Silmarien
Existentialist
- Feb 24, 2017
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Not borrowing from Berkeley or Kant but perhaps from - Hegel? I see him cited in your signature.
Look, the idealism of someone like Hegel - the theory that reality consists of mere immaterial ideas rather than real matter - won't prove terribly useful to you if someone hits you in the head with a baseball bat. It's a useless theory because it doesn't change the reality of the material dynamics that we are forced to live with 24 hours a day. For instance, that philosophical theory certainly didn't prevent an atomic bomb from falling on Hiroshima killing 200,000 people.
I said that I wasn't above borrowing from Berkeley and Kant. I was very much offering a classical argument from Berkeley, and I think he would respond that you still only have sensory impressions of being hit by the baseball bat. Personally, I think the bat is there, but I'm not sure if it's meaningful to say that it's made out of matter. If you try to give a fundamental physical description of what the baseball bat is, after all, you get molecules that are made up of atoms, which collapse into particles that almost seem to be more virtual than actual. I don't think the materialist can say that we know that matter exists when some people are wondering whether "matter" isn't just mathematical patterns.
If you're some kind of Hegelian idealist, or a solipsist, perhaps my quarrel is not with you. For example, how can I disprove the solipsist, who claims I'm just a figment of his imagination? I cannot, and don't much care to try.
Can I disprove Hegel's idealism? Well, for one thing, who is having these ideas? Just God? Are we all God? Or, if I'm a figment of His imagination, how is it that I'm thinking with my own mind right now? Or maybe I am God, doing this thinking, as are you? This doesn't seem to be fruitful.
Oh, I'm not a solipsist. And what you're describing is Berkeleyan idealism, not Hegelian idealism. The whole question of whether materialism or idealism is true is really a side point, though. For the sake of argument, we can just assume that materialism is true. This means that I will be arguing as an atheist, since I think that materialism entails atheism. You will have to actually demonstrate the existence of a material God, since I see no valid reason to accept that one could exist.
Oh. It's a big problem? Ordinary matter is something hard to conceive? But you find creation ex nihilo to be a perfectly straightforward claim? Let's conside that claim. Suppose you asked your wife or kid, "I need to fix something. Please grab me a hammer from the empty toolbox." Wouldn't they say you're off your rocker?
I do find creatio ex nihilo to be fairly straightforward, yes. Also fairly difficult to refute, since you and I as conscious entities at one point did not exist, and now do. Our bodies are constituted by preexisting material elements, but as self-aware agents, we are new creations.
A materialistic world view, such as mine, isn't susceptible to such logical contradictions and incoherence. Matter is the basis of individuation. As such, there will never - can never be - more than one Jal. I am numerically distinct from every other piece of matter in existence.
The material composition of your body is in a constant state of flux. There's apparently a complete turnover in the atoms in the human body every five years, so you're not really a "piece" of matter in any meaningful sense.
No sir. No proof is needed to establish the theory that material objects exist. The burden of proof is on those who claim that magical, immaterial substances dreamed up in Plato's fairytale land somehow exist in real life. Certainly there is no scriptural support for that gibberish.
I'm a woman, not a man. Please do not refer to me as "sir."
Also, I am not asking you to establish the theory that material objects exist. I'm asking you to establish that a material God exists. Remember, in this thought experiment where only the physical exists, I am an atheist.
If you're interested in playing this game, I'll repeat my questions concerning the entity whose existence you're positing.
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