God is Real: a dialogue

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Angel Trismegistus
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Thomyum2 wrote: September 21st, 2020, 11:05 am
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 4:00 am Angel's point
beauty:flower::speed:light

Steve's straw point
beauty:flower::300,000 km/s::light
From the perspective of a logical argument, I would side with Steve on this one. The speed of light is going to be the same to any observer - the beauty of the flower will not. (If you believe that beauty is a property of the object and not dependent on the observer, I'd suggest you visit an art or music forum and see how often you can persuade anyone that a particular work of art or style of much is beautiful if they find it ugly - I predict your success rate at this will be very low.)

But that aside, I think there's more to this argument than first meets the eye, and Angel, I'm surprised you haven't turned to the work of your favorite philosopher on this point. In his lectures on Pragmatism, James said that:
truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
In this sense, I think James makes a very important point that the truth of something, such as the correct measurement of the speed of light, is indeed a matter of value. We hold something to be true because it does have value in a particular sense. So if you follow me, I think you are approaching your case a little bit backwards by suggesting that value 'is real' - that Beauty, or God, are a subset of the collection of things that we identify as being 'real', or that we can can deduce or prove that they are real by any argument that proposes that they meet the requirements to be considered as such because they share some properties in common with those other objects. Rather, it is value itself, in its various forms, by which we make the determination itself that any and all things are real or beautiful in the first place. Value precedes these determinations - it does not follow from them.
Excellent points.

Let's start in the museum. If you and I disagree about the beauty of Van Gogh's The Starry Night -- you find it beautiful, I grotesque, let's say -- we certainly have different subjective valuations of the same painting, as you say, but your valuation is inextricably tied to this and not another painting. The Starry Night is not The Potato Eaters, or the Mona Lisa for that matter, and the beauty you find (that I don't) is the beauty of The Starry Night, the beauty of this particular painting, and unless the beauty is there in the painting, your value judgment is illusory. Now, we move on tp another gallery and our value judgments are reversed before Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror. The beauty I find there is inextricably tied to that particular painting, and not another, and if my aesthetic judgment is not illusory, the beauty I find in Girl Before a Mirror must be contained by Girl Before a Mirror and not another painting.

At the end of our visit we've disagreed, let's say, about every painting we've viewed together. Still, we've found beauty in painting today, and not in music or anything else. The Jamesian "good" we've found is in different objects, though it is the same "good" and the same "truth" -- aesthetic good, aesthetic truth. If the value is detached from the object valued, if the value determines the judgment rather than the object determining the value, then it doesn't matter what we're looking at when the determination is made. If value precedes determination, the object of value is nugatory.

Had the speed of light never been measured, speed would nevertheless be an essential part of the character of light.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Terrapin Station »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 11:25 am
Terrapin Station wrote: September 21st, 2020, 9:13 am

Ah--so it's based on a particular view of what propositions are ontologically. My view isn't at all that propositions are extramental or that they're universals. My view is that propositions, as meanings of sentences that can be true or false, are mental phenomena and are particulars (they're particular mental phenomena in particular individuals' heads).
\And whence the truth of these sentences if not the universal extra-mental propositions they express, the states of affairs or facts embodied by the propositions?
Truth value is a(n individual) judgment about the relation of a proposition to something else. The something else depends on the truth theory the individual is using on the occasion in question (it could be correspondence, coherence, etc.) There is no such thing as "universal extramental propositions." The idea of that is nonsense. Propositions are particular mental states in individuals' brains.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Calepiaro »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 18th, 2020, 6:41 am
Calepiaro wrote: September 17th, 2020, 5:22 pm We are nothing but humble explorers. We do not create values, we only discover them. A rock falls down to earth even if there is no human to acknowledge that. If we created the values as you claim, they would lose all their meaning. One would be right only because he says so, he creating the values his righteousness is based on. Why would killers be evil and innocents innocent? Because we say so, for that nothing but us creates the values we base our morality and virtue on! Values must be set by a supra-human in order for them to be relevant. A killer would no be bad, for that his values would be in his favour, yours would be against him, but what would make you right and him wrong?
Nicely put. Welcome to the club.
Thank you, I am glad to be here.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by h_k_s »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 8:15 am
h_k_s wrote: September 21st, 2020, 6:21 am

Did you take upper division undergrad technical writing in college?

Or are you a high school student still?
No, I did not.

I never in a sense left seventh grade, that annus mirabilis for boys.
So in college most of us took some philosophy.

College philosophy is mostly the history of philosophy not philosophy itself.

The first course is Phil 101 History Of Western Philosophy. They don't go into Asian, Arabic, nor Native American. A pity.

Then you tackle the various eras of philosophy after 101, such as ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, Medieval, Renaissance, etc.

Most colleges require two writing classes. The freshmen take the first one and the juniors must take the second one. But it not unusual to see bright freshmen take 250 their second semester, and a lot of sophomore take it also, and a fair amount of seniors take it at the last minute, which is discouraged for the seniors.

The first one is basic composition, with an emphasis on rhetoric which is emotional argumentation. It's also called Bonehead English 101.

The second one is Technical Writing 250 with emphasis on report writing, technical memos, business letters.

The philosophy majors tend to hate 101 but love 250. You need to be a good technical writer to get your point across in philosophy and science. The only prereq for 250 is the 101 class and a passing grade in it. For a failing grade F or D in 101 they usually make you take it over again before you can take 250.

That is/was the college world back in the late 1970's when I was teaching there.

Then as now, very few high schools or prep schools teach philosophy to kids pre-college.

The Catholic high schools teach Catholic Philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas) to their kids. If you become a teacher in a Catholic college or seminary you are required to teach Augustine & Aquinas, and nothing else.

Today we are in the Anti-Post Modern Era of philosophy. In Catholic schools you were not allowed to learn that.

Terrapin Station or anyone else, correct me if Im wrong here.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Belindi »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 17th, 2020, 5:38 am Image

For Gee

Beside a mountain stream, a Skeptic and an Angel, fishing.

Skeptic: There is no God!
Angel: What's the matter? Fish steal your bait again? Well, look at it this way -- at least you know they're out there!

Skeptic: Fish are out there, yes. But as for God.... My whole life I've been putting out bait -- not a nibble!
Angel: Maybe you're using the wrong bait.

Skeptic: Or maybe that lake has been fished out.
Angel: How can you say there is no God when you are surrounded by the wonders of nature -- by such natural beauty?

Skeptic: What does the one thing have to do with the other?
Angel: What does Beauty have to do with God?

Skeptic: I see no connection there at all.
Angel: The connection is heuristic.

Skeptic: Heuristic, you say? Look, everyone knows beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Angel: Sure, everyone knows that. But is anyone who knows that saying that beauty isn't real?

Skeptic: What do you mean by "real"?
Angel: I mean not an illusion. When we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, are we talking about something real or something illusory?

Skeptic: We're talking about something that is in the mind.
Angel: Everything we know and talk about is in the mind. If everything in the mind is an illusion, then nothing we know or talk about is real.

Skeptic: Well, that doesn't sound right. I know! Beauty is a value!
Angel: That's right.

Skeptic: And finding beauty in something is a judgment!
Angel: That's right too -- a value judgment.

Skeptic: There you go.
Angel: But aren't the different things different people find beauty in real things?

Skeptic: I suppose. Yes, the things are real.
Angel: And the value different people find in things -- this value called "beauty" -- is that not also real? Or are the things real but their value illusory?

Skeptic: But people find this value in different things.
Angel: Granted. But aren't these people finding the same value in these different things?

Skeptic: The same value in different things?
Angel: Yes, Beauty -- with a capital B.

Skeptic: All right, let's say for the sake of argument that it's Beauty with a capital B that they're all finding in different things.
Angel: Well, if the thing is real, isn't the value of the thing real? The face of a beloved wife or child, is not the beauty of that face as real as the face? Isn't the face and the beauty of the face inseparable?

Skeptic: To the one who finds beauty in it, yes.
Angel: And to the one who finds beauty in another face -- isn't that face and the beauty of that face one and the same?

Skeptic: That follows. All right, let's say that the thing and the beauty of the thing are both real to the one making the value judgment.
Angel: Then the many judgments of beauty by many different people in many different things -- these all find something real when they find Beauty in these things.

Skeptic: What's your point?
Angel: Beauty is real.

Skeptic: So let's say that beauty is real -- for the sake of argument, let's say that is the case. What does that have to do with God?
Angel: It's the same case.

Skeptic: What do you mean?
Angel: Like Beauty, God too is in the eye of the beholder. Manifest in the things of this world. A value of things. And that's a judgment most people make, and have made from the beginning of time. And like Beauty, God is as real as the things of this world in which people find Beauty and God. God is the value of the things of this world. God is real.

Skeptic: But I don't see God in the things of this world.
Angel: Well, keep looking, my friend, and perhaps one day you will. But pay attention -- your bobber is twitching! You've got a nibble!



Comment? Challenge? Criticism? Praise?
All good-faith responses are welcome.
The above description of God is true of the existentialist's God which like energy is potential not kinetic.

Kinetic is to energy as actuality is to God .Potential is to energy as possibility is to God.

God in the guise of good and beauty has been actualised in some past events. Even if solipsism were the case , good and beauty have been perceived by the singular mind, the actualiser.

However whether mind is singular or plural, embodied or ghostly, it invents everything including the notions of other minds,good, beauty, values, evil, suffering,death, life, scientific 'laws', blades of grass, tigers' stripes, philosophy, etc etc.

All of the above are not evidence that extended matter does not exist, or that good, beauty, life, death, and blades of grass etc don't exist as we can't prove a negative, except in the form of probabilities. Solipsists can't prove any negatives; that is impossible.

What the solipsist, the idealist, the materialist(physicalist), and the duel aspect monist all have in common is that no event is actual until it is in the past. All events are potential until they are past events. God is potential until someone has actualised God, perhaps only as an observer event.

The above, existentialist account of God, unlike the Cartesian dualist's account of God, contains no problem concerning evil. Evil too is potential. The description Angel T gave of God omits to tell the sceptical angler there is a crocodile creeping up behind for the bait and anglers and all.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Steve3007 »

Then as now, very few high schools or prep schools teach philosophy to kids pre-college.
Where I live it's taught in at least some high schools. My kids are both in secondary/high school. They have philosophy classes. My eldest son's philosophy teacher is also his football (soccer) coach. I did a philosophy 'A' level ( a qualification usually taken at the age of 18 in preparation for university) but didn't study it explicitly in school before that. The 'A' level course was patchy, covering Plato/Aristotle and some 19th Century stuff like J S Mill, but not much else that I recall.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Terrapin Station »

In the majority of U.S. universities, the majority of philosophy courses focus on doing philosophy. Even within a "history of ideas" approach, which some schools follow more than others, you'll still have a heavy "issues" focus where you need to critically assess the material for philosophical merit, you'll have to defend your own views against philosophical objections, and there's always a heavy writing requirement. This is a common reason why a lot of students taking low-level philosophy courses as an elective drop the course--many are not comfortable with either the writing requirements, with having their views challenged and needing to develop philosophical supports against those challenges, or both.

Philosophy courses in high school are very rare in the U.S., unfortunately. Critical thinking courses are slightly more common, as are logic courses, but the focus of the latter is computer programming, not philosophy.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Belindi wrote: September 22nd, 2020, 3:46 am
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 17th, 2020, 5:38 am Image

For Gee

Beside a mountain stream, a Skeptic and an Angel, fishing.

Skeptic: There is no God!
Angel: What's the matter? Fish steal your bait again? Well, look at it this way -- at least you know they're out there!

Skeptic: Fish are out there, yes. But as for God.... My whole life I've been putting out bait -- not a nibble!
Angel: Maybe you're using the wrong bait.

Skeptic: Or maybe that lake has been fished out.
Angel: How can you say there is no God when you are surrounded by the wonders of nature -- by such natural beauty?

Skeptic: What does the one thing have to do with the other?
Angel: What does Beauty have to do with God?

Skeptic: I see no connection there at all.
Angel: The connection is heuristic.

Skeptic: Heuristic, you say? Look, everyone knows beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Angel: Sure, everyone knows that. But is anyone who knows that saying that beauty isn't real?

Skeptic: What do you mean by "real"?
Angel: I mean not an illusion. When we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, are we talking about something real or something illusory?

Skeptic: We're talking about something that is in the mind.
Angel: Everything we know and talk about is in the mind. If everything in the mind is an illusion, then nothing we know or talk about is real.

Skeptic: Well, that doesn't sound right. I know! Beauty is a value!
Angel: That's right.

Skeptic: And finding beauty in something is a judgment!
Angel: That's right too -- a value judgment.

Skeptic: There you go.
Angel: But aren't the different things different people find beauty in real things?

Skeptic: I suppose. Yes, the things are real.
Angel: And the value different people find in things -- this value called "beauty" -- is that not also real? Or are the things real but their value illusory?

Skeptic: But people find this value in different things.
Angel: Granted. But aren't these people finding the same value in these different things?

Skeptic: The same value in different things?
Angel: Yes, Beauty -- with a capital B.

Skeptic: All right, let's say for the sake of argument that it's Beauty with a capital B that they're all finding in different things.
Angel: Well, if the thing is real, isn't the value of the thing real? The face of a beloved wife or child, is not the beauty of that face as real as the face? Isn't the face and the beauty of the face inseparable?

Skeptic: To the one who finds beauty in it, yes.
Angel: And to the one who finds beauty in another face -- isn't that face and the beauty of that face one and the same?

Skeptic: That follows. All right, let's say that the thing and the beauty of the thing are both real to the one making the value judgment.
Angel: Then the many judgments of beauty by many different people in many different things -- these all find something real when they find Beauty in these things.

Skeptic: What's your point?
Angel: Beauty is real.

Skeptic: So let's say that beauty is real -- for the sake of argument, let's say that is the case. What does that have to do with God?
Angel: It's the same case.

Skeptic: What do you mean?
Angel: Like Beauty, God too is in the eye of the beholder. Manifest in the things of this world. A value of things. And that's a judgment most people make, and have made from the beginning of time. And like Beauty, God is as real as the things of this world in which people find Beauty and God. God is the value of the things of this world. God is real.

Skeptic: But I don't see God in the things of this world.
Angel: Well, keep looking, my friend, and perhaps one day you will. But pay attention -- your bobber is twitching! You've got a nibble!



Comment? Challenge? Criticism? Praise?
All good-faith responses are welcome.
The above description of God is true of the existentialist's God which like energy is potential not kinetic.

Kinetic is to energy as actuality is to God .Potential is to energy as possibility is to God.

God in the guise of good and beauty has been actualised in some past events. Even if solipsism were the case , good and beauty have been perceived by the singular mind, the actualiser.

However whether mind is singular or plural, embodied or ghostly, it invents everything including the notions of other minds,good, beauty, values, evil, suffering,death, life, scientific 'laws', blades of grass, tigers' stripes, philosophy, etc etc.

All of the above are not evidence that extended matter does not exist, or that good, beauty, life, death, and blades of grass etc don't exist as we can't prove a negative, except in the form of probabilities. Solipsists can't prove any negatives; that is impossible.

What the solipsist, the idealist, the materialist(physicalist), and the duel aspect monist all have in common is that no event is actual until it is in the past. All events are potential until they are past events. God is potential until someone has actualised God, perhaps only as an observer event.

The above, existentialist account of God, unlike the Cartesian dualist's account of God, contains no problem concerning evil. Evil too is potential. The description Angel T gave of God omits to tell the sceptical angler there is a crocodile creeping up behind for the bait and anglers and all.
This is quite good, Belindi. The Aristotelian concepts of potentiality and actuality open up a promising avenue in the approach to God. My day's thinking will be on this. Idealism (my orientation) plus Aristotle's schema of forms. Outstanding!
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Thomyum2 »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 12:14 pm Let's start in the museum. If you and I disagree about the beauty of Van Gogh's The Starry Night -- you find it beautiful, I grotesque, let's say -- we certainly have different subjective valuations of the same painting, as you say, but your valuation is inextricably tied to this and not another painting. The Starry Night is not The Potato Eaters, or the Mona Lisa for that matter, and the beauty you find (that I don't) is the beauty of The Starry Night, the beauty of this particular painting, and unless the beauty is there in the painting, your value judgment is illusory. Now, we move on tp another gallery and our value judgments are reversed before Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror. The beauty I find there is inextricably tied to that particular painting, and not another, and if my aesthetic judgment is not illusory, the beauty I find in Girl Before a Mirror must be contained by Girl Before a Mirror and not another painting.

At the end of our visit we've disagreed, let's say, about every painting we've viewed together. Still, we've found beauty in painting today, and not in music or anything else. The Jamesian "good" we've found is in different objects, though it is the same "good" and the same "truth" -- aesthetic good, aesthetic truth. If the value is detached from the object valued, if the value determines the judgment rather than the object determining the value, then it doesn't matter what we're looking at when the determination is made. If value precedes determination, the object of value is nugatory.
You're getting into a little bit of an 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it' kind of an argument here. If a painting is in a room but no one goes in to see it, is it beautiful?

But I haven't said that the value or beauty is 'detached' from the object, not at all - it does matter what we're looking at, but also matters who is looking. Beauty does not reside solely in the object, but rather comes about due to the relationship of the object with the one experiencing it. We each find beauty in different things because we each bring different memories and expectations to the experience, so the object will resonate with each of us differently - we'll each notice different things about it, it may remind us of something or contain cultural-specific references, or surprise us or disappoint us in different ways. So it is dependent on, and indeed 'precedes' both the subject and the object - it is not a property of one or the other, but is criteria that is in place prior to the experience itself even takes place. 'Value' drives both the subjective experience as well as the objective qualities that we 'find' in anything.
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 12:14 pm Had the speed of light never been measured, speed would nevertheless be an essential part of the character of light.
The same is true of the light - it has no 'speed' without a relationship to something else. To have speed, there must be a point in space relative to which the light is moving, and an observer (and one who has a clock).

What James is showing in the quote I cited above is that these are essentially the same thing - a relationship of value. Really the only difference here is that in the case of light, we've created standards of valuation that we will agree upon and share, but in the case of beauty, we typically abide by a rule of 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and allow that each person will apply their own individual measures to this type of experience.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
— Epictetus
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Thomyum2 wrote: September 22nd, 2020, 1:07 pm
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 12:14 pm Let's start in the museum. If you and I disagree about the beauty of Van Gogh's The Starry Night -- you find it beautiful, I grotesque, let's say -- we certainly have different subjective valuations of the same painting, as you say, but your valuation is inextricably tied to this and not another painting. The Starry Night is not The Potato Eaters, or the Mona Lisa for that matter, and the beauty you find (that I don't) is the beauty of The Starry Night, the beauty of this particular painting, and unless the beauty is there in the painting, your value judgment is illusory. Now, we move on tp another gallery and our value judgments are reversed before Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror. The beauty I find there is inextricably tied to that particular painting, and not another, and if my aesthetic judgment is not illusory, the beauty I find in Girl Before a Mirror must be contained by Girl Before a Mirror and not another painting.

At the end of our visit we've disagreed, let's say, about every painting we've viewed together. Still, we've found beauty in painting today, and not in music or anything else. The Jamesian "good" we've found is in different objects, though it is the same "good" and the same "truth" -- aesthetic good, aesthetic truth. If the value is detached from the object valued, if the value determines the judgment rather than the object determining the value, then it doesn't matter what we're looking at when the determination is made. If value precedes determination, the object of value is nugatory.
You're getting into a little bit of an 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it' kind of an argument here. If a painting is in a room but no one goes in to see it, is it beautiful?

But I haven't said that the value or beauty is 'detached' from the object, not at all - it does matter what we're looking at, but also matters who is looking. Beauty does not reside solely in the object, but rather comes about due to the relationship of the object with the one experiencing it. We each find beauty in different things because we each bring different memories and expectations to the experience, so the object will resonate with each of us differently - we'll each notice different things about it, it may remind us of something or contain cultural-specific references, or surprise us or disappoint us in different ways. So it is dependent on, and indeed 'precedes' both the subject and the object - it is not a property of one or the other, but is criteria that is in place prior to the experience itself even takes place. 'Value' drives both the subjective experience as well as the objective qualities that we 'find' in anything.
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 21st, 2020, 12:14 pm Had the speed of light never been measured, speed would nevertheless be an essential part of the character of light.
The same is true of the light - it has no 'speed' without a relationship to something else. To have speed, there must be a point in space relative to which the light is moving, and an observer (and one who has a clock).

What James is showing in the quote I cited above is that these are essentially the same thing - a relationship of value. Really the only difference here is that in the case of light, we've created standards of valuation that we will agree upon and share, but in the case of beauty, we typically abide by a rule of 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and allow that each person will apply their own individual measures to this type of experience.
Yes, you get it. Yes, the tree falls in the forest out of earshot. Does it fall in silence?
In this regard we could talk about color as well as beauty, I think.

To think that the tree falls in silence contradicts common sense. It also contradicts a basic scientific assumption about the world.
I mean, the absurdity is easily illustrated by giving our tree conundrum another turn: if a tree falls in a forest out of eyeshot, does it fall?

However, your idea of the priority of value is too interesting not to explore further. As I understand your view, value is prior -- logically and temporally prior -- to both the subjective and the objective elements of a particular experience. Have I read you aright? Do I get your point?

If I do get it, would you kindly say a few words on how value priority might work out in the God Question?
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Terrapin Station »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 4:15 am
Are you not going to comment on my September 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm post to you?
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Terrapin Station wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 6:31 am
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 4:15 am
Are you not going to comment on my September 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm post to you?
We were just starting to hit it off after the rough start of our acquaintance and I deemed it advisable to look the other way as regards your September 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm post. First, because the matter mooted is a tangential matter concerning the consistency of your nominalism. Second, because you are digging yourself into a hole on this question of propositions. Do you really wish to carry it further?
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Terrapin Station »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 11:40 am
Terrapin Station wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 6:31 am

Are you not going to comment on my September 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm post to you?
We were just starting to hit it off after the rough start of our acquaintance and I deemed it advisable to look the other way as regards your September 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm post. First, because the matter mooted is a tangential matter concerning the consistency of your nominalism. Second, because you are digging yourself into a hole on this question of propositions. Do you really wish to carry it further?
Yes. I think it's worthwhile to get you to think about this stuff more.
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Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Fanman »

Long time people. Hope all is well.

My thoughts on this topic:

Having been a theist for most of my life, then around 5 years ago becoming agnostic. I can say without doubt, that anywhere or anything in which I perceived God, can be explained by how I interpreted things. For example, when I was young, I was pretty good at football. Some of things I used to pull-off, caused me to believe that God had blessed me with an innate ability for the game, as I never used to practice that much. But that opinion, whether there was any truth to it or not, is my interpretation. I could not observe any empirical “thing” outside of myself and point to an unequivocal basis for that interpretation.

So what I am saying, is that perhaps by rule, any and all claims of God come from interpretation, not any evident empirical facts. God is not seen, it is intuited. Which is why I will always respect the sceptics viewpoint.
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: God is Real: a dialogue

Post by Steve3007 »

Hey Fanman. Welcome back. As you say, long time.
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