Albert Cipriani

Dear Mr. Plant,
1) God, by definition, is omnipresent.
2) God, by definition, is physically undetectable.
3) I do not detect God.
4) Ergo, God is here with me... but not there with you

Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Kenny

I'm glad you thought so. I'm afraid I don't like politics all that much though, so I think I'll pass.

Albert Cipriani

Now power broker Bruno Nut must go back into the smoke filled room and eat his green visor and Kenny must re-adjust himself to an anonymous lifetime of quiet indignation since Kenny missed his 15 minutes of fame as a politician, all because he couldn't recognize sarcasm. -- Albert

Echo

I guess it would be best to let the theists clarify what they mean when they use the term "omnipresent."

I've heard from some Christian theists that omnipresent doesn't mean that god is actually present everywhere. I guess the idea of god being everywhere in the universe is getting a little too cozy to pantheism, where god is the universe. So they tell me that it means that god is aware of every place in the universe. In other words there is no place you can go where god cannot see you, so to speak.

WJ

Don't forget, much of the attributes were assigned by a few individuals who at the time, felt Platonism was the fashionable way of describing Deity. So, here we go again with apriori logic!

Even if Jesus assigned those attributes to God it would certainly be more convincing than say St. Thomas' and other's words and descriptions, but the fact remains putting them in a propositional form as provided in the thread is meaningless. In that deduction example, you may as well supplant God with evil from the example given and arrive at the same conclusion of omnipresence. Moving words around like mathematical formulas don't provide meaning. So what does that prove or mean?

It's kind of like telling someone the exact description of the phenomena called love, hate, intuition, etc.. Who can?

You are left with faith. Faith will then provide the testing as it seeks understanding from the rational mind-consciousness. But the understanding itself can never be adequately explained like it might could in an exclusive logo-centric manner that mathematics (or the axioms in physics) can provide.

Until folks can grasp the true impacts behind, say, concepts like existence, essence, consciousness, Being, sentience, you all are wasting your time on intellectualizing that which you seek to prove or disprove. The paradox is unsolvable; contradiction results.

If your an atheist; stay that way. If your a theist; stay that way. Approaching the problem of God thru analytical statements postulating his existence won't get you there. Actually, where are trying to get anyway?

I find it quite ammusing that people over the centuries have debated the same things. The more things change, indeed, the more they stay the same.

Sorry, I step down from the soapbox now.

Walrus

Kenny

Oh, I did recognize it, and returned it. As far as missing my 15 minutes is concerned, I've already had them, right here on the secular web. I mean just posting here for all to see makes us all famous right?

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

cleftone

What is so hilarious about this topic is that it raises SO many other problems for the theist: ex. How can God see and hear and speak and otherwise use other cool human "gifts" without having a body? How is God a local presence everywhere at the same time, and yet unconstrained (uncontainable) by that same universe? The typical answers to these questions reveal yet another set of unfounded beliefs in the theist's mind, contrary to the CLAIM(s) that God is by definition this or that. Whose definition? There's no good reason to believe the catholic God any more than Horus.

cleftone

cleftone

Walrus, I appreciate your response, but I think it's a bit hasty to reckon the "evidence" for "atheism" (which as you know is simply an absence of belief in a god or gods) as equal to the "evidence" for "theism", It can't all be about faith, unless you are speaking about "faith" in evidence and logic. In that case, theism is certainly not epistemically more viable than atheism or agnosticism. I think you're equivocating on the word "faith". So there are lots of reasons why one could, in the absence of religious faith (as opposed to "faith" in science or reason), deny that god is next to DarkBronzePlant at this moment. And it comes down to this: anomalies will probably always 'be'. But science has done a nice job of explaining those things which hitherto were mysterious. If DarkBronzePlant said God was next to him/her, then we would want to know how this was known. Could it just be the wind? Low blood-sugar? A fuzzy emotion? All of the above working in concert? Of course. Those are all BETTER, SIMPLER explanations than 'god walks with me and talks with me'. It's the same with a lot of paranormal stuff. Usually there are better, more natural explanations for alleged ghost sightings. Someone
may retort: "But God can still be present in spirit." Not without raisng the issues I mentioned in the previous reply. Or one might argue that the notion of omniscience is Biblical, therefore it's true, in spite of my experiences to the contrary. But this only makes the omniscience of God an empty doctrine, with little or no impact on the believer or the unbeliever, Further, and more importantly, such a claim raises even more serious issues related to the veracity of the Bible, the evolution (and devolution) of doctrinal "standards", the relationship between God and evil, omnipotence, etc.

clef-tone

Albert Cipriani

Dear Kenny,
If you weren't a Christian, I'd have to assassinate you so that your 15 minutes of what passes as political fame here didn't become a half-hour. That would be intolerable.

It is kinda weird when you think of it, how we can just type our minds out here in the privacy of mutual hovels and people continents away are privy to it. I guess that's preferable to incontinent people using privies. Cheers, Albert

emotional

</strong>

He's also fat and ugly. I know, because I've seen Him. Anyone care to disprove?

</strong>

So if I swat a fly then it's the same as swatting God?

</strong>

#include &lt;standardanswer.h&gt; from when I was a theist: "the reason you do not feel God is here with you is that you are full of iniquities and blinded by the flesh".

Even if he exists, he's irrelevant. Theists know that too. A theist's hard disk crashes, and (if he's prudent) he restores the data from a backup. Instead of praying to God, who is the Lord of Hosts and Clients and Computers and Hard Disks.