(August 13, 2009 at 3:32 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: 1) If there is a transcendental God, then he is a necessary being, and then the universe cannot work "just fine without him". If there is not, then there is not a necessity of that being, and then the universe can work just fine without him. You just proved, yet again, that all you really have to offer is a presupposition: namely the presupposition that there is not a necessary being, only in which case the latter conclusion is correct.
If that's an argument then what you have failed to understand is the burden of proof.
A transcendental God is an assumption. And yes, no transcendental God is also an assumption. But the burden of proof is on those who believe in a God. Because what we already know to exist, the universe, by itself, is a less complex hypothesis than the universe + .An omnipotent supernatural "God" with a so-called 'objective mind'.
Untill there is any evidence for God first, the burden of proof is on the believer, not the disbeliever.
If I claim to know there's no God. Then that's different, I am claiming to know something I can't then. I am claiming to be able to have proof of a negative - a logical fallacy. So I would need positive evidence in that case.
But seen as all I'm saying is there's "no evidence for God", then untill I know of any I can rationally assume the burden of proof is on you, the believer, not me.
Quote:2) A transcendental God is not just a God who exists only from the beginning, but exactly transcendental to time, and therefore nontemporal and existing wholly apart from the beginning and the ending. Otherwise he would be immanent and temporal, not transcendent.
Well this definition of God is all fine and dandy as any other. But like the others it has one crutial problem - it lacks evidence.
Quote:You can test Gods existence through the principles of logic, rational and empirical inquiry, since if God truly exists, then his existence has effects which means that we can know, by understanding the nature of reality, whether God is the source for the effect we call the universe. Though you cannot directly observe him, that doesn't exclude evidence, neither of purely rational nor empirically based kinds. We've been over this before; direct observation is not the only kind of evidence of a thing. There is also evidence after the effect.
Yeah, sure. Where is it? Where do you genuinely demonstrate his existence? I don't care how you do it or whether it's direct or not - I just care that it's valid.
EvF
