Philosophy Now Forum

Walker wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:20 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 11:00 am

Walker wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 7:48 am
Folks refuse to say or write God for various reasons.

God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God [/size]God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God GodGod God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God GodGod God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God God


God

That took some one-pointed focus to do that. A continuous thought upon God.

But which one is the true God?

Buddha say, look to the meaning and not the word.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:26 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:12 am
But what if that's not the right view of God?

I suppose it would make two of us who have got it wrong.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But something's got to be true about God, assuming, for the sake of the argument, that God does exist. And what access to information about that might we have?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:40 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:26 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:12 am
But what if that's not the right view of God?

I suppose it would make two of us who have got it wrong.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But something's got to be true about God, assuming, for the sake of the argument, that God does exist. And what access to information about that might we have?

I can't think of any reliable information about God; perhaps you know where it may be found.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:51 am I can't think of any reliable information about God; perhaps you know where it may be found.

What would assure you of reliability?

Walker wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:38 am Buddha say, look to the meaning and not the word.

You can't just pick one off the shelf at random, Walker; IC has warned us about choosing the wrong one. I'm going to play it safe and stay neutral.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:08 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:51 am I can't think of any reliable information about God; perhaps you know where it may be found.

What would assure you of reliability?

I would need an eye witness account, but only if the witness was me.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:11 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:08 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 12:51 am I can't think of any reliable information about God; perhaps you know where it may be found.

What would assure you of reliability?

I would need an eye witness account, but only if the witness was me.

Well, if that were true, you couldn't reasonably believe in the Napoleonic Wars, or the Roman Empire, Or the British Empire, or even the existence of modern Brazil or Thailand, unless you happen to have been to those places.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:21 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:11 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:08 am
What would assure you of reliability?

I would need an eye witness account, but only if the witness was me.

Well, if that were true, you couldn't reasonably believe in the Napoleonic Wars, or the Roman Empire, Or the British Empire, or even the existence of modern Brazil or Thailand, unless you happen to have been to those places.

How can we be sure there ever was, for example, a Roman Empire?

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 2:51 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:21 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 1:11 am
I would need an eye witness account, but only if the witness was me.

Well, if that were true, you couldn't reasonably believe in the Napoleonic Wars, or the Roman Empire, Or the British Empire, or even the existence of modern Brazil or Thailand, unless you happen to have been to those places.

How can we be sure there ever was, for example, a Roman Empire?

In a sense, we can't: not if the standard is, "I only believe in what I directly experience."

Oh, sure we can list the artefacts we find. And sure, we can read what historians have reconstructed. And sure, we can ask questions like, "How did Europe become so heavily influenced by Latin?..." But all of that is inductive and indirect. The truth is that you and I were not there.

And how can we know that each other exists? We've never met. You could be a bot...and so could I. Or you could be a 300lb woman from Denver, Colorado, pretending to be a retiree from Yorkshire, and I could be a 15-year-old Chinese acrobat from Wuhan, pretending to be something else entirely. Lots of things are possible, and very few certain, if we stick to the "I only believe what I experience" standard.

It's also going to give us some serious problems with having new experiences, of course. Maybe one day one of us will be offered a chance to eat matoke or go on a hovercraft -- but we can't accept, because we won't believe matoke or hovercraft...we've not yet experienced either.

But you can probably start to see soem of the problems with all that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 6:24 pm
Well, that's the Atheistic assumption...all theology is false...

Without stating the obvious, any normal rational thinking human mind would agree that believing in something known as a ''Creator'' of all things, that has no image is rather absurd.

And yes, while gravity and wind also have no image, we know this phenomena to exist because of it's self evident, experiential direct effects on our senses, as and through our bodies.

So either you name this so called 'GOD' the absolute (all and everything), or, you stop trying to single this so called ''GOD thing'' out as though it was some ultra exclusive separate entity existing apart from everything else...which is rationally and logically impossible. As that would be like you trying to separate yourself from your thought, or your idea.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 6:24 pmit's like "unicorn studies," or "fairyology." That's how they think.

No they don't, that's how you think.
Unicorns and Fairies are anything but false, they have actual images to prove they exist for real. But No one, to date, has ever seen a real image of God.

So your response, as usual, is just another example of your rather unusual immunity to a truth that is very ordinary and basic rational common sense available to other thinking minds. Yours is more of a classical IC tactical cop-out.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 7:35 pm
I think it's quite ironic that some people would bridle at any suggestion that the Bible comes from God, but would, at the same time, treat a single definition from Merriam-Webster or Collins as if it had fallen from the sky in perfect form.

Well imagine that, that's exactly where any 'thought' and it's meaning comes from, they come right out of thin air, known as the ether, I mean where else are they going to come from? I mean, it's not like you are going to find 'thoughts' neatly stored away intact and fully formed for all to see, inside someone's skull, are you?

Unless you want to call God by another name, like the sky, or the air, or the ether. I mean, look at all the names God's Got, he's quite the shapeshifter isn't he.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pmWell, the Origin of Species has been found, of course, to be quite inadequate in various ways, even by modern Evolutionists...

The question is whether the revisions proposed for Darwin are adequate to save him, or are rearguard actions designed to shore up a dying paradigm.

The essential thesis, that organisms evolve, has not been revised; that's why there are still "modern Evolutionists".

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pmThat's the case that Atheist Thomas Nagel makes in Time and Cosmos...a little book but well worth the read.The question is whether the revisions proposed for Darwin are adequate to save him, or are rearguard actions designed to shore up a dying paradigm.

Well, the point made by Nagel in Mind and Cosmos is that science cannot account for mind. It certainly hasn't done so yet and it may be that it never will due to mind being something only an almighty God can imbue. Given the developments in AI, we may be about to find out. However that pans out, there are several theories about mind and how it evolved, so to commit to any God hypothesis is a choice.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:10 amAnyone who takes the theory of evolution seriously is compelled to accept that any truth in the biblical creation story is allegorical rather than historical.

No, they actually aren't. If we were to suppose that God used evolution as a mechanism to produce all species but one, that would be devoid of theological concerns...whether that explanation were right or wrong.

If we are talking about the same Bible, then yes they are. We can suppose anything, but there is no reason in Genesis to suppose evolution. The creation story in Genesis is consistent with the hypothesis that, far from being inspired by the agent responsible, the authors had no idea how the world actually works.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pmOnly in the case of human beings is the theory of Evolutionism a no-go. And there, you're right: it would have very serious theological implications. Fortunately, the case for human evolutionism has proved to be by far the weakest case for the theory that can be made, and the history of it is fraught with telling frauds and failures, such as the Monkey-to-Man theory, now embarassingly dead, but once held up as core orthodoxy in Evolutionist teaching.

Well, modern monkeys and man have common ancestors, which on any scale were more monkey like than human. That remains orthodoxy because the evidence for human evolution is as strong as any other animal. Some people just don't want to believe it

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pmThat should worry us: if Evolutionists have manifestly lied to us in regards to the data before, then that's a great deal more than a historical revision of old data -- that's an outright fraud.

Charles Dawson, an amateur archeologist, was responsible for the Piltdown Man fraud. That was a lie and it fooled some people. If you scratch beneath the surface, for which you need look no further than Wikipedia, you will discover that paleontologists who examined the bones were sceptical from the beginning. That one fraudster is cause to dismiss evolution is wishful thinking.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pm..."compassion" for failed organisms is contrary to "survival of the fittest," of course.

Why "of course"? How do you think 'survival of the fittest' is understood in evolutionary theory?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pm You believe that when you get up in the morning, the floor will be there, under your feet.

That's because the floor is there, it can be tested to be there when stood on it, no belief required to know the floor exists, the floor is a self-evident direct human experience known immediately here and now as and through the senses of sight and touch.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pmYou believe when you brush your teeth that you won't get tooth decay.

Not cleaning the teeth is known to result in the breakdown of the tooth due to the obvious build of harmful bacteria from lack of cleaning. This is a direct experience known to anyone who has teeth. The breakdown of tooth would be similar to the skin if left unwashed, the skin just like the tooth would be subject to break down and deteriorate when allowed to become teeming with harmful bacteria.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pmYou believe that you will not suddenly die, and that you can count on tomorrow being there for you.

You are also aware that you could drop dead at any moment just as some people have, and so what can happen to someone else's human body can happen to yours. These are self-evident direct experiences, and nothing to do with a belief in God.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pm You believe you are healthy.

If you feel healthy, you know, same as you know when you feel unhealthy, these are self-evident direct experiences, and nothing to do with some belief in God.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pm You believe your government is working in your interests.

No government I know has ever refused paying me some money to live on, when I've needed it, money that would ensure my survival. So in that sense, governments do work in my interest. In fact government's really do assist in keeping me alive at all times actually.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pmYou believe strangers will not suddenly rob you. Nothing you do, you would do if you did not believe first that it was possible for you to do it.

Well you'd first have to exist before you could tell yourself you are actually doing the things you are doing. So it's not like you can deny doing things when you have already told yourself you are doing them.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:50 pmIt's not that some people have a desire to believe things, and some others don't. Rather, it's that some people know that we all have to believe things, and other people believe they are not believing in anything at all.

If you can tell yourself you exist, then you first have to exist to impose that knowledge of existence upon yourself, there is no requirement to believe you exist, because your existence is always self-evidently your direct experience, an experience you cannot negate or experience the absence of.

As for the belief in God, that's not a self-evident, direct human experience, not believing in God is not going to cause you any harm in the way toothache and tooth loss will for example.

So what is going to happen to you without a belief in GOD?
Oh that's right, absolutely nothing. Hmm, funny how that happens isn't it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:06 pmWell, the Origin of Species has been found, of course, to be quite inadequate in various ways, even by modern Evolutionists...

The question is whether the revisions proposed for Darwin are adequate to save him, or are rearguard actions designed to shore up a dying paradigm.

The joke of the week award goes to Immanuel Can.

If O of S is "inadequate" it is only because i has since been built upon. Natural Selection predicted many remarkable things that has proven true, such as the existence of genes, and some of the sequening of events in the evolution of humans.
Far from challenging the paradigm, O of S has been proven to be the bedrock of all evolutionary studies, and a grounding for the emergence of genetics. It has given rise to a fuller understanding of biology and now has implications for memetics, computer circuitry and social engineering.

Your ignorance is astonishing, and is driven by your absurd theist prejudiuce.