RE: I am a Catholic, ask me a question!
July 24, 2009 at 4:58 pm
(This post was last modified: July 24, 2009 at 5:24 pm by Jon Paul.)
(July 24, 2009 at 3:56 pm)Purple Rabbit Wrote: Only it's local manifestation is, it's essence equals nothing less than the whole of non-contingent actuality.Right. The vaccum cleaner has no necessary qualities of pure actuality (such as omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, immutability, mind, will, intellect, absolute perfection by being void of potentiality) and has done nothing to show that it has, and has no special significance within the course of the natural evolution of the universe. It is an entirely absurd suggestion.
What you fail to see is that the matter of the impure actuality of the universe only lays the foundation for the necessity of monotheism, which has nothing to do with specific questions like the divinity of Jesus. The one relevance to that is the fundamental coherence between scripture and pure actuality. God is defined as pure actuality. Yahweh means to be, and in the scriptures, this Yahweh, or He who is, defines his identity as "I am that I am". And Jesus defines himself as I AM as well, over 40 times in the New Testament, as in "Before Abraham was, I AM". All we have is the coherence between what we can know and what we need revelation to know. And here there is such a coherence. What follows are the attestations of omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and so on, that we would expect for pure actuality's selfdemonstration.
We can prove that God exists by natural means, and we can disprove theories that make no sense and are logically incoherent and contradictory of reality. We can also know that humanity has a special relationship to God, that humanity has been generated in likeness of God, by being intellectual, by having great power, by having great knowledge, by being almost the god of the universe. Indeed even the fact that humanity understands the necessity of the transcendental God for the universes existence makes for this teleotic relationship.
We can know, by natural means therefore, that suggesting a fundamental teleotic relationship between God and humanity is rational, due to the likeness that exists between pure actuality and humanity analogiously. From that, we can only compare different worldviews and see what is more likely to be true, and a Christian worldview is certainly more likely to be true given these grounds, than a worldview which does not affirm Christianity to be true.
But since this is the kind of argument you are going to continue with (which has nothing to do with the issue at hand, which I was dealing with in the post you responded to), we can either simply continue forever with absurd ideas, or I can simply stop wasting my time discussing with you. You're simply unable to stay on one topic and focus on what the topic is about.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton