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

[tonyrey]

Not sure because God chose a particular point in time to come down from heaven and become man.

What is the alternative?

 

[tonyrey]

If God is a sufficient cause of the universe then the existence of God implies the existence of the universe. Reversing the implication gives that the non-existence of the universe implies the non-existence of God. In symbolic terms:
(G => U) => (~U => ~G)God-as-sufficient-cause cannot exist unless the universe also exists.

We do not have to “smuggle” in time. Creation is an action, and actions require time. With any action there is a before and an after. Action results in change, and change is a difference in time. Time is impossible to remove from the act of creation. “In the beginning…” The word “beginning” refers to time. God cannot create without time any more than He can draw a square circle.

For philosophical discussions I use the definition: “the universe is all that exists” (ATE). Using that definition there is nothing outside the ATE universe. This means that any existing God is included in the ATE universe. Similarly if any existing thing is eternal then the ATE universe is also necessarily eternal.

rossum

Your definition is based on the questionable assumption that nothing exists but the physical universe…

 

[tonyrey]

Your atomistic view of a person doesn’t correspond to modern medicine which is based on a holistic approach to both physical and psychological illness.

Your question is based on the questionable assumption that nothing exists but physical objects…

Your atomistic view of a person doesn’t correspond to the legal principle that a human being is an enduring entity from birth to death.

Your Church’s doctrine does not correspond to the legal principle that divorce is allowed. When your Church changes its doctrine to conform to legal principle, then I will consider your argument valid.

Irrelevant.

Do you treat your family and friends as “collections of changing parts”?

Yes. As my mother is getting older she cannot do as much for herself as she used to, so now I do more for her than I used to. I treat her as changing. If I did not, then I would not provide the additional help that she needs now that she did not need in the past. I recognise that people change.

Is your mother a** totally** different person? Would you still love her is she didn’t recognise you?

The Creator is not subject to man-made rules about what can be created…

.
To me, this means that you have no answer to my argument and are falling back on the general “God is special” argument. I do not accept that argument. You are correct in understanding that the concept of Jesus as both God and man has huge logical problems. Sweeping those problems under the carpet does not solve them.

Can you justify all your beliefs in Buddhism rationally and produce any evidence that it is the sole valid interpretation of reality?

A “causal chain” is a hopelessly inadequate definition of an individual

member of the human race who makes choices and decisions for which he or she is responsible. No it is not. Your personal opinion is of no relevance here.

Ad hominem ("**Your **personal opinion").
Can you explain how the links of a “causal chain” are responsible
for their individual choices and decisions?

In that case we all have split personalities which have nothing in common!

We are all part of the same causal chain.

With split personalities?

Why doesn’t the dogma itself change?

Because the dogma is not a “thing” in that context, it is a meta-thing: a description of things.

Is every “meta-thing” equally credible and immutable? Why should your dogma be more cogent than others?

 

[levinas12]

I have no idea about Kantian terminology…

I brought up Kant for a reason.

Kant argued that “we” (the transcendental “we”, not the empirical “we”) impose space and time on reality - without “us”, no space and time - beings as they are in themselves (the noumena as opposed to the phenomena) are not in space and time - space and time are merely subjective “forms” of our human perception…

There are problems with this position but it does not involve logical contradiction.

You might find his arguments interesting. See the discussion of the transcendental aesthetic in the Critique of Pure Reason.

 

[levinas12]

For philosophical discussions I use the definition: “the universe is all that exists” (ATE). Using that definition there is nothing outside the ATE universe. This means that any existing God is included in the ATE universe…

God is “outside” the ATE because God is not “a being” … there is a crucial distinction between “Being” and “beings” - and God, as “ipsum esse”, is on the “Being” side of this distinction.

Because God is totally “Other” than any collection of “things” that exist, God is “outside” space and time, “outside” Aristotelian categories, “outside” Kantian categories, “outside” the usual everyday human concepts, etc.

You are right that “nothing”, i.e., “no-thing”, is outside the ATE - but this"no-thing" is God. Being “no-thingness” itself, He can assume human nature without Himself changing, and without damaging human nature.

 

[levinas12]

Again, “a being” here is understood as " an entity" where there is a real distinction between “essence” and “esse”, between “what something is” and “that it is” - this is how Aristotle understood “entity”.

This is the big question: whether there can be “Being” that does not belong to “a being” … or is the “esse” of beings the only type of “Being” …

It all comes down to the meaning of “I AM WHO AM” - and why the Jews were so concerned about idolatrty, about reducing God to “a being” …

And where does Jesus fit into this picture - isn’t Jesus “a being” - yes, but a most unusual being - He is the visibility of the “I AM”, of the “no-thing” …

For more on this, see Jean-Luc Marion.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If God is a sufficient cause of the universe then the existence of God implies the existence of the universe. Reversing the implication gives that the non-existence of the universe implies the non-existence of God. In symbolic terms:

(G => U) => (~U => ~G)

God-as-sufficient-cause cannot exist unless the universe also exists.

Actually that only works if God is nothing more than a sufficient cause. That would imply God causes in precisely the same way as other mindless, will-less causes cause things. Who would accept such as a starting premise? Only those who wish to dismiss God in the first place.

By analogy: I have a brilliant idea for making a unique product (call it Product X.) The existence of Product X depends entirely upon my decision to make it. I choose not to do so.

Your symbolic terms fail:

(PP => X) => (~X => ~PP)

My “failure” to make product X because I choose not to does not imply that I do not exist.

We do not have to “smuggle” in time. Creation is an action, and actions require time. With any action there is a before and an after. Action results in change, and change is a difference in time. Time is impossible to remove from the act of creation. “In the beginning…” The word “beginning” refers to time. God cannot create without time any more than He can draw a square circle.

Ah yes, but there is time within creation wherein everything that comes to be comes to be within time. That does not mean the entire universe, as a changing whole could not simply exist eternally – without any reference to time at all – in the mind of God. There was no time in which the universe as a whole did not exist because there is no time at all that God need be constrained by. Except, of course, within the universe, but that is not a constraint on God, that is a constraint on things within the universe – a constraint that God imposes on the universe not one that constrains him, however.

For philosophical discussions I use the definition: “the universe is all that exists” (ATE). Using that definition there is nothing outside the ATE universe. This means that any existing God is included in the ATE universe. Similarly if any existing thing is eternal then the ATE universe is also necessarily eternal.

rossum

Well, you would be equivocating and using terms ambiguously, since you haven’t shown that the universe is, in fact, all that exists. Big Bang cosmology simply refutes your idiosyncratic use of the definition since the universe (STEM) came to be 14.8 billion years ago – as measured chronologically from within the universe. You would be compelled to insist the universe simply bootstrapped itself into existence from nothing if the universe is “all that exists.”

In short, I don’t accept your definition on the simple observation that the universe is provably NOT all that exists and simply cannot be unless you want to toss out what is a certain philosophical and logical principle: from nothing, nothing comes.

You will have to provide a logically compelling reason for doing so, however. Good philosophers don’t dismiss timeworn logical principles on a capricious whim.

Your equivocating between the universe (STEM) and the universe (ATE) simply gives you a means by which to ambiguate between the two to muddle the logic with respect to the other points you attempt to make.

Philosophy, recall, is the art of making distinctions and there is here a clear distinction to be made and very good reasons for making it.

 

[Tomdstone]

Actually that only works if God is nothing more than a sufficient cause. That would imply God causes in precisely the same way as other mindless, will-less causes cause things. Who would accept such as a starting premise? Only those who wish to dismiss God in the first place.

By analogy: I have a brilliant idea for making a unique product (call it Product X.) The existence of Product X depends entirely upon my decision to make it. I choose not to do so.

Your symbolic terms fail:

(PP => X) => (~X => ~PP)

My “failure” to make product X because I choose not to does not imply that I do not exist.

Ah yes, but there is time within creation wherein everything that comes to be comes to be within time. That does not mean the entire universe, as a changing whole could not simply exist eternally – without any reference to time at all – in the mind of God. There was no time in which the universe as a whole did not exist because there is no time at all that God need be constrained by. Except, of course, within the universe, but that is not a constraint on God, that is a constraint on things within the universe – a constraint that God imposes on the universe not one that constrains him, however.

Well, you would be equivocating and using terms ambiguously, since you haven’t shown that the universe is, in fact, all that exists. Big Bang cosmology simply refutes your idiosyncratic use of the definition since the universe (STEM) came to be 14.8 billion years ago – as measured chronologically from within the universe. You would be compelled to insist the universe simply bootstrapped itself into existence from nothing if the universe is “all that exists.”

In short, I don’t accept your definition on the simple observation that the universe is provably NOT all that exists and simply cannot be unless you want to toss out what is a certain philosophical and logical principle: from nothing, nothing comes.

You will have to provide a logically compelling reason for doing so, however. Good philosophers don’t dismiss timeworn logical principles on a capricious whim.

Your equivocating between the universe (STEM) and the universe (ATE) simply gives you a means by which to ambiguate between the two to muddle the logic with respect to the other points you attempt to make.

Philosophy, recall, is the art of making distinctions and there is here a clear distinction to be made and very good reasons for making it.

The premise G=>U is not true. God can exist without a universe existing.

 

[STT]

The premise G=>U is not true. God can exist without a universe existing.

That is not quite true for a timeless God since two acts are involved for creation, act of decision and act of creation, where act of decision should precede the act of creation which this is problematic in timeless picture. So the premise G=>U is correct if we accept the fact that there is a God.

 

[Tomdstone]

That is not quite true for a timeless God since two acts are involved for creation, act of decision and act of creation, where act of decision should precede the act of creation which this is problematic in timeless picture. So the premise G=>U is correct if we accept the fact that there is a God.

No, because God was not required to create the universe. It was a free act. Consider the following:
A: I exist
B: I drive a car.
Does A=> B ?

 

[rossum]

Your definition is based on the questionable assumption that nothing exists but the physical universe…

I make no such assumption. For a philosophical discussion I define the universe as “all that exists”. Since I am not an atheist then I accept the existence of non-material entities: mahoragas, kinnaras, gods etc.

Nowhere in my argument do I assume the non-existence of immaterial things. You may have noticed that I mentioned God in my argument which should have been a big clue.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Your question is based on the questionable assumption that nothing exists but physical objects…

Where did you get that from? A human being has five components, one of which is material (the physical body) and the other four are immaterial: feelings, perceptions, formations and consciousness.

Irrelevant.

Your legally based argument is indeed irrelevant here.

Is your mother a** totally** different person?

She is different, but not totally different. Taken as a whole she has changed.

Can you justify all your beliefs in Buddhism rationally and produce any evidence that it is the sole valid interpretation of reality?

Yes and I don’t know. There may be some other valid interpretation of reality out there. Buddhism is the best I have found so I am happy to stick with it until I find a better interpretation.

Can you explain how the links of a “causal chain” are responsible for their individual choices and decisions?

Can you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday? Can you remember what I had for breakfast yesterday? You have a causal connection with tonyrey-yesterday which you do not have with any other causal chain, such as the rossum chain. Responsibility for past actions and memory are two of the things that are passed along the chain.

Why should your dogma be more cogent than others?

It works. If you cannot accept that the world changes then you will have an unsatisfactory life.

rossum

 

[rossum]

God is “outside” the ATE because God is not “a being”

Then God does not exist. Anything outside the ATE does not exist, by definition, because the ATE universe includes all that exits.

… there is a crucial distinction between “Being” and “beings” - and God, as “ipsum esse”, is on the “Being” side of this distinction.

As a general rule, in a discussion like this a capitalised word, like your “Being”, is a reification. Reification is an error; it takes an internal mental concept and tries to assert, incorrectly, that the internal mental concept has a real external existence. We have a mental concept of “blue” as a colour. There is no reified “Blue” actually existing out there. There are just objects with the property “blue”. Similarly some things have the property “being” – they exist. Other things do not have that property, such as unicorns.

Because God is totally “Other” than any collection of “things” that exist, God is “outside” space and time, “outside” Aristotelian categories, “outside” Kantian categories, “outside” the usual everyday human concepts, etc.

Then God is outside all human words, all human dictionaries, all human books. You do realise that the Bible is a book? You have just destroyed all of Christianity, from the Bible to all theological writing and to all human mental concepts of God.

You are right that “nothing”, i.e., “no-thing”, is outside the ATE - but this"no-thing" is God. Being “no-thingness” itself, He can assume human nature without Himself changing, and without damaging human nature.

God is nothing. So if I ignore God then I ignore nothing. Thank you, that does simplify things.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Actually that only works if God is nothing more than a sufficient cause. That would imply God causes in precisely the same way as other mindless, will-less causes cause things. Who would accept such as a starting premise? Only those who wish to dismiss God in the first place.

By analogy: I have a brilliant idea for making a unique product (call it Product X.) The existence of Product X depends entirely upon my decision to make it. I choose not to do so.

Your symbolic terms fail:

(PP => X) => (~X => ~PP)

My “failure” to make product X because I choose not to does not imply that I do not exist.

You have proved my point. As well as yourself and you unique product, you have a third thing: your decision to proceed or not to proceed. Because of that element, you are not a sufficient cause on your own. Similarly with God, He is not on His own a sufficient cause. A third element is required, perhaps God’s decision to create now, rather than next week. Since that decision is not eternal (because the created universe is not eternal) then that decision cannot be the eternal God. It is something different from the eternal God.

Ah yes, but there is time within creation wherein everything that comes to be comes to be within time. That does not mean the entire universe, as a changing whole could not simply exist eternally – without any reference to time at all – in the mind of God.

The universe changes. If the universe is a part of God, then that part of God changes. Hence God, taken as a whole, changes.

There was no time in which the universe as a whole did not exist

Some cosmologists use exactly that argument: time, one of the four dimensions of space-time, started at the Big Bang. Hence there was no time when the universe did not exist, which makes the universe in some sense eternal: it has existed for all time.

Except, of course, within the universe, but that is not a constraint on God, that is a constraint on things within the universe – a constraint that God imposes on the universe not one that constrains him, however.

Which universe? The material STEM universe or the ATE universe?

Well, you would be equivocating and using terms ambiguously, since you haven’t shown that the universe is, in fact, all that exists. Big Bang cosmology simply refutes your idiosyncratic use of the definition since the universe (STEM) came to be 14.8 billion years ago – as measured chronologically from within the universe. You would be compelled to insist the universe simply bootstrapped itself into existence from nothing if the universe is “all that exists.”

The STEM universe is a part of the ATE universe. For example, if a multiverse exists or God exists, then both the multiverse and God are part of the ATE universe but not part of the STEM universe. I use the ATE universe in order to avoid equivocation about the use of plain “universe”. The STEM universe and the ATE universe are in principle different.

In short, I don’t accept your definition on the simple observation that the universe is provably NOT all that exists and simply cannot be unless you want to toss out what is a certain philosophical and logical principle: from nothing, nothing comes.

You misunderstand my definition. The ATE universe includes and angels, gods, kinnaras, devils, maras etc that exist. I am not an atheist, so in principle the ATE universe includes more than the STEM universe. If Vishnu exists then he is part of the ATE universe but not part of the STEM universe.

If any of the entities in the ATE universe, such as YHWH or Brahman, are eternal then the ATE universe is also eternal and the question of its origin becomes moot. Any eternal entity cannot have a cause.

rossum

 

[rossum]

The premise G=>U is not true. God can exist without a universe existing.

I started with the assumption that God was a sufficient cause of the universe. I was making an argument by contradiction: assume what you want to disprove and show it leads to an error. The assumption that God is a sufficient cause of the universe leads either to an eternal created universe or to a non-eternal God. Both are errors, so we can see that our initial assumption was wrong. God is not a sufficient cause of the universe.

My apologies for not making myself clearer.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

. . . As a general rule, in a discussion like this a capitalised word, like your “Being”, is a reification. Reification is an error; it takes an internal mental concept and tries to assert, incorrectly, that the internal mental concept has a real external existence. We have a mental concept of “blue” as a colour. There is no reified “Blue” actually existing out there. There are just objects with the property “blue”. Similarly some things have the property “being” – they exist. Other things do not have that property, such as unicorns. . .

Just focussing on this part, there are some pretty idiosyncratic views being expressed. This doesn’t invalidate them by any means, but I want to clarify some points.

Holding that there are “things” that possess existence and other “things” that don’t (unicorns) implies that ideas are primary. It seems to me that the fallacy here would be one of a false abstraction. Things are, even hallucinations and fanciful ideas, which in that case exist as structures of the mind/neuronal processing.

There is a material world in which the colour “blue” exists as a frequency of 606–668 THz and wavelength of 450-495 nm. The other physical property of the colour blue has to do with retinal cone cell which have proteins called photopsins that respond to light causing a depolarization of the cell which connects to and transmits the fact that it has fired to a matrix of neuronal pathways that ultimately travel to mid- and cortical areas areas of the brain. There are L, M and S cones that react differently to different frequencies of light. A greater ratio of S to M cone reactions are the colour blue. There was a fellow, a Canadian I believe, who suffered a stroke in his thalamus; after some healing took place, he could taste the colour blue. Colours are a constituent part of one’s personal relationship with the physical universe. In addition to blue’s being “out there” materially, it exists as part of the brain/mind structure involved in the relationship with physical objects. As a mental phenomenon, it can be understood and manipulated to construct imaginary “things”, those things that are mental phenomena, such as baby male unicorns.

It is not a reification to speak about God as the Being or Existence itself. These words are employed to explain who and what we-in-this-world are about, and on Whom we are grounded. Clearly, not knowing God, one can only conjure up images of what the faithful are talking about. You think we are talking about a thing, and when someone qualifies the matter and talks about no-thing you think that it means God doesn’t exist. You are failing to understand what is being said.

 

[tonyrey]

Your question is based on the questionable assumption that nothing exists but physical objects…

You have just proved my point by implying that the physical body has immaterial feelings, perceptions, formations and consciousness - implying that physical reality is fundamental and produces immaterial phenomena. You don’t mention the mind at all! Surely it is more significant than the body. Why do you put the physical body first as if it is the dominant factor?

Irrelevant.

Your legally based argument is indeed irrelevant here.

The Church’s doctrine about divorce has nothing to do with the right to life.
Quote:

Is your mother a** totally**

different person? She is different, but not totally different. Taken as a whole she has changed.

In other words **she has not lost her identity **and is **fundamentally **the same person.

Can you justify all your beliefs in Buddhism rationally and produce any evidence that it is the sole valid interpretation of reality?

Yes and I don’t know. There may be some other valid interpretation of reality out there. Buddhism is the best I have found so I am happy to stick with it until I find a better interpretation.

Do you mean that you can justify all your beliefs in Buddhism rationally? Or is there an element of faith?

Can you explain how the links of a “causal chain” are responsible for their individual choices and decisions?

Can you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday? Can you remember what I had for breakfast yesterday? You have a causal connection with tonyrey-yesterday which you do not have with any other causal chain, such as the rossum chain. Responsibility for past actions and memory are two of the things that are passed along the chain.

Memory is not an adequate explanation of responsibility nor is being a link in a chain of events.

Why should your dogma be more cogent than others?

It works. If you cannot accept that the world changes then you will have an unsatisfactory life.

Like persons the world changes but it retains its identity. There is no justification for the theory that both the laws of nature and the fact of spiritual development, for example, are constantly changing. If they were it would be impossible to predict future events. Are the four Noble Truths mutating?

 

[STT]

No, because God was not required to create the universe. It was a free act. Consider the following:
A: I exist
B: I drive a car.
Does A=> B ?

I have nothing against your argument but it seems to me that you didn’t get my argument. Do you agree that there are two acts, the act of decision and act of creation, involved if God wants to create universe? If yes, then the act of decision precedes the act of creation which this is illogical for a God who dwells in timeless state. This is true since God can only perform one act in timeless state. Creation exists hence God cannot decide about the act of creation. This means that G=>U.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I started with the assumption that God was a sufficient cause of the universe. I was making an argument by contradiction: assume what you want to disprove and show it leads to an error. The assumption that God is a sufficient cause of the universe leads either to an eternal created universe or to a non-eternal God. Both are errors, so we can see that our initial assumption was wrong. God is not a sufficient cause of the universe.

My apologies for not making myself clearer.

rossum

Why is an eternal created universe an error?

The entirety of the universe – beginning, middle and end – exist in an atemporal state (a state not constrained by time.) I don’t have a problem with that. Why do you keep insisting it is an error when you haven’t shown anything errant about it?

Presumably if God is eternal, then what he creates is also eternal although it may have a time signature written into it, as our universe does.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I have nothing against your argument but it seems to me that you didn’t get my argument. Do you agree that there are two acts, the act of decision and act of creation, involved if God wants to create universe? If yes, then the act of decision precedes the act of creation which this is illogical for a God who dwells in timeless state. This is true since God can only perform one act in timeless state. Creation exists hence God cannot decide about the act of creation. This means that G=>U.

I think your argument doesn’t show what you suppose it does.

If you are arguing a “timeless” state then you can’t be arguing a severely time constrained state as if timeless means there is only one absolute timestate. God is not constrained by time – he has complete control over time. He can create it as he wills and use it as he wills.

You keep trying to insist eternity (timelessness) means having only one time or one opportunity. Instead of allowing that God is not constrained by time as within a sequence you are insisting that he is constrained by time to a single point in time.

So instead of God acting within time represented by a line from beginning to end, as we are:

Beginning |______________________________________| Ending

What you are insisting is that God has to be constrained to a single point in time:

.

Which is the reason you claim he cannot will and then create because, according to your idea of God, he is limited to a single point in time, from which he cannot logically extract himself.

That doesn’t adequately depict eternity, timelessness or being unconstrained by time. That constrains God even more than we human beings in time are constrained by it.

Your view of eternity is severely stilted.