Carneades of Georgia
56Why the supernatural?
I find that the supernatural makes no more sense than having faith in a rabbit's foot , a square circle and has no explanatory values. Per Lamberth's the ignostic-Ockham,either God is vacuous or else He is uselessly redundant, despite Alister Earl McGrath.
Flew's the presumption of naturalism enjoins us to use only natural causes and explanations as efficient,necessary,primary and suffient causes: they are the sufficient cause and the primary one.This means that supernaturalists have to overcome this presumption with evidence,not with definition, faith or postulation.
We naturalists require extraordianry evidence for the supernatural and the paranormal as they involve more than a passing view. W.K. Clifford and David Hume advise us to proportion the evidence to the subject matter. This can vary greatly and thus, we skeptics can get things done!
Per Lamberth's teleonomic/atelic argument as science finds no intent behind Nature, then to postulate God as having intent instead of complementing science, contradicts it. To insist that supernaturalists can still find Him makes for the new Omphalos argument that per John HIck's epistemic distance argument, He makes matters ambiguous about His existence so that He thereby deceives us as with the old one where He deceives by making things ancient in appearance.
No, no intent rules! And without intent as Creator, Grand Miracle Monger and such, He cannot be Himself and with contradictory,incoherent attributes, He cannot exist, affirming ignosticism.
Exorcism,faith-healing and prayer can do nothing to make people better other than emotionally feeling better. Exorcism and faith-healing can ensue in harm. Faith-healing can depend on psychosomaatics. Mass hallucinations account for supernatural apparitions.
What do you think about the supernatural?
Know God = no God!
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What rational person wants to worship? I find no need to thank any but people who actually help me. Any God wouldn't merit worship or thanks anyway! Yes, this goes to the jugular!
As a gnu atheist, I find it so credulous that people desire to worship and need a transcendent reason that upholds all other reasons and induction when such is so metaphysically redundant,since natural ones suffice anyway.
Aquinas and Leibniz's cosmological arguments add nothing to explaining matters anymore than do gremlins and demons and thus are as superstitious. Yes, great thinkers can err profoundly!
Motion is inherent in the Cosmos and thus needs no supernatural explanation. Natural causes need contradict supernatural ones anyways as they allow no intent-teleology-vitalism as explanations anyway. Science finds no need to find any supernatural sustainer for the Cosmos but the law of conservation applies to the quantum fields, so the argument from contingency fails. Ti's a reification - falsely making real- on the contimuum of qualities from hot to cold,etc. that the argument from degrees makes and is a silly argument anyway. And no intent appears to guide the natural cause arrow to make designs which anyway are patterns- no intent involved. So, Aquinas's five arguments hereby fail!
Leibniz's smaller blunder that we need the Ultimate Explanation why things as are they are fails, because it cannot pass Carneades's argument that all teleological arguments fail,because they beg the question of intent as does Aquinas's in four of his five [ excluding the one from degrees].His colossal blunder why is there anything rather than nothing also fails,because of that law and- why assume that nothing could have been the case anyway?
Edward Feser knows Aquinas as his blog under his name shows. Yet, I dare take him on as I take on any other advanced theologian. One might compare his take on Aquinas's arguments against mine and others' at his blog where he notes that many people fail to understand Aquinas.
I'll have commentary on his commentary about that, noting now that he does make excellent points about that lack of understanding!
Inquirers, please give your take on Aquinas, Feser and my commentary!
I am a fllibilist and skeptic, so I am open to other interpretations of arguments and will try to answer revuttals.
The supernatural is a parasite that we gnu atheists are ever trying to stamp out verbally.With no intent, the supernatural is indeed impotent intellectually but people through their ignorance use its non-intent as intent to self-brainwash themselves!
They rationalize that the superatural can provide goodness as when one child is saved when many are killed in a plane accident when, they ignore the many dead people! They get ecstatic in finding keys but immorally rationalize about why He permit such as the Holocaust: Finklestein^ maintains that at times,God goes into seclusion! Ad hockery helps no thesis!
^ not sure about his name
Theologians offer God as that Ultimate Explanation- the one that fills out natural ones and accounts for Existence. Yet, they ever prattle about His mysterious ways and on top of that, they claim that He surrounds Himself with still other mysteries such as the Trinity.
That is, they use the argument from personal incredulity that why, how could Nature account for everything with the argument from ignorance that it must be God who accounts for everything.
Yet as Keith Parsons notes:" Occult power wielded by a transcendent being in an inscrutable manner for unfathomable purposes does not seem to be any kind of a good answer."
TI's no mystery why the Cosmos is eternal: the eternal quantum fiels when came this Universe are such as the law of conservation notes. So ti's a pseudo- question why there is something instead of nothing as Lebniz and Aquinas argue with a pseudo-answer-God! So, why are theer designs is a pseudo-queston when the real answer is they are patterns that natural forces make. Why do we have morality we humanists note is because of our relationships with each other and what is good for each of us for ourselves.
Those two psuedo-argumens lie behind other supernaturalist argument for the supernatural.
Giving God as that mystery,surrounded by others, then means just obscurnatism at work!
This and the previous commentary are extra input for Fr. Meslier's the problem of Heaven hub.
Theologians offer God as that Ultimate Explanation- the one that fills out natural ones and accounts for Existence. Yet, they ever prattle about His mysterious ways and on top of that, they claim that He surrounds Himself with still other mysteries such as the Trinity.
That is, they use the argument from personal incredulity that why, how could Nature account for everything with the argument from ignorance that it must be God who accounts for everything.
Yet as Keith Parsons notes:" Occult power wielded by a transcendent being in an inscrutable manner for unfathomable purposes does not seem to be any kind of a good answer."
TI's no mystery why the Cosmos is eternal: the eternal quantum fiels when came this Universe are such as the law of conservation notes. So ti's a pseudo- question why there is something instead of nothing as Lebniz and Aquinas argue with a pseudo-answer-God! So, why are theer designs is a pseudo-queston when the real answer is they are patterns that natural forces make. Why do we have morality we humanists note is because of our relationships with each other and what is good for each of us for ourselves.
Those two psuedo-argumens lie behind other supernaturalist argument for the supernatural.
Giving God as that mystery,surrounded by others, then means just obscurnatism at work!
This and the previous commentary are extra input for Fr. Meslier's the problem of Heaven hub.
Theologians offer God as that Ultimate Explanation- the one that fills out natural ones and accounts for Existence. Yet, they ever prattle about His mysterious ways and on top of that, they claim that He surrounds Himself with still other mysteries such as the Trinity.
That is, they use the argument from personal incredulity that why, how could Nature account for everything with the argument from ignorance that it must be God who accounts for everything.
Yet as Keith Parsons notes:" Occult power wielded by a transcendent being in an inscrutable manner for unfathomable purposes does not seem to be any kind of a good answer."
TI's no mystery why the Cosmos is eternal: the eternal quantum fiels when came this Universe are such as the law of conservation notes. So ti's a pseudo- question why there is something instead of nothing as Lebniz and Aquinas argue with a pseudo-answer-God! So, why are theer designs is a pseudo-queston when the real answer is they are patterns that natural forces make. Why do we have morality we humanists note is because of our relationships with each other and what is good for each of us for ourselves.
Those two psuedo-argumens lie behind other supernaturalist argument for the supernatural.
Giving God as that mystery,surrounded by others, then means just obscurnatism at work!
This and the previous commentary are extra input for Fr. Meslier's the problem of Heaven hub.
Lamberth's argument from autonomy notes that our rights stem from our level of consciousness in line with the UN Charter and Morgan's Canon. Therefore, we are independent beings owing no other being any allegiance! We're not Yahweh's clay to do with as He wishes!
The Sartre-Rand^ argument from autonomy fails because their version maintains that should there be a divine being then we couldn't be independent: We'd have to worship Him and thus wouldn't really free: no, we're free period!
I might revise that comment.
^ Jean-Paul Sartre Ayn Rand
We empiricists don't have to account for induction: try some other way to get results.
- Millerci, the same problem confronts both of us. God adds nothing as an explanation. Per the atelic argument, He does not interfere in Nature and cannot then be Himself the Creator and Sun raiser and so forth.
Astro-physics tells us why it will and why one day it won't in billions of years.Order, chaos and such inhere in Nature anyway. As Victor Stenger notes we have " The Comprehensible Cosmos."
So, you can use your reduced animism to say why,but that reduces to superstition.
Planks and nails wants to know why naturalism isn't self defeating,using that insult to reason the argument from reason- the self-refuation of naturalism.
C.S.Lewis, Fr. Ewing and now Alvin Plantinga claim how can we trust our faculties should God not have made them trust-worthy? From trial and error, we find them both trustworthy and -untrustworthy. We ourselves have to make them so by being honest, working with others- intersubjectivity that makes for objectiviy- revising them, proportioning our belief to the evidence, and so forth. Would Plantinga allege as he does with natural evils that perhaps demons make for our errors?
Natural selection does not make for the fittest but instead for the most adapatable. Thus, our big brains can find truth that other animals can't, but not because He made it thus!
Planks and nails uses the composition fallacy as Lewis did in wondering how our atoms could ever arrive at truth.Here what is true of the parts isn't true of the whole.
Philosophers overrate Plantinga as one.
And Millerci has failed to address the issue of why the sun will make its customary trajectory tomorrow as she begs the question with divine intent and cannot override with evidence the presumptions of empiricism, naturalism, rationalism and skepticism. She cannot use indcution to lead to Him as the case requires as He presupposes that very induction to hold instead of the other way round as she alleges. Her humor boomerangs on her!
cooldad rules!
Thus, we naturalists have induction on our side!
It could be cloudy! Sometimes induction fails!
The Star Trek argument is that a perfect being would create a perfect world, and since this one isn't, God cannot exist.
Alvin Plantinga,as usual, prattles that omni-God could use flourishes- those imperfections whilst limited God would have to spare and have perfection. Self-refutes!
Hume's dysteological argument - argument from imperfection - gainsays that nonsense. His other argument is the one from analogy- many gods, senile god,vegetable-like outcome and others.
One cannot gainsay the first argument with defenses and theodicy as Fr. Meslier's the problem of Heaven notes.
Any dissent? Any additional argumentation in favor?
Millerci cannot explain how she can find Him existent in order to explain how He makes for induction,because no induction can do either! Again, He has no intent in the Cosmos, so He cannot be Himself and thus exist. To allow that for the sake of argument,how does He do that? Aupernaturalists never will illustrate how He could act in the Cosmos, and that is a deadly flaw1
Not only does He lack intent, as being disembodied, He cannot think nor act anyway as per the argument from physical mind, despite Alvin Platinga's facile dismissal of this argument, He lacks a brain and thus lacks a mind!
He cannot exist to uphold induction or - the Cosmos itself!
Supernaturalists never will give evidence for His very existence: they only give specious assertions!
After millenia, as they cannot produce evidence, as Victor Stenger declares, where mountains of evidence exist and none does, evidence of absence is indeed absence of evidence! This also reflects Charles Moore's auto-epistemic rule.
Thus, God has no more existence than unicorns or anyother made-up matter! He has no more explanatory power than demons or gremlins!
Millerci, how do you know that it will when your explanatory item lacks existence?
Theology is a subject lacking a subject!
We naturalists enlarge upon what Carneades notes! Hartshorne and his co-author, panenentheists, of " Philosophers Speak of God" maintain that.
I heartily welcome thoughtful responses, butplease no inanity!
How do you know when no basis exists as I revealed for HIs very existence? How could He,for the sake of argument ,assure us that the Sun will be on its course as usuaal-- by the magic of let it be?
No, that grand mystery,surrounded by many more, cannot serve as any sort of good explanation. Answer my arguments against Him to find Him for us,please, otherwise asking your question gives no evidence of profunity but instead of inanity! Your aupernaturalism is parasitic on my naturalism!
God is no more usefull as a personal explanation, despite Swinburne and Craig.
Order,etc. inhere in the Cosmos and to make arguments to show why we need Him for them reveals the arguments from personal incredulity and from ignorance at work!
Again, supernaturalists must overcome my arguments to find Him at work in the Cosmos without the standard logical fallacies and special pleading.
Inducton leads away from Him!
Who now might respond to these arguments thoughtfully?
Should God uphold induction, then perforce He has intent for that!
Without begging the question as Chrysippus does with the begged word builder as Carneades notes, how can one account for His very existence?
You'd have to rely on the presumpton of naturalism to try to overcome it!
Supernaturalists cannot even account for Him, so His upholding induction is out of the question! Again, natural forcess account for natural phenomena!
Alexander Smoltsczyk, German journaleist, claims that God is neither a principle nor an entity nor a personal being but rather the Ultimate Explantion [ Leibniz' other blunder], yet if not the latter two , then how can He effectuate Himself as that, or is He only a metaphor?
Onthe other hand, per Lamberth's the Malebranche Reductio, Nicholas Malebranche claims that He is the real cause behind natural phenomena: we effectively don't effectuate changes. When we strike the eight ball. He does the real striking!
Either way, or any other way, what are HIs means to be that Pirmary Cause [ which I reveal as illusory anwyay], by the magic of let it be?
Arguments for Him depend on the arguments from personal incredulity and from ignorance, which lie behind other supernatural arguments.
Leibniz's colossal blunder is why is there somehing rather than nothng, an example of incredulity,a pseudo-question with a pseudo-answer based on the argument from ignorance. No the supernaturalistic card relies on the naturalistic one!
By the way, Antony Garrard Newton Flew, before his dotage and being mislead by Gerald Schroeder would have used his the presumption of naturalism by asking qualified scientists how abiogenesis works.
How then without begging the question,using those two other fallacies and special pleading, how do you know that He exists and will exist?
Definition, faith, presuppositionalism and postulation cannot instantiate Him!
We don't see Him acting in history as the Tanakh is largely just made-up history and, we don't see Him saving Jewry anymore than other peoples survive horrors like the Armenians and the Amerindians. This is for another blog here but does reveal no historial intent of His.
I use the present tense for all persons due to their arguments being still alive and I am a fallibilist- tentative skepticism at work.
Please Google Lamberth's naturalistic arguments about God so as to see how I combine and permute arguments to reveal;
: know God = no God! See the aricle on page 22 2 WEIT about the teleonomic/atelic argument where WEIT concurs with the argument.
No problem! Let's have fun!
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It's not teleological, there is no sought after intent in the question "How do you know the sun will shine tomorrow?" (There is my intent to show you naturalism is irrational) Answering the question doesn't call for intentionality in the answer. Shoot, even if I said it is because God upholds the uniformity of nature, that isn't teleological.
It is a transcendental argument and when you answer my question with, "Pragmatically, it works," you are not answering my question, you are telling me why you use it.
Without begging the question, how do you know induction works?
If you want, you can check out the hub I wrote on it here: http://millercl.hubpages.com/_millercl/hub/Creatio
We account for it pragmatically.: it works.
And the argument from reason-the self-refutation of naturalism fails, because as with all teleological arguments, per Carneades's argument, it begs the question of intent, which Lamberth's teleonomic/atelic argument illustrates as not there.
Neither can theism account for induction or how we arrive at truth, and is parasitic on naturalism for details of either!
Order,chaos, regularity and natural laws inhere in Nature such that were there God, He'd depend on them as He'd depend on morality as the Euthyphro notes. So, He cannot be that Primary Cause!
Thanks for being the first responder.
I think if you pull the naturalist card you lose any reason for reason, intelligence, order and even life itself.
A naturalist cannot account for induction or even how they know something is true or not.
Tell me, how do you know sun will shine tomorrow?
Carneades-Georgia Hub Author 4 weeks ago
Oh,please serious inguirers do post here so as to keep the God-discussions from talking past each other! Before one can find God's accounting for induction, one must first reveal Him without begging questions which this Millerci's argument does!