What I have done is providing rational argument to support my view and they are very transparent and objective.
All you need to do is to prove my premises are false and my conclusion can be deservingly squashed.
You are being rhetorical here and jumped to conclusion on the above.
I am not into the above modernism, positivism and nominalism.
What I relying upon are the philosophy of critical empirical-realism.
So far my arguments are always empirical and philosophical based criticisms and they are being realistic. Prove to me, I am none of these.
Prismatic567. Thank you for replying to my comments. You ask me to prove that your premises are false. They’re false in so far as Christian orthodoxy is concerned. You can find definitions of God in the creedal statements and catechisms of mainstream churches. You claim to know what absolute perfection is whereas the well documented traditional Christian understanding of God has always maintained that God (and therefore God’s perfection) is beyond human comprehension. Thus, your entire argument is a Straw Man as far as the Christian doctrine of God is concerned.
You’re playing a game you cannot lose. You have chosen an idiosyncratic definition of God that no Christian subscribes to. And if anyone disagrees you disqualify them for not arguing in terms of your definition.
Besides, you have dismissed or ignored many of the strong arguments made by others above. So, in spite of your opinion of yourself, your thread shows that you are not an objective judge of how the debate is going. That being the case, only a fool would play with you on your terms.
Am I being rhetorical? I don’t know how knowledgeable you are of the history of philosophy, but if you like I can expand on how your brand empiricism is thoroughly modern, positivistic, nominalistic.
So, you want to go empirical. What then is your empirical evidence for the efficacy of your argument? Has it persuaded anyone who didn’t come to your thread already an atheist?
It is so easy for any one to claim what they believe existing as real is beyond human comprehension.
All theists make the same claim that their God is beyond human comprehension.
Muslims claim their Allah [God] exists as real which is beyond human comprehension. Allah exhorts all Muslims to war against and kill non-Muslims under vague conditions.
If we convinced there is no such real God which is beyond human comprehension, there will be no more Muslims believing in such a God that command them to kill non-Muslims.
What theists are are ignorant of is the inherent existential crisis that drive them to cling to a God. Other non-theistic religion [Buddhism, Jainism, etc.] recognize this fact and deal direct with the existential crisis rather than depend on a God [with negative baggage].
Btw, Schizophrenics will claim the people [even gnomes] they had a conversation with, thus direct personal experiences is beyond the comprehension of other people.
I can claim XYZ thing [more powerful than your God] exists and that is beyond human comprehension, what can you do about that?
Nope I have not ignored any arguments by others - which one?
I strive to maintain intellectual integrity and would never leave any challenge unchallenged.
I am reasonable knowledgeable of the full range of Western Philosophy including Eastern Philosophy.
You are being rhetorical into pigeon-holing me into philosophical pigeon-holes without knowing my actual position.
I am not into positivistic , i.e. positivism which is no more popular and not into pure nominalism.
As stated I am into empirical realism with critical thinking.
My argument is grounded on the empirical.
I don’t take a leap out of the empirical to jump to the conclusion that something non-empirical exist as real.
I argue that leap is due to psychological reason within the human psyche.
Yes it is all humans including the clinging to a God.
If you claim and insist God exists as real, where is your evidence and justification to prove your claim.
I am an atheist. I claim no such thing. I simply argue your claim that a god does not exist as real. I don’t personally have a god. I have questions about the “here” of here and don’t have an answer for them. The god you argue against does not answer them for me. Whether there is a god that can, remains to be evidenced. I agree with Felix in the regard that you have a fairly limited definition of what a god might be. A particle or a wave, Quantum Mechanics vs. Relativity?
Don’t get me wrong. Looking at the question relatively is a sound pragmatic process, but to think you’ve crossed into absolutes, is a mistake of a lack of imagination. I would encourage you to practice the latter in equal proportion to the former.
Belief, I think is a key to your argument. It lacks proof in the same way any other belief can be held.
We spoke earlier of an absolute certainty which can not be reached.
Yet these uncertainties remain. There seems a required reflexivity in the statement as well. You can not claim to ‘know’ what is absolutely unreal either. Therefore what you hold is a belief that god is an impossibility.
Yes, belief is a key to my argument, but it is based on rationally justified belief, not a highly subjective belief.
Belief comes in a continuum from;
Opinion - free flowing very loose subjective views
Belief - beliefs ranging from low personal convictions to higher justified-beliefs.
Knowledge - justified true beliefs [JTB] as in Science, etc.
My argument is based on rationally justified beliefs, i.e. logical arguments.
Note my argument is not of an absolute certainty which cannot be reached, it is that there is no absolute-certainty to be reached.
E.g. the analogy of a square-circle, it is a non-starter. No matter what, it is not a thing which can not be reached. There is no square-circle to be reached for a start.
Similarly, God is an impossibility, the question whether God exists or not is moot, i.e. a non-starter.
What is absolutely unreal is absolutely falsehood, why we should be bother with that.
There are loads of possible unknowns.
But what is possible unknowns which can be real must be empirically justified, i.e. has empirical elements.
I can predict unicorns [horses with one single horn on the head] exists somewhere in a planet > one light year away in the universe. This is not an impossibility to be real because all the elements in the above statement are empirically laden which can be empirically justified if the empirical evidence is brought forth.
If one insist one’s God is a monkey existing more than one light years away - creating the universe - then I can agree such a monkey-God is possible to be real. All you need is to bring that ‘monkey’ for empirical verification. This is possible in theory but not probable in reality.
But, the-has-to-be ultimate God is a thought and idea that has no possibility of any empirical attribute [as defined] thus an impossibility to be real empirically and philosophically.
The word ‘god’ can be defined to be impossible, or to be possible.
The ancients defined ‘god’, theos, as natural force…so, for them, the word has meaning that they could experience.
Moderns, infested by Abrahamism, defined god as an absolute. They idealized and mystified the word, to ensure the manipulation and exploitation of morons throughout the ages.
They defined the word out of existence - beyond space/time.
You can define words like morality, value, love, in ways that makes them impossible - supernatural, ideological. Then morons can spend a lifetime looking for what does not exist, the way they’ve defined it.
All the so-called divine attributes are windows into infinity. Infinity is not knowable. It literally means “not finite”. It is defined analogically by what it is not. So with all the other attributes. Omnipotence. We know what finite power is. Infinite power is not that. And so on with omniscience, perfection, omnipresence, etc. Now if you claim infinity is impossible, I ask YOU to prove it. Cuz, until you do, I can’t imagine it.
Prismatic567 Here is an example where you only superficially address one of a respondent’s seven arguments, go off on a irrelevant tangent about your divine mission to save the world from theism( how’s that going for you, by the way?) and dismiss the rest. Your response is not exactly conducive to a meaningful dialogue.
This is not an issue.
For what is ‘natural’ that is empirically laden, then it should be verifiable via scientific test, like gravity and the likes.
Actually all the mainstream theistic religions define their God as absolute.
They have to do that so that no other religion can claim a one-up position on each other’s God. No theists would accept the possibility their God to be inferior to another.
Not on only they define their God as absolutely perfect but also real to the extent of the Abrahamic God had sent its commands in holy texts that believers must comply as a duty.
The consequences is the killing of >270 million non-Muslims by Islamic-Muslims merely because the non-Muslims do not agree and accept Islam as absolute.
Any rational and compassionate human being should be concerned with the above irrationality grounded on a God which is an illusion and impossibility.
If we shoot a missile from the space shuttle it will go on indefinitely, i.e. to infinity.
‘Infinity’ is simply ‘I don’t know’ not ‘not-knowable’.
In this case, the empirical elements, the missile, time, space are related to this ‘I don’t know’ thus is empirically possible if the evidence is provided.
When we say perfection that is infinite, i.e. till infinity.
Absolute-Perfect infinity is an oxymoron.
If there is absolute-perfection there is no need to attach infinity to it.
The other point is absolute-perfection per se is an impossibility, therefore attaching infinity to it make no difference.
I can use infinity for imperfection, i.e. infinite imperfection.
Thus infinite is a convenience of intellectual surrender.
‘Infinity’ is simply ‘I don’t know’ not ‘not-knowable’.
Yes…and nihilism is absolutist.
The only place the absolute exists is in the mind.
That’s why the mind is defied, and the body denied.
In the mind anything is possible. You can travel in time, simultaneously hold two contrary ideas, synthesize anything into a while.
For the nihilist the mind is the magic producer, projecting into the world everything ti is “lacking”.
Nihilists deal in either/or - Binary, Dualisms.
1/0
Not degrees.
The more words, representing concepts, you ground in reality, the more you disarm these imbeciles.
Begin with ‘love’. They ‘love’ love. They sing about it, constantly evoke the word, and yet they are the most love-less minds in the world.
They’ve idealized love out of existence, so nothing ever satisfies.
The 7 points were not addressed directly to me.
I did not dismiss outright [like saying it is nonsense, etc.] but I believe I have countered all the points as a whole logical and rationally.
You are making a complain on my response without any counter arguments to the points I raised at all.
Show me which of my 6 premises above are false?
There are various perspectives to what is nihilism - nihil’.
In one perspective, what you say is very true, i.e.
Absolutists are nihilists.
Their grounding is on ‘nihil’ i.e. which is basically nothing, more so, on an impossibility.
Their ideals, if taken literally and not figuratively, negate the real.
Consider the absolute one - singularity.
If it actually existed, there would be no cosmos.
Consider universe…it requires a projection in some imagined ‘external’ vantage point, because from inside existence there is no one, there is only multiplicity.
To put it another way…nihilism is the noumenon, the idea, that negates the phenomenon, the real.
Originally a cosmos void of a one-god, universal morality, and meaning - all defined absolutely - was considered negative. In other words a world void of human constructs was negative, when it is a positive, because it is existence.
Nihilism is the occult existing in the mind, that claims to exist in the ‘beyond’ or in some secret ‘hidden’ realm, contradicting the experienced world.