So, apparently the only serious place to ask a question is where it is going to be answered in the Christian affirmative manner.
Your confirmation bias is showing.
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Well, yes.
And it's hard for me to believe this is a serious question, when you're asking it in the non-Christian area of CF.
God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.
That is the epistemic problem of theism.
Yes, so you are requiring an argument of necessity from me - it is necessary that God did x. The closest I've seen anyone come to that is Dembski's design inference argument (I'm not referring to the pop ID that followed after). Intuitively it feels like a very good argument, but as soon as one tries to put it in a logical framework to solicit agreement from unbelievers the gaps become readily apparent. Still, it's the best I've seen so far - better than Warwick's Tractatus Logico-Theologicus or Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity IMHO.
So, also IMHO, the answer remains personal experience and trust. If I put my newspaper on the table and go inside to get a drink, and it is gone when I come back outside, there is no necessary reason for it's disappearance. It could be the wind blew it away or that the dog ate it. I'll never know.
But when my friend says, "When you set it down, I thought you were done, so I used it for kindling," you need to accept that as a possibility and trust the answer. You don't start arguing that is not a necessary solution, and you believe it is more likely that the wind blew it away.
Thanks.
There is apparently a subtlety in "I don't know" that many miss. Or at least I think there is. I think people get frustrated with this answer when one side is arguing for necessity and the other side is arguing for possibility.
If your car won't start and you have it towed to a mechanic who tells you, "The battery might be dead," and you ask if he can replace it and he replies, "I don't know," that would be an unacceptable answer. You need a different mechanic, because there are certain criteria necessary for repairing your car.
If however, you're sitting around on your front porch one evening and a friend asks you how to get a car engine started and you reply, " I don't know how all cars do it, but I once heard about someone who used a rolling start", there is no reason for your friend to get angry and start arguing about how it won't work in vehicles with a torque converter. A rolling start is possible for cars with manual transmissions.
I wanted to pose my other thread another way.
In church, often the pastor says that God is "in this place".
So, is God distinct from the things in the room?
If you removed the pews, would God still be there?
If you removed the carpet, the windows, the walls, the crosses, the musical instruments, would God still be there?
If you removed the pastor, would God still be there?
If you removed 80% of the congregation, would God still be there?
If you removed the whole congregation, would God still be there?
You are now left with a barren plot of land: no building, no people, no pastor. Is God still there?
Okay, so keep removing stuff...
If you remove the grass and dirt from the plot, is God still there?
If you remove the Earth, is God still there?
If you remove the Solar System, is God still there?
If you remove the Universe, is God still there?
You are now left with Nothing. Eternal nothingness. A pure vacuum. No universe. No matter.
Is God still there?
My main questions:
1) How is God distinguishable from Nothingness?
2) Is God distinct? Or is God dependent?
You lost me at "necessity" and "possibility". What part of "I don't know how the universe started/existed prior to the big bang" is an argument for necessity or possibility?
Going a little farther, however (I'm no longer speaking of your reference to the Big Bang), overusing "I don't know" can begin to stretch the limits of credulity.
And going still further yet, for some time my only goal for logic in these discussions has been to establish that God is possible. It is possible the Big Bang had a living agent called God. From there, it's a matter of how much you trust my testimony ... and if you reject it, then it's a matter for God and you.
I don't know is always going to be appropriate for things we legitimately don't know.
It would be hard to show by logic that God is impossible because as I said before: God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.
So you are arguing against a position I (and many other atheists) don't hold.
...and that's why we need to take a holistic approach to 'detecting' God.
So you are arguing against a position I (and many other atheists) don't hold.
I think you misunderstand me. Let's try this: I assume someone raised you when you were a child - a mother, father, grandparent, sibling - someone. Assuming your father was involved in raising you, I would expect that your idea of "father" when you were a child was formed by that relationship. You didn't create a definition from the void and go in search of a man to fulfill it. Rather, the man in your life, by default, became the definition of a father.
Even if later you became disenchanted with him and wished for something different, yet he was still your father.
I fail to see the relevance. My idea of father was indeed taught and experienced (first hand).
How shall I judge the possibility of an idea which has no defining qualities that will be absent or present when it is true or false?
And so it is with any person, including God.
I don't know what idea you're talking about, but the point is that whatever your idea is, it is most likely irrelevant.
Again, let's pick something. Since the Big Bang was mentioned, I'll pick creation. Suppose you meet a person who (by whatever means) manages to convince you they were the creative agent - the cause of the Big Bang, and his name is Bob. But as you got to know Bob you find he makes mistakes - he indeed created all the evil mess present in this world.
It would be irrelevant for you to say, "But, Bob, I thought the creator of the world was perfect." It doesn't really matter. You get to know Bob, World Creator through first hand experience, not by philosophizing in an ivory tower (or in an Internet forum).
variant said:God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.
That is the epistemic problem of theism.
Sorry.
If you want to use your experience as a barometer you first have to have some criterion upon which to draw a conclusion for the various possible outcomes of your search.
I'm sorry this is difficult for you to grasp. I didn't expect it to be.
Search? Search for what? Did you go searching for "father" based on some criteria? For what people have you started with a criteria, and then gone searching for a match?
You are now left with Nothing. Eternal nothingness. A pure vacuum. No universe. No matter.
Is God still there?
My main questions:
1) How is God distinguishable from Nothingness?
2) Is God distinct? Or is God dependent?
It's probably because I see your argument as very poor.
Let me start again, then. You spoke of searches. Do you search for "father" as an idea and "father" as a person separately?
I experienced my father and then learned about him as a person. The idea follows from the experience, and the observation of other fathers.
Exactly.
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