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Well according to your reasoning, your God is not devine; because not everybody has immediate knowledge of him.If the God of the Bible is divine then all people have immediate knowledge of him.
But since we agreed that your God is not devine, all of the above points are null.Now some syllogisms:
So to have any experience at all is to be acquainted with God.
- 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 be a person is to be intimately 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.
We've been through this already; it means your God is not devine.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?
It means the first one; not the second one.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
If the God of the Bible is divine then all people have immediate knowledge of him.
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.
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.
- 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.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
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.
Animated meat functioning under the illusion of self. Is that like God?You know what God is like because you know what you are like.
Empty rhetoric.Man is in the image of God.
How does that work? How do you know this?Whatever man is on earth God is in the heavens.
Do you wave your hands around when you say that?Whatever man is locally God is cosmically.
"latest"God is like man but ultimate
not compatible with "latest", eternal,
Sin being a wholly manufactured religious concept, a "disease" for which only religion has the cure.and without sin.
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?
That is part of my point. The claim that God is clearly seen through introspection is so unqualified as to be meaningless.
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