Please explain

[Linusthe2nd]

We are getting further and further away from the topic of this thread. It does not matter, however. The original creators of “Linux” were two college students, who were challenged by their professor… They “created” the new operating system and made it available for everyone, to use and to enhance it. It was not a “creation ex nihilo”, they built upon the already existing UNIX operating system. But who is to deny that they “created” something NEW?

It would be nice to return to the actual topic of the thread. Any chance of that?

If I have offended ( or Inocente ) then why compound the digression?
Getting a little touchy in your old age, hey?

Linus2nd

 

[MPat]

Creation is a simple concept, to make something “new”. Nowhere is it restricted to creation “ex nihilo”. **Some **people asserted that but they did not quote OFFICIAL church documents to substantiate that claim. When a writer CREATES a new novel, no one (in the right mind) denies that it is “merely” an artifact not a “true creation”, because it uses the existing alphabet. When a composer CREATES a new musical piece it is still a creative process, even if he uses the already existing scale.

Catechism, paragraph 296 (vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM): “We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely ‘out of nothing’: If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.”. Is that official enough for you?

Not true. Thomism is widely followed, but that is all. There are many who follow Molina and other philosophers.

And yet, it is St. Thomas Aquinas who has a special official recognition.

For example, Second Vatican Council, Declaration on christian education Gravissimum Educationis (vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html): “In those schools dependent on her she intends that by their very constitution individual subjects be pursued according to their own principles, method, and liberty of scientific inquiry, in such a way that an ever deeper understanding in these fields may be obtained and that, as questions that are new and current are raised and investigations carefully made according to the example of the doctors of the Church and especially of St. Thomas Aquinas, there may be a deeper realization of the harmony of faith and science.”.

But, just for the fun of it, let’s contemplate that “creation” really means “ex nihilo”. In this case the quoted text degenerates to a logical error called circular reasoning, Something along these lines:The phrase “created things” means everything that God created ex nihilo.
Therefore the existence of “created things” directly points to God’s existence. This is the quintessential “DUH” moment.

And once again, that is not circular reasoning, because that is not an argument.

Now really, you claim you are open to rational arguments, but on this very thread you seem respond to almost none of them (for example, would you care to defend your investigation from my criticism?) and seem to refuse to accept anything you are told. You didn’t accept that the Church does teach creation ex nihilo, you didn’t accept that this dogma about existence of proofs of God’s existence is not meant to be a proof of God’s existence itself, you keep referring to it as being cited from Catechism, when it was pointed out (again - several times) that this specific wording is not from there…

In fact, if you are not willing to accept our answers about what the teachings of the Church are, why are you even asking?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

When speaking in the language the Catholic Church uses and that which Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastic use one must keep to the meaning of the terms - which are not always dictionary meanings.

Keeping this in mind, " to create " means to make something for which there was no prior existing matter from which it could have been made. Thus: " to create, " in philosophical language, means to make something from nothing, in time. When use in connection to the origin of the universe it means that God created the universe out of nothing in time.

In other words God created the universe with an absolute beginning before which no matter existed at all, only God.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church

III. The Knowledge of God According to the Church

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. the human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”.14

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[ynotzap]

I see a few problems here. We don’t need to know that God exists in order to be able to say what God would be if He does exist. We could be agnostic, and still ask what kind of god does monotheism claim? We can rule out lots of possibilities and home in on what such a god must necessarily be like without even asking whether that god exists. And also, lots of people just believe in God without needing any logical argument.

Only trouble is, this is close to a god-of-the-gaps argument, where god stands in for what we can’t explain. And as our knowledge increases, as it surely must, this god has less and less to do. A thousand years ago some people thought God had angels push the Sun across the sky. Then the angels were put out of a job when we learned more.

Answer;

We are concerned with proving that God exists by reason aren’t we? I would expect to encounter rebuttal from atheists and agnostics and not to deal in imagined speculation, but in objective facts To home in on what God could possibly be, we would have to determine if He exists, otherwise why waste our time on possibilities.

God does stand in for all that we can’t explain, isn’t that what we are proving, or trying to prove, The First Cause to supplly all the answers to our questions. There is a gap alright and its in our minds and we are trying to fill it with truth. Just another excuse, like using Occams Razor when the going gets tough. When one dispenses with unnecessary complexities in choosing arguments one gets no response
And wouldn’t the God-less world be surprised to know that the angels are the forces that they observe in nature, in the Universe unrecognizable to them because of their ignorance, their uninlightenment and they think that man’s mind is superior, they don’t need God, material science has all the answers to fill the Gap

You claim to be a Baptist, and I assume you do believe in Scriptures, to what extent I don’t know. But I think I can safely assume that you have read all or part of scripture and have come across references to angels executing God’s will, found strongly in the Book of Revelation. If you really believe, then you will not think it foolish if some in the past believed that angels pushed the Sun around. Angelic power can move material entities, because they participate in God’s power. But this is all Revelation, and within my personal experience which you answered by quoting "Occams Razor. You never referred to the God given law of gravity. The truth of the law of gravity is a truth found in emperical science, and that’s where our contact with reality starts, in the physical world, but for some scientists that’s where, unfortunately it stops There is your “Gap” and it needs to be filled. We don’t quit because it is a “problem”

 

[inocente]

We are going to make you an expert on Catholic theology yet. Even now you know more than most Cathlics ( I mean the average pew warmer ). But once again you paint with a too narrow brush. Those items in 32-35 are types or examples of the kind of arguments which can show to an open and intelligent mind that God exists. They are not premise, middle, conclusion arguments. And they are only examples, see the 20 proofs for Gods existence by googling " Strange Notions " ( boy oh boy there is a lot there for you to complain about ).

I see no ships. Nor anything in CCC 31 which talks of examples. Are you putting words in the author’s mouths?

32-25 each say something about God or our relationship with God, whereas many of Kreef’s 20 “proofs” are arguments from bafflement - we dunno what dunnit, so let’s use God as a placeholder.

So true. But it is psychologically satisfying, and productive of spiritual insight if one can actually reason from first principles to the author of these first principles. If one can understand as well as believe, it makes our appreciation of our creator much deeper.

That might be the case if the arguments told us something new, but most of them take something we already believe we know about God and then try to rationalize it, so they don’t bring anything to the party except a veneer of logic.

That does seem contradictory. I think the authors have expressed something poorly or perhaps the proof readers missed something ( there is a later edition, at least one ), or perhaps the translation is poor. I lean to the latter. So what could the quoted sentence mean? I think one has to say that what the authors are trying to say, but said poorly, is that first; all men do have this capacity ( except those severely, mentally handicaped ), and secondly; once we have faith that God exists or know that God exists ( no matter how we know this, it may be a spark of grace out of the blue, it happens all the time ), that knowledge makes us or inclines us to accept the totality of Divine Revelation.

Ah, so you have to rewrite the CCC to get your interpretation. I think not. The Spanish says exactly the same as the English - “36 Sin esta capacidad, el hombre no podría acoger la revelación de Dios. El hombre tiene esta capacidad porque ha sido creado “a imagen de Dios””.

I can’t do Latin but it here it is - “36 Sine hac capacitate, homo Revelationem Dei accipere nequiret. Hanc vero capacitatem habet homo quia « ad imaginem Dei » creatus est (Gn 1,27)”.

None of them at all? How about the 20 Arguments for God’s Existence by Peter Kreeft ( strangenotions.com/god-exists/ )? Surely something appeals to you?

He seems to think that piling up a lot of bad arguments might make us think he has one good one, but logic doesn’t work like that. Some of his arguments are mirthful - for example, to paraphrase the argument from miracles, "I dunno, search me, must be magic, < poof > ".

*You refuse to face reality. It may hurt to tell the truth but sometimes it has to be said. If you don’t the child will be spoiled and evil will pollute the culture. Political correctness is what is killing us now. *

I’d have thought calling people “blind, stubborn, or culpably willful” when they disagree with you is the more likely to pollute the culture with evil, although I’m not really sure what polluting the culture means, it sounds a bit like saying nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

*Lucy, you have tried that trick before. Have you never attended a Catholic Mass. Be sure to let me know if you hear a sermon grounded on philosophy. I readily admit that some of our pastors give modest sermons and usually limited to 10 minutes but then they have more to give than the non-Catholic pastor. In a few minutes the priest consecrate the bread and wine and give the poor soul ( if a Catholic in the state of grace ) Christ the Resurrected God-Man himself. Go to Mass some time, live, not on T.V., the experience is different. *

Charlie, I’ve attended a few Masses, in various countries, but it’s a non sequitur. I said “When a lost soul walks into your church, tell them about Christ” and meant you tell them right there and then, don’t ask them to come back next Sunday and maybe the sermon might put them on the right track.

How about the Encyclical " Humani Generis " by Blessed Pius XII, strangenotions.com/god-exists/, quite interesting. How about this from paragraph 2: [snip]
I got a bit lost - I think the original point was Dei Filius saying reason + revelation, and if you read Humani Generis on to para. 3, doesn’t it say the same?

 

[inocente]

Thanks I wish I would be half my age (it would be the value of the 4 by 4 magic square) - with all the knowledge stored in my brain still there (of course!). If I could send back a message to my twenty years old self, it would be very simple: “borrow as much money as you can and buy Microsoft shares at the IPO”.

Yes, wish I’d bought Apple.

*Completely agree with the first part. The second part depends on the precise definition of God. If the definition of God contains a logical contradiction, then such a being cannot exist. This is why I would love to start with a somewhat boring but necessary preamble of defining the terms of the discussion. Most people are not interested. *

I once saw a philosophy magazine at a newsstand, and it turned out to contain a piece which supposedly disproved the existence of God. The author gave his definition of God and then demolished each point in his definition, thus proving he could demolish his own definition, while forgetting to prove that his definition had any relation to God. So that’s a good reason not to buy philosophy magazines. If God is I AM then he can’t be defined.

Sure, but that is not exactly what I meant. At the age of three all of us went through the “WHY” period. I was only referring to the fact that one must start somewhere - with axioms in the formal sciences, and basic principles in the natural sciences - which cannot be meaningfully expected to “prove” - since they are basis of all the subsequent proofs.

Some posters try to argue that the natural sciences rely on philosophy in some way, but I disagree. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that alone is enough, no axioms or assumptions are needed. Imho

There was Paul Erdos (a very famous Hungarian mathematician) who firmly believed in the existence of “THE BOOK”, which contains the most beautiful and elegant proofs of all the mathematical theorems. He did not believe in any god, but he believed in THE BOOK.

If you’re a programmer, you must at some time have programmed a zoom into the Mandlbrot Set. Infinite complexity from the simple function z = z[sup]2[/sup] + c. Now there’s God. Here’s a nice zoom - youtube.com/watch?v=WAJE35wX1nQ

 

[inocente]

Was beginning to worry about you. Glad to hear you are just busy.
Didn’t know Grace invented Cobol. But I did know she was a legend in the Armed Services. She could have made much more at AT&T or IBM.

Her nickname was Amazing Grace.

It would be nice to return to the actual topic of the thread. Any chance of that?

 

[inocente]

Answer;

We are concerned with proving that God exists by reason aren’t we? I would expect to encounter rebuttal from atheists and agnostics and not to deal in imagined speculation, but in objective facts To home in on what God could possibly be, we would have to determine if He exists, otherwise why waste our time on possibilities.

God does stand in for all that we can’t explain, isn’t that what we are proving, or trying to prove, The First Cause to supplly all the answers to our questions. There is a gap alright and its in our minds and we are trying to fill it with truth. Just another excuse, like using Occams Razor when the going gets tough. When one dispenses with unnecessary complexities in choosing arguments one gets no response
And wouldn’t the God-less world be surprised to know that the angels are the forces that they observe in nature, in the Universe unrecognizable to them because of their ignorance, their uninlightenment and they think that man’s mind is superior, they don’t need God, material science has all the answers to fill the Gap

You claim to be a Baptist, and I assume you do believe in Scriptures, to what extent I don’t know. But I think I can safely assume that you have read all or part of scripture and have come across references to angels executing God’s will, found strongly in the Book of Revelation. If you really believe, then you will not think it foolish if some in the past believed that angels pushed the Sun around. Angelic power can move material entities, because they participate in God’s power. But this is all Revelation, and within my personal experience which you answered by quoting "Occams Razor. You never referred to the God given law of gravity. The truth of the law of gravity is a truth found in emperical science, and that’s where our contact with reality starts, in the physical world, but for some scientists that’s where, unfortunately it stops There is your “Gap” and it needs to be filled. We don’t quit because it is a “problem”

Not sure if we’re talking at cross purposes. The guy who taught me comparative religion, a devout doctor of divinity, used the phrase god-of-the-gaps as first defined by Henry Drummond:

“There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of gaps, gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in the gaps? What view of Nature or of Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is not in what it can explain but in what it cannot, whose quest is ignorance not knowledge, whose daily dread is that the cloud may lift, and who, as darkness melts from this field or from that, begin to tremble for the place of His abode? What needs altering in such finely jealous souls is at once their view of Nature and of God. Nature is God’s writing, and can only tell the truth; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer summed it up pithily:

“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.”

So rather than the (American?) notion of trying to fight against science, I believe we can and should find God in science, in a continuation of Paul’s “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

 

[Hee_Zen]

Yes, wish I’d bought Apple.

Both?

I once saw a philosophy magazine at a newsstand, and it turned out to contain a piece which supposedly disproved the existence of God. The author gave his definition of God and then demolished each point in his definition, thus proving he could demolish his own definition, while forgetting to prove that his definition had any relation to God. So that’s a good reason not to buy philosophy magazines. If God is I AM then he can’t be defined.

If he cannot be defined, then there is nothing to speak of.

Some posters try to argue that the natural sciences rely on philosophy in some way, but I disagree. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that alone is enough, no axioms or assumptions are needed. Imho

I agree fully.

If you’re a programmer, you must at some time have programmed a zoom into the Mandlbrot Set. Infinite complexity from the simple function z = z[sup]2[/sup] + c. Now there’s God. Here’s a nice zoom - youtube.com/watch?v=WAJE35wX1nQ

Every time I learned a new language with graphical capabilities, it was my first project. I can’t even recall how many times I enjoyed the beauty of fractals. But it does not speak to me about God. It just tells me that quadratic (and higher) equations are cannot be predicted, unlike the linear ones. And that math is beautiful…

 

[ynotzap]

Not sure if we’re talking at cross purposes. The guy who taught me comparative religion, a devout doctor of divinity, used the phrase god-of-the-gaps as first defined by Henry Drummond:

“There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of gaps, gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in the gaps? What view of Nature or of Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is not in what it can explain but in what it cannot, whose quest is ignorance not knowledge, whose daily dread is that the cloud may lift, and who, as darkness melts from this field or from that, begin to tremble for the place of His abode? What needs altering in such finely jealous souls is at once their view of Nature and of God. Nature is God’s writing, and can only tell the truth; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer summed it up pithily:

"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know."

So rather than the (American?) notion of trying to fight against science, I believe we can and should find God in science, in a continuation of Paul’s “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

I wasn’t using God as a stand in for what we can’t explain, but knowing that He exists to be discovered by those that do not know Him. I know that God is the total explanation for all we do not understand, for He is Truth. I am in perfect agreement with your quote, we are to find God in what we know, and not in what we do not know. this is why I started with the basics, our experience of the empirical world, this is where our knowledge starts, in the senses. We make objective contact, with objective reality. From there we proceed to proving God’s existence. It synthesizes what we naturally know with what we know through faith, some of us know God is the author of both, truth that can be known by reason, and truth that is known by Faith. We Christians are accused of using God to fill the gap because of our ignorance of emperical scientific knowledge, and now see human reason is superior to what we know by Faith. I see this as so much human arrogance, ignorance and pride, man’s superior mind over God I will give a real example from a letter printed by our local paper: I will not print the real name of the writer for obvious reasons.

John Doe’s letter One step back suggests that God is necessary to explain the mystery fo “primal cause” on the grounds that “No matter how far back the scientists go in their explanation it unrelentingly begs the question “Well, where did that come from?” The obvious response to Mr.Doe is to ask, Well, where did God come from?” And the follow-up," If God can exist without being caused, why can’t matter?" Mr Doe’s argument is an example of a common move sometimes called the “God of the Gaps” positing God as the explanation for whatever science does not currently understand. The odd consequence of that move is tha God’s role and importance gets smaller and smaller as science’s knowledge expands. More-over as the “primal cause” example illustrates, the suggestion that “God did it” does not end the search for explanation, since the posited agent is itself and entity in need of explanation. Signed Joe Blow, New York, N.Y. (continued next post)

 

[ynotzap]

I answered the letter: (note there was another letter near the same time that was titled
“Primal Cause Flawed” referring to Ockam"s Razor)

He just Is (the title was made by the News Paper)
Joe Blow (God’s role declines,) responds “Where did God come from? And if God can exist without being caused, why can’t matter?” I respond: If God was caused He is the effect of a greater cause and He couldn’t be God in the first place. If God was not caused and He exists then existence must be His nature. (I Am Who Am)
Matter has potency ( a capacity to be) and it can not be all that it could be at one time. Example: Ice can be water, water can be steam, yet it remains matter. It’s state of existence changes. If existence was it’s nature it would be all that it could be at one time and not subject to change and time. Matter is in constant motion in varying degrees, it does not explain itself and is moved by another. God who is Pure Being does not have a capacity to be, He is! "We can say "We are because He is " When we speak of God we must necessarily think of Him in an existential way, in other worlds “that He is is” and not “What He is” Matter is sustained by God who is infinite so it accidentally appears infinite when actually it is essentially finite. Signed : poster
I believe these men were college students who are being brain-washed by those who think they know, subjective thinking, not very objective for science students, if they were. These are some of the reasons we must use metaphysics with those who are not gifted with the Faith. It may bring them to the doorstep of Faith, as truth always leads to God but we know that Faith is a supernatural gift from Jesus Christ, God-man, the gift of His Sanctifying Spirit. If it was a result of reason, then we could take the credit, salvation comes from Jesus alone. PS I never got a response and I answered Ockam’s Razor the best I could.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I see no ships. Nor anything in CCC 31 which talks of examples. Are you putting words in the author’s mouths?

32-25 each say something about God or our relationship with God, whereas many of Kreef’s 20 “proofs” are arguments from bafflement - we dunno what dunnit, so let’s use God as a placeholder.

That might be the case if the arguments told us something new, but most of them take something we already believe we know about God and then try to rationalize it, so they don’t bring anything to the party except a veneer of logic.

Ah, so you have to rewrite the CCC to get your interpretation. I think not. The Spanish says exactly the same as the English - “36 Sin esta capacidad, el hombre no podría acoger la revelación de Dios. El hombre tiene esta capacidad porque ha sido creado “a imagen de Dios””.

I can’t do Latin but it here it is - “36 Sine hac capacitate, homo Revelationem Dei accipere nequiret. Hanc vero capacitatem habet homo quia « ad imaginem Dei » creatus est (Gn 1,27)”.

He seems to think that piling up a lot of bad arguments might make us think he has one good one, but logic doesn’t work like that. Some of his arguments are mirthful - for example, to paraphrase the argument from miracles, "I dunno, search me, must be magic, < poof > ".

I’d have thought calling people “blind, stubborn, or culpably willful” when they disagree with you is the more likely to pollute the culture with evil, although I’m not really sure what polluting the culture means, it sounds a bit like saying nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Charlie, I’ve attended a few Masses, in various countries, but it’s a non sequitur. I said “When a lost soul walks into your church, tell them about Christ” and meant you tell them right there and then, don’t ask them to come back next Sunday and maybe the sermon might put them on the right track.

I got a bit lost - I think the original point was Dei Filius saying reason + revelation, and if you read Humani Generis on to para. 3, doesn’t it say the same?

I think it would be a wasted effort to respond. Same game all over again.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

If he cannot be defined, then there is nothing to speak of.

We can say some things about God, but not the precise definition you want. For instance, we can say God is perfect. But if being perfect means God never changes (perfection cannot become less or more perfect), then does that mean God is trapped by the fates? There are all manner of questions like that which will always keep theologians in a job.

We come up against the limits of language. To give an analogy, thousands and thousands of songs have been written about romantic love, whereas if any of them managed to capture it, there would be no need for any of the others. People keep writing love songs because romantic love has far too many aspects to ever be closely defined.

But you can still love your partner - not being able to define something doesn’t mean it can’t exist.

*I agree fully. *

That’s good, we are a tiny band of brothers here on CAF.

Every time I learned a new language with graphical capabilities, it was my first project. I can’t even recall how many times I enjoyed the beauty of fractals. But it does not speak to me about God. It just tells me that quadratic (and higher) equations are cannot be predicted, unlike the linear ones. And that math is beautiful…

It’s the unexpected gift of a dead simple function giving a perfect pattern which goes on for ever, never repeating itself. It’s a now-who-ordered-that moment. I don’t mean in terms of explanation or reasoning, just the emotional response.

 

[inocente]

I wasn’t using God as a stand in for what we can’t explain, but knowing that He exists to be discovered by those that do not know Him. I know that God is the total explanation for all we do not understand, for He is Truth. I am in perfect agreement with your quote, we are to find God in what we know, and not in what we do not know. this is why I started with the basics, our experience of the empirical world, this is where our knowledge starts, in the senses. We make objective contact, with objective reality. From there we proceed to proving God’s existence. It synthesizes what we naturally know with what we know through faith, some of us know God is the author of both, truth that can be known by reason, and truth that is known by Faith. We Christians are accused of using God to fill the gap because of our ignorance of emperical scientific knowledge, and now see human reason is superior to what we know by Faith. I see this as so much human arrogance, ignorance and pride, man’s superior mind over God I will give a real example from a letter printed by our local paper: I will not print the real name of the writer for obvious reasons.

I don’t think all Christians are “accused of using God to fill the gap”. After all, the god-of-the-gaps accusation is made by Christian theologians against other Christians. And it may be how you phrased it but a number of scientists are Christians so they can’t be accused of having an “ignorance of empirical scientific knowledge”.

I answered the letter: (note there was another letter near the same time that was titled
“Primal Cause Flawed” referring to Ockam"s Razor)

He just Is (the title was made by the News Paper)
Joe Blow (God’s role declines,) responds “Where did God come from? And if God can exist without being caused, why can’t matter?” I respond: If God was caused He is the effect of a greater cause and He couldn’t be God in the first place. If God was not caused and He exists then existence must be His nature. (I Am Who Am)
Matter has potency ( a capacity to be) and it can not be all that it could be at one time. Example: Ice can be water, water can be steam, yet it remains matter. It’s state of existence changes. If existence was it’s nature it would be all that it could be at one time and not subject to change and time. Matter is in constant motion in varying degrees, it does not explain itself and is moved by another. God who is Pure Being does not have a capacity to be, He is! "We can say "We are because He is " When we speak of God we must necessarily think of Him in an existential way, in other worlds “that He is is” and not “What He is” Matter is sustained by God who is infinite so it accidentally appears infinite when actually it is essentially finite. Signed : poster
I believe these men were college students who are being brain-washed by those who think they know, subjective thinking, not very objective for science students, if they were. These are some of the reasons we must use metaphysics with those who are not gifted with the Faith. It may bring them to the doorstep of Faith, as truth always leads to God but we know that Faith is a supernatural gift from Jesus Christ, God-man, the gift of His Sanctifying Spirit. If it was a result of reason, then we could take the credit, salvation comes from Jesus alone. PS I never got a response and I answered Ockam’s Razor the best I could.

While agreeing with your empirical approach, I think this line of argument is likely to backfire. The trouble is that the argument from motion is based on Aristotle’s wrong physics, and the average person with any interest in science can tell it is false just from what she learned around age fifteen about inertia and so on. That’s not brain-washing, that’s just good basic science which she can see works with her own eyes. So she objects to the argument and the discussion becomes about trying to defend Aristotle’s wrong physics rather than about Christ.

None of Kreeft’s 20 arguments are in the bible, because none of them are anywhere near good enough. I think the danger is they make agnostics think Christianity is irrelevant at best, and sloppy or wishful at worst. I know that if a lost soul wonders into church, then telling her about Christ and showing Christian behavior towards her will help her, whereas I don’t see how reeling off any of Kreeft’s arguments could.

 

[inocente]

I think it would be a wasted effort to respond. Same game all over again.

I’ve not had much time over the last few days yet took the trouble to give a full response to you, and you insult me in reply with a one-line dismissal.

It was you who wanted to play your Charlie Brown vs. Lucy van Pelt game, and Lucy forced you to admit that the CCC would have to be rewritten to make your interpretation work, so I think this is more about Charlie being unable to cope with Lucy challenging his worldview. To see who is playing games, look in the mirror bro.

But perhaps I caught you on a better day today, if you want to continue getting bruised.

 

[Hee_Zen]

We can say some things about God, but not the precise definition you want. For instance, we can say God is perfect. But if being perfect means God never changes (perfection cannot become less or more perfect), then does that mean God is trapped by the fates? There are all manner of questions like that which will always keep theologians in a job.

There is a problem here. How does one define “perfection” in an abstract fashion? A perfect bullet would penetrate any shield, while the perfect shield would withstand any bullet. There is no “perfection” in a vacuum, one needs to specify “perfect in what respect?” and at that point we start to deal with subjective categories. God can’t be both perfectly good and perfectly evil.

Some people say that God’s attributes need to be understood allegorically. They use the example that we speak of a dog’s loyalty, which is not the same as human loyalty. They say that the dog is loyal according to his nature, while humans are loyal according to human nature. They have something like “A is to B” as “C is to D”. But in order to “solve” this, one needs to have 3 of these 4 variables known, and then we can resolve the fourth. To wit: “human love is to human nature like God’s love is to God’s nature”. And here we have TWO unknowns, God’s love and God’s nature - so the equation is unsolvable.

Let me explain. There is a human concept called: “God”. Many people say that this concept has no “referent” in reality, because the concept is problematic. The concept needs to defined precisely in order to have a meaningful conversation. Maybe the concept does not reflect the “true God” accurately, that is possible. But the concept is a human concept, and as such it needs a clear and precise definition.

We come up against the limits of language. To give an analogy, thousands and thousands of songs have been written about romantic love, whereas if any of them managed to capture it, there would be no need for any of the others. People keep writing love songs because romantic love has far too many aspects to ever be closely defined.

But you can still love your partner - not being able to define something doesn’t mean it can’t exist.

Romantic love is the result of certain chemicals in the brain, which can be invoked by adding these chemicals artificially. Only poets try to make it mysterious.

That’s good, we are a tiny band of brothers here on CAF.

You are right, but it is still very sad.

It’s the unexpected gift of a dead simple function giving a perfect pattern which goes on for ever, never repeating itself. It’s a now-who-ordered-that moment. I don’t mean in terms of explanation or reasoning, just the emotional response.

I share the emotion that the pattern is beautiful, but it still is a direct corollary of “1 + 1 = 2”… which does not make it less beautiful, but not “mysterious”.

 

[ynotzap]

We can say some things about God, but not the precise definition you want. For instance, we can say God is perfect. But if being perfect means God never changes (perfection cannot become less or more perfect), then does that mean God is trapped by the fates? There are all manner of questions like that which will always keep theologians in a job.

We come up against the limits of language. To give an analogy, thousands and thousands of songs have been written about romantic love, whereas if any of them managed to capture it, there would be no need for any of the others. People keep writing love songs because romantic love has far too many aspects to ever be closely defined.

But you can still love your partner - not being able to define something doesn’t mean it can’t exist.

That’s good, we are a tiny band of brothers here on CAF.

It’s the unexpected gift of a dead simple function giving a perfect pattern which goes on for ever, never repeating itself. It’s a now-who-ordered-that moment. I don’t mean in terms of explanation or reasoning, just the emotional response.

When speaking of emotional response many people I believe have the wrong notion of what an emotion is. they often identify it with just feelings of different intensities and don’t seem to give much thought to the spiritual part, the apprehension, or comprehension. But for every emotion there are two parts, one physical, one intellectual (spiritual) as is appropriate to human nature, the union of body and soul. In the emotion of fear, one first must apprehend a dangerous situation, eg. a head-on collision with another car and what can happen. That is the spiritual part. Then the physical part the body undergoes changes, muscles tighten, adrenaline increases, breathing become rapid , heart rate increases, preparing the body for the expectancies. Similarly the emotion of love must

apprehend a situation that evokes feeling of various intensities, the more appealing, the more perfect, the more pleasing the more attraction, the more desirous ,the more pleasure it evokes will determine the intensity of the physical reaction, so that the range of the emotion can be from a mild pleasant reaction to ecstacy, depending on the revelation to the human mind first. In each person whether they recognize it or not, there is a spiritual attraction to beauty, to the perfect, to harmony, to order, to the aesthetic , in reality a desire for God who is all of these qualities, We Catholics have been exposed to the convictions of our Faith, and in the process the sentiments of our Faith has been lacking, this is not to say we don’t have some but we do emphasize that the convictions are the most important, and they are, so much so that some of the faithful have crucified their sentiments and died for the convictions of our Faith. Jesus always expressed the

sentiments and the convictions. He wept, He felt sorrow, He responded to the hunger of people, their illnesses, their anxieties, to all their needs and He suffered the crucifixion of His body, the source of His feelings for the love of Humanity. To be wholly human is to experience convictions and feelings, even though we may suffer one or the other alone. When we tend to become too intellectual we may become to “angelized” and not “humanized” St.Theresa of Avilla stated that when it comes to the practice of virtue, some can scale the shear face of the mountain of perfection, but as for her (a spiritual giant in her right) that she preferred the “trip around the mountain, where there were an occasional oasis ( spiritual consolations which involved feelings). One can find love, and happiness in the contemplation of the beauty found in creation especially when it leads to God, it’s Creator, and when the Creator touches you, and says “I love you” to me there is not greater joy and love. But how can we love, if we do not know Him? Love always demands knowledge. He sets out enticements if we know what to look for, some found enticements but don’t understand their purpose, they content themselves with the enticements. The ability to know something without conscious reasoning is called :Intuition. There is “intuitive truth” the human soul is stamped by God with this ability, so can we say with St.Paul :that” we have no excuse"?

 

[Hee_Zen]

I’ve not had much time over the last few days yet took the trouble to give a full response to you, and you insult me in reply with a one-line dismissal.

The one-line dismissal is par for the course, when there is no rational argument.

Will see you in about 3 weeks. Won’t have internet access on the Transatlantic trip from Barcelona to Miami. Barcelona is still beautiful, especially the buildings of Gaudi… the Sangria Familia will be awesome when completed. (No, sangria was not a typo ) Best wishes!

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’ve not had much time over the last few days yet took the trouble to give a full response to you, and you insult me in reply with a one-line dismissal.

It was you who wanted to play your Charlie Brown vs. Lucy van Pelt game, and Lucy forced you to admit that the CCC would have to be rewritten to make your interpretation work, so I think this is more about Charlie being unable to cope with Lucy challenging his worldview. To see who is playing games, look in the mirror bro.

But perhaps I caught you on a better day today, if you want to continue getting bruised.

As usual you twist what one says into something unrecognizable in order to defend an indefensable ideology. My response was not an insult, you said nothing substantive, you just hurreled demeaning opinions. I can cope with Lucy just fine, it is Lucy that is getting upset because Charlie insists on sticking to the truth of the matter. I did not say the CCC needed to be rewritten and you did not prove it needed to be. You pointed out an incongruency which I admitted appeard to be there. I admitted that the statement should have been made more clear, I offered several possible explanations and for that you accuse me of saying the CCC needed to be rewritten and insult me for refusing to answer.

So who is in a bad mood Sis? So stay tuned.

I will add that your peculiar position on intellectual proofs for the existence of God, or just proofs based on simple reason are pecular to an attitude that was not present among Christians prior to the Reformation. This also applies to your views on the natural moral law. And that attitude was taken up by the leaders of the Enlightenment led by the atheists of the day and has become the intellectual basis for the secular, agnostic culture of today. .

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

It does no good to respond to professional protestors or objectors. So for the benifit of those seeking truth I enclose several paragraphs of the Catholic Catechism which defends human reason and explains the necessity of Revelation.

II. Ways of Coming to Know God

31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10

35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

III. The Knowledge of God According to the Church

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. the human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”.14

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

Pax
Linus2nd