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Originally Posted by Halifax
Does He ask for our worship? Or is it due Him in accord with the existent order of things? I don't think God created us to merely to worship Him—not in the "slavish" sense of worship which some people have. He created us as a gratuitous expression of His love and glory. Only the superabundance of Goodness found in God could spur Him to a true creative act. We were created free because properly one may only enter into a loving relationship with a free creature.
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This only works if the arguer works from the center: subjective agnosticism. In all of your arguments, you make claims that god is great and god is good and god is perfect. That's all well and good for you and I hope that your faith gives you peace and happiness for the rest of your life, but that's not my perception of reality.
I see faults lining both arguments because I perceive reality differently.
1. In our minds, we can entertain the possibility that God exists. I agree completely, and you are living proof. Many people consider god daily and not only entertain, but believe certainly that god exists. It's the foundation of theism.
2. That which we can conceive of as possible in our minds is possible in reality, (for the same reason as mentioned above—the need of a prototype). This is absolutely incorrect. With knowledge of the rules, one can conceive ways to break those rules. I can imagine hot snow falling up. The existence of paradox disproves #2 conclusively.
3. There is, therefore, a possibility that God exists. There is a possibility that god exists, but it's as far from #2 as anything can be. God existing depends on our limited understanding of the universe. As I've tried to touch on before,
science is ever growing. What we know today could seem almost godlike in comparison to what we knew thousands of years ago. As such, it's possible that an intelligence developed through evolution over millions of years that is absolutely beyond our current understanding. The thing is, god is supposed to have predated existence, so either that idea is incorrect or god isn't real.
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Originally Posted by Halifax
The non-dualistic perfection you describe sounds essentially like the concept of "excellence" in the classical, Platonic/Aristotelian sense. It is relative and therefore contingent, as you say. Perhaps you can expand more on the meaning and sense of the first. I don't think the perfection I'm describing and which the argument concerns is a "third" option, but rather an ontological perfection—a perfection and self-sufficiency in being. This does not vary from person to person. Unless we're going to lapse into solipsism, being must be taken as common. That is, my experience of existing—not my personal or life experience, but merely my awareness of the fact of my existence, my being, my substance—is something which I share with all existent things and therefore the basis on which I can relate to any existent thing.
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Being must be taken as common? That can't happen without collective experience of said being. For the same reason there are dozens of denominations of Christianity based on one book, there are going to be many interpretations and perceptions of the god concept...thus god is a subjective phenomenon.
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Originally Posted by Halifax
Yum.
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You're telling me. This thread gets me more hungry than Tilted Cooking....and I have only myself and Plantinga to blame.
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Originally Posted by Halifax
Seriously, though, I'm hesitant to even touch upon the Trinity in this discussion because, well...it's a whole other (long) complex discussion. Christianity is a monotheistic religion. There is one God, and God is one. ("Hear o' Israel..." etc.) Furthermore, and more importantly, perhaps, it is philosophically imperative that God be one. To introduce division into a fundamental, (or in this case the Fundamental), is to violate and deny its status as a fundamental.
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You said god was more simple than a potato chip. I begged to dipper (I can't help myself, don't take it as blasphemy...it's more like diet blasphemy).
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Originally Posted by Halifax
God is not made of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is one, and each is in turn God. They are not modes, nor expressions, though the word "expression" comes closer than anything else I can think of to capturing the nature of the persons of the Trinity, (though no words may completely express their nature). Each person is fully God and represents a particular expression or mode of the Godhead, (but not, of course, in the sense of Modalism, the early heresy). The Father is the creator, the memory, the generating mind; the Son is the intellect or "word;" the Holy Spirit is the will. Yet in the proper operation of each of the persons, their actions are undertaken through modes proper to each of the other persons, (including its own person); i.e. the Father, in encompassing the whole of existence and Being, can be considered in terms of metaphysics, (the principles), which is proper to the Father, or in mathematics, (the image), which is proper to the Son, or in physics, (the instantiation, particular, or gift), which is proper to the Spirit.
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The perfect potato chip mentioned above is not made of potatoes, oil and salt. The chip is one, and each is in turn the chip. I think you get where I'm going with this. Anything someone can say about god I can twist to say about my fictitious chip. I'm not by any means saying that this disproves god. I'm just saying I think there is a flaw to the reason.
I had a thought. Your argument is based on the idea that god is fundamentally simple. Can you really call the last paragraph simple? Honestly? I'm a fairly bright person, and I had to read it twice to make sure we were on the same page.