Philosophy Now Forum

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 11:59 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 8:34 am If s/he were omnipotent, benevolent, omniscient, and had any regard for the beings living in his or her creation, then you'd think s/he'd be smarter than creating something s/he didn't like.

But if there was nothing here for someone to dislike, then there would no way to tell ourselves we dislike something.

So I guess God created an imperfect world just so I have a valid reason to complain. Otherwise, I'd be whining in vain.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 2:35 pm So I guess God created an imperfect world just so I have a valid reason to complain. Otherwise, I'd be whining in vain.

Yes, God had to create imperfection, just so you would have something to complain about, that is correct Gary. You'd never be able to tell yourself the world is imperfect if it wasn't.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sat Nov 25, 2023 1:56 pm ( The Bible says of God, ‘Behold’ the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee. To be infinite is to be without limits. Where there's a limit there's finiteness. Being truly infinite, God knows no restrictions of space, ability, or power.)


The above claim is obviously false, since it implies that infinite knowledge can only be known by an infinite knowing entity, known by the name of God, but which in reality can only be known by that which is finite, namely, the human mind.

In essence it is logically impossible to cross infinity - and so only ‘infinite finites’ can be known, which is never infinite knowledge, and is why knowledge can only point to the illusory nature of it’s infinite existence.

Yes, there are logic problems with monotheism just as there are emotional issues with polytheism. No matter, mythologies don't have to be everything to everyone.

LuckyR wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2023 7:38 pm Yes, there are logic problems with monotheism just as there are emotional issues with polytheism. No matter, mythologies don't have to be everything to everyone.

Both monotheism and polytheism are beliefs about a deity named God, and are not the absolute truth.

The absolute truth is this mysterious unknowing. It's not all knowing or infinite in the context of the concept because infinity never completes, it's eternally open ended, subject to change, entropy, and cannot be touched or pointed to.

Scripture points only to the human condition, on a human level, it's all just pure esoteric dreamscape, or for want of a better word, pure fantasy.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 8:13 am The absolute truth is this mysterious unknowing.
It's not all knowing or infinite in the context of the concept because infinity never completes, it's eternally open ended, subject to change, entropy, and cannot be touched or pointed to.

Regardless of how you phrase it, you are still chasing after 'something' i.e. a mysterious unknowing, an 'infinity' that is eternal and never complete; this point creates subliminal [unconscious] cognitive dissonances within oneself.

For the pyrrhonian skeptic, they just suspend judgement whenever they are triggered with the above naturally inherent question to deliberate on a finitude, ex nihilo nihil fit, "nothing comes from nothing".

Pyrrhonists dispute that the dogmatists – which includes all of Pyrrhonism's rival philosophies – claim to have found truth regarding non-evident matters, and that these opinions about non-evident matters (i.e., dogma) are what prevent one from attaining eudaimonia. For any of these dogma, a Pyrrhonist makes arguments for and against such that the matter cannot be concluded, thus suspending judgement, and thereby inducing ataraxia. [equanimity]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhonism

The Pyrrhonists devised several sayings (Greek ΦΩΝΩΝ) to help practitioners bring their minds to suspend judgment.[17] Among these are:

Not more, nothing more (a saying attributed to Democritus[18])
Non-assertion (aphasia)
Perhaps, it is possible, maybe
I withhold assent
I determine nothing (Montaigne created a variant of this as his own personal motto, "Que sais-je?" – "what do I know?")
Everything is indeterminate
Everything is non-apprehensible
I do not apprehend
To every argument an equal argument is opposed

What is most effective is to focus ONLY on the present, i.e. the 'now' that can be experienced, justified and verified empirically and the empirically-possible via say Science, the most credible and objective vehicle or FSK and therefrom also to learn [not cling] from the past so as to optimize the well-being of the individual[s] and that of humanity.

The Buddhists had been doing that >2500 years ago.

One can speculate [to be encouraged] on the impossible or the illusory, the fictitious as long as one fully understand, it is a speculation and not something that is really real.