RE: I am a Catholic, ask me a question!
August 8, 2009 at 11:39 am
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2009 at 11:40 am by Jon Paul.)
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: But we already know about animals and their footprints. God doesn't leave any.God is not an animal, like a car is not a brush, and a mind is not a rock. It was a metaphor. And the point was exactly that God does, metaphorically speaking, leave "footprints".
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: What makes you think god created everything?I have provided many answers to this question and elaborated on them in countless posts now. I have provided two kinds of arguments, one is the epistemological argument, which I have already spent hours elaborating on, notably on page 16. But what is relevant to the metaphor of the footprint of an animal, is the a posteriori argument. I have provided an a posteriori argument that bases it self on the reality of the universe and it's nature, and thus utillises a "footprint"-approach (a posteriori / after the effect) by taking it's premise in what is known to be actual before coming to the conclusion of what explains it. That is opposed to, for instance, the ontological argument, which is an a priori argument (before the effect).
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: Just because the univurse exists doens't automaticly mean god did it. Not everything needs a designer or creater. Evolution is a process that requires no outside intelligance. Planets, solar systems and galaxes can form on their own.Of course, but all those things already presuppose the existence of reality and the universe.
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: How did god come into existance? How did he create energy?How did God come into existence?
The question asks for temporal account for the ontogenesis of a nontemporal being whose ontogenesis is accordingly nontemporal. The question is, in other words a fallacy, because it applies a standard to something to which that standard in and of the nature of the thing does not apply. It's like asking "What exists outside of the totality of all existence?". The question is meaningless because it contradicts itself by positing existence outside of "the totality of all existence", a self-referential self-contradiction. Like the question of "When/how did God come into existence?" is positing temporal existence in "God", a word which implies, by definition, a nontemporal being.
How did he create energy?
Energeia (greek) is the word that in Latin is translated into actus. The conception of God as actus purus means that God, in his essence is pure energeia. In other words, any energy in the universe is the actualising (or energizing, in the Greek) principle of God at work. So he created the universe out of nothing, but the power (energy) to do so lies in his own nature.
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: What makes you so sure he exists and done what you think he did. I don't believe in this fairytale of yours. It's too simplistic, it lacks details and it lacks evidence.There are many details in it, but I did not come here to pour out details, but rather to sketch a general picture of some reasonable grounds on which to accept Gods existence.
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: Even if there was a god, which god and why? Also why should I believe it?The God that my argument establishes. If you are asking what attributes he has, then the answer is the attributes emanating from our understanding of God as transcendent, that the argument necessitates (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, maximal perfection, immutability, eternality/nontemporality, immateriality, nonspatiality, etc).
(August 8, 2009 at 11:11 am)Ace Wrote: When I look around I see formation not creation. Things can form on their own.Formation and creation are not contradictions. In fact, some of the words used for "creation" in Hebrew and Greek in the Bible also mean to "form". But it's also true that even when things in our world apparently form on their own, they never really form own their own independently of the rest of the physical universe. It's rather an interplay of forces that already have been formed and already have received their existence which continues the cycle and procession of new formations.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton