I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Jon Paul]

I believe I am in right reason when I accept God's existence as truth. In the first run because I don’t believe anything else is a possibility, without logical self-contradiction. The denial of God’s existence else ultimately refutes its own epistemic foundation by rejecting an objective foundation and standard for logical and moral truth (God)

Can you further explain this part please? How is denying God self-contradictory, if that's what you are saying? I am having trouble following there. And when you put "(God)" (in brackets), are you saying that denying God is to deny truth (and 'moral truth', etc) because God is truth? Because my question is how and why you believe God is truth. Are you saying you believe God is truth because you can't deny God because that's to deny truth because God is truth? Because if so that's obviously completely circular! So my question is:

Can you further explain the above paragraph I quoted, please? If that's ok?

Hello again. I couldn't sleep, so I might as well reply now.

Are you saying that denying God is to deny truth (and 'moral truth', etc) because God is truth?

Absolutely not. That would be a circular argument and an informal fallacy.

What I was speaking about was rather the epistemic structure of the presupposition of atheism (the presupposition that there is no God) as compared to the presupposition of orthodox Christian monotheism (that God exists) or in any case, the presupposition of omnimax transcendental monotheism.

So I am not dealing, in that paragraph, with whether or not God exists, or what the truth is, but simply on the epistemic foundation for truth in the two different worldviews.

An atheist has no objective and infallible epistemical foundation and standard for logical and moral truth, according to his own worldview. By explicitly rejecting (or refusing to accept) the monotheistic foundation for infallible truth, it equals to subjectivism, because in his worldview there is no omniscient and infallible mind, only fallible and temporal human brain chemistry which is neither right nor wrong, it "simply is", and that provides no objective standard by which to determine truth, which is not itself a result of a temporal and fallible brain chemistry. And so there is no truth, and so atheism in its own epistemic structure denies its own objective truth, whereas omnimax transcendental (or simply Christian) monotheism affirms it.

So, let me try and paraphrase:

• You believe you are right to accept your god as truth and you do so because you believe that it is logically impossible for that god not to exist.

When you say "my god", you sound like I am just speaking of some arbitrarily predicated God. I am not speaking of an arbitrarily predicated God, but specifically the transcendental omnimax God, who can be defined as the transcendental source of everything that exists, that is, as pure actuality.

You believe that there cannot be no god because it refutes the concept of objective moral truth and allows for subjective morality and (as far as I can tell) the possibility that we may be more controlled by nature than controllers of it.

No. I believe it cannot be objectively true that God does not exist, because if God does not exist, there is no objective truth.

I'm afraid I can't even make the vaguest sense out of your second paragraph because it is complete and utter philosophical psychobabble. In essence it seems to be some kind of complex special pleading asking us to accept that your god exists because you believe it does.

It is not a special pleading. The reason you call it babble is likely because you are not familiar with the language devices I use. I use the language of the classical world, and of the Thomistic tradition. It is essential for understanding my argument that you understand the distinction of actuality versus potentiality. Here is a definition: http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=...t_Potentia

A question ... why should your theism be excepted from the usual demands of evidence and rational/compatible explanation?

It isn't. My monotheism is rationally demonstrable, as soon as you understand the metaphysics of what I am saying. Every statement and any language has implicit metaphysics, even when we don't realise it. Upon analysing metaphysical propositions and presuppositions implicit in any assertions and claims, we come nearer to reality. The tradition of philosophy has been to analyse and make explicit metaphysical discourses which would otherwise be kept implicit and incomprehensible. Such is the case with Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

Regards,
JP.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

So you're a Catholic,of the reactionary Latin rite persuasion?

I'm a recovering Catholic and atheist myself. I lack the depth of knowledge and/or the hubris to say "I'm' atheist,ask me about atheism"

From your grandiose post,I can only assume you are deeply learned,steeped in apologetics, Aquinas,Canon law and Sophistry. If not,why on earth should I be bothered with the views of some autodidact from of sub genus of a religion I've despised for 40 years?

No offence.

[Kyuuketsuki]

You believe you are right to accept your god as truth and you do so because you believe that it is logically impossible for that god not to exist.

When you say "my god", you sound like I am just speaking of some arbitrarily predicated God. I am not speaking of an arbitrarily predicated God, but specifically the transcendental omnimax God, who can be defined as the transcendental source of everything that exists, that is, as pure actuality.

I am indeed speaking of your god as arbitrary on the basis that there are hundreds/thousands of other gods who are or have been claimed to exist and none of them have ever had a single shred of supporting validatable evidence. That you believe it exists is fine, but it also opens the logical door for me to view your argument as insane (and I do).

You believe that there cannot be no god because it refutes the concept of objective moral truth and allows for subjective morality and (as far as I can tell) the possibility that we may be more controlled by nature than controllers of it.

No. I believe it cannot be objectively true that God does not exist, because if God does not exist, there is no objective truth.

Same thing as far as I can tell. As far as I know there are no objective truths ... care to tell us one or more?

I'm afraid I can't even make the vaguest sense out of your second paragraph because it is complete and utter philosophical psychobabble. In essence it seems to be some kind of complex special pleading asking us to accept that your god exists because you believe it does.

It is not a special pleading. The reason you call it babble is likely because you are not familiar with the language devices I use. I use the language of the classical world, and of the Thomistic tradition. It is essential for understanding my argument that you understand the distinction of actuality versus potentiality. Here is a definition: http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=...t_Potentia

OK ... first point.

Language is a communication tool. If you come to a forum and say a load of stuff in a language that is not readily comprehended then you are failing in the basic use of language because you are NOT communicating. You need to explain yourself in the sort of language that the denizens of this place understand.

You didn't deal with why your argument wasn't special pleading therefore I will assume it is until you have raised a rational argument against it.

A question ... why should your theism be excepted from the usual demands of evidence and rational/compatible explanation?

It isn't. My monotheism is rationally demonstrable, as soon as you understand the metaphysics of what I am saying. Every statement and any language has implicit metaphysics, even when we don't realise it. Upon analysing metaphysical propositions and presuppositions implicit in any assertions and claims, we come nearer to reality. The tradition of philosophy has been to analyse and make explicit metaphysical discourses which would otherwise be kept implicit and incomprehensible. Such is the case with Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

I agree your theism is demonstrable, it's just a shame that your god is not.

Ah yes ... metaphysics!

Metaphysics is one of those academic, meaningless concepts that gets bounced around in these circles yet no one has yet demonstrated it is any way of value so I dismiss it and (along with Asimov and Feynman discussed later) I think I am in good company!

Philosophy seems to have (as is usual within the English language) a correct meaning and a number of common usage meanings but, thanks to the late Isaac Asimov (one of those dratted Doctor's of Philosophy as you know) and his "New Guide to Science", it appears that it derives from the ancient Greeks. Asimov devotes some space to philosophy where he referred to the Greek investigations of the universe and that they called (and I quote) 'their new manner of studying the universe philosophia ("philosophy"), meaning "love of knowledge" or, in free translation, "the desire to know"'.

So, with the above in mind, I consider one's philosophical stance to be the one that an individual adopts when attempting evaluate the world (the universe, the cosmic all, everything) in which they exist and it seems to me that the search for knowledge is, must be, an open-ended (tentative) search. In other words the true seeker of knowledge goes where the knowledge takes him/her, follows it to its logical conclusion no matter how unpalatable that conclusion might be and does so with an utterly open mind. I consider science, by its very nature, to be truly open-minded.

Whether or not this is the prime definition of philosophy is, of course, debatable ... I argue that it is because the others (current day philosophers) seem to provide little or no direct value to the real world, indeed it seems to me that much of the philosophy bandied about today is little more than academic psychobabble. I freely admit a number of assumptions must be made to progress anything anywhere, to form the basis of our knowledge but I consider these kind of tactics (employed by many halfway smart theists these days) to be those a bunch of hooligans muddying the water or upsetting the applecart just because they can, because it's often difficult to get a cohesive grip on the arguments they raise. It's a bit like when I used to be over on CI$ (CompuServe), you used to have 5 or 6 people discussing things in depth, another dozen or so chipping in intelligently every so often and then a few people whose posts equated to "Look at me" "Whoohoo" and "I'm over here" i.e. they were little but pointless wastes of time. My basic view is if you have nothing intelligent to say then STFU and listen ... I'm aware there are those who might figure I'm much the same because I can be abusive but I put a lot of effort into many of my posts and, whilst it may obscure my message, that can't be taken away.

Now Asimov makes no mention of metaphysics in his book and given the kind of book it was I feel one can reasonably assume he didn't have a great deal of time for it especially in relation to real science. This is confirmed in an interview where Asimov was asked what his general opinion was on ESP, metaphysics and astrology (interesting how the interviewer lumped those three together don't you think?) and Asimov replied, "I am a sceptic. I won't accept it without good, hard scientific evidence. And there isn't any so far!"

Richard Feynman also rejects metaphysics as being of particular use ... as far as he's concerned you don't need the metaphysics to do the physics!

Modern day philosophy is a much more complex beast than philosophy as it was defined by the ancient Greeks. Philosophy is (or should be) the application of logic and reason to (often) abstract ideas and can often provide highly entertaining and interesting answers to perceived important questions however, alone, philosophy has never been able to provide any universally accepted facts about our universe (allowing for the fact that some individuals will never accept anything). Modern day philosophy remains useful to society because it often feeds back into the scientific process and ends up producing knowledge that can genuinely be applied to the real world. Modern day philosophy therefore can be seen to be a valid philosophical tool.

Metaphysics however exclusively concerns itself with that which cannot be proven, cannot be demonstrated, cannot be directly or indirectly observed by any method and can be somewhat cynically defined as a means of justifying that which cannot be demonstrated empirically. Supporters of metaphysics would like it to be taken seriously however, in order to do so, one has to establish a standard by which to measure it, to demonstrate it as fact and there are no standards by which any metaphysical concept can be measured. Despite its name it is not now and never will be a science and is of no use as a tool in the armoury of the real knowledge seeker.

So we have me being the sceptic and you mounting a metaphysical argument in language few of us can truly understand ... oh I'm impressed Mr. Pope-Man ... really, truly impressed.

I don't suppose you have any validatable evidence to back up your claims do you?

Kyu

[Dotard]

Can a sparrow maintain enough air speed to remain in flight from the tropics to the UK while carrying a coconut?

[Purple Rabbit]

Jon Paul, first let me thank you for the oppotunity you offer to shed some light on the RC view.

Here's my question. In one of your postings you state that you believe in your god because you "don’t believe anything else is a possibility, without logical self-contradiction". This means logic is a prerequiite for your belief, which I think is a good thing to do. I reckon you are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma that for me demonstrates the logical fallacy of the concept of absolute divine moral. In short 'Euthyphro' shows that it is a logical fallacy to accept divine moral as absolute moral. If there exists absolute moral it is not absolute because god says so, but it would be absolute independent of what god says about it and indeed of his existence. If absolute moral exists at all it is necessarily independent of god. If there is no absolute moral then it is a fallacy to claim divine origin for it. How do you cope with it?

[Edwardo Piet]

Hello again. I couldn't sleep, so I might as well reply now.

Are you saying that denying God is to deny truth (and 'moral truth', etc) because God is truth?

Absolutely not. That would be a circular argument and an informal fallacy.

What I was speaking about was rather the epistemic structure of the presupposition of atheism (the presupposition that there is no God) as compared to the presupposition of orthodox Christian monotheism (that God exists) or in any case, the presupposition of omnimax transcendental monotheism.

So I am not dealing, in that paragraph, with whether or not God exists, or what the truth is, but simply on the epistemic foundation for truth in the two different worldviews.

Oh, ok...but my question of is whether you believe you have any evidence for his existence or whether you take it on faith alone. So the question was about his existence :S

If you put that part somewhere, sorry, but I couldn't find it. I don't know how you can talk about the truth of God before you've addressed my question of whether you believe there's any actual evidence for his existence or not, or if you just 'take it on faith', it seems. Sorry if you did answer that part.

You seem to have answered my question for me in response to Kyu though! Seems you believe there is evidence in metaphysics! In which case my second question would be: What evidence; and how is it evidence?

EvF

[Tabby]

I've got a question...

If god is omnipotent, omniscient, W/E, why did he allow hell to be created in the first place if he KNEW that some people--no matter how bad, because I KNOW that no one deserves any kind of everlasting torture of any kind--would be going there, and yet the Bible says, "God loves us!"

...o rly?

---

Can a sparrow maintain enough air speed to remain in flight from the tropics to the UK while carrying a coconut?

is that some silly creationist theory?

[Jon Paul]

I am indeed speaking of your god as arbitrary on the basis that there are hundreds/thousands of other gods who are or have been claimed to exist and none of them have ever had a single shred of supporting validatable evidence. That you believe it exists is fine, but it also opens the logical door for me to view your argument as insane (and I do).

Right. But this is a straw man argument. I am not merely claiming any God to exist, but claiming the only logically reasonable kind of theism: transcendental monotheism. The attributes of such a God are not defined by arbitrary predication, but by logical necessity. For if such a God transcends reality, which is the definition of the hypothesis, the attributes logically follow of themselves: it must be beyond time (eternal), beyond space (omnipresent), beyond the finite limitations of the universe it itself spawned (omnipotent, omniscient), immutable (transcending causality) and so on and so forth. These are logically necessary attributes, if we want to be consistent with the definition of God as being the transcendental source of reality. They are not arbitrary theistic claims with no logical grounds.

Same thing as far as I can tell. As far as I know there are no objective truths ... care to tell us one or more?

Exactly. You as an atheist are forced to acknowledge that there is no objective truth, due to the very epistemic structure of atheism. In other words, in the epistemic structure of atheism, atheism is not even true itself, nothing is true, because there is no truth. Truth is an abstraction of an ape-mind, which has no value beyond it's apparent predictive survival qualities (and even that is another abstraction of the brains chemistry which has no transcendent truth value). Everything is reduced to the brain chemistry, and nothing more.

OK ... first point.

Language is a communication tool. If you come to a forum and say a load of stuff in a language that is not readily comprehended then you are failing in the basic use of language because you are NOT communicating. You need to explain yourself in the sort of language that the denizens of this place understand.

There are no replacements for the expressions I use. Language is indeed a communication tool, and I am being very clear as to what I am communication in terms of meaning. If I used everday language, I would likely be abusing many words beyond what they were intended for.

You didn't deal with why your argument wasn't special pleading therefore I will assume it is until you have raised a rational argument against it.

You haven't provided any argument why it is a special pleading. My argument, given it's rational grounds, fulfills the criteria for proper basicality, as far as I can see. If it doesn't, then you are going to have to show me where it invokes special pleading.

Special pleading, used this broadly, is an informal argumentation fallacy.

Ah yes ... metaphysics!

Metaphysics is one of those academic, meaningless concepts that gets bounced around in these circles yet no one has yet demonstrated it is any way of value so I dismiss it and (along with Asimov and Feynman discussed later) I think I am in good company!

Right. As I've already said, metaphysics are implicit in any communication of meaning. If you don't like that, remain silent. But you cannot say anything without implicit metaphysics. Also, the fun is really that an atheist will claim to be "rationally driven", yet when it suits you, you will simply call rational arguments for "useless metaphysics" without demonstrating where it errs. That is a red herring.

[Edwardo Piet]

Same thing as far as I can tell. As far as I know there are no objective truths ... care to tell us one or more?

Exactly. You as an atheist are forced to acknowledge that there is no objective truth, due to the very epistemic structure of atheism. In other words, in the epistemic structure of atheism, atheism is not even true itself, nothing is true, because there is no truth. Truth is an abstraction of an ape-mind, which has no value beyond it's apparent predictive survival qualities (and even that is another abstraction of the brains chemistry which has no transcendent truth value). Everything is reduced to the brain chemistry, and nothing more.

But there is still both 1. Evidence and 2. Subjective morality.

And no evidence for any objective morality. It's not like being an atheist means there's not evidence for anything, or that subjective moral can't be moral. Truth doesn't have to be absolute and absolutely objective. There is evidence for many things, not for God. So no reason to believe he exists. Unless you can enlighten me.

EvF

[Jon Paul]

But there is still both 1. Evidence and 2. Subjective morality.

I was not talking about either evidence or morality in the paragraph you quoted, but about the epistemic presuppositions concerning objective logical truth. Not moral truth, that was in the other post.

And no evidence for any objective morality. It's not like being an atheist means there's not evidence for anything, or that subjective moral can't be moral. Truth doesn't have to be absolute and absolutely objective. There is evidence for many things, not for God. So no reason to believe he exists. Unless you can enlighten me.

It's not about the evidence for or against. It's about the characteristics of the presupposition of an epistemic structure concerning the nature of epistemic objectivity, regardless of what truth or evidence there really is. To have truth or evidence, first you need the presumption that truth even exists (in the metaphysical sense).

Oh, ok...but my question of is whether you believe you have any evidence for his existence or whether you take it on faith alone. So the question was about his existence :S

You asked me to clarify that paragraph. It was not about whether or not God exists.

You seem to have answered my question for me in response to Kyu though! Seems you believe there is evidence in metaphysics! In which case my second question would be: What evidence; and how is it evidence?

Metaphysics is a convenient way to dismiss it. But (meta)physics, in my definition, only means starting with empirical reality, and recognising patterns at the foundation of it. Causality is an example of a metaphysical concept. Time is a metaphysical concept. Space is a metaphysical concept. Yet these things surely are part of reality. Metaphysics means understanding reality. Metaphysics is refined understanding of the basic patterns and mechanics of reality as they attest through empirical observation.

You ask me what evidence there is. I will give you an answer, but it's a long one. So don't ask such questions if you don't want long answers

Monotheism is not supposed to be proposed, and then evidenced. It is supposed to be the key which fits into the lock of reality. It is reality in its basic nature (temporality, causality, movement, impure actuality, order, telos, finity, contingency, consciousness) which makes it necessary to propose monotheism in the first run. And with an evidentialist approach, they are the evidences. But I prefer to call them the foundations of the proper basicality of transcendental monotheology.

Impure actuality is the phenomenon you really need to understand. In a way, it's another way to describe causality, but it's not entirely the same. It is basically the recognition of the fact that in reality, potentials (things that might have been, but aren't actual) rely on actualities outside of themselves for their own actuality, before they can become actual.

For instance, your parents procreated you. Therefore you exist. This procreation was the actualisation of the potential that you are. But you did not give yourself your own actuality - you rely on your actuality from outside of yourself. In this example, you rely on your parents actuality for your actuality. On a causal antecedent, in more familiar terms. We can see that our reality consists of impure actuality - not pure actuality. Pure actuality would imply that our reality is based on immediate actuality, with no outside or antecedent or transcendent actuality which puts it into being, such as we see in causality/time. In other words, causality is the essence of the potentiality of our reality. Spacetime can be understood as causality/impure actuality as well, time being the distance between causal events or the actualisations of potentials, and space being the distance between causal effects. Simply different dimensions of causality.

This impure actuality, and actualisation of potentials from outside of themselves, keeps happening all the time. It relies on the first actuality of potential - or in other words, the actuality of causality. Causality is a potentiality, because it is really just the process/mechanics of the actualisation of potentials from outside themselves - impure actuality.

My contention then is that since the actuality of causality is itself contingent upon its own actuality, it doesn't account for its own actuality, because that would be a circuar argument and infinite regress. We cannot account for the actuality of causality by invoking an actualised potentiality (such as the actuality of causality itself), because actualised potentiality implies causality. Actualised potentiality implies the actualisation of potential, and that is the impure actuality which is the foundation of causality. So it is necessary for causality to be actual, that it derives it actuality from something that has nothing of potentiality (that is, that it derives its actuality not just from another actualised potential, since that would be causality again).

This is where pure actuality comes in. Pure actuality is that which has nothing of potential, as opposed to impure actuality/causality, which is the continuous actualisation of potentials contingent upon a chain of actualisations as we see it in our reality. Pure actuality is that which is not contingent upon an actuality outside of itself for its own actuality, but is purely actual in and of itself. That is the only possible reason for the actuality of causality that we can show if we are to remain coherent with empirical reality, without reading fallacious circular concepts into it. Pure actuality, or actus purus, is the word that St. Thomas used for God. I will show why so. It is because of the very nature of pure actuality.

Now, since a pure actuality transcends everything of potentiality - that is, causality - it also transcends everything that comes with causality, including time and space (which, as I mentioned earlier, are connected with causality). The first consequence of this is that the pure actuality is unchangeable/immutable, since it transcends change itself (causality) and of course immortal because mortality is a part of causal and changing reality. It is also eternal, since if it transcends change and causality, it transcends time. It is also immaterial, since it transcends matter. It is also one, since the the principle of individuation, i.e., of numerical distinction of one individual from another with the same specific nature, is matter designated by quantity (and it transcends matter).

It is also omnipresent, since everywhere where there is something, potential has been actualised, ultimately by pure actuality. It is also omnipotent, since everything which is potential can be actualised by pure actuality. It is also omniscient, since pure actuality subsists every actualised potential, and every actualised potential in the universe is thus rooted in and contained by pure actuality, so there can be no knowledge which isn't already contained as actuality in pure actuality, since there is nothing actual that pure actuality isn't the actualising principle of, and hence contains and subsists.

Anything less than this pure actuality, we can see is only perfect in so far as it is actualised by pure actuality - because otherwise, it would not be anything at all. And we can see that pure actuality has the highest perfection, by its attributes which exceed anything which has anything of potentiality. We can also conclude that anything of potentiality owes its entire being to the pure actuality. It would not exist if it wasn't for it, and thus, by giving everything that exists everything it has, its very existence, we can define it also as omnibenevolent (since everything (omni) that exists, is granted its existence by pure actuality, thereby being the most fundamental expression of agape - pure charity, with no previous warrant or mandate).

I've got a question...

If god is omnipotent, omniscient, W/E, why did he allow hell to be created in the first place if he KNEW that some people--no matter how bad, because I KNOW that no one deserves any kind of everlasting torture of any kind--would be going there, and yet the Bible says, "God loves us!"

If God is "omnipotent, omniscient", that is simply the fallacy of arbitrary predication - making some predications and leaving out others for arbitrary reasons. From the perspective of divine simplicity, all attributes are an aspect of the same thing: transcendence. If you deny one attribute and acknowledge another, you are incoherent and inconsistent, according to divine simplicity. Since you have not predicated omnibenevolence, you could be speaking of some hypothetical evil God, and then the question poses no paradox.

If you do predicate all necessary attributes of a transcendent creator God, including omnibenevolence, and what you want is an explanation as to how hell could exist in the Christian perspective, I can tell you. Hell is, in a certain sense, mortality. It is in a certain sense, the ontological opposite of communion with God, who is immortality itself. Heaven is immortality. Immortality is an attribute that only God has by self-subsistent nature. By grace, he gives this to man by creating man as the one creation with a mind, which can actively choose between Godlikeness (immortality) or beast-likeness (mortality and death). So man himself chooses between accepting Gods grace of immortality (heaven) or rejecting it (hell) and being damned for eternity.

There is nothing in this which contradicts omnibenevolence. Since, what God does is merely respect mans free choice. If he forced man to go to heaven, heaven would not be heaven, but hell. And the argument is fundamentally flawed since, there is no way you can say that there is another, better way, for an omniscient being to practice its benevolence than that which it has done, since you cannot know more perfectly than an omniscient being which approach would be more omnibenevolent.

Jon Paul, first let me thank you for the oppotunity you offer to shed some light on the RC view.

Here's my question. In one of your postings you state that you believe in your god because you "don’t believe anything else is a possibility, without logical self-contradiction". This means logic is a prerequiite for your belief, which I think is a good thing to do. I reckon you are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma that for me demonstrates the logical fallacy of the concept of absolute divine moral. In short 'Euthyphro' shows that it is a logical fallacy to accept divine moral as absolute moral. If there exists absolute moral it is not absolute because god says so, but it would be absolute independent of what god says about it and indeed of his existence. If absolute moral exists at all it is necessarily independent of god. If there is no absolute moral then it is a fallacy to claim divine origin for it. How do you cope with it?

Let's summarise Euthyphros dilemma: Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?

The answer is that it's a false dilemma, in my conception of God. The moral precepts that Gods reveals to us are absolutely necessary because of Gods nature as an omnibenevolent being. Since God is not contingent (dependent) upon anything else, it would be absurd to say his absolute nature is contingent upon anything else. So therefore, the moral preceptives are not contingent upon God, or upon something outside of God, but absolutely necessary because of his absolute nature of omnibenevolence, necessity being the explicit antonym of contingency.

Regards,
JP