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Author Topic:   The Case Against the Existence of God
Faith 
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Message 245 of 301 (302236)
04-07-2006 9:06 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by JustinC
04-07-2006 8:37 PM


Re: I also see only two options logically speaking
Maybe if you can define the universe this would be easier. Look at my previous post and tell me if that is what you mean by universe.
Your previous post says Everything that is not an eternal being = the universe.
I think so but maybe there is a semantic problem that needs to be sorted out further.
"The universe" is all things that exist apart from a Creator God, if He exists, or in other words "all Creation."
The question is how it all came to exist. The two options that answer the question are
1) It is self-existent or self-creating.
2) A conscious Being created it.
Again, you guys need to define what you mean by universe. What if our universe is apart of a larger structure? Or is that the universe also?
Everything that is in existence -- except the Creator God Himself. Yes, a larger "structure" would still be "the universe."
Even so, why all powerful? Why not just powerful enough to create our universe?
A being powerful enough to create all things, all that exists, including any other universes than ours, seems to imply all-powerful. What could be more powerful than a Being that could create everthing that exists?
And why does it need to be self existent? It could be created by another being, which was created by the another being, ad infinitum. No eternal being in that scenerio.
Because there has to be a Being where the buck stops as it were, a Being at the back of all of them, and what would that Being be except an eternal being? So all lesser gods are a subset of the idea of the eternal Creator God.
Or are you imagining beings just come into existence and/or universes just come into existence out of nowhere without beginning or end? Is this really a viable option? Isn't there always the question Where did it start?
Or what is the being that created our universe was "created" or "evolved" in another structure (purposely not using universe because I don't know how you define it yet). And this structure was created by a being, which evolved in another universe, ad infinitum.
And you can imagine this beginningless and endless chain of creating beings arising out of mindless universes ad infinitum? That's a very odd one. There is no beginning? You don't postulate either an Original Universe or an Original Creator back of it all? Seems to me this still has to be a version of the two options Robin gave although I'm not sure which one.
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-07-2006 09:07 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 246 of 301 (302237)
04-07-2006 9:21 PM
Reply to: Message 240 by JustinC
04-07-2006 7:23 PM


Re: Muddying the waters
From what I can tell, here are your definitions:
Universe = everything which is not an eternal being
Then your dichotomy is:
1. Everything which is not an eternal Being was created by an eternal Being.
2. Everything which is not an eternal Being has always existed (dropping the "in some form" since it is redundant).
Is this what you are trying to say?
Yes.
Took me a while to understand your terms but the answer is yes.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
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Message 250 of 301 (302255)
04-07-2006 11:11 PM
Reply to: Message 248 by lfen
04-07-2006 10:52 PM


Re: Satheism, Watheism
You want to posit energy as a third kind of entity in the world?
Isn't it clear that Robin is simply saying there are living things and nonliving things? Energy isn't a living thing.
Either there is a living being who made it all
Or it all simply exists somehow or other on its own

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Faith 
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From: Nevada, USA
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Message 252 of 301 (302259)
04-07-2006 11:29 PM
Reply to: Message 251 by lfen
04-07-2006 11:17 PM


Re: Hearsay
No, I do not want to debate the authorship. There is plenty of internal evidence that the authors were who the books were attributed to.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
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Message 255 of 301 (302263)
04-07-2006 11:46 PM
Reply to: Message 253 by lfen
04-07-2006 11:37 PM


Re: Satheism, Watheism
Quite possibly Robin is wanting to distinguish between living things and non living things. What I am saying is that is a meaningless distinction because there are no things (entities) at all. All there is is a complex processing that is ongoing.
Does it make any sense to ask the question What set all this complex processing in motion originally?
For the sake of discussion I'm sure you can recognize the distinction between living and nonliving things at least, or is it not even worth it for the sake of discussion?
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-07-2006 11:48 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
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Message 262 of 301 (302334)
04-08-2006 10:30 AM
Reply to: Message 261 by robinrohan
04-08-2006 10:24 AM


Re: Beings and Things
OK, I didn't think "living things" said well enough what you were getting at with "beings" but "sentient beings" didn't either. I wonder if you will ever get to the title point about the case against the existence of God since the whole thread is bogged down in definitional confusions.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
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Message 268 of 301 (302392)
04-08-2006 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 267 by 1.61803
04-08-2006 12:21 PM


Re: Oh but it is based on fact
Would you please define for the purpose of this argument what your going to use as a definition of facts ?
The witnesses testify to the facts and I believe them, therefore I believe the facts they testify to, that is, the entire account they give of Jesus, in fact the entire account of the Bible from beginning to end. That is what happens when you believe what truthful witnesses tell you. What they tell you is fact. Just as the existence of Australia is a fact although I've never been there and merely believe those who have.
As for convincing anybody else, I already said that {abe: the difficulty of} this is due to the prejudices in the hearers, and explained how. They bring to the hearing of the witnesses a prejudice against what the witnesses say.
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-08-2006 12:34 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 272 of 301 (302407)
04-08-2006 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 271 by robinrohan
04-08-2006 1:03 PM


Re: Summary comments
I thought at one time there was a "moral argument" against the existence of God. It is indeed a very common claim. If there was a God as described in the OP, he would not allow the suffering we see in the world. This God would be immoral, having done harm to innocent creatures. Certain Christans answer this charge with the concept of the Fall, but evolution does away with the possibility of a Fall. I think now, however, that this argument fails. Our morals, being ungrounded, are presumably subjective. If so, a subjective moral judgment accusing God of cruelty fails, because a subjective judgment is no good at all as evidence of any charge against anybody, God or people.
Not following part of this. WHICH argument fails? The Fall? I don't think you mean that but its position in the paragraph leads one to that thought. And I think you must have left out a step or two to demonstrate that our morals are ungrounded.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 276 of 301 (302467)
04-08-2006 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 273 by nwr
04-08-2006 1:53 PM


Re: Summary comments
Reasoning is done by a subject, so in inherently subjective.
This is false NWR. All reasoning is done by a subject, but some reasoning is objective because it involves giving attention to the external problem or object or to the terms of the argument. It is about truth not about feeling or attitude.
In journalism, back when people still believed in objectivity, it was the discipline journalists cultivated of keeping their own views of a situation scrupulously out of their report. At a minimum it is an avoidance of value judgments. It is in fact possible to do this. In recent years it seems to me and some others that including value judgments or "spin" in a news report is the method of choice, usually done covertly or subtly with the choice of a word.
This is not to say that all objective reasoning leads to truth, as there is always still error in the best of reasoning, but it is objective nevertheless if it is aimed at discovering truth.
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-08-2006 05:02 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
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Message 277 of 301 (302481)
04-08-2006 5:08 PM
Reply to: Message 275 by Rainman2
04-08-2006 3:18 PM


The Western concept of God
I would just like to point out that God is not the God of the west but the entire world. And if there was one specific place it would be Israel in Asia, Inbetween the three major continents (before they spread out to much it is where the Christ was born, and as they spread out the gospel did with them including into the west.)
Of course God is God of the entire world. The reason for focusing on the concept of the God of Western Tradition is that it is the concept of God most familiar to us in the West. And this is no doubt because the Biblical God had the biggest impact historically in Europe and America over the last two millennia, up until relatively recently, although the specific theology of the Christian God (the Trinity for instance) is not part of the definition that Robin gave.
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-08-2006 05:09 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 282 of 301 (302520)
04-08-2006 6:55 PM
Reply to: Message 281 by nwr
04-08-2006 6:17 PM


Summary comments cont'd -- plus my own
You are using the sense in my second sentence (the publically expressible steps taken), while I am using it as the mental activity of the reasoner.
But the term is simply not used in this latter sense, and to use it that way is to derail the discussion.
============================================================
ABE: Summary Comments: I didn't really understand the idea of trying to come up with a positive reason to reject the idea of the existence of God (as opposed to the usual attempt to discredit the arguments for the existence of God), but hoped to see it developed, and am disappointed that it bogged down in all these definitional concerns -- although I think I finally understand why it did. Maybe these issues should have been taken to another thread as they disrupted the intended topic.
I'm interested to see that Robin has rejected the moral argument against God, which I gather he finally did on the basis of the subjectivity of moral arguments, rather than on the basis of the Fall. --?
I'd like to see a list of the arguments against the existence of God.
Maybe a new thread would be in order in which definitional sallies are kept to a minimum and these kinds of arguments are spelled out in the OP?
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-08-2006 07:51 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 287 of 301 (302685)
04-09-2006 5:47 PM
Reply to: Message 286 by lfen
04-09-2006 5:19 PM


Re: The Western concept of God
I am having a hard time grasping your point, or grasping why you think it important, so for that reason I don't want to waste the thread on my reaction to it, but thought I'd venture one post. When I get what you are talking about it seems obvious and trivial. The fact that things change in no way negates the thingness of things. All things are transitory, but they are still things for whatever time they are those things and even when they change form they never lose a certain something that identifies them.
The one unchanging thing in the universe is God. And in fact I think it's interesting and maybe apropos that the ceaseless round of change in the Creation inspired a monk, Brother Lawrence, to give himself to God. It was simply the observation of the changing seasons that suddenly caused him to see the greatness of God. I never really understood what it was about this observation that caused him to see God in such glory, but it does bring home, I think, a recognition of the immutability of God outside and above all temporal change.
Brother Lawrence.
He told me that God had done him a singular favour, in his conversion at the age of eighteen. That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time, the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and Power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul.
This message has been edited by Faith, 04-09-2006 05:49 PM

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 291 of 301 (302701)
04-09-2006 7:33 PM
Reply to: Message 290 by lfen
04-09-2006 6:53 PM


Not western, universal
It really is too bad this thread is so close to the end and we are discussing what is only a peripheral topic, and arguments against the existence of God are being ignored.
This time I have to question that what you are opposing is the "Western tradition." While one Eastern religion may have made much of the observation of endless change, there is nothing about other cultures in general that denies the same kind of logic that is being used by Robin on this thread. That is, there is nothing particularly "western" about the recognition of the reality of things and beings. It's universally human.
You are merely focusing on one particular strand of thought which is rather esoteric and obscure. And it is no less western in its esotericism than eastern. You mention Heraclitus as one who made much of this observation of ceaseless change, and he is a Western thinker. Buddha is an Eastern mystic. They are both outside their cultural traditions as far as how the culture thinks about reality. I also looked up Korzybski and found him among the cadre of Western oddballs as I think of them as Buckminster Fuller and Heinlein.
The idea of the Western concept of God has nothing to do with any of that. It simply refers to the fact that for whatever reason Christianity took root more deeply in Europe than in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire where it was also planted.
I read quite a bit in the Catholic contemplatives, by the way, and I did find some parallels between John of the Cross and certain buddhist meditative practices I'd run across, but none of it as I recall has anything to do with the dissolution of the ego as Buddhism seems to present the idea. There is the sense of being ravished by love of God, love being often a way the self feels itself dissolved --but being dissolved in love, dissolved in the Object in THAT sense, not the same thing as being dissolved as a drop in the ocean of bliss or whatever. Different meanings of "dissolve" perhaps.
In any case this has nothing to do with the topic of this thread after all.

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