RE: I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!
August 22, 2009 at 8:28 pm
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2009 at 8:45 pm by Jon Paul.)
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote:JP Wrote:You have failed to demonstrate that and only managed to repeat it using your fallacious definitions.Failed to demonstrate what? Fallacious definitions?
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(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: If he arose from chance that would be extremely improbabel, this is why he's complex.That's what I have been addressing all along.
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: To say is nontemporal does nothing. How does being nontemporal make him any more simple? He still needs evidence.No. I never said that he is nontemporal makes him simple. The reason why he is nontemporal is the reason why he is simple; namely, that he is pure actuality, with nothing of potentiality and composition. That he is non-temporal makes a difference to the measure of complexity, whereas the essential simplicity lies in his pure actuality.
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: How? When? Where? Where is the actual evidence? Where? You can call God what you like but you still need evidence for him.I will point to the posts I've already written about why the state of affairs of impure actuality necessitates that there be pure actuality (God). Here, here, here, here.
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: I made a postulate that God was complex because you don't just get God out of nowhere. He needs an explanation - a big one. He's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. And if he's nontemporal that doesn't make any difference untill: A. You can show that he's none temporal, and B. You can show that this makes him any less complex and any more probable. And then C. You still have to properly evidence God of course. (D. If you want to).A; a fact of him being actus purus, B, a fact of him being actus purus.
And again, you conflate two separate issues. Whether God as an entity is ontologically complex in theory has nothing to do with whether God exists. If it did, you would not claim that God is complex in theory without conceding his existence; but you do, because it's not a matter of evidence, but of the implicit ontology even in hypothesis.
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: No because your accusation of strawman is false, and even if I had made one it is irrelevant to my argument Untill you provide evidence that nontemporal makes him any less complex and that he is nontemporal, whether you call him temporal or not is irrelevant to the reason I gave that he's complex if he's temporal.Him being non-temporal has nothing to do with him being complex or not, but with the measure of complexity in his ontological plane.
(August 22, 2009 at 7:52 pm)EvidenceVsDelusion Wrote: What strawman? As I have said: 1. If he was temporal and arose from chance alone this would be complex 2. This is analogous to him 'being there from the beginning', he's just as complex and requires just as much an explanation untill evidenced otherwise 3. Nontemporal also applies untill you give me evidence that it should be any different.You claim that if an atemporal being (actus purus) was temporal and arose from chance alone, this would be complex. I reply: no, it is a self-contradiction, it cannot be even in theory nevermind in praxis, because it contains a contradiction in terms. The only way you can claim that it is possible either in theory or practice to consider the scenario that "if God was temporal and arised from chance alone", is to address a God who is not actus purus, because actus purus necessitates nontemporality (e.g. God is not a potentiality which is actualised/an entity that "arises"). If you do that, then you are addressing a temporal ontology which is not actus purus, and thereby not God, and this equals to the straw man or non-sequitur of pretending to make significantive conclusions about the status of actus purus complexity by addressing the status of complexity of something which is not actus purus. Since it is not actus purus, it would have none of the other attributes of God, either; such as omnipotence, omnipresence, eternality, omniscience, etc, since all of these attributes are ultimately equal to actus purus, and are not arbitrarily predicated, and do not exist without actus purus. In other words, God cannot be temporal and "arise by chance", and still be God. A random object with a spatiotemporal and material ontology can.
The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
-G. K. Chesterton
-G. K. Chesterton