Carneades was the first ignostic. He found that the Epicureans and the Stoics just shot hot air with their definiion of the gods as applicable in effect to everything and thus to nothing! I find that as He has no referents as Primary Cause, Grand Miracle Monger, Grand Designer and so forth and He has incoherent, contradictory attributes, He is no better than a square circle or married bachelor.
Oer the atelic or teleonomic argument that since the evidence displays no intent, divine or otherwise as Aristotle thought, then to postulate a divine intent contradicts what science finds true! This applies not only to teleological arguments - design, etc, but to all arguments based on intent: there then is none behind the Big Bang - no Primary Cause and none behnd miracles-all natural,even fraudulent. Thus no referents for Him exist.
No one can make a definition based on empirical evidence for those attributes- onmiscience, omnipotence and so forth; supernaturalists merely guess with their it must be and it may be.They cannot define,postulate or use faith to instantiate Him.
No, this is not dogmatic or begging the question against supernaturalism but merely a demand for evidence. Sacred writings, personal religious experience and faith fail to comport with what is required for evidence.
Sacred writings meam only that mere men wrote them without that divine intent, making up matters. Religious experiences are only ones mental actons; to alleg divine intent behind them begs the question rather than as atheist Jonathon Harris states that we would beg the question against supernaturalists by denying,saying Marian influence.
Faith is just the we say so of credulity!
Now, what do you contend about all this? As a fallibilist, I acknowledge that I might err!
Carneades advances the incompaitibility argument thhat God cannot be all-virtuous as He cannot fear anything! So, he cannot exist!
ReplyDeleteOr following my friend David Ramsay Steele, we cannot overlook virtue and even vices, finding Him no way,even anlalogically close to any kind of a person.
So either He cannot exist or else, He is a non-personal being.
Why would people who know that natural causes rule still need God as the Primary Cause with Aquinas or the Sufficient Reason. God explains nothing but the tautology that He wills what He wills or God did it!He is a parasite on natural causes rather than being their Primary Cause.
ReplyDeleteHe adds no more information than do gremlins or demons as primary causes of mechanical failure or my personality disorder, respectively!
Fr. Copleston in his debate with Lord Russell claims that phenomena are like chocolates adding to themselves but leaving out what makes them do so. No, this contingency that things come and go does not apply to the quantum fields as the law of conservation notes: they themselves are the necessary being, the ground of being, the creating and sustaining causes of the eternal Universe. They are not contingent. This bespeaks Aquinas's failed argument from contingency.
Contrary to Alister Earl McGrath, per the Ockham, He is that useless redundancy.
And per the ignostic challenge, He has no referents as previously noted, making for the combined ignostic-Ockham argument [ Google that for more information,please.].
Viewers, what is your take on all this and preceding comments? Let us have an enlightening,spirited conversation!
What do you think about these arguments?
DeleteAquinas' superfluity argument that to add God to explanations add nothing, boomeranging on him!