A question to theists . . . . . . .

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Creation:


More:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04470a.htm

The creator , if he were perfect , would be above love or hate , as both of these are his own creations . If they were not his own creations , then there are principles above God , which necessitate negating his Godhood .

[SlowwHand]

That's ridiculous. The whole basis is centered on love.

[beingofone]

Whaleboy:

You'd be far better off looking at the problem of evil as expounded by Epicurus which is a more consistent argument. From Wikipedia because I can't be bothered to paraphrase:

There is no possible world that would be perfect according to this set of questionings. There might be better and better worlds ad infinitum? It is like saying the world is to crowded for perfect cities.

The ironic thing is, though, that if we live in a fundamentally unjust universe, we should welcome disasters that claim lives. They are freeing us from a basically awful existence; death is the salve on the wound of life if life is fundamentally a wound, and not a blessing.

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small,
uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and
every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed
forthcoming.

Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of
driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few
possessions.

One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his
little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had
happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief,
grief, and anger.

"God, how could you do this to me?" he cried. Early the next day he
was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island.
It had come to rescue him. "How did you know I was here?" asked the
weary man of his rescuers.

"We saw your smoke signal," they replied.

-- Unknown

It is like in chemistry - matter heated to atrociously high temperature, by a laser, the properties of the matter change. The behaviour of the matter results in a brand new type, never before seen, material in a plasma state.

It is like electricity and your computer. Electricity needs resistance to cause it to function. If there were no resistors in your computer electricity would continue at the speed of light.

Like a radio and radio waves.

It is impossible to have either form or substance in an absolutely pure state. Lacking the light that reveals things all at once, it might be thought that it is a world of darkness, but it is not.

We are living in our own time never before having been. We are making new discoveries, finding many things not known before.

To insist that it is improbable that suffering produces a higher purpose is to pull the veil over our own eyes and complain that the world appears ugly.

It just needs eyes to see the brightness of the truth in the light.

[SlowwHand]

That's a good story.

[beingofone]

Originally posted by Sandman


God exists outside of time. This raises more problems, but deals with this.

If you include all time in all possible worlds the Totality has transcended this time and these worlds as you said above by including time - logical necessity.

Its(Totality) time is eternal and therefore; expands time like a bubble that pops.

*POP* - goes time and all of its component parts. Logical necessity if time is included and contained by the Totaliy.



aneeshm:

It's true that that is the most unanswerable argument yet against the existence of a personal God , but it leaves open the possibility of other Gods or divinities , such as the impersonal universal consciousness Purusha of the Vedas . The above argument ( which I have presented ) eliminates the concept of a prime mover altogether , by showing that assuming he existed , he would have no motive to move anything .

That is how I just proved that God was beyond you limiting it to be only what it can internally be - I used logic.

If God did not become you then why do you exist?

Anytime you apply a limit you just infered it is transcended already, now that, is a logical necessity. You cannot have a limit without it being transcended, logical impossibility.

You cannot have a limit of any kind including change that is not transcended in all possible worlds.

God is that which is in a constant state of transcendance as it is not made of that which is the sum total of its parts.

God is not limited to what it cannot be.

God transcends existence.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by aneeshm


The creator , if he were perfect , would be above love or hate , as both of these are his own creations . If they were not his own creations , then there are principles above God , which necessitate negating his Godhood .

I think again you are trying to push the concept of perfection and omnipotence beyond their meaning.

Read this too:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/102503.htm

Omnipotence does not imply the power to do contradictory or mutually exclusive things.

[Kuciwalker]

You're a moron.

From 1) and 2) and 4) , we can deduce that

5) God does not possess the quality of desire , for desire arises only when there is limited potential to achieve the object of desire , whereas there is no object to desire in the beginning ( when only god exists ) , and the potential of God is unlimited.

You mean from 1) and 2) and 4) and dozens of other, unstated assumptions.

That's as far as I got before I stopped caring.

[SlowwHand]

Moron? I don't know where it's come from, but y'all have a bad influence from somewhere.

Bunch of bastards.

[Elok]

This would be a lot less irritating if I weren't reading "The Consolation of Philosophy" in Medieval Lit class. Boethius does the exact same sort of equivocation seen here, only he uses it for the other side and with a lot more panache.

[SlowwHand]

Panache? What does Portugal have to do with this? They're all going to Hell anyway.

[Whaleboy]

God wants to eliminate evil, and can, but it would necessitate eliminating human free will from which evil stems. And as much as God hates evil, he loves us too much to eliminate our free will.

It doesn’t really address the point, because by your argument, you’re begging the question “is evil our choice, or God’s?” It can only be one or the other, and that’s a contradiction at the heart of the Epicurean paradox. Remember that Epicurus believed in free will, and was attempting to demonstrate the incompatibility of the idea of God and the idea of free will. In effect, the human condition presents God with a choice. There are two solutions to the paradox; either “evil” is merely a contrived absence of “good”, which presents another set of contradictions, or there is no god.

but it leaves open the possibility of other Gods or divinities , such as the impersonal universal consciousness Purusha of the Vedas .

True, but trying to equate Dharmic deities with Abrahamic religion is fraught with difficulty, not least because the notion of “absolute” which underpins much Christian, Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish doctrine, is somewhat alien to Indian philosophy.

eliminates the concept of a prime mover altogether

But you assume the cosmological argument to do so, which in turn is absurd. The necessary conclusion from the failure of the cosmological argument which is a premise of yours, is that God and our world cannot communicate in any meaningful way with each other.

Ozzy: Very weird extract you’ve quoted there, a few points:

Firstly, if we take “whatever is not intrinsically impossible” to mean contingent possibilities, then God is supposed to be able to cause such things (which of course goes back to the Cosmological argument but I’ll ignore that for the time being). However, the passage then goes on to say that the “universality of the object of the Divine power is not merely relative but absolute”, which implies that God also has dominion over necessary propositions, which contradicts the first statement.

God exists outside of time. This raises more problems, but deals with this.

the primary subjective motive of creation must be the Creator's love of His own intrinsic goodness

That makes no sense.

Time is a convenience contrived by man, and nothing else. It's only important at all on Earth.

An interesting piece of bull****, I’d like to hear more.

There is no possible world that would be perfect according to this set of questionings. There might be better and better worlds ad infinitum? It is like saying the world is to crowded for perfect cities.

Remember that just because something is hotter than something else, that does not imply that there exist something which is hottest.

The ironic thing is, though, that if we live in a fundamentally unjust universe, we should welcome disasters that claim lives. They are freeing us from a basically awful existence; death is the salve on the wound of life if life is fundamentally a wound, and not a blessing.

That’s rather like saying that we should now welcome Nazism because it enabled us to explore space, enjoy microwave cookery, and play with computers. If you believe in “good” and “evil” (which, for the record, I don’t), then you must also accept that evil acts can beget good consequences and vice versa. The conclusion there must be that the two cancel each other out, which contradicts the belief in absolute good and evil, unless you examine each moral act as it happens, i.e., Nazism as a moral act, as opposed to its social and historical context. This is why the notion of moral philosophy is diametrically opposed to relativism, but for a Christian, surely evil acts are evil acts full stop no?

It is impossible to have either form or substance in an absolutely pure state. Lacking the light that reveals things all at once, it might be thought that it is a world of darkness, but it is not.

We are living in our own time never before having been. We are making new discoveries, finding many things not known before.

To insist that it is improbable that suffering produces a higher purpose is to pull the veil over our own eyes and complain that the world appears ugly.

That is a very wise thing to say, and it is proof that life in itself is a beautiful, valuable thing. I don’t see what it has to do with the argument at hand though, for the above reasons.

If you include all time in all possible worlds the Totality has transcended this time and these worlds as you said above by including time - logical necessity.

But then how could anything whose property is Totality possibly communicate with us?

Its(Totality) time is eternal and therefore; expands time like a bubble that pops.

*POP* - goes time and all of its component parts. Logical necessity if time is included and contained by the Totaliy.

I want what you’re smoking I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say here, as you’ve written it, it doesn’t make much sense.

That is how I just proved that God was beyond you limiting it to be only what it can internally be - I used logic.

Not really, to be fair you cheated a little bit by saying, effectively, that “if God exists, he must be absolute/total et al, and thus not bound by your non-absolute rules of logic”. If Aneesham is questioning the existence of God, then your response begs the question. If not, then Aneesham is questioning the incompatibilities of your theory to the observable world around us, assuming that God created it.

God transcends existence.

IOW, God is permitted not to exist… effectively God is the invisible friend in a beholders mind. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, since it presents an interesting possibility… if trying to find God by looking up is futile, perhaps it is better to look in?

[CrONoS]

Thanks to have point him(Boethius) out here in this thread. I didn't know him.
Looks real good!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Consolation_of_Philosophy

From Wiki:

From Wikipedia
Boethius writes the book as a conversation between himself and the Queen of Science, Lady Philosophy. She consoles Boethius' failed fortunes by discussing the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which she calls the “one true good." She says happiness comes from within, something that Lady Fortune can never take away: “Why, then, O mortal men, do you seek that happiness outside, which lies within yourselves?”

Originally posted by Elok
This would be a lot less irritating if I weren't reading "The Consolation of Philosophy" in Medieval Lit class. Boethius does the exact same sort of equivocation seen here, only he uses it for the other side and with a lot more panache.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Whaleboy

True, but trying to equate Dharmic deities with Abrahamic religion is fraught with difficulty, not least because the notion of “absolute” which underpins much Christian, Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish doctrine, is somewhat alien to Indian philosophy.

Mostly true . But the context for the argument I put forth is that of Indian philosophy , so I stand by what I said , at least in the context in which it was said .

Originally posted by Whaleboy

But you assume the cosmological argument to do so, which in turn is absurd. The necessary conclusion from the failure of the cosmological argument which is a premise of yours, is that God and our world cannot communicate in any meaningful way with each other.

That's very interesting , actually , because the Samkhya school of thought runs into exactly this same difficulty . Having completely separated purusha ( consciousness ) from prakriti ( the physical or material world ) , it cannot explain their interaction and bridge the gap between the two , a bridge which is essential to explain truths which are self-evident to every conscious being .

[Whaleboy]

That's very interesting , actually , because the Samkhya school of thought runs into exactly this same difficulty . Having completely separated purusha ( consciousness ) from prakriti ( the physical or material world ) , it cannot explain their interaction and bridge the gap between the two , a bridge which is essential to explain truths which are self-evident to every conscious being .

Fascinating . Can you recommend any books on the Samkhya school... it's not something with which I am familiar so at the moment I can't really comment on it.

Is it like the mind-body problem?

[aneeshm]

I'd recommend to you the book "Indian Philosophy" , Volume II ( by Dr. Sarvapillai Radhakrishnan ) . It thoroughly covers all the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy ( the Nyaya and the Vaisesika acting as the foundation , based on which we have the Samkhya , the Yoga-Sutras , the Purva Mimamsa , and the Uttara Mimamsa ( also known as the Advaita Vedanta ) ) . Volume I deals with the early , non-formal Hindu systems , and the formal heterodox systems ( Jainism and Buddhism ) . The two volumes are a fantastic introduction to Indian philosophy . You will , of course , be more comfortable with the six orthodox schools , as they have as their basis a logical framework strikingly similar to Aristotle's .

I feel inspired to learn Sanskrit just to I can access these materials in their originals . Let's see how many years before I finally get the time to do so .