(January 11, 2023 at 12:10 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(January 10, 2023 at 11:53 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Are you saying that "something and not nothing, therefore, God exists"?  If true, is that all there is to being God?  Nothing more??

I suppose now you want me to explain how one goes from what-could-be-no-other-way to seeing Divine Love and Wisdom as the very foundation of the reality. Sure. I'll just condense 40 years of my theological reflection and private study into a couple sentences <sarcasm> :-) I cannot do that and besides you have your own wisdom that has gotten you this far through life. Who am I to say otherwise? I can point you in the what I think is the right direction, but personally I do not think you're interested because you keep tying to proof-text me.

The Christian tradition, very early on, expressed itself in various Creeds; is your faith beyond that, a simple declaration of what you believe & profess?? And, yes, as you know, the Church very much argued over the meaning of its Creeds, but, I am not asking for that here.

(January 11, 2023 at 12:20 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(January 10, 2023 at 11:17 pm)Objectivist Wrote: A rational being does not ask other rational beings to have faith.  So either this god does not exist or it is completely irrational.

This is assuming that an omnipotent God would be rational in the same way as people. But since people are far from being omnipotent or omniscient, we really don't know what such a God would do.

The argument seems to be "if I were God I would do this, but since no one is doing this there can't be a God." This seems very anthropocentric to me.

God, as theists profess, cannot do things that are logically impossible, and, so, God must share some attributes with Us, His Creation, or so the arguments go.

(January 11, 2023 at 12:59 am)Jehanne Wrote: God, as theists profess, cannot do things that are logically impossible

Yes, that's a standard part of the description.

Quote:and, so, God must share some attributes with Us, His Creation, or so the arguments go.

Do you mean that both God and people can't do things that are logically impossible? I'd agree with that.

That doesn't establish that a person's idea of how he would run a universe would be at all similar to an omniscient and omnipotent God's way of running the universe.

(January 11, 2023 at 12:59 am)Jehanne Wrote: God, as theists profess, cannot do things that are logically impossible, and, so, God must share some attributes with Us, His Creation, or so the arguments go.

Theists constantly claim that god is logical but when logic shows he is not possible, then they say that god is beyond logic or just illogical sometimes. So you get special pleading.

(January 11, 2023 at 1:46 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(January 11, 2023 at 12:59 am)Jehanne Wrote: God, as theists profess, cannot do things that are logically impossible

Yes, that's a standard part of the description.

Quote:and, so, God must share some attributes with Us, His Creation, or so the arguments go.

Do you mean that both God and people can't do things that are logically impossible? I'd agree with that.

That doesn't establish that a person's idea of how he would run a universe would be at all similar to an omniscient and omnipotent God's way of running the universe.

You're pounding on an open door. The whole idea of Christian theism is that God became man and walked among men, convincing some of them (historically, a tiny minority to be sure) that he was God. Now, I do not at all think that Jesus himself ever claimed that he was God or even divine, but, certainly, in the subsequent decades others began peddling that idea, and the meme took off, spread and morphed in a fragmented world religion that is with us today.

And, so, mistake or not, human beings at least have the capacity to be convinced that another person of their own rank is God. Is not the real McCoy, if He exists, capable of pulling off the same hat trick?

(January 11, 2023 at 7:48 am)Jehanne Wrote: Is not the real McCoy, if He exists, capable of pulling off the same hat trick?

I guess that depends very much on what you think the real God is like. Obviously Spinoza's God wouldn't undertake the kind of kenosis you describe. I think it would be fair to say that Spinoza's God "couldn't" become a person. Omnipotence doesn't mean that God could go against his own nature. 

The threads that people start on this forum nearly always address the anthropomorphic emotional God from a literal reading of the Old Testament -- the concept of God that Blake called Nobodaddy. So the argument is that God would think and act like a big powerful person. I agree with you that if God were like that, he would likely perform demonstrations as he does in the Old Testament.

Or the new testament. Or the quran. Or any of the hindu sacred texts. As I said, gods have commonly been asserted to be in the demonstration business. The RCC won't stop minting saints and you can't throw a stick of butter without hitting miraculous toast. It seems like a truism that a god could prove that it existed, just as any of us could do the same...and do the same..daily, with each other. That's hardly acting like a big and powerful person, as even infants can demonstrate their existence. A god..or....really, anything we're aware of...even if it isn't omnipotent or omniscient can manage it, and so the misplaced hostility towards the questioners and attempts to have some other argument are all pointlessly transparent.

There's alot that a spinozan god can't do..but..spinoza was an atheist, so, he might have been aiming for that... lol. Demonstrating it's existence, though, wasn't one of those things. I think that example is particularly illuminating, as even if we were to peel back god until there is no god, only the term god standing in for notions of the sacred and a sense of the numinous - these things prove themselves to the experiencer, at a fundamental level. If we understand those god expressions as culturally coded non cognitive utterances they are capable of being completely and obviously true by the numbers.

(January 11, 2023 at 8:21 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(January 11, 2023 at 7:48 am)Jehanne Wrote: Is not the real McCoy, if He exists, capable of pulling off the same hat trick?

I guess that depends very much on what you think the real God is like. Obviously Spinoza's God wouldn't undertake the kind of kenosis you describe. I think it would be fair to say that Spinoza's God "couldn't" become a person. Omnipotence doesn't mean that God could go against his own nature. 

The threads that people start on this forum nearly always address the anthropomorphic emotional God from a literal reading of the Old Testament -- the concept of God that Blake called Nobodaddy. So the argument is that God would think and act like a big powerful person. I agree with you that if God were like that, he would likely perform demonstrations as he does in the Old Testament.

One must wonder how deists or pantheists know so much about what their God is unwilling to do or what feats their God is not capable of.

people who like to be full of shit for their god naturally are always willing to pretend what they think must be known  for their god to be persuasive is always readily at hand for them to know.

(January 11, 2023 at 12:25 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(January 10, 2023 at 11:49 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Is that any reason why an advanced alien could convincingly represent himself to you as both of these things?

An advanced alien could not rationally the satisfy requirements of a self-subsisting necessary ground for all existence. If you truly believe otherwise, I challenge you to demonstrate that an advanced  alien could conceivably be the necessary ground of all existence. That's quite the implicit claim you have made! :-)

As for me, I consider the Principle of Non-Contradiction an Absolute. It is an ever-present effect of the Eternal. If there were/are advanced aliens, they would be equally bound by the PNC. Since the PNC is logically prior to all contingent beings, I could never be rationally convinced that an advanced alien was cause of the PNC.

Is your god subject to the PNC?