Wanted: posters to talk on intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts.

[ManOnFire]

My point is that the Big Bang theory does not purport to answer this question one way or another.

Yet the media and academics act like it does. That’s my point.

 

[ManOnFire]

There is no inherent need for there to be a beginning.

Science and faith are two distinct domains. Both can reveal truth, and truth uncovered from both sources cannot contradict each other, nor can it corroborate each other.

Yes, there most certainly does need to be a beginning if you’re an atheist who believes that nothing supernatural has ever happened. The cosmos exists, so it needed to have a birthday, otherwise, it has always existed without Cause. If God doesn’t exist, then everything has a Cause which can be explained by Science. Except Science can never explain a godless cosmos that had a birthday when nothing else existed before it to create it, and Science can never explain the birth of a godless cosmos that had no birthday because the birthday didn’t ever happen, by definition. So, neither the birthdayless godless cosmos nor the birthdayed godless cosmos will ever be able to be explained by Science since the very first something can’t magically pop into existence without a supernatural explanation.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Yet the media and academics act like it does. That’s my point.

Word of advice, don’t expect the media to give an accurate representation of what was said by a scientist. The media tends to target an audience that probably doesn’t specialize in science. You are probably more educated than the personas they target to. Also often if you go to the source of a scientific claim and compare it to how it is presented by the media you’ll find significant differences in what is actually being claimed and that confidence qualifiers get culled out.

As polytropos said the Bigbang doesn’t explain the absolute origins of the universe. It explains some aspects on how matter is arranged in the universe and predicts/explains some other phenomenon (cosmic background radiation). It doesn’t suggest anything about what may have happened before a certain point. There’s no evidentially supported hypothesis about what happened before that time and we don’t have a physics model of understanding the universe then.

 

[runningdude]

Yes, there most certainly does need to be a beginning if you’re an atheist who believes that nothing supernatural has ever happened. The cosmos exists, so it needed to have a birthday, otherwise, it has always existed without Cause. If God doesn’t exist, then everything has a Cause which can be explained by Science. Except Science can never explain a godless cosmos that had a birthday when nothing else existed before it to create it, and Science can never explain the birth of a godless cosmos that had no birthday because the birthday didn’t ever happen, by definition. So, neither the birthdayless godless cosmos nor the birthdayed godless cosmos will ever be able to be explained by Science since the very first something can’t magically pop into existence without a supernatural explanation.

We are human, and are endowed with an innate understanding of nature. We know within our being, because our being reflects the natural law, that the universe must have a distinct beginning. This is in obvious intuition for us. Our intuition in this case is validated by divine revelation.

However, absent divine confirmation, there is no logical reason that our intuition in this case must be true. Indeed, it would be the height of indifferent scientific exploration to reach with hard evidence a conclusion that intuitively feels wrong. A universe with no beginning would not contradict an atheistic view point, because the atheistic view point is based solely on observed facts and logical reasoning. If the facts are valid, and the reasoning is sound, then a seemingly absurd conclusion must be true!

This is a subtle point; the Christian view point is also based on valid facts and sound reasoning. The Christian view point, however, has a source of facts not accepted by the atheistic community, that of divine revelation. Divine revelation is a source of truth that does not contradict scientific inquiry, but rather provides answers to questions that cannot be answered from observation and reasoning alone.

The atheist cannot conclude there is a God, because the sole evidence of God’s existence is divine revelation! *

• The Second Person of the Holy Trinity was divinely revealed by the Incarnation. Though the divinity, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is part of the historical record, it is still an overt action of God, and is thus a priori rejected as truth.

 

[frobert]

I do not doubt that from well before Aquinas the proofs for the existence of God has been at the heart of Catholic philosophy.
The inference from the complexity of nature seems to me the best prof of a creator. The analogy of finding a watch on a deserted island infers the presence of man, so the complexity of scientific discoveries of the elements that underlie the nature of matter is enough to infer at least to the highest level of probability of the existence of an external creator. According to Karl Popper it is then up to others to find the failure of this hypothesis to disprove it.
I wish them all good luck.

Has Karl Popper considered that it is impossible to prove a negative or that faith would be of little value if we could prove that God exists. For the record I am pro faith.

 

[a_priori]

Kind of convenient isn’t it? Faiths determine things that we dare not question because God and logic are incompatible. Then how did any of them arrive at their conclusions…having never met God.

Doubt is the dialectical partner of faith. -Muggeridge

 

[polytropos]

Has Karl Popper considered that it is impossible to prove a negative or that faith would be of little value if we could prove that God exists. For the record I am pro faith.

Karl Popper advocated falsificationism. Given the data, one constructs a theory. The theory makes testable predictions. If those testable predictions are falsified by experiment, then the theory is falsified.

There are problems with this:

• These arguments are probabilistic. So it’s not “proof” but evidence and corroboration. But the theory is held as probabilistic, so that is not too much of an issue.
• As Duhem and Quine pointed out, there are problems with how we take a falsified prediction to falsify the theory. Theories tend to contain a lot of possibly conditional assumptions. By a (probabilistic) modus tollens, if the prediction fails, then one of the hypotheses was false (at least). But you don’t know which one, necessarily. As scientific theories get more and more complex, and the entities quantified over in the assumptions become more and more theoretical (ie. less and less objects of our day-to-day experience), then it becomes increasingly difficult to proceed.
• Petaro seems to be misusing the theory. Others can disprove it because the theory generates predictions which can be falsified. As the theory’s purveyor, he would have to specify what the predictions are so that people can assess them. (Fine tuning arguments do this, however. They are falsifiable.)

(All of that said, I would not read Aquinas’s Five Ways, even his Fifth Way, as sorts of scientific hypotheses, as Petaro seems to be doing. Perhaps I am misunderstanding him and he doesn’t mean to construe his design argument as Aquinas’s Fifth Way. Aquinas’s Five Ways purport to be metaphysical demonstrations that can be “falsified” if someone can show them to be unsound.)

Regarding the value of faith: I do not think a sound, normatively persuasive proof for God’s existence would detract from faith. God’s existence (and, let’s say, his basic attributes) are pretty bare bones. Assent to the mysteries of revelation–the Incarnation, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion–is far more central to a Catholic’s life. To know of God’s existence is just to know that a theistic worldview is plausible. It leaves the depths of faith largely unplumbed.

It’s also worth pointing out that proofs have other functions. The Bible, for example, underdetermines God’s nature. A Christian does not have to undertake natural theology, but by doing so he can learn more about God. (For example, the fact that God is simple.)

One also can hold God’s existence on the basis of faith. But if it is true that God exists and that he created us as rational creatures to know him by faith, it would seem odd if faith and reason were fundamentally opposed. Reason need not be a necessary condition for faith, but the idea that they should be incompatible strikes me as an odd position for a Christian to take. Of course, many Christians have taken it.

 

[runningdude]

… so the complexity of scientific discoveries of the elements that underlie the nature of matter is enough to infer at least to the highest level of probability of the existence of an external creator. According to Karl Popper it is then up to others to find the failure of this hypothesis to disprove it.

Admittedly, I have only learned of Karl Popper while reading this thread, however, I am familiar with the concept of falsifiability, a central tenant of the scientific method and built in part on Popper’s work.

You are using Karl Popper’s philosophical method inappropriately here. Karl Popper’s method belongs to the domain of science rather than theology. A hypothesis is scientific if and only if it could be empirically proven wrong. A theory that is one hundred percent correct could still be scientific, if a hypothetical experiment could plausibly demonstrate some phenomenon predicted by the hypothesis to be incorrect.

For instance, gravity is apparently a correct theory, because it predicts that two objects will always be attracted to each other, and will accelerate towards each other in proportion to their relative masses. An experiment could plausibly disprove this theory: two objects must merely fail to accelerate towards each other at the predicted rate.

I wish them all good luck.

As your theory leaves no testable hypothesis, you leave others no plausible path to disprove your claim. You are wishing them “luck” on a delibrately impossible task!

Your inference that the complexity of the universe demonstrates the existence of a creator is simply not scientific. Invoking Popper’s theorem of falsifiability is thus inappropriate here. There is no experiment that could plausibly disprove the existence of God!

Even the watch hypothesis is scientific: a plant for instance could plausibly (though unlikely) be discovered that could grow fruit in the form of an intricate watch. That the watch was infinitely more plausibly left by humans makes this the preferred hypothesis. It is the hypothetical ability to disprove the claims of a hypothesis that makes it a scientific theory.

From what I have read, Karl Popper did not deny that rational thought could applied to non-scientific areas such as theology. He merely noted that such thought, by not producing testable hypotheses, was not part of the empirical sciences.

 

[Padster]

I very much subscribe to the Jungian principle of the collective unconscious. This is a safety blanket which the majority of the world’s population live under. I think the safety blanket may even have been put there by God Himself, though I cannot prove this theory. Consider the very narrow area of interest that most people contain themselves in: beer, sex, football, celebrities and fame. I do not include the everyday concerns of money and family worries here, just interests. You may get a minority of people who branch out into the arts or do hobbies such as model railroading (interests incidentally, which the majority views as either elitist or odd), but on the whole, most people are happy with those five mainstream interests.
Now, for some reason, the Supreme Being allows some people to wake from this unconscious state and see the world as it really is. And here is where we stray dangerously into mental health and depression. These people, once they get over the utter shock and upheaval of what is occurring, will want to share with the world that basically there is, in FACT, a God. When they do this they will make their loved ones quite ill with their strange behaviour and will usually end up on a psychiatric ward as a result. Nothing must be allowed to threaten the collective unconscious and its massive ego. So, a clever trick is conjured up: these poor enlightened people show all the symptoms of being mentally ill and are put with those of a similar ilk who DO have genuine mental health problems. Job done. But, there are shrewd people out there who are going through this and are learning to keep quiet about it. Because the Creator has them in a strange position: the collective unconscious cannot handle the idea of something beyond itself, and will get very angry and frightened by those who suggest it, even with family. And because those who have become ‘enlightened’ for want of a better word, cannot go back to their old lives either, having seen them for what they really are.

Best wishes,
Padster

 

[PoorKnight]

You are talking about general ideas that man fashions from his experience of facts.

Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

KingCoil

I don’t have the knowledge or intelligence to hang here long…

But I just have to point out… can you prove the above statement as fact using your own criteria? Does this statement, this idea, exist outside your mind and is it specified with circumstances like when, where, how?

Is you philosophical idea a “fact” - as you defined fact - or is it just the sifting of ideas in ones own mind?

This seems akin to saying “the only things that exist are those things we can test using the scientific method.” Can we test that idea using the scientific method?

Sorry, I’m still trying to learn, but most of the rest of this goes over my head so I’m sure I’m way off…

God Bless,
Poor Knight for Christ and His Church

 

[KingCoil]

QUOTE
Originally Posted by KingCoil

You are talking about general ideas that man fashions from his experience of facts.

Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

KingCoil

UNQUOTE
​

I don’t have the knowledge or intelligence to hang here long…

But I just have to point out… can you prove the above statement as fact using your own criteria? Does this statement, this idea, exist outside your mind and is it specified with circumstances like when, where, how?

Is you philosophical idea a “fact” - as you defined fact - or is it just the sifting of ideas in ones own mind?

This seems akin to saying “the only things that exist are those things we can test using the scientific method.” Can we test that idea using the scientific method?

Sorry, I’m still trying to learn, but most of the rest of this goes over my head so I’m sure I’m way off…

God Bless,
Poor Knight for Christ and His Church

Thanks for your post.

You ask:can you prove the above statement as fact using your own criteria? Does this statement, this idea, exist outside your mind and is it specified with circumstances like when, where, how?

You are referring to this paragraph from me:Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

For example, this statement, “You have a nose in your face,” can you and I prove that there is a nose in your face, and also a nose in my face, which statement is a declaration of a fact?

I really like you and me to exchange thoughts but practically no one stays long with me, let you be the exception.

Okay, how do we prove that it is a fact that a nose is in your face and in my face.

Here, I will bring your hand and fingers to touch your nose and touch my nose, and you will do likewise, bringing my hand to touch your nose and touch my nose.

Is that already proof from touching the nose by you and me?

If it is not proof, then we have to work to concur on what we mean by proof.

Do not go away, tell me now, isn’t that touching the nose by you and me of each one’s nose, proof of the fact that there is a nose in your face and in my face?

If not, then we have to first now work to concur i.e. agree on what we mean by proof.

Do you recall how Jesus told Thomas to touch his wounds to prove to himself that He Jesus had risen from the tomb?

Please do not go away at this point as everyone is doing and I am very disappointed, because it shows that everyone likes to talk but without intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, as soon as thinking intelligently on logic and facts is required they will take to flight.

KingCoil

 

[polytropos]

Please do not go away at this point as everyone is doing and I am very disappointed, because it shows that everyone likes to talk but without intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, as soon as thinking intelligently on logic and facts is required they will take to flight.

I am still here, eagerly awaiting your response to post #34.

 

[KingCoil]

QUOTE=polytropos;12116770 ]I am still here, eagerly awaiting your response to post #34. /QUOTE ]

I was away for some days to explore other forums and it is the same with them, no one does intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, they just regurgitate rote materials they read and learned from others who are also into the same tack.

I am here again because notwithstanding the casual disgruntlement of unthinking posters and powers here, I don’t bet banned forever for talking intelligently grounded on logic and facts.

So, let me just look up post #34 and see whether there is intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts in your words there.

Here is your post below courtesy of TinyPic upload service (if readers don’t see it anymore it is because this service has stopped operating, or its service for me has ended – hope it exists as long as Catholic Answers).



What do you want me to react to in your post?

What about this text from you:

Poly:

This ratifies my point. “God in concept is the creator of the universe” is underdetermined as a God concept. For example, it does not specify whether God is eternal, sempiternal, or (perhaps) something else. One might take it to imply that God is either eternal or sempiternal, but there are philosophers in both camps who all believe that God is the creator of the universe. So the concept is underdetermined.

“God in concept is the creator of the universe” is underdetermined as a God concept.

Now, I will tell you that God as in concept the creator of the universe is first and foremost the most important thing man can know and say about God in the Christian faith.

You don’t agree?

Okay, do some intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, and tell me what features do you want to add to it, God creator of the universe, that can stand alone without God being creator of the universe.

I have explained why God creator of the universe an nth times already in all my writings in this Catholic Answers forum, and folks still without intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, they still find my concept of God as first and foremost creator of the universe not good enough.

Tell me, what is the first verse of Genesis, and what is first line of the Apostles’ Creed.

In your next post in reply to me, please first before anything else, recite in writing the first verse of Genesis and the first line of the Apostles’ Creed.

One of the canons of intelligent writing grounded on logic and facts is to present one’s ideas with the minimum of words, but with the maximum of impact in terms of implications from the concise words encapsulating the gist of one’s text, like God is the creator of the universe.

KingCoil

 

[PoorKnight]

Thanks for your post.

You ask:can you prove the above statement as fact using your own criteria? Does this statement, this idea, exist outside your mind and is it specified with circumstances like when, where, how?

You are referring to this paragraph from me:Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

For example, this statement, “You have a nose in your face,” can you and I prove that there is a nose in your face, and also a nose in my face, which statement is a declaration of a fact?

I really like you and me to exchange thoughts but practically no one stays long with me, let you be the exception.

Okay, how do we prove that it is a fact that a nose is in your face and in my face.

Here, I will bring your hand and fingers to touch your nose and touch my nose, and you will do likewise, bringing my hand to touch your nose and touch my nose.

Is that already proof from touching the nose by you and me?

If it is not proof, then we have to work to concur on what we mean by proof.

Do not go away, tell me now, isn’t that touching the nose by you and me of each one’s nose, proof of the fact that there is a nose in your face and in my face?

If not, then we have to first now work to concur i.e. agree on what we mean by proof.

Do you recall how Jesus told Thomas to touch his wounds to prove to himself that He Jesus had risen from the tomb?

Please do not go away at this point as everyone is doing and I am very disappointed, because it shows that everyone likes to talk but without intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, as soon as thinking intelligently on logic and facts is required they will take to flight.

KingCoil

If I understand you correctly, I believe you’ve misunderstood what I was asking. Your statement about what a fact is, is a philosophical statement. It is not something that can be tested using the criteria you stated needs to be in place to make something a ‘fact’. Therefore, unless I’m way off, (and I certainly grant I could be) the philosophical statement you made defining what a fact is… seems like it is self refuting.

That’s all I was getting at.

Hope that helps
God Bless,
Poor Knight for Christ and His Church

 

[Oreoracle]

I never understand what you intend to get out of your threads, KingCoil. If you have a question, ask it. If you have an argument, state it. But you don’t. Instead, all of your threads begin with you asking people to talk about a vague topic, with you proceeding to criticize anyone who wants to get more specific with the issue in question.

Also, when I get tired, I count the number of times you say “intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts” in your posts. It’s a bit like counting sheep–very therapeutic!

 

[polytropos]

I was away for some days to explore other forums

Well then, I wish you luck in your pursuits. Or perhaps I should say: I wish them luck in your pursuits.

no one does intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, they just regurgitate rote materials they read and learned from others who are also into the same tack.

Well, I admit, many of my arguments are derived from men and women who are better philosophers than I. That’s because it takes a lot of philosophical ability to produce an actually good argument. (I hardly regurgitate rote materials, though.)

So, let me just look up post #34 and see whether there is intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts in your words there.

Here is your post below courtesy of TinyPic upload service (if readers don’t see it anymore it is because this service has stopped operating, or its service for me has ended – hope it exists as long as Catholic Answers).

That is post #31, not #34. (But for whatever reason you respond, correctly, to #34 below.)

Also, I would suggest simply linking to posts instead of posting a picture of them. If you click on the “#34” in the top right corner, it takes you to a page with only that post on it. That might better serve your ends without cluttering your posts as much.

What do you want me to react to in your post?

#31 was a response to another poster on why I didn’t think God’s eternity implies that the world did not begin temporally. So I don’t expect you to respond anything in there; besides the comment about the fact that I am not committed to your God concept, which remains unclear to me, it was not about you.

“God in concept is the creator of the universe” is underdetermined as a God concept.

Now, I will tell you that God as in concept the creator of the universe is first and foremost the most important thing man can know and say about God in the Christian faith.

You don’t agree?

It’s up there. It would be hard to specify a single proposition as the most important thing about the Christian faith. That is why we have dogmas, and that is why there are multiple of them.

That God exists is undoubtedly a proposition on which everything else someone could say about God depends; if “God exists” were false, for instance, then “God is powerful” would refer to nothing. But “God exists” also is not remarkably informative if one does not have other propositions disclosing the nature of God. So I don’t find it to be a productive enterprise to search for the one most important truth about God in the Christian faith. (Obviously, none of this says anything about Christological revelation, which is also necessary for Christian faith, since it constitutes Christianity’s “specific difference” from Judaism and Islam.)

I suggest “God is creator of the universe” is more like “God exists” than an informative conjunction of propositions about the nature of God. (Which, to start, might look like: “God exists; God is creator of the universe; God’s activity concurs with that of creatures; God is eternal rather than sempiternal; God is omniscient; God knows by knowing himself; God is absolutely simple and his non-existential properties are identical in referent, though not in sense, to his existence…” and so on.)

Okay, do some intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, and tell me what features do you want to add to it, God creator of the universe, that can stand alone without God being creator of the universe.

Well, as I pointed out (with no response, no intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts), there are several senses of the word “create” on offer. So specifying which one you mean would be necessary for your concept of God as creator of the universe to make sense to me.

Knowing how you conceive of the other divine attributes would be helpful too. Do you hold divine simplicity? Divine eternity? How does God know?

Do these need to “stand alone without God being creator of the universe” to cause your God concept trouble? Certainly not. My criticism has not been that there is some fact about God that is more primary than your concept of God as creator of the universe. It has been that unless you specify other facts about God, “God as creator of the universe” tells us relatively little. And remember, we are on the journey to enlightenment by way of intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, so we want our propositions to tell us a lot.

 

[polytropos]

I have explained why God creator of the universe an nth times already in all my writings in this Catholic Answers forum, and folks still without intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, they still find my concept of God as first and foremost creator of the universe not good enough.

That’s because, though you repeat yourself on this point, you don’t engage with any of the interesting questions of natural theology. We agree that God is creator of the universe. OK. Or at least I would say, “God is creator of the universe,” and could give you an account of what I mean when I say that. (That is what I did in post #34.) Whether you mean the same thing as I do is not yet clear, because you haven’t told us.

I am with Oreoracle here. I engaged with you at length in one of your previous topics, and it doesn’t go anywhere. When you give an argument (which is rare), you don’t defend the premises from criticisms but keep saying that they are intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, as though saying that is a sufficient justification of whatever argument you give. I hope that you engage my points here and in post #34. (Your thoughts on #31 would also be interesting, though that was not a response to you really.) If not, I won’t waste your time any longer. If such a case obtains, feel free to inform everyone that my reason for leaving the topic is an incapacity to think intelligently, grounded on logic and facts.

Tell me, what is the first verse of Genesis, and what is first line of the Apostles’ Creed.

I’m not going to do that. I’ve explained that I agree that God is the creator of the universe. My point has not been that you are wrong in saying that, but that until you specify what you mean, the proposition is uninteresting.

There has been disagreement in the Catholic tradition, for instance, on what God’s creation amounts to. The people involved in these disputes were, in general, not heretics. The reason they could disagree over God’s creation without being heretics is that there are multiple senses of the word “create,” and which one is correct must be determined philosophically. (Some, of course, are ruled out for theological reasons, for example deism.)

In your next post in reply to me, please first before anything else, recite in writing the first verse of Genesis and the first line of the Apostles’ Creed.

I invite any interested readers to simply google it.

One of the canons of intelligent writing grounded on logic and facts is to present one’s ideas with the minimum of words, but with the maximum of impact in terms of implications from the concise words encapsulating the gist of one’s text, like God is the creator of the universe.

Conciseness is great, I agree. But then if someone asks you to clarify, hopefully you are able to do it.

 

[KingCoil]

Thanks, Poor, Oreo, and Poly, for your reactions.

Before anything else, I like you to know that my purpose is to get readers to come to the conclusion by intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts that God creator of the universe exists.

So, you are annoyed with my mantra, intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts.

But instead of being just annoyed, you do intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts?

So, you get even more annoyed.

It is just like me telling you that you have a nose in your face and to do intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts to formulate a proof to guys who doubt you have one, although they are sure they have one, and you just keep on and on and on getting annoyed and disgusted, and even report the post of this guy telling you all the time to do intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts.

Suppose we work together to get to concur on what is intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts?

That is the agendum of this thread.

…]

Originally Posted by KingCoil

Here is the post 34, sorry for the mistake – and I appreciate very much your instruction on just clicking on a post to get to just that post – my deficiency here in the instant case, that is an example of my not doing intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts.



Now, I will address each one of you three but going into the two points linked together, of my heart and mind, namely (instead of attending to extraneous matters):

1. From intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts,
2. You will come to the conclusion that God creator of the universe exists.

Don’t oh please don’t go away.

KingCoil

 

[KingCoil]

Now, I will address each one of you three but going into the two points linked together, of my heart and mind, namely (instead of attending to extraneous matters):

1. From intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts,
2. You will come to the conclusion that God creator of the universe exists.

Don’t oh please don’t go away.

If I understand you correctly, I believe you’ve misunderstood what I was asking. Your statement about what a fact is, is a philosophical statement. It is not something that can be tested using the criteria you stated needs to be in place to make something a ‘fact’. Therefore, unless I’m way off, (and I certainly grant I could be) the philosophical statement you made defining what a fact is… seems like it is self refuting.

That’s all I was getting at.

Hope that helps
God Bless,
Poor Knight for Christ and His Church

You have introduced a new subject, namely, the idea of a philosophical statement, and all I am asking you to do is to tell me what is your idea of a fact.

Now, suppose you just tell me what is your idea of what is a fact?

You can do some intelligent thinking on logic and facts on your own use of the word fact and what you mean by it, or and also look up dictionaries on the word fact.

That is what I mean with folks always evading the issue at hand, in the present instant to get people to just tell readers what is their idea or concept of the thing represented by the word fact.

Will you go into that, or you will introduce another subject like God is the source of all truth and goodness and beauty and unity?

Will you have the courage of heart and mind to do intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, and tell readers starting with yours truly what you understand by the word fact?

KingCoil

 

[KingCoil]

Now, I will address each one of you three but going into the two points linked together, of my heart and mind, namely (instead of attending to extraneous matters):

1. From intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts,
2. You will come to the conclusion that God creator of the universe exists.

Don’t oh please don’t go away.

I never understand what you intend to get out of your threads, KingCoil. If you have a question, ask it. If you have an argument, state it. But you don’t. Instead, all of your threads begin with you asking people to talk about a vague topic, with you proceeding to criticize anyone who wants to get more specific with the issue in question.

Also, when I get tired, I count the number of times you say “intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts” in your posts. It’s a bit like counting sheep–very therapeutic!

Okay, read again:
"KingCoil:

Now, I will address each one of you three but going into the two points linked together, of my heart and mind, namely (instead of attending to extraneous matters):

1. From intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts,
2. You will come to the conclusion that God creator of the universe exists.

Don’t oh please don’t go away.

Have you read enough posts from me in this Catholic Answers for you to come to the conclusion on intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts, that the man yours truly, is into:

1. From intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts,
2. You will come to the conclusion that God creator of the universe exists.

And don’t oh please don’t go away.

And the point I am trying to get into your heads at present is that we must concur on what is a fact, then afterwards what is intelligent thinking, and then also what is logic.

Okay, here is again my own worded concept of what is a fact.

You are talking about general ideas that man fashions from his experience of facts.

Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

Please don’t get annoyed by a screenshot, it is intended to keep my post within the maximum number of words allowed in a post, I think it is 6000 words(?).

So, will you everyone just tell me what is your concept of a fact?

Okay, again, here is my own self-worded concept of what is a fact:

Facts for the purpose of identifying something to exist outside our mind must be specified with circumstances like when, where, how, for what end or to what end, by whom or what, but first there must be a thing or a person involved in acting or operating as the subject agent in the stage of objective reality.

KingCoil