The problem with the Ontological argument is the same as the problem with Berkelyian Immaterialism- it simply fails to convince. When people hear it, the first response is generally that it’s some sort of clever word game, not that it actually proves anything. Beyond that, it can be rephrased in so many ways, some more credible than others. At it’s best, I think it’s solidly demonstrates that God must either exist or else His existence is utterly impossible- there is no room for a middle-ground. If that’s true, then the argument throws the burden of proof back on the atheist to show that God’s existence is impossible.
A post I made previously I explained the arguments for the existence of God. I failed to mention that the arguments don’t stand alone, but are used as a family of arguments. They give a panramic view of God from different aspects for a fuller understanding.
God’s existence is not the question here. The true question is this:
Will the solution to humanities problems come from the death of the believers [who will be in ‘heaven’ with ‘God’]? Or will the solution to humanities problems come through “the singularity”, in which supertech combines with the human body structure, and we become thousands of times more intelligent, far more stable, and immortal?
Don’t be silly. Your human body has a set of deep rooted natural instincts and rewarding systems that cause pleasure, fear and pain. Any physicist can tell you that energy is invinsible. In Dan’s heaven there is no longer any craving or fear. There is no need or hate. You will not need or want any sort of virgins in Dan’s heaven. You will no longer be slave to the animal ways of the organic class.
^
But maybe “Dan’s heaven” doesn’t exist?
Yes, well, I have been writing about Dan 2.0, and then I realized how much better the SBNH04 would be. Animal life on earth – at this era – has a bio-chemical based energy source. Oxygens and sugars, etc. Your cells die if you don’t breath for a few minutes. The SBNH04 is a nanobot system in the shape of a humanoid body, that is actually purely robotic. Its body is run electronically and its skin absorbs solar power. Humans have cravings, consume their environment, and have weaknesses. They die if they are denied what they need. They feel like they have to defend their territory (which leads to violance). But the SBNH04 needs relatively nothing. The bulk of its body are m-cells that store large banks of energy. There is no microbial ‘muscle’, only electronic-robotic ‘muscle’. When a human runs out of air, they die. When a SBNH04 runs out of power, it shuts off like a PC. No death.
ucsf.edu/neurosc/faculty/neuro_kenyon.html
^If this is ever practiced on humans, the x6 life span will help us all live into the era in which old age is completely cured and reversed.
DNA synthesis and decoding is already happening.
ETA of the Genetic Revolution = 2026
ETA of the Nanotech Revolution = 2036
Those little games a few had played at my genetic combinations thread could become a reality sooner then you may expect.
DNA is information, and information based technologies have a way of growing expotentially. Wither we like it or not, in less then a century the human species will be inferior and superhumans/cyborgs will take center stage. Save your money, because body strucutre upgrades wont be free, and they will be the greatest thing you could ever buy.
The modern education systems and medical systems are – actually – out of date. Scientific knowlage doubbles each decade. Salvation will be on shelves sooner then we may expect, and Christianity will be crushed by real solutions to the problems that Christains claimed only God could fix.
My last words are simple:
If we don’t ‘play god’, then who will?
Dan, Man has been playing god for thousands of years. For instance murder, being defined as a senseless act of taking a life. Only the one who creates life out of nothing is rightfully the only one that can take a life. Really all the experimentation and dabbling with DNA, isn’t that profound. All scientists are
doing is creating life from pre-existent matter, ho hum! Now if the scientist could create something out of nothing, that, would be an accomplishment. Science will never solve all our problems, new problems will just keep cropping. For me, I’ll just trust what God has said through the Bible, and what Jesus Christ did for me by dying for my sins and reconciling me to God. =D>
Who wrote the bible? Who ever told you to read it?
And if God ‘took a life’ would that me more or less senseless then if a human did. A human has anger, greed, desire, needs, is curruptable, is despirate, can go insane. What excuse does God have? Why did he create it in the first place if he was going to kill it? Why would he not want it to sin but then build it with a natural tendancy to sin and allow it to sin?
It’s good and getting more advanced every year!
That is what moma does to when she gave birth to you. The only way a human can make anything is when they combine matter using energy, and make a structure.
Colliding ions at high speed to create anti-matter? (or was it protons, I dunno) building elements or matter out of atoms, individually. [using nanotech, very slow but possible]
But at least it is trying and it is real! Life exectancy is over doubble what it was 200 years ago. ‘God’ didn’t give us that kind of medical advice/tech in the bible, we had to descover/invent it slowly by trial and error.
Jesus’s death was to undo Adam and Eve’s sin, therefor now that their sin has been undone, God’s curse upon them should have also been undone, and we should not be imperfect or grow old and die anymore.
Did Jesus’s death fix anything? He did a lot of teaching and healing when he was alive, but what could or did he do when he was dead? What is he doing now?
Aztex and Jews believed in blood sacrifice to their angery/judgemental God/gods, but this was done out of insane fear. Blood sacrifice is wrong and evil.
If you’re so reconciled then why don’t you get some of what Jesus got? Get some holy spirit and start healing people and teaching the truth to others. Get something real that actually helps and works.
They say that God is way better then humans? Then I want God’s will to be done on earth and I want things to be his way since it is the better way. What is the freakin old up!? It NEVER happened yet!
If you sit and wait for God to do something instead of doing it yourself, your one dead duck! You are as good as dead! For this reason many people stopped asking from God and just tried to do something real, themself. Others say God ‘helped’ them, but that can’t really be proven.
That’s too bad, because they miss out on God’s blessings. Sorry, but that is really couldn’t be further from the truth. It can be proven, but perhaps some people are too narrow minded or myoptic. 
When soomeone states flatly that they can prove the supernatural in a thread with my name on it, I expect to see it done.
So get on that, and don’t trip over your phoney credentials on your way out.
When I was stating the supernatural was provable, I was referring only to personal experience. To attempt to prove any position, first of all one must establish the nature of proof and what would be considered acceptable proof
for all involved. Logically to prove some point deductively true is tricky, however, inductive reasoning is far safer and not as apt to be severely criticized or easily refuted, since it is based on probability. Oh, by the way Dr. Satan, Jesus loves you and died for your sins. Invite Him into your life to forgive your sins and spend eternal glory in fellowship with God almighty. God Bless.
Just when I thought you were completely worthless, I read your little attempt at witnessing at the end and couldn’t help but chuckle.
Thanks for that, laughter is the best medicine. 
As a philosopher and one who is engaged in dialogue, you committed a serious error which exposes the weakness in your thinking. Insults, when one resorts to insults it is an admission of defeat in a philosophical dialogue. 
You understand, your loss is because you left the topic under discussion and turned to one that was not an intelligent topic, insults. 
Jesus, you are officially invited into my life!
Eternal glory in fellowship?
Fellowship is like friendship; it involves communication and sharing of thoughts and feelings. How will you know when someone is your friend? Well, first they would like you in some way, and secondly they would talk with you. I can get this from real people on earth, but I don’t see anyone getting this from God or Jesus. It would be nice if they could get it, but do they? No. Prove me wrong.
Proving you wrong wouldn’t be necessary if you tried it. I very satisfied with my relationship with Jesus. First, you may you are comparing apples with oranges; Christians are not friends, they are brothers in Jesus, much deeper relationship. Secondly, fellowship with God is not the same as fellowship with human beings. The life of a Christian is a life time process, it doesn’t happen over night, (though salvation is an immediate effect)God is always looking to see a Christian become more intimately acquainted. He is purifying my life of sin so I reflect the glory of Jesus. Since you are on the outside looking in, you may not understand the Christian life, God is very involved in the life of a Christian, you don’t see these events occurring; how He takes care of my needs, and gives me guidance. Of course as a Christian I have an enemy who is always trying to make me sin, but Jesus is my advocate and interceeds for me before God’s throne. Third, fellowship with God involves private time to pray, study the Bible, that you won’t see.
I think this would prove you wrong, but unfortunately that may not be enough, but like I said earlier, try Jesus, you’ll like Him. He loves you very much, but if you die in your sins, the story changes, to a God of judgement. “Depart from me, cursed one, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Is that all you have? A belief and a feeling?
All I have is a belief and a feeling? No, my faith is based on historical and philosophical supports. I am a Christian and a Philosopher, neither at the expense of the other. Feelings have little to do with my faith, yes I have beliefs, Justified True Beliefs. But feelings are unreliable and unstable, Christian doesn’t live by feelings, but by knowledge of the word of God.
Dan, it appears you have a subjectively arrived at list of what you believe God should be. So it seems that if God does not meet with your particular subjective critieria, then you have no choice but to reject him. I’m sure you can see the folly in this. Can’t you?
Meno,
That you would advertise yourself as an intellectual and proceed to spout such utter nonsense is a triumph of contradiction.
Congratulations.
No, I will not grant you a serious discourse until you show you are not just another loony faith based nutbar arguing not with logic, but against it, armed only with a ‘feeling’ presented as some sort of a priori without ever being able to show why.
It’s pathetic and actually insulting. Do better or shut up.
Start here. Let’s see if you are capable of creating a cogent argument WITH support. Bald assertions will be met with more mockery.
Ok, first I will provide some philosophic supports, first Christianity is the most consistent system of thought. My Epistemology is based on God being the source of all truth. That the world is knowable through our senses, because God created us to live in this world. In addition what my senses gather is consistent with is really out there. There also exists a body of knowledge that is non-empirical, which one can obtain knowledge through rational discourse, A Priori knowledge. Mathematics, and Geometry are excellent examples, in particular, Euclid’s 5 postulates, which are accepted without proof. Of any other e is the other`mathematical formula is independent of empirical knowledge. Another example, What is beauty? Platonic Forms have a grain of truth. and can be helpful. My knowledge of reality is based on the existence of God, which of course is a presupposition. Ultimate reality is God and His activity in the universe. The universe is not an eternal self sustaining substance as Spinoza or Hegel would conjecture. It wasn’t constructed out of pre-existent material, like the Platonic form of God. It was created out of nothing. The universe had a starting point and its creator is God. (Of course one would ask, who created God? This leads into the Cosmological arguments, which I’ll deal with later.) Ethics, for me Ethics is a no brainer simply because God has established absolute standards of right and wrong. (It always amuses me how people grapple with moral issues, and because they don’t have an absolute standard on which to base their beliefs, they are at a loss for a clear decision) Christians have an unfair advantage in ethical issues. Aesthetics is an area that I don’t deal with because it doesn’t carry any serious philosophical issues with it, in fact it is not even have a course devoted to it as in Epistemology, Metaphysics and Ethics have devoted to them. I will return after school is completed today. A Christian’s worse day is always better than an atheists’ best day. Go ahead and mock me, it only exposes your narrow mindedness.
Well lots of people say God created everything – is all-mighty – far more righteous then any human. All of that crap doesn’t add up. It’s rubbish. I can’t prove it all wrong because it was never proven right in the first place. It’s just one big opinion that can’t do anything on its own so it needs tons of people to preach it – otherwise it would not exist or effect anyone. I don’t see any of the rest of “God’s creations” worshiping or preaching. They eat, sleep and reproduce – things like that – but there is no God and religion intertwined into life on earth. People over extend their relativity ideals.
‘Folly’? Normally a folly is when someone says something untrue, or they hurt someone else or themself – etc. To think that an animate being created all inanimate matter/energy is absurd. It’s like saying that light comes from the human eye instead of the stars.
If I say: “God doesn’t give a damn about anyone or anything.” it will have more logical ‘support’ then if I say: “God loves each and every one of us” – because of the amount of substance. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall though because they all defend their precous nothing and say that it is something.
nexusmagazine.com/articles/schumann.html
^
Read this, okay?
Yes, there are higher powers that have a deep effect on us – but they are not life forms are they? Ancient superstition blamed all kinds of things on God antil – way later – there was a scientific explanation for everything.
I think that most Christians have a will to connect with the greatest good in the universe – but they combine this with the premise of angels, demons, God, Satan and Jesus. I think that various cosmic forces and cycles can be tapped into – in some small way – and it effects a persons ‘soul’ – but then their opinions about “God” get mixed in.
