Dear JDaniel,
your two last posts only contain ideas that I’ve already addressed in my former posts - and I’m sure you won’t be offended if I, by lack of time and humour, refrain to return on them.
However, I just want to propose a few indications and gently ask you to return to my posts and those written by punkforchrist.
These indications are:
- your thinking I’ve dealt with as the “realist” position which, however, might now be more properly termed the realist-materialist position
- I don’t think the realist-materialist position has any need of God(as explained) - to the contrary, the invocation of God becomes superfluous here
- you confound abstract objects(propositions made by a subjective-concious mind) with material objects in believing that abstract objects could be mind-independent(what apparently you do, otherwise you wouldn’t think it necessary to disagree with me and restate you own position in two full-blown posts)
I also conceive that you are not representing Spaemann’s ideas correctly. I can only bid anyone to return again to the original post and read the extract by Spaemann I copied.
I believe one will easily see that the bend that punkforchrist and I have been given to the argument is much nearer to Spaemann’s intention than Daniel’s veiled realist-materialist rendering of it which doesn’t get more theological just because the concept of God is unnessarily, arbitraily attached to it.
Yours.
No offense taken.
your thinking I’ve dealt with as the “realist” position which, however, might now be more properly termed the realist-materialist position
(1.) That’s where I think you are wrong. It is not the
realist-materialist position vs
idealist position. He spent the whole of part one explaining why we do not want to accept
being-as-real. He was really trying to assert that we can know things with certainty, that we can get past the obvious cavern between what is merely in our mind and what is out there. You are still perceiving from the standpoint of life-in-the-cave. The
futurum exactum is the direct connection, the hidden tunnel or open bridge, if you will, between our mind and the outside world. (I have to work on this last statement a little as it still does not convey what I want it to convey.)
I don’t think the realist-materialist position has any need of God(as explained) - to the contrary, the invocation of God becomes superfluous here
(2.) That’s the point. Since your perception (and understanding) is still affected by life-in-the-cave you cannot even find a proof for God anywhere in Spaemann’s words - and, you know it. If I am wrong, please show it to me.
you confound abstract objects(propositions made by a subjective-concious mind) with material objects in believing that abstract objects could be mind-independent
(3.) I don’t think so. Where?
I’ve read your’s and punk’s posts. They go no where and dissolve into nothingness. You state twice, in your OP that “here is the proof for God” then you walk away from any pointer to it. Even your syllogisms speak to a certification of the real. There’s no abstractions here. You simply have to obtain a better grasp of just what the future perfect tense means. It cannot be fully understood without extrapolation beyond our primitive way of thinking.
My “over blown” posts were not intended to be dissected. That would be a waste of time on anybody’s part. You asked me what I thought about the argument as a proof for God and I gave you an answer. There is no other answer than to get beyond ourselves and understand why we were even permitted the extravagance of thought of the future as
futurum exactum. The future perfect tense is another trace left behind by God so that we can ratify being. In fact, it may be the single most powerful perception-revelation that God has left for us. If your don’t understand this, the whole writing is just a stack of clever nonsense.
1.) If the now is, then the future will be.
2.) But, the now cannot be assimilated except in the mind, as a thought, hence it resides
only in the mind and is not real.
3.) Therefore, the future will not be real, as it, too, is merely a thought.
You see the absurdity in this? But this is exactly how we perceive it from our standpoints in the cave. Thus, no certitude. All certainly could be just illusion, if that’s all we can understand of it.
jd
