if god real why bad thing happen?

>>24977963
A creator deity absolutely exists. Only morons think otherwise. The problem with Aquinas is that his conception of that deity is so bent and misshapen that it's almost unbelievable

>>24977963
Burden of proof is on the man making the claim.

>>24977968
>A creator deity absolutely exists.
Buddhism says otherwise

>>24977965
>>24977968
What if God isn't wholly good (dystheism)? It would make perfect sense.

>>24977972
Nice discourse regime

>>24977973
buddhism has unconditioned reality, which is unknowable. it's the end of all suffering though. an Absolute principle without an anthropomorphic mask.

>>24977963
Aquinas, very clever, basically figured out that Being-Itself (Existence) is God, because you can have an infinite chain of dependencies for any given phenomena, but each member of the chain requires the condition of existence, so the arbitrarily long chain of dependencies has a terminus in each and every one of its members requiring existence to, well, exist. Of course, the argument against this is to question if "Existence Itself" is the biblical God, but that's theology and not philosophy.

>>24977963
i am a boltzmann brain and nothing actually exists, it's all a figment of my imagination and any moment now i'm going to pop out of existence

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>>24977963
I guess it’s fedoratime.
His logic is like some guy writing a manifesto claiming “Kenny is the murderer” in the first sentence. Aquinas smuggled his God conclusion into his premise which breaks the whole thing. Below are further fedorisms:
>everything has a cause so there must be a first cause
This is self-asserted cope. He assumes the universe can’t have an infinite regress of causes. That’s not demonstrated; it’s just asserted. Quantum events don’t neatly follow classical causation, and space-time beginning to exist doesn’t magically require a conscious agent.
> Everything moves, so a Prime Mover must exist
Aquinas loved God but he also loved to sniff Aristotle’s armpits. His “logic” comes from Aristotle. Aristotle got us to a certain point but Newton showed the west that even Aristotle was wrong about physics. Motion doesn’t require a “mover” as he understood it; inertia exists. Bodies stay in motion unless acted on. He’s arguing from a premise that literally evaporates under Newtonian mechanics.
>Things are necessary or contingent, so a Necessary Being must exist
Even if contingent beings exist, a necessary physical law, or a quantum substrate, or a self-existent universe fits just as well as “God.” Nothing here uniquely predicts a deity. The conclusion is yet again another self-assertion without proof.
>Gradations of goodness imply a maximum Good (which is supposed to be God)
This assertion has no logical basis. It’s just supposed to look pretty like a prison bitch wearing a mop on his head. By the gradations of goodness logic, because we can compare spicy foods, a perfect taco must exist transcending space and time. So this whole assertion is just turning a linguistic convenience (comparative adjectives) into a metaphysical truth. So far, no proof. It’s just bullshit.
>Teleology proves a Designer
This relies on final causes: things act toward ends. Modern evolutionary theory and complexity science drown this point. You can get apparent purpose through natural selection, feedback loops, and emergent systems. “Purpose” doesn’t need a puppeteer. It can be a property of systems.

>>24977963
if God real then why Aquinas so fat they had to pull the walls off his house to get his body out when he die ?

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>>24978049
God wants his people to enjoy gabagool.

>>24978021
What about Luminous Mind Buddhism?

Also, Aquinas' God can hardly be called anthropomorphic given the Analogia Entis and Via Negativa.

>>24978045
>He assumes the universe can't have an infinite regress of causes.
Yes, as infinities don't exist at least in that sense; in order for an infinite regress of causes to exist, it would in fact need to be a progress from some point, equally in need of a cause, by the reverse of the laws that govern the actual progress of events.

>Quantum events don't neatly follow classical causation ...
This only matters if one is a materialist, which Aquinas is, of course, not.

>You can get apparent purpose through natural selection, feedback loops, and emergent systems.
>"Purpose" doesn't need a puppeteer.
>It can be a property of systems.
You can get apparent purpose, nothing more.

Your other arguments can, of course, be argued against; but, those I mention above are just absurd.

>>24977963
d

>>24978090
analogia entis is a good answer, and I agree with you. "anthropomorphism" then is just the analogy of proper proportionality applied to the Absolute principle. but virtually nobody understands this, and I would wager that trying to explain the analogy of being would just get you labeled a heretic.

>>24977963
>>24977985
Divine Hiddenness is an insurmountable criticism for Christianity. If God exists, and he wishes a relationship with each person, then any person who honestly seeks him should find him. Therefore, if a single people who has honestly looked, and never found, it categorically disproves the existence of the Christian God. Such people do exist, such as Alex O'Connor.

>>24977978
at this point just abandon the abrahamic conception of god all together

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>>24977963
Now what?

>>24978158
this is retard shit, people deserve hell and thinking anyone has the ability to reason out to God despite their moral issues is retarded.

>>24977963
I won't get into showing why his 5 arguments fail, because they've been done thousands of times already.
I'll just point out that even if his arguments do succeed, "Calling it God" isn't justified in the arguments. We can just say that it's some naturalistic explanation or even unicorns, and it works equally well.
There's no reason to take his arguments serious, when they can be defeated by a basic mirror argument.

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>>24978162
We don't need to keep subscribing to that framework anyway. It's possible that God just doesn't particularly care about us.

>>24978180
>subscribing to that framework anyway
maintaining that belief in a single god while claiming you no longer need abrahamism is like walking around with a used condom in your ass while claiming you're no longer gay. there's simply no reason to hang onto such an idea

>>24978167
dude what are you talking about. im a christian so i dont agree with who your replying withs argument but this is not how argue against hell you arent even doing that. hes talking about divine hiddenness not morality. your no better than this guy>>24978169 who says it can easily be argued against yet doesnt do that.

>>24978260
NTA this analogy, sucks address your points better

>>24978285
>this analogy, sucks
this analogy sucks,*

>>24978279
He says that evil obscures deity.

>>24978167
Bro, you are sperging out to an embarrassing degree. Major cringe. If you are just going to assume your conclusion, why speak to other people at all?

>>24978290
i dont think the guy i replied to even insinuated something like that and the idea that evil does obscure god is nonsensical since forgiveness is quite literally one of the main tenants of Christianity how is a wrongdoer not able to see God if God wants people to repent and welcomes does who do.

>>24977963
God exists, but natural theology and thomism is false

For me, it's the fact that everyone ignores that Thomas Aquinas had a spiritual experience so profound that he stopped writing the Summas altogether and simply stated that arguing for the existence of God via logic is pointless. Bro wouldn't even use the arguments he wrote earlier in his life if you asked him today were he alive.

>>24978301
>welcomes does
welcomes those

>>24978304
>simply stated that arguing for the existence of God via logic is pointless
are you thinking of kant? only he has this exact idea. aquinas stopped writing cause he believes what he wrote is nothing compared to what he saw. imagine trying to give someone an asnwer when you can only write 0.00001% of it. that was basically his mindset along with some idea of being too profound

>>24978158
How can you prove the existence of Alex O'Connor? Is he a real existential human being or just a simacrulum of the algorithm?

>>24977963
>Disprove Thomas Aquinas on the existence of God.
People can kill themselves

>>24978414
I use him as a public figure. For myself, the example is me. I searched in good faith. Did not find. Therefore God categorically does not exist, at least not in the form Christians proclaim.

>>24977968
Who created the creator deity?

>>24978495
this is nonsensical if you think this line of thinking is viable or concrete you should agree with " I searched in good faith. Did find. Therefore God categorically does exist, in the form Christians proclaim."

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>>24977963
A informative point that this book makes about pre-modern proofs for god like those of aquinas’ or some Islamic or classical philosophers is that they were not proofs as we conceive of them as being. They were not constructed from a modern point of view with modern interpretation. They are not rational justifications of a point which could prove wrong. They are not logical tests about something which is falsifiable. Rather they were made as philosophical-spiritual exercises to develop one’s character and relationship to god within the context of a worldview which presumes god as an obvious and un-negatable factor in the equation from the start.

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>>24978101
That’s a lot of cope.
Aquinas starts by assuming causation has metaphysical necessity. Hume: we never observe necessity, we just notice patterns and call them laws. If causation isn’t necessary, Aquinas can’t force a first cause, so his First Way becomes optional instead of mandatory.
His entire framework depends on Aristotelian metaphysics. If you don’t already buy substances, essences, and intrinsic teleology, the Five Ways don’t prove anything. They preach to the choir not to skeptics.
Even if I grant a First Cause, nothing gets you from “something unexplained” to “omnipotent monotheistic creator who cares about dietary laws and foreskins.” It’s just a metaphysical model and can’t be taken as serious proof.

>>24978101
>This only matters if one is a materialist, which Aquinas is, of course, not.
Wrong, while Aquinas might not want to inherently prescribe to materialism, he definitely understands the necessary utility and is very much trying to frame his arguments such that they can compatibly coexist with materialism, otherwise he wouldn't need any of his convoluted arguments and he would just take the transcendental argument of saying god exists because god revealed himself in the bible or the pauline argument of saying god exist because he appeared to me and told me he exists.

>>24978521
You have failed to understand the argument. If God desires a relationship with EVERYONE, then a single person failing to find him invalidates that claim. Do you understand now?

>>24978045
>This is self-asserted cope. He assumes the universe can’t have an infinite regress of causes. That’s not demonstrated; it’s just asserted. Quantum events don’t neatly follow classical causation, and space-time beginning to exist doesn’t magically require a conscious agent.
only applies if your a materialist as the other anon stated
>Aquinas loved God but he also loved to sniff Aristotle’s armpits. His “logic” comes from Aristotle. Aristotle got us to a certain point but Newton showed the west that even Aristotle was wrong about physics. Motion doesn’t require a “mover” as he understood it; inertia exists. Bodies stay in motion unless acted on. He’s arguing from a premise that literally evaporates under Newtonian mechanics.
you could even deduce the counterpoint in your own words with you mentioning inertia, objects at rest will stay at rest and objects in motion will stay in motion leading to point towards something that made everything start to move. Hell even the most popular theory for the beginning of the universe was made with that assertion.
>Even if contingent beings exist, a necessary physical law, or a quantum substrate, or a self-existent universe fits just as well as “God.” Nothing here uniquely predicts a deity. The conclusion is yet again another self-assertion without proof.
you start this off by saying a contingent being does exist then you list 3 things that arent beings there and cant encapsulate the scope of what we are talking about. we have necessary physical laws we live with them everyday we dont consider them the beginning of our universe just a part of it. a quantum substrate would just be considered another physical law just one that most physical laws stem from this, this is in no way a replacement or an equal for the idea known as God we are discussing. a self existent universe isnt even worth elaborating upon since it just works (or only works) with the other ones you listed. Also as you say nothing there predicts a deity just a contingent being which is why there is an entire host of arguments for why it is a deity multiple authors have talked at length about this a good amount of them not being religious.
>his assertion has no logical basis. It’s just supposed to look pretty like a prison bitch wearing a mop on his head. By the gradations of goodness logic, because we can compare spicy foods, a perfect taco must exist transcending space and time. So this whole assertion is just turning a linguistic convenience (comparative adjectives) into a metaphysical truth.
your off on this one, gradation is not something i subscribe to but your forming it as some guarantee that when you describe it, it will form into your taco argument where it transcends space and time instead of the peak and greatest good of that taco which will be the perfect taco for one to enjoy. its existence is guaranteed by the fact that comparison exist. Same thing with goodness. next line another anon did

>>24978597
in your first lines in this thread you wrote "honestly seeks him" can you tell me what you did was honestly seeking. cause as you said god wants a relationship with everyone and if he gets relationships with people but there are those who "honestly sought him" but failed wouldn't they be off the mark not god since as you said he wants a relationship with everyone and hes getting relationships but somehow because you missed the mark he doesn't exist? do you see why i called this nonsensical?

>>24978570
this isnt countering this anons points about apparent purpose, or the quantum events and materialist just a heavy if statement by hume with your personal spiel

>>24978634
You are evading the point. Do you concede the fact that, logically speaking, if a person was honestly seeking God, and did not find him, that it would invalidate the Christian conception of God?

>>24978634
>wouldn't they be off the mark
No, they aren't the omnipotent parent, they inherently have flaws, god, according to the christian conception, does not, so you are invalidating god by giving the humans power over him to be in charge of the seeking and accurately hitting the mark.

>>24977963
There is no empirically measurable evidence that god of any kind exist.
There is also no rational reason to believe in the god of the Christian Bible specifically.
Nuff said.

Alright... Summa Theologica but all the affirmatives are now negatives and all the negatives are now affirmatives.

>>24978736
There is tons of empirical evidence that every god exists since varieties of people explictly say they have sensed each and every type of god, you just seem like one of those people who doesn't know what empirical means and confuse it with quantifiable.

>>24978279
this was the standard christian view for like all of history you are just totally ignorant

>>24978291
you deserve hell

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Who created god?

Why can't there be multiple gods if one being "self-created"?

Why do you assume the creator of this flawed decaying universe is the supreme creator?

>>24978839
>Who created god?
god
>Why can't there be multiple gods if one being "self-created"?
There can be a father, a son, and a holy spirit, though.
>Why do you assume the creator of this flawed decaying universe is the supreme creator?
Its not an assumption it is a revelation.

>>24978508
It came from the infinite source of all being that is beyond our comprehension. Even the creator deity cannot understand it

>>24978570
The Hume objection is of course right, especially if empiricism is the mode of thought.

The bit about the first cause jumping to biblical god I don’t care for desu. He never said it did. He thought it pointed to one of the attributes of God. Which it does…if it were sound.

>>24978854
Then I'll worship a deity who does.

>>24978570
Hume's conclusions re causality and ethics only follow if you accept his psychology, laid out in the first books of the Treatise. He makes no argument for these though, he just asserts them as true, even though what he says about how the mind works and the sources of ideas cannot be known through constant conjunction. Indeed, all the claims that support his psychology are rendered wholly unknowable according to his epistemology; he refutes himself. Moreover, while he might appeal to introspection, he has weakened the claims of this sort of knowledge, but more to the point, Hume's various claims, e.g., that reason is wholly discursive, etc., are at odds with all the past sages of the Western and Eastern traditions. So we also have to ask, does Hume the gluttonous dandy possess such powers of honest introspection, even though he mocks the "monkish virtues" and contemplative live, that the saints and sages of past eras are all deluded fools, while he, Hume, has uncovered the direct truth of how the mind works by simply reflecting in between meals and games of billiards?

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>>24978631
> Only matters if you’re a materialist
>translation: My metaphysics absorbs every objection by declaring it irrelevant.
If quantum behavior, modern physics, and alternate cosmological models “don’t count” because they don’t serve the conclusion, then you have left philosophy and entered brand loyalty.
itt:
>We pretend proofs prove.
>We pretend metaphysics is reality.
>We pretend belief is deduction.
Yeah, brilliant stuff anon.

>>24978896
Hume doesn’t need a positive psychology to undermine Aquinas. His point is that metaphysical necessity isn’t observable, which means Aquinas’ assertion of necessary causes isn’t binding. If you want to restore Aquinas, you have to demonstrate why necessity is mandatory rather than simply declaring his metaphysics superior by tradition or taste. Critiquing Hume’s lifestyle or comparing him to monks isn’t an argument. That’s a preference for one paradigm over another.

motion argument: sure, the pastor started my girlfriend, but i was the one who walked into the school
efficient cause: presupposes 3 other things
necessary being: presupposes your existence as a monist or rationalist
goodness: no rebuttal from me on this front, but you still need to decide if it's all 4 in one or just 1 of them depending on the thing
design: see above requirement

argument from queer revelation: completely arbitrary to the point where it doesn't matter that the proposition is

>>24977972
And he filled it.

>>24978045
>He assumes the universe can’t have an infinite regress of causes.
Not just him, our current understanding of logic doesn't really consider infinite regress to have explanatory value. Which is why we never, ever, use it as an explanation. To make an exception for the entire universe would he a hell of a request.
>Motion doesn’t require a “mover” as he understood it; inertia exists.
>Bodies stay in motion
After being moved, correct.
>Even if contingent beings exist, a necessary physical law, or a quantum substrate, or a self-existent universe fits just as well as “God.”
*Incontingent. No, physical laws are patterns across time and space (both of which are contingent), not beings. Universe cannot be eternal because entropy would be infinite. And to post-pone the unmoved mover to whatever is the frontier of science (currently quantum phenomena) is just non-God of the gaps.
>a perfect taco must exist transcending space and time
Nope.

>>24978570
>If causation isn’t necessary, Aquinas can’t force a first cause
Nice causative statement you have there.

>>24978839
>Why can't there be multiple gods if one being "self-created"?
Multiplicity implies difference, difference implies a contingency.
>Why do you assume the creator of this flawed decaying universe is the supreme creator?
Ockham's razor.

>>24978101
>quantum only matters if you’re a materialist.
Quantum mechanics isn’t a belief system. It’s not optional like fucking while keeping your socks on. It’s literally the observed behavior of energy and matter.
Aquinas’ arguments rely on classical metaphysics: substances, essences, stable causation, and teleology built into nature.
Quantum mechanics breaks those assumptions like a wicker folding chair breaks under a an obese monk. You don’t get to say “it only matters if you’re a materialist.” It matters if you live in this universe.

If your framework only works in a cosmos that stopped updating after Aristotle’s warranty period expired, that’s not metaphysics that’s just your desired fan fiction.
>You can get apparent purpose, nothing more.
Aquinas needs teleology to require a mind but modern systems don’t care. Modern systems produce structured, adaptive complexity without any cosmic project manager: natural selection, cybernetics, feedback systems, self-organization in complex systems, autopoiesis, also emergent behavior in game theory and information systems.
We have multiple pathways to “purpose-like outcomes” without a deity. The insistence that only consciousness can produce order is just theological nostalgia. The world also looks flat from eye-level but we don’t build cosmology off eyesight alone.

What’s funny is none of Aquinas’ arguments get you to God.
Even if we grant a first cause, a prime mover, a necessary being, a maximal good, a teleological ground none of that leads uniquely to monotheism, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, personal agency, or the Christian God. Aquinas sneaks that in after the fact. These arguments at best get you to: “Something something metaphysical thing”.
Congratulations, we’ve proved the existence of Perhaps (be praised to Its name).
Aquinas assumes the universe works like Aristotle thought it did, then argues from inside that conceptual worldview. It’s not a proof. Science has proven the universe doesn’t work that way. There are modern Christian scientists who are probably closer than Aquinas was at proving the possibility of Divinity. But at the end of the day, Aquninas’ philosophy was built on outdated physics. If you want to believe in God, fine. Just don’t pretend medieval metaphysics can prove it right.

>>24977963
If the premise is optional, the conclusion is optional.

the argument for goodness is, well, good, pending any updates that take us past mind

>>24978967
>Even if we grant a first cause, a prime mover, a necessary being, a maximal good, a teleological ground none of that leads uniquely to monotheism, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, personal agency, or the Christian God
Additional arguments are required for personhood and Christianity (the argument isn't supposed to conclude an institution, just God), but if you actually read Aquinas argument, he does point out how Prime Mover has to be one (monotheism) and has to be unlimited (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience), and that since all goodness is derived from Him, also all good (omnibenevolence). There is no sneaking, he takes them head-on.
>Aquinas’ arguments rely on classical metaphysics: substances, essences, stable causation, and teleology built into nature.
>Quantum mechanics breaks those assumptions
>Aquinas philosophy was built on outdated physics
Things we don't fully understand don't break classical metaphysics, we just don't yet know how they fit in it. You're literally appealing to ignorance.
>We have multiple pathways to “purpose-like outcomes” without a deity.
>The insistence that only consciousness can produce order is just theological nostalgia.
Those are two only mildly related sentences. "Purpose-like outcomes" are a function of system limitations. Order is, as far as we've observed, the product of order. Every example you can name - balls arranging in hexagonal patterns, snowflakes forming, 0 and 1 generating an image .. all have more order going in than going out.

i wonder if the argument from design depends on the design being continuous with the intentionality of the person trying to prove god's existence

>>24978562
That's a good book, but I think it oversells this point. While the skeptical viewpoint was essentially dead as a living concern, it and responses to it were well known and the proofs are responses to these positions. But ancient skepticism is also quite different from modern skepticism. At any rate, Aquinas shows how a supreme One follows from premises that seem essential if one supposes that being is intelligible (and so philosophy and science worth doing in the first plac), i.e., that things don't happen "for no reason at all" and aren't one way instead of any other "because they just are." A core premise of modern skepticism tends to be the acceptance on incoherence and brute fact.

>>24978934
>His point is that metaphysical necessity isn’t observable,

According to Hume's psychology. This just is false on any account of anthropology and reason that includes intellectus and noesis. So again, you are relying on the claim that actually everyone from the pre-modern period is a delusional retard and God Hume just knows the truth of reason. It's just assertion.

Whereas, prima facie, seeing a rock smash a window is seeing causality. One might ask Hume what the fuck "seeing causality" would look like. The whole thing is question begging.

>>24978992
Well, according to Hume we have no good reason to think it is better to cross a bridge than to step out over a precipice. But then he tries to paper over how ridiculous this is by appealing to "Nature" which gives creatures a survival drive. However, this cope is exactly the sort of metaphysical speculation he has just disallowed (he makes a similar appeal vis-á-vis morality). His work is riddled with such performative contradictions.

He showed how empiricism, or at least his brand of it, makes knowledge impossible, and then rather than say "hmm, I guess my epistemology is retarded" just doubled down on "truth for me, but not for thee. I am reasonable, you are not."

Of course, the modernite mind loves this sort of "iconoclastic" (scare quotes because it is overwhelmingly popular) sophistry, even though it should be obvious that it quickly reduces to might makes right and the sort of effete urbanites who developed it are not in the least mighty, hence the obfuscation and cope.

It's a position right out of Plato's sophists' mouths.

>>24978958
>Not just him, our current understanding of logic doesn't really consider infinite regress to have explanatory value. Which is why we never, ever, use it as an explanation. To make an exception for the entire universe would he a hell of a request.
This is not a proof. It’s a rule of thumb made up like a metaphysical law.
It’s basically:
>Infinite regress bothers me, therefore it can’t be real.
Even if infinite regress doesn’t explain, that doesn’t make “God does it” an explanation. It just shifts the regress to a being with handcrafted exemptions.

Aquinas: “There must be a first cause.”
Skeptic: “Why?”
Aquinas: “Because infinite regress is bad.”
Skeptic: “Says who?”
Aquinas: “Me and Aristotle.”
This isn’t deduction, it’s taste.

>Universe cannot be eternal because entropy would be infinite
That’s a physical model based on temporal thermodynamics, not a metaphysical necessity. Cosmology has competing models like eternal inflation, cyclic universes, conformal cyclic cosmology (Penrose), quantum vacua with emergent spacetime. All of them break Aquinas’ neat causation ladder.
Claiming entropy = proof of God is like reading one chapter of a science book and declaring victory.

>>24978985
>Additional arguments are required for personhood and Christianity (the argument isn't supposed to conclude an institution, just God), but if you actually read Aquinas argument, he does point out how Prime Mover has to be one (monotheism) and has to be unlimited (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience), and that since all goodness is derived from Him, also all good (omnibenevolence). There is no sneaking, he takes them head-on.

Yes but here’s the catch: he does so through conceptual stacking, not observation. He moves from: one first cause to one ultimate cause to one unlimited cause to one unlimited being to one unlimited mind.
At no point does necessity force the transition from “uncaused cause” to “personal God who cares about human behavior.” It’s an interpretive leap, not a logical one.

>Things we don't fully understand don't break classical metaphysics, we just don't yet know how they fit in it. You're literally appealing to ignorance.
No. If your metaphysics requires classical causation, and the universe doesn’t reliably have it, then the burden is on the metaphysics to reconfigure itself, not on reality to conform. If your model only works in a pre-relativity cosmos, that’s not timeless truth. Aquinas was cutting edge for his time, but he’s outdated nowadays.

:/
but that did come into being

>>24979016
>It’s a rule of thumb made up like a metaphysical law.
>It’s basically... taste.
It's how logic works.
Is it how the universe works? Who knows... But to sacrifice logic as we know it to avoid an argument is a hell of a move lmao.

>That’s a physical model based on temporal thermodynamics, not a metaphysical necessity
I'm aware.

>Cosmology has competing models
So logic and thermodynamic laws aren't good enough but various contradictive models are a silver bullet? Anon, you're grasping at straws. Nobody is arguing that the contingency argument is final. What is argued that from what we understand, it's valid and sound. If you want to avoid that by ditching logic and thermodynamics, be my guest. Just don't pretend you're arguing for science.

>>24979022
>At no point does necessity force the transition from “uncaused cause” to “personal God who cares about human behavior.” It’s an interpretive leap, not a logical one.
The very greentext you quoted addresses that. He made no leaps. He showed why omni- qualities are directly implied by incontingency and for personhood and Christianity he has separate arguments.

>>24979022
>If your metaphysics requires classical causation, and the universe doesn’t reliably have it
It does reliably have it, it just ceases to be a useful concept outside particular bounds. As is the case for all concepts. Hoping we will one day acquire the holy grail of propositional knowledge isn't a valid standard to judge anyone against.

DTA has no existent

>>24978992
>Whereas, prima facie, seeing a rock smash a window is seeing causality. One might ask Hume what the fuck "seeing causality" would look like. The whole thing is question begging.
No, it isn’t. It’s seeing sequence and inferring causation. Hume’s point stands: We never perceive necessity, only succession. But Aquinas needs necessity. Hume says: “You can’t get necessity from perception.” That’s not self-refuting, it is delineating the limits of what perception licenses. So, Aquinas is forced to smuggle necessity in, not derive it.

the mackie fallacy

Aquinas is wrong if I just give up logic and causation.

Bonaventure died in the same year. bad boys or whatever

>>24977973
No it doesn’t you fucking midwit

>>24977963
The question is premised on the fallacious conflation of God existing and the Bible being true/Jesus being God. Atheism originally was a cultural issue as to whether the Pantheon is real, which is a much, much more complex question than the purely philosophical one of whether a Creator exists which everyone always took as granted before the Modern Era when Christianity had thoroughly derailed the convo and made everyone who believes in it retarded.

>>24979050
It's self-refuting to say: "I know how the mind works and actually, the necessity and form prior thinkers thought was necessary for thought to be thought at all is actually just delusion. Actually, the mind is sense data + instrumental, wholly discursive reason that calculates over sense data. That is not something that can be known from constant conjunction.

Again, this is no problem for Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, or Aquinas. It's only a problem if one assumes that they were all delusional (and virtually all Eastern thinkers were delusional) whereas Hume looks at this own mind and knows exactly how it works.

Sure, if we grant Hume his premises his conclusion follows. No one denies that. But do his conclusions make any sense. If reason were just discursive rule following over sense data how could it even have intelligible content at all. How does the mind calculate over sense impulses so hard it becomes aware of form? Hume's psychology has to declare more of human thought and intuition delusional, and on what authority? "Hume says it is thus!"

>>24979050
You don't need to perceive necessity for Aquinas' arguments. All you need is the assumption that contingent things don't come in to being or change (move) for "no reason, just because."

This is beside the point.

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>>24979187
Hume doesn’t need to replace Aquinas with a superior metaphysics. His point is that Aquinas’ conclusions aren’t forced on anyone who doesn’t accept his starting assumptions. Removing necessity doesn’t prove Hume’s worldview it just proves Aquinas can’t claim universality. You don’t rescue Aquinas by attacking Hume. You rescue him by demonstrating that metaphysical necessity is binding prior to observation. Until that’s shown, Aquinas is a conditional system, not a proof.

>>24979203
That assumption is the point. Your entire framework depends on the premise that contingent things cannot occur without a sufficient reason. I don’t grant that as a universal metaphysical law, and it isn’t demonstrated. If the premise is optional, the conclusion is optional. At that point, Aquinas is not proving God; he is showing what follows if someone already accepts his assumptions. There’s no compulsion there.

>>24978690
>You are evading the point
how?
>if a person was honestly seeking God, and did not find him, that it would invalidate the Christian conception of God?
once again what is this "honestly seeking" and what do they try to find which gives them a belief in God? you keep saying that if you tried to find god you should find god but what does this "honest seeking" entail that would give you a definitive answer.
>>24978730
>No, they aren't the omnipotent parent, they inherently have flaws
yeah thats why im saying there missing the mark.
>god, according to the christian conception, does not, so you are invalidating god by giving the humans power over him to be in charge of the seeking and accurately hitting the mark.
how is did you interpret "missing the mark" as power over god and there the ones who are seeking of course it lies in the human beings hands (unless your a Calvinist)

>>24979209
>Aquinas’ conclusions aren’t forced on anyone who doesn’t accept his starting assumptions
Which we do. Not a single person objecting to Aquinas does so out of disbelief in logic or causation, they are at most trying to upgrade from linear causation to metaxological/Russelian relations and for some reason think the latter invalidates the former.

>>24978896

I’ve never seen anyone take this argument before desu, because I don’t know how you can create a psychology anterior to your senses

>>24979209
>I don't need to assume the world is intelligible and that shit doesn't happen randomly, despite all of experience and thought saying otherwise.
Ok, even if you accept that the conclusion that follows from Hume is that philosophy and science are worthless. His copes don't resolve this issue. So, I suppose he represents a great counter if you're fine with "deny all the evidence of the world having a logos and just like, do whatever bro."

sure they exist. they're called appetitions

>>24979220
it's the definition of contingent you fucking retard. what you're saying is you believe there are some things which simply aren't contingent: unconditioned things. but you can't say you believe there are contingent things without condition. that's like asking for a polygon composed of fewer than three lines.

>>24979209
But the assumptions here >>24979203 are like the bare minimum for logic and reason working at all.

No one actually acts like they don't accept them. At most they selectively reject them when they lead to conclusions they don't like.

>>24979220
You think anything at all can happen at any moment. So, you might become a lobster at any moment, and your next step might take you to the moon while the Earth vaporizes spontaneously?

Truly, the power of modern thought...

I suppose when we find ancient ruins we ought not suppose people built them but might just suppose they popped into being randomly, because contingencies can just happen at any moment. Maybe Kamala will be President when you wake up tomorrow. Who is to say?

>>24979306
All that shows is that you have no familiarity with philosophy before the Enlightenment though.

And yes, many people have made this objection to Hume, from the begining when his book flopped.

that would make me cooler than you, invalidating the entire purpose of posting on 4chan

>>24977965
Bad things happening doesn't mean God immoral or evil doesn't exist

>>24978896
hume assumes the logic of sense found in hobbes. hobbes shows why and how the senses can produce real knowledge but why that knowledge is always relative to factual knowledge of sense. he does this by laying out a very clear argument for how regularity of sensory repetitions reflexively generates habitual familiarity with the flow of time. this, after a fashion that should be familiar to kantians (though hobbes will not use the word transcendental) required for conceptual identities. essentially, each sensory datum comes to be recognized as the protensive anticpation of a subsequent datum; thought is nothing but free play in the imagining of data that can possibly lead to anything else.

*sigh*
yes, everything got better effortlessly.

>>24979337
Rejecting that contingency must point to necessity doesn’t imply chaos, it implies non-compulsion. You’re confusing an epistemic limit with an ontological claim. Until you demonstrate that necessity is binding rather than assumed, Aquinas isn’t proving God, he’s illustrating what follows if one already agrees. That isn’t a proof it’s a conditional system.

now you're being stupid on purpose

>>24978508
>still getting filtered by this and not realizing the inherent absurdity of the question, taking into account we're talking about an unconditioned clockmaker that can exist even in the state of absolute nothingness.

>>24978158
Alex O'Connor never tried to be a christian. the closest thing is him saying out of all metaphysical claims he would like Christianity to be true of course i skimmed that down but you get it

>>24979050
>We never perceive necessity, only succession
yea and his master hobbes makes it very clear that you can still just go ahead and use relative knowledge. it's only in a post kantian universe that one would even care to "ground" probabilistic rationalizations of empirical sequences.

>>24979327
>the world having a logos
the regular uninterrupted sequentiality of sensory data is a logos.

>>24979397
If contingent events/beings can just happen for no reason at all sometimes, why wouldn't they do so whenever and wherever? You have just claimed they don't require causes/necessity. You can't claim that contingencies can just occur, sometimes, whenever, for no reason, and then claim "but this is rare." Why is it rare? If contingencies can "just happen" they should do so whenever and wherever and the world should just be chaos.

>>24979438
he's making a sophistical insinuation to the effect that he may be wrong, in order to get out of the responsibility to which his statement entitles him, which is the one you rightly accuse him of: defense of absurdity. one could instead just call oneself an absurdist.

Epicurus already did before this kike worshipper was even born

>>24979397
>You’re confusing an epistemic limit with an ontological claim
there's no confusion. it's just as impossible to conceive a two-lined polygon as it is to draw one, and the analogy to metaphysical definitions is just as clear: no one can conceive of an unconditioned contingency because each terms is just the negation of the other. the real limit we're confronting is grammatical, which is a specific articulation between being and knowledge reducible to neither without being a transcendence of either.

>>24979438
Declining your premise isn’t defending absurdity. It’s just refusing to LARP that Aristotle’s physics is a substitute for reality as we have learned about it since the 13th century. If your “God” needs patch notes to survive Hume, that’s a skill issue.

>>24979455
You haven’t shown that conceivability = metaphysical necessity. You’ve just stated it. The fact that something feels conceptually incoherent inside your framework doesn’t make it ontologically impossible outside it.

>>24979472
That contingent things don't "just happen" does result in absurdity. That has nothing to do with Aristotle. That premise isn't unique to Aristotle, it can be found throughout world philosophy.

>>24979473
nothing about a two-sided triangle feels impossible in my framework, it's rather that i constructed a framework that excludes impossible things. that's the purpose of geometric method in reasoning. and further, i have an infinite supply of contingent proof of my theory: i can repeatedly challenge you to show me a two-sided polygon, and you can repeatedly prevaricate to avoid admitting that thought is capable of identifying and proving what things beings can and cannot do.

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>>24979485
Saying “declining your premise = absurdity” is just putting a shock collar on the argument and calling it logic. You’re not demonstrating that contingency demands necessity; you’re threatening incoherence if I don’t salute your metaphysical flag.
Plenty of philosophical traditions (East and West) admit limits to explanation without collapsing into chaos: Nāgārjuna, Pyrrhonism, apophatic theology, even Plotinus at the ceiling of intellection. None of those systems disintegrate just because they don’t grant your specific version of necessity.
If rejecting your premise turns the universe into a madhouse, then that says more about your premise than the universe. A proof shouldn’t need training wheels.
The two-sided polygon example works in geometry because the definitions are stipulated and the system is closed. You’re trying to drag that airtight structure into metaphysics like it’s a 1:1 map. It isn’t.
>>24979486
Conceivability is not necessity.
Incoherence is not impossibility.
You can’t upgrade a category mistake into a universal law.
Your framework isn’t wrong for having boundaries. It’s wrong for confusing boundaries with ontology. “My model says X is impossible” is not the same thing as “X is impossible.” Conceivability isn’t ontology. A fish can’t conceive of space either, but the ISS isn’t required to fit inside an aquarium.

>>24979524
>You can’t upgrade a category mistake into a universal law.
nobody is trying to do that but you, by insisting that our definitions are more than grammatical. we're schoolmen here. ontology is a type of comment on aristotle.

>>24979524
>A fish can’t conceive of space either, but the ISS isn’t required to fit inside an aquarium.
revealing analogy. that you conceive of the difference you're looking for as a quantitative one tells me all i need to know: you're quibbling for a difference without a distinction. you offer me a quantitative figure to trick me into thinking my framework is "too small" - but we're not dealing in quantities at all, are we? but rather with definitions. you cannot define an ISS such that it could not be located somewhere in space -- or could you?

>>24979524
>My model says X is impossible” is not the same thing as “X is impossible.”
PROBLEM: Draw a two-sided polygon.

this nigger is like 'just because something's impossible doesn't mean it's not possible, it just means that impossible things have been defined as excluded from possibility... and i take issue with that!'

>>24979556
>>24979567
>>24979571
Your system doesn’t collapse when I say no. It collapses because it never learned to survive a no.

>>24979575
You haven't been reading your philosophy books. "No" is the first thing we get a handle on.

Now again.

PROBLEM: Draw a two-sided polygon.

>>24979556
>>24979567
>>24979571
(((YOU))) are coping pretty hard here, Thomistfag

>>24979585
did you figure out how to do it yet?
did you even figure out why i want you to try?

>>24979083
Buddhism is dogmatically agnostic on whether or not the universe always existed because that was one of the questions Buddha refused to answer

>>24978304
Because that's not what happened. He had a vision of God and commented that it made all his previous work concerning the divine essence to "look like straw", which means small and vain, not because it is incorrect, but because all human speculation is so inferior to the real divinity. Do you think no thomist theologian ever thought of reading a biography of their master lol

>>24978304
Thomists mention this all the time bud. And it's completely consistent with Saint Thomas's earlier position, or his main sources such as Dionysius the Areopagite.

>>24979016
It's trivial to show that if you need an infinite regress of causes to explain any given contingent event that it should never actually occur.

If I told you that making a cup of coffee required you to walk to a coffee maker that is an infinite number of steps away and you deduced from this that you could never actually make the coffee because it takes an infinite amount of steps to get there, and so no matter how many steps you take towards it there will always be infinitely more steps ahead of you, this would not be "a matter of taste."

Honestly, don't feel bad, I could respond to like 20 different posts in this thread in this way. I guess I cannot blame people for a lack of comprehension given the way our educational system works.

>>24979524
>Plenty of philosophical traditions (East and West) admit limits to explanation without collapsing into chaos: Nāgārjuna, Pyrrhonism, apophatic theology, even Plotinus at the ceiling of intellection. None of those systems disintegrate just because they don’t grant your specific version of necessity.

You're making it obvious that you don't even understand the names you're dropping. Phyrro *was* a radical skeptic, apophatic theology has nothing to do with this, Plotinus agrees with me—the only name here who is partially relevant is Nagarjuna, but he's been accused on nihilism from the begining.

I did not just say your claim results in absurdity, I showed that it does.

Stop name dropping and explain how if contingent events/beings can occur for no reason at all, they shouldn't happen whenever? Why? What limits these uncaused events? Nothing can. By definition, they are determined by nothing and so random. What do you call a cosmos where random events occur at random for no reason at all? Absurd chaos.

At least the (rare) ancients who advanced such an absurd position all defaulted to "but that's ok because nothing really exists" (nihilism) which in a way seems at least a little less ridiculous. They are at least consistent, rather than misologists who use reason when it suits them and appeal to absurdity when it doesn't say what their feel feels demand.

Of course, Hume was happy to admit that his reason was the slave of his passions (literally the state all the sages, including the Buddhists by the way, pointed out was completely degenerate/demonic).

>>24979666
>if contingent events/beings can occur for no reason at all, they shouldn't happen whenever? Why? What limits these uncaused events?
That would be "incontingent". And time itself is contingent so they are not events in time.
>determined by nothing
Determined by themselves.

>>24979575
>>24979585
BTFO by a two sided polygon....

>>24979666
Also "limits on explanation" seems here to be equivocating on ontological versus epistemic notions. Maybe that's why you thought apophatic theology is at all relevant. But this is simply mixing together two distinct things:

All contingent beings have causes.

And:

Man (or an individual man) can know the causes of all contingent beings.

Rejecting the first is what leads to absurdity. The second is affirmed by virtually everyone.

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>>24978809
>you deserve hell

>>24978958
>difference implies a contingency.
So a trinity of Gods is off the table then?

>>24979671
How does this answer the question at all?

>There are not invents in time.
This seems untrue. And it does not follow from "time is contingent" even if the antecedent were true.

>Determined by themselves.
What determines themselves and how? There are all sorts of contingent beings. Did they all just zap themselves into being? Why did just these things zap themselves into being and not any other? Why is the world one way and not any other if the way the world comes to be is just contingent things just making themselves exist? Again, the result of contingent things just becoming (because they somehow make themselves be) would be chaos, because what is undetermined is, by definition, arbitrary and random. You haven't responded to the problem at all.

>Incontingent
Is not a word. The word is necessary. Are you now arguing that everything is necessary as a new cope?

>>24979203
If you just assume your conclusion, your argument is non-existent. I could just assume differently and have the same justification as you.

>>24979430
He recounts a story of deliberately living with Christian roommates, going to church, and taking a theology degree with the honest and open hope of coming to believe in God. He even claims he believes that belief in God is a good thing. He just simply isn't convinced. On the Christian worldview, anyone who seeks in this manner should always become convinced, and the fact that he didn't proves the Christian conception of God must be false.

>>24979687
>Reason just reduces to feel feels and assertions.

Yes, given your premises, this might as well be true. After all, any contingency might just happen at any moment, by "determining itself." That is precisely the point of later moderns, once you kick away reason all that is left is assertions and feels.

This is exactly the misology Plato warned against.

>>24979686
NTA, but could you ever prove that anything wasn't necessary? We perceive time as an arrow, but that is likely not the true character of time. Perhaps every action, every object, everything that exists necessarily exists, and it can't have not existed exactly where and when it did.

>>24979696
In order to create a persuasive argument, you must begin from premises that your opponent or audience agrees with. Otherwise it all falls apart at the fist step.

>>24979693
>God didn't make me feel the right way so I abandoned the faith.
>If God was real reading some books and sitting in a lecture would have led me to attain the gnosis.
Christians don't even say this will happen. When they talk about the spiritual life, they do not mean "talk with your roommates a bit and take a few classes and read some books in your 20s and you should be all set."

>>24979685
If they were different instead of distinct, yes.

>>24979686
>>There are not invents in time.
I'll take it you tried to greentext "they are not events in time". Time is contingent, an event is predicated on something contingent as it has to happen in time. Incontingent being isn't an event. It is a direct implication.

>What determines themselves and how?
The Prime Mover. How? No idea.
>There are all sorts of contingent beings.
Yes, all except the Prime Mover.
>Did they all just zap themselves into being?
No, if they are contingent, the Prime Mover zapped them in one way or another.

>[incontingency is...] by definition, arbitrary and random
Nope. Just self-determined. You haven't established the problem, you have just shared how you feel about self-determined essences.

>>Incontingent
>is not a word
Fair enough.
>Are you now arguing that everything is necessary as a new cope?
My nigga, are you sure you know what you're arguing against?

>>24979697
The claim that everything is necessary is at least more coherent than the claim that contingent things happen for no reason at all, or just make themselves happen.

Nevertheless, it does seem to have the difficulty of explaining why all the seeming contingencies of life should be necessary, especially if you're trying to argue against God/Infinite Being/the Absolute.

In that case, you'd have to explain why exactly our history is necessary, but any slight variation is actually impossible.

This is why people who go in this direction like multiverse theories so much. But these aren't really any less absurd. "Everything happens," and it all happens by necessity is a pretty big cope loop to throw yourself into.

>>24979705
Have you not been reading the thread? Christians claim that God wishes to have a personal relationship with every single person. Thus, when a person honestly looked to connect with God, he must be there to offer the connection, otherwise this refutes the claim that he wishes such a relationship. Again, either a person opens up and then feels his presence, or a person opens up and gets total radio silence. If even a single person honestly opens up and gets nothing, it refutes the Christian claim.

Also, you are falling for the classic "you just didn't try hard enough" cope. How much more can a person do than dedicate their home life, their school life, and their leisure time to the pursuit of God for years at a time while getting absolutely zero sense of God actually being there? If you are proposing a kind of irrefutable case where there is always more you could have done, you show the weakness of your case since you can't outline the criteria for its falsification.

>>24979710
>If they were different instead of distinct, yes.
Can something be distinct from something else and have no differences? What babble is this?

>>24979715
If he honestly looked then he would have found Him. He is obviously a lying sack of shit.

>>24979712
>In that case, you'd have to explain why exactly our history is necessary, but any slight variation is actually impossible.
"Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel; so, likewise in the actions which men voluntarily do, which, because they proceed their will, proceed from liberty, and yet because every act of man's will and every desire and inclination proceedeth from some cause, and that from another cause, in a continual chain (whose first link is in the hand of God, the first of all causes), proceed from necessity. So that to him that could see the connexion of those causes, the necessity of all men's voluntary actions would appear manifest."

Will this do? I might add you could apply a kind of Spinozian definition of God here as just the sum total of the universe.

>>24979704
If someone adopts retarded premises they completely fail to defend (i.e., your total inability to explain how they don't lead to absurdity) you are under no obligation to adopt them. We've already been through how your premise leads to absurdity. So far we've run through
>Random name dropping to deflect
>Making up gibberish words
>Simply refusing to answer the challenge

Now we've moved to
>You have to accept my absurdity as true! Only then, having accepted my nonsense does argument work.

This is, in fact, also textbook misology, "I said it and I feel it, thus we must act as if it was true regardless of what it implied because I feel committed to it!!!"

>>24979719
You understand that you are just assuming your conclusion here, right? It's always the person's fault, not that God might actually not exist. You demonstrate you are close minded and unwilling to entertain criticisms of your beliefs. This is the condition of a very weak and fragile mind.

>>24979715
Are you young perchance? Doing something for a bit during undergrad doesn't really amount to much of anything. And this would be just as true for being a communist, feminist, libertarian, etc.

This is why it's an old joke that young people will "grow out of" whatever they are into.

>>24979725
I'm not the anon from earlier, I just made a simple observation that if you assume your conclusions, you aren't making an argument, you are just asserting something.

>>24979734
Are you going to outline the actual criteria of what would count as honestly seeking God or are you going to continue deflecting the fact that you actually would never accept the situation where someone honestly searched and never found? Seems as though you are acting dishonestly desu

>>24979723
It works for Locke because he has God in there. If the God is just the sum total of what exists, I don't see how this solves the issue at all. Why this universe and not any other? Why is a universe where the water droplet rolls left necessary, and one where it rolls right impossible?

The problems only multiply on a physicalist view of the universe.

>>24979731
Its called faith something you wouldn't know anything about because you are a pathetic fedora jackal who is repulsed by anything whole and healthy. You disgust me.

>>24979737
It's an argument Anon.

We have A and ~A.
~A results in absurdity.
Therefore A.

That isn't, A therefore A. It's a classic argument, one of the most common ones in the history of logic.

>>24979743
Faith is the calling card of every cult and scam. But thank you for finally admitting that argumentation and evidence don't apply for you; that you either suspend any critical thinking and have "faith" or you don't believe in God.

>>24979717
Yes, the Trinity. Distinct without division and one without confusion. If you've never experienced like this, just wait.

>>24979742
God here stand also as mysterious. Yes, as far as we can see, the chain of causation passes into the mists of history and we cannot see its origin. Yet the observation holds true for contemporary phenomenon, everything around us seems to operate strictly on cause and effect, so that everything that happens must happen that way by necessity.

>>24979744
What you view as absurd doesn't matter. If you think "~A results in something impossible" you would then have to make a case for why it is actually impossible, otherwise you are just stating a preference.

>>24979749
Incoherent babble. If something is the same, it can't be distinct from itself. The very fact that you can call one part one thing and another part another thing is, itself, a difference.

>>24979746
It will be interesting to see how well your arguments and critical thinking hold up when you are kneeling before the Throne of Judgment pleading to not be cast into the lake of fire.

>>24977963
God isn't real.

>>24979693
> anyone who seeks in this manner should always become convinced
who decided that? why would this method guarantee a belief in god? why does a method not working mean god doesn't exist?

>>24979766
Did they tell you that stuff when you were a child? Man, that must suck to have been abused and traumatized to the point that now, so many years later, it still scrambles your mind and derails your ability to think. I pity you, anon.

>>24979771
If God wants a personal relationship with you, and you reach out to him honestly and in good faith, and he denies you, then he categorically did not want a personal relationship with you and thus it refutes the original claim.

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>>24979738
NTA, and I don't know the person in question, but Christ says, "seek and ye shall find," not "seek until you get tired of it or feel like you've done enough." The lives of the saints, particularly modern one's were cultural skepticism is more of a thing, are full of discussions of battles with their faith. Jacob has to wrestle with God all night. It's a caricature to say that most Christians say, "just do some honest searching and you will have unshakable faith." No doubt, some Evangelicals so say something like this, but not the majority, and it isn't even how the traditional churches understand faith, which is more as a sort of infused knowledge that comes through grace but also often through ascetic labors, and in the lives of many saints much suffering.

The idea isn't that you just "get interested in Christianity" and become beatified though. This is maybe most clear in Orthodox theology where they are always reminding you that Christ didn't come to flip a switch and take suffering away, but rather transfigures suffering. The key advice comes from Saint Peter; be happy that you can suffer as Christ suffered. Join in his suffering. Transfigure it. That includes his doubts, temptation, and eventual fate being tortured to death by the very people he had come to save. This is how he "tramples down death by death."

Saint John or the Cross and other mystics talk about this a lot. There isn't some happy place you get to where things are assured. Rather, he talks about God withdrawing all consolations, including those of illumination (by which God is known), leaving us in utter darkness. This is the "Dark Night of the Soul" where one walks by faith, without consolation or surety, and he compares it to the sufferings in Hell itself, this spiritual anguish being worse than the mere physical torments of his captivity.

>>24979764
They are not part. It is entirely coherent. You just didn't experience something like this. You will.

>>24979755
Sure, that's the most common position. Contingent being must have causes. If they were necessary.

>>24979759
The case has been made over and over, see:

>explain how if contingent events/beings can occur for no reason at all, they shouldn't happen whenever and wherever, all the time? Why isn't there total chaos? What limits these uncaused events? Nothing can limit them. By definition, they are determined by nothing and so are wholly random. What do you call a cosmos where random events occur at random for no reason at all? Absurd chaos.

Note that this also is not in line with any of our experience either.

So, contingent beings have causes or they don't, A or ~A.

A has tons of evidence is support of it. If you want water to boil, you have to light a fire. If you want to have a son, you need to have sex with a woman, not a tree or pond. Likewise, rabbits don't just appear in our beds out of nowhere. If our dad dies, we won't accept from the police and medical examiner, "well, there probably was no cause of death, not even one we cannot determine, sometimes healthy people just cease living for no reason." Particularly, we would be incredulous if they followed this up with, "but stick around, maybe he will randomly come back to life. That happens for no reason sometimes too."

So, empirically, ~A is unsupported. But also, ~A makes doing philosophy and science pointless, since the world is random, which makes it self-refuting in a way.

There are many reasons why it is a silly position. Saying "you have to accept my absurdity to start an argument" makes no sense here.

>>24979738
the criteria is on you to explain what honest seeking is because you were the one who brought it up. why is connors method a foolproof way to prove god doesnt exist instead of him missing the mark? you said anyone who searches for god in the way conner did has to have a relationship with god or else he doesnt exist and another anon said based on what? which you didnt explain. you also said to to someone else that god should offer up connection which makes no sense since the offer is always there.

>>24979779
>If God wants a personal relationship with you, and you reach out to him honestly and in good faith, and he denies you
how did god deny you? You keep saying "honestly and "in good faith" but once again how would this method guarantee a belief in god? why does that method not working prove god doesn't exist? and where did you get the idea god categorically doesn't want a relationship with you from if you don't get a belief in god through this method?

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I know. You have no rebuttal to this >>24978163
Thread's been over since then. Stop embarrassing yourself already.

>>24979738
I don't know of many conversion stories that involve living with Christian roommates for a bit and taking some classes. Saint Augustine's Confessions span 33 years until his conversion, and they are pretty agonized.

>>24979454
Epicurus was the Greek equivalent of a redditor bugman atheshit.

>>24978933
If you are a materialist, you are an idiot.
But, my point isn't that those things "don't count", it's that they only pose difficulties to materialist ideas of causality.

>>24977963
Why do the wicked prosper?

>>24980077
because God wills it

>>24980078
Then He's neither good nor just.

>>24980082
You dont get to judge God. God judges you. This is not a difficult concept.

>>24980094
Here's your (You), tranny.

>>24980073
>Our metaphysics is unfalsifiable by empirical findings about how reality works, therefore criticisms based on how reality works don’t count.
kek

>>24979779
I don't think your conclusion follows your premise. It's like the claim that a benevolent God cannot exist because evil exists. God has a long term goal in mind, and sometimes things that are not in line with said goal are needed for its eventual completion.

Demonstrate necessity without assuming it.

>>24980148
>*inhales oxygen*

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>>24980170
My brother in Christ, that’s cardiopulmonary function, not an ontology.

>>24980180
Nonetheless, 'tis a necessity, innit?

>>24980180
>NOOOO, NOT LIKE THAAAT!!
LMAO, get fucked.

>>24980183
If necessity requires necessity as a premise, then it’s not a proof, it’s a preference. Your argument isn’t universal, it’s closed-circuit logic. You’re proving Aquinas to Aquinas. You might be able to convert yourself in front of a mirror I guess.

>>24980189
Lick my scrotum you dumb nerd, lmao.

>>24977963
This thread isn't going to get you into heaven lil' bro.

>>24977963
I killed God.

>>24977963
I booked a hotel room to kill myself in tomorrow and will disprove him once and for all.

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>>24977963

He fails the physique check.

Catholics literally worship statues, lmao.

>>24980120
If God is required to allow things to happen that he doesn't intend in order to bring about what he does intend, this would imply there is a set of rules that supersedes God which he cannot violate. In short, he can't bring about the thing he wants directly, but only through machinations like an agent operating within a system, not an architect of the system itself. This invalidates the idea of God being all powerful or the absolute source of being.

>>24979820
You are just assuming the offer is there. If a person seeks for the offer, genuinely, sincerely seeks for it, and does not find it, we are left with two options. The option you cling to, that somehow the person is at fault for not seeking hard enough, or, which seems more likely, the offer doesn't exist. If God wishes to have a relationship, it seems totally incoherent for him to place so many arbitrary obstacles to the point that some people go their whole lives never connecting with him despite being open to it. You tacitly acknowledge this problem by simply saying the person in question wasn't honest enough, but your solution is a kind of infinite moving of the goal posts where if any person doesn't find, you can axiomatically assert they didn't look hard enough, and you probably perceive this difficulty because you refuse to actually outline a criteria which would falsify your position.

>>24979848
If God wishes to have a personal relationship, why does he place such horrendous obstacles to that outcome? If I, as a father, want a relationship with my son, I go to him, even before he cries. I am there for him and I answer him at the slightest call. Yet God, the supposed pinnacle of fatherhood, demands decades of blind faith in his existence all the while maintaining absolute silence? What nonsense is this?

>>24979833
see>>24980793
If you knock on a door for decades and no one answers, the safe assumption is that no one is home.

>>24980793
Perhaps, God doesn't want any relationship with you; he wants a particular relationship.

>>24980800
Seems like another moving of the goal posts, but okay. As I said, if I am a father I answer my son at his first call to me; to stand by in silence for decades as he opens his heart to me is inconceivable.

Not disproving him by any means, but I fail to see how divine simplicity isn't flagrantly against the Trinity.
Why speak of a trinity at all, if all differentiation is formal and not real? How can a partless non-entity have internal relationships, when internal relationships presuppose parts? You can't exactly allegorize that.

>>24980810
You don't get to decide with your weak pathetic mortal brain what a relationship is with the divine creator of everything.

One follows the Church because one is stupid and they are more learn'd than us. The point is to maintain the tradition of the establishment because the alternative is gay fucking Protestantism.

God operates on a moral logic higher than us. To say he has a personal relationship is just so you can rationalize it. He is so beyond you that you should submit to God because of this distance, not because of what he can do for you.

>>24980943
Thanks for demonstrating slave morality, now shoo, the adults are talking

>>24977963
Thomas Aquinas Said that all he wrote was like hay in the face of his first mystical experience.

>>24981033
Doesn't this undermine his entire theology up to that point? Why bother making arguments or trying to convert people if God just randomly decides to give mystical experiences that are orders of magnitude more persuasive?

>>24980970
Pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins.

>>24981243
He stopped writing after it, it happened shortly before his death. Non mystical theology is like 'food for babes', it's a pointing and description until the reader recognises the thing in their experience prior to conceptuality, the One which is called God.

>>24981292
What worse excess of pride is there than to say you have all the answers to all of the deepest mysteries of life? To claim the universe was created for your sake, so that God could create you in his image? The lack of self awareness is staggering, religion is always the gold medal winner in pride.

>>24978839
>Who created god?
God's uncreated

>Why can't there be multiple gods if one being "self-created"?
God being the ultimate, other gods would be sequent to God making them not gods.

>Why do you assume the creator of this flawed decaying universe is the supreme creator?
Because everything is sequent to God

>>24981323
How do you determine whether God is good or evil? We've all heard the theodicy justifying the existence of evil to bring about some ultimate good, but isn't it just as possible that good exists for the sole purpose of bringing about an ultimate evil? On what grounds could a person claim it is one and not the other? Personal preference? Hope?

>>24981329
>How do you determine whether God is good or evil?
Since he produces all goodnes, he must be Good.
>evil
Evil has no ontological existence.

>>24981329
>How do you determine whether God is good or evil?
Through the process of theosis a person's personal will is surrendered to God's will, their behaviour is saintly and tends to what we would call Good the more their will is surrendered. Evil comes from the human's free will, which God lamented giving us as said in Genisis.

The buddhist equivalent to this is seeing through then unbinding the self/ego, no more desires = no more human will = only the absolute functioning in the relative = saintly behaviour.

Subjectively they say it's extremely liberating and better than anything the world offers.

But better off asking a saint who has done the whole thing.

>>24981334
>Since he produces all goodnes, he must be Good.
Why? How did you determine this? Are you speaking of your own personal faith or hope?
>Evil has no ontological existence.
Are you going to justify this or just assert it?

>>24981341
>>Since he produces all goodnes, he must be Good.
>Why? How did you determine this?
It is a direct implication of him being the source of all being.
>>Evil has no ontological existence.
>Are you going to justify this or just assert it?
Just assert it.

>>24981335
So the core of Christianity is the repudiation of free will and the absolute subjugation and slavery of the individual? Really just giving the game away here, huh?

>>24981343
He produces all evilness because he is the source of all being. Only evil has ontological existence, not goodness. Now what?

>>24981346
Now we disagree. You live your life as though evil is primary and I live as though goodness is and we will see how it works out for whom. Something tells me it will go evil for you.

>>24981344
No they don't say that. It's like partaking in the divine, God works with and through you. Better off asking a monk or priest, I haven't done the whole thing.

>>24981341
They're empirical facts from mystic practice. Evil is created thus sequent thus has no inherent existence. When experience is 'stripped' of all conceptuality and semantic content, what's left is Good.

If what was left was evil, enlightenment would prob drive people insane or make them kill themselves, writhing around the floor screaming in terror or just sad. There'd surely be no religions. Someone should write a novel about it. Entire cultures keeping people distracted by materialism lest they discover the horrifying truth.

>>24981349
Ah, an appeal to outcomes. How very utilitarian of you.

>>24981350
If someone says "yeah, the boss gave you free will, but you better only use it how he says" the least that can be hoped for is that the one saying this will be aware of the irony in such a statement. Are you?

>>24981360
>They're empirical facts from mystic practice
I actually laughed out loud at this, thanks anon
>If what was left was evil, enlightenment would prob drive people insane
Aren't most "enlightened people" deemed insane by their contemporaries?

>>24981366
I prefer "pragmatic". Like the reason we invented words at all. Pragmatic.

>>24981375
>I actually laughed out loud at this, thanks anon
It's all very real, where did you think religions came from? You can experience it for yourself as well, it's not difficult.

>Aren't most "enlightened people" deemed insane by their contemporaries?
no

>>24981369
I suppose. It leads to a unique expression in each person though, and it's not forced on the human, the human gives up their own will by choice. You can do what you like, but obviously the thing that created you knows best, that seems to me to be inherent in the nature of being a seperate but created being.

>>24981369
If someone says "yeah, the boss gave you free will, but it doesn't matter what you do - the outcome is always the same" the least that can be hoped for is that the one saying this will be aware of the lack of freedom. Are you?

>>24979771
>who decided that?
Who decided anything you believe, dumbass? The Bible is just some shit a bunch of Jews wrote down.

>>24979654
anon is getting at something a little bit more troubling, the so-called munchausen trilemma

- infinite regress can only be stopped by prime movers
- prime movers can only prove their identity in relation to themselves
- if they want to prove their identity in relation to something else, they collapse into infinite regress

There's zero proof of anything supernatural thus the null hypothesis stands.

>>24981394
Your will can do what it likes, but can you will what you will? Hobbes's passage here >>24979723 elegantly outlines how every voluntary act of man is actually a necessary act following from the strict causes preceding it.

>>24977965
cause you touch self(& no ask forgive)

>>24982230
Yeah this is a subtle point which will be misconstrued on 4chan but a free will is also sequent to God so is only free when considered from a certain level of abstraction.

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>>24977963
>Aquinas spoke of the mythical city on the hill, soon that city will be real and we will be crowned its kings. Or, better than kings. Gods!

>>24977963
God isn't an Absolutely Simple Monad.
God is a Trinity.
God is Real.

>>24983490
So three Gods?

Also Thomas Aquinas is not a saint.
He doesn't believe in sainthood; it's nominal to him as become "like-God" is realistically impossible and thus can only be imaginative (nominal/vicarious).
He's a fraud.

>>24983493
One God.
Three Persons.
Much like you have one human essence, but have a will of your mind, a will of your body, and a will of your spirit.
You've "changed your mind".
You've fought yourself from going to sleep.
You've done shit despite feeling like shit.
You are a composite of multiple wills.
You are a microcosm of God's ontology; hence the phrase "Image of God".
You're smarter than this, I shouldn't have to explain a bad faith question.

>>24983493
Three for the price of one, like a meal deal

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>>24977965
/thread

>>24983500
>>24983501
Oh, so polytheism!

>>24983548
You only pay the 'price' for _one_, thus monotheism. Not sure how i could make this clearer for Americans but apparently it wasn't enough.

>>24983550
But if there are three Gods, it's polytheism.

>>24978851
>>24978958
>>24981323
>terrible christian arguments

lol imagine your cult getting beaten by "who created god"

>>24983557
oh shit you're right, someone should inform the church

>>24977963
Disproved by Kant's Fourth Antinomy