RE: Ontology of God--Theological Noncognitivist View
January 16, 2010 at 1:00 pm
(This post was last modified: January 16, 2010 at 1:25 pm by fr0d0.)
(January 16, 2010 at 9:13 am)Zen Badger Wrote: So you are saying that the whole universe is God.
No. The whole Universe and God is God.
(January 16, 2010 at 9:23 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Fr0d0,
How can you find out what is NOT God before you first agree on what God IS!
If God =anything other than what you know what is... then God just= the unknown perhaps?
Which is nothing more than metaphorical:?
Easy: because we can't know what God is.
If we can know what he isn't, then we know he isn't the unknown right? Because nothing at all can be known about the unknown. So God can't be metaphorical.
(January 16, 2010 at 9:24 am)Tiberius Wrote:(January 16, 2010 at 8:50 am)fr0d0 Wrote: You are not God - we can clearly know that...I'm gonna be the uber-agnostic here and challenge that statement. How do we know he isn't God?
We can't know in that sense. In the sense that we can't know absolutes. But to assume that would break as soon as we considered God further. Hmm.. I wish I was Arcanus

(January 16, 2010 at 9:27 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: How, fr0d0, do you know that God is not disguising himself in that form? (After all it is said that God "Works in mysterious ways"). Would God not be capable of doing that?
God is in Kich and Kich is part of God. God could use Kich and be controlling Kich... but we couldn't logically say that Kich is the sum of God. (No disrespect intended Kich


(January 16, 2010 at 9:30 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Well, since Frodo maintains that the whole universe IS God. We must therefore all be God. Dammit, I've just had an evil thought. Do I now have to condemm myself to hell?????
Since you're talking Christianity again LOL


(January 16, 2010 at 9:33 am)Knight Wrote:fr0d0 Wrote:So if I were to define you as not vegetable or mineral but animal would that not help define you?You are defining me in two ways here which makes your analogy a fallacy. You first define me as not vegetable or mineral. That is extremely vague...I could be almost anything! I think you realized that, which is why you added on "but animal." You have now switched to positively defining me. How did you do that? How did you know that since I'm not a vegetable or a mineral, I MUST be an animal? Why couldn't I be a rock, a piece of chocolate, a gaseous planet, an inanimate object, a magical talking box with fingers to type, or something else? You have made observations of me without even having met or seen me.
Well if you were a rock you'd be mineral; chocolate you'd be vegetable etc. By process of elimination animal is all you could be as something existant in the physical universe. Yeah I could be a lot more vague... but for simplicity I started with the first question of the '20 Questions' game.
(January 16, 2010 at 9:33 am)Knight Wrote:How many legs; Live in water, on the land or in the air; Meat or vegetable diet... you can see how it's possible to easily narrow down what you are by what you are not. When we get to human we can start narrowing down locations then names... we'd probably be able to identify you in person.Quote:Apply that successively to what I can know doesn't apply to you, and you can see that I can come up with a pretty good idea of what you are.
No, you can't. Even when you somehow concluded that I was an animal, there are millions of different species on Earth...
(January 16, 2010 at 9:33 am)Knight Wrote:Quote:This is how God is defined and it clearly is effective in formulating an idea of what God is.
It clearly is not.
Tis so

(January 16, 2010 at 9:33 am)Knight Wrote:Quote:You are not God - we can clearly know that... so that shows already there are some things we know are not God which is what I'm saying. Do that a lot more and you can arrive at what God is.
God is in everything but each individual component alone does not equal God. It's quite simple.
You already assume you know what God is. How do you know God is in everything? I don't see him. Is he in my sperm? Damn, I never knew that warm feeling that comes over me was a religious experience!
Someone else here suggested that God is either creator or emergent. And we're going with creator, which can then lead to everything as being 'of God'. You see him as everything your eyes see, and you mind understands. Everything is spiritual

(January 16, 2010 at 9:33 am)Knight Wrote: Alright, now I'm just messing with your ambiguity. Since I'm sure you probably wouldn't get the point of including the above, I'll make it clear now: What exactly does that mean, "God is in everything." I assume you mean God is omnipresent. Again, how do you know? Have you measured him? I think you are hinting at another attribute you have given God ("Creator"), but I won't knock that connection down unless you actually say it.
Again, the point is I don't know what he is: only what he isn't.
It was or also was St Thomas Rabbit: the Via Negativa is one of his 3 ways to understand God.
Rabbit Wrote:IMHO the statement from St Augustine excludes knowledge of any attribute. So whatever you say about your god, it will be a lie.
That we can't know isn't the same as our logical assumptions being false.