is the Christian concept of the One from a philosophical point of view true?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Uninterested.

[Dubious]

But in those days, people used to believe in "miracles" - violations of the laws of nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

This is only 16 minutes long, but is excellently articulate and a brilliant summary of the reason why thinking that faith and science are opposites is a mistake. It's really worth your time.

I would think that's true. It is a mistake to think of them as opposites. Instead, each belongs to its own domain of separation enclosed by its own specific models where the overlap, if it exists at all, is minuscule. By these parameters, there can be no opposition. What creates it are the conflations' people invariably indulge in by opposing one to the other when, in fact, there really is no such antithesis.

[Immanuel Can]

But in those days, people used to believe in "miracles" - violations of the laws of nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

This is only 16 minutes long, but is excellently articulate and a brilliant summary of the reason why thinking that faith and science are opposites is a mistake. It's really worth your time.

I would think that's true. It is a mistake to think of them as opposites. Instead, each belongs to its own domain of separation enclosed by its own specific models where the overlap, if it exists at all, is minuscule. By these parameters, there can be no opposition. What creates it are the conflations' people invariably indulge in by opposing one to the other when, in fact, there really is no such antithesis.

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

[attofishpi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

This is only 16 minutes long, but is excellently articulate and a brilliant summary of the reason why thinking that faith and science are opposites is a mistake. It's really worth your time.

I would think that's true. It is a mistake to think of them as opposites. Instead, each belongs to its own domain of separation enclosed by its own specific models where the overlap, if it exists at all, is minuscule. By these parameters, there can be no opposition. What creates it are the conflations' people invariably indulge in by opposing one to the other when, in fact, there really is no such antithesis.

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

I don't think it's that Science and Faith are opposite, it seems to be that many atheists think they mutually exclude each other, that if you believe in God then you don't have a scientifc bone in your body.
Some atiheist friends of mine seem to have that opinion, and yet when we go to quiz nights I tend to have the anwers to some of the science questions, they on the other hand have never read a science book in their lives! (it seems the less educated atheists that mutually exclude one from the other!)

[Janoah]

the Supreme Being,

All beings obey the laws of nature. Why invent about beings that do not obey the laws of nature?


***And without miracles, there would have been no Israel.***

Yes, David Ben-Gurion's expression is known that "he who does not believe in miracles in Israel is not a realist"
But at the time of Ben Gurion, as at all times, there were no violations of the laws of nature, there were miraculous coincidences.


***What is your answer: did God bless Abraham? Or did He not?***

Yes, sure.
But it should be noted that our ideas about God differ with you.
There is a parable,
an atheist comes to a rabbi and says, - "Rabbi, I don't believe in God!"
The rabbi replies to the atheist, - "In the God you don't believe in, I don't believe either."


***That is not an answer: is Israel chosen by God? Yes, or no.***

Certainly. Does anyone doubt this?


***Are you saying that God did not give these commandments to Israel?***

Of course He gave.
How could people receive commandments?
People could receive commandments only through conscience, there is no other body organ in a person to receive.


***And do you think that not working on Shabbat, which is one of those commandments, is simply what somebody discovers when he "follows his conscience?"***

I understood the meaning of Shabbat while reading Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and Plato's "State".
Aristotle writes that in order to engage in philosophy, a person needs leisure.
Plato writes that there will be no good for the state until the tribe of philosophers rules the state.
The Torah puts these theoretical ideas into practice.
The establishment of a free day in an orderly manner for the whole people in the form of Shabbat, encourages and "compels" the whole people to turn to philosophizing.


*** Torah comes from Moses, and at no point in his entire earthly life was Moses ever in Jerusalem.***
"3 And many peoples shall go and say: 'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah [law], and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem."
(Isaiah 2)
In Hebrew it is written - Torah, and in English translations - the law.
That is, the Torah was given to Moses, and proceeds to the nations from Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a holy city of God!


***If so, HaShem has no will, no judgments, no revelations, no particular people, no city, no Torah...Do you believe that?***

No attributes of the material are inherent in the One literally, neither "will" nor "appetite", this is the basis of my faith.

[Immanuel Can]

the Supreme Being,

All beings obey the laws of nature. Why invent about beings that do not obey the laws of nature?

Nothing "invented."

If you don't believe God transcends the laws of nature, then by definition, you don't believe God (or YHWH, or HaShem) is the Supreme Being. What you have to believe, then, that the Laws of Nature are the Supreme Being, and HaShem is a secondary being, subject to them.

That's just logic. Period.

Anybody can see that the God of Israel, if we take that identifcation seriously at all, as described in Torah, has to be the Supreme Being and the Entity that is higher than all things...and is the source of the so-called "laws" of nature (a misnomer, because they aren't "laws" but merely "observed regularities when nothing interferes with them"). That's how Torah has it, and that's how logic has it.

So no, not all beings "obey the laws of nature." The so-called "laws of nature" are subject to HaShem.

***And without miracles, there would have been no Israel.***

Yes, David Ben-Gurion's expression is known that "he who does not believe in miracles in Israel is not a realist"

Well, anybody who does not believe HaShem chose a people does not believe in Israel. And his choosing of a people, from Abraham to Moses to the prophets and beyond, is framed in Torah in terms of miracles.

***What is your answer: did God bless Abraham? Or did He not?***

Yes, sure.

So you do believe in miracles when they support Israel.

But you've lept over some very important points I've made to you. One is that there is no truth to uniformitarianism -- it does not even logically follow from the belief that nature has observable regularities that those regularities cannot be interrupted by divine action. I notice, for example that the miracle at the Red Sea is not taken up by you, as a subject. And I don't wonder at that -- it definitively makes you select between your uniformitarian faith commitments and the election of Israel by HaShem. If I were you, and wanted to hold your belief in the "laws of nature" being uniform, I wouldn't want to discuss the Red Sea or the plagues of Egypt at all...let alone the manna, the quails, the pillar of smoke and fire, the Ten Commandments, Jericho...and on, and on, and on.

***That is not an answer: is Israel chosen by God? Yes, or no.***

Certainly. Does anyone doubt this?

How do you know Israel was chosen by HaShem? What's your evidence for that?

***Are you saying that God did not give these commandments to Israel?***

Of course He gave.
How could people receive commandments?
People could receive commandments only through conscience, there is no other body organ in a person to receive.

So now you're saying HaShem did NOT give the Ten Commandments? For you are saying that the Hebrews simply derived them from their own consciences?

So who were the people with Aaron, at the foot of the mountain, dancing and fornicating around the golden calf? Not Hebrews? Or did they simply fail to listen to their consciences? And when Moses came down the mountain, did he throw their consciences to the ground?

*** Torah comes from Moses, and at no point in his entire earthly life was Moses ever in Jerusalem.***
That is, the Torah was given to Moses, and proceeds to the nations from Jerusalem.

That is not the same thing: Moses himself is not "the Law of Moses."

Moses himself was never in Jerusalem. The fact that the Hebrews later went forth from Jerusalem, bearing the Torah that Moses himself never took to Jerusalem doesn't answer that problem, anymore than I could claim that because Shakespeare's plays are played in Shanghai, Shakespeare was in China.

Jerusalem is a holy city of God!

I know that. But I can't see why you believe it. After all, Moses was never there. So now, you've turned Jerusalem simply into a village that the Hebrews arbitrarily stole from the Jebusites during David's time. That being so, what claim has Israel to Jerusalem, if what you say is true?

***If so, HaShem has no will, no judgments, no revelations, no particular people, no city, no Torah...Do you believe that?***

No attributes of the material are inherent in the One literally, neither "will" nor "appetite", this is the basis of my faith.

What "faith" is that? It can't be Judaism. Judaism speaks of God as having many properties that human beings also have secondarily derivatively, as "made in His image," to quote Genesis.

Perhaps what's got you messed up on this is that you're mistaking the prototype for the antitype. You're feeling that attributing characteristics we see in men might pull down "the One" from His lofty place of difference. But that is not at all what we, or Torah, are doing.

Let me set that straight. God doesn't have a personality, a will or a consciousness because men do. Men have a personality, will and consciousness because God has those things. He is the Original; they are but the pale reflections of His nature. It's not the other way around. That's how Torah has it, anyway.

[Dubious]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

Yes, I have. Three times in fact to make sure I'm getting the message. If one were to have a written transcript of his lecture posted, there's hardly a statement which couldn't be challenged logically and scientifically. One of his opening assertions is that since nothing comes of nothing the only way a universe could emerge is through god's direct intervention which is an old kludge forever repeated by theists whose final answer for everything not understood is GOD! It's one of the most expected theistic arguments that ONLY god could have done it! Lennox repeats it as if it were something new!

He attempts to prove that god must exist mainly by word-play, a type of subterfuge when the relevant data is missing, a typical rhetorical scam used by theists. He quotes old data by some scientists from 50/60 and more years ago when the idea of something from nothing was still hard to accept. Thus, god appeared to annul the nothing by surmounting it by his own will to create....hence the universe! Of course, most scientists even then did not accept god as an explanation. Better to denote a mystery likely to be solved than connote a certainty which remains stagnant explaining nothing.

In the meantime, many things, once thought impossible, became not only possible but probable. He doesn't mention any of that. He talks as though he were a scientist to give himself more credibility when espousing his counter-factual scientific theories but actually trained as a mathematician. The two were never the same, each under the control of its own paradigm. There is no reference I could discover which testifies to any actual scientific training he may have had.

The more I listen to this kind of lecture and all the logical and scientific fallacies and distortions required to reify an operating metaphor into existence the less believable the whole god scenario becomes.

I'll stop here. I dislike long posts, even though it could be vastly expanded if each point in his lecture were to be critiqued. Let the old fart have his way; it won't preempt him from going extinct like ALL else that ever lived...where Nothing ever emerges as more than itself. Does it hurt? Not in the least, though theists, like Lennox, may consider it the ultimate injustice if the universe offers no final reckoning. Justice as a revenge motive exists only in life. For that purpose Judgement is demanded which only a god can perform and those like Lennox desperate to establish...but only until his life dissolves into the same nothing from whence it came annulling all vestiges of what humans once qualified as good and evil including all memory of those who were one or the other.

[Gary Childress]

I would think that's true. It is a mistake to think of them as opposites. Instead, each belongs to its own domain of separation enclosed by its own specific models where the overlap, if it exists at all, is minuscule. By these parameters, there can be no opposition. What creates it are the conflations' people invariably indulge in by opposing one to the other when, in fact, there really is no such antithesis.

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

I don't think it's that Science and Faith are opposite, it seems to be that many atheists think they mutually exclude each other, that if you believe in God then you don't have a scientifc bone in your body.
Some atiheist friends of mine seem to have that opinion, and yet when we go to quiz nights I tend to have the anwers to some of the science questions, they on the other hand have never read a science book in their lives! (it seems the less educated atheists that mutually exclude one from the other!)

There has NEVER been a rule in the US that Christians can't go to universities to study the sciences. Devout Christians weren't doing it because their pastors didn't want them learning the theory of Evolution and told them they were being "indoctrinated" and cheap Christian "colleges" like "Liberty University" were being created by people like Jerry Fallwell to counter that. Literally, Christians didn't want to learn because they knew they weren't going to learn what they WANTED to learn.

No one was "indoctrinating" them in colleges to adopt evolution. No one was forcing anyone to believe anything. As far as my experience goes, if a student could at least apply his learning in a term paper--demonstrating competence in what s/he was taught--in a way to address why he didn't believe a theory to be true s/he would get an "A". Evolution was taught as a "theory". That's why it was even widely known as the THEORY of evolution--as advertised in the academic institutions in my country when I was going to college. If that changed since I went to college in the 1980s, then maybe that's what happened. My personal eyewitness experience is of a very competent university system. Then along came Fox News with the conspiracy theories and every other form of "information" for paranoid people who think Satan is working in the universities to undermine Yahweh.



I give up. Since AJ has been here I haven't seen much in the way of real philosophy as I learned it. All I see is endless postulations about different "world views" and how any world view could be correct, even the Biblical one. Fucking multi-culturalism applied to science.

Fuck it.

[Immanuel Can]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

Yes, I have. Three times in fact...

So...watched it three times, but didn't understand it?

Your "summaries" just don't stand the test of comparison with what he actually says, the arguments he actually adduces. But hey, if that's all you got out of it, I guess that's all you got.

I'll believe you.

[Immanuel Can]

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

I don't think it's that Science and Faith are opposite, it seems to be that many atheists think they mutually exclude each other, that if you believe in God then you don't have a scientifc bone in your body.
Some atiheist friends of mine seem to have that opinion, and yet when we go to quiz nights I tend to have the anwers to some of the science questions, they on the other hand have never read a science book in their lives! (it seems the less educated atheists that mutually exclude one from the other!)

There has NEVER been a rule in the US that Christians can't go to universities to study the sciences. Devout Christians weren't doing it...

Actually they were: but the prevailing Materialist orthodoxies and the attached penalties meant that to do so, they had to keep their faith a private matter, in some cases. That's not unusual in the scientific "community," as Polanyi, Livingston, Hart and Kuhn all so sagely pointed out.

In fact, when Galileo was persecuted, it was not actually at the initiating of the Catholic clergy so much as of the Aristotelian scientific community. But you can check that out for yourself. There are lots of good histories of those events.

No one was "indoctrinating" them in colleges to adopt evolution.

The indoctrinators didn't wait that long. They were already fully active in public and high schools. By the time anybody got to university, Evolutionism was an orthodoxy nobody was allowed to question. Just look at how much trouble even an Atheist like Nagel got into for doing it. It simply was not to be interrogated: period.

No one was forcing anyone to believe anything.

Actually, they were: and rather vigorously, too. But since you personally probably never tried to question Evolutionism or to operate on an alternate theory, I don't wonder that you were blithely unaware of that. How would you know, if you'd never tried? Nobody would bother you about it.

[Age]

Did you watch the video? The above summary suggests maybe not.

I don't think it's that Science and Faith are opposite, it seems to be that many atheists think they mutually exclude each other, that if you believe in God then you don't have a scientifc bone in your body.
Some atiheist friends of mine seem to have that opinion, and yet when we go to quiz nights I tend to have the anwers to some of the science questions, they on the other hand have never read a science book in their lives! (it seems the less educated atheists that mutually exclude one from the other!)

There has NEVER been a rule in the US that Christians can't go to universities to study the sciences. Devout Christians weren't doing it because their pastors didn't want them learning the theory of Evolution and told them they were being "indoctrinated" and cheap Christian "colleges" like "Liberty University" were being created by people like Jerry Fallwell to counter that. Literally, Christians didn't want to learn because they knew they weren't going to learn what they WANTED to learn.

And, conversely, a number of so-called "scientists" do NOT go to specific 'educational institutions' neither, because they knew they were NOT going to learn what they WANTED to learn.

This 'phenomena' could be said in regards to just about ALL of 'you', older adult human beings, BACK in the 'OLDEN DAYS' when this was being written. That is; 'you' did NOT venture where 'you' might have LEARNED what 'you' did NOT WANT to LEARN, and UNDERSTAND.

No one was "indoctrinating" them in colleges to adopt evolution. No one was forcing anyone to believe anything.

BUT, if 'you' HAD BEEN 'indoctrinated', and/or are now BELIEVING some particular 'thing' to be true, then HOW, EXACTLY, would 'you: KNOW if 'you' were being 'indoctrinated' and/or 'forced' to BELIEVE some 'thing'.

When 'you' were a young child were 'you' 'indoctrinated' and/or 'forced' to BELIEVE IN "santa claus"?

As far as my experience goes, if a student could at least apply his learning in a term paper--demonstrating competence in what s/he was taught--in a way to address why he didn't believe a theory to be true s/he would get an "A".

So, ONCE AGAIN, we have ANOTHER example of the so-called 'education system', BACK in the days when this was being written.

As long as one REPEATS or COPIES, 'correctly', what one was TAUGHT and INSTRUCTED to 'learn', 'comprehend', and 'understand', THEN, and ONLY THEN, they got good MARKS and a good REPORT. No matter how Wrong or BAD what was being 'taught' was, EXACTLY.

As long as 'they' RE-REPEATED what was being 'TAUGHT', then 'they' were, VERY LAUGHABLY, classed as 'educated'.

Evolution was taught as a "theory". That's why it was even widely known as the THEORY of evolution--as advertised in the academic institutions in my country when I was going to college. If that changed since I went to college in the 1980s, then maybe that's what happened. My personal eyewitness experience is of a very competent university system. Then along came Fox News with the conspiracy theories and every other form of "information" for paranoid people who think Satan is working in the universities to undermine Yahweh.



I give up. Since AJ has been here I haven't seen much in the way of real philosophy as I learned it. All I see is endless postulations about different "world views" and how any world view could be correct, even the Biblical one. Fucking multi-culturalism applied to science.

Fuck it.

[Gary Childress]

I don't think it's that Science and Faith are opposite, it seems to be that many atheists think they mutually exclude each other, that if you believe in God then you don't have a scientifc bone in your body.
Some atiheist friends of mine seem to have that opinion, and yet when we go to quiz nights I tend to have the anwers to some of the science questions, they on the other hand have never read a science book in their lives! (it seems the less educated atheists that mutually exclude one from the other!)

There has NEVER been a rule in the US that Christians can't go to universities to study the sciences. Devout Christians weren't doing it...

Actually they were: but the prevailing Materialist orthodoxies and the attached penalties meant that to do so, they had to keep their faith a private matter, in some cases. That's not unusual in the scientific "community," as Polanyi, Livingston, Hart and Kuhn all so sagely pointed out.

In fact, when Galileo was persecuted, it was not actually at the initiating of the Catholic clergy so much as of the Aristotelian scientific community. But you can check that out for yourself. There are lots of good histories of those events.

No one was "indoctrinating" them in colleges to adopt evolution.

The indoctrinators didn't wait that long. They were already fully active in public and high schools. By the time anybody got to university, Evolutionism was an orthodoxy nobody was allowed to question. Just look at how much trouble even an Atheist like Nagel got into for doing it. It simply was not to be interrogated: period.

No one was forcing anyone to believe anything.

Actually, they were: and rather vigorously, too. But since you personally probably never tried to question Evolutionism or to operate on an alternate theory, I don't wonder that you were blithely unaware of that. How would you know, if you'd never tried? Nobody would bother you about it.

IC. I went to college in the United States and experienced the US education system first hand from bottom to almost top. I can tell you that what you are spouting is nonsense put out by people who DID NOT attend or else pay attention when they went to schools like the one I went to. You're in Canada. If you don't know what American education was like in the 1980s (at the height of secularism) and you don't wish to listen to me, then please shut up and stop spreading ill informed nonsense. I was there.

[Immanuel Can]

IC. I went to college in the United States and experienced the US education system first hand from bottom to almost top. I can tell you that what you are spouting is nonsense put out by people who DID NOT attend or else pay attention when they went to schools like the one I went to.

Did you ever tell anybody you didn't believe in Evolution?

No, of course not: because you did believe in the orthodoxy, and never had an occasion to experience what others experienced. So you may assume there was openness, decency and equal treatment; but I assure you, there has not been and is not now.

[Gary Childress]

IC. I went to college in the United States and experienced the US education system first hand from bottom to almost top. I can tell you that what you are spouting is nonsense put out by people who DID NOT attend or else pay attention when they went to schools like the one I went to.

Did you ever tell anybody you didn't believe in Evolution?

No, of course not: because you did believe in the orthodoxy, and never had an occasion to experience what others experienced. So you may assume there was openness, decency and equal treatment; but I assure you, there has not been and is not now.

I ACTUALLY WITNESSED people who DID JUST THAT in some of my classes and they were not failed just for that reason. They participated in the discussion too, the few that did bother going to a college back then when "scientific creationism" was all the rage among evangelicals. But I'll defer to your expert opinion on the education system I experienced. Proceed to take the floor IC.

[Immanuel Can]

I ACTUALLY WITNESSED people who DID JUST THAT in some of my classes and they were not failed just for that reason. They participated in the discussion too, the few that did bother going to a college back then when "scientific creationism" was all the rage among evangelicals. But I'll defer to your expert opinion on the education system I experienced. Proceed to take the floor IC.

If that was your experience, then don't think it was typical. There is an abundance of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Perhaps you were in a particularly reasonable corner of things...or perhaps it is as I suggested, that you never really had reason to know what was going on, since you were not the target of any ill-treatment yourself. Either way, there's no doubt there's a great deal of antipathy to treating any alternate theory to Evolutionism with anything more than a dismissive attitude, if not also outright hostility.