I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Kyuuketsuki]

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.

No it is not a straw man .,.,., a strawman is when you set up an analogous scenario, destroy it and declare the original scenario defeated by that analogous defeat ... I have not set up such a scenario (though it is entirely possible I have used another) and therefore you are either lying or mistaken.

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.

Lovely I am sure ... now would you care to answer the question I asked you and not the question you decided you wanted to?

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.

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.

Yes there are replacements, if there weren't no one would ever be able to learn a subject and you, in my opinion, are using that excuse as a way to evade the points I am raising.

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.

It is special pleading because you are implicitly excepting your claims from the usual requirements of evidence and a rational explanation of the same.

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!

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.

How dare you come to OUR forum and insist one of us cannot comment validly on your arguments you arrogant disingenuous [expletive deleted] when you havened even answered the point raised ... answer the [expletive deleted] points I have raised!

Kyu