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Does God exist? (3 Viewers)

do you believe in god?


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Teclis

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Some other options:

(1) Paint the problem of the absolute as fundamentally meaningless within the relativist frame

Relativist: "There is no one, singular truth"
You: "So there are no absolutes?"
Relativist: "Mu"
You: "Wut?"

---

(2) Restrict the domain of relativist claims

Relativist: "There is no one, singular truth within the moral domain"
You: "So there are no absolutes?"
Relativist: "Correct, within the moral domain"
You: "Have you not thereby contradicted yourself?"
Relativist: "No, because metaethical claims like 'there is no moral truth' are metaphysical, not normative - they do not fall within the 'moral domain'"

---

(3) Paraconsistency: accept contradiction at the limits of thought

Relativist: "There is no one, singular truth"
You: "So there are no absolutes?"
Relativist: "Yes"
You: "Absolutely?"
Relativist: "Yes"
You: "Reductio ad absurdum"
Relativist: "So? My claim is true and false"

---

(4) Accept uncertainty

Relativist: "There is no one, singular truth"
You: "So there are no absolutes?"
Relativist: "Yes"
You: "Absolutely?"
Relativist: "No"
Hehehehehe... Mu... No his reply would be "Mu" and mine would be "sif the question is flawed..." and he'd be like "lol k n00b"

Number 2 is an interesting argument anyway. In many ways, Theist, atheists, agnostics... anyone has to admit to some level of Moral relativism. Because all morality has to stem from some sort of law or code of what is right or wrong. That code needs to come from some sort of referential point to be a moral absolute (such as the existence of, say, the Abrahamic God). I think about the only absolute that most people will agree on is cogito ergo sum...

Number 3 is a bit of a cop out. Basically, the way I see it... the claim of holding contradictory ideas that cancel each other out is tantamount to claiming omnipotency in the same vein as free will coexisting with predestination as we Christians believe. So to claim that you really have to be claiming infinite knowledge of the universe and enlightenment... and If you claim that, you can go solve world hunger, war, write the ultimate song then go fuck yourself. :)

I'm interested how number 4 helps the cause when not only do you use a philosophy that contradicts itself, but you contradict yourself also.
 

sufyan

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dear all,

i just signed in to realise there are over 8000 pages of new posts but more interestingly... that this debate is still ongoing LOL

let me guess the athiests are still trying to confuse everyone with semantics ? lol thats what they were doing back in 07.

anyways, dont believe everything u think.

with love!

sufyan.
 

Teclis

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dear all,

i just signed in to realise there are over 8000 pages of new posts but more interestingly... that this debate is still ongoing LOL

let me guess the athiests are still trying to confuse everyone with semantics ? lol thats what they were doing back in 07.

anyways, dont believe everything u think.

with love!

sufyan.
Yes oh enlightened one... :hat:
 

KFunk

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Number 2 is an interesting argument anyway. In many ways, Theist, atheists, agnostics... anyone has to admit to some level of Moral relativism. Because all morality has to stem from some sort of law or code of what is right or wrong. That code needs to come from some sort of referential point to be a moral absolute (such as the existence of, say, the Abrahamic God). I think about the only absolute that most people will agree on is cogito ergo sum...

Number 3 is a bit of a cop out. Basically, the way I see it... the claim of holding contradictory ideas that cancel each other out is tantamount to claiming omnipotency in the same vein as free will coexisting with predestination as we Christians believe. So to claim that you really have to be claiming infinite knowledge of the universe and enlightenment... and If you claim that, you can go solve world hunger, war, write the ultimate song then go fuck yourself. :)

I'm interested how number 4 helps the cause when not only do you use a philosophy that contradicts itself, but you contradict yourself also.

Heh, you leave a rather large relativistic domain if 'cogito ergo sum' is the only certainty. I agree that the general competing approach is the attempt to derive moral claims from 'cogito'-like premises whose logical force is hard to deny, e.g. Levinas finds a call to ethics in the alterity (= 'otherness/difference') of the other (noting, of course, that an undeniable call to being ethical differs from brute normative claims about what one ought to do). Nonetheless, I think that sensible arguments can be made to the tune that absolutes are unatainable in normative discourse.

I agree that paraconsistency is rather odd - it certainly doesn't sit well intuitively with most people (that is, unless possessed of the insight afforded by copious hallucinogens). Question: what exactly do you mean when you say that claims to contradiction are tantamount to claiming omnipotency? In particular I was wondering if you were making use of the technicality that in systems based on classical logic a true contradiction can be used to prove any sentence. Explosion ensues. As a consequence the dinstinction between truth and falsity disintegrates and the system becomes next to useless - hence the non-tolerance of contradiction in such systems. A paraconsistent system, however, in which the methods of deduction are modified slightly, does not have this problem.

How does contradiction emerge in option four? For example, suppose I were to say "all statements are made in the face of uncertainty and against a background of presuppositions and biases - even this one".
 

Smile_Time351

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dear all,

i just signed in to realise there are over 8000 pages of new posts but more interestingly... that this debate is still ongoing LOL

let me guess the athiests are still trying to confuse everyone with semantics ? lol thats what they were doing back in 07.

anyways, dont believe everything u think.

with love!

sufyan.
On behalf of the semantic-obsessed atheists that you seem intent on referring to, I welcome you to this monster of a thread. What I find interesting is that you seem to subtextually associate atheism with intelligence. Given that you seem to find atheism a possible topic that arouses confusion, combined with your cautionary advice 'dont (sic) believe everything u (sic) think' and I think I can say with relative certainty that you seem to fall into this 'confused' category.
To enter my own anecdotal plug, don't be afraid. We're not trying to confuse you, on the contrary, its the semantics that contain the truth. Take heart!
 

Omie Jay

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dear all,

i just signed in to realise there are over 8000 pages of new posts but more interestingly... that this debate is still ongoing LOL

let me guess the athiests are still trying to confuse everyone with semantics ? lol thats what they were doing back in 07.

anyways, dont believe everything u think.

with love!

sufyan.
Dear sufyan,

Oh ok.

Utmost regards,
Omie Jay
 

Cookie182

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Heh, you leave a rather large relativistic domain if 'cogito ergo sum' is the only certainty. I agree that the general competing approach is the attempt to derive moral claims from 'cogito'-like premises whose logical force is hard to deny, e.g. Levinas finds a call to ethics in the alterity (= 'otherness/difference') of the other (noting, of course, that an undeniable call to being ethical differs from brute normative claims about what one ought to do). Nonetheless, I think that sensible arguments can be made to the tune that absolutes are unatainable in normative discourse.

I agree that paraconsistency is rather odd - it certainly doesn't sit well intuitively with most people (that is, unless possessed of the insight afforded by copious hallucinogens). Question: what exactly do you mean when you say that claims to contradiction are tantamount to claiming omnipotency? In particular I was wondering if you were making use of the technicality that in systems based on classical logic a true contradiction can be used to prove any sentence. Explosion ensues. As a consequence the dinstinction between truth and falsity disintegrates and the system becomes next to useless - hence the non-tolerance of contradiction in such systems. A paraconsistent system, however, in which the methods of deduction are modified slightly, does not have this problem.

How does contradiction emerge in option four? For example, suppose I were to say "all statements are made in the face of uncertainty and against a background of presuppositions and biases - even this one".
Hey,

I had two philosophical questions:

1) What are your thoughts on arguments against say the classical Christian paradigm from materialistic apologetics- ie Michael Martin's "Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God" (TANG)? The crux of this argument is that the grounds for logic, morality and the uniformity of nature fail for presuppositionalists when they propose a non-self contained universe, subject to the ultimate (and unknowable) will of a diety.

The argument would, in its simple form, call for a materialistic universe as the only grounds for cognition and values. Primarily because:

-God could make the law of non-contradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time.
-Under this view, what is moral is a function of the arbitrary will of God; for instance, if God wills that cruelty for its own sake is good, then it is.

Note that we don’t need to say that God actually does make A be not-A, or that God actually does make gratuitous cruelty good (although one can use the Bible to prove it). Rather, the point is that such a thing is possible if a god exists. This alone is enough to deny the necessary nature of anything, and therefore to deny logic altogether – since logic is necessary. It cannot be the case that A is not-A.

If logic and uniformity of nature don't exist, then how can we know anything? Even though Ume criticised its limits, we generally gain knowledge through our capacity to use logic and to find regularity in nature – induction.

I guess in sum, an argument from this stance could follow:

Posit a cognitive feature F (examples: logic, morality, induction, etc).

1.F is necessary or has a necessary part.
2.If theism is true, then a hypothetical god is Creator (source of the entire material universe) and/or Sovereign (in control of the entire material universe).
3.If theism is true, then all in the material universe is contingent (on a hypothetical god’s will), and no part of it can be necessary.
4.If theism is true, then there is no necessary feature or necessary part of a feature in the material universe.
5.Theism is false. (from 1 and 4).

The theist could reply that while they don't personally know everything, god has reveal this knowledge to them directly (through revelation etc). However, accepting existence of god under this framework begs the question of how they know this to be true.

2) On Descarte's "I think therefore I am"- What do you make of Eckhart Tolle's criticism that this is a basic logical fallicy, since we are able to separate from our thoughts and "observe" them (Ask yourself what is my next thought going to be and then listen for it)? This is the basis of much Zen meditation- the mind itself must be separate from thought.

Tolle said:

"The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!
 
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Teclis

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Heh, you leave a rather large relativistic domain if 'cogito ergo sum' is the only certainty. I agree that the general competing approach is the attempt to derive moral claims from 'cogito'-like premises whose logical force is hard to deny, e.g. Levinas finds a call to ethics in the alterity (= 'otherness/difference') of the other (noting, of course, that an undeniable call to being ethical differs from brute normative claims about what one ought to do). Nonetheless, I think that sensible arguments can be made to the tune that absolutes are unatainable in normative discourse.
I know it's a rather large domain... that was kind of my point.

But yea, I'd have to agree with you on that. Arguing stringently for complete absolutes in normative discourse amount to... well amount to wank.

I agree that paraconsistency is rather odd - it certainly doesn't sit well intuitively with most people (that is, unless possessed of the insight afforded by copious hallucinogens).
That's also called delusion isn't it :)

Question: what exactly do you mean when you say that claims to contradiction are tantamount to claiming omnipotency?
What I was getting at is this.

To say that you KNOW why and how two contradictory, completely cancelling instances exist in Unison, and that you can instigate such, is either delusional or complete enlightenment and power over the workings of the Universe... and the latter is omnipotence (and omniscience too actually).

paraconsistency will probably undermine this logic :)

How does contradiction emerge in option four? For example, suppose I were to say "all statements are made in the face of uncertainty and against a background of presuppositions and biases - even this one".
Ah I see what you're talking about now. When you subject something to its own rules in that sense
 

Teclis

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has god stood in front of any of you??
Seriously?

Why not just ask "can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?"

You may as well have just come on and been like "lOlZ bIoLoGy AnD cHaRlEs DaRwIn DiSpRoVeD gOd lol k n00bs roflmao"

And my answer to that is so generic...

Do you see the wind? No! You see its affects and you feel its presence...

Well when a drug induced paranoid schizophrenic, who after 20 years in Hospital meets a Christian friend of mine, comes to church and after we prayed for him, a combination of drugs... including Ritalin... a small dose of what caused the delusions, which they only gave him to make him easier to manage... stops his delusions... I'd say Miracles do happen that defy all logic... and when it happes like that, I see God at work.

And that's my heartwarming (but still true) story.
 

KFunk

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On Decarte's Cogito:

I'm not entirely sure what Tolle is saying, especially in the latter half of the quote, but I will make a few comments. The quote reminds me, in part, of Heidegger's critique of the Cogito in Being and Time in which he suggests that Descartes spends a great deal of time on epistemology - the cogito, I think - without giving an adequate analysis of the sum (being). Heidegger thinks that Descarte's atomistic dualism of thinking versus extended substance (res cogitans and res extensa) misses the essentially the human kind of being (Dasein) which, along the lines of Tolle, is more holistic and consists, in part, of our indissoluble ties with a world, culture, language, and so forth. On this kind of reading I'm not sure that you could call the Cogito fallacious, per se. Rather, the terms, 'being' in particular, are in need of further analysis.

You may also want to compare Hume and Kant. Hume (in his Treatise in the chapter on personal identiy) developed a bundle theory of the self. Hume held that introspection yields no core 'I' which can be experienced. Instead we just have a bundle of thoughts and perceptions which are associated by means of resemblance (,contiguity and causation). What would 'I am' amount to within a theory of this sort (perhaps simply one's mental contents? Kant's views on the self are debatable, but at a minimum he held that in order for unity of experience to obtain (across time, space and the relations of spatiotemporal objects) there must be a logical locus to which all experience belongs. We perhaps can't experience the 'I' or say anything about it, but we can nonetheless posit it as a logical condition of the possibility of experience.
 

KFunk

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That's also called delusion isn't it :)
Only if we accept a psychiatric vocabulary with an imperialistic conception of rationality (note also that the current DSM allows for culturally appropriate delusions).
 

KFunk

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1) What are your thoughts on arguments against say the classical Christian paradigm from materialistic apologetics- ie Michael Martin's "Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God" (TANG)? The crux of this argument is that the grounds for logic, morality and the uniformity of nature fail for presuppositionalists when they propose a non-self contained universe, subject to the ultimate (and unknowable) will of a diety.
It's a fairly cheap argument, in my opinion. One can simply claim that the laws of logic and morality hold independent of God, i.e. that omnipotence is not absolute (see, for example, the Euthyphro Dillemma and discussion on the omnipotence paradox).

A more sophisticated kind of argument (which he perhaps had in mind?) would start from a Kantian perspective of transcendental idealism in which the 'world' and experience are grounded on, and ordered by, certain categories of the mind, such as causation, which act as the conditions of the possibility of experience. If god could be argued to be such that god would disturb this order then the non-existence of god would also be a condition of experience (i.e. we only exist and have experiences insofar as god does not). Once again, however, all one needs to do is argue that god is not such that they would disturb our transcendental unity.

As per usual, the weakness lies in the strawman failing of only targeting a specific conception of god.
 

Teclis

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Note that we don’t need to say that God actually does make A be not-A, or that God actually does make gratuitous cruelty good (although one can use the Bible to prove it). Rather, the point is that such a thing is possible if a god exists. This alone is enough to deny the necessary nature of anything, and therefore to deny logic altogether – since logic is necessary. It cannot be the case that A is not-A.
Quanitify and qualify?

And on Tolle... I really think he misunderstood the point of Cogito ergo sum. It's not to do with Identity and being. It's about existing. The singular quantifiable proof that you exist is justified by your thoughts... seperating them makes no difference. You can't really seperate yourself from your thoughts. Because you're thinking about your thoughts then aren't you.

Just as in Buddhism, enlightenment is actually impossible... because you can never be desireless due to the desire to BE desireless.
 

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