by Tuesday 122 Replies latest watchtower bible
Burn said:
And if you don't like that, then give up the notion of God as a conscious entity and become a Spinozaist.That's Spinozist.
I've seen it printed both ways. Also Spinozean, Spinozite, Spinozaic. Spinozist perhaps is more common for this particular usage, with Spinozaist being used for one who draws on more of his philosophy (such as his ethics) than just the God issue in general. Nevertheless, a wrist-slap I cannot accept.
I understand Burn to mean:
1. If God exists, he "exists" in a manner that is outside the explanatory scope of space/time.
No. Space/time explains some aspects of God.
Next:
2a. All reality exists within space time and is entailed therefrom.
Proof?
3a. Only hypothetical entities can be postulated to existed outside space time.
All entities are hypothetical, presumably only things inside our spacetime can be repeatedly confirmed with empirical evidence.
So this does not follow:
4a. Therefore "God" is not real and is a hypothetical entity.
1b. If God exists, he acts and chooses in terms of mind.
2b. If God exists, he is not bounded by space/time.
3b. A mind experiences thoughts and actions one after the next in time. <---------WEAK PREMISE
4b. Therefore God does not exist.
Burn
Belief in god does not mean one has to behave in any way differently form when one does not believe in god.
If one is in tune and empathetic by nature then the likely similar behaviours would ensue in either case IF that person were supported and helped be confident about their right to hve their belief!
Problems, oppression and reaction with often deviant behaviours result when a person becomes disassociated from their personal 'essence' by interfering others who are always wanting others to do and believe as they do or wish with no due concern for the long term damage it may cause to the individual or family etc.
So the issue is not if god exists but if the person does!!
If God is perfect and there is such a concept as imperfection then God cannot be entangled with an imperfect universe (else God is imperfect by association.) Which argues either for an imperfect God or an unentangled God. Incarnations of God as recorded by the world's religions argue for a God associated - not just quantumly - but literally with fallen / imperfect matter. Either way we are left with an imperfect God by interaction with that which is imperfect. Maybe though this is just a misapplication of what perfection means to any God.
Qcmbr,
I loved your post!
I agree, and I do see God as non-observing (since I don't see God as a separate conscious entity). God is intrinsic to the universe and is neither perfect nor imperfect (because those measures are man's). Therefore the way I see it is that death and pain and all manner of horrid things are part of the universe and therefore part of God. This God is evolving with us, hopefully towards a less painful existence.
Sirona
Nice Sirona.
It feels just so!
Nice Sirona.
It feels just so!
That isn't to say that a person has no hope in life. Just as there are horrible things in life, there are also completely beautiful, wonderful and spiritual experiences to be had.
Sirona
Burntheships began a rebuttal against the second to last of my trains of logic, which were, as the record holds, an attempt to understand in specific terms a non-specific assertion he had made. He began by disagreeing with one of these premises:
...Space/time explains some aspects of God.
The rebuttal as stated to my first premise fails. Furthermore, I direct the reader to consider that Burn had specifically stated as a form of rebuttal that God exists in no time. This is a play on language which violates the common meanings of words. I would not even have begun this chain of argument were it not for that brief rebuttal to a lengthy argument.
To be stated precisely, I can understand Burn's reply to mean only one of two things he did not state. It could be that:
1. To Buurn, the functional description of space/time constitutes evidence for the existence of a God.
2. In Burns metaphysics, If God exists, some of his "aspects" exist within space/time.
These are two disctinct ideas not addressed by Burn. He fails to distinguish under case (2) how these aspects which are bounded in space time would not still fit within the context of my argument. Burn is of course free to elaborate on this, but has not done so. If he is claiming case (1), Burn bears the burden of proof to establish that an additional logical level of explanation is required beyond the entailment arguement previously presented.
He continued to the second premise:
2a. All reality exists within space time and is entailed therefrom.Proof?
Burn, so far, has not distinguished or claimed any other entities in a hypothetical realm beyond space time, neither has he responded to the entailment argument previously presented. All real things which have been observed have been observed in time and space. All other past events and entities of which we have evidence occur as inductive derivations from information entailed by time and space. I could continue to elaborate, but I feel my numerous lengthy arguments rise above the reasonable burden of fair discourse given from a one word question.
Burn continued:
All entities are hypothetical, presumably only things inside our spacetime can be repeatedly confirmed with empirical evidence.
So this does not follow:
4a. Therefore "God" is not real and is a hypothetical entity.
Burn's claim that all entities are hypothetical cannot be allowed to pass. Neither does this touch on the previous argument presented about the infinite imporobability of a hypothetical deity. The conclsion in 4a stands if the premises stand, and Burn has fallen short of a serious challenge. If Burn is pleading case (2) previously described he is bound to demonstrate how those aspects of his hypothetical God which are related to space/time are not described within the argument as presented.
Burn further denied the brief definition I gave in 3b of one aspect of mind, in that minds operate temporally. He failed to articulate the nature of his disagreement, and his comment therefore deserves no further rejoinder.
If Burn's objections to my premises take the form of "the exception to the norm is the case in question" then he is engaging in special pleading and question begging.
So far, though these arguments are not ones I normally make, they stand in response to Burn's rebuttal.
For the sake of argument:
2a. All reality exists within space time and is entailed therefrom.
...depends on a specific definition of "reality". If "reality" is defined as the physical world of cause and effect that we perceive through our senses during everyday consciousness, then the premise is valid and the argument can be followed to its stated conclusion.
However, if I were to interpret Burn's comment to define "reality" to include a non-consensus supraset of which space/time is but a fraction, then the premise demands a proof. It is regretable that this supraset (in this case, perhaps a definition of "God" as being a higher order - sure, "hypothetical" - structure) leads back to the same unprovable assertion.
Which again leads back to "God" being unproveable, since proof exists within the world of external, observable, verifiable evidence (and "God" does not exist in this framework).
spook,
I do not work in the sciences so I am not an expert. But since we are having this little debate, I went to an expert. My daughter's high school science teacher. I was at school today for a conference so I asked about the 1st law of thermodynamics and its implications. I asked a simple Question which is where the matter and energy that cannot be destroyed come from? To be fair, I explained to him about our little debate about God. While he is not a christian, but an agnostic, he did agree to help me with a proper response on this issue. And here it is;
About the "original" matter and it's origin;
Matter cannot create itself and in our natural world, cannot arise out of nothing. Within the bounds of natural law all effects must have a cause. Because of this fact, the spontaneous appearance of hydrogen atoms, (which helped "begin" our universe), out of nothing would be an unusual breach of the First Law of Thermodynamics, which asserts that matter, under natural circumstances, can neither be created nor destroyed.
When asked his opinion about how this occured: He admitted he did not know and that current science does not know either. But someday he felt that science will have an answer to my question.
About the "out of touch" comment: I called you "out of touch" with the scientific community because you were the one that first said I was out of touch with them. That is why I said "maybe, it is you that is out of touch with them". I am not out of touch with science at all and whether or not many great scientists believed in a God. For your information; I am currently working on an article about the contributions that Christians have made to the field of science, some of which are very significant because they affect our current scientific views. So I stand by my statement that science and belief in God can go together and many times does.
Thanks for conceding that the "cause" of the universe could be God. That was the first point I was trying to get make. I cannot believe it took 2 days of posting to finally get an athiest to concede to this one tiny point. Its too bad too because if this thread were not so time consuming, we could go onto other points.
That being said though I will have to say this. Just so no one thinks I was conceding that one of your named "gods" could have been the God who created the universe; most of the "gods' you named would easily be disqualified as such. Why? Because they first have to lay a claim as being the creator of the universe to even be considered as such and they have not.
For example Zeus was the God of thunder and the sky, Osiris was the god of the underworld only, niether claimed being the creator. We already ruled out the flying spaghetti monster because his creator admitted he was a parody of religion, ditto with the pink unicorn, We know the origins of Santa and he never claimed to be the creator, and so forth and so on.
Peace, Lilly
God conjures up various platforms for argument amongst many humans and so to start with one must void all notions of what god 'morality' is when approaching this argument! I suspect some take up a unique position due to their 'relationship ' with their personal reality of their imaginary god.
That reality is subjective and lives largely in the minds of humans in all manner of ways worldwide and throughout the history of, particularly, our species!
If divinity does exist then it does so absent our existence. Some would argue with this notion on account of god being 'in life' but my point is that before our births, if divinity existed, it existed without us!
We are bound by space and time!
We postulate the cosmos has infinite space.
We postulate the cosmos has infinite time.
It is likely, if divinity exists, that it is bound by neither!
Each of the above is beyond our experience and, I argue, also beyond our psychological imagery!
As such we can be neither certain or uncertain of that which is not bound by what we are bound by.
What humans attempt to do is conjure up an idyll - a perfect equalising divinity which ultimately will symphonise humanity into a perfectly orchestrated reality.
This, as with much, is hypothetical and pleasureable to contemplate, but someone has to go out and clear up the shit right now so go figure!!
