So it’s humans that are to blame, like I said, why blame a god?
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.
I have covered all variations in the definition of God.
One of the ultimate attribute of God is as ‘absolute’ normally with capital ‘A’ to differentiate from what is generally absolute;
If you are still doubtful, just google ‘Absolute’ & ‘God’.
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.
Agree, that is the point of the OP.
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.
Note:
As such, the self-dissolution of Christianity constitutes yet another form of nihilism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism#Nietzsche
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.
You getting on to greater truths.
I am very well verse with Kantian philosophy, your equating nihilism with noumenon is very true and appropriate.
It is from the noumenon [extreme of the empirical] that it is stretched to the absolute thing-in-itself [transcendental idea].
Note this thread,
Kant: God is a Transcendental Illusion
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=195263
And most believers and even most expert believers, like priests say, do not think like this. They do not think in terms of ‘absolute’ in the way the word is SOMETIMES defined in philosophy. ‘Mainstream religions’ do not define. That two word noun is an abstraction and a reification of billions of processes involving billions of people. It is not a person, so ‘mainstream religions’ cannot define. You have a term used in philosophy and theology, where specific experts come in and draw incredibly abstract conclusions that have very little to do with believers, the people who inspired the religions, the people who wrote the texts. You are a cherry picker. And someone who is incredibly naive about both the philosophy of language and human nature - for example, what people would mean when they talk about the greatness of a deity.
And even if it were the case that most people believed God was X, and you actually could prove that ‘if God must be X, then God cannot exist,’ you still haven’t proven that there is no God. You would have simply demonstrated that a particular, perhaps emotionally-driven exaggeration is illogical. People believed the earth was flat for a long time. This didn’t mean the earth didn’t exist. We can have all sorts of misconceptions about other minds. My wife is like X. We can idealize other people’s minds, because we only have indirect contact with them. Our errors and misconceptions and idealizations do not make these people unreal.
You take what you want from religions,
think that you have the authority to say, even to theists, what they believe
then use your cherry picking, appeals to authority and confusions about what actually constitutes a logical argument
to flood forums with your certainty.
Grow up. You have atheists pointing out the problems with your arguments.
Psychology is involved here.
The mind projects its own desires/needs, as ideas, into a world which fails to provide them to it.
It then subconsciously, or consciously, mistakes tis own projections, its own interpreting processes as existing in the world independently.
It projects noumena into the phenomenal world, intentionally mistaking them as already present there.
Noumena bein interrelations of phenomena. Simplifications/Generalizations of complex interactivities.
Noumena - i.e., abstractions, ideas/ideals - translating the world, are then mistaken as being more real than the real.
Abstraction being a simplification/generalization which eliminates dimensions - i.e., possibilities, where space is possibility, and matter/energy is probability within this field of possibilities.
This is where inversion occurs. The noumena become creators of phenomena, rather than phenomena triggering an interpretation.
In my view Nihilism, already diagnosed by Nietzsche, can be traced back further to emerging self-consciousness, producing vulnerability and insecurity which demands to be comforted.
Nihilism is a defensive reaction, using abstractions represented by words/symbols. It posits language as a shield….declaring that the experienced world is a shadow, illusory, hiding a more profound, more real reality, represented by words - logos.
This is where superstition, the occult, and obscurantism enter the picture.
Philosophy, as it is practiced currently, is corrupted by this defensiveness.
Our language is full of intentional detachments from reality. Words no longer act as mediating symbols, connecting mind to world, or noumena to phenomena, but increasingly refer back to mind, or to text representing another’s mind.
Mind is Deified. It is the only way to escape an indifferent threatening tangible, physical, world.
A form of solipsism, often using external sources - via stricture, text - to substitute for reality.
Philosophy has become an endless commentary on commentary, without ever engaging reality. It has become immersed in theory, emotions, abstractions, ideologies, detached from reality.
In this atmosphere, charlatans rule.
Occultists, superstition peddlers, obscurantists, using words to trigger emotions, to imply great rewards and powers, to seduce desperate minds.
It seems to me that your “missile shot from a space shuttle” would never reach the infinite. No matter how far it went, it would always travel a finite measurable distance. That would be knowable. And yet no matter how far out it traveled there would always be an infinity beyond it. That would be unknowable.
If we use the term “world” to denote the finite and “God” to denote the infinite, then there would be an unbridgeable gap between the world and God. There wouldn’t be a way to ascend to or to know the absolute greatest. The absolute greatest couldn’t be diminished to the point where it became limited and finite, and the knowable couldn’t be inflated to become absolute.