Jehovah stands out because, as Paul says in Ephesians, all families of the earth owe their name to Jehovah.
Eph 3:14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
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slimboyfat
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
Yes some who believe in God find the word “exists” problematic because it seems limiting. If God is real he is likely outside time, space, and being as we understand them.
The idea that the universe and all its laws can exist without something outside of it causing it and sustaining it seems like special pleading.
Incidentally I argue for God being real, but the particular God I am interested in is the God revealed in the Bible.
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
In biology organisms have tended to get more complex over time and animals with larger and more complex brains seem to be more intelligent. But are we correct to infer from this that if God exists that he is simply a much more complex being than we are? What does “complex” really mean when you talk about God? Presumably it does not mean God has a larger or more complex brain. For many who believe in God he is not a “thing” that can be described in comparison with “things” in our experience. He stands outside of the universe, outside matter, outside time, outside of “being” as such. This is how God can be said not to be an added complication to reality as we know it, because he stands outside reality as such. He crafted reality and is not subject to it.
It's like you have a classroom full of 20 children left to their own devices and chaos rules. I suggest we add one more, and you say that will only add to the chaos. But I say let the additional one be a teacher and not a child. In this case the addition of another does not add to the chaos but instead solves it. In a similar way, adding God to our understanding of the world does not add complication, but instead provides order and coherence.
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
The idea that the universe exists without God is every bit as much a hypothesis as is the idea that God created the universe.
If we see an ambiguous pattern on the beach that may be of human origin and may not be of human origin we can disagree about the likelihood of either possibility. One person may say, unless proven otherwise we should assume this pattern was made by a human. Another person may say no, unless proven otherwise we should assume this pattern was not made by a human.
Who is right? It doesn’t seem obvious that either position inherently deserves to be the default position. Much may depend on the exact appearance and details of the pattern observed.
I take this discussion to be about the existence of God in principle, not about the existence on any particular God
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
I think he means it provocatively in the sense that it’s an idea that stands in relation to God, as do other notions abou God. Mainly he’s a political commentator and sometime neocon, but for some reason likes to talk about God sometimes. It just happens that the comments he has made I find are close to my own ideas on this particular subject.
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
I don’t know. How will we talk about it then? I am reading Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel a second time, an atheist who doesn’t believe in materialist reductionism, very fascinating. Maybe he can produce a new vocabulary. It’s not easy. -
169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
The idea that everything that exists stands in an infinite chain without anything outside as the ultimate cause is an interesting idea but I think it calls for some evidence if we are to accept it. It’s the sort of “extraordinary claim” that some sceptics are fond of demanding “extraordinary evidence” in order to believe.
The atheist position is actually quite a demanding propositIon when you really think about it. Describing it as the fallback position or null hypothesis is a rhetorical strategy disguised as science. Why shouldn’t God as a hypothesis be the starting position? “Because I say so” seems to be the best atheists can come up with.
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
Atheism is only a lack of belief, nothing more. It does not claim that there are no gods.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues against this definition of atheism at length, beginning with these comments:
“Atheism” is typically defined in terms of “theism”. Theism, in turn, is best understood as a proposition—something that is either true or false. It is often defined as “the belief that God exists”, but here “belief” means “something believed”. It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing. This is why it makes sense to say that theism is true or false and to argue for or against theism. If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists (more on this below). The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
It solves the problem in the sense that God is the word we use to describe how anything is able to exist at all. And it provides the idea that, while everything we know has a cause, there may be something outside of the world as we know it that accounts for everything. It may also be possible that nothing is uncaused and there is nothing outside of the world as we know it. But somehow this just does not “seem” as likely. It is difficult to explain why, but people who see it this way know what it means. As Krauhammer says, we are not in a position to know for sure about whether God exists, but atheism just appears to be the least likely of the available theologies.
There are some items of knowledge that are not discovered by research. For example we don’t know the square root of 2 by research, or what is sadness, or whether it is wrong to steal. These things were not discovered by experiment or scientific method, but we count them as things we “know”. The existence of God seems more like this type of knowledge, rather than something that’s discovered by science such as the boiling point of water or the speed of light.
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169
Universal sovereignty on trial
by Factfulness ini just had a thought of clarity regarding the jw explanation for this doctrine.
they explain that satan challenged god regarding his right to rule.
god failed to prove his right to rule.
-
-
slimboyfat
It means that everything we are and know and experience derives its existence from something else, whereas God does not derive his existence from anything else. You may disagree with the idea, but I don’t see why it should be difficult to understand. Even if you don’t believe in God there is still the problem of accounting for the original cause, or if there is not one, then accounting for the infinite chain of causes. So disbelieving in God doesn’t solve the problem. .