The burden of proof is on believers to prove God exists (according to atheist philosphers)

[tonyrey]

I have the same doubt long time ago. We simply don’t know God’s purpose.

At the very least we know God’s purpose is for us to exist and choose what to believe, how to live and who to love. Isn’t that enough?

 

[tonyrey]

Yes. I follow you: if Jesus at one time had only a divine nature, then at some point acquired a human nature as well, doesn’t that mean that God has changed? I confess I hadn’t thought of it that way. Since God is unchanging, that would seem to be a contradiction. I haven’t figured out the answer…

Anybody?

You might as well argue that God changes whenever He creates something or some one - which is obviously illogical. Jesus couldn’t acquire a human nature because He didn’t exist before He was born!

 

[Lion_IRC]

Cheiron;14252419:

The step from the philosophical God to the Biblical God is very, very big…

Indeed it is.

The step from logically/ontologically sound, philosophical God to biblical monotheism is only as big as you want it to be. And it’s not a step you are forced to take right from word go. All you have to do is take one step at a time.

The biblical apologist who argues for a First Cause or Maximally Great Being or Fine Tuning isn’t insisting that you (therefore) sign on immediately and necessarily to some particular individual denomination of Christianity.

But the step from a First Cause to mono theism isn’t a huge step - unless you think multiple competing gods (causes) all creating and uncreating each other’s universes is parsimonious. And the step from a non-Kalam creator to a creator who has volition and intentionality is not a huge step

• unless you think Creators do so accidentally or carelessly without any thought of intelligent design. And it’s not that big a step from First Cause Creator who thinks about what He creates to the idea of a God who cares about us - His creatures. And from there, it’s only a small step to the very basics of biblical theism.

 

[tonyrey]

Then the nature of Jesus, and hence the nature of the Trinity, has changed between 500 BCE and today. The Trinitarian God is not eternal, because some properties of that God have changed, and hence it is not the same God today as it was in 500 BCE.

You might as well argue that our properties change when we create something yet we do not lose our identity. Causing change is not equivalent to changing ourselves. If we procreate, i.e. have a child, in a sense we extend ourselves. So why would it be impossible for God to have a human Son?

Alternatively the changed properties are not essential to God, but are peripheral, such as the humanity of the Second Person. Or is the entire Second Person rejected as changing, and hence incompatible with an unchanging God?

It doesn’t follow that the divine Son must change because a human son is created for the reason I have already given. Even we do not change when we have a son (or daughter). We are essentially the same persons throughout our lives.

 

[STT]

At the very least we know God’s purpose is for us to exist and choose what to believe, how to live and who to love. Isn’t that enough?

No, that is not enough. Why? Because everything is meaningless if you think throughly.

I would be happy if you could reply to post #326.

 

[tonyrey]

The step from logically/ontologically sound, philosophical God to biblical monotheism is only as big as you want it to be. And it’s not a step you are forced to take right from word go. All you have to do is take one step at a time.

The biblical apologist who argues for a First Cause or Maximally Great Being or Fine Tuning isn’t insisting that you (therefore) sign on immediately and necessarily to some particular individual denomination of Christianity.

But the step from a First Cause to mono theism isn’t a huge step - unless you think multiple competing gods (causes) all creating and uncreating each other’s universes is parsimonious. And the step from a non-Kalam creator to a creator who has volition and intentionality is not a huge step

• unless you think Creators do so accidentally or carelessly without any thought of intelligent design. And it’s not that big a step from First Cause Creator who thinks about what He creates to the idea of a God who cares about us - His creatures. And from there, it’s only a small step to the very basics of biblical theism.

:clapping: Irrefutable! Both the principles of economy and adequacy should be taken into account unless we have an axe to grind!

 

[Bradski]

The biblical apologist who argues for a First Cause or Maximally Great Being or Fine Tuning isn’t insisting that you (therefore) sign on immediately and necessarily to some particular individual denomination of Christianity.

The biblical apologist, eh? Whose presumptions and assumptions and therefore arguments will always lead in one predetermined, pre-packaged direction with laser like accuracy.

If you start with the Christian God, as a biblical apologist obviously does, then is it at all surprising that his arguments are formulated in such a way as to lead back to the Christian God?

 

[Lion_IRC]

The biblical apologist, eh? Whose presumptions and assumptions and therefore arguments will always lead in one predetermined, pre-packaged direction with laser like accuracy.

If you start with the Christian God, as a biblical apologist obviously does, then is it at all surprising that his arguments are formulated in such a way as to lead back to the Christian God?

Yes, you can 'reverse-engineer’ the theology starting at Christology and working back.
And the reasoning /parsimony doesn’t change.

Much the same as you can say 3 + 2 = 5 it’s also possible to start at 5 and work back to zero.

 

[Lion_IRC]

But that’s not what most Christian apologists do and neither is it the preferred method of their audiences. Most people start at a blank slate and try filling in gaps.

Isn’t that what atheists accuse apologists of doing? Taking a gap and filling it with God?

 

[Lion_IRC]

We don’t start with a presumption of God and then look for gaps.

 

[Lion_IRC]

And let’s remember that some of the greatest apologists are folks who used to be skeptics/atheists.
CS Lewis
GK Chesterton
Malcolm Muggeridge
Lee Strobel
Peter Hitchens
Alister McGrath

 

[tonyrey]

At the very least we know God’s purpose is for us to exist and choose what to believe, how to live and who to love. Isn’t that enough?

If everything is meaningless your statement is also meaningless - and self-destructive!

I would be happy if you could reply to post #326.

I apologise. There have been so many posts it’s easy to overlook them.

I think that I have asked this question before. What is meaning? And how love which is mere feeling can make our lives meaningful? Love simply a byproduct of biochemical activities in brain. Just think of a depressed person who has no sense of love or fulfillment at all. This person become a normal person and feel love by having some medications. Medication is nothing but a chemical substance so how love could give meaning to our lives knowing the fact that can be disrupted or activated by a chemical substance.

Again your argument is self-destructive. If our thoughts, beliefs, choices, decisions and conclusions are byproducts of biochemical activities in brain we have no control over them and no guarantee they are correct or meaningful.

That of course included in Buddhism. In fact Christianity doesn’t offer anything new in this regards.

Buddhists don’t believe in redemptive self-sacrifice. They believe our suffering or death has no effect on others.

 

[tonyrey]

Christians do not belong to you or your strange vocabulary.

Please cite a link defining what in heaven’s name a “human set” might be, I’ve never seen the term and no search engine can find it anywhere.

According to rossum it is a human category…

 

[tonyrey]

That was part of your conversation with someone else, it had no part in you telling me “What individuals want is irrelevant”.

We already went over this.

You: What individuals want is irrelevant.
Me: With regard to the topic, no one may compel another to justify his beliefs.
You: In that case there is no point in participating in this thread.

It is a principle of my religion, and of human rights, that each person is absolutely free to believe what he wants without compulsion, yet you say “What individuals want is irrelevant”, and you now call it wishful thinking.

Can you not see that you’re not making sense? I asked you to explain yourself as one adult to another. Why not do so?

I’ve no idea what a “human set” is, there is no reference to “human set” in any literature.

Your Church does not agree with you that descriptions must be analogical:

CCC 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.” 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”.

Rather than God “not included in any human set”, it says we are “in the image of God”.

“in the image of God” does not imply that it is literally true.

An optically formed duplicate or other representative reproduction of an object, especially an optical reproduction of an object formed by a lens or mirror. A mental picture of something not real or present.

 

[john_ennis]

You might as well argue that our properties change when we create something yet we do not lose our identity. Causing change is not equivalent to changing ourselves. If we procreate, i.e. have a child, in a sense we extend ourselves. So why would it be impossible for God to have a human Son?

It doesn’t follow that the divine Son must change because a human son is created for the reason I have already given. Even we do not change when we have a son (or daughter). We are essentially the same persons throughout our lives.

Yes, I didn’t think that the question of how Jesus could be God, unchanging, and still take on human nature, was a question without clear answer. (Just hadn’t thought it through.)

So God the Son is no different a God after acquiring a human nature, than he was before. It all fits very sensibly with the teaching that Christ is not a human person and he doesn’t have a human soul. His identity never changed, and his godliness is exactly as it always was.

 

[STT]

If everything is meaningless your statement is also meaningless - and self-destructive!

You misunderstood what I meant with meaning. I didn’t mean the meaning of a word or sentence. I meant if life has a serious, important, or useful quality or purpose.

I apologise. There have been so many posts it’s easy to overlook them.

No problem.

Again your argument is self-destructive. If our thoughts, beliefs, choices, decisions and conclusions are byproducts of biochemical activities in brain we have no control over them and no guarantee they are correct or meaningful.

Who said or have any proof that we have control on our thoughts, etc? Do you? By the way what do you mean with meaningful?

Buddhists don’t believe in redemptive self-sacrifice. They believe our suffering or death has no effect on others.

We were talking about compassion toward others not redemptive self-sacrifice.

 

[Bradski]

Yes, you can 'reverse-engineer’ the theology starting at Christology and working back.
And the reasoning /parsimony doesn’t change.

Much the same as you can say 3 + 2 = 5 it’s also possible to start at 5 and work back to zero.

Not a very good analogy. You insist that the only answer is 5 and then try to convince me that the ONLY way to get 5 is by adding 3 and 2.

And you can’t work out what the equation should be without presupposing the answer.

 

[levinas12]

Existence is necessarily within a particular space and time…

What kind of necessity are you invoking here? In Kantian terminology, is it synthetic a priori or analytic a priori?

 

[levinas12]

That means God is sometimes outside space and time …

“Sometimes” is a temporal word - and thus cannot apply to God if He is radically “outside”.

It’s not as if we can say that God, at one time, is “outside” and, at another time, He’s “inside”.

But from our side of the equation, it looks as if God is “outside” and then “inside” - but from His side, He’s remains “outside” even when He has entered into time and space.

This is not true of us. We can be outside a specific place and a specific time but we have to be in some place and some time.

Using Hegelian terminology, time and space involve absence (time - past is no longer, future is not yet; space - here is not there).

God is without absence.

So what about Jesus? Wasn’t He subject to absence? Yes and no. The humanity of Jesus involved absence (temporal and spatial). But Jesus’ person was not human but divine. So He was able to “assume” human nature at a particular time and place but without “discarding” his divine nature.

We are not divine persons. So we cannot “assume” human nature. That’s a critical difference between us and Jesus…

 

[Peter_Plato]

It is a principle of my religion, and of human rights, that each person is absolutely free to believe what he wants without compulsion, yet you say “What individuals want is irrelevant”, and you now call it wishful thinking.

Are individuals in your religion under any compulsion to believe the truth, or are they absolutely free to discount the truth and make up their own if they want?

Is what individuals want the ONLY relevant thing?

Is the truth more or less relevant than what individuals are free to want to believe?

Is what each person wants to believe and is free to believe more relevant to your religion than the truth?

Isn’t it possible that what individuals want is relevant to the degree that what they want is the truth and what individuals want is irrelevant to the degree that what they want is mere wishful thinking?

Take your time