I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Kyuuketsuki]

You believe you are right to accept your god as truth and you do so because you believe that it is logically impossible for that god not to exist.

When you say "my god", you sound like I am just speaking of some arbitrarily predicated God. I am not speaking of an arbitrarily predicated God, but specifically the transcendental omnimax God, who can be defined as the transcendental source of everything that exists, that is, as pure actuality.

I am indeed speaking of your god as arbitrary on the basis that there are hundreds/thousands of other gods who are or have been claimed to exist and none of them have ever had a single shred of supporting validatable evidence. That you believe it exists is fine, but it also opens the logical door for me to view your argument as insane (and I do).

You believe that there cannot be no god because it refutes the concept of objective moral truth and allows for subjective morality and (as far as I can tell) the possibility that we may be more controlled by nature than controllers of it.

No. I believe it cannot be objectively true that God does not exist, because if God does not exist, there is no objective truth.

Same thing as far as I can tell. As far as I know there are no objective truths ... care to tell us one or more?

I'm afraid I can't even make the vaguest sense out of your second paragraph because it is complete and utter philosophical psychobabble. In essence it seems to be some kind of complex special pleading asking us to accept that your god exists because you believe it does.

It is not a special pleading. The reason you call it babble is likely because you are not familiar with the language devices I use. I use the language of the classical world, and of the Thomistic tradition. It is essential for understanding my argument that you understand the distinction of actuality versus potentiality. Here is a definition: http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=...t_Potentia

OK ... first point.

Language is a communication tool. If you come to a forum and say a load of stuff in a language that is not readily comprehended then you are failing in the basic use of language because you are NOT communicating. You need to explain yourself in the sort of language that the denizens of this place understand.

You didn't deal with why your argument wasn't special pleading therefore I will assume it is until you have raised a rational argument against it.

A question ... why should your theism be excepted from the usual demands of evidence and rational/compatible explanation?

It isn't. My monotheism is rationally demonstrable, as soon as you understand the metaphysics of what I am saying. Every statement and any language has implicit metaphysics, even when we don't realise it. Upon analysing metaphysical propositions and presuppositions implicit in any assertions and claims, we come nearer to reality. The tradition of philosophy has been to analyse and make explicit metaphysical discourses which would otherwise be kept implicit and incomprehensible. Such is the case with Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

I agree your theism is demonstrable, it's just a shame that your god is not.

Ah yes ... metaphysics!

Metaphysics is one of those academic, meaningless concepts that gets bounced around in these circles yet no one has yet demonstrated it is any way of value so I dismiss it and (along with Asimov and Feynman discussed later) I think I am in good company!

Philosophy seems to have (as is usual within the English language) a correct meaning and a number of common usage meanings but, thanks to the late Isaac Asimov (one of those dratted Doctor's of Philosophy as you know) and his "New Guide to Science", it appears that it derives from the ancient Greeks. Asimov devotes some space to philosophy where he referred to the Greek investigations of the universe and that they called (and I quote) 'their new manner of studying the universe philosophia ("philosophy"), meaning "love of knowledge" or, in free translation, "the desire to know"'.

So, with the above in mind, I consider one's philosophical stance to be the one that an individual adopts when attempting evaluate the world (the universe, the cosmic all, everything) in which they exist and it seems to me that the search for knowledge is, must be, an open-ended (tentative) search. In other words the true seeker of knowledge goes where the knowledge takes him/her, follows it to its logical conclusion no matter how unpalatable that conclusion might be and does so with an utterly open mind. I consider science, by its very nature, to be truly open-minded.

Whether or not this is the prime definition of philosophy is, of course, debatable ... I argue that it is because the others (current day philosophers) seem to provide little or no direct value to the real world, indeed it seems to me that much of the philosophy bandied about today is little more than academic psychobabble. I freely admit a number of assumptions must be made to progress anything anywhere, to form the basis of our knowledge but I consider these kind of tactics (employed by many halfway smart theists these days) to be those a bunch of hooligans muddying the water or upsetting the applecart just because they can, because it's often difficult to get a cohesive grip on the arguments they raise. It's a bit like when I used to be over on CI$ (CompuServe), you used to have 5 or 6 people discussing things in depth, another dozen or so chipping in intelligently every so often and then a few people whose posts equated to "Look at me" "Whoohoo" and "I'm over here" i.e. they were little but pointless wastes of time. My basic view is if you have nothing intelligent to say then STFU and listen ... I'm aware there are those who might figure I'm much the same because I can be abusive but I put a lot of effort into many of my posts and, whilst it may obscure my message, that can't be taken away.

Now Asimov makes no mention of metaphysics in his book and given the kind of book it was I feel one can reasonably assume he didn't have a great deal of time for it especially in relation to real science. This is confirmed in an interview where Asimov was asked what his general opinion was on ESP, metaphysics and astrology (interesting how the interviewer lumped those three together don't you think?) and Asimov replied, "I am a sceptic. I won't accept it without good, hard scientific evidence. And there isn't any so far!"

Richard Feynman also rejects metaphysics as being of particular use ... as far as he's concerned you don't need the metaphysics to do the physics!

Modern day philosophy is a much more complex beast than philosophy as it was defined by the ancient Greeks. Philosophy is (or should be) the application of logic and reason to (often) abstract ideas and can often provide highly entertaining and interesting answers to perceived important questions however, alone, philosophy has never been able to provide any universally accepted facts about our universe (allowing for the fact that some individuals will never accept anything). Modern day philosophy remains useful to society because it often feeds back into the scientific process and ends up producing knowledge that can genuinely be applied to the real world. Modern day philosophy therefore can be seen to be a valid philosophical tool.

Metaphysics however exclusively concerns itself with that which cannot be proven, cannot be demonstrated, cannot be directly or indirectly observed by any method and can be somewhat cynically defined as a means of justifying that which cannot be demonstrated empirically. Supporters of metaphysics would like it to be taken seriously however, in order to do so, one has to establish a standard by which to measure it, to demonstrate it as fact and there are no standards by which any metaphysical concept can be measured. Despite its name it is not now and never will be a science and is of no use as a tool in the armoury of the real knowledge seeker.

So we have me being the sceptic and you mounting a metaphysical argument in language few of us can truly understand ... oh I'm impressed Mr. Pope-Man ... really, truly impressed.

I don't suppose you have any validatable evidence to back up your claims do you?

Kyu