Proof that the Christian god cannot exist

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Cris, Jun 21, 2001.

  1. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,611
    qwerty, I think you get it but I'll make it explicit: lightgigantic's claim that "empiricism is insufficient to distinguish reality from illusion" is just a poorly obscured claim to having some kind of special knowledge or special abilities. Hence the distinction between "sense perception" and "the state of the seer." Theoretically we make no such distinction, and in fact altered states of consciousness are rather easily explored in an empirical manner. This last fact is inconvenient to lightgigantic solely because it diminishes his own sense of authority. We can say that he is not defending any form of rationalism, either, for exactly the same reason; "the state of the seer" would be said to enclose an alternate rationality not subject to philosophical inquiry. The subject is, as it were, totally cut off from the Other in terms of experience and rationality, and all his attempts to express his "special abilities" are utterly futile.

    In short, lightgigantic's own position is that it is useless to debate him. I have to agree.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    funnily enough, your recalcitrance illustrates precisely my point.
    Your state of being makes it practically impossible for you to discuss anything with me.
    :shrug:
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,611
    Since it is practically impossible for anyone to discuss anything with you, I doubt the cause is my state of being.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    regardless whether you want to hold that its one or both of us that are looking through shit stained glasses, the point still holds

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  8. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,611
    I am pretty sure my original point was that everyone's glasses were shit stained from the start, so to speak. Sense data are all maya, as per the Vedic insight (which is really a Perennial insight). That's what makes all theories false and all facts true, and what disconnects us finally from any meaningful approximation of one by the other. But that makes your own point irrelevant, I'm afraid. You've inflated a platitude into some horrible Cartesian malin genie. You've got to get past it at some point and realize that you were reasoning about experience all along, regardless of your particular state of consciousness* or theoretical magisterium, and that you can't stop it by any means short of frontal lobotomy.

    Like I said, go, get out and challenge your mind. I am not kidding. You are as stupid as I remember you. That doesn't bode well for you.

    * It's true that altered states of perception can quickly demolish most of the Western philosophical canon. But that doesn't make these theories completely wrong, that's a false reductio. It only means that most thinkers' conclusions do not strictly follow from their premises. That shouldn't be surprising at all.
     
  9. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    do you suppose one can have an experience that has as a prerequisite, a particular state of being?
    (No need to get particularly esoteric here - the same general principle holds for the experiences of particle physicists as well as well as great saints)
    if we want to accept that all states of beings follow experience, there would be no need to endeavor to challenge one's mind ...

    you mean conclusions such as these?

    Empiricism is not only sensory perception, but experiential knowledge; it is how we differentiate between appearances and reality; illusion and actuality.


    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  10. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,611
    Of course. Easy example: a thought is an experience which can only be had by a being with the ability to think. To see, you need eyes; to hear, you need ears; etc.

    Furthermore, we have built instruments capable of sensing what we cannot. The non-visible EM spectrum is THE example of this. But there are more. Individual electrons are not only known to exist, we can actually interact with them without directly sensing them at all. How do you suppose this is possible?

    What we want to do is allow experiences to affect the antecedent rationalities (or "states of being") which ground our understanding of them. Otherwise there is no real progress in understanding, just an accumulation of trivia.

    In fact, when a monk enters a deep meditative state, or when a shaman imbibes ayahuasca and trips on the DMT in it, isn't precisely what is going on an alteration of the state of being, on the mode of rationality, by the mystical experience itself? Yet we are still able to reason about this experience. It is just very difficult because we must find a rationality so extremely abstract and general as to be able to cover both the operations of reason in our normal waking mode and in the altered state. We know we must do this because both experiences have occurred in the same universe and so must have something in common.

    Let me be perfectly clear: empiricism is a necessary but insufficient condition for knowledge. Popper (whose theory of falsification I am constantly returning to) got the "necessary" part of this formula right. He was a brilliant critic of all kinds of dogmas of reason. What he was unable to do was cede his own rational dogmas (like his liberalism, and his materialism). Like all modern men, Popper went so far as to deny that he had any metaphysical biases whatsoever(!). I suppose this sort of denial is why you apparently hate empiricism. Materialism is a metaphysical position, though, and empiricism doesn't depend on it. In fact, if you want to adhere strictly to a scientific method, you are forced to refute materialism. The world as we experience it ultimately doesn't make sense in terms of substances with primary and secondary qualities. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

    Yes, exactly like those. Which is a good conclusion actually, not because it is true but because it offers an enlightening perspective. Knowledge does come from experience and we can discern illusion from reality to an extent. Obviously we can't do this in an absolute sense, because, well, there are no absolutes in the realm of experience. (How could there possibly be when every experience is a transient event?) But what do we do when we realize this: dwell on it and continue to criticize everything as if it were a stifling absolutism? Or do we deal with it passively, simply ignoring dogmatisms of any sort?
     
  11. qwerty mob Deicidal Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    786
    @ baumgarten

    Thanks, I appreciate your insights, and hadn't much weighed information about altered states before, or lent the full gravity of "set and setting" to experience that I perhaps should have; particularly with regard to Human theisms and deism.

    And yeah, LG has a history with me.

    Greetings
     
  12. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,478
    only if Empiricism can measure, then it can be labeled proof by man.
     
  13. Gustav Banned Banned

    Messages:
    12,575
    /chuckle

    welcome back, baumgarten
    an absolutely fascinating series of posts that i am attempting to soak in
     
  14. Raymon Registered Member

    Messages:
    1
    I agree 100%

    great argument, but it doesn't even have to be that complex it's as simple as since god knows everything then why in the world did he create Satan knowing he was going to become bad? and if he didn't know he would become bad then god does make mistakes and therefore he isn't perfect, therefore he isn't a god. Its as simple as that imo, also the whole worship me or go to hell ideal is very immature and arrogant for a god imo.
     
  15. Bravowon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    54
    I think I agree

    I can't go through all the posts so please forgive me if the point has been made already, but is this generally the premiss?

    According to the bible:
    1.)God gave us free will and,
    2.)God is the logos (or is logic)

    If the process or mechanics of freewill were created to work in a logical way then every action or sequence of events that brought about a thought must follow a logical pathway that, when examining the influences closely enough, could only have followed to its one intimate conclusion. The way I see it, the responsibility for any purposely constructed logical sequence of events would have to lie with the prime mover (if such a thing exists) in this case, the supposed god who exists separate from causality but caused causality.

    However if free will, thought and decision are influenced at the base level by an illogical and random process (again, if such an influence exists) then it is no more reasonable to expect the barer of such an influence to act in a specified or predetermined way than it would be to expect severally ill mental patients to behave rationally.

    If that's the premiss then I can agree with that.

    It also raises the question: “Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character”

    Secular thinker say that, for morality to have any substance is must conform to a logical perspective of what is beneficial and tolerable in human society and so morality must lie outside of god and not objectively from god. It is then argued that “yes but god is logic. It says so in my bible”. Well, if he is logic then he must take responsibility for all that is logical while appreciating that randomness is not controllable, predictable, governable or rationally punishable.
     
  16. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    One way to look at this is using a chemical reaction as an analogy. The reactants first need to climb an energy hill. Once at the top of the energy barrier, they fall down the other side to products. The products are analogous to the final defined cause and effect, but climbing the energy hill can be done in many ways, with not all as efficient.

    Enzymes making it easier to climb the energy hill compared to just adding energy, relying on random collisions or even high concentrations of products to get up the hill. But regardless of the means, the same final products becomes the ends.

    Free will, in the light of climbing the energy hill of cause and effect to the product, appears sort of random at one level. But in terms of efficiency, what appears random lines up in an order, with the most efficient free the best way to the product.

    If God gave free will, the idea is not a random walk up the energy hill, but the most efficient walk up the hill. That may take a lot of different people making their own random trials, but eventually the most efficient stands out, like it always was.
     
  17. Bravowon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    54
    We use the word random but are there any truly random events that are not proceeded or caused by previous events. Some mechanics (like the loto machine) may be described as random to our perception but not to an omnipotent god who can work out all the influences and predict an outcome.
    I think true randomness would have to be “something from nothing”. I won't commit to saying that's imposable but how can a god expect me to take responsibility for it's influence on otherwise rational processes? I know that some theists and new age types like to vulgarly shove their gods into every orifice of uncertainty involving quantum mechanics but this still does not defeat the proposition proposed in the initial thread. The finest Swiss watchmaker who designs the perfect 12 hr time piece and then curses it every time it strikes 6 o'clock would rightly be thought mad. Is freewill fully logical or partly random; is god logic and is randomness accountable?
     
  18. creationist Registered Member

    Messages:
    4
    Cris,
    I understand your argument, however it is fallacious and you either fail to understand the definition of omniscient. There is no paradox at all as all knowing is not the same as all controlling. The bible does not say that God controls our every action. It says that He created us and thus knows everything about us. He knows every hair on our head and every thought in our minds. Just like I know exactly how my husband will respond to certain situations (because I know him so well), even those we have never experience together because I know his character that well. The Creator God knows us more intimately than we even know ourselves because He created us. Therefore, He can be omniscient, knowing our every move before we make them, without controlling those movements. Likewise, simply knowing how my husband will respond does not mean that I am directing his response.

    Omniscience: Perfect knowledge of past and future events.
    Free will: Freedom to choose between alternatives without external coercion.
    Control: To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct.

    Conclusion:
    Omniscience and Free Will are not a paradox as Omniscience and Control are not synonyms.

    Argument failed.
     
  19. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,478
    wow..first post..there are many threads here discussing free will vs omniscience..i have argued your conclusions till i was blue in the face..maybe you can do better..
     
  20. kx000 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,134
    Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha roflrofllmaololololololollmfaotehejajajajajajajajaja:roflmao:
     
  21. Arioch Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,274
    @creationist --

    Semantics bullshit, nothing more. You're arguing your own personal definitions based on your own personal preconceptions.

    Argument failed.
     
  22. markl323 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    166
    the authors of the Bible didn't think this far ahead...
     
  23. Socratic Spelunker Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    170
    One possible answer.
     

Share This Page