Dawkins seems to forget that God is not a material, physical being. — EnPassant
But does the designer need a designer? — EnPassant
Most definitely the designer needs a designer. — GreyScorpio
The question is not about God's existence it is about how God can be complex without a designer. If abstract knowledge can exist in God's mind you have complexity right there; mathematical complexity.I don't follow how this would warrent God to be able to pop into existence. Why is God exempt from logical rules if he can only do what is logically possible? — GreyScorpio
How can you justify something as complex as 'God' — GreyScorpio
How did God come into existence? — GreyScorpio
If 'God' was all knowing, powerful etc. There would be no room for doubt on whether he exists or not. — GreyScorpio
Existence' is what 'transcendent' is transcendent to. — Wayfarer
According to classical theology, God is not complex. I know that seems counter-intuitive, but it's part of the specification. — Wayfarer
How can something so simple create a universe as complex as this — GreyScorpio
whatever the New Atheists don’t believe in, it’s not God, at least not God as conceived by a single one of the major theistic traditions on the planet.
Instead, the New Atheists ingeniously deny the existence of a bearded fellow with superpowers who lives in the sky and finds people’s keys for them. Daniel Dennett wants to know “if God created and designed all these wonderful things, who created God? Supergod? And who created Supergod? Superdupergod?”—thereby revealing his lack of acquaintance not only with Augustine and Thomas but with Aristotle.
It was Aristotle who wrote that “one and the same is the knowledge of contraries.” Denys Turner, in his recent Thomas Aquinas (which makes a fine companion piece to The Experience of God), puts the matter like this: “Unless…what believers and atheists respectively affirm and deny is the same for both, they cannot be said genuinely to disagree.”
There are, then, a great many people who say “God” and mistakenly believe that they have the notion, at least, in common. Hart is interested in clarifying the notion, and one of his deeper points is that the major theistic religions do indeed have something in common when they say “God.” 1
if God is completely supremely perfect and supremely logical then it is only fair to say that those that exist can only act on those that exist. — GreyScorpio
Whoa there! The teapot is from Bertrand Russell who, I think it should be acknowledged, engaged charitably with Christianity while rejecting its claims, at least it seems that way from his discussions with Father Coplestone. I'd be pretty confident that Russell had read Aquinas and understood the claims of classical theism.But the caricatures which Dawkins makes out of God - the Flying Spaghetti Monster, orbiting teapot, celestial potentate - are indeed the figments of his own imagination.
The teapot is from Bertrand Russell who, I think it should be acknowledged, engaged charitably with Christianity while rejecting its claims, at least it seems that way from his discussions with Father Coplestone. — andrewk
Watts had a typically nuanced perspective... — andrewk
I'd be pretty confident that Russell had read Aquinas and understood the claims of classical theism. — andrewk
Very good point. How I would answer that (and I know my view is almost universally contested on the forum) is that the philosophical understanding of the relationship of God and creation was mainly derived from the Greek tradition, principally neoplatonism — Wayfarer
My experience is quite the contrary of this. Most theists I've encountered do not recognise that at all. Instead they write and speak at length about alleged properties of God - what She can do, what She wants, what She thinks, what She has said, what books She has dictated.The theist recognizes the vast reality which is beyond the capacity of human understanding, and that the unintelligibility of God is a reflection of this. — Metaphysician Undercover
Most definitely the designer needs a designer. — GreyScorpio
The explanation for why anything exists is going to run into an infinite regress, brute existence, or unknowns. — Marchesk
But you can't talk about god having a designer without talking about how he came to exist. Because that is the whole point, no? How did this complex knowledge come about in the first place? — GreyScorpio
God's mind it can evolve into mathematics — EnPassant
How does a necessary being become necessary and what warrants that? — GreyScorpio
Why should a omniscient being's mind be able to evolve, however? — GreyScorpio
My experience is quite the contrary of this. Most theists I've encountered do not recognise that at all. Instead they write and speak at length about alleged properties of God - what She can do, what She wants, what She thinks, what She has said, what books She has dictated. — andrewk
The theist that agrees that God is unintelligible and we can say nothing meaningful about Her is a rare beast indeed - but all the more admirable for that. — andrewk
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