Here lies one of the stumbling blocks in defining God: To define God as a person is problematic at best, and contradictory and incomprehensible at worst.
What reason do you have for assuming the future must resemble the past?
This makes the definition of faith relevant. If what you do requires faith, then you can’t reject it.
Once again, what non-circular proof can you offer me that the future must resemble the past?
Your definition is absurd. This would mean that aliens, even if they possesses a full consciousness with perfect communicative abilities and had the ability to maintain long, involved, complex abstract conversations would not be persons. I don’t want to get into a debate about AI, either, but your definition makes it impossible for an AI to be a person before even bothering to look at any evidence.
Please read and try to understand what I wrote. I never wrote or even implied that the future must resemble the past. But from daily observations, they can be reasonably expected to do so.
I will gladly alter the qualities of person-hood when and if you can provide evidence of alien life just as I will gladly alter it if you can show me evidence of a non-material, immortal being outside of the universe.
Please show me how I am wrong. How can a person be non-human, immortal, dis-embodied, and not exist in the universe and still be defined as a person? And please be ready to offer evidence for this knowledge, not just faith.
This is only so because in the current reality God is allowing you to choose evil. In my hypothetical one He is not and everything you do would in fact be good then.
Freedom to choose good does not imply freedom to choose evil. “Freedom of the will” means not inexorably coerced by another entity. Just because a will is not inexorably coerced does not mean it cannot be infallibly moved and yet act freely, as you yourself admit.
It’s obvious that God permits evil. This is precisely where the problem lies.
No, it’s not a mistake, any more than it’s a mistake to say God can’t choose evil. Their experience of the beatific vision is precisely what makes their choice of evil an absolute impossibility, for their will is infallibly drawn to will and desire the good.
Yes, but the point is, if I had the power to infallibly prevent my children from choosing evil, rather than only exercising an influence, I would use it, and would claim that my love for them demanded that I do so. Because, choosing evil is harmful for them and, loving them, I desire to keep them from harm.
No, this is an absolute refutation of the free will defense. The free will defense says that a loving God must permit us to choose evil in order to also allow us to choose good. But as you admit a loving God does NOT have to permit us to choose evil since He can infallibly bring about good without violating our free will, which means we are still free to choose good, and do so freely.
Semantics. “reasonable expectation”, faith, trust, all pretty synonomous. I’ll agree with your usage regarding inanimate objects. As to the actions of human beings, sorry, reasonable expectation doesn’t wash, at least from my standpoint.
If you can accept that random, chaotic events could create something destructive like cancer, why is it so hard to imagine random, chaotic events creating something ultimately beneficial? The fact that the events are random and chaotic would appear to negate a preconceived result, after all.
What makes those expectations reasonable? What gives them any weight at all? It’s the same line of argumentation either way, really.
No no, I’m talking things like laws of physics, stuff necessary for your car to function. What makes you think those won’t change? What gives you any degree of certainty whatsoever that those things can’t change at any second? Remember: you can’t say “because they haven’t so far,” because that’s begging the question.
Irrelevant. I’m asking for a proof, not calling for a vote.
Then the essense of what “personhood” means is different than your definition. Technically, what you have done is delineated the number of things in existence that you know of which fit the definition of “personhood,” in which case it arguing from that list to the conclusion that God doesn’t exist or can’t be a person is circular.
That you know of. But in any case, to claim, that to be a person, one must have those qualities is logically invalid. We’re not using this argument to prove God’s existence. All we’re saying is “If God exists as we think he does, he would be a person.” You cannot disprove this statement in the way you are attempting. You would have to show that it is a logical impossibility for God to be a person, when all you have show is that for God to be a person, he would have to be not a human, which is tautologically true.
In order for God to be a person, he has to exist. I can’t prove that he exists. Therefore, I can’t prove that God is a person without appealing to faith. What you’re asking for is akin to asking me to jump up three feet without jumping.
Because a car will break down on its own more often than it will replace a spark plug on its own.
Well said.
But what do you say to the Christian who indeed does have the “reasonable expectation” that God shows Himself to them in prayer?
I keep seeing this word “BLINDLY” being tossed around quite a lot from so-called atheists at (so-called) Christians!
Faith is not a means of acquiring knowledge. It is a part of the knowledge acquisition process called “religion”.
Your narrow definition of faith is perfect reasoning on your part to create the impossibility of your perceiving God.
Faith is the USE of belief through time so as to test the belief.
I dunno, I don’t really have one. It has never been necessary to codify it, since most people know what I mean anyway. Essentially, though, I guess, a person is a rational consciousness (taken in a broad sense; just because someone is “unconscious” doesn’t mean they don’t have a “consciousness” at that time). It is the “I.”
God is a person, but not a human. My point is that though these two things are generally the same, it isn’t a logical necessity, and you’re confusing incidental with necessary.
It would have been a non sequitur had you said, “Why can’t random events create beneficial as well as destructive things?” But that’s not what you asked. You said “Why is it so hard to imagine…” And the reason that it’s so hard to imagine is because we hardly ever observe something like that occuring. We see hurricanes take out houses on TV all the time, but I’ve never even heard of a hurricane constructing a house out of basic building materials, not even a “wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Correct. Cars are orders of magnitude simpler.
Nor do I (I happen to believe in evolution).
Indeed. And it works the same way, albeit in the other direction, for Christians.
Well, it is a thing in which it is difficult not to believe, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any more or less “reasonable” than any other belief.
Actually, the real answer is that this is a Catholic forum where atheists are in the minority, and they are never allowed to have the last word.
I knew it!
OK, that one I’ll give you!
Although, if you (or those like you, you secular mind-bending soul-stealing person from Saaaay-Ten, you! ← spoken with the “SNL Church Lady” voice) would INSIST that people give you ONE question at a time, we might avoid the avalanche which so-easily seems to overwhelm “atheist-types” around here!The SECRET! The SECRET! Aren’t these “SECRET” promoters SECRETLY Scientologist stooges!? It’s all TomKats fault! And that EVIL Travolta guy! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…!
Why don’t we hear more about these? If you take the ACLU membership numbers, and figure it CAN’T take more than 6 or 7 minutes per “bus shove”, and you guys put in at LEAST 2 hours of gleeful Faithful-Flinging, that’s what, like THOUSANDS of martyrs per week!?
Now, that one I’m not entirely against, though I WILL get kept NICE AND TOASTY in purgatory for quite some time for that particular vice.
Ba’al and Moloch love 'ya babe!
This one I don’t understand. What?
Oh. So THAT’S what the spraypaint and boxknives are for! What, no mosques!? You racist!
Apparently “your kind” has been doing this for some time, since “pews” have been around for AGES! I like persistence, though. Do you guys make babies cry and cell phones go off in Mass as well? You can be honest with me. I won’t tell anyone.
It’s a full life!
Not that you necessarily meant it that way, but you challenge hangs out there like a giant man made of straw. I think you’ll find that by some definitions, “atheist” simply means a lack of a belief in any gods, not a belief in the lack of any gods. So when I say I am an atheist, I really mean I am an agnostic that has a certain feeling that there is no god but would welcome any god to speak up any time now. Certainly can’t prove the proposition either way. And all the arguments I’ve read or thought up do not even come close to a “proof”. Besides, if you really get down to it, a god could not even prove its own existence to itself at least in any way that would definitely prove it to anyone else. It is useful for me to operate under the assumption that I exist, but I have what I feel is evidence.
