Where did God come from?

Thanks for the reply, some further questions for you.. Are you not assuming an absolute truth here? Namely, that it is impossible to remove all tentativity from an assertion? Do you agree that it is possible that an absolute truth might exist?Thanks and regards..

Percy answered this question in the post you are replying to. He seems to be taking it as a 99.9995% "truth" so still tentative but very sure. As for the existance of "absolute truth" could you clarify the definition of this for me (and maybe others). I think I know what you are saying it is and if so, don't see any examples so far.

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Common sense isn't

grace2u responds to me:

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1) For one, my original comments were that you faulted WT for using circular argument. I questioned your motives since your arguments ultimately hinge upon a form of circular argument-that is ultimately you must rely upon reason to prove your own reasoning.

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Incorrect. How many times does the word "axiom" need to be repeated before you remember it?

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2) You (as most do who deny absolute truth) speak as if there is one ultimately.

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Incorrect. Show me where I do. If explicit denial is equivalent to embracing, then there is very little point in continuing.

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3)This argument itself provides further evidence for the claim of absolute truth.

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Incorrect. It simply points out that you are insistent on seeing the word "black" when what I said was "white."

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Do you not agree that Descartes also assumes absolute truth in his philosophy as well?

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No.

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Says who? You? Why should we agree with you? You haven't given a single example of an absolute truth

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"It would be moraly wrong for me to go home today and kill my child today by cutting off his fingers and letting him bleed to death."

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We've been through this before. This is not absolute. There are people who would do exactly that. If it were absolute, nobody would do it.

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But they would say the same toward you. How is someone supposed to judge between you?

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In fact, we are all living in a world of depravity.

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Non sequitur.Let's try again, shall we?People who do not share your theology would say that you and not they are living in a world of depravity just the way you said that they and not you are living in a world of depravity. How is someone supposed to judge between you?Your ad hoc response of "we are all living in a world of depravity" is rejected. That is not what you originally said.

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I never did mention hell,

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Don't be disingenuous. The fact that the word hell did not escape your fingers does not mean you weren't invoking it.

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Here you have clearly made a statement that ASSUMES absolute truth.

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Incorrect. Try again.

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Fine, I have given ample evidence, what is your evidence for the contrary?

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The mere existence of atheists proves you wrong.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

grace2u writes:

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I maintain that in this world, rational and intelligent discussion could not exist

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And yet, the mere existence of atheists proves you wrong.

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While this would be another discussion, morality and justice would not even be concepts to ponder within a world void of absolute truth, nor would right and wrong.

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So atheists have no morality, no concept of justice, don't understand right and wrong, and would just as soon as kill you as look at you?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

:ae:,
I have read and reread your posts in order to try and fully understand your position and question in regard to this. The statement absolute truths do not exist is making a claim of absolute truth. Since it is irrational to deny the existance of an absolute truth, (since in doing this you are acknowledging the existance of an absolute truth, namely absolute truth does not exist) it is safe to say that absolute truth must exist. Denying this is to appear irrational or insane, IMHO.You agree it is possible that absolute truth does exist, do you think that it is POSSIBLE for absolute truth to NOT exist?If it is possible for an absolute truth to exist and impossible for it to not exist(as I would claim), which is the most likely answer to the question of absolute truths existance?If this is not enough evidence, imagine a world void of absolutes. No statement could ever be made with any certainty. You agree that communication would possibly be meaningless, I would say communication would be meaningless because all communication would be unintelligable. If you would like me to address this further, I will, however I am curious of your reply to my question from above.I agree that ultimately we don't fully know what this truth is(or perhaps could not demonstrate fully the proof to others), however I do maintain that a truth must exist. Why would anyone assume it does not exist as opposed to it existing? What is the evidence against the existance of absolute truth, in light of the evidence suggesting there is one?So ultimately, it neccesarily follows because of the impossibility of the contrary and because the data points within the cosmos suggest there is such a thing as truth.It does seem as though a lot of work(and faith) is required to conclude that absolute truth does not exist. That is, one must deny certain basic ideas and philosophies or in my opinion suppress the truth. One must ultimately conclude that the statements and numerous journal articles and books science has presented are only true for the scientist making the claim and that the equations and theories explained or deduced are not truly binding on reality.Thanks, btw, I do not mind the "hounding" as you put it.
Take care.

Youve said this before and I do not fully understand your argument. Could you explain a little more? How does the existence of atheists prove me wrong? I am not saying this. In fact I agree with you that atheists/agnostics have these things. In fact some atheist/agnostics I know behave in more appropriate ways than some Christians I know. My point is that their worldview can not account for such things and therefore there worldview is lacking in credibility.Take care.

No, it's not. It is a descriptive observation of reality. Sorry, but this is based on a false premise. Which is precisely why the claim "absolute truth does not exist" is not purporting to be absolutely true. Why would I make the claim "absolute truth does not exist" if I didn't think it was possible? To answer your question directly, it would be more likely that absolute truth exists. However, I reject the premise of the question. I think you've set up a black/white fallacy here. Certainty isn't always an all-or-nothing issue. In reality, when we say that X is Y, we don't mean that we're absolutely sure that X is Y, we mean that X and Y are sufficiently similar that we can ignore the possibility of error and proceed. In other words, we have sufficient certainty although we never have absolute certainty. You position does not follow as I tried to illustrate in my previous post with the homograph "colon." Words do not have absolute or objective meanings, yet our communciations employ them quite well regardless. Communication, therefore, does not require that absolute truth exists. It requires only a certain agreement between the communicating parties as to the meanings of the symbols employed in the commincation. I believe in the past that you've claimed that this absolute truth is not only unknown, but also unknowable. Is this still your position? I don't see any evidence of absolute truth, and there obviously exists statements which are relatively and subjectively true (See my thread titled "An Object Lesson"). Evidence of one and no evidence of the other seems to indicate to me that the unevidenced one is non-existent. Disagree. "Truth" is a word of human language, and its meaning is therefore defined by human minds. Reality exists, obviously, but it does not say "A is true" or "B is true" or "A and ~A is false." These are statements in human language. Reality says only "A." Or reality says only "B." Then humans, upon observing "A," construct the statement "A is true." This does not bind reality at all, but instead describes our observations of it. I don't find it difficult at all, but your incredulity is irrelevant anyway. Which "basic ideas and philosophies," exactly? Not really. The truth values of scientific statements are contingent upon repeatable testability and the endurance of the statements to the repeated testation. Some (like the description of electrons orbiting a nucleus like little planets) are patently false. But that's exactly right! They're NOT binding on reality! They're DESCRIPTIVE. They say "This is what we observed reality doing." It's always possible that reality behaves contrary to that observation in some other place or at some other time. It could be that we are "in the Matrix," so to speak, and what we observe right now is not "really real." We can never truly know that. So we hypothesize that our theories are accurately descriptive of reality over as much of it as we can possibly observe, but there is no absolute certainty.

Perhaps you did not read my full comment. I conceded that it is fair enough to assume that I beleive this to be the ultimate end of those who do not recieve grace. I am curious then, what do you suggest Descartes means then when he suggests that our senses are decieving? What are they decieving? Other deceptions?WHile I admit I have not exhaustively stduied all of Descartes writings, I am familiar with his basic epistemology and find it amazing that anyone who is familiar with it would alledge he denies absolute truth. In fact, this should be an obvious fact, a given if you will. I should add that I somewhat agree with some of Descartes writings. The fact that this doubt ultimately can be carried too far, such as to render that doubt being presented to be much more irrational than the belief it is questioning. For example, do you understand Descartes proof for his very own existance?My original thought is that you have a gross misinterpretation of Descartes philosophy such that you behave in a way that Descartes would find fault in. Descartes philosophy of doubt is more a systematic way of peeling away layers of false presuppositions as opposed to an out right denial of any absolute truth.Of course I could have simply misunderstood you. If this is the case, my apologies.Take care.

grace2u responds to me:

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And yet, the mere existence of atheists proves you wrong

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Youve said this before and I do not fully understand your argument. Could you explain a little more? How does the existence of atheists prove me wrong?

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You claim that something is only possible because of god. But atheists have no god and yet still have that which you claim is possible only with god.Ergo, the mere existence of atheists proves your claim that such-and-such can only happen because of god is proven wrong.

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So atheists have no morality, no concept of justice, don't understand right and wrong, and would just as soon as kill you as look at you?

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In fact I agree with you that atheists/agnostics have these things. In fact some atheist/agnostics I know behave in more appropriate ways than some Christians I know. My point is that their worldview can not account for such things and therefore there worldview is lacking in credibility.

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But the mere fact that they have them shows you to be wrong.How can an atheist possibly have morality, have a concept of justice, understand right and wrong if they cannot account for such things?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

grace2u responds to me:

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Don't be disingenuous. The fact that the word hell did not escape your fingers does not mean you weren't invoking it.

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Perhaps you did not read my full comment. I conceded that it is fair enough to assume that I beleive this to be the ultimate end of those who do not recieve grace.

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Perhaps you did not understand my full comment. If it is fair to assume that they are going to hell, then you do not need to actually use the word "hell" in order to understand what you were getting at.Specifically, they're not Christian, so they're "living in a world of depravity" and thus are going to tell.

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I am curious then, what do you suggest Descartes means then when he suggests that our senses are decieving? What are they decieving? Other deceptions?

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Ourselves.Don't equivocate. We weren't talking about our internal consciousness. We were talking about the outside world. And even then, our internal consciousness might not be all that real, either, but is rather a complex program being forced to behave the way it does, very much like a puppet.

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WHile I admit I have not exhaustively stduied all of Descartes writings, I am familiar with his basic epistemology and find it amazing that anyone who is familiar with it would alledge he denies absolute truth.

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You misunderstand. He does not assume absolute truth...he concludes it. He starts with universal doubt, runs through a whole bunch of philosophy, and concludes with, "I think, therefore I am."You do understand the difference between an assumption and a conclusion, yes?

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For example, do you understand Descartes proof for his very own existance?

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Yes...even wrote a paper on it about how he got it wrong.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Certainly Ned,
By absolute truth, I simply mean ->
"Absolute truth" is defined as inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts.I took this definition off a website and it does appear consistent with the definition I have been touting, that is a universal and invariant truth.There really is no way around denying the existance of absolute truths. Ultimately, if you deny they exist then you are claiming an absolute.So either,
1) They exist. Observations in the physical world suggest this.2) They do not exist. Unlikely since it is impossible for them to NOT exist(since to claim something to not exist is to declare an absolute).3)They exist and do not exist at the same time. This is irrational and there is no evidence which would suggest this.So the best option is that they exist. In order to conclude they do not exist, I would have to see evidence that would suggest that the claim of their non-existance is not in itself a claim of absolute truth. If one claimed that there are truths, but that they are not absolute, in other words a truth might exist but this truth is changing, then it is not really a truth by definition, rather it is an agreed upon concept-that btw is in itself another subtle claim of absolute - namely that "agreed upon truths " exist but they are free to change. I think this is probably where :ae: and some others are coming from, however I do not think that they agree on what this claim implies. Ultimately, the problem I have with this notion is that it seems to be a more complicated construct than the simple acceptance of an absolute truth. That is, one must assume that the truth will change, else you would assume it will not change and therefore would be an absolute(saying it could change is still an absolute, namely it is possible for truth to change). Even if you assume that the truth will change, that in and of itself could be viewed as an absolute truth as well. My question is why is this denial of absolutes a more likely explanation than the acceptance of absolutes? Especialy when it can be demonstrated that it is impossible for an absolute truth to NOT exist.Thanks and regards,

OK. I understand your argument now, let me clarify my position. I do not claim that only a belief in God can permit such things to be realized(notions of morality or justice, etc) within a human mind. In fact my theology says quite the opposite, that in fact all have had these things placed within themselves-by God. So ultimately, a person can have a sense of morality and do moral and good things, but that would be expected since God has given all a sense of right and wrong. This is an act of His mercy towards humanity in that He has given man a glimpse of His glory in doing this.Ultimately God does at times relinquish His restraint and turn man over to depraved mind. BTW, I would say that if God were to do this on all of humanity at this time, that we would have a concept of what hell is.Paul in Romans indicates that "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools" and that "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator -- who is forever praised. Amen" and "Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done" "They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity" I have cut and pasted at my own leisure on this.To summarize what Pauls is saying, Man, has exchanged the glory of this truth for broken concepts and God has simply relinquished His restraint at times. I believe atheism to be the ultimate end of this kind of thought, the final end of what a sin-cursed mind unrestrained by God will eventualy merge towards. That is, one that denies the very existance of that which logic demands must exist(Gods very own existance), and in turn worships his own "alleged rational" thought, even though he still agrees that his own rational thought is limited and unknowable. Professing to be wise, it ultimately is a foolish position(atheism) since in doing this, an individual is denying some extremely basic concepts and logical truths(for example that it is possible for an absolute truth to not exist) and finally concluding that we in fact don't even know if we truly exist. I have given numerous other examples from the denial of absolute truth.The explanation of moral goodness within atheists is quite simple to understand. For one, if God truly has placed a sense of morality within man(as He claims to have done, so that man would know God exists), then we would expect even atheists to behave moraly at times. Secondly, if man truly does have a sinful nature as God claims he does, then we would expect both theists and atheists to behave in a manner contrary to Gods nature(to sin).So again, I am not claiming that atheists themselves do not have concepts of morality, quite the contrary, I agree with you on this, my point is that there worldview can not account for that which they have. Within the confines of atheism, how can any sense of justice even exist? Why is it that atheists constantly fault "the alledged" God for being unfair or even perhaps evil at times when these concepts are not even real concepts within atheism? For example, if you say God is unfair for sending someone to hell, how can you even begin to know what fair or unfair is? How can you, acknowledging that you are in a cave viewing only shadows, begin to make any claim of what is right or wrong for an alledged God to do or not do?"Christe eleison"

grace2u responds to me:

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You claim that something is only possible because of god. But atheists have no god and yet still have that which you claim is possible only with god.

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Ergo, the mere existence of atheists proves your claim that such-and-such can only happen because of god is proven wrong.

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I do not claim that only a belief in God can permit such things to be realized(notions of morality or justice, etc) within a human mind.

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Yes, you do: What are we to make of this? You claim that atheists can't account for this, and yet they do without any appeals to god or absolutes. Ergo, their very existence proves you wrong.

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In fact my theology says quite the opposite,

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But here's the thing: Your theology is not the standard to use when dealing with atheists. You have to use the atheist's philosophy (since atheism is not religion or theology.)

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that in fact all have had these things placed within themselves-by God.

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But the mere existence of atheists proves you wrong.They have those things and god had nothing to do with it. Ergo, your claim is wrong.

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Within the confines of atheism, how can any sense of justice even exist?

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Because atheists have logic, reason, and emotion from which to examine the system. No need for god at all.The Golden Rule? You can derive it from mathematics.

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Why is it that atheists constantly fault "the alledged" God for being unfair or even perhaps evil at times when these concepts are not even real concepts within atheism?

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Because those things are real to atheists. The fact that you can't understand how they realize that doesn't mean they don't. Their very existence and their statements about how certain things are evil attest to that.Have you considered the possibility that the problem is not that atheists don't understand evil but that you don't understand atheists?

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For example, if you say God is unfair for sending someone to hell, how can you even begin to know what fair or unfair is?

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Because atheists, as people who understand good and evil, can make a judgement about it.You keep trying to use your standard and refuse to accept that atheists are using a different one. Why should anybody care what you think? Why don't you stop trying to psychoanalyze people you don't know and don't understand?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

grace2u writes:

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1) They exist. Observations in the physical world suggest this.

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Incorrect. In fact, the nature of observational processes states the exact opposite: We can never know if they do exist or don't. We only have our observations and since we can never observe everything, there is always the possibility that we have missed something.Take a look at Newtonian mechanics. At the time, given the technology available, it was the best thing going. It jived with every single observation ever made.But it was still wrong. Better technology came along and we started observing things that Newtonian mechanics couldn't describe.Suddenly, that "absolute" wasn't.

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2) They do not exist. Unlikely since it is impossible for them to NOT exist(since to claim something to not exist is to declare an absolute).

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Logical error: Circular reasoning. You assume that they exist because they exist and they exist because you assumed they exist.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

"quote:
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that in fact all have had these things placed within themselves-by God.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------But the mere existence of atheists proves you wrong.They have those things and god had nothing to do with it. Ergo, your claim is wrong."I think there's a serious misinterpretation on both parts which has lead to a really annoying parroting contest, I swear if the mere exisence of atheists proves anybody else wrong any more times....Er, anyway...What Grace2u is saying is NOT that the belief of God is required for us as humans to have morality, but the EXISTENCE of God whether or not people believe in Him.Let's just assume that God is real for a second.He gives us all the concept of morality. Sure, some may say he doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean they don't still get the morality.Here's an analogy:Before we 'believed' in primal human instinct, it was there. Given to us at birth. We know how to swallow, how to take a dump, etc. We don' t need to acknowledge its existence and effect on us, but it still takes place on everyone no matter what they believe.Again: The point of the morality arguement is not that belief in God is required, but that it's simply given to us at birth like instinct.The belief that something gave it to us is NOT relevant in the arguement, just that we have it.The existence of athiests is irrelevant.

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Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.[This message has been edited by Born2Preach, 01-02-2004]