Name an argument against solipsism if the world is purely mental

The old Testament supports slavery. Somehow Christians convince themselves the new Testament calls for more love. Why not more love in any age?

You are making consciousness an object in order to separate it from matter.

Everything in your OP accepts reality a priori

Polytheism sounds cartoony to me. Nonduality is better I say. It says spirituality is totally one

Your unconventional polytheism is not satisfying

Does a baby who suffers cause it's own suffering or is it forced into a theodicy God never endured?

What evidence for some "person" out there from matter? None. What evidence we don't have to struggle? None. Your position is high fangled and impractical

My own argument against God is that we are images of God but are forced to suffer while God is not forced to suffer. This is not symmetrical because one would expect God to have the power to get us to heaven effortlessly like he is in heaven

The teleological argument looks for signs of God in nature. Carroll looks for things that one would expect but doesn't find and so concludes one cannot expect signs from nature

Carroll is using teleological arguments against themselves, not saying that teleological arguments are logical. An illogical argument follows its own logic

How can there be more than one God?

It's a paradox. They say God loves everyone with the same love but gives some more than others. But to give more has motive in love. So it's unanswerable

There is no logical fallacy in Carroll's argument. Not all arguments follow symbolism

Sean Carroll made an interesting argument about God. He said suppose we lived in a world where children never suffered. The priests would be saying "look, clearly there is a God because we see how he protects the young ". Yet we don't live in that world. This argument for me takes down teleological arguments. What do you guys think?

Michio Kaku says strings are one dimensional yet discrete. There is no easy way out of these issues without advanced math

The theory of loop quantum gravity, along with string theory, propose that matter is not infinitely divisible but they could be wrong. I'm not a mathematician so there's only so much I know about this. Those theories want to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics in favor of quantum mechanics where there are discrete quanta instead of singularities

As one that self loops and so stays finite. Something discrete is an infinitesimal. It infinitely gets close to zero but never reaches it. Whether this solves or merely repeats Zeno's paradox has not be settled in science

According to Thomas Aquinas, God is in the world in his essence. So God is us, closer to us than our egos

If spacetime is quantified, how can a particle move from A to B in the first place? — EugeneW

Quantified means discrete, right? If there is a series of discrete spaces with the spaces between them being meaningless then motion is getting stepping accross the path. But if space is infinitely divisible, then we have a distance that is finite from one point of view and infinite from another point of view. They say calculus solves this, but math has never been my strong suit

Didn't the Eleatic philosophers thought space is undivisible (in the link)? — EugeneW

Yes. Zeno, Parmenides, and Mellisus thought the world one unity, one form

What is knowledge however. What if I said that Islam and Christianity were BOTH true? They have conflicting claims, but could they be reconciled by a higher truth? A meta-truth? (Let me go off on a tangent). Hegel opposed being and nothing to each other, pushing the closer and closer together until they "sublated" themselves and each other. The result was Becoming, eternal becoming. So knowledge of one thing to the exclusion of another might be opposed to a meta-truth. But there are ways we have to think about things. Once we are satsified, we have found knowledge. If you think you've found the Absolute truth on this earth, the gods laugh

Indeed I read about an indestructible indivisible reality (I dont agree with changeless). So they argued from contra, so to speak? — EugeneW

Zeno said that the world can't be infinite yet it's infinitly divisible, and it can be finite because the division of nature goes on forever. String theory and quantum loop gravity speculate about discrete pieces of space, which would solve Zeno's paradox. The conflict between general relativity with it's singularities and quantum mechanics has partially to do with this question

Time can't be stopped and space can't be cut. How can spacetime intervals exist? — EugeneW

According to modern physics, motion is relative, not absolute. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR1lU6DmLy6m9a1IBbs2NKx5XBaUIaBkcjQ984b_s_4O23ZX31OGYn7uAB0&v=a205YJsbBSQ&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0L0G064ucS76BpWhJd2rchmww1f64bu5CNooLkdBOKDB3Jk2VXvr-8_08&v=FdWMM6aXpYE&feature=youtu.be

But how can I not know the string goes around the marble if I move it around a marble? It's very tricky, but they say it's about B-time and the unified nature of the world, something both Zeno and Spinoza were getting at

There is also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissus_of_Samos

Zeno made one big mistake. He thought the spacetime continuum could be broken up in parts. Just try break up time in pieces. Or space. It's hard. — EugeneW

His opponents thought that. He thought the world was one metaphysical thing, like Spinoza

It's you who should be Gregory A... — EugeneW

haha

If knowledge didn't exist, we could necessarily not know whether or not knowledge exist. However, if we didn't know, whether or not knowledge exists, it would be possible, that knowledge exist, which in turn stands in contradiction with the axiom "knowledge doesn't exist". Thus, knowledge must exist. — Carlikoff

No, you've only shown it's possible. Go over your premises again.

Theism offers an explanation for our existence, atheism offers no explanations of its own, a weaker position. Naturalism is the counter-position to theism, atheism occupying a non-existent middle ground. The majority of the world's scientists, academics, etc. are not atheists accepting religion for what it is, Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria an example.

If atheism were valid, atheists would not be able to open their mouths. They would have nothing to talk about. — Gregory A

I've found atheism to be very aesthetically pleasing, just as much as theism

Ok, but imagine if all that existed was an infinite spiral water slide going vertically down forever. The water that has always traveled on it has the slide as their alpha or reason for moving. But the slide is eternal so there is actually an alpha supporting an infinite series.

A physical Alpha? There doesn't have to be a loop or an infinite past. The first motion is the first motion and there is nothing prior. In physics this is the big bang. There is no past for the big bang. But I think your correct that a first act is needed

"1. Either all things have a prior cause for their existence or there is at least one first cause of existence from which a chain of events follows."

So there is either 1,2,3,4 or infinite,1,2,3,3

"2. We can represent with the following labels.

Y: represents an existence that may or may not have prior causality."

So everything

"X: represents an existent prior causality to Y."

First cause

"Z: Represent an existence caused by Y."

World

"Alpha: A Y existence that is identified as having no prior causality."

Alpha is X

"3. This leads us to 3 plausibilities.

a. There is always a X for every Y. (infinite prior causality)."

So a first cause for every series

"b. The X/Y causal chain eventually wraps back to Y/X (infinitely looped causality)"

Making the loop based on the first cause

"c. There comes a time within a causal chain when there is only Y, and nothing prior to Y. This Y is Alpha. (first cause)"

There can still be a world. Begging the question

If the first cause is material than we are on the same page. If it is spiritual than we are not

It's the same argument. You can't imagine an infinite series going into the past without a God? Some can. For me it always comes to paradoxes, but there are other options than non'physical reality

I did reread it, sheesh. Aristotle argues that infinities on their own are unstable and a past infinity needs a root in a first cause, just as you say a first member as a cause is needed

Hawking proposes his No Boundry Hypothesis in response (using imaginary time) and Lawrence Krauss wrote a whole book about reality and anti-reality canceling each other to form Zero (hence nothing straight from nothing)

It depends on how much of the Gospel you accept.

The first part of the argument that limits imply infinity and then it says necessity means exists. None is supported

Your OP, which I read months ago, says nothing about Hawking's or Krauss's argument, but just rehearsed Aristotle's argument about an infinite past

Why do people try to prove there is a God unless they are trying to convince themselves or can't handle people having different beliefs? "We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought." The Cloud of Uknowing

If you think you have prove there is a God than this God of yours is not the true God (or at least this seems probable)

Pascal's wager would require us to study the hells of all the religions and go with the one that has the most painful of them all. When there is no evidence for a God or that one which exists wants us to pay attention to him, the wager becomes rather silly. Risk is when there is a good reason to think you are in danger