Athiests, in which way do you feel that modern scientific thought

>>1702300
XTIANS BTFO JEW ON A STICK LMAO LMAO LMAO SRY GODKEKS 2 ENLIGHTENED 2 HEAR U LMAO

Atheist here. I don't. It may contradict specific gods. I think Darwin makes the case in The Greatest Show On Earth that in contradicts the Abrahamic god, but I don't remember the details. I'm not trying to tell you to go read the book or anything like thay, but I think Darwin is making that argument. If
A person views religious creation myths or flood myths as historical events, that's contradicted.

>>1702300
desu I dont care and talk about religion at all.

I fucking hate you damnass American atheists, you gotta act superiour to others because you think not believing in bullshit
makes you better. It fucking sickens me.

I grew up in completely irreligious country and I've never in my life talked about religion, so I dont need to refute it or anything.
I just fucking dont think about it.

Same as you guys who didnt fucking read Harry Potter books dont care about Harry Potter.

Please stop connecting atheists with "refuting religion", I dont give a flying fuck about that shit dude.
And atheists that have need to talk about it are just fucking cunts.

It doesn't. Science and religion exist for different purposed and answer fundamentally different questions. Knowing more about how the universe works doesn't say anything on any possible creators. I guess science can contradict things like biblical literalism, but that's a dumb, modern (post-scientific) stance anyway.

Basically, unless you want to believe things that can be proven untrue (like the earth being 6000 years old), there's no contradiction between science and religion.

>>1702377
>American atheists

That's the thing. American atheists seem so poisonous because they are reacting to American Protestant Christianity, which they had to grow up with. Of course if you grew up in a irreligious country you have less reasons to be anti religious.

>>1702393
thats where we are hitting the wall though.

Atheist just doesnt give a fuck about religion and similar shit. Its like arguing with a tree.

>>1702300
Atheist anon reporting in.
I stopped believing in a divine power or almighty creator after my mother died. At that point in my life I was lost, the Church I attended with her did nothing to help. I eventually recovered from my state of depression and did not think about it for awhile.
Then shit took a real turn for the dumb when I went into 6th grade.
I moved from pantheon to pantheon, trying to find one that would gel with my own terrible personality. [spoiler] Thanks Percy Jackson [/spoiler] I went from the Greek gods to Norse Paganism, If I recall I even called myself a Buddhist at one point.
After I entered High School and I realized how much of an autistic fuckbucket I was being, I calmed down and integrated back into society.
In sophomore year we learned about Evolution and I was convinced that might have been the origin of out species.
At this point I am in my last year of high school, I do not hate religion. I respect the rights of others to believe what they want. I have seen people on the Internet with the whole "HUR DUR DUR MOAR SMARTER DEN U KRITAN SKUM." So most of the time I worry about turning into that.
I do not know where we came from, I will probably never know.
Have a good day /his/.

>>1702300
It doesn't contradict the idea of a generic "divine being" per se, but it brings a plethora of scriptural and doctrinal problems for Christian theism in specific. I find attempts to make evolution compatible with doctrines like the original sin to be unsatisfactory.

>>1702418
>evolution
>high school
Jesus fucking Christ, how does America keep on existing?

> The presence of a divine being in your mind?
What does it even mean?! Divine being is literally can take any form and shapes, just look on how much religions are here. No science can deny all possibilities here. What it really nullifies for me is authority of Holy Book and such. It claims pretty major amount of things that are pure magic in the end and have no back up in evidence whatsoever.

For me it's awareness of the scope of anthropology. All cultures have superstitions based on simplistic explanations for the natural world. Arbitrarily privileging the judeochristian mythos to be "true" above the others just seems like an obvious cultural bias.

>>1702300
Why specifically darwinism?

It doesn't contradict a divine being per se, but it points out one important thing: an almightly deity cannot be told apart from a lack of an almighty deity because such a being can erase any evidence of it's own existece and make up any evidence that contradict it's existence.

While it my seem like a proof of such a being probably existing, it does add aditional things to our worldview which we in fact don't actually need to desribe the world. Which makes everything more complicated that it needs to be (and the world is already pretty much too complicated for our understanding). If there's no evidence for god's existence than there's no reason to think he exists.

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>>1702300
>Athiests, in which way do you feel that modern scientific thought and Darwinism contradict and/or nullify the presence of a divine being in your mind?
I, don't think they do. I mean, even basic logic rebels against specific models of god, but there's always a way to justify the possibility of the existence of some sort of divinity, at least until we know everything about everything, and in all likelihood, that's impossible.

Even if there is no divinity, the concept itself and the teachings that surround it have value beyond the mere existence or non-existence of the deity or deities in question. Particularly in such religions where god is "unknowable", and is thus a conceptual backdrop and focal point, that doesn't necessarily need to exist at all (and being unknowable, effectively doesn't.)

But I'm among those "atheists" who believe in the value of religion and religious teachings, when applied properly, as well as for personal enrichment, and is critical to an understanding of both one's self and of man in general. I believe using religion to define "good and bad" is the lowest form of religion, and that fundamentalists, of all stripes, religious or otherwise, are a plague on mankind and intellectual honesty in general, but spiritual discipline is just another form of mental discipline, and as a more staunch atheist once said, "He who cannot rule himself will be commanded."

But one does not have to believe in a story, to believe in the value, consequences, and teachings of such a tale. In fact, it often aids in proper understanding if one does not. Otherwise one risks, for instance, taking away the lesson from "The Grasshopper and the Ants", that such creatures are sapiently communicating and thus sacred, rather than coming away with a lesson regarding consequences of hedonistic sloth. (Or that the tale of Adam and Eve is literally about the creation of man, rather than a parable as to the condition of man.)

>>1702619
There is nothing wrong with cultural bias.
If silly to pretend to be an elephant when you're a giraffe.

>>1702720
there's nothing wrong with cultural bias in the sense that you prefer your own traditions and religion but if we trying to discuss what is likely to be objectively true a bias is a bias

>>1702300
You have literally no proof that a divine being exist.

>thread went this well

Am I on an alternate reality /his/ right now? Where are the fedora images?

>>1702720
Cultural bias is to pretend that you are giraffe just because you was born near elephants.

Christians how do you accept christ as your saviour while you know full well that the catholic church created the book of daniel centuries after christ's death to legitimize him as the messiah.

>>1702300
I don't. divine beings, gods, etc are too vaguely defined for anything to be said about them. however specific religious ideas (mainly just creationism) can be disproved with science. for christianity in general i think there's better arguments against it from archeology and textual criticism

>>1702753
>>1702757

Oh well...

>>1702300

Your god is uninteresting.

>>1702762
that sounds more like being contrarian against your society's culture. also it's kinda a nonsensical comparison that i can't exactly figure out what you mean by it. christian or hindu isn't an inherent part of your identity like race, species or sex, just something you have a tendency to favor

>>1702619
The scope of anthropology also includes parameters for cultural relativism and trying to understanding cultural traditions for what they are. That includes various ways of understanding the world. Yes, believing in once religious system is kind of a cultural bias, but that doesn't make it less valid to a person that believes it.

The existence of multiple religions also says nothing about the truth of any of them. This thread is about whether modern science contradicts the existence of deities. As other people have said, the two are answering different questions; learning about how other cultures view those deities can't really say anything about whether they exist or not (or in what way they may exist or not exist).

In other words, whether a religion is true isn't a question anthropology is in the business of answering, nor does it want to be.

>>1702792
it doesn't give definitive proof, but it gives a good case, especially as you watch religions evolve over time and see stuff like cargo cults which i think we can agree aren't true

>>1702692
> He who cannot rule himself will be commanded.
If you think about it, it clearly works opposite way. You can't really command over people if they can't even control their own actions. Idea of command is based on people who execute your orders. People who lack discipline to do task basically couldn't be commanded by any means. *I can't do that* is the one the best defenses again any kinds of external pressure. This is why insane people couldn't really be negotiated with, they can't control what they do and you can't command over them because of this.

>>1702790
Faith isn't something that you can choose to have. If you doesn't believe in God or say in communism why should you pretend to? Just because you was born in the Catholic country or say USSR?

>>1702792
> modern science contradicts the existence of deities
Deities are unscientific because you can't really disprove their existence. Of course you can just believe in any speculative things, but religion as just one of infinity of them have no special value.

>>1702810
Which still has no bearing on whether or not some concept of a deity might be true. It's just a question that science can't answer because there can be no evidence for it either way (partly because the concept isn't clearly defined enough to even figure out how to answer the question outside of faith).

I'm an agnostic atheist (really I just don't care about religion, so don't think I'm arguing for its veracity) anthropologist who's also studied religion heavily. I've studied lots of ways that religions have changed over the years. The only thing religious change means is that culture changes. It's about people and how they modify things over time. In a way you can study some of those changes and declare that some traditions are invented and probably not "true," but that can hardly extend to the supernatural as a whole. Again, that's an issue that science can't deal with; refuting specific claims is different than trying to answer the unanswerable.

>>1702836
Yes, they're unscientific, but religion doesn't try to be scientific (unless you're Ken Ham). They're two different systems that exist for answering different questions.

>>1702753
There are better and more logical arguments for the existence of a divine entity than there are against.

>>1702810
But wouldn't the fact that almost every human culture, no matter how spread out, developed along similar theological lines and mostly came to the same conclusions?

There is a fairly clear trend from polytheism/animism towards a sort of monotheism. One god eventually becomes the principle [G]od.

>>1702848
> religion doesn't try to be scientific
Except when it tries to deny scientific facts when they went against the dogma. Science is a pretty apathetic to deities and such, believers somehow are triggered by evolution, etc.

>>1702300
Intelligent design may become a stronger theory as time goes on but divinity just isn't necessary even for that.

>>1702851
> logical arguments for the existence
Name one that doesn't contradict itself.

>>1702851
> One god eventually becomes the principle [G]od.
The atheism is next step in that process. Infinities of Gods -> Many Gods -> Small Pantheon -> One God -> No Gods, see the pattern here.

>>1702851
>There are better and more logical arguments for the existence of a divine entity than there are against.

There are no sound arguments for God's existence.

>>1702875
Which is why I brought up Ken Ham as an example of when religion oversteps is purpose and said "refuting specific claims is different than trying to answer the unanswerable."

Some things can be answered by science and some can't. The same can be said about religion. There's only really a problem when people on either side try to overstep those boundaries.

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>>1702887
Negative god is coming

>>1702897
I agree here, but there are difference from theology that can coexist with science and religion that can and in many ways choose to be opposed to it, the last is pretty major problem.

I have never believed in a deity, even from childhood. I went through a stage in my mid-teens where I thought thunderf00t, the Amazing Atheist and Richard Dawkins were geniuses of religiously-oriented wry wit. I would do the pseud's thing of making myself look smart by explaining to my friends and school pals why i thought religion was poisonous, why science was the way forward, etc, and all based on the odd sarcastic comment I'd heard from one of the aforementioned gentlemen.

Then I came to understand that Western Civilisation and Christianity are so closely intertwined that one cannot appreciate any aspect of the former without understanding the latter. I now consider myself very much Christian, in the cultural sense, but I am still atheist/agnostic with regards to a God. I still laugh in the face of creationists, think Dawkins writes some great stuff (when it comes to Biology) and agree with him also when he says that, regardless of your thoughts on Christianity, it is certainly a bulwark against something far worse (i.e. Islam).

It also saddens me that in an age when Christianity is portrayed as the fusty old grandma of religions, it is considered cool to call yourself Buddhist or Hindu just because you like lotus flowers and yoga.

>>1702300
>Scientific thought
Because of scientific thought I just think any supernatural claim is an opinion since they don't provide a falsifiable hypothesis or otherwise sufficient reason to believe their claims even more so a divine being/god since that area tends to be quite nebulously defined.
This does require me to hold the opinion that the scientific method is a valid epistemology but I think that's pretty reasonable as far as opinions go (in my opinion).


>Darwinism or "Modern evolutionary synthesis" if you want to use the less wrong version
Removes explanatory power from various creator myths by filling in gaps that opinions used to exist in. Otherwise it does nothing to contradict or nullify the presence of a divine being.

>>1702300
Strictly speaking, it doesn't. I cannot either prove or disprove the existence of God, gods, or just the supernatural in general. I just choose not to believe, which ultimately is just the same type of decision as belief in God and that shit is, it's all just rooted in faith in your beliefs.

Now, that being said, I highly doubt the existence of any sort of supernatural entities given current scientific advancements. To say it's highly improbable that the supernatural actually exists is a bit of an understatement in my mind, but I still can't confidently say it does not exist, as I have no solid proof it doesn't.

>>1702921
> It is considered cool to call yourself Buddhist or Hindu
Well, Christianity does nothing to present itself as cool despite here is huge potential to it. Guys are literally using execution/torture device as symbol.

>>1702985
You choose not to believe.

Zero upside.

Infinite downside.

But you think you are rational.

>>1702499
Dat military.

>>1702843
i know it can't prove anything per se. but when religion changes due to cultural change it really lowers the likelihood of it being true. if a religion was true it wouldn't change (though perhaps there could be a change in power dynamics in polytheism like Zeus being overthrown like Cronus) due to culture, it would be divine revelation. for example, christianity has remained relatively static for quite some time, but this only came about once individuals' "divine revelation" was no longer able to change an established orthodoxy of doctrines. if their divine revelation was real it should have brought them together, not the raw power and influence of the church as an institution. i agree that this doesn't really prove anything to be false by itself, especially just the vague concept of a deity by itself. but it shows that the individual religions are very unlikely to be true

>>1703039
> Infinite downside.
What downside? God could as well be the one who punish believers in hell just for the irony.

>>1702300
You're implying here that it's the atheists and scientists who have been actively opposing Religious institutions since the time of Darwin and not the opposite.

>>1703039
>basing "belief" upon a gambit
That's not belief, friend.

>>1703039
Should I also believe in Odin and die in glorious battle to avoid an eternity in Hel, or perhaps I should bow five times a day to Mecca so that I don't end up in Jahannam. Maybe I should even sacrifice to Zeus and Hera while I'm at it so that I don't end up in the Fields of Punishment.

That's not how it works, and if you were truly a man of faith you would understand that.

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This thread is cute, filled with agnostics.

Agnostic Atheists are boring as fuck.

>“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.”

God is not objective yet, you MUST believe, everyone believes something. If you subscribe to science you belive what they are telling you to be true, to be observable time and time again - YOU do not know it to be true. You belive, everyone has belief. It is more fun to believe in a being an individual that is our reasoning for everything.

TO answer your question OP. Science answers how, Religion answers why. Science is denying the parts of religion which attempt to tell you how, but science can never answer you why. Religion and more generic philosophy does that.

>>1703095
> Religion answers why
Most of the time the answer is that God works in mysterious ways.

>>1703082
I base my beliefs on what I know to be true.

Infinite upside

No downside

Because unlike you, I actually am a rational person.

>>1703114
> being cucked by jews
No downside

>>1703094
Odin is Nimrod, the King of Babylon.
Very few people pray towards Mecca, as we live on a globe.
Zeus and Hera are none other than Adam and Eve.

Because I worship the Truth, I know these things to be true.

>>1703118
You do recall the Jews contrived to have Jesus murdered, yes?

So that you're basically on their side?

>>1703095
>God is not objective

kek

>>1703095
>God is not objective yet, you MUST believe
>Religion answers why

Empty rhetoric and pretend confidence, that's all religion offers.

>>1703072
God will do as He says, as He told His prophets, and as He said through His Son, Jesus.

Unbelievers are cast for eternal torment in a lake of fire.

>>1703124
Well he told me that you fucked a dog once.

>>1702792
Well I prefaced it with "for me" since that's how I think. The fact that these religions come and go with cultures strikes me as undermining the "truth" of any particular religion.

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>>1703119
> Zeus is Adam
> Chris is Second Adam
> Jesus Christ is Zeus Krishna
You are unto something here, anon.

>>1703120
Jesus contrived to have himself murdered.

>>1703124
Jesus lying to send people in Hell. I heard he was a dangerous criminal who pretended to be royalty and was even executed because of that.

>>1703137
Zeus is Adam.
Jesus is the second Adam.

By the sin of the first Adam, humanity was lost.

By the sacrifice of the second Adam, Jesus, some of humanity will be saved.

Your krishna nonsense is demonology.

>>1703138
Correct. He came to die. And He provoked the conspiracy of Jews to kill Him to do so right when He said they would, on Passover.

But murder starts in the heart, so if you wish someone dead, you have violated Thou Shalt Not Murder.

Even if you just call a man a fool, you violate that commandment.

>>1703141
If in your head God lies, be an atheist.

>>1703095
>It is more fun to believe in a being an individual that is our reasoning for everything.

It's fun to walk around without pants too

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>>1703143
> krishna nonsense
*tips fedora*

>>1703159
You'd have to tip 330,000,000 fedoras

>>1703039
>>1703114
>>1703124
Why respond to this troll?

>>1703251
I dunno, honestly this whole board is full of shit.

>>1703251

ad hom

Not an argument.

>>1703293
Why bother? I know I'm not going to change anyone's mind, but if you're not even willing to intellectually entertain the other side's position, why even BE here?

>>1703303
Racking up GBP.

>>1702814
No, it works exactly like that. If somebody can't control their actions, you can work out their behavior patterns and then manipulate them into doing what they want.

>>1703333
Doing what YOU want, sorry, fucked up.

Mainly materialism however it was the study of comparative religion that really did it. Seeing that even the old religions aren't all that unique in their history and how they all bear the marks of human fabrication, the only advanatage they have over newer religions is the veil of time which helps distort this greatly.

You do not know what god is true, and you should absolutely get informed on the topic, since you may err in your raving calculations.

For instance, what if you were captured in your world by a few lunatics that want to destroy you by forcing your wills to kill each other and then blame you all for it.

You could then be forced to a life of prayer where you are chrisians being "rescued" of an evil entity while "god" helps you destroy mankind (whom are demons) by merely destroying it "himself".

>>1702300
Divine Being as a general idea? Not so much. Science at the get go doesn't look to contradict a divine being, rather the "evidence" for a divine being is not scientific.

I can understand why some would take up Deism, but the simple fact is that is a philosophical position. There's nothing in our current understanding of the Universe that requires the "God' factor in calculations.

If we're to address specific gods, we can take the Christian one. As Paul said, the Resurrection is where the faith stands and falls.

Immortality or resurrection has been one of mankind's most passionate and futile pursuits. No matter what medicines we compose or rituals we perform, the laws of Thermodynamics keep a dead human body dead.

In my opinion the account of the Resurrection is not very good against naturalistic scrutiny, and in conclusion, I think Jesus of Nazareth died in a terrible manner and is now dust in this earth. Believing he rose again is a matter of faith, and more power to you if you hold that.

>>1702300
>""""athiests""""
>""thiests"'"'
>""""ie""""

Fucking philosofags and religionfags can't even spell. This is a history board. gtfo

RRREEEEEEEE-

>>1703834
>history & humanities
>& humanities.

>>1702300
>modern scientific thought and Darwinism contradict and/or nullify the presence of a divine being in your mind?

They don't. But there is no reason to have "the presence of a divine being" in my mind in the first place.

>>1702879
>>1702891

The modal ontological argument is valid. But you need to buy into the conceptual schema of medieval perfections: a scale of qualitative perfection that can culminate in an actual infinity. To me it seems straight forward though, to "be greater than" in this sense of qualitative perfection is just to have more of it, having an immutable/necessary existence means having existence to oneself entirely, where to have a contingent/mutable existence is to have one's existence derived from another, meaning that in itself it has no existence, "some x" is more than "no x", so the necessary being has "more existence" and is "greater" in this sense of medieval perfections.

Now Kantians and Fregeans want to deny that "existence" can be a first order predicate that we can do this kind of stuff with. But that is one philosophical tradition out of many. Many schools of philosophy have rejected this picture, not just scholastics but also modern analaytic philosophers like Meinong. You can press on this point, but just invoking a Kantian/Fregean position without justifying why we should buy into it over contrary positions is not enough.

1/3

>>1704899

We also have to justify that P5 is coherent, if the scale of perfections was a potential infinity rather than an actual infinity it would't make sense since a a being "that which no greater can be thought of" would not be a coherent notion. Where before there would be a quantitative notion of "greater" invoked, here a qualitative notion of "greater" would have to be assumed such that to have the highest degree of some quality would be to have it just as it is. ( kind of like having the platonic form of it, rather than something that merely takes part, like a perfect triangle, rather than an imperfect triangle like the one's we can draw)

Presumably we are going to have to limit which kind of qualities are actually "good making" qualities, as one cannot be a perfect triangle and a perfect circle at the same time. The Scholastic notion of "The Transcendentals": where Goodness,Being,etc are all convertible and count as the "good making" qualities, can ground this, but obviously one would have to go read up on the coherency of that doctrine( and all the different variations on it) in order to justify it. Ceterus paribus the argument is sound, but there are allot of different points to press on to try to refute it, but that is the same with every philosophical argument that makes a non trivial claim anyways.

2/3

>>1704900

Gx- That which no greater than can be thought of exists

1. (P -> Q) -> ( ◊P -> ◊ Q) Axiom 1
2. Gx -> □ Gx Because: It is greater to necessarily exist than to not necessarily exist.
3. (Gx -> □ Gx) -> (◊ Gx -> ◊ □ Gx) From 1 and 2.
4. (◊ Gx -> ◊ □ Gx) From 2 and 3.
5. ◊ Gx Assumption: There is nothing contradictory inherent to the concept of “That which no greater can be thought of”.
6. ◊ □ Gx From 4 and 5
7. ~ □ Gx -> ~ Gx From 2
8. ~ Gx -> ~ ◊ □ Gx Axiom 2
9. ◊ □ Gx Re of 6
10. ~ ~ Gx From 8 and 9
11. ~ ~ □ Gx From 7 and 10
12. □ Gx From 11

3/3

>>1704899
Nobody takes ontological arguments seriously. I don't why you even bother.

>>1705085

Actually, allot of contemporary philosophers take it seriously, a handful champion it outright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_3Lwk6V3qY

>Athiests, in which way do you feel that modern scientific thought and Darwinism contradict and/or nullify the presence of a divine being in your mind?

It points more towards polytheism being right

>>1706270
Wrong. Even Christian apologists recognize ontological arguments are unconvincing, and the only relevant philosopher that "champions" the ontological argument is Plantinga.

>>1706694

I just posted a video by one who does. Godel did as well.Charles Hartshorne did as well. As did Norman Malcolm. And that is merely in 20th century philosophy,

On the SEP page there is a large list of contemporary works by authors who thought that the style of argument is worth taking seriously enough to write books on.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/#OntArg21sCen

Furthermore, any consensus against ontological arguments is weakened by the fact that there is no consensus on just what exactly is wrong with them.

>>1702430
But why?

>>1706769
> there is no consensus on just what exactly is wrong
Well, that because there are too many things that wrong with them so you are free to choose a point that you hate more than others.

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>>1704899
> the modal ontological argument
> Imagine the most perfect waifu
> To be perfect she must be real
> q.e.d.
The modal ontological argument is valid only if you agree with certain view on reality of modalities, but such views allow all kinds of a fictional entities and this is clearly overkill... I am not saying that it isn't legit, as it allows waifus after all.

>>1703333
> you can work out their behavior patterns
You also can do exactly this with people who can control themselves. It isn't like they have no logic, value or principles behind what they choose to do and somehow free from patterns.

>>1702367
This. I don't deny the possibility of the existence of a divine being, but the one supposedly revealed in the Jewish and Christian scriptures (as well as the Qur'an) necessarily CANNOT exist. You cannot have evolution and a historical Adam.

>>1707125

Not that faggot. It's not that such a god can't exist, but that such accounts must be read metaphorically or treated as myth. A literalist reading of the Bible is not compatible with evolution as the Young Earth Creationists themselves clearly realise.

Of course some might say that a Bible that contains passages that are not true that are not clearly labelling within the text as metaphorical can't be the revealed message of a god who wants to be understood.

>>1704899
>But you need to buy into the conceptual schema of medieval perfections

So it's "valid" if you ignore ~500 years of advances? By that "reasoning", I can claim to have cured you of cancer with magic, it's "valid" if you ignore logic and reason, I'll be expecting my check for $1,000,000 from you any day now.

>>1707106

Yes, but a person who can control themselves can over-rule their instincts or act on them as they chose and so counter your attempt to manipulate them.

>>1706270

People who take it seriously don't understand the reason why astrophysicists don't. It's a dead "argument", revealed as empty semantics like Presuppositionalism.

>>1707232
Why would I care what an astrophysicist thinks about a philosophical argument ? It would be like asking a biologist for an authoritative answer about a question on set theory.

>>1707210
>So it's "valid" if you ignore ~500 years of advances?

500 years of advances and errors.

The very fact that we lost formal logic after the 14th century, and that it took until the 20th for us to recover everything we lost in temporal and modal logic from guys like Ockham and Buridan, and that cases like this are the norm when it comes to Medieval Philosophy, is enough to justify taking the theory of medieval perfections as a live option that deserves consideration. The fact of the matter is that we didn't have the intellectual resources to properly understand scholasticism until 50ish years ago - most of it is still untranslated, and there is allot we still have to work through. Just blindly dismissing it because of your lack of knowledge about western intellectual history is not acceptable. I also justified why it is not a problematic schema, and how we can understand it, in my post, if you think there is an issue with it you can make a case against the formulation I layed out.

>>1707086
The modal ontological argument is distinct from Anselm's ontological argument because it does'nt argue for it's conclusion in that way. See >>1704901

>>1707060
Explain what is wrong with the formulation that I layed out, not all ontological arguments are equal.

>>1702367
>darwin makes the case in The Greatest Show on Earth

>>1702300
for me, nothing that modern science has shown to us would suggest that the universe was created specifically for us. It seems to me far more likely that we are a cosmic accident and that the universe doesn't care about our existance.

I don't. I just don't see any reason to believe in a personal god.

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>>1702300

Not atheist, but generally the abrahamic religions lack in evidence and logic to prove their own God.

And if we assume ones logic of any of them to suffice, then we have to assume they are all correct (which defies their own logic).

What I am trying to say is, if the Bible is enough proof that Jesus is the savior, then the Quran is sufficient proof that Mohamed was right too.

So what it is? How can you use outside sources not including the Bible to disprove Islam?

How can Islam disprove Christianity without using the Quran?

>>1707387
>Why would I care what an astrophysicist thinks about a philosophical argument ?

Because it isn't a philosophical question, it's an astrophysical one. The study of the early Universe and other advances in physics have shifted the topic of the origin of the Universe firmly into "science".

> It would be like asking a biologist for an authoritative answer about a question on set theory.

Or rather, it's like asking a biologist about the myth of Noah's Ark. It's all well and good for theologians to play dumb on the practical possibility of this event when they were the only ones with an answer, quite another for them to deny the heaps upon heaps of evidence contradicting it that have been discovered by biologists.

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>>1707387
> Gx - Evil being which no more great being than can be thought of exists
> We logically proved that God is evil. Great result, everyone.
You can prove anything about god by an analogue here as general logic of argument doesn't change. Literally the same problem.

>>1702383
The problem with NOMA is that religious types want to skew what it allows. I'm a deist personally so I'm a big fan of keeping God away from science...the problem is my God is non-interventionist and I am unable to support anyone who honestly thinks NOMA should apply to their beliefs in miracles.

>>1707387
> what is wrong
You can counter it from the step 2.
> It is greater to necessarily exist than to not necessarily exist.
I disagree here. The great being isn't a slave of any necessities. If anything existent beings are limited by laws of physics so nonexistent being should be greater. In fact, if our Universe would be destroyed, temporal existent beings would collapse, but being that doesn't exist would be literally unaffected. For me this is really impressive display of a greatness.

>>1704901
No proof, no validity. Simple as that.

>>1707191
The moment you treat the bible as myth, however, you undermine the entire message.

>>1707542

Exactly, that's the dilemma that holds the YEC's in their absurd frenzy of science denial.

>>1706769
>I just posted

You just posted some irrelevant figure

>did
>did
>did

I thought it was obvious we were talking about living philosophers.

>Furthermore, any consensus against ontological arguments is weakened by the fact that there is no consensus on just what exactly is wrong with them.

There's consensus that there's a lot wrong with all of them.

>>1707424
We are talking about the existence most maximally great being possible, not how the "universe" came to be through it or the processes that accompanied that creation. We are talking about the most general features of reality here, NOT just physical cosmology, which is what astrophysics is limited to.

>>1707467
That makes Gx an incoherent concept though, A because being good is better than being evil, insofar as evil is just the privation of good( See Augustine), and B as I mentioned ( though I did not give a full elaboration) >>1704900 the framework of the argument presupposed that there are particular "good making properties" that makes this being so great, goodness is one of them. You cannot coherently posit an "Evil being which no more great being than can be thought of exists". Unless you want to claim that "goodness" is not a "good making property".

>>1707492
It isn't as if there is some "law" compelling the "great being" to have necessary existence, rather if you do not grant it necessary existence then it no longer has existence in the highest degree possible and you are coming across a conceptual error. Non-Being lacks existence and thus is less great than any existing being according to the scale of perfection mentioned in my post.

There are also no "law of physics" in the sense of anything that compels beings, "laws of physics" are just mechanistic abstractions based on the dispositions of things in the world by which we idealize events and properties of things in the world through quantitative reduction. No existent beings have "laws" compelling them, they just act the way that they do and exist the way that they do.

>>1707507
Show the logical error, it looks like a valid proof to me.

>>1708007
I'm not sure what your criteria for relevance is. Brian Leftow is a well known philosopher among people in his sub fields who has published work in the last 5 years.

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>>1708197
> That makes Gx an incoherent concept though
In that case, there is no proof for original Gx to be some sort of coherent concept. For example, you basically argue that *if you add property then new Gx would be even greater* which is pretty weak if you can't actually add that property. For example, you can make gray objects to be more perfect by coloring them pure white or pure black, but object can be pure only one way or another, not an all at once. Basically, before even starting the attempts to prove something from a greatness, you need to construct complete hierarchy of it. Otherwise, the counter argument to the entire logic is simple one and it is about how there can exist infinities of the beings equally greater to each other. Evil being is one of them. Even if you can't add goodness to it, it doesn't matter. In fact your inability to do that is a prove of greatness of such being. Can evil made a beings great? Many great people were people of great evil, so why not? Great Evil Being is the evil being that is different from The Great Good Being. Anyway, I am not sure that hierarchy could really be constructed, but if it could be, what exactly in original logic pointing on one and not on another? You can swap *great* to any property that greedy for a claim of existence, prove by analogue that a certain pathological entities are exist, than derive entire pantheon of them, as conclusion of original prove. At this point you proved complete insanity, but to deny such insanity, would be to deny God.

>>1708295
> You can swap *great* to any property that greedy for a claim of existence.
I.e. instead of being great you can use property of being dangerous, necessarily existing entities are more dangerous and such property works for God that is evil pretty well. All steps from 1 to 12 stay the same, 5 and 2 changes in the name only. The danger can even be argued to be a more worth for consideration that greatness.,, If you miss a great object, whatever. If you miss danger, you can die. Of course, it is only one of many variations of that kind of proofs. The full list of properties should be, probably, thousands of pages.

>>1708295
What you are asking for is something that was covered in thousands of pages of Scholastic theology. As I said, we need more to justify the existence of these Transcendentals- the "good making properties" like "goodness"," being", etc, and differentiating them from basic ones like "triangular" and " grey"- I mentioned this in my first post. >>1704900 (You) The literature is there though, it is as you mentioned later though, not something can be well explicated in the kind of short winded format of a message board post. This is a decent starter

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentals-medieval/

>Evil being is one of them.

Again, this takes more argumentation, but the Augustinian tradition defines evil as the privation of good, it is nothing in itself so it can't be a relevant property. We can account for "great people" who were also evil this way. Hitler was great according to his power(something substantive) but evil due to his lack of love( the lack of something substantive) for many peoples, Roma, Jews, Homosexuals, etc. If Hitler instigated the Holocaust in his sleep by accident we would not consider him evil. it is the lack of love in his motivation that made him evil.

1/2

>>1708681

If you are a dualist and believe that evil is substantive then that is a different story, I don't think dualism is coherent, but that is a different argument. But anyways, it does seem absurd to say that "evil" which is presumably the opposite of "good" can be considered a "good/great making quality" since they are definitionally contradictory to one another. So even if evil is substantive like a dualist would claim, the idea that you could fit it into the list of "Transcendentals" is barred unless you are willing to remove "goodness" from the list of "good/great making" properties - which is incoherent. If omnipotence is turned against you that is certainly the most dangerous thing that could happen. But neither omnipotence nor dangerousness entails evilness. If dangerousness comes from omnipotence and omnipotence comes from a maximal degree of being, then dangerousness fits fine.

2/2

>>1707542
Agreed. I'm not even talking about literalism when I said you can't have a historical Adam and evolution. Doesn't matter if you're YEC or not. If sin and death entered the world through Adam, then evolution is necessarily false. But it's obviously true. And if Genesis is merely a myth, then everything about the life and death of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, must necessarily be a myth. In which case, there is literally no use to the Bible at all. It doesn't make for good mythology; it actually has a message.

>>1702499
It was middle school for me and i live in the worst state for education, most people probably knew it from television if they knew before middle school.