RE: I am a Catholic, ask me a question!
July 18, 2009 at 11:56 am
(This post was last modified: July 18, 2009 at 11:56 am by Jon Paul.)
(July 18, 2009 at 3:47 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: 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).Right. But this is a straw man argument. I am not merely claiming any God to exist, but claiming the only logically reasonable kind of theism: transcendental monotheism. The attributes of such a God are not defined by arbitrary predication, but by logical necessity. For if such a God transcends reality, which is the definition of the hypothesis, the attributes logically follow of themselves: it must be beyond time (eternal), beyond space (omnipresent), beyond the finite limitations of the universe it itself spawned (omnipotent, omniscient), immutable (transcending causality) and so on and so forth. These are logically necessary attributes, if we want to be consistent with the definition of God as being the transcendental source of reality. They are not arbitrary theistic claims with no logical grounds.
(July 18, 2009 at 3:47 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: 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?Exactly. You as an atheist are forced to acknowledge that there is no objective truth, due to the very epistemic structure of atheism. In other words, in the epistemic structure of atheism, atheism is not even true itself, nothing is true, because there is no truth. Truth is an abstraction of an ape-mind, which has no value beyond it's apparent predictive survival qualities (and even that is another abstraction of the brains chemistry which has no transcendent truth value). Everything is reduced to the brain chemistry, and nothing more.
(July 18, 2009 at 3:47 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: OK ... first point.There are no replacements for the expressions I use. Language is indeed a communication tool, and I am being very clear as to what I am communication in terms of meaning. If I used everday language, I would likely be abusing many words beyond what they were intended for.
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.
(July 18, 2009 at 3:47 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: 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.You haven't provided any argument why it is a special pleading. My argument, given it's rational grounds, fulfills the criteria for proper basicality, as far as I can see. If it doesn't, then you are going to have to show me where it invokes special pleading.
Special pleading, used this broadly, is an informal argumentation fallacy.
(July 18, 2009 at 3:47 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: Ah yes ... metaphysics!Right. As I've already said, metaphysics are implicit in any communication of meaning. If you don't like that, remain silent. But you cannot say anything without implicit metaphysics. Also, the fun is really that an atheist will claim to be "rationally driven", yet when it suits you, you will simply call rational arguments for "useless metaphysics" without demonstrating where it errs. That is a red herring.
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!
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton