Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

In answer to your question, I would say that the probability that God does not exist is an excellent definition of absolute zero.

Which is exactly the same as saying you think it a certainty that your god exists, despite your complete and utter failure to provide the slightest shred of evidence or any of the promised "sound logic" that would support it.

Since no amount of evidence would provide absolute certainty, there is only a watertight, sound argument that could rationally lead you to certainty.

So, either this is just foolish, baseless blind faith, or you should be able to do what you claimed to be able to do and provide the sound logic of which you spoke...?

Off you go then (not holding my breath).........

[bluehillside Retd.]

Prof,

Just to note that Alan’s trying quite the double standard here: essentially, “I have some sound the logic that means you must agree with me that god exists (notwithstanding that he never produces it), but also “if however you produce logic that falsifies mine I don’t have to be bound by it because my faith is inviolable”.

It seems logic is fine for Alan (or would be if he had any) if it produces the outcomes he wants it to produce, but inadmissible when it doesn’t.       

[Dicky Underpants]

In answer to your question, I would say that the probability that God does not exist is an excellent definition of absolute zero.

Would you further add to that arrogant assertion : "The probability that the Christian God does not exist is...etc"?
Or would you be happy with saying "The probability that some sort of God does not exist is an excellent definition of absolute zero"?

[Alan Burns]

AB,
 

Or, to put it another way, no argument no matter how sound could ever be allowed to shake you from your faith belief about that.

Is that right?

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
You will never know just how profound this difference is until you yourself come to know God.

[Sebastian Toe]

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
You will never know just how profound this difference is until you yourself come to know God.

Have you actually met him?

[Stranger]

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".

So why should anybody believe you? You have posted many things here that have turned out to be false, even though you seemed to believe them to be true. For example, that you had some "sound logic", that people's posts and ability to think counted as evidence for your view of free will, to just name two.

So how could we, or you, for that matter, know that you're not equally mistaken in thinking that you "know" this god of yours? And that's before we get to the endless disagreements between people, all claiming that they "know god", about what said god wants from them or its attitude to any number of issues in the world.

[Gordon]

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
You will never know just how profound this difference is until you yourself come to know God.

I've no doubt, Alan, that your faith is strong but it seems that, for you, that isn't enough since you also want your faith to be seen as rational, or logical, or underpinned by scientic knowledge: and none of these apply.

Hence you tie yourself in fallacious knots trying to, in essence, demonstrate that with sufficient faith circles can be seen to be squares.   

[ProfessorDavey]

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".

Even your choice of words demonstrates your confusion.

If you 'know' something you don't need 'faith'. Faith is the thing we rely on when we don't have knowledge/evidence.

So you either have faith or you have knowledge. The reality is that what you have AB is faith - you interpret your experiences as being 'god' - you have faith that this interpretation is correct.

And AB - have you answered the question about your upbringing. Relevant because people brought up christian, if they think god exists it is always always the god of their upbringing. Likewise for people brought up muslim, jewish, hindu etc etc. Weird that - why do you think that might be the case AB?

[Dicky Underpants]

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
You will never know just how profound this difference is until you yourself come to know God.

I don't know if you realise this, but Sassy, the person who started this long thread, also claimed to "know" God. However, she was vehemently a non-Trinitarian, and strongly opposed to the Catholic Church. Whereas you, I believe, are Catholic and believe that Christ was God incarnate.
How odd that two people who "know" God, cannot agree on a fundamental aspect of his/its nature, let alone on the principal organization through which he chooses to work in the world .
Let alone the Hindus and Mormons etc who claim to "know" God. What you have is merely faith, which is seemingly impervious to intellectual scrutiny, but does not become a particularly admirable quality in the process.

[ProfessorDavey]

I don't know if you realise this, but Sassy, the person who started this long thread, also claimed to "know" God. However, she was vehemently a non-Trinitarian, and strongly opposed to the Catholic Church. Whereas you, I believe, are Catholic and believe that Christ was God incarnate.
How odd that two people who "know" God, cannot agree on a fundamental aspect of his/its nature, let alone on the principle organization through which he chooses to work in the world .
Let alone the Hindus and Mormons etc who claim to "know" God. What you have is merely faith, which is seemingly impervious to intellectual scrutiny, but does not become a particularly admirable quality in the process.

Because in most cases the reality is that 'know god' actually means that they were brought up to believe in a particular flavour of god and therefore interpret their adult experiences as 'knowing' that god.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

My faith is based on the difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
You will never know just how profound this difference is until you yourself come to know God.

No, you don’t "know" that – you just believe it. Plato called knowledge “justified true belief” – and what you have is the belief part, but not the justification part. No matter how many times you try either very bad reasoning or no reasoning at all, you still have all your work to do to satisfy the justification criterion. When you can’t do that either to others or even to yourself though, blind faith is all that’s left.

Sorry.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB,
 

Or, to put it another way, no argument no matter how sound could ever be allowed to shake you from your faith belief about that.

Is that right?

Is there one?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Is there one?

Yes, there are lots – every attempt AB has made to justify his faith beliefs has been quickly and easily falsified, generally simply by explaining to him the various fallacies he’s (unwittingly) relying on. That I suspect is why he’s given up with the effort and declared instead that logic isn’t up to the job of justifying his assertions in any case – though sadly he’s yet propose an alternative means of doing the job.   

Anyway, any news from you yet on justifying your assertion "the universe must have been caused by something other than itself" without collapsing into fallacies or just running away?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Yes, there are lots

One would do.

BTW a contingent universe is the default position. Have a nice day.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

One would do.

One what – example of the logical fallacies he’s attempted to justify his faith beliefs? That’s easy… he’s a big user of the argumentum ad consequentiam just for starters (though other fine fallacies are available from all good AB posts, as for that matter they are from yours …). 

BTW a contingent universe is the default position.

So you assert. What you were actually asked to do though was to justify that assertion with an argument that isn’t fallacious. So far all you’ve done is to run away from the question or to deflect from it with incoherence. So, yet again: how would you justify your assertion "the universe must have been caused by something other than itself" without collapsing into fallacies or just running away?

Have a nice day.

Like I said, always.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

"the universe must have been caused by something other than itself" without collapsing into fallacies

No my position is that the cause of all contingent things could be put together with contingent things and we could call this the universe, as defined as everything that exists. That which caused the contingent things though would still have to exist and be non contingent.
A contingent universe has to have an external cause. In other words if the universe is contingent, on what is it contingent?
A universe in which everything is contingent and has no external cause is an absurdity.

Your fallacies are, composite necessity, contingency only, bringing yourself into existence, infinite regress.
And as they say, people in glasshouses shouldn't. Have a nice day.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

No my position is that the cause of all contingent things could be put together with contingent things and we could call this the universe, as defined as everything that exists. That which caused the contingent things though would still have to exist and be non contingent.
A contingent universe has to have an external cause. In other words if the universe is contingent, on what is it contingent?

All of which presupposes that the universe is a “contingent thing” – which is the assertion you keep being asked to justify with an actual argument remember?

A universe in which everything is contingent and has no external cause is an absurdity.

I hear your assertion and I’ll raise you a justifying argument for it: where is it?

Your fallacies are, composite necessity, contingency only, bringing yourself into existence, infinite regress.
And as they say, people in glasshouses shouldn't. Have a nice day.

You can’t just lie your way out of this. First, as I’ve made perfectly clear several times now they’re not even my arguments (let alone my fallacies), and second you’re still running away. Here’s the question you’re still ducking yet again then: how would you justify your assertion "the universe must have been caused by something other than itself" without collapsing into fallacies or just running away?

[Alan Burns]

Yes, there are lots – every attempt AB has made to justify his faith beliefs has been quickly and easily falsified, generally simply by explaining to him the various fallacies he’s (unwittingly) relying on. That I suspect is why he’s given up with the effort and declared instead that logic isn’t up to the job of justifying his assertions in any case – though sadly he’s yet propose an alternative means of doing the job.   

My logic stands firm.
I am fully aware that you are trying to invalidate it by various means, but I stand by the overwhelming evidence for our own spiritual nature, God's creativity (which far exceeds anything remotely possible by the purposeless, unguided forces of nature alone), the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the vast number of personal witness stories from the saints and people who have come to know the love of Christ, the miraculous answers to prayer, and my own personal relationship with Jesus.

[torridon]

My logic stands firm.
I am fully aware that you are trying to invalidate it by various means, but I stand by the overwhelming evidence for our own spiritual nature, God's creativity (which far exceeds anything remotely possible by the purposeless, unguided forces of nature alone), the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the vast number of personal witness stories from the saints and people who have come to know the love of Christ, the miraculous answers to prayer, and my own personal relationship with Jesus.

This isn't logic; it is just a statement of your beliefs.  If there were any objective evidence for these things, then they would be widely accepted.  Beliefs are cultural constructs; if you'd been born in Karachi, you'd be prostrating yourself towards Mecca five times daily and disavowing all this business of God having a child.  You just haven't made the effort to think objectively about these things, to think outside the box of your cultural roots,

[Nearly Sane]

...  If there were any objective evidence for these things, then they would be widely accepted...

This leans to an argumentum ad populum, and there is widespread acceptance of many things for which there is not strong intersubjective evidence, and indeed rejection of things for which there is.

[Maeght]

My logic stands firm.
I am fully aware that you are trying to invalidate it by various means, but I stand by the overwhelming evidence for our own spiritual nature, God's creativity (which far exceeds anything remotely possible by the purposeless, unguided forces of nature alone), the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the vast number of personal witness stories from the saints and people who have come to know the love of Christ, the miraculous answers to prayer, and my own personal relationship with Jesus.

I've asked you about this before but you haven't ever provided any such evidence from outside of the Bible as far as I recall. Can you? I think it is likely, but not certain, Jesus existed and died but the resurrection isn't an historical fact.

What personal witness statements from the saints?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

This isn't logic; it is just a statement of your beliefs.  If there were any objective evidence for these things, then they would be widely accepted.  Beliefs are cultural constructs; if you'd been born in Karachi, you'd be prostrating yourself towards Mecca five times daily and disavowing all this business of God having a child.  You just haven't made the effort to think objectively about these things, to think outside the box of your cultural roots,

This isn't logic; it is just a statement of your beliefs.  If there were any objective evidence for these things, then they would be widely accepted.  Beliefs are cultural constructs; if you'd been born in Karachi, you'd be prostrating yourself towards Mecca five times daily and disavowing all this business of God having a child.  You just haven't made the effort to think objectively about these things, to think outside the box of your cultural roots,

Beliefs are cultural constructs. Naturalism must be a cultural construct then. Empiricism must be a cultural construct.

[Alan Burns]

What personal witness statements from the saints?

I said personal witness stories, not statements.
What I am referring to is the life stories of the numerous Christian saints which give witness to the power and love of God working through the extraordinary lives of these saints.

[Alan Burns]

I just came across this video from a few years back in which Robert Barron gives a highly informative view on the big questions of the universe being "something from nothing" and contingency - in which he highlights the limitations of what science alone can explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yx5WN4efo&t=15s

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

My logic stands firm.

You have some logic? Finally? Excellent – I look forward to reading it…
 

I am fully aware that you are trying to invalidate it by various means, but I stand by the overwhelming evidence for our own spiritual nature, God's creativity (which far exceeds anything remotely possible by the purposeless, unguided forces of nature alone), the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the vast number of personal witness stories from the saints and people who have come to know the love of Christ, the miraculous answers to prayer, and my own personal relationship with Jesus.

Aw no Alan. No no no no no. Say it ain’t so. You told us you had some logic, and then all you posted was a series of assertions and declarations with absolutely no logical reasoning whatsoever. None. Zip. Zilch. Sweet FA.

I wonder if perhaps the problem here is that you have no idea what the term “logic” actually means? Let me help you here: logic is the study and use of the interrelationship between statements to determine whether or not arguments yield useful, coherent, and correct results. What you do on the other hand is to post statements (“the overwhelming evidence for our own spiritual nature” etc) with not even the attempt to apply logical reasoning to them. Clearly you find these statement to be comforting or appealing in some way, but please don’t ever kid yourself that they’re logically well supported.

Look, I’ll even break one down for you: “the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ” is your claim. OK, let’s examine it – what is this evidence? Does it meet the basic standards of academic historicity? Does it plagiarise similar stories from other traditions? Are plausible other explanations for the events described available? Would the potential naturalistic explanations require fewer assumptions than the potential supernatural one? And so on and so on… 

See, that’s what happens when you do actually apply rational, logical analysis to your claims and declarations – they fall apart under scrutiny. None of this will concern you of course – you start and end just with the assertions with no logic involved at all – but if nothing else you might want to consider confining yourself to claiming blind faith for support rather than overreaching by claiming logic. 

Just a thought to spare you further embarrassment.