Philosophy Now Forum

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:02 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 2:42 am

godelian wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 11:03 pm
The false belief that Christ died at the cross is based on a forgery of the Bible that we can trace back to Origin of Alexandria.

Actually, it's not. We can actually trace that belief back to the early disciples themselves, and there's no other reason for them to have promulgated it but that they believed it to be true, because many of them died for it, and died in rather unpleasant ways. That much, we can say for sure.

But what do you do with the two declaration of Mo that it is impossible for the word of God to become corrupted, because God would never permit it; but yet, subsequent Muslim apologists explaining Mo's variance from the Bible by way of corruption? How do you keep those two claims intact?

You want to turn this into a debate between Christianity and Islam.

I'm not "turning it into" that. You intended it from the start, and very obviously so.

I am not interested in that.

Then treat it as a discussion of how Mo can believe both that the words of God cannot be corrupted, and yet his followers excuse his errors on the basis that they WERE corrupted. Let's figure that one out.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:05 am I'm not "turning it into" that. You intended it from the start, and very obviously so.

I am not a representative or spokesperson for Islam. If you want to debate Islam, you will need to do that with a scholar trained in Islamic apologetics. I just read about Islam on the internet. I find it a very useful doctrine, but so is Judaism as well, which I also read on the internet.

Both Judaism and Islam are adamant on the recommendation that you should not worship a hominid, a homo sapiens, an ape, a monkey, or a baboon as a god. It is plain wrong to do that. All such animalistic religions are false. These people are liars, if they are capable of using their brains, and misguided imbeciles, if they are not.

By the way there was a Neanderthal individual who was apparently also a god. Why don't you worship him instead, huh?

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:19 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:05 am I'm not "turning it into" that. You intended it from the start, and very obviously so.

I am not a representative or spokesperson for Islam. If you want to debate Islam, you will need to do that with a scholar trained in Islamic apologetics. I just read about Islam on the internet.

It shows. You walked into a very obvious one.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:27 am

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:19 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:05 am I'm not "turning it into" that. You intended it from the start, and very obviously so.

I am not a representative or spokesperson for Islam. If you want to debate Islam, you will need to do that with a scholar trained in Islamic apologetics. I just read about Islam on the internet.

It shows. You walked into a very obvious one.

Look, we are the homo sapiens. If you worship one of us as a god, you are not one of us. In that case, you are a homo imbecilatius, which is clearly below us.

So, show a bit of respect for the homo sapiens individuals around you, since you are at the bottom of things, below everyone else.

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:39 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:27 am

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:19 am
I am not a representative or spokesperson for Islam. If you want to debate Islam, you will need to do that with a scholar trained in Islamic apologetics. I just read about Islam on the internet.

It shows. You walked into a very obvious one.

Look, we are the homo sapiens. If you worship one of us as a god, you are not one of us.

Nobody, least of all Christians, believe a man can become God. Give it up. Nobody's fighting you.

The question is, can God become a man? And you don't know what to say, obviously.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:48 am The question is, can God become a man? And you don't know what to say, obviously.

I do not invent answers to that kind of questions. That is bad practice because you cannot guarantee consistency nor deductive closure if you do that. You clearly expect me to invent an answer but I surely won't. I will use an existing doctrine to which I can reconcile myself with in terms of consistency and deductive closure:

ChatGPT: In Islam, can God become a man?

In Islam, God (Allah) cannot become a man. This belief is a fundamental part of Islamic theology and is rooted in the concept of Tawhid, the absolute oneness and uniqueness of God.

According to the Qur'an:

> "There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing."
(Surah Ash-Shura 42:11)

> "Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begets not, nor is He begotten; and there is none like unto Him."
(Surah Al-Ikhlas 112:1–4)

Muslims believe that:

Allah is completely beyond human form or limitations.

He does not incarnate or take human shape.

Associating human attributes to God or claiming that God became a man is considered shirk (associating partners with God), which is the gravest sin in Islam.

This sharply contrasts with beliefs in some other religions where divinity might be believed to incarnate in human form. In Islam, however, prophets like Jesus (Isa), Muhammad, Moses, etc., are human messengers, not divine beings.

If you double check with Jewish doctrine, you will find pretty much the same answer:

ChatGPT: In Judaism, can God become a man?

In Judaism, the idea that God could become a man is generally rejected.

One of the core principles of Jewish belief, articulated most famously by the philosopher Maimonides (Rambam) in his 13 Principles of Faith, is that God is absolutely one, incorporeal (without a physical body), and completely distinct from His creation. The notion that God could take on human form contradicts the fundamental Jewish understanding of God's nature.

Judaism teaches that God is infinite and beyond human form or limitations. Verses in the Torah and other Jewish texts that describe God in human terms (like "the hand of God" or "God spoke") are understood metaphorically or anthropomorphically—ways to help humans relate to the divine, not literal descriptions.

So, in short: no, in Judaism, God cannot become a man, because doing so would compromise His unity and transcendence.

The fundamental reason why God has never become a human and will never do so, is to prevent the emperor of Japan to claim that he is God incarnate.

Seriously, what else stops everybody and their little sister from proclaiming that they are God incarnate?

We simply do not want a god incarnate!

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:08 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 3:48 am The question is, can God become a man? And you don't know what to say, obviously.

I do not invent answers to that kind of questions.

Yes, you do. You already declared you believe no man can be God, and I've agreed.

What's the problem with making a claim the other way? I can do it. I believe that God became a Man. No problem saying so. But you, you can't figure out whether God could do that or not.

As for ChatGPT, aren't you tired of trusting a computer program programmed by somebody else to do your thinking for you?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:16 am As for ChatGPT, aren't you tired of trusting a computer program programmed by somebody else to do your thinking for you?

Aren't you tired of using a calculator to do the additions and long divisions for you?

Of course, you still have to sanity check what you see on your calculator screen. For example:

4356.622 times 975.3 is how much?
That's around: 4000 times 1000.
So, the answer shouldn't stray too much from around 4 million.
Apparently, according to google search, it is 4249013.4366 which is an answer that I accept.

Concerning the idea of trusting another programmer, I strive to use reproducible-build compliant free and open-source software:

https://reproducible-builds.org

Reproducible builds are a set of software development practices that create an independently-verifiable path from source to binary code.

It means that for every program I use, I can precisely pinpoint the source code from which it was built. Consequently, a large number of people can independently verify the source code and raise issues. Of course, the more obscure the app, the less likely that this will happen.

This principle is non-negotiable when it is about a lot of money. I would not use a wallet that is not reproducible-build compliant:

https://walletscrutiny.com

Know your wallet like you built it.

Not everyone is a developer. Not everyone has to be.

WalletScrutiny helps everyday bitcoin users verify whether or not their wallet is truly open-source and secure. Enter your wallet's name to get started.

Thousands of wallets reviewed, and counting.

Our wallet analysis process requires running 17 separate tests across various categories. This might sound excessive, but our thinking is that every compromised wallet, whether it’s already popular or just released, has the potential to damage bitcoin’s reputation or discourage future users.

Learn more about our methodology.

The most important piece of software that needs to be reproducible-build compliant is the operating system. I use Debian Linux, which is strongly committed to reproducible-build compliance. Furthermore, new versions are quarantined for two years in "testing" before being released to "stable" in order to give security researchers enough time to scrutinize the source code.

ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini are a bit new to the game. I currently use these things more as a matter of testing than anything else. It is obvious that sooner or later the training dataset of these programs will also have to be scrutinized. It may require some adjustment to the existing methodology. We may indeed have some catching up to do.

But then again, it is absolutely not desirable to stop innovation over regulatory compliance issues. Regulations always come later.

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:52 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:16 am As for ChatGPT, aren't you tired of trusting a computer program programmed by somebody else to do your thinking for you?

Aren't you tired of using a calculator to do the additions and long divisions for you?

I can do basic maths. But I don't turn to my calculator to do my logic for me anyway. Nor should you.

You have to be responsible for what you believe about God. Whether you choose to be Islamic or Christian, you're going to have to prepare for the Day of Judgment. And when you do, "I brought my calculator" will not be the right answer.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 12:51 pm

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:52 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:16 am As for ChatGPT, aren't you tired of trusting a computer program programmed by somebody else to do your thinking for you?

Aren't you tired of using a calculator to do the additions and long divisions for you?

I can do basic maths. But I don't turn to my calculator to do my logic for me anyway. Nor should you.

You have to be responsible for what you believe about God. Whether you choose to be Islamic or Christian, you're going to have to prepare for the Day of Judgment. And when you do, "I brought my calculator" will not be the right answer.

No, it's a fantastic tool both against manipulation as a potential one for manipulation.

So, we certainly need an additional bureaucracy of regulations to certify the dataset, as well as a lot of decentralization.

Logic needs to be kept consistent and deductively-closed. We need more tools for that and not fewer.

What you are suggesting, amounts to saying that you should not use a compiler to generate machine language from higher languages. You should do it manually instead. Or that you should not use a spell checker or a grammar correction tool.

I have always been an avid tool user whole my life. Your line of thinking is unthinkable to me. In my opinion, you should never do things manually if a program can do it instead.

Either you build the machine, or else you use the machine, because in all other cases, you are trying to be the machine.

One reason why university graduates typically earn less than vocationally trained workers, is because of exactly this problem. There is no market for people who can merely repeat word salads from memory. Machines can do that much better. The typical graduate would earn more if he got a truck driving license instead. That will allow him to use the machine, instead of trying to be one.

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 1:13 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 12:51 pm

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:52 am
Aren't you tired of using a calculator to do the additions and long divisions for you?

I can do basic maths. But I don't turn to my calculator to do my logic for me anyway. Nor should you.

You have to be responsible for what you believe about God. Whether you choose to be Islamic or Christian, you're going to have to prepare for the Day of Judgment. And when you do, "I brought my calculator" will not be the right answer.

No, it's a fantastic tool both against manipulation as a potential one for manipulation...

Don't change the subject. The subject is whether or not you think God can become a man.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 8:14 pm
No, just using it in a standard way. There's a reason that the Greek and Norse "gods" get a small "g," and the Supreme Being gets a big "G": that is, that everybody who deals with these concepts realizes that they're not exactly the same concept...and hence, Standard English deals with it this way.

Or, As AI puts it:

"In general, "small g" god refers to deities or beings worshipped in various religions, while "Big G" God refers specifically to the supreme being in Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The "small g" is used when referring to multiple deities, or a general concept of a god, while the "Big G" is reserved for the singular, supreme being in these monotheistic faiths."

That seems like ethnicentric bigotry. Who knew AI supported that?

Alexiev wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 5:39 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 8:14 pm
No, just using it in a standard way. There's a reason that the Greek and Norse "gods" get a small "g," and the Supreme Being gets a big "G": that is, that everybody who deals with these concepts realizes that they're not exactly the same concept...and hence, Standard English deals with it this way.

Or, As AI puts it:

"In general, "small g" god refers to deities or beings worshipped in various religions, while "Big G" God refers specifically to the supreme being in Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The "small g" is used when referring to multiple deities, or a general concept of a god, while the "Big G" is reserved for the singular, supreme being in these monotheistic faiths."

That seems like ethnicentric bigotry.

It's called "Standard English usage." But it also marks an important difference between two quite-different concepts: that of the fictional, superman-type god-being, such as Odin, Aphrodite or Hermes, which legend tells us had an origin and a termination, and were never said to be all-powerful in the first place, and that no sane person today believes actually exists, on the one hand, and the concept of the eternal Supreme Being on the other.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 5:27 pm The subject is whether or not you think God can become a man.

Njet.

godelian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 5:51 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 5:27 pm The subject is whether or not you think God can become a man.

Njet.

You think your god can't? Then he's considerably less than omnipotent. He can't do what ordinary men can do.