Posted by zazenduck on May 25, 2006, at 13:07:09
In reply to Re: Please be Estella » 10derHeart, posted by Estella on May 21, 2006, at 0:53:02
I don't think God can be proven or disproven. Philosophical p*sturing is just **********. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein said "of that which we cannot speak we must remain silent"If the system is incapable of speaking to the question, it doesn't mean anything about God. It means under the conditions I define with the language which I have I cannot find what I have defined to be coherent. But God is not in your equation because God is supernatural and your system is natural. So saying it is not coherent in the natural world is irrelevant... when God is defined as being supernatural.
so it is only incoherent if you assume God is not God
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> i'm sorry you felt put down by my post.
> i didn't mean for you to feel that way.
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> > ther are limits, at Babble anyway.....
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> i'm not sure how that hit up against the limits...
> having a little trouble here...
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> > Well, at least now I know my beliefs may be seen as incoherant by others. Guess that'll have to be okay. I can live with that.
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> incoherance is a formal property.
> that is the way i see it yes.
> though when pushed i'll back down to agnosticism
> - that should clue you in that it is very arguable indeed whether the formal property of incoherance is there or not ;-)
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> the argument for incoherance is also known as the problem from evil. i'll reconstruct...
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> 1) God is all powerful (can do anything)
> 2) God is all loving / kind / good / benevolent.
> (you grant those by definition)
> 3) There are instances of evil.
> That shouldn't be controversial for those inclined to christianity. For those not inclined to christianity I might need to argue for this a little. Some of my favourite examples:
> NATURAL EVIL - We can haggle over whether these count as 'evil' but just consider some destructive acts of nature. Consider the Tsunami. Consider whatever natural disaster you like.
> MORAL EVIL - Murder, rape, etc etc.
> Those things happen and those are the things I mean by 'evil'.
>
> Now in the face of those things...
> EITHER god chooses not to prevent them (so he is not all loving, kind, good).
> OR god cannot prevent them (so he is not all powerful).
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> So the notion is you must either limit gods power or his goodness for the notion to be coherant.
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> The problem of evil (which I prefer to consider an argument for incoherance) has been around for centuries... As such there have been a number of defensed (known as theodicies) trying to render the concept of god coherant in the face of the existence of natural and moral evil. i'll try a couple...
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> THE FREE WILL THEODICY
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> 1) Free will is a great good indeed and so cost benefit analysis shows that we are better off with free will even though some people use their free will to do evil.
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> My response is - surely the existence of natural evil doesn't depend on human free will. Regarding moral evil either god COULD NOT give us free will but restrict the range of it to harming oneself or god CHOSE NOT to. This once again entails that either he is not 1 or he is not 2 or both.
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> THE CHARACTER BUILDING THEODICY
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> Natural and moral evil is necessary for us to build character.
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> My response is EITHER god could not make it such that we didn't need to suffer evil to build character OR he chose not to make it such.
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> Hence he is not 1 or he is not 2 or both.
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> But this has been debated for centuries.
>
> Please don't take it personally that I think that concept of god is incoherant...
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> Apparantly general relativity and quantum mechanics are similarly incoherant when you put them side by side...
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poster:zazenduck
thread:642679
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060417/msgs/648417.html