Atheism and the Universal Knowledge of God

[Ken-1122]

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

Well according to your reasoning, your God is not devine; because not everybody has immediate knowledge of him.

Now some syllogisms:

1. If God is divine then he is the ultimate cause of every event.
2. If God is the cause of every event then every experience of the world is also an experience of God.
3. 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.

1. 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.
2. If our personality is an image of God then we experience God by simply being persons.
3. 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.

But since we agreed that your God is not devine, all of the above points are null.

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?

We've been through this already; it means your God is not devine.

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

It means the first one; not the second one.

K

 

[Gene2memE]

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

Starting with a contingent ‘If’ is not a particularly good way to construct a non-mathematical syllogistic argument. Its a bit like closing a door but leaving a hole where you can reach through and unlokc it.

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.

For premises to be accepted, they needs to be correlate with reality. Unless you pre-suppose the complete accuracy of the biblical account - discounting archaeology, cosmology and modern medicine, just to use your examples - only one of those four pieces of evidence you just used has the possibility of correlating with reality.



As I don't pre-suppose biblical inerrancy, I don't need to accept the divinity of the god character.

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.

Are my mother and father divine then, to a greater or lesser extent? They may not be foundational or eternal, but my existence certainly depends on them.

An atheist secular humanist worldview wouldn’t accept your definition of divinity. Neither would lots of Buddhists.

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

This is an appeal to personal revelation. Therefore it is not universally applicable. Therefore cannot be used as a foundational premise for a syllogistic argument. I have no personal acquaintance with any supernatural entity.

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.

This is just argument from first cause/transcendent ontological argument, making it contingent on your own definition of divinity. If I substitute ‘reality’ or ‘the universe’ for ‘god’, is this argument is equally valid? Or invalid (depending on your presuppositions)?

• If reality exists then it is the ultimate cause of every event.
• If reality is the cause of every event then every experience of the world is also an experience of reality
• If every experience is an experience of reality then every living person is always acquainted with reality.

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

• 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.

What makes the major premise valid? First of all, you’d need to define ‘personality’. Do you mean consciousness, mind, ego?

Second, you’d have to demonstrate how the personality of a physical, conscious, temporally bound, finite mind is dependent and replicates that of a supernatural, eternal, infinite, omni-benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent entity, the existence of which has been neither proved or disproved.

Thirdly, you’d need to account for changes to personality/mind whatever due to changes to the physical brain. If you suffer from a personality disorder (aspersers, autism or another development disorder), is that a reflection of the mind of god? As above so below and as below so above?

If my personality/consciousness is dependent on the existence of some supernatural being, does that mean that I have no independent personality/consciousness? If my personality changes, does that change the personality of god?

If my personality has negative elements, does that mean that god’s does too? Does that not violate the formulations of the whole ontological argument for the past 60 years or so?

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

Again, if you substitute the words reality or the universe, is this premise equally valid?

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?

Only as you define it, for the sake of your own argument. If someone else has a different definition of divinity, then the syllogism falls apart.

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.

The difference between belief and unbelief is not ‘a difference of friendship and enmity”.

I do not believe simply because I do not have sufficient evidence to believe. No case or set of cases put forward to me for the existence of god or gods has given me a rational reason to believe them.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Greetings and good day to all!

I am happy to be a member of this forum and this is my first post which is more or less a question for Brightlights.

After reading your initial post, I want to see if I understand you aright. Is it your view that belief in an ordered universe is irrational unless one assumes God exists?

If I have misunderstood you I apologize. I just want to make sure this is your view because it sounds interesting and sounds like something I want to look deeper into.

Yours in Christ.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Greetings and good day to all!

I am happy to be a member of this forum and this is my first post which is more or less a question for Brightlights.

After reading your initial post, I want to see if I understand you aright. Is it your view that belief in an ordered universe is irrational unless one assumes God exists?

If I have misunderstood you I apologize. I just want to make sure this is your view because it sounds interesting and sounds like something I want to look deeper into.

Yours in Christ.

I'm sort of loathe to point you in this direction, but if you're interested in Brightlight's kind of, um, "arguments," look into presuppositional apologetics.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

I'm sort of loathe to point you in this direction, but if you're interested in Brightlight's kind of, um, "arguments," look into presuppositional apologetics.

Since you were loathe to point me in the direction that would be helpful to me, then I shall thank you all the more for doing so. You were the first to respond to my inquiry and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to do so. You did not have to but you did and I am grateful to you for helping me. I hope your day is going well so far and if you have any more suggestions I would appreciate them. I am eager to learn not only from those who share my views but from those who offer a counter-perspective.

Once again I thank you.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Since you were loathe to point me in the direction that would be helpful to me, then I shall thank you all the more for doing so. You were the first to respond to my inquiry and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to do so. You did not have to but you did and I am grateful to you for helping me. I hope your day is going well so far and if you have any more suggestions I would appreciate them. I am eager to learn not only from those who share my views but from those who offer a counter-perspective.

Once again I thank you.

Just keep these two things in mind if you do looking into presuppositional apologetics: first, their arguments fail on just about every level, and second, it's a really uncharitable way to argue; starting off an argument by declaring that your opponent actually agrees with you but is to corrupt, dishonest, or stupid to realize or admit it is not a great way to have a friendly conversation.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Just keep these two things in mind if you do looking into presuppositional apologetics: first, their arguments fail on just about every level, and second, it's a really uncharitable way to argue; starting off an argument by declaring that your opponent actually agrees with you but is to corrupt, dishonest, or stupid to realize or admit it is not a great way to have a friendly conversation.

Thank you. I have never looked with any depth into presuppositional apologetics. If P.A. entails what you have declared it does, then I agree, it is not at all something a Christian should use when defending their truth claims.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Or it means that he's the most unavoidable reality there is. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge him.

So what do you say about the people who have absolutely no concept of your god? Or how do you address the contradictions that make the typical Christian view of god impossible? Or the history that we can trace back to show roughly when and where your god, and religious stories were first made up?

 

[brightlights]

So what do you say about the people who have absolutely no concept of your god?

Because man is made in God's image every person has a very clear conception of God. When man looks at himself he sees a picture of God.

Or how do you address the contradictions that make the typical Christian view of god impossible?

Which contradictions are these?

Or the history that we can trace back to show roughly when and where your god, and religious stories were first made up?

I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

 

[Davian]

Because man is made in God's image every person has a very clear conception of God. When man looks at himself he sees a picture of God.

When I look in the mirror, I see past the illusion of self. As explained by philosopher Thomas Metzinger, when I look at myself, I see no one.

Self-model theory of subjectivity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Being No One with Thomas Metzinger - YouTube

 

[brightlights]

When I look in the mirror, I see past the illusion of self. As explained by philosopher Thomas Metzinger, when I look at myself, I see no one.

Self-model theory of subjectivity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Being No One with Thomas Metzinger - YouTube

You find that this makes sense of the world for you?

 

[Davian]

You find that this makes sense of the world for you?

I generally raise the bar higher than "makes sense" when it comes to evaluating scientific theories. There is plenty in science that does not "make sense".

As for Metzinger's self-model theory of subjectivity, I find that it has explanatory power and is evidenced in the field of psychopathology. I accept it as being an accurate description of how the brain works.

What does not "make sense" is your claim that every person has a "very clear conception of God".

Unless that conception is that gods are only characters in books.

 

[brightlights]

I generally raise the bar higher than "makes sense" when it comes to evaluating scientific theories. There is plenty in science that does not "make sense".

As for Metzinger's self-model theory of subjectivity, I find that it has explanatory power and is evidenced in the field of psychopathology. I accept it as being an accurate description of how the brain works.

What does not "make sense" is your claim that every person has a "very clear conception of God".

Unless that conception is that gods are only characters in books.

You know what God is like because you know what you are like. Man is in the image of God. Whatever man is on earth God is in the heavens. Whatever man is locally God is cosmically. God is like man but ultimate, eternal, and without sin.

 

[bhsmte]

You know what God is like because you know what you are like. Man is in the image of God. Whatever man is on earth God is in the heavens. Whatever man is locally God is cosmically. God is like man but ultimate, eternal, and without sin.

Speak for yourself, not for others.

 

[Davian]

You know what God is like because you know what you are like.

Animated meat functioning under the illusion of self. Is that like God?

Man is in the image of God.

Empty rhetoric.

Whatever man is on earth God is in the heavens.

How does that work? How do you know this?

Whatever man is locally God is cosmically.

Do you wave your hands around when you say that?

God is like man but ultimate

"latest"

, eternal,

not compatible with "latest"

and without sin.

Sin being a wholly manufactured religious concept, a "disease" for which only religion has the cure.

I think it is clear that gods are only characters in books.

Have you anything else?

 

[Tinker Grey]

P1: A person is like God.
P2: I am a person.
C1: I am like God.

P3: Jack the Ripper is a person.
C2: Jack the Ripper is like God.

P4: Jack the Ripper is like God & I am like God (C1 & C2)
C3: I am like Jack the Ripper. (Transitive property.)

I think I got me some premises to reject.

 

[daniel777]

P1: A person is like God.
P2: I am a person.
C1: I am like God.

P3: Jack the Ripper is a person.
C2: Jack the Ripper is like God.

P4: Jack the Ripper is like God & I am like God (C1 & C2)
C3: I am like Jack the Ripper. (Transitive property.)

I think I got me some premises to reject.

i don't think "like" is descriptive enough to say the conclusions are necessarily wrong. anything can be like anything else, right?

 

[Tinker Grey]

i don't think "like" is descriptive enough to say the conclusions are necessarily wrong. anything can be like anything else, right?

That is part of my point. The claim that God is clearly seen through introspection is so unqualified as to be meaningless.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

That is part of my point. The claim that God is clearly seen through introspection is so unqualified as to be meaningless.

And what qualifies the statement you just made?

 

[Tinker Grey]

Unqualified here means to be indistinct or vague. No meaning is discernible. As such, demonstrating the vagueness of it (ala my syllogisms) is all that is needed to demonstrate or qualify my point.