Children's freedom?

That probably a good idea. This entire thread is circular!

 

I thought we were just starting to make progress as well...

Aikimac read Luther properly (rather than taking select quotes) and showed that wasn't what Luther was saying. By the by, the bit in bold basically said "Aikimac clearly wasn't being rational else he'd've agreed with me". Read it again - it was very cheeky!

Those quotes were as blatantly out of context as can be.
This isn't double standards. It reminds me of Christian Union speakers who'll sometimes quote a throw-away comment of a famous philosopher or scientist while completely missing the point of the important things that they said. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about these quotes anymore because they're irrelevent to me. I'm more interested in the logical meat of the argument.

The logical argument is seperate from the quotes.
I mean, even if you position was logically correct, that doesn't mean that these theologians agreed with you, so "being right" doesn't justify abusing quotes!

This assumes that there has to be something outside of God.
If God is omnipotent by that strict definition then there cannot be something outside of God. Personally, I don't think that the definition of omnipotent need be that strict. Omnipotent only has meaning to us to affairs that are relevant to us, so he's unlimited in all the affairs that concerns us. Anything outside of that is meaningless so needn't be brought under the concept of omnipotence.

Remember, we're talking about possibilities at the moment, not "what is".
Your argument is that any proposition of God is meaningless and that's what we're debating at the moment. Once we've finished with this it'll become relevant what God is (unless you win in which case you prove that "what God is" is absolutely irrelevant! ) This is the reason why questions of epistemology are currently irrelevant. Until we settle this logical argument first, they're not even worth talking about.

Say there was a Red beam with an infinite length.
It would be unlimited in length but limited in colour.
In the same way, God isn't limited by what he can do if he "wills" it but is limited in what he will "will". It's not contradictory.

Yes. The concept of "power" is limited to "something we can do if we want to". God can make anything happen that he wants to.

Again, the concept of power has limits, as does the concept of time and the concept of length. Yet it is conceptually possible to have objects of limitless length and that last for limitless time.

Logical contradictory "situations" are "meaningless".
A square circle. A pixel that is both red and green. A length that is both 5m and 7m. So the concept of a rock that an omnipotent being can't lift is meaningless by its definition. If omnipotence meant defying logic then it would be a meaningless word altogether. When people say God is omnipotent, the fact they are trying to speak meaningfully means that they clearly don't mean he defies logic.

Who said anything about no limits altogether?
Omnipotence talks about a lack of limits in ONE attribute.
Otherwise why mention omniscience too if omnipotence covered all lack of limits?

Then God is not supernatural by THAT definition. (there are variations on "supernatural") God only has to be supernatural as in "outside our current understanding of nature" - that's all that's logically necessary of him.

At the moment we're talking about the "concept" of God, not making claims that there is this God so the epistemology is irrelevant for now. We will come onto it later but for now we're simply arguing whether it's logically possible. Until I can convince you that it's logically possible then we can't even talk about the epistemology. One argument at a time sir!

The concept of God has characteristics.
As to the supernatural, see above - God only has to be outside our current understanding of nature. Even if he is supernatural by your definition, there are still somethings we can know (like his effects on the natural world) and what we can know can be identified.

We've been over this...
Does omnipotence talk about all possible limits? No.
It talks about one particular limit, the power to do things that he wants to do. So does it contradict the possibility of there being limits that don't interfere with him "doing what he wants to do"? No.

 

My last comments on this thread-

If you demand to look at something logically when logic doesn't apply (i.e. faith isn't logical),

If you demand evidence to believe, yet you do not accept the source material as evidence (i.e. The Bible),

If your understanding of the material is from bits and pieces rather than the whole of authors who have written extensively on the subject (i.e. taking snippets off the net rather than taking the time to actually read texts and absorb);

there will never be room for debate, argument, discussion, or give and take.

And if I blame God for who I am and never take responsibility for who I am but don't believe in God, yet extend it just in case there is a God then I further set myself up for not believing. AKA-God has made me so logical and analytical that it's his fault that I don't believe in him. This is akin to 'my parents knew I had a huge weakness to sweets and set the cookie jar on the counter and told me to stay out of it...well, I ate a couple and they got mad at me, therefore they have set me up to get into trouble.


Anyway, I'm done because Homer will come and argue against most everything I have said.

 

Moi

 

i have gone straight from the first page to the last to answer the original question asked.

For me my kids go to catholic school so they go to church on sundays, at this age they just dont want to go full stop, not a case of another religion just pure boredom for them, they will get used to it.

 

I think you actually have to have read it cover to cover a few times to know it. As I recall, in the faith thread, HJS admitted to not even doing it once. Therefore, I would take your comment as being highly inaccurate.

As I perceive it, HJS spends quite a bit of time hearing arguments from other sites and copying them here. He didn't read many (maybe not even any) of the sources he has quoted and doesn't know the context in which small snippets are copied here. He admitted in this thread that he copied those snippets off the Internet.

Since I am not Catholic, I have not read the Catholic Encyclopedia. But I have read the Bible multiple times as well as a number of theology books all cover to cover so that I understand their context.

 

I stand by my comment, I believe that HJS has a better understanding of the Christian faith than most 'christians'. It is only the hardliners and theologians who study other religious texts, I'd bet than a significant majority of christians would think of martin luther king if you asked them what they thought of luthers teaching.

 

I think a significant majority of non christians would think a reference to Luther was referring to King. But do you really think Lutherans would think that way? Or that most Catholics? Or Presbyterians?

If you are referring to a Christian, you are referring to someone who is more than someone who attended a church a couple of times for weddings and funerals. If they haven't read the Bible and don't know what Christ taught, I don't see how they can be viewed by themselves or others as Christians.

 

Of course Lutherans are going to know, but I would wager the average church going Catholic probably wouldn't know that much about him.

Are you in favour of Christianity being more elitest then? If you dont do X Y and Z you dont have the right to call yourself Christian? Because I'm fairly sure thats not the vision that its poor Carpenter founder had in store.

 

Homer could come back here and state that he has read the entire Bible, cover to cover, as well as some Christian theology books. If he says that he has, then fine, I will take his word for it. If he ignores the issue, I will continue to assume that he has not.

I think that it would be very difficult for anyone to take seriously a person's arguments about a book that they haven't read. Just like when you were in school and you had to do book reviews, it was usually obvious who actually read the books versus those who only read the cliff notes.

 

He wasn’t being rations/logical because he wasn’t being rational/logical! Ones opinions is irrelevant

If you disagree with the quotes, disprove them… all of them!

Wrong! I’m saying precisely the opposite – nothing can be ‘outside’ of a god!

You’re the one arguing there are things outside of god by arguing he is limited.

Yes.

What your ‘think’ is irrelevant to the definition.

Yes. It’s tautological! Once you declare god to be supernatural (which ‘he’ must be by definition), you can only conclude that no meaningful assertions can be made.

To call god supernatural and then expect him to be explainable is to demonstrate a basic misunderstanding of the term supernatural.

Your argument is based on making epistemological assertions (that we can have knowledge of god and make positive assertion about ‘him’). Until you prove these assertions, your assertions are meaningless.

This analogy necessarily fails because you’re comparing natural things to supernatural things! The colour red has meaning to us because it has a universe of discourse. Only natural things have a universe of discourse.

What is god limited to ‘willing’? And how do you know this?

Wrong! The only way to discuss/define the concept of ‘power’ meaningfully is to give it an identity and therefore limits. But neither the supernatural nor god can have an identity, or limits. So we have the negative description of omnipotence (without limits) but because it’s supernatural, we have no meaningful way to describe/discuss it! Hence god’s omnipotence is necessarily incoherent.

You can only disuses it meaningfully once we give it identity, yet the supernatural cannot have identity. Do you not realise this?

You also commit a naked assertion fallacy by stating that god only wills certain things, but not evidencing it!

Yes, but only in the natural world. Why? We give power limits by giving it identity, but only natural things have identity. We cannot give god identity, hence we cannot limits his power.

Your repeated error is in applying a natural ‘things’ to the supernatural.

Yes, and these are natural.

Yes, in the natural world.

Exactly! That is exactly why we cannot talk meaningfully about god. It makes no sense at all!

Correctly defining ‘supernatural’ and ‘omnipotence’ will lead to such logical contradiction.

You’re expressing dismay that something which is incoherent, is incoherent!

The expectance of the supernatural to be coherent is itself irrational.

Exactly. It’s meaningless to natural, finite minds. It’s absurd to us because we are bound to it. But the fact is, it doesn’t apply to the non-natural, non-finite.

You’re error is in expecting the supernatural to be meaningful and coherent to finite minds.

Logic is man made. It is beneath god. God cannot be bound by something within his own creation, something beneath ‘him’. If god is limited by it, then ‘something’ ‘above’ ‘him’ created it, and that something would be god, not the ‘god’ we speak of.

He would be responsible for the natural world, and therefore logic in the first place!

The error lies that they are trying to speak meaningfully in the first place!

Omnipotence by definition is [n]no limits[/n], NONE! Period!

It’s doesn’t talk about specifics. All it tells us is ‘god’ is not limited by anything.

If ‘god’ is limited by anything at all, then he would not be god, because whatever created these limits would be god.

Trying to argue against this is irrational itself.

The supernatural is defined as being BEYOND the natural world.

In Latin: super = "exceeding" + nature. i.e exceeding nature. i.e. beyond nature.

The supernatural is the antithesis of nature!

God created the natural world, so he cannot logically ‘be’ within it, nor limited by it in any fashion.

Even if we understood all of the natural world, we wouldn’t understand god because he is by definition not a part of it, in any way.

Yes, and you need to evidence your assertions about the concept of god.

By not doing this, your assertions are useless. They’re naked assertions. They don’t mean anything. Until you evidence what you are saying, there is nothing to debate.

So stop trying to avoid evidencing your claims.

Well so far your claims disregard logic. Example… You believe the supernatural to be coherent and comprehensible.

No, the concept of god, by definition, cannot have characteristics.

Look:

P1 God is non-natural, beyond nature.
P2 Characteristics are natural.
C1 God cannot have characteristics.

People’s desires of god may have characteristics, but desires mean little. Simply because you desire something, doesn’t make it true.

Our understanding of nature is irrelevant. No amount of understanding nature will bring us close to something which is necessarily beyond it.

If you acknowledge the definition of supernatural, you cannot rational/logically claim to know anything about god. It’s tautological!

How could you know?

This would be begging the question.

You would be begging the question by assuming god exists, and assuming ‘he’ is the cause of something.

 

So you’re saying that the only way to accept faith is reject logic?

The bible is not evidence. To present it as evidence would BEG THE QUESTION! It would be a fallacy, ergo, it’s rejected.

 

Just out of interest… how do you define god?

 

I've not read the book cover to cover, but i read it...quite a lot of it. Either from the copy on my computer, or usually from BibleGateway.com

 

You say "unfair" about taking snippets of things for examples without having read the text in whole. Perhaps this can be an argument but one really needs to have read the text in whole to understand..case in point, if you were to take bits and pieces of Huckleberry Finn, then you would conclude it and/or the author is racist because it uses the word "nigger" in it many times. However, this argument is usually, almost always made by those who have not read the entire text.

If you were to read it, you'd see that the author and the book are not racist. This is the problem of taking things out of context.

I also remember doing a paper for Literary Criticism class in which I used some quotes from the book The Rise of the Novel. I found some great quotes that supported what I was trying to argue. However, the professor pointed out that I had taken the quotes out of context and I needed to read the entire chapter. After reading the chapter, I realized that I had completely taken things out of context despite how the few sentences/paragraphs looked at first reading.

 

So very true. Many of the arguments on these forums have been because someone picked a phrase out of the middle of a paragraph and used it in their reply and did not use the whole context. It totally changed the meaning.

 

I like BibleGateway.com. It is a great site.

There is no substitute for reading the whole book.

 

If the whole passage changed the meaning, post it here.

And i never picked out "a phrase," i supplied lots of examples of Luther's opinion. Most of them were as direct as your could get, such as...

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."
-Martin Luther (First Psalm Lectures, Luther's Works, Vol. 12, p.285)

In what possible way could you change the meaning of that!

 

Strafio,

I say we should just agree to disagree. Our debate is circular and hence, no point.

Your error will continue so long as you incorrectly, illogically define the terms we are discussing.

Your argument begs the question and is riddled with naked assertions.

I suggest you read into various philosophers (such as Kant) and negative theologians (such as Gregory of Nyssa. Some info here and here) on the issue.