Possible

Davian said:

More of an igtheist.

You will need to first tell me which God you are referring to. A panetheistic Christian God that *is* universe? A theistic evolutionist God that is indistinguishable from natural processes? A literalist God that created the universe 6 to 10 thousand years ago? God is Mind? God is Love? And a myriad of variations on those themes.

I am not saying they are impossible. I am asking, are any of them possible, in a way that is demonstrable?

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Tree of Life said:

The God of the Bible is Jesus Christ. You can read about him in the gospel accounts.

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I will take that as a 'no', then.

terryjohn said:

so we shouldnt believe in the miracles of christ? Things are possible if we know it or not.

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No you shouldn't. If by a miracle you mean something acting outside of its nature like water turning instantly to wine or people walking on unfrozen water then no, you shouldn't. These things violate the axioms and therefore are impossible in principle.

terryjohn said:

so we shouldnt believe in the miracles of christ? Things are possible if we know it or not.

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Turning water into wine is such an easy parlor trick just about anyone can do it with practice. Combine some theatrics and human exaggerations, and a decent magician becomes a messiah

Tree of Life said:

They may violate your axioms but they don't violate mine. How can we tell whose axioms are the right ones?

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Objective verifiable evidence can be a good independent means. Of course, some rely on this more than others.

Tree of Life said:

The God of the Bible is Jesus Christ. You can read about him in the gospel accounts.

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Do you mean the gospels that were written by anonymous authors, decades after Jesus died and have been edited centuries after Jesus was crucified?

Tree of Life said:

Axioms are already in place before any evidence is considered for anything.

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So? That doesn't mean they must be correct or incorrect. That they exist in and of itself is without weight

Tree of Life said:

No I mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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Yep, those gospels.

Tree of Life said:

Axioms are already in place before any evidence is considered for anything.

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Objective verifiable evidence is independent and there for all to see. It will either support an axiom, or it won't.

Tree of Life said:

They may violate your axioms but they don't violate mine. How can we tell whose axioms are the right ones?

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The easiest way of all. Sense perception. The truth of them is implicit in your question above.

Tree of Life said:

They may violate your axioms but they don't violate mine. How can we tell whose axioms are the right ones?

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If my neighbor claims that his vehicle's increased fuel economy is due to repainting in a colour that is conducive to attracting pixies that push the car in the desired direction, I would ask him to state that in the form of a testable, falsifiable hypothesis. How do we do that for pixies? or gods, for that matter?

Tree of Life said:

Our senses can obviously deceive us. The idea that sense perception is a viable method of apprehending truth is itself an axiom.

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Not really. The senses are passive and simply bring us data about the world we can perceive. It is not on the perceptual level that people depart from the truth but on the conceptual level. The conceptual faculty is what identifies and integrates the data brought to us by the senses. The classic example of the stick appearing to bend in water is proof. If we conclude that the stick actually is bent by being in the water, that is a conceptual error. Our eyes are faithfully reproducing what they see and the fact that light slows down when traveling through water. But, we don't only have sight. We have 4 other senses with which we can investigate whether or not the stick actually is bent by the water and we can therefore discover the truth and learn about how our visual sense works. After we have investigated this a number of times, when we see that a stick bends where it enters the water we know that it is because of the nature of light traveling through water and we need not investigate every stick in the water. The fact that Human beings make mistakes and are wrong sometimes does not mean that this obtains all of the time. That is why an objective theory of concepts is so crucial. What is the biblical theory of concepts by the way? I've been unable to even find the word concept or epistemology in the Bible or any guidance on how the conceptual faculty works or should be used.

I agree with you that the validity of the senses is axiomatic. The senses are our only contact with reality and if they are not a valid way of perceiving reality then we are not conscious, having no means to perceive reality. The senses, as our only means of awareness, are necessarily valid, Just as the axioms "existence", "identity", "consciousness" and the primacy of existence principle are are implicit in all knowledge. They must be true for you to utter the statement that the axioms are not true since this statement presupposes that something exists to know, a consciousness exists to know it and that something can be factually true or not true, affirming the primacy of existence principle. If our senses are invalid then so is any concept we form, including the concepts used to deny the validity of the senses.

There is no arguing the falsehood of the axioms unless the axioms are valid. That's what makes them axiomatic, that they must be accepted and used in order to disagree with them. They must be accepted and used in order to make the claim that God exists.

Tree of Life said:

Axioms are already in place before any evidence is considered for anything.

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This is true because the concept of "evidence" rests on and is dependent on the truth of the axioms "existence", "identity", "consciousness" and the primacy of existence principle, which is itself an axiomatic principle. these four axioms are implicit in all concepts including invalid ones. They are an excellent way of knowing what is possible and impossible by whether a concept contradicts any of them them.