RE: Theists - I want to know what you think
May 11, 2018 at 1:35 pm
(This post was last modified: May 11, 2018 at 1:41 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(May 10, 2018 at 6:16 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: My position is that there is no certain basis on which any belief system rests and yet the human condition requires each of us to have beliefs that rest, either tacitly or explicitly, on some freely adopted intellectual assumptions.
I don't think the most fundamental axiom of all lacks a certain basis. I don't think there's any basis more certain than the very basis that allows all certainty itself to be reached.
I don't see how reason itself is not a reasonable axiom. Wouldn't any other sort of axiom be... unreasonable?
You still haven't clarified what you mean by saying that beliefs can be rational without being reasonable (EDIT: Oh wait you said it the other way around. You said they can be reasonable without being rational. Again, what's the difference?). That doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
Surely if God were to exist the very minimum characteristics for God would be Logos. Without logic itself being built into the essence of God I would consider God to be inferior to logic itself and therefore God would be kind of Logos's sidekick.
After all, God cannot do the logically impossible... doesn't that make him kind of inferior to logic unless it is literally part of him? The way I see it is that him having to follow certain rules makes the rules have power over him rather than the other way around (again, unless the rules are literally part of his being).
(May 11, 2018 at 12:01 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(May 11, 2018 at 11:02 am)SteveII Wrote: I know. I chose 'unknowable' on purpose. If you think there was a first cause and you deny it was God, then you are admitting to a brute fact (whether you realize it or not). A brute fact is unknowable.
Bullshit. That's a false dichotomy.
He's also confusing unknown with unknowable. And, even if the nature of the first cause is unknowable... that doesn't mean that pretending to know the nature of the first call and pretending it has a mind is at all rational. On the contrary... the most rational stance to take when you don't know is to withhold judgement until you do.