(November 21, 2016 at 2:28 am)theologian Wrote: Next questions:I clarified my position for one and two, which you can also find in many of my previous responses.
Quote:3. Further, does Five Ways affirm "everything has a beginning"Why did you switch from "argues for" to "affirms"?
Quote:That doesn't shown to be showing beginning, does it?If we break a causal chain or work towards a logical end that everything leads to, we are working our way towards a beginning. I don't see why you're getting hung up on this.
Quote:But those exist with good things.Correct. And they can be graded on a scale, just like good things, which happen to exist with bad things.
Quote:Without being, there can't be no corrupted being which is evil. Therefore, evil is still privation and is like a parasite.We can say the same about good and reverse the analogy, so that evil is a property of being and therefore evil is just the absence of good. It's a nonsense explanation which does not invalidate the point I have made.
Quote:Well, I don't understand your mantra "Unproven assertion", even though there are demonstration via argumentation.You are stating things that need to be proven before they can be accepted, but you're neither proving them nor demonstrating them. You are simply stating them, or "explaining" them by relying on additional unproven assertions. That you seem confused by this is not surprising-- Aquinas' five ways depend on the acceptance of a number of unproven assertions. It's not surprising that people who already believe in God find the arguments compelling, and people who do not believe in God easily see the flaws in it.
Quote:So, as long as you don't have a good reason to show that Five Ways is wrongThey're logically invalid. That's a pretty good reason to me.
Quote:So what is the fact are telling us?If one way of finding the truth always works, and another way never does, then our confidence should be with the method that works.
Quote:1. Only which is verifiable is real.1. That which cannot be verified may not be true.
2. God's existence cannot be verified.
3. "God exists" may not be true.
Quote:All of those presuppose metaphysical concepts like being, principle of non-contradiction, principle of sufficient reason, principle of cause and effects etc.Those are not metaphysical concepts. One is a law, the others are philosophical concepts that are not proven and not required in order to conduct scientific research and learn more about the world.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould