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NM505StKate
Guest
This makes no sense. Shouldn’t atheists act as if God exists? What do you mean by this?
The first way?
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NM505StKate
Guest
Sir I was raised Catholic and for many years I believed. Even when I dipped into paganism I held belief. Only after the Ken Ham/ Bill Nye debate did I start looking at atheism. For a solid while I didn’t like what I heard, got very angry at it because it shook my beliefs.
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inocente
Guest
Sure, a quality of red is STOP and a quality of green is GO. Well, not to Genghis Khan, only to much later cultures.You are correct, of course
However, my argument doesn’t deny that there is quantities in color, but that color’s qualities can’t be reduced to quantities. This is rather obvious. You don’t experience quantities when you look at a firetruck. Colors have a qualitative aspect, and a quantitative aspect.
Consciousness is a vague, folksy term, and science will provide a better definition as the explanation progresses
. Which it will, because humans are good at this stuff. The type of mind which worked out how to determine the exact elements in a distant star, just by looking at it with a prism, is not going to give up explaining itself after only a couple of decades research.btw you linked that blog before. Another problem with it, and a strange mistake for a physics PhD to make, is he says “if man knows any truth at all, the redness of an apple is a reality that truly exists in the apple”. Nope. Illuminate it with blue light and the apple is black. Not to mention that an apple which is yellow in daylight could be reflecting a mix of red and green rather than yellow light, as the human eye can’t tell the difference. Perhaps that physicist should talk to some artists and fashion designers.
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Lucretius
Guest
I don’t see a reason why the burden of proof must be on us to prove God’s existence for you to be baptized. If we don’t have arguments either way, one should act as if God existed, a practical theism, rather than agnostics acting as if God didn’t exist, a practical atheism (see Richard Dawkin’s bus slogan for an example).
And then I have an example to when the burden of proof is given to the police to prove there aren’t innocents in a building before they shoot into it. They don’t have evidence that there are innocents, but they still have to prove that there aren’t. Why isn’t the burden of proof like this with the Existence of God?
All of this, of course, is meaningless if you have an actual argument to disprove the existence of God, aka the Argument of Evil.
The first of the five main arguments for the correctness of Classical Theism formulated by the Great St. Thomas Aquinas.
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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owr39
Guest
Yet, you have yourself listed as Catholic now.
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Lucretius
Guest
Both people don’t consider Catholic and Thomist views on the subject. If you would open your mind a bit, and read something like Ed Feser’s works, you might see that atheism isn’t as sound as it seems, and that evolution vs. creationism isnt the only two options
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
The lowercase “god” is often inclusive of all god-concepts including the one spelled with the uppercase ‘G.’ Someone believing that any god-concept to be true would be sufficient for not considering the person an atheist irrespective of the case used. Also note that with the upper case G that God can refer to god-concepts that are not Abrahamic, such as the God of pantheism which sees the term “God” as synonymous with the Universe.
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NM505StKate
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Because you are making a positive assertion. If I said I have an invisible pink unicorn in my bedroom the burden of proof is on me to show it exists not on you to show it doesn’t exist.
Ah ok.
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NM505StKate
Guest
It didn’t really matter on their views. I just found it interesting and from there I started looking more into atheism.Both people don’t consider Catholic and Thomist views on the subject. If you would open your mind a bit, and read something like Ed Feser’s works, you might see that atheism isn’t as sound as it seems, and that evolution vs. creationism isnt the only two options
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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Lucretius
Guest
Descartes clearly defined it as that which thinks, the thinking thing. In a sense, you are correct that the turn is often used vaguely, but because matter is defined in a way that rejects it having secondary qualities, that means that secondary qualities exist in the mind, but if they exist in the mind, that means mind cant’t be matter entirely, because the mind has secondary qualities, and secondary qualities are not material.Consciousness is a vague, folksy term, and science will provide a better definition as the explanation progresses
This is just the reasoning of the early modern philosophers, the creators of the intellectual foundation you use. This is also why they tend to be dualists or idealists, and that materialism was taken to be rather blind.
What I argued is that consciousness can’t be understood by science, because everything that couldn’t be understood by science was tossed into the pile of things we call “consciousness.” Consciousness just is those things that exist, yet can’t be measured by science, like secondary qualities (intentionality too). If you sweep all the dirt under the rug, it makes no sense to try and sweep the dirt already under the rug under the rug?
He wouldn’t deny that there is a subjective component to these things, just that it isn’t entirely subjective. Optical illusions regarding three dimensional cubes on two dimensional surfaces doesn’t make us doubt the objectivity of three dimensions.
Color not being subjective in its entirety is actually a good thing for the materialist, because it redefines what matter is so he isn’t stuck with the dualism I pointed out above.
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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Lucretius
Guest
This is semantics. God has always been used in English as the God of Classical Theism. Monotheism isn’t just a reduced polytheism.
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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Lucretius
Guest
God isn’t a being among beings, but Being. This objection is based on a category error. Monotheism is reduced polytheism. The fact that most atheists make this basic mistake here makes me skeptical if you have ever seriously understood what you are rejecting…
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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Aloysium
Guest
That is the nature of human communication and its limits.
If you want to know God, he is right here and everywhere.
It may take a split second or a life time; it is between you and Him.
I have an obligation to fill you in on the truth; do with it as you will.
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NM505StKate
Guest
Define Being please. Also I don’t know anyone who says monotheism is reduced polytheism.
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NM505StKate
Guest
But you haven’t done anything with truth. You type in vague terms.
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Lucretius
Guest
Whenever one says that God is a god, they are often failing at making this distinction.
What is Being as such? It’s like something that is purely actual, and gives being to all of us lower beings.
Christi pax,
Lucretius
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inocente
Guest
You appear to have taken an untested hypothesis from a populist book and treated it as if it is gospel. Take your pick from another 1,130,000 hypotheses at arxiv.org/.
Now, now, don’t be coy, work out the probability for a supernatural cause and then we’ll get the probability of a natural cause as one minus that probability.ID fans don’t say God, they say intelligent designer. I think that’s because they want to sound scientific rather than religious.
Interesting that the only alternative you could think of is to drop the word “intelligent” rather than drop the word “designer”. Perhaps all those Christians in the life sciences who accept natural selection are not True Theists. But that’s off-topic.
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Wesrock
Guest
As opposed to non-being. We have existence (or more accurately, participate in the action of existence). God is existence itself. Not in a pantheist way, mind.
And God is not comparable to a unicorn, or Santa, or the Easter Bunny. He is not a contigent being. God is understood as a metaphysical necessity. And it’s not applying God in reverse to fill in the metaphysical gap, it’s following the arguments to what is metaphysically necessary, determining it’s attributes through reason, and only then realizing it’s to that being that we’ve been referring to historically as God and as the only being which could be thought of as a God in the western sense of the word.
And I think he’s referring to the “You’re an atheist for 3,000 other gods, why not one more?” argument that’s hurled around.
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owr39
Guest
But your profile states you are Catholic. Why? Why do you keep dodging the question? You consider yourself an Atheist. I messaged you a while ago, and you told me you were. Why continue to label yourself Catholic on your profile?
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inocente
Guest
Tell me more, wise master.inocente;13768250:
Theism does require a belief in God.Third, and I cannot emphasize this enough, theism doesn’t require a belief in intelligent design or a denial of science.
This may come as a big surprise, but most Christians don’t go to church to worship a philosophical argument. Just the opposite - “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” - 1 Cor 1.
Here’s an alter call. The descendants of slaves wanting to be free at last. The pastor says “It is not an accident that you are here. God brought you here. Because this is the day for the chains to come off. You don’t have to walk out this building the same way you came in.” - youtube.com/watch?v=6vjlpg9i2Bg
Perhaps that’s not for you, insufficiently rational. But to them it is. Born again, bro. When a lost soul walks into a church, they’re not looking for philosophizing.
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