Is There One Sound/valid Syllogistic Argument For The Existence Of God?

[Quantum Windbag]

Not yet.

See, if there was a generic "GOD" or "creator, we'd be able to see him. He would have no reason to hide and in fact he wouldn't be able to hide from us. If he existed he would be obvious.

When I say a god I mean something that created us.

When THEISTS refer to God they refer to one that sat around and intelligently designed us with a purpose and a god that cares and created a heaven and a hell for us and listens to your prayers. He tempted Adam & Eve, drowned everyone but Noah and fucked Mary. This god is completely man made.

There you go telling other people what they believe again.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If you want to know what is most likely just ask an agnostic atheist who is also a scientist. You'll get the most logical/rational/probable answer.

Agnostic atheists do not exist, how is anyone supposed to ask them anything?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness.

I fully understand the implications of the eternal now.

I also understand that the concept cannot be supported using the Bible, which is why I sneer at people who think it provides an answer.

Whaaaa?

That's the central meaning of His name! YHVH (I AM THAT I AM, or I WILL BE, or I AM BEING).

"Before Abraham was, I AM."

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come, the Almighty."

He is timeless, for all of existence is contingently grounded in His being at all "times" simultaneously right now.

He is infinitely omnipresent right now. If it were not so, for example, what is for us the past would dissolve into nothingness, and we'd have no recollection of it at all. In fact, as some theologians have put it, and rightly so, the God of the Bible is the divinity Who never leaves His post. Berkeley, the Christian empiricist put it this way: “God never looks away", for if He did all other existents would cease to be. Hence, the most perfect understanding of His name is that it denotes the infinite entirety of Who and What He is in every conceivable dimensional sense simultaneously right now . . . of a singe predicate. He is the Principle of Identity in Whom all other existents subsist—from our perspective, past, present and future—right now.

The God of the eternal now, like the doctrines of Christ's divinity and the Trinity, is a bedrock doctrine of scripture and of Christian theology. Not only is this idea embedded in His name, it's one of the preeminent themes of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and the ultimate essence of His name is the God of an infinite number of dimensional existents or potential existents (manifestations or creations) that exist in Him right now simultaneously.

"God, who quickeneth the dead, calleth those things that are not into existence as though they were."

And that's why I alerted Foxfyre to the problem of thinking about the fundamental laws of thought, collectively, the principle of identity, merely in terms of "human logic," as that leads to error.

It is of course the intrinsically organic law of human thought/apprehension but only as its grounded in God. The law is perfect, reliable, without blemish. The fundamental principle of "human logic" was not corrupted by the Fall, as that is the means by which we are still able to perceive the construct of God and know what He's like in terms of His fundamental attributes. This is not the same thing as understanding Him comprehensibly, of course, for we're not God. It's not the same thing as knowing Him personally. Rather, the merciful God did not allow the core of His image imprinted on our minds to be corrupted/destroyed as a result of our sin, for if He had, we'd be utterly lost with no means to recognize the way back home. And that, by the way, is the foundation of free will.

Logical fallacies, both formal and informal, fallacies in inference or in predication . . . are not the result of any failure or limitation of "human logic". They are due to the abuse or disuse of the principle of identity.

Hence, the construct of the eternal now is also readily self-evident from the universal construct of God itself by which all men may know, as delineated by the principle of identity, from the first principles of existence and origin, "So that they . . . who hold the truth in unrighteousness . . . are without excuse."

 

[dblack]

I yam what I yam

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I don't know this stuff as well as others on this forum but I understand the nature of the rules of organic logic very well. You can't understand anything in philosophy, theology or science without them. The rules of inference and the scientific method are based on them. I don't remember what post it was now but you were saying things that seemed to be sort of right but also sort of wrong at the same time and what I couldn't put my finger on was how to explain what's causing you to mix up the two. But I do know exactly why your idea about the majorana fermion is wrong. I just didn't get into the mix over that because you wrote your post to M.D.R.. He just proved that this kind of argumentation is the logical fallacy of false predication. Even I know that and why that's logically true. There's no contradiction between this well known fact of electromagnetic radiation and the laws of logic, any more than there's a contradiction between the majorana fermion and the laws of logic. The second and third law of organic logic are just detailed annunciations of the universal rule of identity which holds that the predicate of any whole cannot be divided. This is understood in the logic of sets. one whole set can theoretically be an infinite number of things simultaneously just like any whole can be theoretically divided an infinite number of times. There's nothing in human nature's basic rules of logic that says these kinds of things are contradictory or can't exist. I don't know where you're getting this from.

That is certainly what philosophers want you to believe. The problem is, that as I explained, some things in the universe just are not explainable using logic, which leaves us with a few choices. The top three as I see them are that we can ignore the part of the universe that logic insists does not exist, we can ignore logic when it conflicts with the universe, or we can admit that our understanding of our mental abilities is limited by the fact that we are, at least in part, limited by our brains ability to understand itself.

Personally, I opt for the latter, especially when we consider that the same people that developed natural logic insisted the the Earth was the center of the universe.

By the way, there is more than one form of logic. One I find particularly useful, probably because I was forced to learn it as part of programming IFTT functions, is fuzzy logic. Perhaps you should look into the various fields of logic before you decide to use one of them exclusively.

You did not successfully explain the emboldened at all; rather, you were roundly refuted with more to come.

What philosophers are you talking about? You can't be talking about me, as I don't do the sort of "philosophical bullshit" that comes from disregarding the alerts of the principle of identity. QW, I have shown that you are wrong about the notion that the principle of identity is contradicted by existents that are two or more things simultaneously, and the notion that the organic laws of logic are not up to the task of dealing with the complexities of the cosmological order is as wrong as it can be. What are talking about? God is the ultimate Principle of Identity, and we obviously able to understand the things and make the pertinent distinctions your alluding via the principle of identity! Dude!

The laws of thought were asserted in the Bible, centuries before the classical thinkers of natural philosophy formally defined them. Once again, they are, collectively, the principle of identity, the Image of God imprinted on our minds. They have been recognized and have bound human reason since Adam, and they are the means by which we came to recognize that geocentricism is wrong and the means by which we know why Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy and others got it wrong.

Other forms of logic are fine as long as they are faithfully bottomed on the principle of identity, which, by the way, you just asserted in your distinction. You cannot escape it. It can't be refuted. You can't opt out. You never have and never will.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Whaaaa?

That's the central meaning of His name! YHVH (I AM THAT I AM, or I WILL BE, or I AM BEING).

"Before Abraham was, I AM."

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come, the Almighty."

He is timeless, for all of existence is contingently grounded in His being at all "times" simultaneously right now.

He is infinitely omnipresent right now. If it were not so, for example, what is for us the past would dissolve into nothingness, and we'd have no recollection of it at all. In fact, as some theologians have put it, and rightly so, the God of the Bible is the divinity Who never leaves His post. Berkeley, the Christian empiricist put it this way: “God never looks away", for if He did all other existents would cease to be. Hence, the most perfect understanding of His name is that it denotes the infinite entirety of Who and What He is in every conceivable dimensional sense simultaneously right now . . . of a singe predicate. He is the Principle of Identity in Whom all other existents subsist—from our perspective, past, present and future—right now.

The God of the eternal now, like the doctrines of Christ's divinity and the Trinity, is a bedrock doctrine of scripture and of Christian theology. Not only is this idea embedded in His name, it's one of the preeminent themes of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and the ultimate essence of His name is the God of an infinite number of dimensional existents or potential existents (manifestations or creations) that exist in Him right now simultaneously.

"God, who quickeneth the dead, calleth those things that are not into existence as though they were."

And that's why I alerted Foxfyre to the problem of thinking about the fundamental laws of thought, collectively, the principle of identity, merely in terms of "human logic," as that leads to error.

It is of course the intrinsically organic law of human thought/apprehension but only as its grounded in God. The law is perfect, reliable, without blemish. The fundamental principle of "human logic" was not corrupted by the Fall, as that is the means by which we are still able to perceive the construct of God and know what He's like in terms of His fundamental attributes. This is not the same thing as understanding Him comprehensibly, of course, for we're not God. It's not the same thing as knowing Him personally. Rather, the merciful God did not allow the core of His image imprinted on our minds to be corrupted/destroyed as a result of our sin, for if He had, we'd be utterly lost with no means to recognize the way back home. And that, by the way, is the foundation of free will.

Logical fallacies, both formal and informal, fallacies in inference or in predication . . . are not the result of any failure or limitation of "human logic". They are due to the abuse or disuse of the principle of identity.

Hence, the construct of the eternal now is also readily self-evident from the universal construct of God itself by which all men may know, as delineated by the principle of identity, from the first principles of existence and origin, "So that they . . . who hold the truth in unrighteousness . . . are without excuse."

I is central to your interpretation of his name, which is questionable.

YHWH The amazing name YHWH meaning and etymology

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You did not successfully explain the emboldened at all; rather, you were roundly refuted with more to come.

If you are referring to your childish attempt to use the laws of thought to explain sub atomic particles, I refer you to the definition of thought.

What philosophers are you talking about? You can't be talking about me, as I don't do the sort of "philosophical bullshit" that comes from disregarding the alerts of the principle of identity. QW, I have shown that you are wrong about the notion that the principle of identity is contradicted by existents that are two or more things simultaneously, and the notion that the organic laws of logic are not up to the task of dealing with the complexities of the cosmological order is as wrong as it can be. What are talking about? God is the ultimate Principle of Identity, and we obviously able to understand the things and make the pertinent distinctions your alluding via the principle of identity! Dude!

Dude, the principle of identity is about how we think, not how the universe works.

The laws of thought were asserted in the Bible, centuries before the classical thinkers of natural philosophy formally defined them. Once again, they are, collectively, the principle of identity, the Image of God imprinted on our minds. They have been recognized and have bound human reason since Adam, and they are the means by which we came to recognize that geocentricism is wrong and the means by which we know why Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy and others got it wrong.

Yep, they are right there in the Book of Bullshit, AKA The Sayings of People Who Cannot Find the Things They Insist are in the Bible.

Other forms of logic are fine as long as they are faithfully bottomed on the principle of identity, which, by the way, you just asserted in your distinction. You cannot escape it. It can't be refuted. You can't opt out. You never have and never will.

Because only your opinion matters in what type of logic is valid, right?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

I don't see how my concept limits God in any way. I base my perceptions on what God has revealed of himself to me personally, however limited that may be. That I do not require God to be this or that is not coercive of God nor does it restrict him to any particular character or state of being, but it is simply what I believe he has revealed to humankind. To insist that God MUST be this or that seems to me to be much more coercive.

To insist or to know from what God Himself has revealed? Once again, it is not I or Justin, as far as I can tell, who is putting God in chains around here. Though, admittedly, I haven't been able to read all of his posts.

I'm sharing with you what's self-evident to all from the general revelation (the cosmological order beginning with our own reflections upon the problem of existence and origin) should they take the blinders off and open up their minds. These are the very same things asserted about God in the Bible, and the Bible tells us they are self-evident from reflection on the contents of our minds relative to the principle of identity too. There in the Bible! The Bible tells us they may be seen without scripture, but scripture backs what I'm telling you.

I have nothing to do with what is being revealed. I have nothing to do with stamping the Image God on your mind. I'm sharing with you the universally apparent attributes of God in terms of their entire upper range without limitations of any kind whatsoever, save one: God will not and cannot violate the principle of Identity, as He is the ultimate Principle of Identity: God = NOT-God for obvious reasons cannot be.

That's coercive? That's requiring Him to be something He's not or must be? I don't know what your imaging, but that's the only limit I'm talking about. There is no other limitation on Him or full, unrestrained expression of His attributes whatsoever.

For example, Foxfyre, there is no reason to believe that absolute omniscience and free will cannot coexist. The Bible utterly rejects that contention! That restraint. That length of chain. God does not have to limit His knowledge in any sense whatsoever for free will to thrive.

The principle of identity does not tell us that's impossible and neither does the Bible. Illusion. That's not a movie in the can--your chain on Him. Illusion. QW is wrong. I just falsified his notion that existents cannot be two or more things simultaneously according to the principle of identity. False. The principle of identity readily and coherently apprehends such things with no problem at all.

Perhaps if you were to take a look at that fact, you'd realize that it's you who are believing something that originated, by the way, from secular philosophers making baby talk, trying to put God into their models of being.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

For purposes of definition, this is unclear, unsatisfactory. The fundamental laws of thought/apprehension, a.k.a., the three classical laws of logic (identity, contradiction and the excluded middle, collectively, the principle of identity) are intrinsic, universal, absolute, inescapable, hardwired. They are not man made.

This is the logic, in and of itself, at the base of all other logical formulations or frameworks for argumentation. Indeed, it is the first principle of knowledge, the essential mechanism of rational and moral thought. The Hebrews called it the essence of the tzelem elohim (in English, the image of God, in Latin, the Imago Dei) and the Greeks called it the theiotes logos (the divine word). It places no restraints on God whatsoever; rather, the principle of identity is an aspect of the very essence of God.

Classical logic is based on the three classical laws of thought.

1. The law of identity. For any proposition A: A=A
   
2. The law of non-contradiction. For all Not A=(Not -A)
   
3. The law of the excluded middle. For all A: A or -A

The problem is that the universe really doesn't care about what we think, even if we consider it to be universally true. As an example, there is a particle in physics called a majorana fermion. These particles have a rather unusual property, they are both matter and anti matter at the same time. In other words, each of these particles is both A and -A at the same time, which clearly violates the law of the excluded middle.

I refuse to accept anything as universally true simply because it makes sense to me, I need evidence to support it.

This does not violate the law of the excluded middle (or excluded third). You're just not thinking clearly. If the Majorana fermion did violate any aspect of the principle of identity, we wouldn't be able to detect its existence. In other words, your argument fails because its premise falsely identifies the entity perceived.

The fact of the intrinsically organic principle of identity cannot be falsified, and, of course, the reason that's true is because it's the intrinsically organic principle of human cognition by which we perceive and assimilate data at both the proscriptive and descriptive levels of apprehension. You're still thinking about the fundamental law of thought/apprehension as if it were some contrived entity existing apart from our being.

What is it?

The Majorana particle ≠ matter-not-matter, because it's always matter.

The Majorana particle ≠ antimatter-not-antimatter, because it's always anitmatter.​

Rather:

Let Y = matter; X = antimatter.

Hence, the Majorana particle = Y and X simultaneously, or A = A (Y and X simultaneously), or, simply, the Majorana particle is its own antiparticle.​

That's the whole of what it is, as opposed to what it's not and as distinguished from everything else. That's the discrete, positive form or proposition of the single predicate.

The logical principle of identity begins with identifying what the thing is. This fundamental law of human cognition and its analytical elaborations do not assert that something which is simultaneously positive and negative is inexplicable; rather, for all A: A OR ~A is inexplicable. And they obviously don't impede our ability to perceive that such a thing does in fact exist. Your error is to divide the whole of something into something it's not. It's your A and ~A that's off:

For all A: A (Y and X simultaneously) ≠ ~A (matter-not-matter or antimatter-not-antimatter),


or


For all A: A (Y and X simultaneously) or ~A (matter-not-matter or antimatter-not-antimatter).​

This is not the first time I've answered this objection.

Existents that are two or more things simultaneously do not violate the organic laws of thought!


You argued that the Majorana particle violates the law of the excluded middle (or excluded third) or that the law of the excluded middle holds that such a thing could not exist. That’s false. I showed you in post # 1186 that your allegation is false and why it's false: http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/9909969/

And I showed you why it's false again here: Is There One Sound valid Syllogistic Argument For The Existence Of God Page 63 US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

Yet your still claiming this falsehood to be true.

Once again. . . .

You simply misconstrued the principle of identity, as you simultaneously misconstrued the definition of the Majorana particle itself.

The Majorana particle, a material existent, occupying the same space and having the same mass simultaneously expressed in the positive and in the negative, is conceptually and mathematically coherent. There's no inherent contradiction. There's no third to exclude. The whole is a consistently rational proposition of a single predicate (A = A). You split the predicate. The Majorana particle is not A and ~A; rather, it's A (Y and X simultaneously). You insinuated a false premise in an implied syllogism rendering an invalid conclusion.

Not only did you not show that “the laws of thought do not apply to the universe itself", that claim is undermined by the falsification of your contention that the Majorana particle contradicts the law of the excluded middle, for it obviously does not contradict it at all.

What appears to be the crux of your confusion about all of this is the mistaken notion that the logical proof for the self-evidentiary fact that the principle of identity is an intrinsically organic component of human nature = the notion that the cosmological order is necessarily contingent on our apprehensions about it.

False. Neither the transcendental argument nor the laws of organic logic assert any such thing. On the contrary, they assert the opposite.

More to come. . . .
_______________________________

By the way, your contention about the eternal now has been falsified here: Is There One Sound valid Syllogistic Argument For The Existence Of God Page 65 US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

And that also serves to falsify your claim that things like the Majorana particle violate the principle of identity as well your contention that absolute omniscience and free will cannot coexist according to the organic laws of thought. False on both counts.

 

[Foxfyre]

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

I don't see how my concept limits God in any way. I base my perceptions on what God has revealed of himself to me personally, however limited that may be. That I do not require God to be this or that is not coercive of God nor does it restrict him to any particular character or state of being, but it is simply what I believe he has revealed to humankind. To insist that God MUST be this or that seems to me to be much more coercive.

To insist or to know from what God Himself has revealed? Once again, it is not I or Justin, as far as I can tell, who is putting God in chains around here. Though, admittedly, I haven't been able to read all of his posts.

I'm sharing with you what's self-evident to all from the general revelation (the cosmological order beginning with our own reflections upon the problem of existence and origin) should they take the blinders off and open up their minds. These are the very same things asserted about God in the Bible, and the Bible tells us they are self-evident from reflection on the contents of our minds relative to the principle of identity too. There in the Bible! The Bible tells us they may be seen without scripture, but scripture backs what I'm telling you.

I have nothing to do with what is being revealed. I have nothing to do with stamping the Image God on your mind. I'm sharing with you the universally apparent attributes of God in terms of their entire upper range without limitations of any kind whatsoever, save one: God will not and cannot violate the principle of Identity, as He is the ultimate Principle of Identity: God = NOT-God for obvious reasons cannot be.

That's coercive? That's requiring Him to be something He's not or must be? I don't know what your imaging, but that's the only limit I'm talking about. There is no other limitation on Him or full, unrestrained expression of His attributes whatsoever.

For example, Foxfyre, there is no reason to believe that absolute omniscience and free will cannot coexist. The Bible utterly rejects that contention! That restraint. That length of chain. God does not have to limit His knowledge in any sense whatsoever for free will to thrive.

The principle of identity does not tell us that's impossible and neither does the Bible. Illusion. That's not a movie in the can--your chain on Him. Illusion. QW is wrong. I just falsified his notion that existents cannot be two or more things simultaneously according to the principle of identity. False. The principle of identity readily and coherently apprehends such things with no problem at all.

Perhaps if you were to take a look at that fact, you'd realize that it's you who are believing something that originated, by the way, from secular philosophers making baby talk, trying to put God into their models of being.

I have looked at that fact and still draw my own conclusions with the reason and logic that God gave me. You obviously have been very well educated in theology and I do not question your motives or intentions here. But methinks you are sometimes too quick to judge others and reject their arguments, and not always charitably or without insult, and sometimes I think that weakens your own arguments. Is it possible that you have adopted one particular theory of theology and have closed your own mind to other possibilities? One thing I have learned about God is that anytime we think we have God all figured out, we are most likely to have it wrong.

 

[Mertex]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Go.

The Cosmological argument fails.
The kalam fails.
The ontological argument fails.
The modal ontological argument only proves the possibility of god, by virtue of modal logic and axiom S5.
The teleological argument fails.
The transcendental argument fails.
...

ARE THERE ANY? For the past three thousand years, the smartest minds have been unable to provide a single syllogism that conclusively demonstrates god's existence.

Yet, all of these supremely arrogant theists run their mouth against atheism, as if they have an epistemological leg to stand on, when they don't.

Any day now! We are waiting for your argument, and until then, atheism is justified.

I was watching a show the other day on the Pharoah's and they had such details when it came to this time in history. Actual historical record or who the Pharoah's were, what life was like back then, drawings or writings, etc.

My point is, when you see how they lived back 7000 years ago, it doesn't seem that long ago. They had laws, kings, libraries, schools, societies, doctors, etc. Doesn't seem that much different than now.

Now think about stories like Noah living 350 years or Jonah living in the belly of a fish for 3 days and living and all the other stupid stories in Christianity. None of it jives with reality or history. So clearly all made up.

Really....did they have computers, Ipods and smart phones? Did they fly across the ocean in jets? Me thinks you're delusional.

 

[sealybobo]

If you want to know what is most likely just ask an agnostic atheist who is also a scientist. You'll get the most logical/rational/probable answer.

Agnostic atheists do not exist, how is anyone supposed to ask them anything?

Are you asking a human if they know for sure there is a god? 100% sure? No human could honestly answer you yes.

Agnostic means not sure. Agnostic Atheism means, at least to me, that we can't say for sure 100% there is not god. That's the agnostic part of us. But we see zero evidence so don't believe there is a god. That's our atheist part.

I'm at 1% there is a god and 99% there isn't one.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Are you asking a human if they know for sure there is a god? 100% sure? No human could honestly answer you yes.

Agnostic means not sure. Agnostic Atheism means, at least to me, that we can't say for sure 100% there is not god. That's the agnostic part of us. But we see zero evidence so don't believe there is a god. That's our atheist part.

I'm at 1% there is a god and 99% there isn't one.

No, I am calling you an idiot for saying agnostic atheist. The fact that you immediately deflected into something that had nothing to do with what I said actually reinforces my point.

 

[Justin Davis]

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

I don't see how my concept limits God in any way. I base my perceptions on what God has revealed of himself to me personally, however limited that may be. That I do not require God to be this or that is not coercive of God nor does it restrict him to any particular character or state of being, but it is simply what I believe he has revealed to humankind. To insist that God MUST be this or that seems to me to be much more coercive.

To insist or to know from what God Himself has revealed? Once again, it is not I or Justin, as far as I can tell, who is putting God in chains around here. Though, admittedly, I haven't been able to read all of his posts.

I'm sharing with you what's self-evident to all from the general revelation (the cosmological order beginning with our own reflections upon the problem of existence and origin) should they take the blinders off and open up their minds. These are the very same things asserted about God in the Bible, and the Bible tells us they are self-evident from reflection on the contents of our minds relative to the principle of identity too. There in the Bible! The Bible tells us they may be seen without scripture, but scripture backs what I'm telling you.

I have nothing to do with what is being revealed. I have nothing to do with stamping the Image God on your mind. I'm sharing with you the universally apparent attributes of God in terms of their entire upper range without limitations of any kind whatsoever, save one: God will not and cannot violate the principle of Identity, as He is the ultimate Principle of Identity: God = NOT-God for obvious reasons cannot be.

That's coercive? That's requiring Him to be something He's not or must be? I don't know what your imaging, but that's the only limit I'm talking about. There is no other limitation on Him or full, unrestrained expression of His attributes whatsoever.

For example, Foxfyre, there is no reason to believe that absolute omniscience and free will cannot coexist. The Bible utterly rejects that contention! That restraint. That length of chain. God does not have to limit His knowledge in any sense whatsoever for free will to thrive.

The principle of identity does not tell us that's impossible and neither does the Bible. Illusion. That's not a movie in the can--your chain on Him. Illusion. QW is wrong. I just falsified his notion that existents cannot be two or more things simultaneously according to the principle of identity. False. The principle of identity readily and coherently apprehends such things with no problem at all.

Perhaps if you were to take a look at that fact, you'd realize that it's you who are believing something that originated, by the way, from secular philosophers making baby talk, trying to put God into their models of being.

I have looked at that fact and still draw my own conclusions with the reason and logic that God gave me. You obviously have been very well educated in theology and I do not question your motives or intentions here. But methinks you are sometimes too quick to judge others and reject their arguments, and not always charitably or without insult, and sometimes I think that weakens your own arguments. Is it possible that you have adopted one particular theory of theology and have closed your own mind to other possibilities? One thing I have learned about God is that anytime we think we have God all figured out, we are most likely to have it wrong.

From where I'm standing I'm seeing a lot of claims being made that can't be objectively backed by rational experience of by the Bible. I'm a young Christian, new to the faith but I'm not new to the Bible. I was raised in a Baptist church that my mother attended with us kids. I just went along but I do know the Bible as I had to do all those Bible studies for years. Of course reading the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit is a whole other level of understanding from just the intellectual level. The idea that the basic attributes of God are known from the act of thinking about the possible ultimate source of existence being intelligent and spiritual rather than being material, that humans can perceive what that would mean in the highest sense is biblical. David, Moses, the prophets and the apostles talk about that and why God did that to our minds constantly. Some of the best affirmations of this are found in the Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Daniel, Job, the epistles and the gospels. The very things that can be known about God by thinking about the issue of origin are specifically named by the inspired writers also. I have no problemfollowing what M.D.R. is saying. What he calls the "imperatives of the problem of origin" that come to our minds when we think about the idea of God without the Bible are in the Bible. The Bible teaches that these things can be seen without the Bible and what they are. I don't get what arguments you think he's rejecting out of hand. I still don't really know what you're saying about free will. All I can get out of what you said is that you believe free will happens. M.D.R. believes free will happens. I believe free will happens. I believe the same way he does that total omniscience and free will can be at the same time. You seem to be saying that these two things can't happen at the same time but you don't really say why that can't be, except that for some reason you think that means everything is mapped out.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Go.

The Cosmological argument fails.
The kalam fails.
The ontological argument fails.
The modal ontological argument only proves the possibility of god, by virtue of modal logic and axiom S5.
The teleological argument fails.
The transcendental argument fails.
...

ARE THERE ANY? For the past three thousand years, the smartest minds have been unable to provide a single syllogism that conclusively demonstrates god's existence.

Yet, all of these supremely arrogant theists run their mouth against atheism, as if they have an epistemological leg to stand on, when they don't.

Any day now! We are waiting for your argument, and until then, atheism is justified.

Ever seen a child smile? Ever seen a rose bloom? Ever seen the sun rise over the mountains? Ever wonder how complete synergy could come from complete chaos and cause the universe to work in perfect order - in direct violation of man's law of thermodynamics?

You don't believe in God? Your choice. As for me and mine? We will honor the Lord. Sorry if it upsets you.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Are you asking a human if they know for sure there is a god? 100% sure? No human could honestly answer you yes.

Agnostic means not sure. Agnostic Atheism means, at least to me, that we can't say for sure 100% there is not god. That's the agnostic part of us. But we see zero evidence so don't believe there is a god. That's our atheist part.

I'm at 1% there is a god and 99% there isn't one.

No, I am calling you an idiot for saying agnostic atheist. The fact that you immediately deflected into something that had nothing to do with what I said actually reinforces my point.

Indeed. "agnostic atheist" is a contradiction in terms.

 

[Boss]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Go.

The Cosmological argument fails.
The kalam fails.
The ontological argument fails.
The modal ontological argument only proves the possibility of god, by virtue of modal logic and axiom S5.
The teleological argument fails.
The transcendental argument fails.
...

ARE THERE ANY? For the past three thousand years, the smartest minds have been unable to provide a single syllogism that conclusively demonstrates god's existence.

Yet, all of these supremely arrogant theists run their mouth against atheism, as if they have an epistemological leg to stand on, when they don't.

Any day now! We are waiting for your argument, and until then, atheism is justified.

First it must be determined what you mean by "existence" here. If you mean a physical existence, then there is no evidence that God physically exists. Now, what other types of "existence" do you acknowledge? If you can't acknowledge spiritual existence, then there is no way to show you evidence of God.

The syllogistic argument for God is simple. Time, space and a physical universe exist. Something had to create the physical. It's illogical that it created itself. Something had to create it because the universe has entropy, it is not perpetual. So until you can provide a syllogistic argument for how "physical" came to exist, we have to assume something beyond "physical" must have created it.

Now... Atheism is still justified. Atheism is a faith-based belief that God does not exist. The simple fact that God does not physically exist is enough to justify Atheism. This doesn't validate Atheism, but it is justified.

 

[Justin Davis]

Well I thought you believed in free will but that God wouldn't be completely omniscient in some sense because we couldn't have free will if He was. That suggested to me that you would be going on the way we commonly experience time, past, present, future, nothing heavy duty. But I admit that I apparently still don't really understand why you see it that way then. I'm not talking about God in the philosophical sense as the idea that He exists in the eternal now and is the God of infinite possibilities is biblical, though I suppose some philosophers have inferred that from thought. I don't know. But the only persons I know who have rejected this biblical understanding of God are philosophes for the reason I thought you were expressing. I think there's a misunderstanding here. There are things that can be known about God from the general revelation or from the creation itself through thought without the Bible. The Bible tells us this and even tells us what those things are. Philosophers have seen these things too. I've got no use for the things some have "seen" past these universals. Every philosopher I've looked at gets some if not most of these universals right and then go off and start making all kinds of claims that in my opinion don't follow and definitely aren't biblical.

Never fall into the trap of thinking you know what other people believe unless they express that belief.

I have no idea how we experience time. Many people believe we see it is linear, yet people often have an experience we call a flashback were they experience a past event in the present. Do they experience time differently than other people? How can anyone be sure of the answer to that question?

By the way, if you want to learn about the omniscience of God I suggest you clollect all the verses in the Bible that contradict our concept of God as all knowing and figure out how to reconcile them with your view that God knows everything. Like I said before, the omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, and ever present God most people understand is entirely a product of philosophy.

I only went by what it appeared you were saying. Sometimes you have to ask in some way or guess something in some way to elicit from the other person what he means. That's all. I really wish I'd seen this post before posting to Foxfyre, so please look at that post because it's important to this (1294). I strongly disagree. One of the first bible studies I did after becoming a Christian was on God's attributes. This was my own study using a concordance. The ideas about these things in the philosophy I've read are different from the Bible. Then I compared my notes to a couple of books on biblical doctrine and theology. I was seeing the same thngs. In my opinion, the only thing that can be taken from Aristotle, for example, is the idea that God is indivisible and unchangeable in His being. The rest of his stuff doesn't work very well with the Bible. The Bible overwhelming talks about God's attributes in the most perfect or complete sense there is. I have no idea what verses you could be talking about that contradict this. I know that Descartes, Plato and Kant talk about God in the most perfect sense but the problem with those guys is that you end up with a philosophy of pure subjective introspection with ideas of perfection about everything else. Why should that be I ask myself? Once you get past the objective things that can be seen in the highest sense about God's attributes from thinking about the idea of God from the problem of origin, these guys need to stop and get over themselves. Lots of the other stuff they go on about past the objective things that can be known about God from reflection is not in the Bible about God or other things.

 

[sealybobo]

Are you asking a human if they know for sure there is a god? 100% sure? No human could honestly answer you yes.

Agnostic means not sure. Agnostic Atheism means, at least to me, that we can't say for sure 100% there is not god. That's the agnostic part of us. But we see zero evidence so don't believe there is a god. That's our atheist part.

I'm at 1% there is a god and 99% there isn't one.

No, I am calling you an idiot for saying agnostic atheist. The fact that you immediately deflected into something that had nothing to do with what I said actually reinforces my point.

Indeed. "agnostic atheist" is a contradiction in terms.

Agnostic means not sure. No one can know for sure unless you are a god yourself right? So that's the agnostic part of us. Atheist because your Jesus and Mohammad stories are completely bullshit!

Get it now?

It's like being a bi sexual man who likes women a lot more than you do men. You may lean more towards hetero but you're a fag too. See how you can be a blend of both?

 

[sealybobo]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Go.

The Cosmological argument fails.
The kalam fails.
The ontological argument fails.
The modal ontological argument only proves the possibility of god, by virtue of modal logic and axiom S5.
The teleological argument fails.
The transcendental argument fails.
...

ARE THERE ANY? For the past three thousand years, the smartest minds have been unable to provide a single syllogism that conclusively demonstrates god's existence.

Yet, all of these supremely arrogant theists run their mouth against atheism, as if they have an epistemological leg to stand on, when they don't.

Any day now! We are waiting for your argument, and until then, atheism is justified.

First it must be determined what you mean by "existence" here. If you mean a physical existence, then there is no evidence that God physically exists. Now, what other types of "existence" do you acknowledge? If you can't acknowledge spiritual existence, then there is no way to show you evidence of God.

The syllogistic argument for God is simple. Time, space and a physical universe exist. Something had to create the physical. It's illogical that it created itself. Something had to create it because the universe has entropy, it is not perpetual. So until you can provide a syllogistic argument for how "physical" came to exist, we have to assume something beyond "physical" must have created it.

Now... Atheism is still justified. Atheism is a faith-based belief that God does not exist. The simple fact that God does not physically exist is enough to justify Atheism. This doesn't validate Atheism, but it is justified.

Nothing you say validates the existence of a god.