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Peter_Plato
Guest
That would depend on the definition of “you” that you are trying to defend or prove. Even after being slapped, he may have no compelling reason to think a “you” did it. Automatons with no personal identity could conceivably be programmed to slap as hard as a human person.
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Peter_Plato
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Tomdstone
Guest
You are arguing for the sake of arguing. The person is standing in front of you drinking a glass of water, conversing with you and then he throws water in your face. Obviously, he exists. Unless of course you are a Berkeley guy and think that everything that goes on in is in our heads and the real world is a total illusion. Is that what you are arguing here? Are you arguing for subjective idealism?
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Tomdstone
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You gave a list of Catholic scientists. Why haven’t many of them (relative to the population) won Nobel prizes?
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Aloysium
Guest
I think it has to do with the issue of oneself. The only thing you can know for sure.
When you are in pain, you are in pain.
No one else in the universe.
Pain behaviors may indicate to others your plight, but they have to use their imaginations.
You don’t have to do that, you know.
Even though you are the most real to yourself, except through love, no one will know you.
You cannot prove your existence. You can only reveal it and hope that others will care.
They will not know you even if you beat them. They will only label you as rude, mean, cruel, whatever.
It is only through love, giving of oneself, that we can know another.
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Peter_Plato
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Why assume being “present” to the past or future requires being in a “moment?”
All past, present and future “moments” and infinitely more beyond could be eternally present to God without him being constrained to or constrained within any one or all of those moments. The meaning of “present” to those traveling within the flow of time may not be the same as the meaning of “present” in an eternal sense to an eternal sustainer of all time.
Just seems odd that you would pick a decidedly imaginary physical manifestation (a beard) as essential to God in order to make your point. So in order to accept your “argument” that “eternal” existence requires some constraint to “moments” of time, one must first buy your premise that God has a beard? Strange, no?God’s beard, if He had one, would always be the same length and not a growing beard because He does not subject Himself to change via the flow of time.
Correct me please if I am wrong. I rather enjoy my comeuppance.It is personal growth and how can I grow if I don’t learn what I am wrong about?.
Clearly, your argument is refuted simply by denying that God has a beard, or any facial hair at all, as an essential aspect of his eternal nature.
That was easy.
Now, with regard to “growth,” Aquinas posits that God is unchanging because there is no actuality that he lacks and no potentiality to be actualized. He is Actus Purus, the actuality of all actualities, the fullness of Being Itself, Ipsum Esse Existens, from whom all else comes into existence.
Since time is simply an aspect of change from potentiality to actuality, and God lacks no actuality, time is not an aspect of God, nor an aspect of existence, only of change from potentiality to actuality, i.e., of those contingent realities which come into or go out of existence.
Put another way, God does not come into being or go out of being (and neither does his beard - to use your example) because he is not “a being” but Being Itself. He would not need to “grow” a beard because essentially God is what makes “having a beard” or the “Ground” that makes possessing the property of “beardness” itself a real or substantial possibility to begin with.
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Aloysium
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Sure, rub it in how I disappointed my mom.
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Peter_Plato
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No, actually, I am arguing that an atheist denying God’s existence is much like the “Berkeley guy” who thinks everything that goes on in his head is the real world. And since “God” does not exist in this conceptual world - i.e, Berkeley guy cannot imagine anything greater than his own ability to conceptualize - he thereby concludes nothing greater than which he can conceive cannot be conceived and therefore does not exist.
Now merely because this “Berkeley guy” is an atheist materialist and not an idealist does not mean he cannot suffer from the same mental constraints.
Subjective idealism is still an issue for the “guy” who conceives that everything is material as it is for the one who conceives that everything is his idea.
That isn’t nearly the extent of the problem, however. What 987mk is doing is assuming the same “posture” as the subjective idealist who denies “you” exist and dares you to prove your existence to his liking always defaulting to the possibility of denying that whatever argument you put forth will ever satisfy his unstated criteria for evidence or proof. Which is why he offers no such criteria to begin with.
That is why 987mk claimed absolutely that theists “CAN’T” provide evidence or proof for God’s existence. How would he know that, short of posturing that he will simply deny, a priori, whatever evidence is put forth, much as the subjective idealist will simply deny that you can “prove” your personal existence to his liking?
Strictly speaking, the subjective idealist is quite correct that no one can possibly “prove” their own subjective existence to his liking (as Berkeley guy) in the same way that a theist can never “prove” the existence of God to a subjective materialist (aka materialist Berkeley guy.)
There is no point in wasting time taking up Berkeley guy’s challenge, as there is no point in taking up a subjective materialist’s challenge because the “limits” of what he will accept as possible have been preordained by fiat.
It would just be good to know that up front, rather than wasting time with someone who has reached a preordained conclusion.
Notice, he hasn’t answered my concern regarding his use of “can’t” instead of “have not.” How does he know theists “can’t” do what he challenges them to, without having made a prior decision that he won’t be persuaded by any argument or evidence whatsoever?
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Peter_Plato
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The phrase is “exceptions to the rule.”
This is only important in that it is you who are touting “higher education” as an indicator of lack of religious beliefs as if only the unintelligent and uneducated would find religious beliefs acceptable or reasonable.
What does “higher education” mean if not the ability to detect error, use facts reliably, make sound judgements, communicate effectively, etc. etc.
Do you count yourself as having a “higher education?”
Your use of English does not support that claim, nor does your inability to defend the assertions you make speak for your having achieved any great level of scholarship.
Not that this is important because I greatly admire many uneducated people and find quite a few to be the most wise and knowledgeable of any human beings that I have encountered, which is why I find your claim about “higher education” to be most objectionable.
It is you who have made “higher education” an issue, so I am calling you on it. Is it really that important that you can safely claim “truth” is found only or mainly in the halls of academia?
Personally, I am skeptical of that claim.
This would be an important observation if it were true that higher education is completely unbiased with regard to holding appropriate or inappropriate beliefs, beliefs which have little to do with intelligence.
Higher education in the Soviet Union, for example, was notorious for mind molding those being “educated” into atheistic materialism. Modern western universities, likewise, are proponents of atheism as the underlying rite of passage into what counts as “well-educated.” Clearly, higher education is not immune to indoctrinating its graduates into the de rigueur faithlessness of campus life. Hardly an unbiased ground for assessing the intelligence of believers vs unbelievers.
Personally, I find pure intelligence more telling.
According to the Mensa site the number of members by religious affiliation are as follows:
49% Christian, 3% Unitarian, 9% Jewish, 7% agnostic, 3.6% atheist, 9% no religion
Note, only 3.6% atheist.
Notice that there is a significant difference between the Mensa statistics, where only 3.6% of those with very high intelligence are avowed atheists and your source which, falsely, concludes “religiosity has a significant negative relationship with intelligence” and “that stronger religious beliefs are associated with lower intelligence.”
The problem, it would seem, is that higher education does, in fact, indoctrinate atheistic beliefs into those who attend and that religiosity is not, in fact, purely associated with intelligence. The false assumptions on the part of your source is that higher education is strictly correlated to intelligence and that higher education does not in any unbiased way influence those so “educated.”
If it were true that religious beliefs were strictly correlated with intelligence, then Mensa members would have the same profile regarding religious beliefs as those in higher education. They don’t. Ergo, something fishy.
Speaking of “cherry picking,” if you were at all interested in a sound analysis of the question, you would not rely on one source - a rather tainted one at that - but would bring together a number of important aspects of intelligence and religious beliefs for a better handle on whether your contention is true. The fact that you only pick the most damning and one that clearly doesn’t measure what you think it does, is an instance of cherry picking to prove what you want it to, not what it actually does.
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Peter_Plato
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I suppose we should wait until the end of the enterprise, when all is said and done, to determine what proportion of Catholics have won the prizes that really count.
It might be added that asking why Catholics have not won secular “prizes” is about as peculiar as asking why not many non-Catholics have been declared saints by the Church.
It could also be because the aims of the Church are not quite the same as the aims of secular society. I think Augustine characterized it as the distinction between the City of Man and the City of God. Different goals, different outcomes. Perhaps some overlap, but no necessary one.
There could be other reasons, as well - something about non-disclosure: “Don’t let your left hand know what you right hand is doing. Let your giving be in secret…”
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Tomdstone
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Well, I don’t think that many of the arguments work in the sense that any given one would convince an atheist. I am not saying that there is not evidence for God, or that God does not exist, I am only looking at the arguments given and explaining the objections that an atheist may have to them so that in the end he will not accept your arguments. Also, I don’t want to be offensive to anyone, I am just going through a few arguments, without actually coming to any conclusion at this point and without saying that these are the only arguments possible.
Let’s take the argument from causality. Everything that has a beginning has a cause. Or everything has a cause.
Generally, I read the argument in the second sense as everything has a cause. So I shall take that one first.
Everything on earth does have a cause, except perhaps in the subatomic world of quantum virtual particles splitting and spooky quantum correlations at a distance, which I am not sure about. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that everything on earth does have a cause. Then you say that the universe as a whole must have a cause. That does not follow actually, because we see and verfy that everything in the universe does have a cause, but we do not actually see and verify that the universe as a whole has a cause. But even supposing that it did, suppose it were God, then why didn’t God have a cause? You then say that God is the uncaused cause. But instead of going to that step, the atheist will just say that the universe as a whole is uncaused and there is no need to go one level further up.
Let us now take the first argument. Everything that has a beginning has a cause. Did the universe or taking it one step further, did the multiverse have a beginning. Oftentimes, people mention the BB. But can you prove that the BB was the beginning of the universe and not an ongoing process? If there were a multiverse, which of course is not certain, and even not accepted by many, could the BB be one of a large number of processes spinning off from the much larger multiverse. What caused the multiverse? Assuming that the multiverse has a cause, is very similar to assuming already that God exists. So your proof in this case is actually an assumption.
So in the end, i don’t think that this particular line of argumentation will convince an atheist.
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tonyrey
Guest
Being within the flow of time doesn’t explain the origin of our power to make choices.
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glendab
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Hello PRMerger.
Glenda
Nope. It isn’t Fideism until the “alone” get added to the mix as in by faith alone one is to know God exists, exclusive of any reason or reasonable argumentations. Pay closer attention in your current religion classes.
Glenda
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glendab
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Hello 987MK.
Glenda
How about the fact that there is breath in your lungs? Did you put it there? And the stars were shinning long before man started naming them and finding out all kinds of interesting things about them. Who put them there? You are kinda stuck if you are waiting for God to prove Himself to you. Once again I’ll say it is you who has to prove himself to God and I think you just aren’t up to the challenge. It is easier to remain slothful and detached in a self aggrandizing way from all the “fools” who are fools for God. Your lack of belief takes nothing away from anyone who does believe. You are the one who will loose in the long run. In fact, you’ve been losing all the years you’ve been denying God’s entrance into your life. Ever notice how some who have this thing called Christianity are unaccountably happy? Ever meet a Sister who is in love with God or a Priest who is so familiar with Jesus as to be speaking of his own flesh and blood Brother? Love cannot happen in your heart because you deny Him. Real love that transcends all that is made and visible.
Glenda
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PRmerger
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LOL!
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RGCheek
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I did not express myself well it seems. There are three positions a moment in time has to a being within the flow of time; present (current thought and sensation), past (recall from memory, or recorded otherwise), and the future (anticipated, planned, imagined, hoped for etc, but not known). To experience the flow of time one has to contrast an element of the past or future with the present, or a past event with another past event, or either the present or past event with an imagined future event.
When I measure the speed at which my car moves I measure the speed of a rolling ball I look at where it was some time prior to a second position, measure the time elapsed with a standard rate of change like a clock, and the change in distance. So I say the ball travelled lets say 5 feet in 2 seconds. That shows change, in this case change of position. And by it I can measure/compare it to a flow of time, and thereby have a sense of the flow of time itself.
For God there is no past or future, there is only the present and thus no flow of time. He observes it but does not experience it.
I agree.
The beard was an analogy. I was simply trying to illustrate that God does not experience change in any way.Just seems odd that you would pick a decidedly imaginary physical manifestation (a beard) as essential to God in order to make your point. So in order to accept your “argument” that “eternal” existence requires some constraint to “moments” of time, one must first buy your premise that God has a beard? Strange, no?
Clearly, your argument is refuted simply by denying that God has a beard, or any facial hair at all, as an essential aspect of his eternal nature.
That was easy.
Yes, about the same thing I am trying to say but I said it in English you said it in Philosophique.
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Mystical_Seeker
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ROFL. PR you made me smile! Clearly it is your mission to “instruct the ignorant.”
Sorry I’m so behind in the thread. If I were working on my homework like I “should” be doing, I wouldn’t even be posting this.
MS
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PRmerger
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This is not a correct articulation of the Argument from Causality.
Everything that has a beginning has a cause.
See the above.
Everything that has a beginning has a cause, Tom.
God has no beginning.
Evidence for the existence of the multiverse, please!
And this puts you in the same place, now, as Believers: you have to prove that your theory is correct. You maintain “if there were”…which is similar to the Believer’s paradigm.
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