Nature of God

[anileve]

Originally posted by Anonymouse
While we use reason to arrive at conclusions based on our known world, we use reason in our discussions, and our analytical mind, even with regard to God, but at a certain point, it ends. It is limited.

Your post exudes poetry, but in the essence is only a paraphrase of my post. In your first sentence you say that “reason” and “faith” cliches are indeed exclusive. Yet you insist on arguing that faith and reason are independent variables where as I've pointed out that there is a parity between faith and reason.

The fact that you have come to an acceptance of the existence of God, demonstrates that your assertion was a result of deductive reasoning. You refused to accept God as a “standard of living”, your faith is not based on the conditioning of your surroundings but due to the application of reason, which in the event brought you the current conclusion. Thus you can see how faith and reason is interrelated. What you speak of is “religious faith”, the theological virtue. Where as I refer to faith as a belief that makes an explicit reference to a transcendent source.

Your definition of God still stands unclear, you refuse losers and my concept of the belief in the unknown, yet you still cannot elucidate your faith in God. Do you perceive the role of God as the creator, as the omniscient force that controls life? And if so that what how do you suggest to go about means of acknowledging God? Live a virtuous life? How so, who and what decides what a virtuous life is? Many claim it is God, but we must almost belief in the integration of God with a human image. For it is the habit of humans to dictate the accepted virtue which varies in its standards from culture to culture. Cannibalism in the Christian understanding of living a virtuous life is a moral turpitude, a crime against God, yet many tribes practice it due to their belief in the divinity of the act. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him," - Jesus

Why is our belief is more virtuous than theirs, simply because we follow the teachings of the Bible or the conditioning of the society we live, or the convictions of our parents? What does God represent for you? People fail to look into their belief, yet justify their refusal of accepting the “unknown” as the belief in God, which they formalize into a human creature.
We have no standard virtues to abide by, it varies one instance to another. The represents the “unknown” it does not hold guidelines or morals, it's just infinite and invincible. “God” is simply a term for the “unknown”, so that we can identify with its incomprehensible force.

So to impose your view of the image of God you hold as the ideal is inaccurate, since you yourself cannot entirely define its purpose or validity. “Why should I believe in your God, if my people believe in this God, what makes you say that yours is more righteous than mine, if you can't formalize the significance of your belief?” God doesn't have guidelines, in effect it is unknown and it's left upon us to decide what morals work well with our lifestyle, it is our responsibility to reason and rely on our understanding of logic.

In addition, contrary to the common belief, I am not struggling with the definition of God, I found my peace in the acceptance of the unknown. And I consider myself a product of the society and a conditioned specie just as everyone else, my thoughts are neither original nor unique. Moreover I dwell in the joy of my ability to be a creator of my own virtues or morals, I enjoy being a "writer" of my destiny, nor do I fear the higher force. I acknowledge the limit of my powers and I don't strive to understand the purpose. Having an delicious platter of a perfect breakfast consisting of ideal eggs, powerfully crisp bacon, and divinely well prepared pancakes is more important to me.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Only one of us can be wrong according to that fundamentalist Muslim, and according to you, but does this conclusion display actual thought into studying religion, not just your own, but of others? I've already made my point, thus you are drilling a non-issue.

You are ignoring my point. You think the fundamentalist Muslim is incorrect to say that you will go to hell. He thinks he is correct. You cannot both go to hell and not go to hell. Therefore, you cannot both be correct. You both use faith to come to your conclusions. There is no way to evaluate competing faiths. Person A can say he has faith that the moon is made of cheese. Person B can say he has faith that the moon is made of paper mache. How does faith determine which of these persons is correct?

My point was that I didn't make that claim, and hence why they would have made it, because to them it was not obvious.

It makes little difference why they made that specific claim. The point is that they didn't have an answer, so they made one up, and backed it up with faith. They were wrong. Now, this pattern has been repeated thousands of times in the history of man, and there's a pretty damn good chance that many of the claims you are making, based on faith, will also one day be shown incorrect.

You just described a purpose and a process, and then go on to say there is no need to assign any purpose to this.

That is ridiculous. The mechanics of how rain falls does not include a purpose. There is reason in that there is a causal basis for it, but there is no intent.

Therefore that is purpose, there is a reason behind it, a design.

That is the mind of early man at work right there, a man with no scientific knowledge of the workings of nature, blindly attributing purpose and design to everything he sees in the world because it all works so well. Have you ever heard of the anthropic principle?

Can you not follow Jesus as both a human and a God?

You cannot simulataneously believe that he is God and believe that he is not God. That should be self-evident.

Sure you can, it is the belief of whoever holds the faith. Moreover, we have faith, and that is what our perception of the world eventually amounts to.

That is non-sequitir, completely unrelated to the question of who is making the correct claim, Jesus Christ or Joseph Smith.

We have faith either in the creation of God or the uncreation.

Or we don't come to premature conclusions. Would you please take that mouse out of your pocket?

We have faith in either Jesus or no Jesus.

More specifically, you have faith in Jesus. Why are you Christian as opposed to Mormon? What critical evalution have you performed of each faith in order to determine that the one you hold is correct?

It is not a matter of giving dictates on how to live.

Really? When you said that I live my life in accordance with Darwinism, that has nothing to do with how I live?

Moreover, ask yourself, where did J.S. Mill and Aristotle get their ideas?

My guess is you have probably read both of these dudes, and you already know that they obtained their ideas through the use of reason. It is pretty well explained by both.

This line of reasoning implies that it's either God or Universe.

Not necessarily. If God was created, then it goes back to his creator. If that creator was created, then it goes back one step further. The point is that we can't have infinite regression. Something must have been first. The two options we have before us, however, are God and the universe. Those are the competing claims. Neither is more or less logical than the other. Your attempt to show that the universe must have been created using logic has failed.

Those who have faith in God see the beautifully above the great wide human errors . . .

Those who have knowledge of the laws of physics and evolutionary theory see the beauty of nature at work. It is indeed something transcendent in a far less literal sense. As Darwin himself said, "there is wonder in this way of looking at the world."

You are missing the point of my statement. I agreed insofar as believing because of certain experiences that to me were reason enough to believe and simply believing because it is cool or I'm a blind believer.

There you go. You claim that your faith has a rational basis in the inexplicability of your experiences. That is reasoning, and can easily be shown to be faulty. You are again left only with faith, just as blind as if you had never had those experiences to begin with.

Faith has no prerequisites aside from faith. I have faith in God, you have faith in science.

Wrong. I believe in science because it has been proven to reveal usable knowledge and irrefutable facts. Science also involves speculation, granted, but in order to be considered fact, it must be verified according to very strict rules, including peer review and repeatability. People of faith are always in disagreement. Jainists do not even believe there is a God. Buddhists believe that our souls work toward Nirvana over the course of many lives. Jews believe they are the chosen people. The Cult of the Heaven's Gate believed that extraterrestrials would take their souls to paradise if they killed themselves as the Hale-Bopp comet approached. This isn't to say that scientists always agree, but they have approved methods by which they may come to agreement. Faith does not.

Thus a little that was revealed to me, is alot gained. God is the principle moral of truth, and of personal morality. I am a moral person. You are a moral person. That means we are one endowed with reason and liberty. We are capable of virtue, and virtue has two forms, respect for others, and love of others. Thus to admit that morality is universal, is to admit to a truth.

It is to admit that humans have enough in common to come to agreement on such basic innate beliefs. Eagle chicks are born with a reflex to move away from cliff ledges. This keeps them alive before they are old enough to fly. Humans are born with a basic sense that it is good to be decent and loving toward one another. In principle, this should keep the race from killing itself.

God is not a logical being, you forget.

God is free from the dictates of cause and effect? Then how did he cause the universe?

Nor is its nature explained by deduction, and by any means of algebraic equations.

Nor is a human being. That doesn't make us illogical beings.

When the attributes of God are attempted to be deduced we end up with nothing but abstractions. Thus from a critical point of view of using logic, you cannot approach God, or any discussion of God, although we may certainly discuss God.

I realize that. In fact, that is what my second post to this thread said. You want misunderstanding, go back and read what you said in reply to it.

If you cannot understand why this is, it is because of our consciousness, that which determines all reality.

I thought it was God that determined reality? If we do this ourselves, what is his purpose? How do you know your illogical experiences are not simply evidence of hidden powers that you subliminally possess, and not an external deity?

Thus the first notion we have of God is of an infinite being, not given us a priori, independently of all experience.

So basically what you're saying is that you can't approach God using logic, and yet you can come to the logical conclusion that he is infinite.

It is our consciousness of ourselves, a limited being at once, that raises us to the conception of a being, the principle of our being, and itself without limits. Therefore there is no relativism aside from what we make. Essentially all our approach to this world, and even science is based and rooted in our consciousness.

That is a pathetic attempt at evasion of my point. If everyone's beliefs are true, then competing truths will exist. That is the very definition of relativism. You have your truth, I have mine. Person B has his. Person C has his. None can have anything to say about the other, because it is all a result of individual perception. Mousy, that is relativism.

The claim was that matter had its roots somewhere.

Funny you should use a law that states matter/energy can never be created to show that it must have been created.

And that the order we see is a result of intelligence, because only intelligence can create such order that has laws and rules for how it works.

That is incorrect. The laws of physics are perfectly adept at creating order in one system at the expense of overall universal order. I suggest you take a class on thermodynamics. This is all very basic to any student of chemistry or biology and has been known for hundreds of years.

From the beginning an infinite being must create and preserve the finite, and we the finite must in our own way give our kind. We cannot conceive of any finite thing existing without a God, an infinite basis.

Yes, I can. So can every other person on this planet who is either an atheist or an agnostic. In fact, I have trouble conceiving of anything infinite, period. Infinity is an all-inclusive set, but all-inclusive of what set? Is God everything? Is he simply everything immaterial? Is he simply everything that is conscious? Again, what is the infinity you speak of?

God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating cause. A world, is then,the necessary logical condition of God, its necessitated consequence or cause.

What the hell are you trying to say here? God needs the world as much as the world needs God? Then how did God exist before the world. I think you are misunderstanding the idea of causal necessity as opposed to necessary existence. A necessary being that is the cause of all other beings does not himself need a cause.

I never misunderstood it, nor did I question the validity of it. All I said was we observe an order that could not result from nothingness, which can only be the result of intelligent design.

That, right there, is a misunderstanding of the law. Nothing implied in the law leads to anything resemblind the conclusion that intelligence is necessary to create order.

Somehow, the massive amount of precision and order and purpose we see in nature, is translated as meaning something other than what it is obviously implying.

There is no mystery here. The somehow is logical fallacy. That is what leads you to believe that natural order must have been intelligently designed.

We got 33 bones in our vertebrae. Our skull has 22 bones and our ribs have 11 bones. 11, 22, and 33, are precise numbers that are multiples of 11 and are encoded within our DNA.

One brain, two intestines, four chambers of the heart, five fingers, eight contact joints, three catabolic processes, varying numbers of hairs, etc., etc., etc. Again, you can find any number in the human body. The fact that you single out these particular numbers proves only how far you will reach to find evidence for what you are looking for.

Physics is not about revelation. It is something we can all study. The illogical nature of your analogy is apparent, once it is exposed to your own argument. You believe you can never gain any knowledge of God, therefore why comment on it, it is impossible to know.

What does this have to do with my analogy? There is nothing illogical about it? You can come to have knowledge of Calabi-Yau spaces through reading. I can come to have knowledge of God through revelation. As of this moment, you do not have that knowledge, and so you come to no conclusions regarding the validity of its usage in translating string vibrations into elementary particles. As of right now, God has not been revealed to me, and so I come to no conclusions regarding whether the universe was created or uncreated. There is no flaw in the analogy.

Then to make your analogy you state that one cannot make a judgment about topography because one doesn’t know. Whereas in the case of God you say we can never know because it is beyond our knowledge, the area of physics is not, therefore making your analogy moot.

I said I think we can never know. We certainly cannot know through the use of argumentative logic. I did, however, leave a loophole through divine revelation.

Thoughts are intangible and as such live before and after us. Thoughts are sort of akin to electricity traveling, we don’t see it, we don’t touch it, it just is, it’s the current that connects the whole of humanity into one whole consciousness. That most people aren’t famous and that we don’t know there thoughts mean nothing for their thoughts live with their children, and their children’s children. My grandfather wasn’t famous, but his thoughts are here, and so are his fathers. The point which I am making is that thoughts live past us, and all our actions and thoughts are an attempt to live past our lives as well, our desire to transcend our limited sense of self and have thoughts live past our lives into the minds of others.

You have once again ignored my question. Does Socrates still exist? Not his thoughts.

It’s not that it’s impossible, it is inconceivable to me that a human can be alone.

Is your imagination that poor that you can't imagine being alone? Honestly, Mousy? I can imagine that pretty easily.

We exist because of the whole of humanity, it is one single thought. A human cannot exist by itself, that is impossible, and this is where Marx is right, for once.

Oh, man, I beg you to come up with some kind of backing for that assertion. In the most literal sense, sure, we exist because we other humans screwed and brought us into existence. But if every person on this planet was killed, and I was the only survivor, something gives me the feeling I would not cease to exist because of that.

[Anonymouse]

Actually, you know what..I'm wrong. Cancel all that. There is no purpose, there is no reason, there is no God, just science. Science is supreme, I believe.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by anileve Your post exudes poetry, but in the essence is only a paraphrase of my post. In your first sentence you say that “reason” and “faith” cliches are indeed exclusive. Yet you insist on arguing that faith and reason are independent variables where as I've pointed out that there is a parity between faith and reason.

The fact that you have come to an acceptance of the existence of God, demonstrates that your assertion was a result of deductive reasoning. You refused to accept God as a “standard of living”, your faith is not based on the conditioning of your surroundings but due to the application of reason, which in the event brought you the current conclusion. Thus you can see how faith and reason is interrelated. What you speak of is “religious faith”, the theological virtue. Where as I refer to faith as a belief that makes an explicit reference to a transcendent source.

Your definition of God still stands unclear, you refuse losers and my concept of the belief in the unknown, yet you still cannot elucidate your faith in God. Do you perceive the role of God as the creator, as the omniscient force that controls life? And if so that what how do you suggest to go about means of acknowledging God? Live a virtuous life? How so, who and what decides what a virtuous life is? Many claim it is God, but we must almost belief in the integration of God with a human image. For it is the habit of humans to dictate the accepted virtue which varies in its standards from culture to culture. Cannibalism in the Christian understanding of living a virtuous life is a moral turpitude, a crime against God, yet many tribes practice it due to their belief in the divinity of the act. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him," - Jesus

Why is our belief is more virtuous than theirs, simply because we follow the teachings of the Bible or the conditioning of the society we live, or the convictions of our parents? What does God represent for you? People fail to look into their belief, yet justify their refusal of accepting the “unknown” as the belief in God, which they formalize into a human creature.
We have no standard virtues to abide by, it varies one instance to another. The represents the “unknown” it does not hold guidelines or morals, it's just infinite and invincible. “God” is simply a term for the “unknown”, so that we can identify with its incomprehensible force.

So to impose your view of the image of God you hold as the ideal is inaccurate, since you yourself cannot entirely define its purpose or validity. “Why should I believe in your God, if my people believe in this God, what makes you say that yours is more righteous than mine, if you can't formalize the significance of your belief?” God doesn't have guidelines, in effect it is unknown and it's left upon us to decide what morals work well with our lifestyle, it is our responsibility to reason and rely on our understanding of logic.

In addition, contrary to the common belief, I am not struggling with the definition of God, I found my peace in the acceptance of the unknown. And I consider myself a product of the society and a conditioned specie just as everyone else, my thoughts are neither original nor unique. Moreover I dwell in the joy of my ability to be a creator of my own virtues or morals, I enjoy being a "writer" of my destiny, nor do I fear the higher force. I acknowledge the limit of my powers and I don't strive to understand the purpose. Having an delicious platter of a perfect breakfast consisting of ideal eggs, powerfully crisp bacon, and divinely well prepared pancakes is more important to me.

I can only refer the reader to Kant, who was nothing more than the time's response as a critic to the dry sobriety of empiricists such as Hume. Reason and faith are two different things in and of themselves, albeit at times they can be used in parity as you suggested, yet even then they are not the same for it is by our perception of the world that we change it, by the use of faith, in others and in ourselves foremost. Therefore since reason is limited we ought not to believe what reason denies; that at which the sense of right revolts, that which is self-contradictory, that which degrades the character of Providence, or even Providence itself. A persons faith is as much his own, as his reason is. No one can decide what other people should believe as to any tenet of faith. Except to those who first receive it, every truth of all writings depend on human testimony and internal evidences, to be judged of by reason, and accepted by the wise analogies of faith. Enthusiasm is unreason. Emotions are unreason. Love is unreason. Faith is unreason. Yet these are the wings of our souls, and without these we would not be human, yet we know of them, we adhere to them, and we move about more by them, then by the use of reason, and these are all contrary to reason. The power of the pen, the sword, or reason, compared to that of the spirit, is poor and contemptible. It is precisely with the fascination with knowledge that we exert faith in knowledge that elevates man over man and of why people revere the intellect more than the physical. We tread on earth more by what we believe than what we know, and what can man point to that he knows without believing?

As I would agree with Kant, most of what we deem 'knowledge' on this planet is all based on faith. Reason is indeed misleading. To paraphrase Kant, all knowledge is based on experience. "Religious faith" is nothing more than "faith", for how is the faith a Church goer has in God who is religious, any different than a non Church goer or a non-religious? My faith is not based on "application of reason". An "application of reason" as I have numerous times pointed out, is misleading and can lead us, in fact, away from truth. I go along the lines of Kant, and a priori synthetic truths Thus, this equates to losers attempt at trying to use the brush of reason to paint on faith, when it is precisely this misunderstanding. It is only a metaphysical assumption that all ‘knowledge’ can flow from scientific research, or reason for that matter. The only time I am employing reason is in a discussion with you folks to communicate what is essentially non-communicable. Thus reason is a means to an end, the endpoint being faith. What the "reason" you and loser are referring to is analytical knowledge, such as two plus two equals to four which is true in that it agrees from what it is derived from. That would be deductive. The conclusion follows the premises but says nothing about the actual nature of our world. "God" is not to be approached by logic, or by reason, or by dry empiricism. Such attempts are only humans using their limited sense of self at trying to grasp something beyond analytical skills and logic. The premise is not the evidence that has been heralded into nature by God, this is only the conclusion and the effect. The premise, is not known as you would state. Therefore, there is no way of using deductive skills to trace back that which we see to a first cause or antecedent. Reasoning fails at once. There is a second form of knowledge, which synthetic knowledge is as is evidenced from the statement such as "My bed has a stain on its sheets". This is a synthesis of known and knower. My statement is open for critique, and even discussion. As loser has told me in our previous discussion regarding my "revelation", that my "experience" can be a result of deception, imagination or any number of other factors which make it beyond absolute "knowledge", but only in comparison to what is "absolute" by reference to analytical knowledge. Thus this argument deems analytical knowledge supreme over other forms of knowledge. This knowledge is known with as much certainty as that knowledge which is analytical knowledge, in essence knowledge via of the known and knower without experience of the known by the knower. And perhaps the best evidence that this knowledge is real is the knowledge of time, which we do not experience but which we do assign relevance to and attest to whose reality is evident in the experience of events in our daily lives which have sequence.

As to the lack of clarity on my definitions, I believe the universe is that which is the uttered word of God, or Providence, or Allah, or Mercury, or "the unknown" ( if it is which you seek ), is infinite in extent. It is the thought of that which is the first cause. We cannot conceive of the first cause, and it is only human to slap a human image on the first cause but this is evidence in us that we are limited, and the first cause is in us and we in it, and are creators ourselves, in it, and make reality out to be what we deem it to be. It is because of this connection which the creator has to the created that even the most adamant atheist will turn to God when the terrorist hijacks his plain. The universe never was nothing, since nothing we cannot conceive. Forms of creation change, suns and moons change, planets come and go, stars are created and destroyed, but the universe itself is infinite and eternal, because, what I call God, and another calls Allah, is, was, and will forever be. To show the necessity for a cause of the creation is to also need to show the cause for that cause. As that old saying goes "We rest the world on the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise, and the tortoise on - nothing". We cannot conceive of that. It is when an understanding of religions is gained that one begins to understand that it has always been the same intelligence that has been worshiped by man in different tongues and in different gods.

I am not imposing my definition of God on anyone. I am merely describing that which I see through me, and at the same time trying to show the flaw in the belief that only through reason do we gain knowledge. I cannot tell you what God is or isn’t, or at the same time if it is at all for you. For me it is obvious. All of us without even being aware worship a conception of our own mind. It is not one religion only, but rather the fusion and basis of all religions that reveal truth that is in all religions and the origin of all. Science, wandering in error, aims to strike out the hand of intelligence from us, and substitutes it with what it calls "Forces", i.e. "Forces of nature". It only deals with phenomena which can be observed, with behaviors and reactions, yet most of science turns out and deals with the invisible and the infinite, which is faith. When it rants about the powers or causes that prodce these or those things, or what the essence of those things are, it only uses the nice aura of scientific words and gives names and nothing more. It no more knows what light, or sound or perfume is, than the Kurdish sheep herders did, or the Babylonians with their swords and fire sticks.

To the assertion that we invent our own morality as we choose, I will have to disagree, for we don't choose, we merely feel in our conscience what is right and wrong, what we 'ought' to do, and what we 'ought not' to do. We should never do unto others what we should never want others to do unto us. That is not leaving any room for arbitrary morality, but something firm and objective - universal. Arbitrary rules in morals are always injurious and misleading as history attests to this. That people in all times and places consider harm inflicted on the soul, by means of torture, war, and killing and unfaithfulness, or deceit, as being wrong, contends to the belief that there is a universal guideline emanating from our conscience, not something arbitrary. As any relative or arbitrary morals claim to be, they are somehow based on a "scientific view of morals". Analysis of human behavior is the task of sociologists respectfully. But all too often it is from the field of sociology, and anthropology, that these self styled experts jump to conclusions and value judgments. These fields exist only to tell us what people are doing, not what they should be doing. Thus it cannot deal with morality or what is virtue. Therefore, you cannot use sociology, or anthropology, as a measuring stick regarding morality, because people can be doing many things in times and places that are not necessarily the things they themselves believe they 'ought' to be doing or that they should be doing.

We as humans have a sense of justice in our nature. It is instinctive more so by its inward effects, than by its outward ones. We feel the nature of rightness of what we feel we ought to be or do, as it determines reasonable rule of conduct. It is an object of the conscience, what we all too often call “guilt”. It is that which holds the balance, between individuals, between families, between nations, between races. The temporary interests of individuals will always collide. That we show respect, and do good works, is a universal debt we aim for. We intuitively understand what right and wrong is, better than we can depict it in formulas or words. We very well may differ as to the abstract right of many things, for every question has many sides, and few will only look at them all but one. But we all recognize cruelty, unfairness, inhumanity by their faces as wrong. Any relativism implied in a society, will eventually become corrupt and lead that society to ends destructive. This is similar to how in a democracy "right" and "wrong" become a matter of majorities. Certain tribes have a majority in their view on the virtue of cannibalism. Does their unanimous consent on this issue make it moral? This same reasoning can be applied to the Nazis or the Young Turks. If the majority of the Germans believed in the destruction of Jews by the Nazis, then their actions were "right," and other cultures should have withheld any criticism of Germany as it is “their business”. If the majority of the Turks believed in the extermination of the Armenians from their historic lands by the Young Turks, then there actions were "right", then we should have stopped any criticism of their actions, and further not have condemned them. Moral "relativism" is nothing more than a status quo and “might makes right”. Those who yield and abide by this ethical norm must consider that if there is no standard by which society can be judged, or people held accountable for their actions, then society, or the given status quo, becomes the judge and when that transpires and unfurls, no one is safe, not the dissenters, not the heretics, not the unborn, not the low class, not the retards, and perhaps not even the feminists.

[anileve]

A mountain climber slips over a precipice and clings to a rope over a thousand-foot drop. In fear and despair, he looks to the heavens and cries, "Is there anyone up there who can help me?" A voice from above booms, "You will be saved if you show your faith by letting go of the rope." The man looks down, then up, and shouts, "Is there anyone else up there who can help me?"

[PASAMONSTER]

Now see this post was inteligent, amusing and has a very deep meaning!

no argument for this one I will give you the most proper respect.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Actually, you know what..I'm wrong. Cancel all that. There is no purpose, there is no reason, there is no God, just science. Science is supreme, I believe.

Bow down.

[Anonymouse]

You know loser, there are alot of non issues in your response that simply don't make sense such as "prove it" and other one liner sentences that simply do not merit a discussion but are merely ego centered, as in "I can post a reply to you". Therefore, I chose to respond to anileve, and in fact in my response to hers, alot of it is a response to your major points. The minor points you've raised have swayed us from the discussion at hand and we got bogged down in minor non essentials, therefore it is not conducive to a productive discussion, in which case I consider our last responses moot.

[loseyourname]

There is only issue, my man. Can knowledge be obtained through faith alone? No, it cannot. You have failed to address every objection I bring up, instead deflecting to other issues. That is how we ended up with such a long, unfocused, drawn-out discussion. All you have done is find new ways to state arguments that I have already debunked. I understand your frustration.

Still, take a joke.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname There is only issue, my man. Can knowledge be obtained through faith alone? No, it cannot. You have failed to address every objection I bring up, instead deflecting to other issues. That is how we ended up with such a long, unfocused, drawn-out discussion. All you have done is find new ways to state arguments that I have already debunked. I understand your frustration.

Still, take a joke.

Because it is tedious to address one liners that lack any base, such as "Wrong! Blah blah blah blah prove it". I thought anileves argument was a refresher as opposed to your tautological nuances. As for knowledge through faith, interesting how now you say that "can knowledge be obtained by faith alone", whereas earlier it was not even an option. you already know my position, on a priori synthetic truths. Well, funny you say "debunked". I say the same thing.All you have done is repeat tautological statements that I have debunked. Your point?