Now for the philosophical point (remembering that I don't care what Catholics think, I only care about what makes sense - which seems very different). — Bartricks

:fire: You're on a roll amigo!

If a person is constrained by logic — Bartricks

Can it be said that logic frees rather than constrains? To be perfectly logical then is a divine attribute, oui? If so, the stone paradox is both a positive (god doesn't do irrational stuff) and a negative (god can't do irrational stuff).

Too, suicide, an exclusively human phenomenon (recall your previous coupla-months-old post) simply won't make sense to animals. Is our relationship with god of a similar character? Clearly, there's something inanimate about life - a stone, a plane full of screaming passengers, both follow the laws of gravity. How often do we stop and examine a worm, a bug? Do we feel any compassion for microbes (jains excepted)?

I don't think it is possible to go beyond or change the laws of logic when the concept is properly understood. — A Christian Philosophy

Do you agree that it is actual nonsense - an actual contradiction - to maintain that of two people, the one with less power is the more powerful?

I take it I do not need to wait for an answer, as the claim that "the less powerful is the more powerful" is a clear contradiction, and thus clear nonsense.

Do you agree that a person who is not bound by logic is more powerful than one who is?

Can it be said that logic frees rather than constrains? — Agent Smith

No. If one is not bound by logic - because one is its author - then one has a power that someone who is bound by logic lacks, namely the power to alter logic. There's no power one gains by being constrained by logic.

If so, the stone paradox is both a positive (god doesn't do irrational stuff) and a negative (god can't do irrational stuff). — Agent Smith

There is no paradox there. Can God make a stone too heavy for him to lift? Yes. There are at least two ways he could do this. He could divest himself of his omnipotence. Or, more impressively, he could make a contradiction true (by making a stone that is too heavy for him to lift and lifting it).

Too, suicide, an exclusively human phenomenon (recall your previous coupla-months-old post) simply won't make sense to animals. Is our relationship with god of a similar character? Clearly, there's something inanimate about life - a stone, a plane full of screaming passengers, both follow the laws of gravity. How often do we stop and examine a worm, a bug? Do we feel any compassion for microbes (jains excepted)? — Agent Smith

I don't know what you mean.

Well, truth is, logic does set down impassable boundaries, clearly demarcates no-go areas in re thought/thinking. It can be likened to a cage of sorts, designed as it were to keep us confined within what passes as reasonable/rational/logical. In that sense, it does confine/restrain/constrain/limit the mind.

This then takes us to a very interesting topic, in question form, what lies beyond logic? Many have attempted to answer this question and one of the answers might give you goosebumps; that answer is God.

Do you agree that it is actual nonsense - an actual contradiction - to maintain that of two people, the one with less power is the more powerful? — Bartricks

Yes.

Do you agree that a person who is not bound by logic is more powerful than one who is? — Bartricks

No - not if the idea of "not bound by logic" is itself nonsense. If the concept of logic is in fact the way I understand it, then the question is equivalent to asking "Do you agree that a person who is capable of [insert nonsense, meaningless noise] is more powerful than one who is not?"


Here is a quick explanation of what logic is, which may help to confirm we have somewhat the same idea about it. https://youtu.be/a-PZP_5DPK4?t=221
(Really it's about deduction but logic in metaphysics is equivalent to deduction in epistemology).

If someone has power over whether or not something is nonsense, then they have more power than someone who does not.

So once more: a person who can do more things than another is more powerful than that person. And it is a contradiction - so, actual nonsense - to maintain that a person who has more power than another is also the less powerful one of the two.

Again then: I believe in a god who can do anything. You believe in a god who can do some things and not others. That is, you believe in a god who is constrained by some mysterious external power source that he is not himself the source of (else he would not be constrained by it).

You simply don't believe in God, then. You can say you do. But you don't. For your god is less powerful than mine. And your god is not the one described in the bible either.

And when it comes to logic, assume that every argument you believe to be deductively valid I also believe to be deductively valid.

This is not about the content of logic. This is about what logic itself is. And what logic itself is is a set of instructions from Reason, yes?

if this premise - P - is true, and if this premise - q - is true, then you ought to conclude that therefore P and Q is the case, yes?

So it is a set of instructions about what to believe.

And instructions need an instructor.

And only an agency - only a mind - can issue an instruction.

So, Reason - the source of all the edicts of Reason (for that is why she is called Reason) - is a person.

And she will have power 'over' logic, for logic is no more or less than instructions she is issuing.

And thus, she will be omnipotent. And so she will be God.

You can believe in a person who is subject to Reason's will rather than the source of it, but then you believe in a god, not God.

I believe it is you who does not understand logic. For what do you think it is? A strange cosmic glue that binds even God? Is it a straightjacket that God did not design yet that he is in and that constrains him?

For your statements to be valid, we have to accept the possibility of a reality outside of logic. But I don't accept this premise, because logic dictates what can exist in any possible world; and anything that does not follow logic does not exist in any possible world.

A horse exists in the actual world.
A horse with a horn, i.e. unicorn, exists in a possible world.
A horse with a horn and not a horn at the same time does not exist in any possible world.
A god who can do x and not x at the same time does not exist in any possible world.

@universeness Here you go, Comrade. :wink:

Fair enough Tom! I will copy my shoutbox question to this thread! Cheers.

Do YOU believe in the Catholic trinity?
If so, then you believe that god and Jesus Christ were the same entity.
I don't think the 3rd state of 'spirit,' matters much to my main question, unless a Catholic/theist/theologian/generalist thinker, has a counterpoint to suggest why it does.

Jesus/god is posited as an eternal, immortal, but, this immortal magicked itself into a mortal, and existed as a male human, for around 30+ Earth time years.
He got crucified/murdered/blood sacrificed, and experienced death as a human experiences death, well, not quite, as humans don't 'resurrect,' but let's say this immortal did die like a man dies.
So during the time after its death, and before it's resurrection, this immortal, cosplaying a human called Jesus, was dead, so, GOD WAS DEAD.
So during this time, do Catholics accept that the universe had no god? or do Catholics think that this immortal was only playing dead? And, if that's true then under what logic do they consider this fake death, a great sacrifice in favour of humans?

Copied from the shoutbox!

I have serious doubts that an actual Jesus existed, but, to the extent they both died similarly, they both died similarly.

Wow! But I thought you considered yourself a Christian? The clue is in the name!
I assume my assumption on this has been incorrect. So is your theism a personal belief in a god rather than a religious following?
Are you familiar with Joseph Atwill's 'Caesars Messiah' or James Valliant and Warren Fahey's 'Creating Christ?' — Hanover

Wow! But I thought you considered yourself a Christian — universeness

Why did you think that?

I only said I was a theist. A thousand times I said I was Jewish as well.

I just asked my friend (a Catholic Priest) to explain the Trinity to me. After he stopped laughing he said that all three are dimensions of God which provide us with different levels of spirituality. Jesus provides redemption and everlasting life and a model of sacrifice; the holy spirit allows us to relate to God's message and communicates it to us; and God is the ineffable creator from which all emanates - including intelligibility, the true, good and beautiful.

Needless to say I am not a customer for any of this god business but I like to get the accounts people offer me as straight as I can. There are of course numerous accounts of the Trinity... this is just one of them.

It's about bringing heaven to earth. And I speak metaphorically, as I describe no physical, tangible heaven. If this sounds like I'm trying to change your mind, I'm not. I couldn't care any less about your soul. I'm just pointing out that your criticisms are simplistic and applicable only to those belief systems you think exist. — Hanover

So why not just be a secular humanist, who have a similar goal of creating a better existence for humans on Earth.
I tend to put the letters 'AS' in front of any reference to a human 'soul.' I know this makes the overall spelling of asshole, wrong but the textual phonetics sound correct to me when you say 'as' and 'soul' together as one, as does the anatomical and therefore scientific accuracy.
I am interested in people's actual belief systems, as they directly affect what they choose to act upon. I am interested, regardless of whether or not they comply with theism, manifest as organised religion or your less damaging, but equally submissive, theosophism.

Why did you think that? — Hanover

From an exchange we had months ago, when you declared yourself a theist.
I don't remember why I assumed you were a Christian.
Anyway, it was my mistake, and I appreciated the correction.

After he stopped laughing he said that all three are dimensions of God which provide us with different levels of spirituality. Jesus provides redemption and everlasting life and a model of sacrifice; the holy spirit allows us to relate to God's message and communicates it to us; and God is the ineffable creator from which all emanates - including intelligibility, the true, good and beautiful. — Tom Storm

Yeah, I already posted a similar style description from wiki on the shoutbox and some of my well practiced response, to such descriptions. Copied below for your convenience, if you have not already read it in the shoutbox:

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (Latin: Trinitas, lit. 'triad', from Latin: trinus 'threefold') is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion) As the Fourth Lateran Council declared, it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds. In this context, one essence/nature defines what God is, while the three persons define who God is. This expresses at once their distinction and their indissoluble unity. Thus, the entire process of creation and grace is viewed as a single shared action of the three divine persons, in which each person manifests the attributes unique to them in the Trinity, thereby proving that everything comes "from the Father," "through the Son," and "in the Holy Spirit."

You can almost feel the typographical traditions and verbal descriptions of storytelling and fables, being handed down from ancient human generations to today's generation. Lies, lies, lies!

This is just a bad attempt to move from a polytheistic model to a monotheistic model. Yahweh(jehovah) was part of a pantheon of gods. But the polytheistic model had a triune existence. A heavenly/mount Olympus/Valhalla type existence, a supernatural/spiritual/polymorphic/shapeshifter existence and they could also appear or become mortals. This maps onto the catholic trinity, imo.
Father, son and ghost is polytheistic in concept, but the trinity tries to (very clumsily imo,) pass them off as being a monotheistic entity

There is also this logically fallacious diagram called the shield of the trinity:

For an atheist, you seem to have a rather larger stock of theological material than many believers.

I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but you spelled "evangelicals" as "evanhellicals. I like that. I'll use it.

Evanhellicals and fundamentalists (incestuously related but not exactly the same) are hell on wheels.

Fundamentalism is essentially a reaction to the biblical and scientific scholarship of the 19th century (continuing into the 20th, 21st) which dethroned inerrant literalism and pre-scientific understanding. It has, in the US particularly but not only here, become allied to Christian Nationalism and other fascistic elements. It isn't uniquely 'Christian' as the same thing is happening in Turkey (Islam) and India (Hindu) or even Burma (Bhuddist). There is a right-ward shift in several unrelated religions.

Clearly religion is a going business, but

"According to sociologists Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera's review of numerous global studies on atheism, there are 450 to 500 million positive atheists and agnostics worldwide (7% of the world's population) with China alone accounting for 200 million of that demographic."

Oddly enough, China also has one of the world's largest Christian populations.

I am pretty sure the number of dis-believers, non-believers, and believers-in-name-only is a lot higher than 7%.

Where does trinitarian doctrine stand in Protestantis?

The Creeds (which many churches recite weekly) affirm the trinity. Liturgically minded Lutherans observe Trinity Sunday; the pastor may attempt an explanation, Or maybe find something else to talk about. Like sin and how they are against it. In many years of attending the Methodist Church there were few mentions of the trinity, except in the most formal rituals.

A lot of evanhellical crutches ignore it all the time, The Unitarians don't have to mention it.

"Being atheist means never having to say you're Lutheran." Name of a past long-running improv show in Minneapolis. The title was worth the show.

I only said I was a theist. A thousand times — Hanover

For the MILLIONITH time! Stop exaggerating!

A thousand times I said I was Jewish as well. — Hanover

Being Jewish does not mean you follow Judaism and the words in the Torah and Talmud, does it?
I know atheists who still call themselves Jewish.

I am interested in people's actual belief systems, as they directly affect what they choose to act upon. — universeness

For me, the strongest push toward socialism and liberation causes came from my reading of the NT and OT. I still counted myself a believer when I was being pushed, and the pushing continued after I concluded I didn't believe any more. I used to say that Protestant Christianity was my operating system. (It's a metaphor.) Whether I still believed or not, I couldn't delete it.

I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but you spelled "evangelicals" as "evanhellicals. I like that. I'll use it. — BC

I have made that particular spelling mistake, since I heard about horrors like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and current horrors such as Kent Hovind and his vile son Eric, Ken Ham, all the evanhellicals, that have appeared and still appear on horror shows like 'God TV' etc.
I like to keep a sharp eye on such nefarious groups.

It isn't uniquely 'Christian' as the same thing is happening in Turkey (Islam) and India (Hindu) or even Burma (Bhuddist). There is a right-ward shift in several unrelated religions. — BC

I agree, but I think the reason why, is that they are under attack from a growing global secular humanist movement and they are more and more desperate, to hold on to their main traditional places of power and influence, whilst also trying to establish new ones, anywhere in the world where there are poor and mostly uneducated masses.

I am pretty sure the number of dis-believers, non-believers, and believers-in-name-only is a lot higher than 7%. — BC

Things are improving even more in places like the UK, where for the first time in recorded history, there are more brits who consider themselves non-religious, compared to the number who consider themselves religious.

From Wiki:
Religion in the United Kingdom (2018 research)

None (52%)
Church of England (13.7%)
Catholic Church (8.7%)
Other Christian (13.2%)
Islam (6.7%)
Other religions (3.6%)
Not stated (2.1%)

Where does trinitarian doctrine stand in Protestantis? — BC

Afaik, protestants do not believe in the trinity.

"Being atheist means never having to say you're Lutheran." Name of a past long-running improv show in Minneapolis. The title was worth the show. — BC

:up:

For me, the strongest push toward socialism came from my reading of the NT and OT. I still counted myself a believer when I was being pushed, and the pushing continued after I concluded I didn't believing," I used to say that Protestant Christianity was my operating system. (It's a metaphor.) Whether I still believed or not, I couldn't delete it. — BC

I met some socialist believers in my early days, as a member of the 'young socialists' in Glasgow, who were affiliated to the Labour party and the co-operative labour party. I had a few debates with them (over many a beer) when they suggested Jesus was a socialist. I remember their annoyance when I responded with 'well if he was a socialist, he was a cowardly one with his:
Turn the other cheek
Love thine enemies
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars
If a Roman soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles.
Etc.
Bullshit! I would then quote clause 4:
"To secure for the workers, by hand or by brain, the fruits of their industry and full control over the means of production, distribution and exchange."
I would also quote 'Governance of, for and by the people NOT god or gods!'
Sometimes I would even get a wee round of applause from the atheist socialists in the group.
Overall however, the atheist and theist socialists, got along quite well.
I am still very much a socialist and a secular humanist but I no longer believe in party politics.

Afaik, protestants do not believe in the trinity.

I'm fairly certain the majority of protestants in the US are trinitarians, though some protestant denominations are not.

If you are interested in the history of how trinitarian beliefs evolved, Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God is pretty good.

The sacrifice has never made much sense. In a similar vein, it's hard to understand Matthew 4:1-11. Here Jesus is tempted by Satan, who offers Jesus all the kingdoms and riches of the world - “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Pretty stupid temptation if Jesus is God, who created all things. What's this god supposed to do with some buildings and loot? Or, is Jesus just a guy and his 'son of God' title an honorarium? If so, the temptation makes more sense. Or, does none of it remotely matter? I'm in this camp. — Tom Storm

There are so many examples like this. The way god treated Job in the OT is also barbaric and illogical.
I think it's very important to challenge all theistic claims Tom. YES! it does remotely matter. It REALLY matters, as global politics and many many politicians in positions of power, influence, and authority, are either very personally motivated by, and are invested in, some religious doctrine, that directs what policies they will support and endorse, no matter how much they deny such influence, OR they continue to use religion as a weapon, or as part of the means by which they become an established 'tour de force,' which quickly becomes nefarious, does terrible damage to a population and becomes damn difficult to remove. Putin and Trump being ideal examples.

I think it's very important to challenge all theistic claims Tom. YES! it does remotely matter. — universeness

I was saying whatever the story is meant to mean doesn't remotely matter.

So why not just be a secular humanist, who have a similar goal of creating a better existence for humans on Earth — universeness

Because I believe in the existence of God.

Why don't you become a theist so that you'll have an underlying reason to promote humanity?

I'm fairly certain the majority of protestants in the US are trinitarians, though some protestant denominations are not. — wonderer1

Yes, I am sure that is pretty accurate. My experience of protestants is Glasgow bound, and was never important to me, even though my father told me I was one???? My knowledge perhaps extends a little into the rest of Scotland, as I know a fair amount about the Scottish reformation, and its main players, like John Knox etc. I know that many Scottish/Glaswegian 'Proddys,' would say that god, his son and the ghostie were all separate. It was only the 'tims' (catholics), that said they were all the same thing. That was just what I heard/experienced in the companies I was in. In the Glasgow pubs of my youth. It may well not have been official Church of Scotland doctrine.


I forgot to add, I am a fan of Bart Ehrman and watch him regularly on YouTube.

Because I believe in the existence of God. — Hanover

Which one?

Why don't you become a theist so that you'll have an underlying reason to promote humanity? — Hanover

Two main reasons. The truth is important to me, and my secular humanism needs no supernatural input to function. I find this functionality, to be very useful, based on my 99.999% conviction level that your god does not exist.

I was saying whatever the story is meant to mean doesn't remotely matter. — Tom Storm

Ok, but as I know you agree, regardless of the intentions of the authors of such fables, the net affect on real human lives can be freaking awful, when such stories are preached as factual events with moral dictates and consequences, that all humans must comply with.

Need some shut eye guys n gals. It's almost two thirty am here!