Atheism and the Universal Knowledge of God

bhsmte · Feb 10, 2014

brightlights said:
You misunderstand my argument. I am coming at this issue in a presuppositional way. My argument is more like this:

1. The belief in a consistent universe is unjustifiable apart from belief in God's existence.
2. You believe in a consistent universe.
3. Therefore you assume God's existence.

If you believe in a consistent universe you also believe in the God who upholds it. Though you may have some inner conflict because you also disbelieve this God for personal reasons.

You make far too many assumptions without providing any evidence, which creates a bit of a problem, if you want to be taken seriously.

brightlights · Feb 10, 2014

bhsmte said:
You make far too many assumptions without providing any evidence, which creates a bit of a problem, if you want to be taken seriously.

Show me an assumption I make in the argument.

bhsmte · Feb 10, 2014

brightlights said:
Call me back when you have some legitimate issues to raise.

Well, of course they aren't legit issues to you, because they call into question the historicity of the NT, but these are REAL issues that give pause to many NT scholars and historians, especially those with the guts to actually be objective about an objective critique of the book.

So, I completely understand your need to make all the assumptions you make in the OP and then wave away any legit historical review of the credibility of the book you hold so dear.

Again, why don't you work on supporting your many assumptions in the OP with evidence to support them?

bhsmte · Feb 10, 2014

brightlights said:
Show me an assumption I make in the argument.

Read the OP.

variant · Feb 10, 2014

brightlights said:
You misunderstand my argument. I am coming at this issue in a presuppositional way. My argument is more like this:

1. The belief in a consistent universe is unjustifiable apart from belief in God's existence.
2. You believe in a consistent universe.
3. Therefore you assume God's existence.

If you believe in a consistent universe you also believe in the God who upholds it. Though you may have some inner conflict because you also disbelieve this God for personal reasons.

Premise 1 is still unsupported. Please demonstrate that there are no other reasons that could lead to the universe being consistent.

Also I don't need to justify using it as an axiom because it is justified by working.

Premise two is mis worded because:

I 'know' a consistent universe until shown otherwise (believe would be something not in evidence). The consistency of the universe is a description I would give it based upon my past experience with it.

Chany · Feb 10, 2014

Holy-begging-the-question Batman!

I like how it is completely irredeemable with the Christian God that God is the actual of cause of all events, as in, humans have no free will. 'Cause, you know, God making humans evil doesn't make him responsible for the evil, and, therefore, a monster, right?

Oops.

Also, your first premise needs work, as in, it needs to be supported. As others have pointed out.

KnowtheSilence · Feb 10, 2014

Chany said:
I like how it is completely irredeemable with the Christian God that God is the actual of cause of all events, as in, humans have no free will. 'Cause, you know, God making humans evil doesn't make him responsible for the evil, and, therefore, a monster, right?

Oops.

Calvinists typically aren't bothered by this.

variant · Feb 10, 2014

KnowtheSilence said:
Calvinists typically aren't bothered by this.

Regardless, everyone else is.

KnowtheSilence · Feb 10, 2014

variant said:
Regardless, everyone else is.

They aren't bothered by that, either.

Chany · Feb 10, 2014

KnowtheSilence said:
Calvinists typically aren't bothered by this.

I know, but it is still something to point out, in hopes that it somehow gets through.

variant · Feb 10, 2014

KnowtheSilence said:
They aren't bothered by that, either.

If the point was to bother the OP maybe.

Eight Foot Manchild · Feb 10, 2014

brightlights said:
Explain where you get these "laws of reality" from?

The same place you do - from science.

brightlights said:
They can't be discovered empirically,

That is, in fact, exactly how they are discovered.

brightlights said:
so how do you justify your belief in them?

I suspect you are committing the very common presuppositionalist fallacy of confusing natural laws with the reality they describe.

Laws are formulated by people. I don't know that the reality they describe 'comes from' anywhere, or what that even means.

brightlights said:
You're wrong on several accounts.

We'll see about that.

brightlights said:
God created the world and all it's workings and it belongs to him. If this is the case I don't know how we could call his miraculous works a "violation" of natural law as if he was somehow held accountable to a law outside of himself.

Furthermore, the God of the Bible is the immediate cause of every event. There are no mediate natural laws that stand between him and creation.

You've just confirmed my point, except you've described it here even better than I could. The entire concept of 'natural law' is utterly incoherent in your worldview. You can't even meaningfully describe a uniformity of nature, let alone appeal to one in deriving information about your surroundings. All you'd actually be describing is the emergent actions of this purported deity, which you cannot possibly predict with any measure of reliability.

brightlights said:
What makes you think that there are such things as natural laws?

Science textbooks.

brightlights said:
And what is a natural law?

A description of the behavior of the universe.

Again, you're conflating the laws with the facts they describe.

brightlights said:
Further still the belief is not based on the "whims" of God but on the promises of God. God has promised to uphold the world so the belief in a consistent universe is part of the larger belief in a trustworthy God.

Even if I allow the existence of this god, you have no workable epistemological means for discerning that he has made promises to you.

Even if I allow the existence of this god and that he has made promises to you, you have no workable epistemological means for discerning what those promises are.

Even if I allow the existence of this god, that he has made promises to you, and that you've discerned what these promises are, you have no workable epistemological means for discerning whether or not he is lying.

Even if I allow the existence of this god, that he has made promises to you, that you've discerned what these promises are and that you've discerned that he is not lying, you have no workable epistemological means for discerning whether or not he's actually capable of fulfilling his promises.

These are a few of the many, many problems you'll have to overcome before I can 'co-opt' your worldview, even in principle (which I still wouldn't).

KCfromNC · Feb 11, 2014

brightlights said:
This all fails to understand the point. Give me one reason to believe that what's been observed in the past should continue in the future.

Considering you're using a computer - created by people using this assumption to produce useful results - you already do believe it. Otherwise why waste your time using a machine based on an assumption you believe to be false?

Not to mention that the only reason you're using language is because it has always worked in the past, and you're using English only because it was what I used to communicate in the past, and so on.

So given we both believe that past observations are perfectly good reasons to expect things to continue in the future, what's the point of your question again?

variant · Feb 11, 2014

KCfromNC said:
So given we both believe that past observations are perfectly good reasons to expect things to continue in the future, what's the point of your question again?

Because David Hume did a pretty good job explaining why you can't justify it using only abstract reasoning.

brightlights said:
Scientists predict future events using empiricism but empiricism itself can give no reason to suppose that anything will continue as it has. Hume demonstrated that.

You have to ignore pretty much everything else Hume said though to get to this point though because he was one of the fathers of empiricism.

And, of course, a big fat flaming atheist.

Please demonstrate that God is the only possible solution for the problem of induction:

For review:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/

Davian · Feb 11, 2014

brightlights said:
If the God of the Bible is divine then all people have immediate knowledge of him.

This is a plain statement of scripture but rather than demonstrating this from the Bible I'd like to explain it with syllogism. First, defining some terms:

By "God of the Bible" I mean the person who created the world, appeared to the fathers, raised Israel from Egypt, and raised Jesus from the dead.

By "divine" I mean something or someone on which all other things depend. If anything is foundational, eternal, and necessary it is divine. Divinity defined in this way is a concept that cannot easily be escaped. In this sense there is something divine within every worldview.

I understand that "divine" means "god-like". Is this sense you have a tautology.

brightlights said:
By "knowledge of God" I mean personal acquaintance. Knowledge means an awareness of his presence and either friendship or enmity with him.

Now some syllogisms:

If God is divine then he is the ultimate cause of every event.

If God is the cause of every event then every experience of the world is also an experience of God.

If every experience is an experience of God then every living person is always acquainted with God.

So to have any experience at all is to be acquainted with God.

Replace "God" with "Nature" or "the universe". I don't see how you connect this with the character of "God" in the bible.

If "God" is god-like then he is the ultimate cause of every event? Only if you define it that way.

brightlights said:
If God is a divine person then our personality depends on his. We are persons only insofar as he is a person. Our personality is a minature model of his personality. Our personality is an image of his.

If our personality is an image of God then we experience God by simply being persons.

If by being a person we experience God, then by being a person we are acquainted with God.

So to be a person is to be intimately acquainted with God.

I cannot reconcile my understanding of how the human brain works with how you are using "personality" as a "thing" in this context. Does "God" have a brain that functions like ours?

Can you rephrase this in terms discussed in these thread:

http://www.christianforums.com/t7569197/

brightlights said:
If a divine person exists it must be this way. It's not possible for a divine person to exist and us be ignorant of his existence. Yet many people claim ignorance or agnosticism toward the existence of God. What does this mean?

That a divine person does not exist. That does have parsimony.

brightlights said:
It means either that God does not exist or that those who identify as atheists and agnostics are actually denying and suppressing what they know to be true -- the existence of God. All people are acquainted with him. The difference between belief and unbelief is a difference of friendship and enmity. Believers like God and unbelievers do not like him. They dislike him so much that they seek to explain his existence away.

I do not dislike the character of "God" in the bible any more than I dislike the character of Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies.

Could you be a bit more explicit on the intent of this thread? I mean, even if everyone you encountered believed in this god of yours, it wouldn't mean that it actually exists.

Davian · Feb 11, 2014

brightlights said:
Do you believe in a consistent, dependable universe?

At the daily macroscopic level, sure.

brightlights said:
Do you believe in any sort of normative moral responsibility?

Nothing that cannot be explained in evolutionary terms.

brightlights said:
Do you believe that knowledge is possible at all?

Why not?

brightlights said:
If so, you also assume the existence of God.

Your biblical God? The bible does not describe a consistent, reliable universe. Prayer that works, talking animals, global floods that leave no evidence, the dead coming back to life, 900 year old people?

KCfromNC · Feb 12, 2014

variant said:
Because David Hume did a pretty good job explaining why you can't justify it using only abstract reasoning.

Can anything be justified using only abstract reasoning? That's not the point of abstract reasoning in the first place.

Eight Foot Manchild · Feb 12, 2014

variant said:
Please demonstrate that God is the only possible solution for the problem of induction:

For review:
The Problem of Induction (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Notice presuppositionalism does not even register a footnote in this article. No one takes this nonsense seriously, save those who already believe. Even most Christian apologists avoid it.

essentialsaltes · Feb 12, 2014

KCfromNC said:
Can anything be justified using only abstract reasoning?

Mathematics?

Eight Foot Manchild · Feb 12, 2014

essentialsaltes said:
Mathematics?

Yes, I would say math, and the most fundamental logical axioms. They can also be demonstrated practically, of course.

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