Apparently communing with God makes a person mysterious and arrogant. A story as old as time.

:ok: Dismiss my last post. We're only talking past each other.

Welcome to the forum, junior :cool: It needs more youngsters like you!

No combination of lesser things can create a greater thing without something greater than the greater thing added to the lesser things. — Joe Mello

The union of the sets {a,b,c} and {d,e} is the set {a,b,c,d,e} which is "greater" than the initial sets. I'll not comment on the more general statement.

the Metaphysical Principle that I discovered — Joe Mello

How? How did you discover it? How did you know it was a Metaphysical Principle -- which is what exactly? like the law of identity, that sort of thing? -- rather than, say, a thought or an idea? Were you looking for Metaphysical Principles or did you just stumble upon it?

Bartricks, you're the most qualified person here, yet you can't follow a simple conversation.

I have been maintaining quite simply that in our observation of the physical universe, God exists out of necessity to logically explain it.

And you fell into some idea that has probably been stuck in your head for decades that God cannot exist out of necessity as he exists in himself because then he wouldn't be capable of not existing and therefore couldn't be God.

I never even got close to saying that God, as he is in himself, exists out of necessity.

And anyone can study philosophy for many years and get many degrees. But only a scholastically trained philosopher has become philosophically advanced in learning how to think.

G.K. Chesterton admitted that becoming a scholastic academic did not teach him what to think but how to think.

Your inability to ponder the metaphysical principle I gave to you is not a small thing. You simply do not have the philosophical clarity to think profoundly and without personal prejudices in the third degree of abstraction.

Hello, jgill.

Your example is greater in quantity not in quality.

Big difference.

Srap, I discovered the principle by being in the right place at the right time with the right mind and with the right people.

There was this one teacher of mine, a German priest, who spoke in a half dozen languages, read in a dozen, had doctorates in Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology, refuted everything from communism to Freud, and spent his long life constantly reading and writing alone in his room.

He taught it to me, and it was he who formulated it.

All I did was spend years learning to understand it, and years seeing how every new scientific discovery only supported it and never refuted it.

Tex, you're absolutely correct.

dimo, if you're so sure of your thinking you wouldn't get rattled and emotional when it gets upended.

Science uses metaphysical principles to function.

And only the science of Logic creates a metaphysical principle.

I asked you to ponder the principle, not hold my hand and skip away with me.

T Clark,

Your judgement of my contributions here so far isn't really much of a thing, now is it?

Your example is greater in quantity not in quality.

Big difference. — Joe Mello

Which perhaps you might have clarified in your OP. Since this is more a religious discussion I'll bow out.

jgill, equating God with religion in a philosophy forum is rather ridiculous.

I have been quite clear that a greater thing is greater in reality, not in mathematics.

Don't accuse me of not being clear because you fell into a fog.

You haven't addressed anything I said. The principle you mentioned in your OP is demonstrably false. God is not 'needed' to explain the universe and we have prima facie reason to believe God did not create it, as it is rather crappy, a point you've said nothing whatever to challenge. You seem to be just another standard dogma-loaded Christian who isn't interested in following reason save to the extent that reason can be used to support the dogmas.

Note, virtually everyone accepts that the first-cause argument for God is not, actually, an argument for God at all, but rather for the existence of some uncaused things. That is, it is an argument that shows that if anything exists, some things must exist uncaused. But it does not show that there must be just one such thing and that the thing in question is God. That's a gigantic leap and one that generates problems - and thus a leap it is quite irrational to make.

The only thing I have to say to you, because you're certainly heading in the right direction, is coming to know the absolute truth about our existence is absolutely knowable. — Joe Mello

:pray:

There was this one teacher of mine…, — Joe Mello

Stanley Jaki was like that, but I believe he was Hungarian.

Can God, according to you, create something infinitely greater than himself?

Lots of little things can be combined to make a greater thing. — Bartricks

By what? How does that occur? What causes that to occur? Why must ‘the universe’ emerging from the total chaos of the big bang result in living beings rather than heat death? There might be ways of addressing that question, but they won’t be trite,

You don't understand how combining lots of little things can make a big thing? I assume you have velcro shoes and not lace ups. Bloody hell. I do wonder sometimes why I bother posting criticisms and arguments. I'm serving Michelin-starred food to dogs. The point is that the principle in the OP is false. There's just no reason to think it is true, and plenty to think it is false.

I have said nothing about the emergence of life, I simply pointed out that one does not need to invoke God to explain the origins of the universe. Plus, as I keep saying, if one does posit God as the cause of everything, then you face the problem of evil: why on earth would God create a universe like this one and people like us? It makes no sense.

God is the necessary being for the physical universe, and us, to exist. — Joe Mello

I have been maintaining quite simply that in our observation of the physical universe, God exists out of necessity to logically explain it. — Joe Mello

What proofs of this do you have in mind? I can think of two: The Aristotelian argument of the Unmoved Mover and the Leibnizian contingency argument.

salamander, you’re right on track. Good for you, really.

This principle was formulated by Father Marius Schneider over fifty years ago by him taking his complete understanding of Aristotle and Aquinas, mainly, and many others, such as Duns Scotus and Anselm, and contemplating on this body of philosophical thinking that was no longer scattered texts but an integral part of his own thinking.

This principle did not spring up in his mind, but was a true achievement of his life’s work and personal talent.

Google it and you get nothing … or possibly me.

Philosophy is basically dead in our world today. And philosophical genius, the type of which takes a lifetime to develop, is basically extinct.

have you heard this simple principle before? — Joe Mello

Not in those exact words, no, but as I said....close enough. Seems to me any intelligent design argument arises from similar iterations of your personally derived metaphysical principle, and your comments subsequent to your response to me lends support.

The dismissal of this principle under the auspices of what it sounds like is not a philosophical accomplishment. — Joe Mello

If your principe sounds like it has similar internal truth value to principles that sound just like it, but are on the record chronologically prior to it, yours can be dismissed as merely repetitious, being no more or less interesting than its predecessors. And that judgement, in the form of dismissal from repetition, while mere opinion, albeit with empirical support, is nonetheless a purely philosophical accomplishment.

You’ve got three pages of responses in a scant twenty hours, so you’ve been successful in drawing attention to yourself. But the principle, so vigorously propounded herein, cannot be said to enjoy any such success at all, having been established, at least in kind, close to 400 years ago, and that only so far as I know.

That you have been introduced is certainly true; that something else has been introduced, is not. No reflection on you, of course; you apparently weren’t aware.

Carry on, with best wishes of course.

Bartricks, "people like us"?

What kind of people should God have created? Winged angels? He did. But angels watch us in awe, for we stand between eternal bliss and temporary struggle, with a personal and individual destiny to become what we ourselves achieve or do not achieve.

The skeptic ignorantly looks at a man hanging on a cross as a horror and failure when he is the most successful human being who ever lived. For he thought as God thought and lived not in service to his own temporary gain but in service to the eternal gain of himself, everyone else, and God, the author of reality.

If you cannot look around you, and within your own heart, and see humanity's spiritual need as its greatest need, and the man on the cross as humanity's perfect and beautiful Messiah, then all your learning just made you less of a human being.

To think as God thinks is to play both the long game and the deep game.

To think as man thinks is to play an ignorant and selfish superficial game.

I couldn't be more grateful to be born in this world and a "person like me".

And I couldn't be more exited to get up every morning to see what lies next, good or bad.

It was written in the first century that "The Glory of God is a human being fully alive".

The skeptic is half alive through a superficial prideful ignorance of who he is and where he is.

Your mind is not the first place to search out God and the meaning to your life. Your heart is.

Your mind is not the first place to search out God and the meaning to your life. Your heart is. — Joe Mello

Conclusion: Belive in God is irrational and it depends on each one's beliefs and emotions

Mww, so I'm not aware, I'm repetitious, I'm drawing attention to myself, I'm not interesting ...

You feel better now?

Your work is done. You put me and the principle tidily in a small draw in the corner of your mind.

You're free again to walk away from any argument you don't understand in the same pair of shoes you have probably been wearing since you were a teenager.

Bye bye, then.

Janus, your question displays your lack of understanding of what God's omnipotence means.

God is the greatest being we can imagine, but our imaginations are not a perfect understanding of God's abilities, or even of what words mean.

It is God's will that dictates what he does or does not do, not his omnipotence.

When we observe our own will, we see that we ordain things to happen and allow things to happen. So does God. So, if God, for example, ordains that he will not do an evil act but allow an evil act to happen, he is free to do so, even if he is omnipotent, and no matter what Epicurus has told you.

javi, I said the “first” place, for only after our hearts are in the right place will our minds be.

Learn to read … and to proofread.

But, Joe, I guess when we have to debate about argumentation, "heart" or "love" have no space here. If you want to be rational you need to use the mind and knowledge. Because beliefs themselves are just pure guessworks. If I have to prove something I would use reasons not emotions

And only the science of Logic creates a metaphysical principle. — Joe Mello

Since when? Is it a new "principle" that you discovered or your German priest taught you that also??

Anyway the interaction with you is pointless. Your desperate need to believe in God made you mix everything and make an intellectual salad out of it.You use philosophy, Logic, science, the meaning of word "great" etc with the way it fits into your abstract "principle". But that doesn't make it right. Sorry.

Your way of thinking goes like "since science can't disprove my principle then it is the right one"! So whatever science can't prove wrong, It's then right! I hope you see how ridiculous that sounds.

With that way of thinking also you could support anything at all.That there is a life after death and say "oh science can't prove it wrong, so I m right" or I don't know, even that flies were once human beings in another planet but they were "bad" and God transfered them to Earth and condemned them to stick into shit! Can science prove it wrong?

Generally I don't have a problem at all with theists but your arguments rape Logic. You could easily just say "guys this is my opinion or simply what I believe, let's discuss it" and it would be totally fine with me.
But setting principles?? Pfffff.. You sound dogmatic with no evidence at all and with dogmatic people I do have a problem indeed. Even atheists dogmatics.

Anyway this was my last response to you. I see you got many "friends" here with your fancy entrance into the forum. So I will leave you to them. Take care.

Your judgement of my contributions here so far isn't really much of a thing, now is it? — Joe Mello

I made a specific claim - that you have made most of your assertions without justification. Do you dispute that? It makes your claims to be a qualified philosopher unsupportable.

I think the fact that you are unwilling to follow the forum's standard methods for quoting and referencing other posts shows you are not interested in collegial philosophical discussion.

I don't expect you'll be around on the forum for long. You don't seem to me to be someone who can tolerate recognition that the emperor, by which I mean your arguments, has no clothes, by which I mean reasoned justification.

dimo, if you have been telling yourself for so very long that the points you make are the only points worth making, then you’ll probably live the rest of your life standing on the head of your own pin.

Jump off, man.