Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But there are a slew of theologians who would argue that he didn't. They would say that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine without blending or what they would call confusion.

Been a while since you tried the argument from authority fallacy. There’s also a “slew” of theologians who assert that god will intercede in the fates of people in response to prayers made on their behalf. There’s no guessing what you think about that though as you seem determined to keep it a secret.   

Christianity though also states that humans will be raised to eternity spiritually.

First, your relationship with mainstream Christian beliefs is tenuous at best given how frequently you make shit up as you go along and then shift position about whatever it is that you do believe.

Second, Leprechaunology states that leprechauns don’t like muesli because the bits get stuck in their teeth. So what though? 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Er,  which previous discussions?

Ooh look, a helicopter…

Again then:

Do you think that prayers to your god to intercede in the fate of other people can have effect:

A. Yes

B. No

C. I refuse to answer, and this is why I refuse to answer

D. I refuse to answer, and I’m not going to tell you why I refuse to answer?   

[Stranger]

There is a reason for existence over non existence,
That reason must exist
Non existence cannot be that reason.
It must be something that exists

Seems sound to me

As you seem to want to ignore my other responses, I'll point out that even if we accept the premises of this argument, the conclusion is not a 'necessary entity'. There is nothing in it that suggests this 'reason' couldn't not exist or be different.

It's an argument for a brute fact; something that just happens to exist for no reason.

You still have no logic to support something being its own reason for existing. That is still in the realm of "it's magic, innit?"

[jeremyp]

But there are a slew of theologians who would argue that he didn't. They would say that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine without blending or what they would call confusion.

Let's try to put this simply so that you can understand:

I didn't claim any blending or not blending. Jesus didn't exist. Then he did exist. That is a change. God didn't have a human avatar, then he did have a human avatar. That is a change.

Christianity though also states that humans will be raised to eternity spiritually.

Good for them. How is that relevant?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Let's try to put this simply so that you can understand:

I didn't claim any blending or not blending. Jesus didn't exist. Then he did exist. That is a change. God didn't have a human avatar, then he did have a human avatar. That is a change.
Good for them. How is that relevant?

Yes humans change.
The mainstream Christian model is that human life has a beginning, an end and a resurrection to eternity.
God is "In eternity".
Jesus is both fully man and fully God.

God in Christ has not changed from God into a man. He remains God and Jesus has two nature's one human and one divine

[Gordon]

Yes humans change.
The mainstream Christian model is that human life has a beginning, an end and a resurrection to eternity.
God is "In eternity".
Jesus is both fully man and fully God.

God in Christ has not changed from God into a man. He remains God and Jesus has two nature's one human and one divine

Smashing - but your 'model' has no supporting evidence nor a method whereby its veracity can be checked: it is mere assertion compounded by centuries of fevered and dogmatic speculation regarding superstitious beliefs that give undue weight to ancient anecdotes that lack any meaningful provenance.

I'm genuinely surprised that you guys seem to take it seriously.

[Stranger]

Yes humans change.
The mainstream Christian model is that human life has a beginning, an end and a resurrection to eternity.
God is "In eternity".
Jesus is both fully man and fully God.

God in Christ has not changed from God into a man. He remains God and Jesus has two nature's one human and one divine

Telling us your baseless fantasies all over again, does not actually address the point that the God described in the bible has a mind, and does things like plan, create, interact and all sorts of other things that represent change and require time.

I don't think anybody is arguing that the God-concepts in the bible change their basic nature, but that is irrelevant. Any action, interaction, thought, or plan is a change in state. As Feser himself argues, even an isolated mind requires the hierarchy he then tries to put God at the base of. It comically self-contradictory.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

The mainstream Christian model is that...

As I understand it, the mainstream Christian model is also that its god will sometimes intercede on behalf of the prayed for to effect miracle cures and the like. For some reason though you refuse to tell us whether or not you agree with that part of the mainstream Christian model, so there's no guessing what you do think about that.   

[torridon]

..
Jesus is both fully man and fully God.
..

How would that work ? To be human is to be not God.  Your claim looks suspiciously like made up nonsense, crafted to suit an agenda.

[ekim]

How would that work ? To be human is to be not God.  Your claim looks suspiciously like made up nonsense, crafted to suit an agenda.

As far as I can recall, the expressions used are 'Son of Man' and 'Son of God'.  I suspect that these expressions relate to the translation of Aramaic idiomatic language of the time -- son of, brother of, daughter of, mother of etc.  Examples are 'mother of the arm' meant 'forearm', 'brother of song' meant' singer', 'son of thunder' meant 'impetuous'.  'Son of God' probably meant 'divine' and 'Son of Man' meant 'human'.

[jeremyp]

God in Christ has not changed from God into a man.

I didn't say he had.

He remains God and Jesus has two nature's one human and one divine

So there was God. Then there was Jesus with part of God and God. That's a change.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Jesus is both fully man and fully God.

My dining table is both fully square and fully circular. Just asserting a claim to have mutually contradictory characteristics is incoherent.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

My dining table is both fully square and fully circular. Just asserting a claim to have mutually contradictory characteristics is incoherent.   

Do you really need me to tell you why your analogy is the Fred and Ginger of piss poor analogy?
Squares and circles describe the physical shape. Humanity is a physical state but divinity is not.

The argument from contingency is a bottom up argument.
Infinite regress, unexplained networks of contingency, composite necessities, things for which you dissapply reason
are unevidenced skyhooks.
Have a nice day.

[Outrider]

Do you really need me to tell you why your analogy is the Fred and Ginger of piss poor analogy?
Squares and circles describe the physical shape. Humanity is a physical state but divinity is not.

But they are equally as mutually exclusive as each other. We obviously recoil at the idea of something being both square and circular, but you expect us to just blithely accept 'fully human and fully divine' without blinking an eye. As you say, that's not a 'physical' rule, so God's magical nature to redefine reality to suit doesn't count, it's a logical exclusion. Being divine precludes the limitations that make humanity humanity, you cannot be divine and yet be human, it makes no sense, even if you accept the premise of 'divinity' in the first place.

The argument from contingency is a bottom up argument.

No, it's an argument that's flawed at pretty much every stage, from the presumption that not all things can be contingent because reasons, through to 'therefore the non-contingent things must be my preferred intelligent uncreated creator which I totally didn't come in to the argument to try to demonstrate at all look at that, how did that happen?'

Infinite regress, unexplained networks of contingency, composite necessities, things for which you dissapply reason are unevidenced skyhooks.

How does infinite regress disapply reason? Everything we see has a cause. Each of those causes has, so far as we can tell, a cause. Disapplying reason is suddenly deciding, in the absence of any justification, that that sequence has to stop somewhere.
 
By 'unexplained network of contingency' I presume you're talking about the possibility of a cyclic nature to reality? That's just a particular iteration of the infinite regress above. That you don't understand the reason, perhaps, doesn't mean that it's not there.

Have a nice day.

God willing, obviously.

O.

[jeremyp]

Do you really need me to tell you why your analogy is the Fred and Ginger of piss poor analogy?
Squares and circles describe the physical shape. Humanity is a physical state but divinity is not.

But your god added a physical state to itself (i.e. being human) and is therefore not unchanging.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Do you really need me to tell you why your analogy is the Fred and Ginger of piss poor analogy?

Yes please.

Squares and circles describe the physical shape. Humanity is a physical state but divinity is not.

Oh I see – so you still have no idea at all how analogies actually work no matter how many times I and others here have explained the idea to you. So is “A good man is as hard to find as a needle in a haystack” the Fred and Ginger of piss poor analogies too – after all, a needle is an inanimate object whereas a good man is a living being, so they’re qualitatively completely different things right?

Oh wait though – isn’t the point of analogies exactly that they compare different objects with a shared characteristic – mutually contradictory claims for man-gods and tables, difficulty of finding of needles and of good men as examples?

Oh, and just calling something “divine” as an excuse to say any incoherently contradictory gibberish about it that takes your fancy it doesn’t help you here either.   

The argument from contingency is a bottom up argument.

It would be if someone made it, yes. 

Infinite regress, unexplained networks of contingency, composite necessities, things for which you dissapply reason
are unevidenced skyhooks.

The only “unevidenced skyhook” here is your god, and in any case no-one claims these things. You’re the one inserting “god” as your explanation – all I have to do is to falsify the reasoning you attempt to justify that claim – a trivially simple thing to do (fallacy of hasty generalisation, fallacy of composition and fallacy of special pleading in case you’ve forgotten).

And that’s it. Having falsified your reasoning without even the attempt of a rebuttal, I can safely conclude that you’ve given me no sound reasons to think your religious speculations to be true. I have no obligation at all though to provide answers of my own, and indeed for the most part I have no choice but to reach “don’t knows” and to leave it at that.   

Have a nice day.

You too. Perhaps you could fruitfully spend it looking up the meaning of “analogy” too.

Good luck with it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

PS Should I conclude that you have no intention of telling us whether or not you agree with mainstream Christian theology about your god responding to prayers made on behalf of other people?

Why are you so determined to keep that secret?

[ekim]

Being divine precludes the limitations that make humanity humanity, you cannot be divine and yet be human, it makes no sense, even if you accept the premise of 'divinity' in the first place.

That's possibly why the Trinity was introduced to try to give an analogy to explain the relationship.  Another analogy could be represented by The Ocean (totality), the Wave (partial form) and the Water (the essence).  It then becomes an  inner quest to disidentify with the temporary Wave form, identify with the Water and merge with the formless Ocean.  Humanity could be seen as part of all the wave forms battling it out to sustain their identity.

[Outrider]

That's possibly why the Trinity was introduced to try to give an analogy to explain the relationship.  Another analogy could be represented by The Ocean (totality), the Wave (partial form) and the Water (the essence).  It then becomes an  inner quest to disidentify with the temporary Wave form, identify with the Water and merge with the formless Ocean.  Humanity could be seen as part of all the wave forms battling it out to sustain their identity.

Who knows - I suspect the Trinity was probably just an invention to try to get around previous mutually contradictory statements without having to accept that someone got something wrong. I get, to an extent, the idea of looking at different 'scales' of the same thing, but I don't get a sense that's what the Trinity was ever supposed to convey, or that it was that coherently thought out in the first place.

O.

[jeremyp]

Who knows - I suspect the Trinity was probably just an invention to try to get around previous mutually contradictory statements without having to accept that someone got something wrong.

The biblical evidence for the Trinity is actually very thin. I think it's a handwaving exercise to try to get round the fact that Christianity isn't really monotheistic. Christians desperately want the monotheism badge for some reason as if monotheism is somehow better than polytheism.

[Nearly Sane]

The biblical evidence for the Trinity is actually very thin. I think it's a handwaving exercise to try to get round the fact that Christianity isn't really monotheistic. Christians desperately want the monotheism badge for some reason as if monotheism is somehow better than polytheism.

Unless you decide to worship a capricious God, monotheism will make no sense. There's only so much mileage you can get out of the mysterious ways stuff.

[ekim]

Who knows - I suspect the Trinity was probably just an invention to try to get around previous mutually contradictory statements without having to accept that someone got something wrong. I get, to an extent, the idea of looking at different 'scales' of the same thing, but I don't get a sense that's what the Trinity was ever supposed to convey, or that it was that coherently thought out in the first place.

O.

'The Trinity' has been so concreted into Christian doctrine and has virtually elevated Jesus to godlike status that I doubt whether we shall ever discover its original intention.

[bluehillside Retd.]

ekim,

'The Trinity' has been so concreted into Christian doctrine and has virtually elevated Jesus to godlike status that I doubt whether we shall ever discover its original intention.

No, but it’s not unreasonable I think to posit the explanation that it’s a piece of casuistry devised when the contradictions in the antecedent god stories became so great that more sophisticated theologians had to dream up a way to get them off that hook. The problem though of course is that the Trinity notion then throws up more logical problems of its own, as no doubt would more casuistry then worked up to escape that hook.   

[Stranger]

The argument from contingency is a bottom up argument.

I don't see that it's really bottom up, does it not start by observing contingency? And, at the end, it just makes up a nonsensical, "it must be magic", logically incoherent 'necessary entity', then collapses it in hilarious attempts to pretend that it could be anything like the Christian God.

Infinite regress, unexplained networks of contingency, composite necessities, things for which you dissapply reason
are unevidenced skyhooks.

Exactly like the argument from contingency....

[Nearly Sane]

ekim,

No, but it’s not unreasonable I think to posit the explanation that it’s a piece of casuistry devised when the contradictions in the antecedent god stories became so great that more sophisticated theologians had to dream up a way to get them off that hook. The problem though of course is that the Trinity notion then throws up more logical problems of its own, as no doubt would more casuistry then worked up to escape that hook.

Sort of, and yet billions accept this. You are in a world where logic is not always accepted, indeed, I know no people who work just to logic. Nor how you could