Yes, that’s what I mean. If you start to seek unicorns then they must exist or you would not seek them. You cannot argue with me because I have a very simple mind! 
I might only seek unicorns if I believe that they exist, but that doesn’t mean that I’d be right in my belief.
Would you having a simple mind not stop you from making counter-arguments more than it would stop me from making arguments in the first place?
Hello BeenaJain,
“If I seek God, then God exists or I would not seek Him.” This is a deceptive statement. It implies that I am compelled to seek God, if He exists.
It could be restated in the corrected form:
A: If God exists, then I seek Him or I would not seek Him, if He did not exist.
This should be broken down into its more basic conditionals.
B: If God exists, then I seek Him.
and
C: If God does not exist, then I do not seek Him.
These are very curious claims, because by the first conditional I can snuff out God’s existence simply by not seeking Him. In the second I can will Him into being by seeking Him.
You must think you are quite a powerful person if you can snuff God out and bring Him back at your whim and will.
The true reason why you cannot be argued with on this issue is not because your mind is “simple,” rather, it is because your mind is illogical on this point. Of course, if one is allowed to make any illogical or highly suspect statement and take it as truth, then one can never “lose” an argument.
With all due respect, you seem to suffer from a very common case of self-importance. You place an illogical amount of strength in your own ideas.
On the other hand, you have been strangely provacative and, certainly, worthy of response. Thank you.
Correct me if I am wrong,
Cyber
I told you I have a very simple mind so you cannot argue with me. If you only believed in unicorns, then you would be just believing in them and not actually seeking them, so they may exist or they may not exist. But if you went seeking them, they would have to exist.
An atheist does not seek God, but God may still exist. If I don’t seek my lost cat, the cat is there somewhere or at least existed. And there is no deception in that statement above, only in your screwed up abusive brain. And you better believe that I could “snuff” God out, not bring him back here at MY “whim and will” but HIS!!! But idiots like you could never prove even once that God exists and so like empty minds must make a lot of din and try to put the other person down who has the ability to prove that God exists. Idiots like you exist everywhere because they never learnt to compliment the other on any accomplishment.
I take back any optimisim I had about your thoughtfulness. You are no longer welcome in this thread. Never post here again, BeenaJain, or in any other thread I begin. Your opinions are not worthy of response. You are not a philosopher.
You having a simple mind doesn’t mean that I can’t argue with you: it means that you can’t argue back.
Why? What is to stop somebody from seeking something in consequence of a mistaken belief as to its existence?
You forgot about the agnostics silly. Those who neither affirm nor deny the existence of a god/goddess/diety/omnipotent enity.
Sagesound,
I could have divided people into three groups of theists, atheists, and agnostics.
But I am not concerned with agnostics here. I am concerned with those people who start a forum to argue through philosophy that God exists or does not. As you have pointed out, an agnostic would do neither if truely an agnostic.
A true agnostic could conceivably just read the title of the thread and agree and move on. He/she might see the entire discussion as based on nonsense.
Of course, I have never known a true agnostic that was not truly prejudiced one way or the other. If someone took the time to affirm agnosticism, he/she must have thought about God considerably beforehand.
Thank you for the additional commentary.
hey cyber…thank you for your response…i did reread your argument & i still do not see “precisely why [you] feel [that] just asking is a flawed approach…” i do see that you said you had to work to “get [your] own witness”… have you considered that some may not have had to ‘work’ to receive?.. the apostle paul [as saul] was out practically killing christians & yet christ personnally appeared to him - he did not ‘work’ for this witness - in fact, he worked against receiving a witness…if anyone deserved to NOT receive, he could have topped the list…you presume to know why “religious” & “irreligious” people “start these forums”…is that why you write, to [pound your own chest]?..that’s not why i participate…you presume to know that "these kind of forums [never] satisfy or persuade anyone to change their position…i find others thought and ideas highly valuable in my life… you note that this forum “fail[s]” to explore the “precisely relevant inquiry of the…notion of god,” & then imply that it doesn’t matter anyway, because “god’s survival does not depend” on us…you advise people to "follow…steps set forth by adherents of [a particular] ‘notion of god’ and then to “let us know how it went and what you learned”…and then state “[IT] says nothing about [flinging] words around the internet”…what is this IT you refer to?..do you presume to know every ‘step set up’ by every religion on earth?!..one of them may prescribe “[flinging] words on the internet” to get closer to god - who knows?..personal revelation may not be tranferable, but the process of sharing personal experience & ideas with others - whether in person or in words on an internet forum - can give hope in the knowledge that others have received personal contact with the creator or heaven & earth, that there is a purpose for each individual life, that there is absolute truth, that we can the find answers we seek…what’s your point?..respectfully yours…sharon1963…
hey cyber…thank you for your response…i did reread your argument & i still do not see “precisely why [you] feel [that] just asking is a flawed approach…” i do see that you said you had to work to “get [your] own witness”… have you considered that some may not have had to ‘work’ to receive?.. the apostle paul [as saul] was out practically killing christians & yet christ personnally appeared to him - he did not ‘work’ for this witness - in fact, he worked against receiving a witness…if anyone deserved to NOT receive, he could have topped the list…you presume to know why “religious” & “irreligious” people “start these forums”…is that why you write, to [pound your own chest]?..that’s not why i participate…you presume to know that "these kind of forums [never] satisfy or persuade anyone to change their position…i find others thought and ideas highly valuable in my life… you note that this forum “fail[s]” to explore the “precisely relevant inquiry of the…notion of god,” & then imply that it doesn’t matter anyway, because “god’s survival does not depend” on us…you advise people to "follow…steps set forth by adherents of [a particular] ‘notion of god’ and then to “let us know how it went and what you learned”…and then state “[IT] says nothing about [flinging] words around the internet”…what is this IT you refer to?..do you presume to know every ‘step set up’ by every religion on earth?!..one of them may prescribe “[flinging] words on the internet” to get closer to god - who knows?..personal revelation may not be tranferable, but the process of sharing personal experience & ideas with others - whether in person or in words on an internet forum - can give hope in the knowledge that others have received personal contact with the creator or heaven & earth, that there is a purpose for each individual life, that there is absolute truth, that we can the find answers we seek…what’s your point?..respectfully yours…sharon1963…
This is the first of your arugments.
First, you are arguing as a Christian. This is perfectly relevant because it demonstrates your lack of perspective on the issue of Saul. If you examine the New Testament you will find many passages indicating the absolute fidelity with which Saul followed the Jewish religion as he understood it. He was an Israelite and a Pharisee. He was taught at the feet of Gamaliel, one the greatest teachers in all of Israel.
He kept all of the commandments according the Jewish traditions.
However, he did not know Jesus Christ until his conversion to Christ and this was the why he persecuted the Christians. He felt it to be his duty to God. This is why he is so affected by Jesus statement, “Why persecutest thou me?” Saul thought he had been serving God, not persecuting him.
You say that he did not work for his conversion, but he had worked strenously for God according to his understanding. To say that Saul had not worked to cleanse himself spiritually and draw near to the divine is to fail to understand the man as he must have understood himself.
For these reasons, I find your first argument here unpersuasive and problematic at best.
I have more to say to this, because it seems that you are focused on one of my points in particular. I believe the fourth point caused you to react and not the others.
hi cybersage.
the queries you describe above are exactly what i was trying to ask about in my thread “a question for all you believers”.
but i think people kinda took it the wrong way and the discussion got side-tracked.
which i think is interesting in itself. it’s as if when theists and athiests collide, there can be no discussion on any topic because neither group will ever accept the other’s poit of view on this issue.
therefore it seems that neither group really cares about anything else they have to say.
well, i don;t know but i do know that very few people actually answered the question i posed to start that thread off. most people just took it to mean “why do you believe in God?”.
as opposed to “what qualities does the god you pray to have, and how do you know that the god has those qualities?”
oh well
Hi Prove-it,
Well, it would seem that force-feeding someone faith or doubt ought to be a bit of a challenge. I am grateful for that.
This question that you are posing is precisely the kind of question that ought to be asked by a philosopher of religion.
It is somewhat like one of my questions. How have you experienced God?
This is the ontology. What is God like?
These kind of questions set aside all arguments regarding God’s existence. They assume that He exists for the purposes of discussion.
The epistmology is the second part of your inquiry. How do you know God?
I think you and I are in the same universe in this discussion, though we have not discussed a single characteristic of the divine.
Thank you for posting.
Thankyou. it’s nice to finally find someone who understands the essence of the important questions that are worth asking. as you rightly say, arguing for or against God’s existence is completely pointless especially in the context of an internet msg board.
in the meantime i’ll doubtless continue trying to defend myself against attacks by those who think i am attacking them… when the truth is i am merely curious.
c’est la vie!
Nice to find someone who “understands” or nice to find someone that agrees with you? 
oi!
it is nice to find someone who understands what i meant in my thread.
because i don’t think people got what i was asking (probably because i explained it badly), and it kinda turned into a fight about whether or not god exists.
i don’t care if people don’t agree with me. as long as they know what they don’t agree with me about! if people are talking as cross-purposes, that’s just annoying cos neither of you will get anywhere with it.
This is why I took the time to indicate that we have yet to discuss a single characteristic of the divine. We have only agreed on some of the protocol for such a discussion.
exactly. i don’t have any idea what you think about the whole God thing.
This appears to be your second argument.
-
This is puzzling to me that you would question my “presumption” as to why people start these forums. I think they make it quite clear that their goal is to prove through philosophic dialectic that God exists or God does not exist.
The “chest pounding” is in reference to a what I perceive to be any person’s flawed “presumption” to be able to do precisely that. -
As for my claim that such forums never satisfy anyone to change their position, I give the way to prove me wrong by asking you a question:
Is it the case that you were an atheist and on arriving into the ilovephilosophy.com religious forum and reading the exchanges of these religious debates, you suddenly had a change of heart and mind converting you to a belief in God?
Or, conversely, were you a believer in God and after reading the same matter, did you then deny your former belief and affirm atheism?
Is either of these scenarios descriptive of your religious or irreligious conversion?
Otherwise, my argument stands. You would have to provide a real life example of one of the above to prove me wrong, which I am not opposed to finding. Personally, I do not believe you are such a real life example.
- You claim that you find the thoughts and ideas of others valuable. That is admirable. Would you care to share what thoughts and ideas in these specific arguments you have found to be valuable and why? Otherwise, I cannot respond in a vacuum.
My feeling is that most of the sentiments are worthless, because they have no practical application to life. Indeed, most things dressed as “philosophy” are worthless. Very rarely will one encounter true wisdom and skill in living. However, poor thoughts when acknowledged for what they are can lead to better thoughts.