Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
Doesn't faith start with the a priori assumption that there is God?
Faith is a spiritual matter, resulting from a form of communication with God.
That is a meaningless sentence as far as I am concerned because I don't know what "spiritual matter" is. If anything, it sounds like an oxymoron, i.e. spiritual (immaterial) + matter (material), and I don't know what God is. Now, before you jump to ANY conclusions, I am not saying this because I am a "leftist" but because I am an agnostic, i.e. I don't know if there is a God or what or who God might be or how to recongize him.
It's a perfect illustration of relativism at work, because at any other time you would accept what everyone else accepts—that the majority of historians are fairly objective and reliable.
First, I don't know that for a fact , and, knowing human nature, I would never given anyone that much credit without supporting evidence. I think the majority of historians (a) have their own prejudices, (b) political convictions, (c) career decisions to make, (d) some may experience change-of-life events, etc.
For example, you first claim to doubt my argument because I haven’t been specific enough with the supporting evidence.
I am neither gullible nor under any obligation to believe a perfect stranger who makes rather sweeping generalizations without much evidence.
Here, you say that even if my supporting evidence is specific enough, it isn’t valid because the vast majority of historians aren’t credible.
What evidence did you present me with? A name of an Evangelical professor who earns his bread on an Evangelical university? Do you really expect me to accept his word on his word, convinced that it is unbiased? This is like saying that Rahm Emmanuel will write fair an balanced memoirs without favoring his party's progressivist agenda!
In addition to that, you give me one reference. A name. Did you expect me to read his entire work to convince myself that you are right? You must be joking. Let's see his data, his references, etc. And let's see other, independent studies, on the same subject and see how well their results corroborate with his.
It’s somewhat amusing (though tragic) the way liberals confuse themselves into believing that because 1) Einstein was a genius, that somehow 2) liberals are also geniuses because they can mouth the word “relativity,” and that they can go on to claim that 3) all truth is relative
The word "relativity" pre existed Einstein. The world we live in is a complex relationship, where everything relates one way or another to everything else. What is good for some is not good for others; what is uncomfortable to me may be perfectly comfortable to someone else; what seems true to some doesn't seem true to others, etc. There is nothing "leftist" in any of that.
I’m not specifically calling you a leftist. I’m saying you use a tactic that is the foundation of the way leftists perpetrate their ideology.
My tactic is to trust no one on his word, especially when they hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.
This means he does not assume Biblical inspiration or even reliability of the New Testament, but views the New Testament as a work of literature, and accepts only data which are well evidenced and accepted by nearly every scholar, even the most skeptical ones.
That's fine. Now, let's see his arguments and his data.
Consider this question: In the process of forming your opinion, do you think it’s better to seek more depth and more detail—such as looking at what multiple scholars have said, and examining the nature and methods of determining historicity—or do you prefer to save time and to base your conclusions merely on what seems at first glance to be correct, before knowing the facts?
You have to ask me that? I'd think it's obvious that by asking for evidence and data I don't accept anything superficially or lightly, or on someone's nice words.
But the state of being God is not a person.
Well, that's what you believe and I don't. Why do you believe John?
In order to understand anything in the Bible, His words must be known and understood before anything else is attempted, because He is God and the others can not overrule Him
This is Bible babble. He is God to you. That doesn't mean he is. Christians believe Jesus is God, so there's no contradiction
Then the raising of the Temple in three days does not refer to his Resurrection because overwhelming NT evidence shows that the the most prominent apostles and Luke agree that he was raised by God and didn't raise himself.
ping - to the whole page. :)
"Well, that's what you believe and I don't. Why do you believe John?
It doesn't say John answered them. It says in John 2:19, "Jesus answered them,..."
Re: "In order to understand anything in the Bible, His words must be known and understood before anything else is attempted, because He is God and the others can not overrule Him."
"This is Bible babble. He is God to you. That doesn't mean he is.
In order to understand any story, especially such biographical type stories grasshopper, the main character must be known and understood. If you don't hold the main charcter's own words as the fundamental reference, you'll be forever lost in the confusion of all those different voices and visions. Autobiographies hold more weight, because they are from the primary source.
Re: " Christians believe Jesus is God, so there's no contradiction." " Then the raising of the Temple in three days does not refer to his Resurrection because overwhelming NT evidence shows that the the most prominent apostles and Luke agree that he was raised by God and didn't raise himself.
Christians believe Jesus is God grasshopper. Even Paul said, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form," in Col 2:9. So anywhere you see the word God written in the Bible, it can be replaced with the word Jesus, or visa versa, because He and the father are One.
"But the state of being God is not a person."
In order to be in a state of being God, one must be a person.
But, "John" is writing it... :) o, why do you believe John?
If you don't hold the main charcter's own words as the fundamental reference, you'll be forever lost in the confusion of all those different voices and visions
I am not lost reading Homer's Iliad, but I don't believe it it historically factual either.
"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form," in Col 2:9. So anywhere you see the word God written in the Bible, it can be replaced with the word Jesus, or visa versa, because He and the father are One.
Paul was "all thing to all men" so he told them what they wanted to hear. But one thing he does make sure is not to confuse Jesus with God. For example, (Phil 2:6) "who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped" A form of God? That's like image of God; it ain't God.
Paul makes sure we understand that when he says (1 Cor 8:6) "yet for us there is but one God, the Father", he means the only true God is the Father. And, again, (1 Cor. 11:3) "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ."
John, likewise, does not confuse "being one" with the Father (like the disciples being "one" with Jesus) does not make Jesus God the Father, nor the dispels equal to Jesus! John quotes Jesus as saying not only that the Father is greater than Jesus (John 14:28)but that Jesus actually refers to the Father his God (John 20:17). God calling God his God? Get real.
It took the Church a couple of centuries to figure out the theology that would make all three hypostases equal in divinity but not in person. The Bible writers certainly did not regard him as such.
No he just has to be diivne.
He is a Person.
all that exists had to be caused, except the first cause.
Your prior second statement was: "In that case the first cause cannot exist." right after you excepted it. So it was a logical contradiction or non sequitur.
It was a serious question to illustrate a point.
We either "know" or we believe.
How do you know this?
I know that a hot stove-top burns. I don't know if pink unicorns live (and talk) on Jupiter
But what you know about knowledge doesn't burn or not burn; it's neither pink nor any color. Not capable of any direct sense knowldege.
but I can imagine it, theorize about it, believe it, etc.
So would that mean what you said about knowledge must therefore be in the category of belief?
Yes is see that, and it would comport with the first cause argument. What you're not seeing is the argument's logic that: if all that exists is caused, then nothing exists - uncaused or caused. A universe comprised solely of dependent causes is turtles all the way down, again.
To put in context: You are arguing that the first cause argument is self-refuting. In order to do so, you must state it correctly, and show where, when stated correctly, it refutes itself.
You're giving contradictory statements or non sequiturs, but they are not correct statements of the first cause argument.
Such a "first cause", as we argued very early on, would be a timeless entity and therefore a changeless entity. What that entails is that all of that "first cause" happened in an instant that took no time. Which further implies that "... on the first day I, your deity, created this... on the second day, that..." - based religions cannot be compatible with the First Cause argument.
This premise neglects the definition of eternal as outside time. In this definition of eternal, "instant," "time," "no time," "some time," etc. are nonsensical.
would be a timeless entity
More precisely: eternal.
What that entails is that all of that "first cause" happened in an instant that took no time.
This premise neglects the definition of eternal as outside time. In this definition of eternal, "instant," "time," "no time," "some time," etc. are nonsensical.
Eternal means forever, and again implies time. In your hypothetical realm that was created to accommodate the deity which has no time to speak of, eternity is equally meaningless - no difference between a nanosecond and a trillion years.
As 'time' itself wouldn't apply, change cannot happen without time, and therefore, nothing that the deity did would / should take any time, implying that everything that it did, it did in an instant, and not over a course of days: "On the first day... rested (a time-based non-action) on the seventh day," etc.
That is your belief. However, a god does not have to be a person but has to be divine to be god, regardless if that god is a person or not (sun, volcano, wind, cat, ram, bull, man, etc.). God has to possess the quality of godliness or divinity, and has to exist in the state of being god (i.e. theotes).
It can and it can't. It depends on the use. In the theological definition it means not bound by time, not in time, not finite, etc., more concisely: "outside time" or transcending time..
I'll address your religious points in a separate reply.
[Judeo-Christian] based religions cannot be compatible with the First Cause argument.
They're not proven in your argument as incompatible.
As I've said earlier, the first cause argument is often objected to as a "proof for God" because it does not describe in full the Christian concept of God. I agree that it does not.
The rebuttal is that the attributes of eternal, uncaused, unmoved, unchanging, etc. are an integral part of Christian theology and therefore compatible.
I'm avoiding a religious discussion here and sticking to the non-transcendent observation and logic of the first cause argument.
How this would work as far as your objection would be: The first cause, uncaused, eternal, causes the dependent causes finite, in time.
And these, in time, happen in time, and time has days, etc.
So, it could be this is an explanation for that portion.
However, I'm not defending any particular religion biblical stance or interpretation here, rather trying here to stick to the first cause argument. In this context, it doesn't matter to me what the ramifications of the first cause arguments are outside the narrow structure of the argument itself.
It's an interesting "oh by the way" that St. Augustine, whose Greek was less then perfect, while translating the Greek Old Testament book of Sirach (18:1), wrote "qui vivit in aeternum creavit omnia simul" which means (he) who lives in eternity created everything at once whereas the Greek reads together.
This, of course, clashes with the story of Gensis, so it is interesting to read his rationalizations (in his Creation Days), based on his own mistranslation, in an attempt to "harmonize" the discrepancy between Sirach and Genesis, implying the six days of Creation was really one day repeated six times because "six is a perfect number"!
Of course, the Catholic/Orthodox Church considers Sirach as scripture and a contradiction between them is not an option, so he had to invent something that would make sense in this regard without dismissing either source.
This is, in some ways, exactly what Augustine did with his infinite regress arguments "proving" that God exists as a logical "necessity." even if the argument itself is logically self-refuting.
The only logical thing about his argument is that if anything that exists must have been caused to exist, then that which caused existence things to exist cannot exist (by definition). Which leads to the conclusion that nothing can possibly exist, which is refuted by observing the extant universe.
The paradox is then "solved" by assuming that the first cause is uncaused, and "exists" just because, for no cause or reason whatsoever, as a logical necessity.
Bit if we can assume something like that, we can just as easily assume that energy and time existed all by themselves for no reason whatsoever and are engaged in a repetitive cycle of creation and extinction for no reason whatsoever, without a beginning or an end, like points on a circle, none being the first nor the last, nothing being the beginning nor the end, one always being the cause of the one ahead of it, a perpetuum mobile, a perfect recycling machine or a self-sustained organism.
This is sheer nonsense, imo. The logical question then is: At which "point" in eternity did this "uncaused" mover move to create, what caused it to create, and why?
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