More on the gospels.

[Gordon]

Citations please.

But while we are waiting lets think about it.

Let's take the Dragon in the room crock. If I declare there is no dragon in the room then I have positively asserted and have a burden of proof. My proof of absence is that none of the empirically detected properties of a Dragon have been empirically detected.

You say that you are declaring there to be no dragon based on there being an absence of 'empirically detected properties', and as such you clearly must already know what these 'empirically detectable properties' are in order to declare them absent - so what are they? Sounds to me that you are failing to first consider whether 'dragon' is a meaningful and coherent claim in relation to whether or not there could be supporting evidence. You have the cart before the horse.

As usual you are railing at an idea (based on the 'dragon in my garage' analogy of Carl Sagan) without taking the time to think it through.

If I claim the default position, as you said earlier, then you have positively asserted, with the burden of proof that entails. Whereas it easy to detect presence or absence of Dragons, the lack of empirically detectable properties of God put Dragons, leprechauns etc in a different category.

If you can easily state 'empirically detectable properties' for dragons or leprechauns we'd all like to see them, since currently it seems we only have folk tale and myth to go on: and then you can explain why having 'empirically detectable properties' doesn't apply to 'God' bearing in mind your claim of having had a personal experience of 'God', since if it has no 'empirically detectable properties' how could you ever know you did have an experience of it. 

Since you are positively asserting the so called default position you are making a claim. What Good reason then do you have for no alien abductions? and what Good reasons do you believe you have for no God.

Can you give a citation for what constitutes ''good reason'' and ''sufficient grounds'' namely one we can all agree on rather than just the ''folies a plusieures'' of antitheism?

If you want a good reason for God it's the ownership by dissenting atheists of ''Contingency without necessity'' and that other crock  ''things being both contingent and necessary.


Rather than fucking about with the default position being no atoms, people who we celebrate today went right ahead and proposed them.


I think we will find that ''no good reason'' will turn out to mean 'not empiricism' and 'not physicalism'

This is just another example of your descent into rambling rant.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You say that you are declaring there to be no dragon based on there being an absence of 'empirically detected properties', and as such you clearly must already know what these 'empirically detectable properties' are in order to declare them absent - so what are they? Sounds to me that you are failing to first consider whether 'dragon' is a meaningful and coherent claim in relation to whether or not there could be supporting evidence. You have the cart before the horse.

You what?

A Dragon is a large fire breathing Lizard. There's three empirical statements for starters.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If you can easily state 'empirically detectable properties' for dragons or leprechauns we'd all like to see them, since currently it seems we only have folk tale and myth to go on: and then you can explain why having 'empirically detectable properties' doesn't apply to 'God' bearing in mind your claim of having had a personal experience of 'God', since if it has no 'empirically detectable properties' how could you ever know you did have an experience of it. 

I've already given a reason for why the necessary being has no empirically detectable features. It is not subject to physical effects(that would make it a contingent being) so how then do you propose to detect it?

Let us suppose you suggest The universe is the necessary being? What is observed is subject to physical effects and as such is contingent......so not all the universe would be necessary and undetectable by methodological materialism or science. That would make the necessary part of the universe supernatural.


Given that being in a contingent is derived ultimately from the necessary, communication with a contingent would, I would have thought, have been a piece of cake.

Actually, that idea is practically indistinguishable from Christian panentheism.

[Gordon]

You what?

A Dragon is a large fire breathing Lizard. There's three empirical statements for starters.

Excellent: so the empirical evidence, as opposed to myth, for fire-breathing dragons is what exactly?

In order to be certain that no dragons had breathed fire when and where you looked, which certainly seems to have been the case, you'd have to be at the very least satisfied that there always was a live possibility that an empirically detectable fire-breathing dragon could have paid you a visit: and if you can't countenance that possibility then perhaps your idea of a dragon as an empirically detectable large fire-breathing Lizard is unjustified speculation.

You seem to have leapt from an idea of something to that something being real without first considering that the idea itself was a serious proposition to begin with. 

[Gordon]

I've already given a reason for why the necessary being has no empirically detectable features. It is not subject to physical effects(that would make it a contingent being) so how then do you propose to detect it?

I wouldn't, but you still haven't explained why a necessary being can't have empirically detectable attributes, such as occupying a human body for a while: you've just conveniently decided that it doesn't (or it can't have to suit your purposes). How do you know this?

Let us suppose you suggest The universe is the necessary being? What is observed is subject to physical effects and as such is contingent......so not all the universe would be necessary and undetectable by methodological materialism or science. That would make the necessary part of the universe supernatural.

Actually, that idea is practically indistinguishable from Christian panentheism.

And is just as meaningless and incoherent.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Excellent: so the empirical evidence, as opposed to myth, for fire-breathing dragons is what exactly?
 

I'm not proposing Dragons. All i'm saying is that Dragons are easily dismissed because the empirical claims for them are not evidenced.

God though has no such empirical properties for the reasons I have repeated twice. He cannot dismissed on account of absence of evidence of claimed properties. The properties are just not claimed.

Your failure to grasp this distinction is exactly that

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I wouldn't, but you still haven't explained why a necessary being can't have empirically detectable attributes, such as occupying a human body for a while: you've just conveniently decided that it doesn't (or it can't have to suit your purposes). How do you know this?

And is just as meaningless and incoherent.

No you can't or won't understand it. Anything affected by anything else is definitionally contingent. The idea that everything is contingent is just illogical nonsense.

It is therefore the very opposite of meaningless and incoherent. So any argument against it is meaningless and incoherent.


In terms of incarnation this is a particular case of panentheism, the idea of God being in everything.


If you will not have God as necessary the necessary on which the contingent exists must be somewhere in the universe? So where is it?

[Gordon]

I'm not proposing Dragons. All i'm saying is that Dragons are easily dismissed because the empirical claims for them are not evidenced.

I'll try again and hope you'll get it yet: I'd have thought dragons are easily dismissed not because you can't find any but because the idea of them as being real is fundamentally incoherent to start with - to the extent that I'd imagine you wouldn't bother to start looking. 

God though has no such empirical properties for the reasons I have repeated twice. He cannot dismissed on account of absence of evidence of claimed properties. The properties are just not claimed.

So as things stand God is not a serious proposition, since it seems you can say nothing meaningful about it since you are describing it as a 'something' in the real world but a 'something' that has no detectable properties, which is where the incoherence comes in.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'll try again and hope you'll get it yet: I'd have thought dragons are easily dismissed not because you can't find any but because the idea of them as being real is fundamentally incoherent to start with -

Go on then...…. positive assertion.....justify it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'll try again and hope you'll get it yet: I'd have thought dragons are easily dismissed not because you can't find any but because the idea of them as being real is fundamentally incoherent to start with - to the extent that I'd imagine you wouldn't bother to start looking. 

So as things stand God is not a serious proposition, since it seems you can say nothing meaningful about it since you are describing it as a 'something' in the real world but a 'something' that has no detectable properties, which is where the incoherence comes in.

Again, demonstrate the incoherence since you positively assert it. In otherwords differentiate it's incoherence from your lack of understanding and or your empiricism.


The meaningful is that God is what is necessary on which everything that is contingent is ultimately derived. The necessary is not contingent on what is contingent otherwise it would be contingent and not necessary.


Nothing incoherent about that has yet been demonstrated.

[Gordon]

Go on then...…. positive assertion.....justify it.

Good heavens, Vlad: if an idea is incoherent white noise then, and similarly to citing a fallacy, it simply fails on that basis alone.

The only way I'd be out of step here is if there were meaningful and coherent empirical claims about dragons (or 'God') that I was missing so that I was wrongly concluding white noise even though there were real dragons/God: let me remind that it was you, and not I, who introduced the notion of rejecting something if 'empirically detectable properties' about it weren't detected, and yet you follow this by telling us that 'God' has no such properties - how convenient!

Seeking solace is an argument from contingency isn't an escape route since even if you claim the universe is contingent, so that there must be a necessary being you call God, that argument doesn't preclude this God from having some of these 'empirically detectable properties' you raised.     

[Gordon]

Again, demonstrate the incoherence since you positively assert it. In otherwords differentiate it's incoherence from your lack of understanding and or your empiricism.


The meaningful is that God is what is necessary on which everything that is contingent is ultimately derived. The necessary is not contingent on what is contingent otherwise it would be contingent and not necessary.


Nothing incoherent about that has yet been demonstrated.

Vlad

If something is incoherent it means that nothing meaningful can be distilled from it: your thrashing about between 'empirical detectable properties' and modal cosmological arguments just adds to the overall white noise you are so copiously generating. 

Anyway - time for sleep.

[Roses]

Again, demonstrate the incoherence since you positively assert it. In otherwords differentiate it's incoherence from your lack of understanding and or your empiricism.


The meaningful is that God is what is necessary on which everything that is contingent is ultimately derived. The necessary is not contingent on what is contingent otherwise it would be contingent and not necessary.


Nothing incoherent about that has yet been demonstrated.

The definition of incoherence is:- confused, muddled, unintelligible, incomprehensible, hard to follow, disjointed, disconnected, unconnected, disordered, mixed up, garbled, jumbled, scrambled;
A description of many of your posts.

[Stranger]

Sorry, I'll have to get back to you to help out with your philosophical ignorance.

So, are you actually going to post anything resembling an argument and definition, then?

I've already given a reason for why the necessary being has no empirically detectable features. It is not subject to physical effects(that would make it a contingent being) so how then do you propose to detect it?

If you are proposing the existence of something, how we go about detecting it is your problem. If something is literally undetectable, even if it does exist, it might as well not.

Let us suppose you suggest The universe is the necessary being? What is observed is subject to physical effects and as such is contingent......so not all the universe would be necessary and undetectable by methodological materialism or science. That would make the necessary part of the universe supernatural.

Nonsense. If this is an attempt at an argument, it needs multiple definitions and seems to be missing a lot of important reasoning.

God though has no such empirical properties for the reasons I have repeated twice. He cannot dismissed on account of absence of evidence of claimed properties. The properties are just not claimed.

If your claim makes no testable predictions, then you need to provide some other reason to take it seriously. This isn't complicated.

Anything affected by anything else is definitionally contingent. The idea that everything is contingent is just illogical nonsense.

Why?

I think you need to stop scattering disjointed comments all over the thread and put together one coherent argument - making sure you properly define all your terms.

Any chance of that?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stranger,

I think you need to stop scattering disjointed comments all over the thread and put together one coherent argument - making sure you properly define all your terms.

He never will. His schtick is to misrepresent (wilfully I think) every argument that undoes him – for example by conflating “there are no coherent reasons to believe X” with “there is no X” – and to scatter barely understood terms in place of arguments of his own. Accusing someone else of ignorance of philosophy is beyond laughable.

So far as I can tell, under all that scattergun drivel (“necessary”, “contingent” etc) is just plain, common-or-garden special pleading – “the universe must have been caused by something, that something is the same god with which I happen to be most familiar, and that god is also itself magic because it's exempt from being caused by something else”.

It’s incoherence squared, and dishonest incoherence at that but it’s pointless to expect anything different.

[jeremyp]

Stuff you can't detect with empirical measurement or observation.

Such as what? If you can't detect it, how can you be sure it exists?

He is self defining or revelatory. He is described philosophically. He is the necessary being

Surely you know what his "self definition" is though. If you don't, how can you be sure that it is God hat you have "detected"?

[Walter]

Phillis Tyne is a God detecting tool .

who knew?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Walter,

Phillis Tyne is a God detecting tool .

who knew?

According to Vlad, he does.

Because his efforts here are so incoherent (and dishonest) it's impossible to know what he actually thinks, but it seems to be something like:

1. God is necessary philosophically.

Utter nonsense. He has no understanding of any philosophy - what he seems to be misdescribing with the is term is the bad argument that there must have been a first cause that was itself somehow exempt from the first cause rule.

2. I had an experience of "God". 

Not something he can know to be true, not least because he has no interest in eliminating the various non-divine possible explanations for that experience.

3. "Therefore, that must be the same god that philosophy says is necessary.

Finally he combines two pieces of bad thinking to produce a nonsense conclusion (ie, rubbish in = rubbish out).

It's weird stuff, but there it is anyway I guess.       

[Walter]

thanks for the clarification ,blue. However , I still think he's a tool !

[bluehillside Retd.]

Walter,

thanks for the clarification ,blue. However , I still think he's a tool !

Spirit level?

[Dicky Underpants]

He is self defining or revelatory. He is described philosophically. He is the necessary being

However, the only way any of us can be made aware of this self-definition of your god is through the Judaeo/Christian scriptures. And there you have a myriad of supposed "self-definitions", which differ very widely. You might decide to choose the descriptions which appear more 'evolved' out of this smorgasbord, but that would simply be your choice (probably espoused by a lot of Christians, but by no means all). There is no way of telling what is God's true 'self-definition' out of all this. 'Revelation'? Other religions claim revelations, too, in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, which in turn differ from the Judaeo/Christian descriptions.

"He is described philosophically". Well, Aquinas - to whom you seem indebted - had a go at it, deriving his arguments Muslim sources. But all this doesn't get you much further than the position so clearly summarised by bluehillside above (#289). Well, it would be nice to think that 'God' was the necessary being, but since all the descriptions and arguments for such are so multifarious, contradictory and so lamentably fail in giving adequate explanations for suffering (theodicy), it is not surprising that they are reasonably dismissed as so much woo.

[Walter]

Walter,

Spirit level?

laughing out loud funny ,blue 

[SteveH]

The definition of incoherence is:- confused, muddled, unintelligible, incomprehensible, hard to follow, disjointed, disconnected, unconnected, disordered, mixed up, garbled, jumbled, scrambled;
A description of many of your posts.

They are all synonyms for incoherent (adjective). Incoherence is a noun.

[Alan Burns]

What is God defined by then?

God is the source of all existance

[BeRational]

God is the source of all existance

How do you know?