Intelligently designed how or for what? — tim wood
That - or something equivalent - would be sufficient empirical evidence. Of course it would be most helpful if the giant voice would also tell us the proper religion: — EricH
So you hold that God exists, yes? Can you say anything substantive about
that existence? — tim wood
As to intelligently designed, as a home? For whom? For creation? Of what?
'Rational warrant' and 'empirical evidence' are different things. Empirical evidence, as construed by modern naturalism, starts, as a matter of principle, by excluding consideration of anything beyond the natural domain, and then demands evidence to the contrary, having already made the in-principle commitment not to consider it.
As far as a Plantinga is concerned, belief in God has a rational warrant, on the traditional grounds - anticipated by Plato - that the harmony and intricacy of the natural world bespeaks an intentional creation. The counter-arguments from scientific naturalism, are what seem question-begging from that perspective, because they assume that the order of the cosmos is somehow self-generating or spontaneously occuring
We get it, materialism= bad, and anyone who says materialism=bad is OK in your book. — Enai De A Lukal
If a giant voice would emerge from nowhere saying: — EricH
The scientific methodologies do not inherently (heck, you could launch examinations of "supernatural magic" if there was much to examine).
They're just self-critical, seeking to self-error-correct, minimize bias, falsify, all that.
And it so happens that, say, Sagan's garage dragon, fictional characters, imaginary beings, hallucinatory claims, etc, tend to be discounted as a consequence. And why wouldn't they anyway? Mental attempts to populate the world with such ... stuff doesn't make it so.
If you cannot differentiate whether, say, Shiva or Yahweh are fictional or real, then why insist (and preach indoctrinate proselytize) that they're real in the first place? (If pressed, I might take this a step further, and say that some such activities converge on fraud or deception.) — jorndoe
But then whats the point in saying that they're question begging? If all the premises are correct then the conclusion must follow? We can't just swoop away deductive arguments altogether for begging the question as such, right? Is only the ontological argument invalid?
Surely these arguments are rejected for other reasons than these two.
I do feel as though I should respond to that, as it's not the first time you've said it. Expressed in these terms, it reduces the entire question to personal prediliction, 'what I like'. I think criticism of materialism is more profound than that, as it is the de-facto philosophy of secular culture. I don't believe the main stream of Western philosophy is materialism at all.
The quintessential refutation of the design/teleological arguments do not come from "scientific naturalism"- as you say, naturalism as a methodological principle rules it out out of hand- but from e.g. Hume, as in his DCNR. The argument's flaws are very real, and not a matter of an a priori rejection. Like the other traditional arguments for the existence of God, its just not a good argument... and thus that half of the problem here- the traditional philosophical arguments for the existence of God are all fatally flawed, — Enai De A Lukal
there is no empirical evidence for God's existence, so belief in the existence of God appears to be entirely unwarranted (and therefore unreasonable). — Enai De A Lukal
Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.
If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.
Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.
The problem here is that it wasn't relevant and so was a change of topic. If I wanted to defend or talk about materialism, I would find a thread about materialism. — Enai De A Lukal
As mentioned, I don't believe Christianity has ever relied on philosophical arguments to establish the existence of God.
I should, however, mention one body of solid empirical evidence for, at least, divine intervention. You will recall the origin of the term 'devil's advocate' - it was a role accorded to an ecclesiastical offical whose job it was to try and debunk evidence of the miracle cures that were required for the process of the beatification of Catholic saints. And the reason that this body of records is 'solid' is because the process has been carried out over centuries, and has been meticulously recorded, so there's a reasonable data set. This caught the attention of a haemotologist, Jacalyn Duffyn, whose expert testimony was sought regarding one such case. It piqued her interest and she began to study the records. She said:
Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.
If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.
Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.
From here and here. It is of note that Duffyn continues to profess atheism and was not converted by this research, but she does acknowledge that the cures in all these cases defied scientific prediction.
I can't see how they're not related; they're two sides of a coin.
this only strengthens my point: — Enai De A Lukal
This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead.What would evidence for invisible garden fairies look like? Sagan's garage dragon? Fictional characters? Perhaps more pertinently, how would you differentiate?
This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead. — Punshhh
But learn the differences between belief and reality, what is true and what is supposed. — tim wood
Is this a definition, or an observation? — Banno
It is a deduction. There can be no properties/contingent things, without substance. The eternal substance that is, is the substance of all contingent things. You cannot have a property/form without substance. — EnPassant
But three things at least remain controversial. First, it is disputed what kinds of concepts need to be deployed to characterise these enduring things: are they the rich variety of traditional or ‘Aristotelian’ substance concepts, or will various ways of identifying things simply as physical bodies with certain characteristics do the job? Second, it is still unclear how far our substance concepts purport to reflect a component in reality (real or imagined) over and above the bundle of properties that constitute its intelligible aspects. Third, the unclarity of the connection between what a thing is and what it does leaves unresolved the degree of interdependence between substance concepts and notions of purpose and final causation.
But three things at least remain controversial.
That's an awful lot of baggage to drag around behind your notion of God. — Banno
SO if I have it right, accepting that God exists, for you, involves accepting a a bunch of obscure, somewhat archaic metaphysical notions. — Banno
Yet your response goes ahead and presupposes "Him" anyway. :confused: Presupposition does not make it so (and is not particularly philosophical in this context). This is what you'd have to show in the first place.This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. † — Punshhh
Using intellect? † Let's also go by evidence. (y)Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead. — Punshhh
otherwise the universe is an abstraction — EnPassant
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