I still think it is irrational to make definitive claims about people you don't know or understand
It isn't irrational to acknowledge that theistic claims have not met their burden of proof.
When I asked how a pixy is philosophically possible I'm wondering which characteristic you aretaking as a base and how you can demonstrate that specifically a pixy is possible. Because if the same argument can be use to demontrate basically everything that can come out of your mind then is hardly logical.
Yes. That is my point. There are two kinds of "possible."
- When something cannot be absolutely disproven. We can call this "philosophically possible." Just about every claim that could ever be made, even the false ones, fall in this category. That includes gods, pixies, unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, etc., so it's fairly useless when talking about what is/isn't possible.
- When the actual possibility of something has been demonstrated. Neither pixies nor gods fall in this category.
God is a different story because what we're really pursuing is the possibility of one first cause aka one initiator/creator/whatever you wanna called it.
The existence of a god, let alone the actual possibility a god could exist, hasn't been demonstrated.
Our beliefs based on scientific evidence need a bit of faith too after all
Faith is the belief in something without evidence, so no.
People may use faith -and whatever else- as an excuse/flag of surrender/etc, I guess. But faith really is kinda what I said in my previous post. Its profound meaning is way up high. Maybe down to earth it could mean as if it's a puzzle piece to supply our lack -or low level- of spiritual comprehension skill. I say that we as humans aren't capable of fully understand a thing, let alone the concept of god. That's why -I think- faith is a necessary piece for some religions concept of salvation.
If you're using the word "faith" to be synonymous with a religious belief, then it can't be used to justify the belief; it is the belief.
If you're using "faith" to mean belief without sound reason or evidence, then I agree with you that faith is "necessary" for religious belief.
Adding terms like "spiritual," "religious," "salvation," etc. to a claim does not exclude the claim from having a burden of proof, and if the claim hasn't met its burden of proof, it's irrational to believe the claim is true.
I'm not even arguing about the burden of proof thing you keep asking.
That's too bad, since it's literally the entire point, and nothing else matters. A claim always has a burden of proof, and if evidence hasn't been provided to believe a claim (whether it's physical evidence, a logically sound syllogism, etc.), it is irrational to accept that claim as true. If your goal is to argue that theism is rational, get to the point and provide the evidence.
My point was that the god claim has its rational basis since you called that irrational for not having an evidence
Theistic claims have not met their burden of proof. If you want to argue otherwise, provide the rational basis for believing in god.
We can sorta reach the meaning of perfect by our natural reasoning, that begins by understanding the first nearby things we have in sight in early age, things that were given to us: the tree, the river, etc. Our first approach is through our senses. Then we are able to analyse and think 'What's the cause of the tree?, what's the cause of fire?, what's the cause of heat, etc... All in all the world is ordered by causes and effects. But it would be logically absurd if we imagine that causes and effects track down infinitely. That is a circular logic. So there comes the first cause, and by force it has to be uncaused.
- First, you did nothing here to define what it means for something to be "perfect," but I don't think we need to continue down that path. It's irrelevant.
- If you are going to argue that there was a first cause to the universe, you need to provide evidence for it. Up until this point, you've just been asserting it without justification. How did you rule out the universe not having a beginning? How did you rule out the universe beginning to exist but not having a cause (causality is a property of the universe, so when you say the universe requires a cause, you're nonsensically saying causality requires a cause). Even if you ruled out all other possible explanations that we have (you didn't), the absence of alternative explanations is not evidence that another explanation is true. If you're going to assert the universe requires a "first cause," you need to provide evidence for this claim.
- Even if you were to establish the universe had a cause (you haven't), where is your evidence that the cause is God? How did you rule out atemporal causes (e.g. How did you rule out the universe in the future causing itself in the past?)? How did you rule out naturalistic processes causing the universe? Again, even if you ruled out all other possible explanations that we have (you didn't), the absence of alternative explanations is not evidence that another explanation is true. If you're going to assert God is the "first cause" to the universe, you need to provide evidence for this claim.
In summary, there's no evidence that the universe requires a "first cause," and even if it did have a cause, there's no evidence that God was that first cause. Comically, any reason you have to exclude "God" from needing a first cause can potentially be applied to the universe itself or natural processes that hypothetically caused the universe. "God" has zero explanatory power and only serves to add a extra questions for no reason.
So, this uncaused thing has to be the most perfect
You haven't come close to defining what it means for something to be "most perfect," and you haven't come close to providing evidence for the claim that an uncaused thing has to be "perfect," let alone exists.
but given that we can't understand perfection since our own intellectuality is imperfect, the only resource we have is to first understand imperfection and then, by denial, get a glimpse of what perfection could be.
We can't talk about what perfection could be without defining what it even means. In addition, speculating about what perfection could look like doesn't demonstrate it exists.
If something is corruptable or dies or is damageable or transforms is imperfect. Then, by denial, perfect has to be the opposite: permanent and eternal, immutable.
You haven't demonstrated that something "eternal" exists or has to exist, and even if you did, you haven't demonstrated it's God.
Everything that materially exist has a cause.
You haven't demonstrated this to be true. For example, while the formation of my computer had a cause (I built it), we are talking about "formation" as the rearranging of atoms and molecules to form my computer. When we are talking about the "cause to the universe," you don't actually have any examples of anything coming to exist when it didn't exist before, let alone coming to exist via a cause. You haven't demonstrated the need for a cause to the universe. See above.
Even if you did demonstrate that everything that materially exists has a cause, you haven't demonstrated that cause is a god.
There comes that God (what we call perfection)
"Something perfect had to have created the universe."
"Perfect = God"
"Therefore, God exists."
I hope you can see this is a wholly uncompelling argument. It's just a blind assertion.
There comes that God (what we call perfection) has to be cause uncaused.
Demonstrate this.
Whether it is a being or a thing is irrelevant here.
The word "God" comes with baggage. Are you saying "God" can be unintelligent and indistinguishable from a natural process? Are you just using it synonymously with "first cause"? You haven't demonstrated that a first cause is required or exists, but that would at least get rid of one of the problems with your argument (that the first cause argument doesn't actually lead to the conclusion that an intelligent or personified god exists).
In other words, if the first half of the first cause argument were logically sound (it isn't), it would only demonstrate a first cause and nothing more. You seem to be agreeing with this.
BTW this also demonstrate that if god exist he is one and not many.
The first cause argument is not a sound argument, but even if it were, you're just blindly asserting "there can only be one." Lol.
But still we could ask how does it exist... it must have a beginning, a creator, otherwise what is prior to god? Well that question wouldn't apply. There is no 'before' as that is a time concept and, according to this reasoning, he is out of time, he's pure eternity. The problem is that we are not able to think the world without the time.
Any reason you can give for why God does not require a cause can potentially be applied to the universe or the natural processes that caused the universe. There is no rational basis for asserting that a god is required.
But all those characteristics (eternal, immutable, immaterial, timeless) are of what religions and people in general define as God.
These might be characteristics that some religious ascribe to God, but they aren't synonymous with God. Every major religion I'm aware of ascribes a lot more characteristics than these to their gods.
As I've said many times, this is just a logical thought on the possibility.
Nothing you've said demonstrates that a god is actually possible, let alone exists. Saying "maybe the universe has a cause and that cause is god" is an unsubstantiated claim.
Logic can only demonstrate a positive claim not a negative one and I'm not saying this is a proof or anything btw.
If you're saying that your arguments don't demonstrate the existence of a god, then belief in that god is irrational, regardless of whether or not a god might exist.
Anyway, Idk exactly what you expect by demontration but I'm sure we'll be out of luck. Really, what demonstration would an atheist accept for the conclusion that there is a god? what sort of specific proof would an atheist accept for someone to be god? What would that being/thing have to be able to do? What would he have to show us or do to us in order to believe? I'm not even sure but in the meantime we may be filling that gap with nonsense.
I don't know what would count as evidence that demonstrates a god's existence, but that's not my problem; it's the problem of the claim if it's as unverifiable as it is unfalsifiable.
However, if a god exists, if it's all-knowing, if it's all-powerful, and it wants me to believe in its existence, then that god knows the answer to the question of what it would take to convince any rational skeptic of that god's existence.
@september796, I've enjoyed our conversation, but unless we distill this conversation down to its main point(s), it's just too many things to respond to in any reasonable amount of time. Because you and I are so thorough, the conversation has ballooned with each of our responses.
I politely ask, if you respond to my post, that we reboot and focus on just the following question:
What can you say that demonstrates the existence of a god? (we don't need to focus on whether or not it's possible). If the answer is "nothing," then we should be in agreement that belief in a god is irrational. If the answer is "the first cause argument," then I'd like a numbered syllogism with premises and conclusions so we can very quickly reject bad premises and irrelevant conclusions. The syllogism for what's probably the most common first cause argument looks like this:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause, and that cause is God.
#1 is unsubstantiated and should be rejected, so the argument is already unsound.
#2 is unsubstantiated and should be rejected, which also makes the argument unsound.
We don't have to pay attention to #3 since the first two premises have been rejected. In addition, if we were to assume the truthfulness of the first two premises, the cause of the universe being God doesn't logically follow the first two premises, so the argument is invalid in addition to being unsound.