John, I know how most theistic teachers teach.
They’d say that “god is in every moment”. … very far from “unimaginable”… it’s actually funny !!
To say god is unimaginable is to say that god can’t even imagine god.
Now think about this John … if you make such a stupid error in logic, what makes you think you didn’t make other errors!!!
Oh I know. No one realized that bereft of faith man is up the crick without a paddle, but don’t listen to John He is a scholastic. Scholastics are like lawyers to god. Scholastics are ego ridden, they hate to be challenged, they are one up genetically.
But even lawyers realize and pre empty reason by substance if they are compelled.
God is not a paternal model, women were worshipped some days back. But it’s not even women who can model for men. The really can’t care less, as long as they can rely on their spouses, and they do, they do…The virgin Mary after all did bring forth life.
But so much for manners, but god, heck with manners to all those evolution deniers who probably would not want to find themselves in the jungle. Most wouldn’t even want to return to the garden.
I guess the only place one could return to is politics, and the upcoming struggle the bible thumpers will have with true believers.
But guys, I am not like Judas!
I made no errors. God is unimaginable. God is uncaused and not made of parts. One cannot imagine that. God doesn’t have an imagination in a human sense. But, God causes each moment of time, but that doesn’t make God material or imaginable.
You’re made no errors huh?
How simply did Silhouette explain to you the most basic logical error that you’re making?
If god is unimaginable, then all of your posts are refuted.
Whether god exists or not, you by your own words, claim that your arguments are bullshit!
You don’t need to know a thing to know it exists. I can prove a black hole exists, but I don’t know what is happening inside it.
Yeah, but nobody is claiming that black holes are “unimaginable”!
I can’t imagine the entirety of the universe, but I can prove it exists.
John, you’re trying to be VERY precise, and silhouette and I are very precise people!
Your exact word was “unimaginable”
You’re going to have to stop using that word to move forward
My thoughts exactly. And I wasn’t clear on what he meant by an “uncaused absence” when describing the absolute nothingness side of the dichotomy–did he mean that absolute nothingness is just as uncaused as full reality, or did he mean that since absolute nothingness is obviously not the case, it wasn’t caused? And I think you’re right–he’s confusing the parts constituting the whole for the parts causing the whole–like saying a collection of H2O molecules causes there to be water. And you’re right to say that even if a thing doesn’t have parts, it doesn’t follow that it’s indestructible. Case in point, an electron and an anti-electron are both said to be fundamental particles (i.e. they don’t have parts), yet when you bring them together, they anihilate becoming pure energy.
In general, I think. Although I didn’t get anything about interchangeability from the argument. I think he’s just pointing out that the creator of this reality could have created any other reality, and if we suppose that the cause of this reality is itself caused by a whole chain of other things, then we are saying it is caused by things from another reality (or another reality itself). But we just conceded that the cause of this reality would have been the creator of that other reality, so it couldn’t be something in that other reality (or the other reality itself). Therefore, the cause of this reality would have to be the cause of all possible potential realities, and therefore uncaused.
I agree with your take on the argument about differences between realities tending towards zero leading to ad absurdum when taken as infinitum. What’s the point of arguing from the context of differences tending towards zero if the same conclusion can be drawn for differences arbitrarily large? It’s like saying that if I have a skill, say building houses, then surely I should be able to build a few different houses with some minor variations, therefore I can build anything. The point is that the further out the end product from what I can build, the less likely I will be able to build that. This varying likelihood is what’s missing in his argument. Not every iteration away from some starting point is equally likely.
In general, agreed. The introduction of intelligence, agency, and knowledge seems unwarranted. So far in the argument, he has arrived at the conclusion that any potential reality could have been created, but we have this one. He then concludes that the only mechanism that could have determined that we’d have this one instead of the myriad of other potential realities is a kind of intelligence or decision-making agency. I don’t quite think it follows.
I know. There’s too much here. There may be some actual logical cohesion hidden within the minutia, but he’s got 14 cosmological arguments jam packed into one post. I think each one could be dissected into whole chapters before we see some real logical substance.
Ooooo, that’s gonna be a lot of questions.
I asked a few question in my first post to you. Let me select one. How 'bout this:
Why does existence need an uncaused reason? Let’s take, for example, the idea of an eternal universe–eternal in both directions, past and future–every state of the universe has the previous state as its cause, and there is no “first state”, therefore no “first cause” (which would amount to an uncaused cause). Does the question then turn on the entire series of causes all together? What is the cause of the whole series of causes? In that case, we’re talking about a cause outside of time, a reason why existence is. ← Is this the uncaused reason you’re talking about?
A human proof is a function of human conception - all concepts, definitions and logic contained therein are subject to this limitation because it’s a human doing the proving within their human limitations. The unimaginable, or “beyond human conception” does not fall within these limitations and is thus beyond the scope of any human’s proof. As such, any attempt to prove the unimaginable will necessarily result in either a proof of something humanly imaginable (and therefore not God), or a failed proof. You get out what you put in, and an entirely humanly conceivable conclusion is all that can emerge from an entirely human process done entirely by humans, using concepts and methods that they can only deal with in a human way that is not beyond their human conception.
There is a key distinction being made here: of the necessarily unimaginable versus the possibly imaginable (but unimaginable so far).
The entirety of the natural universe is possibly imaginable: it’s conceivably possible to go out there and confirm anything about it, or all practical difficulties aside it’s at least theoretically possible.
Things that could only be completely defined as at least in part beyond human conception (e.g. God) could never be entirely humanly conceived no matter what you did, unless you’re simply using the word “God” in lieu of some other natural/mundane concept that you can go and study in its entirety like a piece of rock. Such things as God could only be fully defined as necessarily unimaginable in their entirety.
This is why you could theoretically imagine the entirety of the universe but even in theory you could never imagine the entirety of God. Any proofs, anything you imagine, believe in, know about “God” will necessarily be of something less than God and therefore not God, meaning there’s no such thing to humans - conceivably, imaginably, eternally, necessarily. Anything natural is fine and doesn’t encounter the same fundamental impossibility.
You made no errors in specifying all these things that God would need to be: unimaginable, uncaused, not made of parts, causing of each moment of time, beyond the material etc. but you made an error in treating the result as something that can be subject to proof or even your own conception (as well as making various logic errors in your attempt, which I’ve pointed out).
This entire time, your conception has by definition always been of something less than God, and therefore not God. So even if your arguments didn’t fail, they’d not be of God, but something less and therefore not God.
As you can see, there’s no opinion involved here, no wishful thinking or intention to justify/rationalise belief, simply pure logical fact.
Gib,
1). Absolute nothingness is uncaused, not because it isn’t the case and hence hasn’t been caused to exist. As a theoretical concept it would be uncaused just as God is uncaused. Why? There is nothing that can cause it besides the impossible destruction of God.
2). An electron and anti-electron are not fundamental particles, and they obviously have parts made of energy when they annihilate each other.
3). God builds physical reality - not just houses.
You got much closer in understanding the Dichotomy of Existence this time around. Congratulations! However, you still missed the logic on intelligence of God.
So, I will explain it again. Everythingness is God’s uncaused power to create everything that is logically possibly in physical reality. However, some logically possible creations are only created by intelligence. For example, it takes the intelligence of a DiVinci in order for a Mona Lisa to exist. Accordingly, God must have the greatest intelligence logically possible in order for the fullest extent of everythingness to be capable of being created.
Quite the contrary, god is merely an image, the proof is strictly in the pudding.
Every one knows the dichotomy for what it is, it began the very
qiestion it tries to uncover, which has been shown to be an ad hoc attempt to support the unsupportable, that for which even Saint Anselm has been censured.
The charge that imagination and reality work contrary as the rationalists try to envision, so that they can make good mannered believers out of the faithful , demoted those , whose belief is not patterned for gain of what the same spiritual power the architects of the church has infused belief with. All kinds of ridiculous notions like purchasing powers of heaven and crucifying those that they objected to.
Burning of seeds of enlightenment like Bruno, .and witches who were mere mortals with sever and dissolute situations.
Most philosophers who tried and failed to prove God’s existence were unsuccessful , not because they couldn’t, rationalize premises with conclusions, but because the proof was became merely a political tool to placate earthly power of princes . The Sun-King of France, who considered himself belonging in the same heavenly realm that only God had.occupied, consolidated his power by trying to unite and utilize the powers of both: heaven and earth.
Faith was a politically expedient way to reason out an image that they held in tandem with those who excelled at defining the long ago mined ideals of former idealists.
The anthropomorphic ideal had to represent a reasoning, reasonable god, who conformed the wisdom of the ages, and pre set an impression which could sustain man’s egocentric idea, that he was, after all in the center of a paternalistic universe.
But all this does not did prove or disprove God’s ‘existence,’ man achieved the greatness of an unmatched spirit that could identify and finally recognize that. God , he needed to be a copy of, not merely be a fallacious solution to a presumptuous problem.
Theater surrounding the question of God’s causation never enterd God’s intelligence, Hume has eliminated the need to find cause where non exists.
No, God does not exist. the way we commonly think of how existence ties into the relationship between the imagined and the possible.
Everything known been discovered to be an illusion so far, the only reason any thing exists at all , is because the idea that all is that all that manifests developed in and through senses energy, of perceptive acquisition, that can begins anew the journey to receive formally designate the process of sensation with that which reality can reflect thru it’s own image.
The immaterial produces the material world , the inorganic the organic, resulting in conscious self awareness, that finally self awareness, in its most general sense, with the ability to reproduce it’s own image.
Thought and reasoning further develop to a point, a point not yet currently attained in this universe, where limits can mostly be discarded and the world of possibility can penetrate the world of actuality.
That eternal flow of possibility, can realize a state of eternally recurrent images and powers that can realize it’s self as apart , while part of a simultanity that has no beginning and no end, a state of continuity where nothing ends or begins.
Nothing is caused or destroyed, only maintained in an artificially built natural phenomenon that is always becoming natural, in am ever developing state of imaginative process, into amd from which rreasoning is merely a rhetorical excercise proving nothing.
The proofs themselves are commendable shadows of wish fulfillment, and they are admirable for nothing else but reaffirmation of wish fulfillment.
God does exist in the human psyche, as reminders that it is man’s developmental projectile that propels him to become united with the higher realms that he has already attained numerous times.total perfection would really destroy existence into the very nothingness that can only be left undefined.
God is that nothingness, the point where existence both enemates and self distructs in tandem, in spectacular simultanity.
That that.process.goes on eternally in am imminent-transcendent indifference , is what binds man together in an ever defining clasp, that we.call ‘love’.
Yes, John, I know of.God, and I do not merely like him, I do love Him
I could provide examples in my very life, but I do not , can not imagine that.You would believe me.
Poetic, but ultimately a fantasy.
Infinite regress does not exist.
Infinite regress like infinite progression are very simple ideas in math. You conveniently only believe in one of them.
I’m going to make this very simple for you:
Triangles weren’t invented, they were discovered. Triangles are not sentient. A simple triangle is more powerful than gods ability to create.
I hope you understand that. God did not create “triangleness” or triangles, if anything, god discovered them.
The concept of the triangle exists in God’s uncaused mind.
The arrow of time only points in one direction - and that direction is not at my convenience.
Does that mean god has a caused mind? Say, for example, all of us?
Triangleness is uncaused.
God’s mind is uncaused. God’s mind is not like our’s. Yes, triangleness is uncaused within the uncaused mind of God.
A triangle is neither like our mind nor gods mind.
A triangle is not dependent upon god, god is however dependent on a triangle.
I wouldn’t say that either God or God’s uncaused mind containing triangleness is a dependency relationship. It’s the same uncaused mysterious reality.