Yep. New thread, maybe. Although given the present state of the forums it would probably turn into yet another thread about Heidegger and god. — Banno

Seems like someone doesn't understand Bunge and science.

Could God be a Being himself? — Corvus

No, he could not. God has being, as does everything else. Think of it like this: all animals have life, but there is no animal called "Life". All entities have being, but there is no entity called "Being".

I am not sure also what divine revelation means. — Corvus

It means that not even God could grant you access to Being.

Moreover isn't all Being temporal? — Corvus

The way I see it, Being is historical. Existence is not. Both of them (Being and existence) are temporal, but not in the same way. Existence has no history.

Could it imply that time is being or a part of being in Heidegger? — Corvus

That's not the way I see it. I agree with Graham Harman's interpretation of Heidegger, which he sets forth in his first book, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects.

Harman's interpretation would then evolve in his subsequent works. In a nutshell, here's the idea:

Heidegger was a correlationist realist, something unfathomable for Quentin Meillassoux. Being is never entirely present. Even when it reveals itself, something remains hidden. We will never access Being. Not even through divine revelation.

A bit too far off topic here. — Banno

You're wrong. As I told you via Inbox:

Because of Heidegger's Being and Time, that's why. To discuss Time is to discuss Being. And to discuss Being is to discuss Nietzsche. And to discuss Nietzsche is to discuss whiteness and non-whiteness. You're a white Australian. When you discuss the ontology of time, you do so as a white Australian, not merely as a Kantian transcendental subject. — Arcane Sandwich

A topic that might be more pertinent is notions of time in other cultures - cyclic time, for example. — Banno

Which is to my point about Heidegger's Being and Time, and about you being wrong that my comment was a bit too far off topic. What is Heidegger's Being and Time if not an Ontology of Time? The Ontology of Time?

As for cyclic time, see Nietzsche's concept of the Eternal Return, and Heidegger's commentary on that concept. Then consider the concept of the Eternal Return in ancient Stoic thought, particularly in the works of Marcus Aurelius.

EDIT: But feel free to continue it in the Australian politics, Banno. It's the same thing. It's called Political Ontology. The term already exists, I didn't invent it. How's your knowledge of Badiou's work, mate?

Did Bunge say the Big Bang did not happen? — Janus

He suggested it, yes. He suggested it, as professional physicist, as well as a philosopher.

I haven't encountered such a statement in my readings of Bunge. — Janus

I can share some quotes, if you don't believe me. And I've published a paper on this, as well. PM me if you want to download a copy.

I doubt that many physicists consider the Big Bang to be "creation ex nihilo", that is creation out of absolutely nothing. — Janus

Most physicists did not share Bunge's theories.

The Big Bag is compatible with a Universe that cycles form Big Bang to Big Crunch for example (I am aware that current evidence is considered to tell against this thesis). — Janus

Both of those claims are true.

It is also consistent with the multiverse thesis. — Janus

Yes, it is. It is also compatible with the thesis that there have been multiple Big Bangs, each originating a distinct Universe. And there are two kinds of Big Bangs in that theory: simultaneous ones, and successive ones.

Even if we want to say that God created the Universe out of nothing, this is not really out of nothing because God, if it exists, is not nothing (even if it might be no-thing). — Janus

It is impossible for human reason to understand the essence of God.

I can vouch for @Corvus, he is an excellent metaphysician. Maybe his skills as a logician are not comparable to those of an Analytic philosopher, but he's excellent as an Empiricist philosopher.

“Bless your soul with tongues of fire; Holy Spirit burn;
Leave no trace of man’s desire; Holy Spirit turn.” — PoeticUniverse

Are you familiar with this website?

I'm on a roll today. I hope that you Christians appreciate all of these good Christian arguments that I'm making on your behalf, and I say that irrespective of each one's specific Christian denomination.

(FTI22) If the spirit of Jesus was holy, then Jesus is God.
(FTI23) The spirit of Jesus was holy.
(FTI24) So, Jesus is God.
(FTI25) If so, then Jesus has an extra-ordinary nature: generically, a super-natural nature; specifically, an extra-ordinary nature. Uniquely, a divine nature.
(FTI26) So, Jesus has an extra-ordinary nature: generically, a super-natural nature; specifically, an extra-ordinary nature. Uniquely, a divine nature.

↪Arcane Sandwich
Nothign to apologize for at all. I enjoy your contributions greatly. — Tom Storm

Yes, I'm fascinating, both as an intellectual and as a person.

At some point we're going to need to talk about the Holy Spirit in this Thread.

Ok, sorry about that, then. Misinterpretation on my part. There are no facts, there are only interpretations, yadda yadda. Didn't Nietzsche himself say that false statement?

Anyways, sorry Tom.

Carry on.

It certainly takes the wind out of Plato's sails — Count Timothy von Icarus

Eh, I prefer Hegel's paragraph on the history of philosophy being like a plant:

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. But contradiction as between philosophical systems is not wont to be conceived in this way; on the other hand, the mind perceiving the contradiction does not commonly know how to relieve it or keep it free from its one-sidedness, and to recognise in what seems conflicting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments. — Hegel

Here is a new Christian argument, but of the Rastafari denomination (yes, I believe that Rastafari is a denomination of Christianity. Feel free to disagree).

(FTI18) There is no theologically significant difference between Haile Selassie (former Emperor of Ethiopia) and Jesus Christ.
(FTI19) If so, then: if it is a revealed truth that Haile Selassie (former Emperor of Ethiopia) is God incarnate, then it is a revealed truth that Jesus Christ is God incarnate.
(FTI20) It is a revealed truth that Haile Selassie (former Emperor of Ethiopia) is God incarnate.
(FTI21) So, it is a revealed truth that Jesus Christ is God incarnate.

There is no atheist mirror image of this argument. As an atheist, I'm not sure which premise I should deny here.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on Haile Selassie (former Emperor of Ethiopia).

I think that we (non-Rastas) can agree that Haile Selassie is, at the very least, the Rastafari messiah. That would be the correct technical term. But, of course, Rastas want to take this one step further: they claim that Haile Selassie is God incarnate. And I, as an atheist, don't think that's true. But here's my problem: I don't know if I would actually deny premise FTI20. So you see, I'm in quite the predicament here. Please help me.

But anyways, here's the audiovisual material in support of premise FTI20:



That video by itself is not evidence in favor of FTI20. But it's part of the evidence. The other part is this list of instructions:

Instruction 1) Smoke a very powerful joint of marijuana.
Instruction 2) Watch the official music video of Bob Marley and the Wailers' song "Iron, Lion, Zion".
Instruction 3) Wait for the image of Haile Selassie to appear.
Instruction 4) Focus your eyes on the image, and focus your ears on the song by Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Instruction 5) Wait for a divine revelation that premise FTI20 is true: It is a revealed truth that Haile Selassie (former Emperor of Ethiopia) is God incarnate.

That, to me, looks like a scientific experiment. I say that from an anthropological point of view (specifically, from the point of view of Bruno Latour's sociology of science).

The problem is, what happens if you don't get consistent results? What happens if people simply fail to achieve what Instruction 5 tells them to do?

EDIT: I am in no way mocking the Rastafari religion. As I said, I consider it to be a denomination of Christianity, on par with Protestantism, Catholicism, Mormonism, etc. In fact I find the official music video of "Iron, Lion, Zion" to be heart-wrenching, and I say that as an atheist. It is an incredibly sad song to listen to, despite the fact that it was intended as a happy song.

I'm curious what a good example of such Nietzschean self-overcoming actually looks like. — Tom Storm

In an act of Nietzchean resentment, white Australia has cultivated a slave morality grounded in a negative self-affirmation. Instead of the claim, ‘I come from here. You are not like me, therefore you do not belong’, the dominant white Australian asserts: ‘you do not come from here. I am not like you, therefore I do belong’. Might the depth of this self-denial manifest dramatically, not in any failure to embrace a more positive moral discourse but, in the fact that white Australia has yet to produce a philosophy and a history to address precisely that which is fundamental to its existence, namely our being as occupier? — Toula Nicolacopoulos George Vassilacopoulos

40 degrees Celsius (104 Farenheit) right now in the small coastal town where I live in Argentina

And these stupid Eucalyptus trees that some genius brought from Australia are soaking up all of the moisture from the soil. God damn it.

But there is no premise that the Big Bang happened, is there? — Leontiskos

Then let's add one. I'll have to change the numbers of the premises, accordingly:

(FTI10) The Big Bang happened.
(FTI11) If so, then God caused the Big Bang.
(FTI12) So, God caused the Big Bang.
(FTI13) If so, then: if it is a revealed truth that Jesus is God, then Jesus caused the Big Bang.
(FTI14) It is a revealed truth that Jesus is God.
(FTI15) So, Jesus caused the Big Bang.
(FTI16) If so, then Jesus has a divine (i.e., super-natural, extra-ordinary) nature.
(FTI17) So, Jesus has a divine (i.e., super-natural, extra-ordinary) nature.

And here's the structure, in propositional logic:

(FTI10) p
(FTI11) p → q
(FTI12) ∴ q
(FTI13) q → (r → s)
(FTI14) r
(FTI15) ∴ s
(FTI16) s → t
(FTI17) ∴ t

As a Christian, do you accept this new argument, yes or no?

As for myself, as an atheist, I deny premise FTI11: The Big Bang happened, but God didn't cause it.

I think the weakest premise for the atheist is FTI12. — Leontiskos

I don't see it that way. I'm not that "denomination" of atheist, just as a Protestant is not the same denomination as a Catholic.

Jesus was not remotely born when the Big Bang occurred, so how could he have caused it? We could argue that the Son is the Word through which all things were created — Leontiskos

Yes, that's correct. You just answered your own question. To my mind, at least.

I don't see why a Christian would want to pursue such arguments against an atheist who does not even believe in God at all. — Leontiskos

Well, there are many denominations of Christians, aren't there?

You asked why Christians never argue for Jesus' divinity. I pointed out that they do. But it isn't a great surprise that you are not aware of those arguments. — Leontiskos

Would you mind sharing them here?

why would a Christian try to convince someone that Jesus is divine if that person doesn't even believe that God exists? It would be putting the cart before the horse — Leontiskos

Don't worry about that, just share the arguments, please.

Note that the reason Lemaître thought the Big Bang had theological implications was because it so closely paralleled creatio ex nihilo, a revealed doctrine. — Leontiskos

Then perhaps you'll be surprised to know that Bunge suggests that the Big Bang didn't happen. In other words, Bunge himself denies premise FTI10: the Big Bang did not happen, precisely because (in Bunge's view), creatio ex nihilo is impossible. He says that as a physicist. He thinks that the Universe is somehow eternal in an Aristotelian sense. The series of efficient causes is truly infinite, and there is no problem in admitting (contra Aquinas) that an infinite regress of sufficient causes is not absurd. What's absurd for Aristotle is the lack of purpose in such a series. The Aristotelian Prime Mover is neither a material cause nor an efficient cause, it is only a formal cause and a final cause.

(slightly edited due to erratas)

Thanks. Here's an argument that Georges Lemaître might advance.

(FTI10) If the Big Bang happened, then God caused it.
(FTI11) If so, then: if it is a revealed truth that Jesus is God, then Jesus caused the Big Bang.
(FTI12) It is a revealed truth that Jesus is God.
(FTI13) So, Jesus caused the Big Bang.
(FTI14) If so, then Jesus has a divine (i.e., super-natural, extra-ordinary) nature.
(FTI15) So, Jesus has a divine (i.e., super-natural, extra-ordinary) nature.

I don't have an atheist argument to mirror that Christian argument. Instead, as an atheist, I would deny premise FTI10: It's true that the Big Bang happened, but it's false that God caused it.

As a Christian, do you accept the argument from FTI10 to FTI15 yourself? If yes, why? If no, why not?

As to God's presence in the "sheer silence," Scripture is silent. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is your interpretation of that, as a Christian? And are you Orthodox or Catholic?

(Thank you very much for such a high-quality response. It's the best comment I've seen so far in The Philosophy Forum)

A spectre is haunting white Australia, the spectre of Indigenous sovereignty. All the powers of old Australia have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: politicians and judges, academics and media proprietors, businesspeople and church leaders. — Toula Nicolacopoulos George Vassilacopoulos

True heirs to this tradition of power and self-denial, white Australians are today still refusing to become free. In our two centuries-long refusal to hear the words—‘I come from here. Where do you come from?’—that the sovereign being of the Indigenous peoples poses to us, we have taken the Western occupier’s mentality to a new, possibly ultimate, level. Unable to retreat from the land we have occupied since 1788, and lacking the courage unconditionally to surrender power to the Indigenous peoples, white Australia has become ontologically disturbed. Suffering what we describe as ‘onto-pathology’, white Australia has become dependent upon ‘the perpetual-foreigners-within’, those migrants in relation to whom the so-called ‘old Australians’ assert their imagined difference. For the dominant white Australian, freedom and a sense of belonging do not derive from rightful dwelling in this land but from the affirmation of the power to receive and to manage the perpetual-foreigners-within, that is, the Asians, the Southern European migrants, the Middle Eastern refugees, or the Muslims. In an act of Nietzchean resentment, white Australia has cultivated a slave morality grounded in a negative self-affirmation. Instead of the claim, ‘I come from here. You are not like me, therefore you do not belong’, the dominant white Australian asserts: ‘you do not come from here. I am not like you, therefore I do belong’. Might the depth of this self-denial manifest dramatically, not in any failure to embrace a more positive moral discourse but, in the fact that white Australia has yet to produce a philosophy and a history to address precisely that which is fundamental to its existence, namely our being as occupier? — Toula Nicolacopoulos George Vassilacopoulos

Dead can Dance - Yulunga

Dead Can Dance are an Australian world music and darkwave band from Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981. They relocated to London the following year. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance's style as "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock. — Wikipedia

The Rainbow Serpent is known by different names by the many different Aboriginal cultures.

Yurlunggur is the name of the "rainbow serpent" according to the Murngin (Yolngu) in north-eastern Arnhemland, also styled Yurlungur, Yulunggur Jurlungur, Julunggur or Julunggul. The Yurlunggur was considered "the great father". — Wikipedia

Indigenous people cannot forget the nature of migrancy and position all non-Indigenous people as migrants and diasporic. Our ontological relationship to land, the ways that country is constitutive of us, and therefore the inalienable nature of our relationship to land, marks a radical, indeed incommensurable, difference between us and the non-Indigenous. This ontological relation to land constitutes a subject position that we do not share, and which cannot be shared, with the postcolonial subject whose sense of belonging in this place is tied to migrancy. — Aileen Moreton-Robinson

----------------------------------------------------------
Source:

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonising Society’, in Sara Ahmed, Claudia Cataneda, Ann Marie Fortier and Mimi Shellyey (eds.), Uprootings/Regroupings: Questions of Postcoloniality, Home and Place, London and New York, Berg, 2003, pp. 23-40.

I'll just leave this here:

Indigenous Sovereignty and the Being of the Occupier: Manifesto for a White Australian Philosophy of Origins

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: The Call for a Manifesto

2. The Need for a White Australian Philosophical Historiography

3. The ‘Hypothetical Nation’ as Being Without Sovereignty

4. A Genealogy of the West as the Ontological Project of the Gathering-We

5. Ontological Sovereignty and the Hope of a White Australian Philosophy of Origins

6. The World-Making Significance of Property Ownership in Western Modernity

7. Sovereign Being and the Enactment of Property Ownership

8. The Onto-Pathology of White Australian Subjectivity

9. Racist Epistemologies of a Collective Criminal Will

10. The Perpetual-Foreigner-Within as an Epistemological Construction

11. The Migrant as White-Non-White and White-But-Not-White-Enough

12. Three Images of the Foreigner-Within: Subversive, Compliant, Submissive

13. The Imperative of the Indigenous - White Australian Encounter

References — Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos

Indigenous people cannot forget the nature of migrancy and position all non-Indigenous people as migrants and diasporic. Our ontological relationship to land, the ways that country is constitutive of us, and therefore the inalienable nature of our relationship to land, marks a radical, indeed incommensurable, difference between us and the non-Indigenous. This ontological relation to land constitutes a subject position that we do not share, and which cannot be shared, with the postcolonial subject whose sense of belonging in this place is tied to migrancy. — Aileen Moreton-Robinson

----------------------------------------------------------
Source:

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonising Society’, in Sara Ahmed, Claudia Cataneda, Ann Marie Fortier and Mimi Shellyey (eds.), Uprootings/Regroupings: Questions of Postcoloniality, Home and Place, London and New York, Berg, 2003, pp. 23-40.

A spectre is haunting white Australia, the spectre of Indigenous sovereignty. All the powers of old Australia have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: politicians and judges, academics and media proprietors, businesspeople and church leaders. — Toula Nicolacopoulos George Vassilacopoulos

True heirs to this tradition of power and self-denial, white Australians are today still refusing to become free. In our two centuries-long refusal to hear the words—‘I come from here. Where do you come from?’—that the sovereign being of the Indigenous peoples poses to us, we have taken the Western occupier’s mentality to a new, possibly ultimate, level. Unable to retreat from the land we have occupied since 1788, and lacking the courage unconditionally to surrender power to the Indigenous peoples, white Australia has become ontologically disturbed. Suffering what we describe as ‘onto-pathology’, white Australia has become dependent upon ‘the perpetual-foreigners-within’, those migrants in relation to whom the so-called ‘old Australians’ assert their imagined difference. For the dominant white Australian, freedom and a sense of belonging do not derive from rightful dwelling in this land but from the affirmation of the power to receive and to manage the perpetual-foreigners-within, that is, the Asians, the Southern European migrants, the Middle Eastern refugees, or the Muslims. In an act of Nietzchean resentment, white Australia has cultivated a slave morality grounded in a negative self-affirmation. Instead of the claim, ‘I come from here. You are not like me, therefore you do not belong’, the dominant white Australian asserts: ‘you do not come from here. I am not like you, therefore I do belong’. Might the depth of this self-denial manifest dramatically, not in any failure to embrace a more positive moral discourse but, in the fact that white Australia has yet to produce a philosophy and a history to address precisely that which is fundamental to its existence, namely our being as occupier? — Toula Nicolacopoulos George Vassilacopoulos

Dead can Dance - Yulunga

Dead Can Dance are an Australian world music and darkwave band from Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981. They relocated to London the following year. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance's style as "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock. — Wikipedia

The Rainbow Serpent is known by different names by the many different Aboriginal cultures.

Yurlunggur is the name of the "rainbow serpent" according to the Murngin (Yolngu) in north-eastern Arnhemland, also styled Yurlungur, Yulunggur Jurlungur, Julunggur or Julunggul. The Yurlunggur was considered "the great father". — Wikipedia

Hey @Banno here's a book you might like, it's free to download and it's called Indigenous Sovereignty and the Being of the Occupier: Manifesto for a White Australian Philosophy of Origins

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: The Call for a Manifesto

2. The Need for a White Australian Philosophical Historiography

3. The ‘Hypothetical Nation’ as Being Without Sovereignty

4. A Genealogy of the West as the Ontological Project of the Gathering-We

5. Ontological Sovereignty and the Hope of a White Australian Philosophy of Origins

6. The World-Making Significance of Property Ownership in Western Modernity

7. Sovereign Being and the Enactment of Property Ownership

8. The Onto-Pathology of White Australian Subjectivity

9. Racist Epistemologies of a Collective Criminal Will

10. The Perpetual-Foreigner-Within as an Epistemological Construction

11. The Migrant as White-Non-White and White-But-Not-White-Enough

12. Three Images of the Foreigner-Within: Subversive, Compliant, Submissive

13. The Imperative of the Indigenous - White Australian Encounter

References — Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos

space (distance; length) is a relation between things that exist.

Time doesn't exist either. It's not a relation between things that exist. Rather, it's a relation between events. — Relativist

This is what Bunge himself says. Here's the evidence:

More precisely, according to Leibniz, space is the “order” of coexistents, and time that of successives. Hence, the scientific materialist adds, if there were no things there would be no space; and if nothing changed there would be no time. Moreover, for either to exist there must be at least two distinct items: two things in the case of space, and two events in that of time. — Bunge (2006: 244)

I'm not sure that I agree with this, though.

And so, the point here, is that there are several kinds of atheists, just as there are several kinds of Christians. An atheist can be dogmatist (i.e., a pre-Kantian realist), but he can also be a speculative materialist (i.e., a post-Kantian realist, as in, a Speculative Realist). True, Meillassoux no longer identifies as a Speculative Realist (in fact, he doesn't even identify as realist anymore). But that doesn't matter to me, because an atheist can also be a scientific materialist (i.e., a post-Kantian realist, who is not a Speculative Realist), like Bunge.

It's well known that Aristotle coined the terms "matter" and "energy". The former, hyle, is potentiality, and this is what Meillassoux is referring to when he speaks of "the capacity-to-be-other". The latter, energeia, is what Aristotle called "actuality", which is form-in-motion. By the same token, potentiality would be matter-in-motion.

Bunge would disagree. He defines energy, not matter, as the capacity to change. Matter itself is that which has this capacity, instead of being that capacity. That's why it's false to say that matter is identical to energy. It isn't. Energy is a property of matter, in Bunge's view. And this doesn't contradict Einstein's famous formula, E = mc², because in that formula, "m" doesn't mean "matter", it means mass. Matter is not identical to mass. Matter has mass, because mass is a property.

And here's my interpretation of Meillassoux's quote, part by part:

We can make things clearer by considering the following example. Let us suppose that two dogmatists are arguing about the nature of our future post-mortem. The Christian dogmatist claims to know (because he has supposedly demonstrated it) that our existence continues after death, and that it consists in the eternal contemplation of a God whose nature is incomprehensible from within the confines of our present existence. Thus, the latter claims to have demonstrated that what is in-itself is a God who, like the Cartesian God, can be shown by our finite reason to be incomprehensible for our finite reason. — Quentin Meillassoux

This is a general theist argument, it's not necessarily a specifically Christian argument. Someone like Anselm, for example could have made this argument. Aquinas and Descartes could make similar arguments as well.

But the atheist dogmatist claims to know that, on the contrary, our existence is completely abolished by death, which utterly annihilates us. — Quentin Meillassoux

This is a general atheist argument, it's not necessarily a specifically "scientistic" argument. For example, an atheist that believes in ghosts or other paranormal entities can make a similar argument.

It is at this stage that the correlationist comes along to disqualify both of their positions by defending a strict theoretical agnosticism. All beliefs strike her as equally legitimate given that theory is incapable of privileging one eventuality over another. For just as I cannot know the in-itself without converting it into a for-me, I cannot know what will happen to me when I am no longer of this world, since knowledge presupposes that one is of the world. Consequently, the agnostic has little difficulty in refuting both of these positions - all she has to do is demonstrate that it is self-contradictory to claim to know what is when one is no longer alive, since knowledge presupposes that one is still of this world. Accordingly, the two dogmatists are proffering realist theses about the in-itself, both of which are vitiated by the inconsistency proper to all realism - that of claiming to think what there is when one is not. — Quentin Meillassoux

This is a general weak correlationist argument, in the sense that Meillassoux defines "weak correlationism". For example, a Kantian might make a similar argument.

But then another disputant intervenes: the subjective idealist. The latter declares that the position of the agnostic is every bit as inconsistent as those of the two realists. For all three believe that there could be an in-itself radically different from our present state, whether it is a God who is inaccessible to natural reason, or a sheer nothingness. But this is precisely what is unthinkable, for I am no more capable of thinking a transcendent God than the annihilation of everything - more particularly, I cannot think of myself as no longer existing without, through that very thought, contradicting myself. I can only think of myself as existing, and as existing the way I exist; thus, I cannot but exist, and always exist as I exist now. Consequently, my mind, if not my body, is immortal. Death, like every other form of radical transcendence, is annulled by the idealist, in the same way as he annuls every idea of an in-itself that differs from the correlational structure of the subject. Because an in-itself that differs from the for-us is unthinkable, the idealist declares it to be impossible. — Quentin Meillassoux

This argument is an instance of what Meillassoux calls "subjective metaphysics". A Hegelian, for example could make this argument.

The question now is under what conditions the correlationist agnostic can refute not only the theses of the two realists, but also that of the idealist. In order to counter the latter, the agnostic has no choice: she must maintain that my capacity-to-be-wholly-other in death (whether dazzled by God, or annihilated) is just as thinkable as my persisting in my self-identity. The 'reason' for this is that I think myself as devoid of any reason for being and remaining as I am, and it is the thinkability of this unreason - of this facticity - which implies that the other three thesis -those of the two realists and the idealist - are all equally possible. For even if I cannot think of myself, for example, as annihilated, neither can I think of any cause that would rule out this eventuality. The possibility of my not being is thinkable as the counterpart of the absence of any reason for my being, even if I cannot think what it would be not to be. Although realists maintain the possibility of a post-mortem condition that is unthinkable as such (whether as vision of God or as sheer nothingness), the thesis they maintain is itself thinkable - for even if I cannot think the unthinkable, I can think the possibility of the unthinkable by dint of the unreason of the real. Consequently, the agnostic can recuse all three positions as instances of absolutism - all three claim to have identified a necessary reason implying one of the three states described above, whereas no such reason is available. — Quentin Meillassoux

This is what the strong correlationist says. As such, he or she can be Wittgensteinian, or Heideggerian, or of a postmodern persuasion (such as Laclau, for example). It's a far more radical form of correlationism than Kant's weak correlationism.

But now a final disputant enters the debate: the speculative philosopher. She maintains that neither the two dogmatists, nor the idealist have managed to identify the absolute, because the latter is simply the capacity-to-be-other as such, as theorized by the agnostic. The absolute is the possible transition, devoid of reason, of my state towards any other state whatsoever. But this possibility is no longer a 'possibility of ignorance'; viz., a possibility that is merely the result of my inability to know which of the three aforementioned theses is correct - rather, it is the knowledge of the very real possibility of all of these eventualities, as well as of a great many others. How then are we able to claim that this capacity-to-be-other is an absolute - an index of knowledge rather than of ignorance? The answer is that it is the agnostic herself who has convinced us of it. For how does the latter go about refuting the idealist? She does so by maintaining that we can think ourselves as no longer being; in other words, by maintaining that our mortality, our annihilation, and our becoming-wholly-other in God, are all effectively thinkable. But how are these states conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist. For I think myself as mortal only if I think that my death has no need of my thought of death in order to be actual. If my ceasing to be depended upon my continuing to be so that I could keep thinking myself as not being, then I would continue to agonize indefinitely, without ever actually passing away. In other words, in order to refute subjective idealism, I must grant that my possible annihilation is thinkable as something that is not just the correlate of my thought of this annihilation. Thus, the correlationist's refutation of idealism proceeds by way of an absolutization (which is to say, a de-correlation) of the capacity-to-be-other presupposed in the thought of facticity - this latter is the absolute whose reality is thinkable as that of the in-itself as such in its indifference to thought; an indifference which confers upon it the power to destroy me. — Quentin Meillassoux

This is Meillassoux's own position, and (he thinks) it's also the position championed by Epicurus. In other words, it's materialism (specifically, speculative materialism in Meillassoux's case). Why? Because matter is being conceptualized in an Aristotelian way here, as potency, distinct from actuality (i.e., "form" in motion). That's why he talks about the capacity (i.e., the potentiality, the "materiality") to-be-other, and that such a capacity (materiality) is absolute. Stated differently, Meillassoux's philosophy might be described as "Absolute Materialism", as distinct from Hegel's "Absolute Idealism".

In fact, I'd argue that one possible slogan is this one:

"Australia: a beautiful land (as seen in Albert's paintings) with ugly people (as seen in Vincent's painting of Gina).

Well, but arguably everyone can paint like Piet Mondrian. Arguably, anyone can start a punk rock band, you don't even need to know how to play an instrument. That's another legitimate discussion in Philosophy of Art. It doesn't seem to me to be the case that Vincent needs to have good technique or knowledge of the craft of painting in order to make a powerful statement about Gina, and about other people.

Thanks for that insightful critique. It seems like your main objection to the OP is of a methodological nature, i.e., how people should argue, what are the rules of a good conversation, why should anyone assume that argumentative symmetry is better than non-symmetry, etc. In that sense, I would like to bring the discussion of this Thread back to metaphysics, not methodology. What I mean by that, is that the question of whether or not God exists, is a metaphysical question, not a methodological one. I think that you agree with that. What the OP is claiming, in addition to that, is that the question of whether or not Jesus is identical to God, is also a metaphysical question. And I think that you agree with that as well. As for the argumentative symmetry that I'm championing here, perhaps the following quote from Quentin Meillassoux might help clarify my position:

We can make things clearer by considering the following example. Let us suppose that two dogmatists are arguing about the nature of our future post-mortem. The Christian dogmatist claims to know (because he has supposedly demonstrated it) that our existence continues after death, and that it consists in the eternal contemplation of a God whose nature is incomprehensible from within the confines of our present existence. Thus, the latter claims to have demonstrated that what is in-itself is a God who, like the Cartesian God, can be shown by our finite reason to be incomprehensible for our finite reason. But the atheist dogmatist claims to know that, on the contrary, our existence is completely abolished by death, which utterly annihilates us.

It is at this stage that the correlationist comes along to disqualify both of their positions by defending a strict theoretical agnosticism. All beliefs strike her as equally legitimate given that theory is incapable of privileging one eventuality over another. For just as I cannot know the in-itself without converting it into a for-me, I cannot know what will happen to me when I am no longer of this world, since knowledge presupposes that one is of the world. Consequently, the agnostic has little difficulty in refuting both of these positions - all she has to do is demonstrate that it is self-contradictory to claim to know what is when one is no longer alive, since knowledge presupposes that one is still of this world. Accordingly, the two dogmatists are proffering realist theses about the in-itself, both of which are vitiated by the inconsistency proper to all realism - that of claiming to think what there is when one is not.

But then another disputant intervenes: the subjective idealist. The latter declares that the position of the agnostic is every bit as inconsistent as those of the two realists. For all three believe that there could be an in-itself radically different from our present state, whether it is a God who is inaccessible to natural reason, or a sheer nothingness. But this is precisely what is unthinkable, for I am no more capable of thinking a transcendent God than the annihilation of everything - more particularly, I cannot think of myself as no longer existing without, through that very thought, contradicting myself. I can only think of myself as existing, and as existing the way I exist; thus, I cannot but exist, and always exist as I exist now. Consequently, my mind, if not my body, is immortal. Death, like every other form of radical transcendence, is annulled by the idealist, in the same way as he annuls every idea of an in-itself that differs from the correlational structure of the subject. Because an in-itself that differs from the for-us is unthinkable, the idealist declares it to be impossible.

The question now is under what conditions the correlationist agnostic can refute not only the theses of the two realists, but also that of the idealist. In order to counter the latter, the agnostic has no choice: she must maintain that my capacity-to-be-wholly-other in death (whether dazzled by God, or annihilated) is just as thinkable as my persisting in my self-identity. The 'reason' for this is that I think myself as devoid of any reason for being and remaining as I am, and it is the thinkability of this unreason - of this facticity - which implies that the other three thesis -those of the two realists and the idealist - are all equally possible. For even if I cannot think of myself, for example, as annihilated, neither can I think of any cause that would rule out this eventuality. The possibility of my not being is thinkable as the counterpart of the absence of any reason for my being, even if I cannot think what it would be not to be. Although realists maintain the possibility of a post-mortem condition that is unthinkable as such (whether as vision of God or as sheer nothingness), the thesis they maintain is itself thinkable - for even if I cannot think the unthinkable, I can think the possibility of the unthinkable by dint of the unreason of the real. Consequently, the agnostic can recuse all three positions as instances of absolutism - all three claim to have identified a necessary reason implying one of the three states described above, whereas no such reason is available.

But now a final disputant enters the debate: the speculative philosopher. She maintains that neither the two dogmatists, nor the idealist have managed to identify the absolute, because the latter is simply the capacity-to-be-other as such, as theorized by the agnostic. The absolute is the possible transition, devoid of reason, of my state towards any other state whatsoever. But this possibility is no longer a 'possibility of ignorance'; viz., a possibility that is merely the result of my inability to know which of the three aforementioned theses is correct - rather, it is the knowledge of the very real possibility of all of these eventualities, as well as of a great many others. How then are we able to claim that this capacity-to-be-other is an absolute - an index of knowledge rather than of ignorance? The answer is that it is the agnostic herself who has convinced us of it. For how does the latter go about refuting the idealist? She does so by maintaining that we can think ourselves as no longer being; in other words, by maintaining that our mortality, our annihilation, and our becoming-wholly-other in God, are all effectively thinkable. But how are these states conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist. For I think myself as mortal only if I think that my death has no need of my thought of death in order to be actual. If my ceasing to be depended upon my continuing to be so that I could keep thinking myself as not being, then I would continue to agonize indefinitely, without ever actually passing away. In other words, in order to refute subjective idealism, I must grant that my possible annihilation is thinkable as something that is not just the correlate of my thought of this annihilation. Thus, the correlationist's refutation of idealism proceeds by way of an absolutization (which is to say, a de-correlation) of the capacity-to-be-other presupposed in the thought of facticity - this latter is the absolute whose reality is thinkable as that of the in-itself as such in its indifference to thought; an indifference which confers upon it the power to destroy me. — Quentin Meillassoux

With this in mind, and considering the rest of the contents of After Finitude, Meillassoux would have no choice but to accept the following Christian argument:

(FTI7) If hyper-Chaos exists, then it's possible that Jesus is God.
(FTI8) Hyper-Chaos exists.
(FTI9) So, it's possible that Jesus is God.

The term "it's possible", in the preceding argument, should be read in a modal sense, because almost nothing is impossible for hyper-Chaos. Meillassoux has no choice but to claim that both FTI7 and FTI8 are true.

As for myself, I deny premise FTI8: hyper-Chaos does not exist. I've published an article about this, in case anyone is interested. Send me a PM and I'll share the article with you.

I'd also advance the following non-Christian argument:

(ATI7) If hyper-Chaos does not exist, then it's not possible that Jesus is God.
(ATI8) Hyper-Chaos does not exist.
(ATI9) So, it's not possible that Jesus is God.

Perhaps to @Leontiskos's surprise, I'm not sure if I should accept this non-Christian argument or not. Is it true that it's impossible that Jesus is god, as the conclusion ATI9 says? I'm not sure.

They're from Canada.

No, that's clearly not what I'm saying. What I'm clearly saying in that quote is that Heidegger was an intellectual thief. Those were my words.

For Heidegger , subject implies self-consciousness, S=S — Joshs

I hope you see the irony there.

Well, one of the things that makes Heidegger original — JuanZu

Yeah that, and being a Nazi.

To me this fits into the American pragmatism of Dewey and so on. Only in transcendental terms — JuanZu

To me it sounds like that, and it also sounds like Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Augustine.

Heidegger was an intellectual thief.

Remember when Trump made guest appearances in The Nany sitcom back in the 90's? He also made a guest appearance as an amateur voice actor in The Simpsons.

I think he appeared in other comedies as well during that era. Never appeared on Seinfeld, though. And Seinfeld is the best sitcom of all times.

I do see your point, though. You're arguing that he doesn't seem to know the craft of painting as well as his grandfather did, as in, he doesn't seem to have the same level of technical knowledge. I think that's a fair critique in general, as far as Philosophy of Art goes.

(edited for erratas)

Heidegger’s notion of temporality deconstructs both subjectivity and objectivity, replacing the subject-object binary with Dasein’s being in the world.
— Joshs — Joshs

Is there a Dasien/being-in-the-world binary in Heidegger's philosophy? If there is, then it's just a historicized version of the good old subject-object binary from The Good Old Days.

EDIT: With a bit more form:

1) If there is a Dasien/being-in-the-world binary in Heidegger's philosophy, then it's just a historicized version of the good old subject-object binary from The Good Old Days.
2) There is a Dasien/being-in-the-world binary in Heidegger's philosophy.
3) So, it's just a historicized version of the good old subject-object binary from The Good Old Days.

Which premise would you like to deny, if any?