everyone asks these

[Interplanner]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]We all ask three questions: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'why does anything exist at all?'[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'is God mad at himself that evil exists?'[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'how do we know that we know?'[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]These are not questions that specialized academics have, but rather everyone—as a matter of ordinary curiosity; all people chisel their way through these. Actually, because there are such solid answers about these things in Christianity, intellectuals have generally left them behind for ‘modern’ questions about women’s or sexual or gender or racial issues, which are neither historic nor truly philosophical questions. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]For most of the 20th century they were known as the being problem, the moral problem, and epistemology (access to knowledge).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In each case, the Biblical truth is that each one is answered in the historic reality of the Biblical message before we even know it is a question. The only reason it does not come up as such in the Biblical narrative is not ignorance nor to mock the importance of it. Rather it is already answered in the basis or presuppositions of the Biblical view of things. Modern man suffers greatly by thinking that the Biblical message is some form of 'religious' or mythological or irrational conception.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]When one modern philosopher (Sartre) concluded that nothing (of us, of this universe) should be ‘there’ it was because he excluded the basis found on each page of the Bible. There was nothing illogical about his ability to make conclusions, but he made a deliberate mistake by not testing a ‘system of thought’ that started where the Bible does, with God’s being there (with details to follow). Had he done that, his logical skills would have accepted the Biblical details. It is not very professional to make that kind of error. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
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[Star Adept]

I have never asked any of these questions

 

[Interplanner]

OK, start with the last then: how do you know that you haven't?

re #2: do you have any beliefs at all about God and evil?

re #1: is anything 'there' (have objective existence)? If not, why not? If it does, why?

 

[Star Adept]

Fair. For as long as I can remember, I have always thought such questions meaningless.

re #2: I believe in God as he has shown himself to me. My full explanation of this would be quite in-depth. I believe in God but it is not the same as the Christian God nor any religion that I know of. Evil is a subjective concept. Nothing is universally Evil.

re #1: Yes, things are objectively there. Why? I do not care. They exist, good enough for me.

 

[Chesterton]

Fair. For as long as I can remember, I have always thought such questions meaningless.

re #2: I believe in God as he has shown himself to me. My full explanation of this would be quite in-depth. I believe in God but it is not the same as the Christian God nor any religion that I know of. Evil is a subjective concept. Nothing is universally Evil.

re #1: Yes, things are objectively there. Why? I do not care. They exist, good enough for me.

You shouldn't be using the Christian faith icon.

 

[Autumnleaf]

I suspect you don't understand what the word "everyone" means.

 

[Star Adept]

You shouldn't be using the Christian faith icon.

Your opinion of what I should and should not be doing means nothing to me.

 

[True Scotsman]

I used to ask the first one.

Never asked the second one.

The third one is what led me to become atheist.

 

[Chesterton]

Your opinion of what I should and should not be doing means nothing to me.

Honesty should mean something to you.

 

[quatona]

[FONT=&quot][[FONT=&quot]quote][/FONT]We all ask three questions: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'why does anything exist at all?'[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'is God mad at himself that evil exists?'[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]'how do we know that we know?'[/quote]
[FONT=&quot]N[FONT=&quot]o.[/FONT][/FONT]
[/FONT]

 

[Received]

We all ask three questions:
'why does anything exist at all?'
'is God mad at himself that evil exists?'
'how do we know that we know?'

No.

[/Thread]

 

[Albion]

I agree with Star Adept (and others). Hardly anyone DOES ask himself those three questions.

 

[durangodawood]

'why does anything exist at all?

Thats a fun question.

But I'm not convinced in even has an answer.

I think "WHY" might be something we humans, with our busy minds, impose upon the universe.

There may well be no "why" at all, nor a need for one outside our own personal desires.

 

[Eudaimonist]

We all ask three questions:
'why does anything exist at all?'

I had entertained that question at one time, but I quickly realized that it is a faulty question. Any answer to "why" would have to exist, meaning that it could never be an answer to the question. There is no point in asking the question, not because the answer is unknown or unknowable, but because it can't ever be answered.

'is God mad at himself that evil exists?'

I have never asked myself that question, and this is the first time I've ever seen or thought it. I suppose that I've always assumed that an omniscient being would never voluntarily do anything that it would later regret.

'how do we know that we know?'

That is an excellent question, and is the sort of thinking that led to my atheism.


eudaimonia,

Mark