RE: Let's answer CARM's Questions for Atheists
September 15, 2014 at 8:32 am
(This post was last modified: September 15, 2014 at 8:37 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
(September 15, 2014 at 3:46 am)Esquilax Wrote: ...go back and read the question we were prompted to respond to: you just said that we can have physical evidence of an immaterial thing, which CARM labels as a category error.But you can deduce the existence of immaterial things from material things. And if you take a step back, you can also infer the existence of material things from personal experience, which is not a material thing. And that takes you right back to where you started. Unless you accept the concept of the immaterial, the concept of materiality likewise makes little sense. You can go back and forth trying to define one in terms of the other without reaching any conclusion as to which is primary and thus remain forever stuck in paradox. (Hence the category error) The simpler solution is to just accept that both materiality and immateriality are part of one reality.
(September 15, 2014 at 3:46 am)Esquilax Wrote: ... in a discussion about an apparently immaterial god, the first thing you jump to is something that doesn't actually exist, but is a term used to describe the absence of something, an interruption in an expected pattern of material things that comprise a solid object.
Changing the name from ‘hole’ into the fancier sounding ‘an interruption in an expected pattern’ does not solve the problem. An interruption is just as immaterial as a hole, gap, opening, chasm, or rip. In each case we see similar forms that can manifest in various materials. Forms do not depend on specific substances for their existence. This property allows people to say things like, ‘the hole in the metal is the same size as the hole in this paper.” If you insist that holes do not properly exist, then you simultaneously and tacit deny the existence of all other forms, like triangles.