you have the fallacy you accused me of in the first place. there you have to stop using the word gods

Also the problem you having is with the fact God is transcendent. I'm trying to explain a concept where best I can in human turmes.

And if you want to know what we believe look no farther than the Nicene Creed

Also you don't understand set's and subsets

You, and other Christians have to ask yourself: can I believe in something that all logic says is not possible to exist? If I can believe it, am I completely gone, or am I just denying the fact to myself that my belief makes no possible sense?


Just a quick thought if I might. I never understood why people argue that, since there is phenomena in the world that defies logic; cosmology, consciousness, logic of self reference, law of excluded middle/half truth's existing, etc..

So in that sense, since we have these unexplained things happening, why is it such a leap to conclude that the supernatural exists?

Of course, Metaphysics are in large part theories, however, experience combined with inductive reasoning can connect the dots and make things plausible/probable. No?

am I just denying the fact to myself that my belief makes no possible sense? — 3017amen

Please make explicit what your criteria of sense are. And, why must beliefs make sense to you (or, probably your beliefs ought to make some sense to you) - or anyone else?

The tension that seems ever maintained by a never-ending stream of tyros - and we've all been that person - is the claim, the belief, that the belief is subject to and must comport with standards appropriate for science.

Belief (I argue) holds a position with respect to matters that are contingent that axioms hold in thinking on topics that are not contingent (or, as everything ultimately depends on "had better be," a qualitatively different level of contingency).

And one difference is that the axiom is an agreement on a foundational principal that is itself never after in question. A belief on the other hand is conceded in advance as a ground for argument, but itself remains in question, if not always conscious question.

And that is the how and why a scientist can say such-and-such is the case, while a Christian in speaking of his religion takes care to express himself in terms of what he believes, accepts on faith.

In consequence, any question as to the "truth" of any religion is intrinsically a nonsense question. That does not mean that religion is immune to lots of different kinds of questions; it just means that some questions are basically stupid. Just as is the case with any science.

Hey Tim, I think your post is in response to 'God must be an atheist's' quote. I didn't say ...." or am I just denying the fact to myself that my belief makes no possible sense?"

He said that.

So in that sense, since we have these unexplained things happening, why is it such a leap to conclude that the supernatural exists? — 3017amen

Because then that answer becomes all the more explained and so then a higher explanation is needed, over the lesser one, and so forth. So, perhaps the simple is First, with complexity becoming later on.

Sure Poetic, that's one reason why I posted earlier:

Socrates: "What Plato is about to say is false."
Plato: "Socrates has just spoken truly."

How can we resolve the truth value of those statements, and why do they exist...

Well, of course we don't know why a lot of things in nature exist, including ourselves. So maybe a better or more intriguing question is: how is it that we are able to produce unresolved paradox's like those 2 statements above.

Thus the analogies of brute mystery, unexplained phenomena, supernatural, et.al.

how is it that we are able to produce unresolved paradox's like those 2 statements above. — 3017amen

They misleadingly stated unpredictables as fact.

we don't know why a lot of things in nature exist — 3017amen

Existence had no alternative and so what is here now was inherent.

Hey Poetic:

That's pretty good! But, I wonder :

1. How were they mislead (?)
2. If they were misled, is the statement a half-truth? That of course is logically impossible.
3. Were thier predictions based upon an inference of sorts I wonder?
4. Why do I even care to wonder?

Maybe Darwin could help us! After all, he said that abstract concepts ( like mathematics ) help us survive in the jungle LOL ( only kidding of course).

Here's an inference of sorts, maybe they were misled just like the metaphorical tree of knowledge! We are barred from perfect truth and the true nature of things...

Anywho, to that end regarding the last point about the mystery of existence and the nature of things:

Ah, existence is existential then! Sounds like the book of Ecclesiastes...

Anywho, to that end regarding the last point about the mystery of existence — 3017amen

Well, we have to mention the Trinity to stay on topic. Newton spent much of his life railing against the Trinity. Ironically, he worked at Trinity College. OK, that's done.

Existence isn't a mystery, since it has no alternative; it has to be, with no option not to be.

1. The concept of the trinity is logically impossible
2. The nature of our existence remains unexplained
3. The integer of consciousness and subconsciousness is logically impossible
4. The nature of our consciousness is unexplained

Feel free to parse and ponder

1. The concept of the trinity is logically impossible — 3017amen

It doesn't matter, really, as it is not surly established and is already once removed from its base upon a 'God' that isn't established either, as an unknown, for then only the idle chatter of nebulous abstracts of word salads pour forth… even from Newton.

2. The nature of our existence remains unexplained — 3017amen

Cosmic and biological evolution noted over 14 billion years satisfies this.

3. The integer of consciousness and subconsciousness is logically impossible — 3017amen

4. The nature of our consciousness is unexplained — 3017amen

We're not able to inspect the first person private aspect from a public view. Yet, nature made it, as in (2).

HALLEY, NEWTON, AND HOOKE

Halley was a sea captain, a cartographer, a professor
Of geometry, a deputy of the Royal Mint, an astronomer,
And the inventor of the deep-sea diving bell,
And wrote some on magnetism, tides,
Planet motions, and fondly on opium.

He invented the weather map and actuarial table ages,
Even proposed methods to work out the Earth’s old age,
Its distance from the sun, even how to keep fresh fish,
But one thing he didn’t do was to discover Halley’s comet,
For he merely noted that it was yet another return of it.

He made a wager with Robert Hooke, the cell describer,
And with the great and stately Christopher Wren:
They bet upon why the planets’ orbit were ellipses.

Hooke, a known credit-taker,
Claimed he’d solved the problem,
But had to conceal it
So that others could yet know the satisfaction.

Well, Halley became consumed with finding the answer,
So he called upon the Lucasian Mathematics Professor.
Isaac Newton was indeed brilliant beyond measure,
But was solitary, joyless, paranoid—no pleasure.

Once he had inserted a needle in his eye and poked around,
Far inserting the bodkin between the eye and the bone.
Another time, he’d stared at the sun for so very long
That he had to spend many days in a darkened room.

Frustrated by mathematics, Isaac invented the calculus,
And then for twenty-seven years kept it hidden from us.
Likewise, he did the same with the understanding of light
And spectroscopy, keeping it for thirty years in the dark.

For Newton,
Science was but a partial part of his life’s routes,
For much of his time
Was given to alchemy and religious pursuits.

He was wholeheartedly devoted
To the religion of Arianism,
Whose main tenet was
That there could be no Holy Trinity.

Ironically, he worked as a Professor at Trinity College,
The only one there who was not Anglican.

He also spent an inordinate amount of time studying
The floor plan of the lost temple of Solomon the King,
Even learning Hebrew, the better to scan the texts.

Another single minded quest was
To turn base metals into precious ones,
His papers revealing this preoccupation
Over optics and planetary motions and such mentations.

Well, Halley asked Newton what the curve would be
If the planets’ attraction toward the sun was
The reciprocal to the square of their distance from it.
Newton promptly answered, of course, an “ellipse”.

Not finding his calculations of it, Newton not only rewrote it,
But retired for two years to produce his master work,
The Plilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

To Halley’s horror,
Newton refused to release the crucial third volume,
Without which the first two would make little sense.
There had been a dispute between Newton and Hooke
Over the priority of the inverse square law in the book.

That solved by Halley’s diplomacy, the Royal Society
Had pulled out from the publication, failing financially,
For, the year before, there had been a very costly flop
Called The History of Fishes; so, Halley himself popped
The funds for the publication out of his own pocket.

Newton contributed nothing,
As usual, and, to make matters worse,
Halley had just taken a position as the society’s clerk,
They failing to pay the promised 50 pounds to his purse,
Paying him only with very many copies of
The History of Fishes!

"Newton contributed nothing"

I think that sums it up Poetic! Unless I am missing something, my propsitions remain largely unanswered. But that's ok. The tree of life and knowledge had suggested that.

(Like you, I want to respect the original OP about the Trinity, unless you'd like to start another thread...).

I think the Trinity was supposed to display the Christian's perceptions of his personality, even the Jews had more than one name for him, names that reflected aspects/facets of his personality. Jehovah Shammah, Jehovah Nissi, etc

I'll try to explain the concept of the Trinity. First, no contradictions are allowed, even when talking about God, for contradictions represent an error in our thoughts, not a limitation in God.

Christianity is a monotheistic religion in which there is 1 God, the Trinity, which is composed of 3 Divine Persons. Although each Person has all the intrinsic properties of perfection such that they are all at the top of the ontological ladder, they are not in themselves God apart from the other Persons; and there never was an instant in time when one existed apart from the others.

To escape the objection that the 3 Persons are one and the same through the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, each Person differ not in their intrinsic properties, but by the relationship each has with the other two Persons. The Father "begets" (creates a thing of the same nature) the Son, the Son is begotten by the Father, and the Holy Spirit "proceeds" from the Father and the Son (in which the term "proceed" is quite technical so I won't describe here).