God can't be God when there is nothing...So Man rescued him!

by Terry 48 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Terry

  There is no way a fly could ever understand Radio Waves. Therefore to flies radio waves simply do not exist. I think it's logically impossible for us NOT to be unaware of things that escape our consciousness in the same way radio waves escape the consciousness of flies.

  argument to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam)

  The argument to ignorance is a logical fallacy of irrelevance occurring when one claims that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. A claim's truth or falsity depends on supporting or refuting evidence to the claim, not the lack of support for a contrary or contradictory claim.
• 

  Terry

  I don't give any attributes to my Creator because I know that I am not in a position to.

  For a thing to exist it must possess attributes which distinguish it from simply nothing!

  Man is only in a position vis a vis "God" to assign imaginative beliefs and cling to them, transmit them or deny them.

  But, this cannot be held as the equivalent of knowing anything.

  Nature is EVERYthing which exists.

  Man can choose to imagine a SUPERnature (the supernatural) all he wants and to people it with process and force and inabitants beyond any reality of reference.

  But, supernature is beyond that which exists (i.e. Nature) and therefore does NOT itself exist.
• 

  PSacramento

  The argument to ignorance is a logical fallacy of irrelevance occurring when one claims that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. A claim's truth or falsity depends on supporting or refuting evidence to the claim, not the lack of support for a contrary or contradictory claim.

  I found this part quite funny:

  or that something is false only because it has not been proved true

  So, someone saying that God doesn't exist because he hasn't been proven to exist is and "argument to ignorance" ?

  Or did I read that wrong?
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Despite Terry's invocation of a logical fallacy, PSac's argument has merit.

  To deny PSac's argument is to affirm that the only things that exist are those things that are comprehensible to the human mind.

  If the human mind was possessed of infinite cognition, this might be a good argument to make. But even among humans, we can see that there is a continuum from idiot to genius. Can there be still something beyond? Are we like flies on our own level? I cannot teach my dog calculus, if he could communicate, would he tell me that higher maths do not exist?

  BTS
• 

  sd-7

  I think the answers are probably beyond our current body of knowledge. If God existed outside of time and space, then this implies that God lives in a fifth dimension we are unaware of, the fourth being time. Just a theory.

  It could be that God or whatever caused it all existed in another universe and this isn't the only universe after all. Multiverse notions abound in the scientific community.

  But following Terry's logic, being God has no meaning in the absence of other beings, other entities with which to interact. Knowledge cannot predate itself. And knowledge comes from observation, yet God would have nothing to observe, nothing to learn, nothing at all. Perhaps, to take my own theory further, the fifth dimension contains knowledge or something to observe, something to know or learn.

  Perhaps God is a being of pure energy, conscious energy, who then began spreading consciousness through other forms of energy. Eventually, they collectively decided to shape energy into matter (as matter can neither be created or destroyed, as far as we know).

  Perhaps God was not the creator of the universe at all, but merely a being of hitherto unknowable abilities, a being of pure energy who was worshipped because he/she/it could do things beyond human comprehension, beyond known science.

  There are a number of plausible ways to look at this. We know that existence is the Effect of some sort of Cause. But if that Cause were conscious of us and deeply interested in us, I find it hard to imagine he/she/it would leave things so unclear and complex for the only self-aware species on the planet.

  The fact is, every primitive culture in history has attributed things to the supernatural or the divine and written things down to that effect. How can we be truly certain that Christianity or Judaism or Whateverism (hmm, I'll have to start that religion!) isn't just another expression of that? We're still a young species. Heck, we just figured it out about bacteria not that long ago.

  Terry--are you the one putting up all those Humanism billboards in my area? I see them on the bus all the time. Fascinating thoughts, as always.

  And...lol @ superpunk!

  --sd-7
• 

  PSacramento

  There are lots of things we know exist but that, as of yet, can't be proven:

  Thoughts, conscience, dreams, the G-spot (just kidding on that one) ;)
• 

  sabastious

  Terry I'll end with this since I gotta get to work.

  My radio waves anaology is not an argument to ignorance, because it's not an argument for the existence of God. It's an argument against your argument that there is no God, which is fallacious. If you are going to state a Rule of Logic then you should follow it in your original post.

  You stated clearly and absolutely that man invented God. No one is in a position to say either way FOR SURE. We simply do not have enough data to work with.

  Are there logically sound scanarios of which we were created? Yes.

  Are there logically sound scanarios of which we were not created? Yes.

  Problem is we don't have enough evidence for a conclusion from either side.

  So it's perfectly logical to agree with either hypothesis. I understand when someone gives specific characteristics to God which can be openly refuted and proven false, but the fact of whether we had an intellegent cause or not is not concludable.

  -Sab
• 

  Terry

  God wasn't doing anything with anybody.

  Christians believe in a Trinitarian God. There was love in the different persons in the Godhead. Within God, there was relationship. And besides, perhaps before the creation, everything and nothing didn't have the distinctions which our own finite minds often conceive them to be.

  This is an argument???

  The above is what happens when we fail to distinguish between reality and unreality and assign belief without proof to something our mind

  has posited in mystical super-nature.

  Perhaps, if pigs had wings, they could fly.

  You must DO something.

  God was doing something, being God. God was complete in and of himself, and not needing to do something as we might suppose would be necessary for us.

  We have two different words: DOING and BEING...for a reason; they are not the same thing. You can call yourself an "artist' without ever doing any art. But, this would not constitute either "doing" or "being". It would constitute misrepresentation of reality and would require naive belief on the part of others.

  God could not be WISE with nothing to be wise about.

  God was cognizant of God, which is the source of all that we, even now, consider to be wisdom, since all these things originated in God.

  Words are not "things" and have no life or existence themselves. Words are representational signifiers which point to something else.

  The word "wisdom" does not float in outer space on a hyper-real plane of uber-existence as Plato would have us believe.

  Unless and Until you make the connection between actual realities as referents and your own decision to settle for vague semi-actuality without referents.....your assertions are connected to nothing beyond wishfully creative Ad Hoc argument.

  There was an eternity of nothing stretching in all "directions" and nobody and nothing to do anything with.

  Time began with creation. God exists in Eternity.

  Eternity means absence of time in Christian theology, so there is no "stretch." God did not exist for a long time. There was no stretch of time. There is no past, and no future.

  Time came to be with the creation of the world.

  Even now, however, eternity is the state of God. Our own time is not linear to God who is outside time, so that every moment of time from the beginning to the end of the world is as immediately present to him as the present instant is present to us. As for us, with all of our learning, we still cannot truly grasp what time actually is.

  You are speaking here authoritatively from a position of knowledge. How?

  You do not exist in "eternity". How can you have knowledge of its definition or limits or aspects?

  To make your apology work you resort to assertions about something which isn't some thing.
• 

  sd-7

  Oh. One more thought. I say all that to say that the existence of God is something that cannot really be proven or disproven with known science. His existence requires faith that he exists, after all. But so does a belief that he does not exist, as there is no definitive proof of his nonexistence.

  Personally, I do believe someone conscious built this universe, but given its size, he is busy handling some more urgent dispute on Rigel VII and hasn't been heard from for awhile. Or perhaps such a being endowed man with the capacity to make leaps forward in his growth (or her growth) via the acquiring of knowledge and experience, which as a whole is passed on to each generation. Perhaps there is an end result of some kind for humanity that we are not fully aware of as of yet.

  It's kind of odd to me, stepping back from it. This group says, God wants this! Another group says, God wants that! Another says, God isn't real! Another says, God is everywhere! Well, when are we going to hear from God? Men can claim whatever they want, but the universe is quiet right now, I don't hear any divine beings moving around, creaking the floor boards. If such a being is out there, and gives a flying frak about us, he won't transmit cryptic messages through books or revelation, he'll speak to us as a father does his children, face-to-face. And I'm sure he can do that without blasting us into nonexistence with his very presence, or else having all that power doesn't mean much as he can't control it.

  The various forms of God are clearly inventions of man. The confusion if all the scriptures ever written were true would be unbelievable! Either one set of ideas about him are right, or another, or none at all.

  Like I said, it's freakin' complicated.

  -sd-7
• 

  Terry

  You stated clearly and absolutely that man invented God. No one is in a position to say either way FOR SURE. We simply do not have enough data to work with.

  That isn't how science works. Remember, science means knowledge both actual and useful because ours is a practical existence.

  The greater the assertion the greater the PROOF required to verify it.

  To postulate the existence of something greater than every other thing would require the greatest proof imaginable!

  Surely you see that.

  My premise in this Topic is plain spoken and not fancy in the least.

  All the attributes we assign to the postulate of "God" fall away when placed in a real context of "just-before-creation."

  We often deliberately fail to assign context to our speech about God and the supernatural because it is immediately a falsifier of those postulations!