Supernatural isn't a useful concept

[theologian]

[Mudhammam]

It seems to me that you are saying that God creating creation is impossible, because that will give God potentiality and therefore it will falsify that God is Pure Act of Being. Is that what you are showing here?

If God is Pure Act of Being then it would seem, by your claim that God creates in time, that He is only sometimes Pure Act, but that his Being and his Act are separable from each other -- which is a contradiction of the notion that by necessity God is Pure Actuality, and that his Actuality is Being, i.e. Pure Act of Being.  But of course, this is incompatible with the notion of creation, which is the reduction of the Possible into the Actual, and in your view, the reduction of God's Act from potentiality into actuality, which you suggested is but His Pure Act of Being.

If so, then this is what I can answer. It was demonstrated that God Whom is Pure Act of Being must exist.

Yes, just as it was demonstrated that the concept of God is superfluous and that manner of being must exist, not wholly but only in its substratum, the part that is pure Act of Being rather than the part that is only a manner.

Now, it follows that there must be no potentiality in Him and you are correct in that proposition. However, creation is not God's action reducing from potentiality into actuality in Him.

So, then if His Action was not in Him, which part of His Being relates to his Act?  He is Pure Act of Being, remember.

Remember, God must be Pure Act of Being.

Yes! Good!  

What then is creation? What is that potentiality that is reduced to actuality in creation? Of course, it is all the created things which is reduced from potentiality to actuality and not God when we're talking about creation.

But the created things, you claim, existed in God, in potentiality, which is nonsensical, because you also he said he was Pure Act of Being.  So how do all things exist in potentiality in the one thing that is Pure Act of Being, and how do they become reduced to Action without an additional Actuality to cause them to do so?  You also said that God is not a manner of being, but then you said that God was the manner of a creator.  But if God was not always creator, as his Act of creation was at one time potential and not Pure Act, then God subsumed a manner of being, i.e. creator, which contradicts your argument.

After all, created things are not God.

No, but you said they are his Act, and that God is Pure Act of Being

It's like the case where Socrates didn't really became shorter when his friend became taller. Therefore, God's creation doesn't make Him not Pure Act of Being.

I agree.  That's why your conception of creation in time and God as subsuming the manner of being although at the same time being Pure Act of Being are contradictory and must be discarded into the waste bin of failed arguments.

Actually, this is where we can know that God is free and He loves us, for He created us even though He need not us because He is Pure Act of Being, so we are created so that we can share in His happiness.

Why would he degrade God-world, where only a loving Pure Act of Being exists, to create one with infinitely inferior creatures with which to share his Happiness?  Do you deny that God is three persons or that there are angelic beings whom never fail to displease God, which offer God a better opportunity to share His happiness and not further degrade God-world -- a place of perfection -- as no conceivable perfect being would freely chose to do?

Now, your second point is that matter, energy and particles are the pure act of being. Am I correct with that understanding?

No.  The substratum by and from which matter, energy, and particles naturally began to take their present forms is Pure Act of Being. Everything else is its manner of being.

Matter, energy and particles cannot be Pure Act of Being.

Matter, energy, and particles are a manner of being.  A manner of being is two parts, manner and being.  The being is Pure Act of Being, of which manner -- manner, energy, and particles -- takes but a part, but is not itself Pure Act.  

For, whatever is bounded by space cannot be Pure Act of Being, (for Pure Act of Being is Boundless, and whatever is bounded by space is not boundless).

Pure Act of Being is also bounded by the Eternal Now of time, and space is not boundary but the absence of boundary.  A boundary is involves two points, and a line, from whence we arrive at shape -- and a shape involves body, the lack of which is space.

But, it is obvious that energy, matter and particles are bounded by space. Therefore, matter, energy and particles are not Pure Act of Being.

Right, only a part of Pure Act of Being, the part of being that is individuated into a manner or form.

Now, what I can understand from your post is that manner of being is a perfection. However, manner of perfection is not something. Manner of perfection is what limits the act of being. Manner of Being thus limits and makes lesser the act of being of a being.

But no perfect being would degrade the perfection of God-world.  Therefore, God is not the Pure Act of Being or actuality that caused a manner of being to begin to exist, as "Manner of Being thus limits and makes lesser the act of being of a being."  Therefore, the Pure Act of Being is not perfect or manner of being is not an imperfection.  In either case, your perfect God is necessarily excluded from the choices.

Now, the principle of causality implies that the effect can either be equal or less than the cause, but not greater, for as we both hold: "from nothing, only nothing comes". But, the creation is something lesser which is caused by God Whom is Infinitely Greater than the creation, for creation is limited by its manner of being. So, creation is not against the principle of causality.

Many parts which act as cause to produce one effect have the power to create novel forms, and these forms are a kind of perfection that did not exist in its scattered parts.  Actuality is also greater than Possibility, and your notion of creation involves the latter causing the former, which is the lesser causing the greater as you call it.  The problem with your application of the principle of causality to creation is that you wish to assert the fabulous idea of creation from Pure Act of Being while insisting that Pure Act of Being could be reduced from potentiality to actuality without a further cause or actuality which was the principle requirement by which you arrived at your contradictory conclusion.

[Rhizomorph13]

No, none of this, we HAVE observed particles springing into being with no cause or predictable pattern. What you are doing is called special pleading.

Aside from particles, we see many other things which its cause can't be determine immediately like crime scenes etc. Does it follow that crime scenes like the particles doesn't have any cause too? Did we really found something such as particles to be without cause other than God Whom is an Uncaused Cause OR we just don't know yet? After all, particles are defined as particles. Where does its limited form came from? The crime scene is also limited in form, for there are scene that are not crime scene and we know that crime must be caused.

If EVERYTHING has a cause then God needs a cause. If it doesn't need a cause then nothing needs a cause. dismissed. Oh, and what about supergod? the mover of the unmoved mover?

I think this is a good time for Atheists to recognize that correct theistic argument for God's existence doesn't argue from the premise that everything has a cause and so be reluctant next time to commit straw man argument fallacy repeatedly. If you want to be free from that fallacy here, you may want to point out that what I really said is that only those which has manner of being has a cause. So, everything that has a cause, has a manner of being. But God doesn't have a manner of being. Therefore God must be Uncaused. Isn't it funny that when atheist is asking "what caused God?", they are asking an absurd question which is "what caused the Uncaused?"? It's like asking: what have you done that you haven't?

So, if the invocation of the atheist of the proposition that everything has a cause is a straw man, then pointing that "if God doesn't have cause, then nothing will have a cause" will be missing the point too.

I understand that you fail to have the knowledge of my friend's non-contingent vacuum cleaner. You see, he is a Purple Rabbit from the 26th dimension and his vacuum cleaner created everything. Ya know, since we can just assign properties to things without evidence. So I like my vacuum cleaner theory better than the failed hypothesis of God.

You can't just say things have a cause so there must be an un-caused cause; or at least that doesn't make sense to me. There certainly isn't evidence of an unmoved mover. Just like a crime scene suggests a criminal not a non-ontological being of pure act like a Crimus Purus.

I've heard these arguments so many times and don't understand why theists think that a god is necessary but different from the rest of the universe instead of stopping one step earlier and saying the the universe might be all that there is and somehow it either just is or sprang from apparent nothing of a singularity. I certainly don't know, well except the non-contingent vacuum cleaner.

[Soldat Du Christ]

Why couldn't there be a trancedent source that has the ability of intervening with our universe? Trying to say it's impossible because we've never empericaly tested an event of this kind (I'm confident we have at least observed) is an argument from silence.

I don't think that is what I've said at all. If there was a (whatever you want to call it) source that intervened with the universe, it would be natural even if it doesn't follow the laws as we know them now. Also, if a thing has an effect within the universe, that effect would be testable. For example (assuming that the Christian God exists), if prayer was effective then you would be able to see a statistically significant variance between Christians and non-Christians.

The fact that naturalism cannot justify itself, demands its existence. When all other possabilities have been rendered impossible, what remains is the answer.

[Minimalist]

Now you need to put down your fucking bible and start investigating real possibilities instead of supernatural horseshit.

[Soldat Du Christ]

Why couldn't there be a trancedent source that has the ability of intervening with our universe? Trying to say it's impossible because we've never empericaly tested an event of this kind (I'm confident we have at least observed) is an argument from silence.

I don't think that is what I've said at all. If there was a (whatever you want to call it) source that intervened with the universe, it would be natural even if it doesn't follow the laws as we know them now. Also, if a thing has an effect within the universe, that effect would be testable. For example (assuming that the Christian God exists), if prayer was effective then you would be able to see a statistically significant variance between Christians and non-Christians.

The fact that naturalism cannot justify itself, demands its existence. When all other possabilities have been rendered impossible, what remains is the answer.

[Rhizomorph13]

What remains is a non-contingent vacuum cleaner, so, neener neener.

[Whateverist]

Is naturalism in need of justification or is it just what we call the bed rock assumption we employ in the practical task of making our way through the world? I would have said the latter. So long as there are practical tasks to be performed a natural world hypothesis is a useful thing. By contrast the supposition that you can fill that gap with a magic genie is extravagant.

[Sal]

Supernatural is natural phenomena that hasn't been explained yet, or lack evidence to be explained coherently.

"I saw a ghost!" Any number of natural explanations would render such a supernatural anecdote to banal & trivial phenomena; "it was the wind", or the personal "you're just mistaken wind and light artification." Which, for the supernaturally explanation inclined, are unsatisfactory explanations.

No, that isn't the most useful definition for supernatural because then supernatural would differ from person to person based on their understanding of science.

Isn't it like that for any scientific understanding? I mean, as an example, how often isn't the word "theory" thrown around by the anti-evolutionists in a vain attempt to discredit Evolution? It's based on a misunderstanding. A theory is simply the describing and modeling of the facts there are, but tell that to the anti-evolutionists and they equivocate "theory" with the word "guesswork". It's pretty much inescapable that misunderstanding will arise when people use different definitions and apply them therefore differently. I think this level of possible misunderstanding is applicable to any theory in science.

It even does right now but that is why I challenge the usefulness of the word; why bother if it is based on understanding? I think things are either real or not real and if they are real they are also within nature. Now that I think about it "natural" then becomes a useless word.

My motives aren't that pure; I want to hijack the word ... give it a useful meaning instead of the book definition.

[Mudhammam]

The fact that naturalism cannot justify itself, demands its existence. When all other possabilities have been rendered impossible, what remains is the answer.

When the science isn't fully in, just go with the most extravagant metaphysical concept you can come up with and ignore its patent flaws! Got it.