How to transit from the concept of God to the existence of God

[davidv]

Haha, I tend to agree. Thanks for keeping me company on here, and keeping me on topic when I veered off into the long grass. Much appreciated.

Thank you and ThinkingSapien for being quite charitable in your responses to KingCoil. Though I agree with KingCoil’s conclusion, he/she has presented a horribly illogical argument. It is no wonder that some conclude that faith and reason are at odds.

 

[Sochi]

Thank you and ThinkingSapien for being quite charitable in your responses to KingCoil. Though I agree with KingCoil’s conclusion, he/she has presented a horribly illogical argument. It is no wonder that some conclude that faith and reason are at odds.

 

[KingCoil]

Well, I am still waiting for an exposition in aid of the search for the missing God in the universe, or if anyone prefers the suppression of the search for God in the universe, i.e. how to prevent or obstruct the search for God in the universe.

Do it in not more than 200 words.

KingCoil

 

[Sochi]

 

[KingCoil]

Dear Sochi, just put your dollars in your mouth, if you have any dollars, and only 200 dollars or less – that should be easy.

Otherwise, I don’t want to be harsh, but I have to be clear with you, and call a spade a spade, i.e., a junior reluctanist, aligned with satanic obstructionists.

And do away with any popcorn, silly; but of course I fear your brain is loaded with popcorn, it is popping all the time with hot air, nothing else – comic relief only, no offense to you.

If you and others do not set forth your advocacy pro how to transit to the existence of God or contra, in 200 words or less, eventually I have to expound to readers here on my advocacy:

KingCoil:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11863314&postcount=241

We have the concept of God as the creator of the universe, scientists tell us the universe has a beginning, so we go to the universe to look for the cause of the beginning of the universe, and we have found the cause which we identify it as corresponding to the concept of God in the Christian faith, namely, as the creator of the universe: for the Christian Bible describes God in Gen. 1:1 thus, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, and in their Apostles’ Creed Christians profess proclaim God thus: "I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth.

KingCoil

 

[davidv]

Dear Sochi, just put your dollars in your mouth, if you have any dollars, and only 200 dollars or less – that should be easy.

Otherwise, I don’t want to be harsh, but I have to be clear with you, and call a spade a spade, i.e., a junior reluctanist, aligned with satanic obstructionists.

And do away with any popcorn, silly; but of course I fear your brain is loaded with popcorn, it is popping all the time with hot air, nothing else – comic relief only, no offense to you.

If you and others do not set forth your advocacy pro how to transit to the existence of God or contra, in 200 words or less, eventually I have to expound to readers here on my advocacy:

KingCoil

I find this post harsh, unreasonable and uncharitable. It is not conducive to the sharing of ideas and the learning that could result from a reasonable exchange.

 

[Sochi]

 

[ThinkingSapien]

:thumbsup:

 

[KingCoil]

http://i57.tinypic.com/2zxxf9e.jpg

Thanks for your brotherly correction; please also put forth your advocacy pro or contra to the transit to God’s existence from the concept of God.

KingCoil

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Dear readers here, here as follows is the snapshot of the post from me he is reacting to.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11863170&postcount=238
http://i61.tinypic.com/xqf1ms.jpg
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11863170&postcount=238

Now, dear readers here, anyone can utter with categorical but purely gratuitous declaration that some thought of a poster does not make sense to him, but I am inviting him to do genuine intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts to expound to the pubic here how it does not make sense to himself.

Here is my brief exposition of my advocacy and explanation on the topic of this thread: “How to transit from the concept of God to the existence of God.”

Dear Linus2, please present your counter exposition in advocacy of why to your mind you cannot make any sense of my advocacy and exposition, and please limit yourself to just 200 words or less.

Yes, dear Linus2, you will repeat that you have already made it most sufficiently clear to your own mind, that my position does not make any sense to your mind, please just the same render your thought again in not more than 200 words.

You could start with the charge that I am making assumptions all the time, in which case just present one assumption and we will get started on it.

Or if you prefer, you might charge me with the fallacy of arguing from ignorance: because you presume that I am going to premise that there are only three choices to the existence of the universe, namely: it created itself, or it was created by nothing, or some agent outside itself (the universe that is) created it.

I am not saying that I have three choices or even that there are only three choices, I am must imagining that you might resort to that kind of an approach, in which case we can work together to get to the heart of what is the fallacy of arguing from ignorance.

KingCoil,

It is obvious to all here ( even Candide ) that you have no idea what you are trying to do, or, if you do, you explain it terribly and I advise you to give up philosophy. I have explained myself sufficiently to all ( except to you, Candide, and other non-believers ). My answer is the Five Ways ( and a couple more he used in other works like Being and Essence ).

Linus2nd

 

[KingCoil]

Please explain in not more than 200 words why you cannot make sense of my advocacy.

Here it is:

KingCoil:

We have the concept of God as the creator of the universe, scientists tell us the universe has a beginning, so we go to the universe to look for the cause of the beginning of the universe, and we have found the cause which we identify it as corresponding to the concept of God in the Christian faith, namely, as the creator of the universe: for the Christian Bible describes God in Gen. 1:1 thus, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, and in their Apostles’ Creed Christians profess proclaim God thus: "I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth.

Would you like to start with alleging that I am into a tautology, or that it is not the fact that the universe has a beginning, or whatever text in the quote above that you find not accessible to your comprehension?

Otherwise I fear you are to my impression into the reluctionist stratagem of compelling me to look for all your posts, to find out how clearly and sufficiently you have expounded how my exposition does not make any sense to you.

Please just limit your explanation or whatever you care to tell me and readers here why my advocacy does not make any sense to you, in not more than 200 words.

KingCoil

 

[CandideWest]

Please explain in not more than 200 words why you cannot make sense of my advocacy.

Here it is:

Would you like to start with alleging that I am into a tautology, or that it is not the fact that the universe has a beginning, or whatever text in the quote above that you find not accessible to your comprehension?

Otherwise I fear you are to my impression into the reluctionist stratagem of compelling me to look for all your posts, to find out how clearly and sufficiently you have expounded how my exposition does not make any sense to you.

Ok, I’ll take another shot at helping you out here. So, here’s what you wrote as your “exposition”.

We have the concept of God as the creator of the universe, scientists tell us the universe has a beginning, so we go to the universe to look for the cause of the beginning of the universe, and we have found the cause which we identify it as corresponding to the concept of God in the Christian faith, namely, as the creator of the universe: for the Christian Bible describes God in Gen. 1:1 thus, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, and in their Apostles’ Creed Christians profess proclaim God thus: "I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth.

So I’ll break this up and explain as we go.

We have the concept of God as the creator of the universe,…

Ok, yes there are many concepts of things which created the universe. The Christian God is one of these concepts. Fair enough.

…scientists tell us the universe has a beginning,…

Yes, this appears to be the case to the best we can tell.

… so we go to the universe to look for the cause of the beginning of the universe,…

Indeed, and it’s an active and exciting area of research.

…and we have found the cause which we identify it as corresponding to the concept of God in the Christian faith, namely, as the creator of the universe: …

And of course it also corresponds to many other creation stories too with a similar (very poor) level of accuracy. So what can we conclude from this? Well nothing.

Yes, we believe that the universe had a beginning. Yes, there are large numbers of supernatural beliefs which credit various deities for this event. How do we figure out which (if any) of them are correct? Thus far we have no evidence of any involvement from any supernatural entities, let alone the specific one you seem to have belief in. So at present we have no choice but to await evidence of some supernatural deity to examine before we believe one was involved.

 

[KingCoil]

Candide, I am not reading you and Bodicula, you two are satanic obstructionists, you don’t care for facts and logic.

KingCoil

 

[KingCoil]

But I read others even juniors reluctanists.

KingCoil

 

[CandideWest]

Candide, I am not reading you and Bodicula, you two are satanic obstructionists, you don’t care for facts and logic.

KingCoil

Oh, so you’ve reached the point where you stick your fingers in your ears eh? Shame.

Still, I’ve explained above why nobody is going to accept your exposition. I cannot make you read it. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.

Anyway, I wish you all the best and hope you find some real answers on your own since you won’t take guidance from anyone else.

Take care and good luck.

 

[KingCoil]

To others here aside from Candide and Bodicula who are satanic obstructionists, I will read your posts, including juniors reluctantists.

Preferably if you do an abstract of your post in not more than 200 words, then you can go far and wide to talk on and on.

Now, about tautology and the beginning of the universe is a scientific fact, here is what I know about them from my stock knowledge.

Tautology is a sentence where the subject and the predicate are identical, like for example, A boy is a boy.

Critics of tautology tell us that such a sentence does not add anything of new knowledge to listeners and readers.

But critics are not aware that the listeners and the readers can go to the universe of objective realities: of fellow humans, of objects and events, instead on just dwelling in their minds trying to figure out what is new in the sentence, A boy is a boy.

And they will come to the realization and know that there are all kinds of boys in actual reality when they come down from their realm of concepts in their minds (where they cannot make out anything new in the concept of boy in the subject of the sentence and boy in the predicate of the sentence).

So, a tautology is in effect an instruction to listeners and readers to access the universe of reality to know all kinds of say a boy; that is new knowledge, that there are in objective actual real factual reality all kinds of boys: fat ones, thin ones, handsome ones, plain ones, tall ones, intelligent ones, dumb ones, talkative ones, gleeful ones, sad ones, etc.

Now, about the universe having a beginning is a scientific fact, it is because it is a fact inferred on by them to be a past existing event, from evidence they observed present in the actual vicissitudes and circumstances of the universe today.

Science is a method of observation and experimentation; of course when something cannot be experimented on at all, like the beginning of the universe, at least scientists can observe all the evidence available in the universe today by which they infer to the existence of a past event which is the beginning of the universe.

KingCoil

 

[Partinobodycula]

I realize that I’m persona non grata around here. But I have something that I wanna say anyway.

I think we’re quibbling over something that doesn’t really matter. Although I’m sure it matters a very great deal to KingCoil. But in the end I don’t think that evidence of God matters very much, for as Christ pointed out, even if a man should rise from dead, the skeptics will still not be convinced. The five ways of Aquinas have been around for a very long time, and I doubt that they have truly been the catalyst for many a salvation. So when it comes to convincing nonbelievers, I don’t think KingCoil’s proofs matter very much. And when it comes to impressing God, I don’t think they matter at all.

Aquinas with all his wisdom, was still saved by faith. Give me evidence of your faith, and I’ll be far more impressed than I am by your evidence of God. And no, your certainty and verbosity in defense of your arguments, doesn’t count.

 

[CandideWest]

I think we’re quibbling over something that doesn’t really matter. Although I’m sure it matters a very great deal to KingCoil. But in the end I don’t think that evidence of God matters very much, for as Christ pointed out, even if a man should rise from dead, the skeptics will still not be convinced.

Here I’m afraid I have to disagree with you. I think the evidence (or more to the point lack of evidence) for the existence of gods matters hugely. That is the entire reason why I’m no longer a Christian - I could find no rational justification or evidence to support the beliefs of Christianity.

The five ways of Aquinas have been around for a very long time, and I doubt that they have truly been the catalyst for many a salvation.

No, they aren’t convincing, because they fail to demonstrate the existence of a god (as has been covered extensively all over the internet, including this forum). So I’m not sure how anyone could be convinced by them.

So when it comes to convincing nonbelievers, I don’t think KingCoil’s proofs matter very much. And when it comes to impressing God, I don’t think they matter at all.

Well as it stands, I agree. Kingcoils argument here doesn’t matter because it isn’t a sound argument. So it couldn’t possibly be convincing. If on the other hand he was able to create an argument demonstrating the existence of some god, then that WOULD matter. In fact it would I expect be one of the most significant pieces of text ever written. It would certainly change my life and probably the lives of millions of others. However, after all these centuries of trying, nobody has produced such an argument yet.

Aquinas with all his wisdom, was still saved by faith. Give me evidence of your faith, and I’ll be far more impressed than I am by your evidence of God. And no, your certainty and verbosity in defense of your arguments, doesn’t count.

Faith is not a good reason to believe something, it’s an excuse for believing something in the absence of a good reason for doing so.

 

[Sochi]

Faith is not a good reason to believe something, it’s an excuse for believing something in the absence of a good reason for doing so.

Faith has a great purpose: it keeps a child alive in the environment of its family and society. Up to a point. It is evident that a child is in kind of a hypnotic learning state up to about the age of seven. Hence the “age of ‘reason’” many would contend, as do I, that most continue in somewhat lesser state of hypnotic suggestibility for the rest of their lives.

So a child grows up believing that its little bit of the word and its conditions and explanations distribute unchanged over the entirety of the Universe. Yet if you switched an Inuit and a Twareg they would respectively die from “fire and ice.” Similarly with an Ituri Pygmy and a Manhattanite. Not that the early training of any of these is wrong, but the necessary narrowness of their upbringing is not sufficient for many other situations one might find another human in.

Similarly with religion or politics. We have examples of that even in the same general culture. This is true to the point that neurologists are starting to think that there are two fundamentally different kinds of human: fear based and generalists. But those who can move with some degrees of freedom in these different physical and mental environments do so as a matter of training an maturation. They have been taught or learned to expand from their original restrictions of thought pattern and function in others. Hence diplomats, Lawrence of Arabia,* and many anthropologists or Jane Goodall.

But even espousing Universals does not make one safe! In our Nation today there is a distinct repression of critical thinking such that opinions and feeling are elevated in religious and political circles to the status of fact. The portent of numbers and disciplines such as semantics are readily dismissed, and few seem to even have heard of epistemology or care about the nature of logarithms applied to food, fuel, or population. Even the distinction between hypothesis and theory is misunderstood and leveraged into arguments at which one can only shake their in amazement.

So maturity is, in a very real and very useful sense, a growth away from the parochial ideas of one’s infancy, a process which many who are obsessed with power would gladly stymie, for as Hitler said, “It is great luck for leaders that men don’t think!” And then it takes a Martin Luther King, Susan B Anthony, or a Pope Francis or John 23 to break through the societal structure of habituated and stifling belief.

I offer this brief tract on how well we think, or think we think

:"…We define thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic and will discard observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

"That is why there is always room at the top, why a man with a leetle more on the ball can so easily become governor, millionaire, or college president–and why homo sap is sure to be displaced by New Man, because there is so much room for improvement and evolution never stops.

"Here and there among ordinary men is a rare individual who really thinks, can and does use logic in a single field–he’s often as stupid as the rest outside his study or his laboratory–but he can think, if he is not disturbed, sick, or frightened. This rare individual is responsible for all the progress made by the race; the others reluctantly adopt his results. Much as the ordinary man dislikes and distrusts and persecutes the process of thinking he is forced to accept the results occasionally, because thinking is efficient compared with his own maundering. He may still plant his corn by the dark of the moon, but he will plant better corn developed by better men than he.

"Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masks himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; a pink monkey among the brown monkeys–a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he gets caught.

"The brown monkey’s instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

"Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption and non-fact. Such men exist, Joe, They are “New Man”–human in all respects, indistinguishable in all appearances or under the scalpel from homo sap, yet as unlike him in action as the Sun is unlike a single candle.

~RA Heinlein, Gulf, short novel in Assignment in Eternity c 1949, '53, '81 RAH

So, while faith has its place, the unexamined life may indeed be an unfortunate hoax on its “liver.”

*The biography of TE Lawrence adds some great insights into how religions are formed, btw.

 

[Partinobodycula]

Here I’m afraid I have to disagree with you. I think the evidence (or more to the point lack of evidence) for the existence of gods matters hugely. That is the entire reason why I’m no longer a Christian - I could find no rational justification or evidence to support the beliefs of Christianity.

You do realize that many would point out, that the evidence is already right in front of you, you simply choose not to see it.

They might also point out, that although the evidence may indeed be important to you, it may ultimately be too important to you. There may be a reason why the bible puts such emphasis on faith, for evidence may simply not be possible without it.

It’s funny sometimes what a solipsist can argue for and against. When one abandons absolutes, it’s amazing what becomes possible.