in this case, would be a cause.
LOL!!! Damn, I needed a good laugh, thanks!
I did not say everything is random. I said that you cannot only not prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, I also said that in any specific case you cannot prove that a certain cause “caused” a certain effect.
All that exists physically and metaphysically is contingent on a predecessor. If “A” then “B”, If not “A” then “B” cannot exist. I challenge you to give a single example where anything that exists, was not caused by something else. Any example will do, yes, quantum physics too.
Further, causes must necessitate their effects.
I also said that what you call causality is a category you have within you and must logically have been there before you could experience something like causality.
The fact that you can experience causality says more about what you are equipped to experience and less about what the universe “really” looks like.
What one can experience vs. what actually is is irrelevent. The fact the “A” caused “B” to happen has nothing to do with human experience. Understand causality did not bring it into existence. Causality existed before and will exist long after us…
I also said that in the “place” that was before our universe, not everything must have had a cause, if indeed everything must have a cause , because such a claim can only be true, if it is true, within our universe which was not existing then, because its very origin is in question.
What you call that which is uncaused? What kind of thing is that?
[/quote]
I am afraid to say that you do not get it.
You simply take some things for granted that are in no way a logical necessity.
Your whole point is that causality simply must exist because you say so and that that is also true for the beginning of our universe even though the concept of causality needs our universe.
These are relatively simple philosophical questions and most of what I posted is not even questioned any more, though the answers tend to be elaborated.
You might want to read into the nature of causality a little bit:
This is a brief summary/discussion of Hume´s idea:
Causation
Hume�??s views on the concept of causation are a subject of much dispute, and there are at least three different interpretations represented in the literature. These are:
(i) The Logical Positivist interpretation
(ii) The Sceptical Realist interpretation
(iii) The Quasi-Realist and Projectivist interpretation
According to the positivist view, Hume is attempting to specify the semantic content of the concept of causation �?? i.e. what we mean when we deploy causal terms. The traditional analytical take on Hume�??s answer is that it is to be found in the regular succession of certain of our impressions; their �??constant conjunction�??. On this interpretation, Hume is saying that statements such as “A caused B” are equivalent to propositions such as “Whenever A occurs, then B does”, where “whenever” refers to all possible observations of A and B.[26]
This has been rejected, however, by Sceptical Realists, who argue that Hume was not discussing the meaning of causal terms, but rather their source, or their causal origin, in our experience. The major disagreement with the Positivist view is over Hume�??s take on the idea of Necessary Connexion. According to the Positivists, as we have seen, causality consists only in regularities in perceptions, but the Sceptical Realists point out that Hume also thought there to be a Necessary Connexion between causes and effects that goes unperceived.[27] The reason Hume is called a Sceptical Realist on this take is that he did not think we could have perceptual access to the necessary connexion, and thus we have no reason to believe in it (hence Scepticism);[28] but at the same time we are compelled by natural instinct to believe there to be a necessary connexion when we observe a regularity or constancy in our perceptions, and this natural belief is of an external causal necessity (hence Realism).[29]
However, the Sceptical Realist reading has been rejected by Simon Blackburn, who instead proposes a Projectivist and Quasi-Realist interpretation.[30] According to this position, Hume was not arguing that we have a concept of a Real necessary connexion, where “Real” means that our idea represents something in the world, external to human minds. Instead, our concept of causation is composed of two elements (corresponding to Hume’s two famous “definitions” of causation),[31] the first of which is the regular succession given in perception, but the second of which, the necessary connexion, is actually a product of a functional change in the human mind which allows us to anticipate and predict future events based on past regularities. So the Quasi-Realist denies that the necessary connexion is a property existing in the world (hence he denies straightforward Realism), and instead sees it as representative of a change in our mental states and practical attitudes. However, this does not amount to a full-on Anti-Realism about Causation, because the Quasi-Realist is also a Projectivist, who holds that it is perfectly legitimate to “project” our predictions by making statements which express the belief in a necessary connexion. It is not that we talk “as-if” there were a necessary connexion, when really there is not: rather, our talk of there being a necessary connexion is a way of voicing a distinctive mental set, which allows us to explain and predict the behaviour of objects, and hopefully come to control them too. Thus when Hume says that �??nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion�??,[32] he is not diagnosing an error in human thought, but merely giving a scientific explanation of how our concepts arise.
Which mean my point still stands:
Causality is an interesting idea but you cannot prove that it exists, therefore you cannot build an argument upon it.
If it should exist it requires a universe that allows for it, f.E. no time, no causality.
Seen that way a prime mover cannot have caused our universe to begin because without our universe there is no time, therefore no before and after, therefore nothing you would perceive as causality.
Causality is an interesting idea but you cannot prove that it exists, therefore you cannot build an argument upon it.
[/quote]
Actually, I think it’s more accurate to say that we, as humans, cannot help but build arguments upon causality. You yourself have continually used causal arguments in your above posts. Causality is a kind of axiomatic truth; we cannot prove it’s true, but we cannot get along without it either. The scientific community recognizes this axiom among many others.
If God initiated the “first cause,” this would be the initial cause & effect at operation in our universe. What is further back than that is obviously pure speculation. It is often said in the theological community that God operates outside of time & space as we conceive it. The whole idea of the magisterium tremendum is that God is so “other” that were he to reveal his nature to us, he would (in the immortal words of David Bowie) “surely blow our minds.” We can, as now, only dimly perceive what he is, as if we are looking, as it were, “through a glass darkly.”
Causality is an interesting idea but you cannot prove that it exists, therefore you cannot build an argument upon it.
Actually, I think it’s more accurate to say that we, as humans, cannot help but build arguments upon causality. You yourself have continually used causal arguments in your above posts. Causality is a kind of axiomatic truth; we cannot prove it’s true, but we cannot get along without it either. The scientific community recognizes this axiom among many others.
Seen that way a prime mover cannot have caused our universe to begin because without our universe there is no time, therefore no before and after, therefore nothing you would perceive as causality.
If God initiated the “first cause,” this would be the initial cause & effect at operation in our universe. What is further back than that is obviously pure speculation. It is often said in the theological community that God operates outside of time & space as we conceive it. The whole idea of the magisterium tremendum is that God is so “other” that were he to reveal his nature to us, he would (in the immortal words of David Bowie) “surely blow our minds.” We can, as now, only dimly perceive what he is, as if we are looking, as it were, “through a glass darkly.”
Probably Pat would agree with it so stated. [/quote]
Then you are claiming that your God is supernatural, or to put it in other words, he exists in categories we cannot think of and are therefore not to be experienced by us.
To this my reaction would be:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I am merely saying that your “Belief” is still based on the unknown. I don’t say that “Unknowns” don’t exist…there will always be new discoveries as we develop. Religious belief just seems to be something that is taken for granted.
Unknowns don’t exist?! Really? Do you know what is going to happen tommorow, next week or next year? Wouldn’t the future be considered and unknown? What are subatomic particles made of? Inside an atom, what occupies the space between the protons, electrons and neutron? If the universe is 15 billion years old, what happen 20 billion years ago? Why do things live and why do they die. What is “aging” exactly?..I would love to know the answer to these questions…I got a million more if you can answer these or know who has the answer…If you know the answer, I personally will submit you for numerous Nobel prizes.[/quote]
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Perfectcircle wrote:
Give me an example of what i may believe in that i can’t prove.
Good grief, where to start? Try this one: do you believe that time exists?
If so, try proving it.
Much of the “realities” we take for granted to be true (that, say, time not only exists, but moves in a “forward” direction) are, it turns out, far more mysterious than they appear.
Indeed, the “certainties” that we cling to in our own lives, not to mention many aspects of the universe itself, are majestically opaque, intrinsically unprovable, and (perhaps) ultimately unknowable.
The point is this: to say that religion is a bunch of “hooey” because it depends upon unprovable conjectures is a fallacious argument. [/quote]
Time is nothing but a million different clock faces all over the world. A collection of cogs and springs or electronic parts.Time helps us get to work on time or watch our favorite TV program.
Time has never been claimed as an entity. It is a tool.
I have never called it “hooey”, I have merely questioned its necessity…I want to understand why it has such a hold over people. How people can so deeply believe in something so transparent…That is my view only, I speak for no one else.
Then you are claiming that your God is supernatural, or to put it in other words, he exists in categories we cannot think of…[/quote]
Yes…but…
…this does not follow at all.
That’s why words are just the beginning. Words matter very deeply in the Catholic faith. However, visible signs & gestures & ritual actions reflect an even far deeper mystery than words can say.
[quote]orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
orion wrote:
pat wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
pat wrote:
Let’s get down to the core of the matter, you believe there is no God and hence because of that all religion looks pretty much ridiculous, which makes sense. The real question is how you arrived at the conclusion there is no God. How do you “know”? I would assume you know because guessing really isn’t good enough. So let’s take religion totally out of the picture and tell me why you think there is no such thing as God…
I’ll take this one.
I think there is no such thing as God for the same reason I don’t think there is a flying, shit encrusted, tea cup orbiting the surface of Venus that is totally invisible and cannot be detected by any means.
Proof is the burden of the believer. One cannot prove a negative.
The burden is on the questioner. If you ask the question then you have to answer and justify it. You cannot truly know anything to actually exist. Descarte broke it down to where he could only prove existence by his awareness that something exists. Hence, the only thing he could deduce exists is awareness. Mind you he could not prove anything physical exists. We subsist on probability and likeliness, not certainty. You cannot know all the properties of any single object, physical or metaphysical.
Bottom line is that you cannot know God does not exist because you cannot sense Him with your 5 senses. Your 5 senses offer you a limited but functional reality, but surly you cannot say that if it cannot be sensed it does not exist. I have a very specific idea in my head right now, you cannot see it, feel it, taste, hear it, or smell it. You have no idea what it is and even if you did you can’t know if it exists or not. Can you prove it does or does not exist? I could be lying you know.
No, the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
You make shit up, you proof it. There is no way to prove something does not exist so your version means asking for the impossible.
Did you not make a claim? Just because you answer “No” to the question, “does God exist?”, does not excuse you from having to justify why you think he does not exist when the other perfectly viable answer is “Yes”. It’s weak and arrogant to say that because you do not believe in God that you are under no burden what so ever to justify your belief.
But if you wish, I like the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Go find the argument and tell me why it is false. The argument is long and I won’t post it here because of that. It is my favorite though. It basically argues that everything comes from something where as you are arguing, or refusing to argue the point that everything comes from nothing.
God as the prime mover? Really?
There are so many holes in this, should I even begin?
“A cause” does not mean God, further, what or who caused God, then, “causation” is an a priori categorie necessary to experience anything but also very tricky because of it.
Logically, you cannot even prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, so basing an argument on causation is flawed from the start.
edit:
And if you could prove causality, which you can´t, then it would still not work because before there was our universe the idea of cause and effect made no sense.
For there to be cause and effect, if there is such a thing, there has to be a universe that allows for it, to argue that a universe must have a cause is therefore in and of itself absurd.
So let me get this strait. You are saying that cause and effect relationships do not exist? Hang on…I am still laughing…
OK, I think I have gathered myself. If you do not believe cause and effect relationships exist then every thing is random. If cause and effect does not exist, then neither does, science, math, history, basically no form of study exists either because all of it is based on cause and effect. That is how the universe is ordered.
There are problems with the cosmological argument, but you missed them by a mile. But hey everything is ramdom right? I am accidentally typing this. The letters are randomly appearing on my screen and just happened to be ordered in the way I want them to be, just by chance…No that can’t be, “chance” in this case, would be a cause.
LOL!!! Damn, I needed a good laugh, thanks!
I did not say everything is random. I said that you cannot only not prove that there is such a thing as cause and effect, I also said that in any specific case you cannot prove that a certain cause “caused” a certain effect.
All that exists physically and metaphysically is contingent on a predecessor. If “A” then “B”, If not “A” then “B” cannot exist. I challenge you to give a single example where anything that exists, was not caused by something else. Any example will do, yes, quantum physics too.
Further, causes must necessitate their effects.
I also said that what you call causality is a category you have within you and must logically have been there before you could experience something like causality.
The fact that you can experience causality says more about what you are equipped to experience and less about what the universe “really” looks like.
What one can experience vs. what actually is is irrelevent. The fact the “A” caused “B” to happen has nothing to do with human experience. Understand causality did not bring it into existence. Causality existed before and will exist long after us…
I also said that in the “place” that was before our universe, not everything must have had a cause, if indeed everything must have a cause , because such a claim can only be true, if it is true, within our universe which was not existing then, because its very origin is in question.
What you call that which is uncaused? What kind of thing is that?
I am afraid to say that you do not get it.
You simply take some things for granted that are in no way a logical necessity.
Your whole point is that causality simply must exist because you say so and that that is also true for the beginning of our universe even though the concept of causality needs our universe.
These are relatively simple philosophical questions and most of what I posted is not even questioned any more, though the answers tend to be elaborated.
You might want to read into the nature of causality a little bit:
This is a brief summary/discussion of Hume´s idea:
Causation
Hume�??s views on the concept of causation are a subject of much dispute, and there are at least three different interpretations represented in the literature. These are:
(i) The Logical Positivist interpretation
(ii) The Sceptical Realist interpretation
(iii) The Quasi-Realist and Projectivist interpretation
According to the positivist view, Hume is attempting to specify the semantic content of the concept of causation �?? i.e. what we mean when we deploy causal terms. The traditional analytical take on Hume�??s answer is that it is to be found in the regular succession of certain of our impressions; their �??constant conjunction�??. On this interpretation, Hume is saying that statements such as “A caused B” are equivalent to propositions such as “Whenever A occurs, then B does”, where “whenever” refers to all possible observations of A and B.[26]
This has been rejected, however, by Sceptical Realists, who argue that Hume was not discussing the meaning of causal terms, but rather their source, or their causal origin, in our experience. The major disagreement with the Positivist view is over Hume�??s take on the idea of Necessary Connexion. According to the Positivists, as we have seen, causality consists only in regularities in perceptions, but the Sceptical Realists point out that Hume also thought there to be a Necessary Connexion between causes and effects that goes unperceived.[27] The reason Hume is called a Sceptical Realist on this take is that he did not think we could have perceptual access to the necessary connexion, and thus we have no reason to believe in it (hence Scepticism);[28] but at the same time we are compelled by natural instinct to believe there to be a necessary connexion when we observe a regularity or constancy in our perceptions, and this natural belief is of an external causal necessity (hence Realism).[29]
However, the Sceptical Realist reading has been rejected by Simon Blackburn, who instead proposes a Projectivist and Quasi-Realist interpretation.[30] According to this position, Hume was not arguing that we have a concept of a Real necessary connexion, where “Real” means that our idea represents something in the world, external to human minds. Instead, our concept of causation is composed of two elements (corresponding to Hume’s two famous “definitions” of causation),[31] the first of which is the regular succession given in perception, but the second of which, the necessary connexion, is actually a product of a functional change in the human mind which allows us to anticipate and predict future events based on past regularities. So the Quasi-Realist denies that the necessary connexion is a property existing in the world (hence he denies straightforward Realism), and instead sees it as representative of a change in our mental states and practical attitudes. However, this does not amount to a full-on Anti-Realism about Causation, because the Quasi-Realist is also a Projectivist, who holds that it is perfectly legitimate to “project” our predictions by making statements which express the belief in a necessary connexion. It is not that we talk “as-if” there were a necessary connexion, when really there is not: rather, our talk of there being a necessary connexion is a way of voicing a distinctive mental set, which allows us to explain and predict the behaviour of objects, and hopefully come to control them too. Thus when Hume says that �??nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion�??,[32] he is not diagnosing an error in human thought, but merely giving a scientific explanation of how our concepts arise.
Which mean my point still stands:
Causality is an interesting idea but you cannot prove that it exists, therefore you cannot build an argument upon it.
If it should exist it requires a universe that allows for it, f.E. no time, no causality.
Seen that way a prime mover cannot have caused our universe to begin because without our universe there is no time, therefore no before and after, therefore nothing you would perceive as causality.
[/quote]
Causality exists whether we can perceive it or not, the temporal aspect be damned. Causality is simply the relation of action of one “thing” having a result. The most concrete example of causality is simple math. 1+1=2, if you have one, object, widget, whatever and add another you will have two things. The action of adding in this case resulted in having a greater number of the “thing” than before. This is true in any realm, universe, time or space and it is not contingent in any way, shape or form on human perception or understanding.
Hume did try to pose an interesting proposition of a 3rd element of causation. That a cause did not necessitate its effects but that there was a third element in causation that alter the resultant effect of a cause. He never denied causation, he had an issue with the fact that all things being the same, such as in a controlled scientific experiment, the results weren’t always the the same. That things are probable rather than absolute. He also used this third element of causation to try and explain away miricles. Hume’s biggest problem was that causation was locked in the temporal realm for him, simultaneous causation was not a reality for him. He didn’t deny causation, he just thought the definition to narrow to accommodate.
This projectivist concept is a less effective way of saying the something that everything exists in a bubble independent of on another, that our notion of causation is a useful illusion. That is simply bullshit.
Causation exists independent of our perception of it and independent of time and space. This was proven by the EPR effect.
Your task is simple. To prove me wrong all you have to do a give an example of something that was not caused. A single thing will do.
[quote]Perfectcircle wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Perfectcircle wrote:
Give me an example of what i may believe in that i can’t prove.
Good grief, where to start? Try this one: do you believe that time exists?
If so, try proving it.
Much of the “realities” we take for granted to be true (that, say, time not only exists, but moves in a “forward” direction) are, it turns out, far more mysterious than they appear.
Indeed, the “certainties” that we cling to in our own lives, not to mention many aspects of the universe itself, are majestically opaque, intrinsically unprovable, and (perhaps) ultimately unknowable.
The point is this: to say that religion is a bunch of “hooey” because it depends upon unprovable conjectures is a fallacious argument.
Time is nothing but a million different clock faces all over the world. A collection of cogs and springs or electronic parts.Time helps us get to work on time or watch our favorite TV program.
Time has never been claimed as an entity. It is a tool.
I have never called it “hooey”, I have merely questioned its necessity…I want to understand why it has such a hold over people. How people can so deeply believe in something so transparent…That is my view only, I speak for no one else.[/quote]
Fair enough, but methinks you’re avoiding the question: “Dost thou believe that time exists?”
