Proof for an Intelligent Creator and His purpose
- Thread starter andersbranderud
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You are working on the assumption that all religions have a deity that they worship. There is no deity in Buddhism. Everyone is capable of enlightenment. Everyone has a Buddha nature, even Hitler. Buddha's are human beings. When they act in a despicable way they are being overshadowed by the fundamental darkness that we all have and battle with. Siddartha Gutama (also know as Shakimuni) was a man. Therefore religion is not always based on a monothesitic reality.
Oh good grief. More pusedointellectualism.
Nothing you provided proves that there is a "Prime cause" or that such a thing could exist without having been caused by something else. All you are doing is simply arguing that anyone who doesn't agree with you is nonsensical, and that is not a valid, reasoned argument.
Now let me introduce you to something called the Burden of Proof fallacy.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html
You are making the claim that there is a "Prime cause", and you have provided no evidence to support that assertion, so the best you can do is argue that the burden of proof lies on people to prove that there isn't. That is a fallacy of logic and something that someone who claims to be knowledgeable of formal logic should know.
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The only logically factual point we can make about 'the beginning' is that Something has always existed.
Something does not spontaneously appear from nothing. This is borne out from experience.
What has always existed? The Universe as we know it? Unlikely. We have strong evidence that it had a 'beginning'.
Beyond that, no there is no logical evidence for or against a Creator. Though I would argue that we have good philosophical argument against certain potential Creators.
Myself, I think it is likely that Intelligence has always existed due to the philosophical problems of the alternative. It isn't in any way provable though.
Something does not spontaneously appear from nothing. This is borne out from experience.
What has always existed? The Universe as we know it? Unlikely. We have strong evidence that it had a 'beginning'.
Beyond that, no there is no logical evidence for or against a Creator. Though I would argue that we have good philosophical argument against certain potential Creators.
Myself, I think it is likely that Intelligence has always existed due to the philosophical problems of the alternative. It isn't in any way provable though.
Oh, yes, some people evade the problem, saying that they do not support any religion, only God. That's not possible, because every single believer got the idea of God from some pre-existing religion. When we were kids, we were enjoying the food, the sun, the flowers... until some adult told us about God. I haven't met a person who would claim to have invented the idea of God for themselves, without any previous knowledge about such thing.
Even the very first statement is flawed. Because we cannot assume that any abstract concept we think of is really possible. The actual probability may be strictly zero. There is similar paradox in the roots of different axiomatics of set theory. Assuming the existence of a maximal concept is an almost certain recipe for absurd.
Well, we can't even define the 1st line in the argument. Maximally Great Being. This is actually an empty term that defines nothing and explains nothing. Show me Maximally Great. Either in reality or a theoretical view of Maximally Great will do to define the trait that the term is referring to.
Used to be Imagine a Perfect Being. Which was still an empty concept.
S
Shai Gar
But Satya, I think you haven't grasped the crucial point: it's turtles all the way down!
S
Shai Gar
But this isn't entirely true either. Your arguement is regressive, it's like saying I'm a creation only because of my parents, and they because of their parents, and they because of their parents, but the first parents had to come from something (I'm not saying it's God, just giving an example of a regressive arguement).
Your arguement would actually be saying that there was a God somewhere, because people couldn't come up with it on their own. If no one invented God, well then where did the idea of God come from? Either someone invented God or something/someone (god) gave humans the idea of God.
Also, your arguement doesn't prove that someone couldn't believe in God without following a religion. Sure, religion could have helped supply them a concept of God but from their they could have morphed it into their own ideas. Just because they believe in God doesn't mean they practice or follow any of the rules a religion has. Your arguement is speculation. For all we know, if we let kids grow up without any interference from already educated adults (as in no interaction what so ever) that somewhere down the lines, the kids lineage could come up with the idea of God. I'm not saying it would happen, but I'm not saying it couldn't. It's a possibility
Actually we can assume that any abstract concept is possible. Even if the probability is strictly zero, we're still measuring probability, thus it is possible.
Sure it could come completely crazy, but you can't assume that because it's absurd that it isn't possible.
There are some things we can be 100% are impossible. A 2 sided triangle for example. It's impossible because of the properties we give the definition of the word triangle. A triangle is made of three sides where the sum of it's three interior angles equals exactly 180 degrees, no more no less. Sure, we can entertain the thought of a two sided shape but it will never be a triangle by our definitions (and is impossible to imagine a 2 sided triangle).
We can imagine a God, or a flying spaghetti monster, and as improbable or absurd as it sounds, it's still possible.
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I believe in Deity but I disagree with this statement. You can't 'Imagine God'. To Imagine God you would have to be able to really imagine something infinite and not simply say 'It's what I am imagining, but infinite'.
Case in point. Imagine an infinite series of numbers. Is there now an infinite series of numbers in your head? No. You imagine the finite and then say 'but infinite'.
True. But most people who posit God posit:
Perfection. Omnipotence. Omniscience. Omnipresence.
Many tack on Omni beneficence. (Omnibenevolence)
none of these traits are actually 'imaginable'. I wouldn't even agree that they are reasonably definable for the purpose of testing.
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I guess I'm not understanding your objection.
I agree that we can't really imagine the infitiness of something, because then it wouldn't be infinite. But can't we imagine the idea of infinite? And by imagining the idea that something has no end we entertain the possibility that it is true, even if we don't understand it?
When I say we can imagine a God, I don't mean that we understand what that necessarily means. We imagine that it's perfect, omnipotent, and what not; that it's beyond definition. But by entertaining the idea of perfection, doesn't that mean there is a possibility of perfect? Even if we don't understand the extent, imgagining it tests the possibilites, thus making it a possibility.
I'm speaking merely in terms of imagining as it relates to the Ontological Argument. I contend that we can not 'Imagine God' in a way sufficient to require His being, because we haven't truly 'imagined' it, only supplied it as an undiscovered theoretical attribute.
I agree we can 'Imagine the Infinite' well enough to merely discuss it. We just have to be careful to not assume that we really understand what is implied by the terms in the same way as we understand, say, an 'Imagined Orange'.
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I am only bringing it up because we keep inching ever closer to the Ontological Argument.
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Alright, thank you for clearing that up for me.
I would tend to agree with you. Just because we can imagine it doesn't mean it exists or that we should argue that it does exist because we can imagine it.
I was trying to say that because we can imagine it it's possible, nothing more. I'm definitely with you in that the ontological argument doesn't work (and if that's what it sounded like i was getting at, I wasn't. Descartes does have an interesting approach to it in his 3 and 4 meditation, but even then it's fallible.)
I wasn't proving the (non)existence of God here. Only the disability to claim one's faith is not heavily influenced by existing beliefs (which was mentioned in a quote above). It's not regressive, I'm talking about present times only. In present times, all of us get the concept of god from other people, not from our own interaction with reality - which should be the main source of knowledge; not people, not books (blindly).
That happened in the past, because the world around people was full of dangerous and unknown phenomena; knowledge environment is changed since then.
Fine. We are done then.
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