I believe they say that the earth is designed and that this is clear. It is perhaps ‘perfect’ in the sense of fitting the purposes of God, but not perfect in the way they consider God to be perfect. IOW it is not the perfection that indicates it has a creator, but that they think it is clearly designed. Just as we might decide some artifact is designed not based on its perfection.
God however is not an artifact, to them. And they are saying God has always been around.
I think this kind of argument you are making is rather silly. Once we are dealing with an deity, it would be silly to start making up rules for this deity as if we know them, as part of saying that theists beliefs do not make sense. Hell, we know that this kind of hubris gets shown up just around mundane things and what science has discovered. You are taking common sense and applying it to a deity. Common sense doesn’t work in many cases with relatively basic, mundane stuff.
They believe the Bible to be correct. The Bible says God is eternal and made the earth. They then think they can see the designed nature of the world. I don’t see any hypocrisy in believing from these assumptions that there is this eternal maker and a designed world.
To point out the hypocrisy we would have to show how they are acknowledging aspects of God which are designed. the world, in their system, has functions and purposes. It is like a tool. God is not.
Actually in the first statement is a simile beginning with the word “as”. Because, to me, god is reality itself, that is, ultimate reality which is knowable only in part not as a whole. So I qualify the statement by making it a simile. A materialist might find the statement that reality is the set of all things per se acceptable although I don’t think all of them do. Now the set of all things cannot be a thing. For if it is a thing then it goes in the set and once it is in the set it is not the set of all things but rather a member of the set and so on ad infinitum. If you can find an exception where a thing is a member of a set and as also the set of the members let me know. So, I’m saying that God cannot be subsumed by any higher category like reality. God must be reality. And I am saying that such is the case FOR ME. I cannot accept as God anything less than that. So I am saying this with recognition the statement’s subjectivity. Even if you disagree, you should be able to recognize that for me, such can be the case.
See my reply to Buffalo. The set of all things cannot be a thing. It is no thing. It is thingness, being itself. This paradox goes back at least as far as Parmenides. The set theory dilemma is discussed by Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and by others.
What, are you stuck in a loop? Are you just going to keep repeating the same thing? I just explained to you that God is not a something. Therefore, God does not fit in your vicious circle syllogism. Also, God is not an object. Everyone one has to decide what if anything they will call “God”. For me god is ultimate reality. Are you going to claim reality does not exist? I claim it does and I call it God. You can’t tell me it is not God because to me it is. Maybe to you it isn’t. If so, I recognize that to Mutcer, Reality is not God. Or even, to Mutcer, reality doesn’t exist. I’m OK with that.
Sorry. I misunderstood. What you are then positing is that God is the set of all somethings and since the set of all somethings cannot be member of itself, He can not be a something. However, in naive set theory (i.e. natural language) it is possible for a set to be a member of itself. That is why it “sounds” perfectly OK for me to say that the set of all somethings must be something. What else could it be, besides something? Nothing? Every “thing” is a “something”.
However, I realize naive set theory leads to Russel’s paradox. And that is probably why this sort of talk about God inevitably leads to confusion and controversy. The bottom line, to me, is that you are arbitrarily (re)defining God so that he is “not something”, thereby introducing the alleged category error.
And I would certainly recognize that it is your choice to define your conception of God as you will.
It doesn’t seem arbitrary to define God this way at all to me. There is a long theological tradition of understanding God as Being Itself. God is self-sufficient being, unconditioned by and independent on anything for existence a quality known as aseity. God was defined by St. Anselm as that which no greater than can be conceived. What can be conceived of that is greater than reality itself? How could a God that is less than Reality Itself be God?
Rather “the Cause of Being”.
God has always been the The Creator, The Cause, not what is created or caused (the physical universe).
If one does not distinguish a cause from an effect, then one must conclude that God, the Cause, is merely the past.
And that theology could still go quite far, but isn’t the theology of those who coined the word, “God”. What hope would one obtain by praying to History?
If God is not a something, but a nothing, then what value does the argument in favor of God, “you can’t get something from nothing” hold? Sounds more to me as if it is an argument that man and the universe did NOT come from the “set of somethings” or the “nothing” God.
This conversation is pointless. The argument that ‘something can’t come from nothing’ isn’t a necessary part of Christian doctrine and isn’t used in any good theistic arguments of any kind. It’s an artificial introduction by atheist critics who didn’t understand the cosmological argument, and was taken by by poorly-read Christians who’s gut reaction is to argue with everything an atheist says.
Not everything has a cause- it’s fine. Admitting not everything has a cause is no problem for Christianity.
Anyone who is hoodwinked by Anselm’s ontological argument… Well, to me, this is where philosophy really loses touch with reality and starts chasing it’s own tail; and principally so that theists can justify their own shakey beliefs.
I think you are clearly wrong here as theists like William Lane Craig use exactly this type of argument (e.g. The Kalam Cosmological Argument) in debates against atheists.
I think that it basically comes down to waiting til our brains have evolved sufficiently enough to understand that the concepts of something and nothing do not work. We are coming from a place of our own thought forms, perceptions, desires and inner experiences. We define ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ in that way.
We cannot fully understand what IS, especially the god concept, because our brains have not yet developed their full potential to see reality in its totality. Perhaps they never will. We can’t even define what reality is.
So, can something come from nothing? Quantum theory teaches/states (Prph)that even the simple act of observation creates reality. But of course that is still not something coming from nothing. That boggles the mind though even more than the god issue. Damn, hidden reality (or hidden whatever) is so awesome.
Uccisore, we’re talking about things we can’t ever possibly know, with even the slightest degree of certainty. We’re poking in the dark, speculating, wishful thinking, and in the dark looking for a light switch, but this particular light bulb has long since burnt out.
We’re never gonna know if everything came from something or nothing … or even if no-thing came from something. That’s why we use God to explain it all … it’s the best we can come up with.
You missed my point. I’m not employing Anselm’s ontological argument, I am using Anselm’s definition of God to show that my definition of God is not arbitrary. The ontological argument is irrelevant to my assertion. Don’t divert the issue and make about theists doing this or that. If I counter that with “what you just did was a typical atheist trick”, where does that lead us? My belief isn’t shaky. So don’t tar me with that brush.
Because it is explaining what must be the case if the God you do not believe in exists. A Christian God capable of miracles and supposedly eternal.
This is making claims at the level Christians make claims. As if you know how your common sense logic would apply in such cases. Common sense logic doesn’t even work within some of the physics we now consider true.
It wouldn’t be silly necessarily for a Christian to ask this as a question, but for a non-believer to assume they can make a proof about a set of beliefs that includes miracles - in other words complete exceptions to natural law - strikes me as silly.
They posit it as an eternal being. I am not sure the word ‘something’ has the right connotations, since this is a transcendent deity and things are immanent.
Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
The universe has a beginning of its existence;
Therefore:
The universe has a cause of its existence.
It does not argue that something cannot come from nothing.
So you’re saying God is the cause of being but not a being or being itself? That seems wrong to me.
That just seems irrelevant.
Similar to your argument above. You seem to be saying that God caused reality but is not reality itself. If God is not reality than what?
These qualifications you added to my statements quickly result in absurdities. It seems you’ve got non-being creating being and unreality creating reality.
