Devilnaut

Mike:

How, praytell, other than through 'logical meanderings', are we to arrive at this "truth"?


They don't "forget" this, they simply do not believe that it is true. And it doesn't look like it is true, in light of the fact that evolution is an extremely strong scientific theory, and that your story came solely from a book..

Anyway mike, your beliefs are nice and all, and you're certainly entitled to them, but if you want anyone else to take you seriously, you have to present evidence!

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Energy is all that exists. Matter is a form of energy. It is generally beleived that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only change forms.

So, there would be no 'Creation' 'Creation', in a religious or metaphysical sense, would not ever have taken place.

So, one need not posit a 'Creator/God' in order to 'explain' existence/realtiy.

Defining God as 'the first of the race' certainly removes nearly all of the 'God-like' attributes God is usually claimed to possess: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinity, Love, etc.

Defining God as 'the best of the race' also removes all of those 'God-like' qualities.

So, you remove from God all those attributes which are God's, in order to be able to honestly say that 'God exists'?

Gosh, I could say that my dog is God, and thus, God exists.

Though I'm not left with much of a God.

Keith.

Synaesthesia

This is my main point:
“Given that ‘possible necessity’ in modal logic always entails instantiation, to assume &lt;&gt;X[] in any way shape or form is to implicitly beg the question of whether X exists.”

Cosym replied:
This is an excellent response because in ironically whipping right by my point, you illustrate your confusion quite, erm, confusedly. When I say that it’s question begging to assume &lt;&gt;X[] in any way shape or form, I really do mean it.

You earlier wrote:

G = []G
&lt;&gt;G

G, logically implicit in the first statement, exists in all possible worlds if it is instantated in any possible world. The second states that G is instantated in some possible world. The rest of the argument simply draws out the meaning by inference, but all the information is there right from these two assumptions.

In other words, the above is a way, shape and form of assuming &lt;&gt;G[] hence implicitly assuming G. By virtue of asserting those statements within modal logic, you’ve just begged the question at hand.

Key step, fifty key steps or explicit premise, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that I missed these BTW. They beg the question far more explicitly than I would have hoped!

Begging the question is assuming what you are arguing for (namely the instantiation of a necessary God in any world) as though it were an uncontroversial premise. “they fail to provide logical support for their conclusions, which have already been accepted without proof at the outset.” As the link points out, it may be explicit or implicit, it makes no logical difference.

Modal logic helps you disguise controversial premises as innocuous statements of possibility. Such (clearly unwitting) sophistry is effective but the assumption that being who exists in all possible worlds is instantiated in some possible worlds is no more acceptable because of it.

I said:”The only relevant structural consideration is the notion of possible necessity which is assumed in both your argument and my argument.”

To which, oddly, Cosym replied:
Uh, didn’t you say
?

The ontological argument hinges upon the assumption that God is modally possible. No justification for this assumption has been made save the tacit equivocation with colloquial possibility. (ie when you said “All it could say is that it is possible that G exists, and thus only possible that G is necessary. One could claim the same about anything.”)

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

Mike

Devilnaut,

I thought you might ask for evidence. In fact the fossil record that so nicely backs up darwins theory by presenting an order in which life appears on earth also validates the order in which Genesis claimed life appeared on earth: Plant life, aquatic animals, land animals, humans. Unfortunately, there is precious little evidence linking the phylum together. Geologic evidence relates that phylum appeared relatively intact and (from an evolutionary standpoint) almost simultaneously (as the Genesis account suggests). As far as missing links, so far archeology has come up with only one possibility, where there should be millions according to an evolutionary standpoint. This one possibility is a flying, feathered creature that seems to have some reptilian aspects. A platypus also lays eggs, but it is undeniably a mammal. There are many similarities between phylum, but similarity does not equate to missing links. There are many similarities between inorganic elements, but no anscestral claim is made, of course, because rocks don't mate.

Similarities can just as surely suggest that a formula is being followed, as evidenced by such things as the golden proportion found not only in humans and animals, but in plants, galaxies, and mathematical musical proportions among other things.

As for evidence that God is our father, all we have is that of procreation. It only happens millions of times everyday and is observable at that. Judging from the overwhelming weight of evidence, humans are born from humans and have been so long as scientists have been making observations.

There is no evidence that extinct humanoid species are in fact of our race. In fact, an honest scientist once said that scientist who want to find similiarities between humans and neanderthal do in fact find them, and scientists who want to find differences do in fact find them as well. The same could be said of a human and a banana. Discover magazine published a finding of a human skull 800,000 years old which predates neanderthal by hundreds of thousands of years. It is now considered (by conjecture alone) an anscestor of both humans and neanderthal. This might make sense since neanderthal were apparently genetically defected or they may have survived. The fact is we know so little from the fossil record, and so much from daily observations in maternity wards around the world.

The fact is science has no evidence that life began on this earth, or that it can even begin spontaneously (Dr. Frankenstein was a fictional character and Stanley Miller was discredited--in either case, a human was required to create the conditions for life). The ONLY evidence available about the origins of life continues to be procreation--even cloning requires human intervention and existing DNA.

Mike

Keith,

That God is first and best implies one of two things. The first was suggested by your post: That God is not all that he is cracked up to be. The second possibility is that humans are more than we think they are. ie: Humans are potentially infinite, Humans are potentially perfectly loving (meaning being as loving as possible), Humans are potentially omnipotent (meaning having all power that it is possible to have), Humans are potentially omniscient (meaning having all the knowledge that exists), and humans are potentially omnipresent (meaning having an influence that extends infinitely--like the light of the sun).

But humans can only realize this potential by acknowledging their true heritage. If we don't we are nothing more than carbon, water, etc. etc. And any attempts at excellence or progress are ultimately meaningless and literally will become dust in the wind. So if we are not the offspring of God, why try?

Devilnaut

Wow. And the fact that I have legs also validates Genesis' claim that people walked and stood. So what?


What is the golden proportion?


Seeing as how this is all I asked you for, i'm not sure what that above stuff had to do with anything.
With ya so far.

Looks like you're reaching severely toward your conclusion. If you don't mind me asking, was it this same line of reasoning that led you to become a Christian? Please be honest.


Maybe I should rephrase my query. I was wondering why you believe that there was a first man, and why you think he should be called God.

Mike

Oh, and humans are potentially infinite. Did I say that? Yes, I agree that matter cannot be created or destroyed. When Genesis says "created" a correct translation would be "organized." Thus God organized the heavens and the earth from existing matter/energy. Just like he organized humans from existing material. The more science discovers, the more probable the biblical account becomes. Scientists are always trying to extend life, and succeeding in many respects. Suddenly the old ages reported in Genesis don't seem so fantastic, is it a great leap to imagine immortality? Some science fiction writers have done a pretty good job eg. that Arnold Swartznegger movie with the clones who were given the memories of the original.

Mike

Honestly my belief in God is independent of the line of reasoning suggested if you look at an earlier post to ex-preacher I listed the beginnings of my belief in God. 1. The idea has to be suggested to the mind that he exists. Thus all generations have passed this idea onto their offspring, and when the notion of a physical, knowable God disappeared, there was another "dispensation" according to the biblical record--in other words, God actually visited someone so that they could restore the idea that he existed. No one can believe in God unless someone suggests that God exists. 2. A correct understanding of his nature, which comes again through combining eyewitness testimony with reason. If there is a God, which conception of him makes more sense? A bipolar maniac with a thunderbolt and a great big hammer, an intangible essence, or a perfected Father eager to pass on the secrets to immortality, organization of elements, etc.--the original scientist. If you're really interested in the third thing that makes belief in God possible, let me know.

The line of reasoning in the preceding post came later, after the idea of God and his nature were already suggested to my mind and I had my own experiences with him.

The Golden proportion is a proportion roughly represented by the fibonacci series but only exactly represented geometrically because it is an infinite proportion roughly 1.6......, but never exactly obtained arithmetically because it doesn't end. It was used by artists and architects in the old days to create the golden rectangle which was assumed to be more pleasant then other shapes (modern psychological studies have confirmed a preference for golden rectangles and marketers have noticed and used approximations of the proportion in their products eg. credit cards). But it is not only found in rectangles (the proportions of the human body, plants, architecture, etc.), it is also found in triangles (flowers, apples, etc.), spirals (nautilus shells, sunflowers, some spiral galaxies, etc), musical chords (the fifth), etc.

By the way it may not be logical to assume that random processes could produce such similarity. Why does it just so happen that a universally pleasant rectangle and a universally pleasant musical chord and a spiral that suggests infinite exponential growth all found in nature both organic and inorganic would all correspond to the ideal proportions of the human body?

Mike

The fact that people walk and stood was readily apparent to the writer of Genesis, the correct order in which life appeared on the earth was not, since the science of archeology was not as advanced when Moses was around. Since Moses didn't get his information by digging up bones, he must have got it somewhere else...or perhaps from someone who knew...someone who set the order perhaps.

Mageth

Correct order in how life appeared on earth, as in birds being created the day before land animals? Plants created the day before the sun?