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Graceful_Lamb
Guest
No one can be the creator of God. God is. He is the Alpha and Omega. God is not limited by time and space as we are.
You saying that you are the creator of God is blasphemous.
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You saying that you are the creator of God is blasphemous.
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Gorgias
Guest
No, actually they’re not. One may be a compassionate Hindu, a patient Muslim, a merciful Buddhist; but what makes a person a Christian is belief in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate.
Again, no. What makes a person a Catholic is belief not only in Jesus, but also in the Church which He founded.
I think I would disagree here, too. (Sorry.) I would say, rather, that you have such a high (i.e., unrealistic) standard for ‘proof’ that you refuse to believe anything that you cannot ‘prove’. That’s not a completely logical approach. After all, in yourself, you can experience the act of ‘breathing’. Yet, can you ‘prove’ (to your satisfaction) that you’re breathing air? Nope… since ‘air’ is outside of yourself and you hold to a certain skepticism to anything outside yourself. (This disconnect, then, viewed through the lens of your approach to proof, might lead you to doubt your own physical existence – after all, maybe you’re just a mind trying to convince itself that it has a physical body that breathes.)
So, I would conclude that you encounter a wide variety of experiences, but merely refuse to assent to them. (That, however, does not logically lead to the proposition that you’re God.)
If by that you mean that you’re compassionate, patient, forgiving, kind, merciful, and humble, I could buy that proposition. However, that’s not the ‘definition’ of a Christian (even if Christians tend to have those characteristics). What you’re doing here is noticing that puppies have eyes and ears and a nose, and concluding that, since you have eyes and ears and a nose, you’re a puppy.
Interesting perspective. If you accept the existence of persons (who suffer), and those persons tell you that their existence chronologically precedes yours, then why can you not accept that assertion?
How can you distinguish – with the high standard of proof that you insist upon – that your consciousness ‘creates’ and doesn’t merely ‘experience’? If you cannot prove it, then you must – by your own rules – refuse to accept that assertion.
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e_c
Guest
Why not actually read it instead? (By the way, if you created it, you would not be uncertain about it.)
Your mind has potential, as evidenced by learning and experiencing. Since it has potential it is not pure act. Therefore it is not the First Cause, which we call God.
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Jake_Parker
Guest
I have always said I believe there is a God. I also live my life as though there is a God, and specifically the triune God understood in Catholicism. Could I be wrong? Sure. But I don’t waste time worrying about whether or not I am right or wrong. I live my life as though there is a God, because that is what I truly believe. That’s it.
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BobCatholic
Guest
If you are God, please heal my son.
If you are defining yourself as the creator of everything around you, then you created my son, created him with his autism.
So, you created him this way, you can fix him.
That is, if you are really God.
Of course, you can’t do it, so you’re not God.
[Disclaimer: I don’t believe he is God.]
If you are defining yourself as the creator of everything around you, then you created my son, created him with his autism.
So, you created him this way, you can fix him.
That is, if you are really God.
Of course, you can’t do it, so you’re not God.
[Disclaimer: I don’t believe he is God.]
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Partinobodycula
Guest
I read Google book’s preview of it, and it seemed fairly obvious that it’s just a rehash of arguments that I’ve seen hundreds of times before. The mind can’t create an object out of whole cloth, therefore the external world must exist. I see this argument all the time. Case in point, openmind77 makes the exact same argument in post #104. Only he references a specific object, under the assumption I suppose, that a graduate level mathematics textbook is somehow more difficult to create than a tree. As if the concept of a tree comes preloaded with all the prerequisite idiosyncrasies required in the life cycle of a tree. If that were the case, then all one need do is imagine a graduate level mathematics textbook, and it would automatically come preloaded with the all the necessary text. Easy peasy. Of course its not that easy, but almost. You just need to make a couple of simple basic assumptions about the nature of reality, and graduate level mathematics textbooks will magically appear out of nowhere.
That depends doesn’t it upon the manner in which I created it? If I consciously chose to create it, then yes, I should be keenly aware of each and every nuance of it. But then I probably wouldn’t have chosen to create a reality with quite this level of suffering either. I probably would’ve toned it down a bit. Therefore, I would describe my role in reality’s creation as less of a designer, and more of merely a cause. Reality may be nothing more than the conscious mind trying to rationalize the existence of itself.
You believe that God must be pure act, because Aquinas argued that God must be pure act. But let’s examine that argument, and the alternative. Aquinas argued that it’s manifestly evident from the world around us that things change, because they’re composed of a combination of potency and act. And nothing can change from potency to act except it be acted upon by something which is itself in a state of act. Now since this series of things changing from potency to act can’t go on forever, there must exist something which is pure act, and that everyone understands to be God.
This seems simple enough, except that it creates some problems. Like, if at the beginning of this series of causes all that existed was pure act, then obviously there was no potential for anything else to exist. Solution…God created a thing with potential, out of nothing. Not out of potency. Not out of anything. But if something exists, mustn’t it first have had the potential to exist? If this creation story is true, then we now have at least two things that exist without ever having had the potential to exist. The logic here seems a little bit strained.
But let’s examine the alternative, that what Aquinas assumed to be pure act, is instead pure potency. Ah, but the Thomist will immediately object, for this is impossible. For potency cannot actualize itself. But what if nothing has really been actualized, only perceived to have been actualized? What if an immaterial potency, has given rise to an immaterial consciousness, which is experiencing an immaterial world? What if everything is all in my mind? What of Aquinas’ Five Ways then?
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Partinobodycula
Guest
The admission that one might be wrong isn’t meant to temper one’s faith, it’s meant to temper their arrogance. Some people seem to be confused about which one it is that they’re letting go of.
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Partinobodycula
Guest
There’s a thread on this forum that proposes that the greatest argument against God is the evil in the world. It’s funny, because I often think that that’s the greatest argument against solipsism as well. That men do, what my heart beseeches them not to do.
I wonder sometimes though, is the evil meant to produce suffering in them, or compassion in me?
I wonder also what the answer is in your case, which has your son’s autism produced in greater measure, suffering in him, or compassion, patience, and faith in you?
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Spritus1
Guest
If you have to ask “Am I God”? Then you are NOT God. If you were God you would be omniscient and would know the answer to the question without having to ask it.
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StAlphonsusMary
Guest
If your permissive will doesn’t want them to do such things, then you can’t control your imagination?
Because in Christianity, God allows evil for a good reason, to make something better proceed from it. That’s why God died on a cross to come into a relationship with us, to be with us for eternity in blessed friendship. That is a good response to the Problem of Evil. Nothing is more evil than God crucified.
What about solipism?
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BobCatholic
Guest
I’m more compassionate to people who have disabilities like autism. But it was not necessary that my son be made autistic to do this, I already was that way because I was bullied as a child, and I knew that bullies pick on those who have autism.
I think my son’s autism is a punishment from God because I was selfish and waited a long time to marry (one cause of autism is having kids when a woman is over age 35).
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Partinobodycula
Guest
One of the great things about being me is that it’s pretty much impossible for God to punish me. Catholics on the other hand seem to be getting punished all the time. Maybe God’s trying to tell me something…don’t be a Catholic.
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davidv
Guest
Really? How do you this?
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Gorgias
Guest
God doesn’t punish here on earth. There are evils in the world, which He allows, but He doesn’t use them as punishment.
The place of ‘punishment’ is in eternity. If someone thinks he’s immune to punishment… just wait. You might just find out you were horribly, horribly mistaken. :sad_yes:
Why must it be one or the other? Why does the degree matter? When we see suffering in the world, we’re called to be compassionate. When we experience suffering ourselves, we’re called to unite our sufferings to Christ’s. There’s no scale, along which we measure the effects of evil in the world, in order to evaluate the evil! :nope:
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davidv
Guest
Edit: How do you know this?
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Partinobodycula
Guest
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davidv
Guest
All of them.
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IWantGod
Guest
Davidv i am a competing God, don’t listen to him. Worship me instead.
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MPat
Guest
Have you noticed that you often claim that you are not arrogant and other people often claim that you are? And that you often seem to claim other people are arrogant?
Have you ever thought why that happens?
Oh, and, speaking of that, how would you define arrogance?
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Trichakra
Guest
Jesus is God. God created everything. He created universe not you.
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