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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

there ya go tweak, you wanted drivel and they came out of the woodwork for you!

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: vincentML

What did deity do before Time would be an example. Was there a time before time would be another example. The answers lie in the assumption that there was a deity who created time.

Time is just a conspiracy to keep everything from happening all at once.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne


Hume, Kant, and Rational Theism Hugo Meynell A graduate of Eton and of King's College, Cambridge, Hugo Meynell took his Ph.D from Cambridge University in 1963. He began his teaching career at the University of Leeds in 1963, where he remained until 1981, when he assumed a professorship at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he teaches today. He has authored ten books, including God and the World, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, The Intelligible Universe, and The Theology of Bernard Lonergan, and has published some 100 articles in journals such as Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, Analysis, Mind, Religious Studies, and others. Professor Meynell is also a skilled musician and has a forthcoming book on The Art of Handel's Operas.

Good article although I'm not so sure he has added much in his argument for Rational Theism.

Hume's Empiricism has stood the test of time, and most of us would agree that seeing is believing and in the absence of being at an event then veracity of second hand evidence is good enough to base an assumption upon.

The idea that the world is not dependent upon the human mind because of course the world was long in place before human beings were in a position to conceive of it, seems to be a self-evident proposition to me and it simply does not follow that some other mind must have created the world and that it was one mind as the world has developed consistently.

Reason, I suppose, is open to interpretation; yet that line of argument does not appear to be reasonable to me.

I do not think there is anything wrong, narrow-minded, dangerous, or anything like that with/in the belief in God, so I'm certainly not some sort of militant science bloke determined to insist that we must place the quest for knowledge above any faith based beliefs.

Firstly, I think the quest for knowledge at the expense of the imagined is not helpful for human beings, knowledge is not the be and all and the two can exist side by side comfortably.

Furthermore, most of us don't know very much at all, so let's not kid ourselves that we're these veracious seekers of knowledge. We're not. We're happy with a job, a wife, children, food, a home and some fridge magnets. 99% of the world's population would settle for that.

But, regardless, I think he needs to come up with something better than that in order to lay claim to a reason based argument in the existence of God.

It follows thus we're still at the juncture of the most reasonable proposition being that there probably isn't a God but we can't be 100% certain because our knowledge is limited to our experience, and of course we only know so much of what has gone before us and will go after us.

I hope there is a God in the end as it's a nice story with a happening ending, and far more interesting to me than DNA or a rocket flying to the moon or anything like that, but a reasonable proposition? I'm afraid not.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: vincentML

What did deity do before Time would be an example. Was there a time before time would be another example. The answers lie in the assumption that there was a deity who created time.

Time is just a conspiracy to keep everything from happening all at once.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

The answers lie in the assumption that there was a deity who created time.

You are one of those atheists who disbelieves in a God that nobody believes in. [:D]

K.

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But even kant recognized and demonstrated that pure reason alone is neither a sufficient nor a correct method to obtain knowledge of God.

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So, for Meynell there must be a Mind analogous to the human mind to account for the existence of nature that lies beyond direct encounter with our physical senses. In other words, since an atom is too small to be seen by the naked eye there must be a deity. Huh!?

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: vincentML

What did deity do before Time would be an example. Was there a time before time would be another example. The answers lie in the assumption that there was a deity who created time.

Time is just a conspiracy to keep everything from happening all at once.

Not to put to fine a point on it but time is perception. The perception of the recognition of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future and of indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events are perceived to succeed or follow one another.

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

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So, for Meynell there must be a Mind analogous to the human mind to account for the existence of nature that lies beyond direct encounter with our physical senses. In other words, since an atom is too small to be seen by the naked eye there must be a deity. Huh!?

the irony! thanks for making my point that today people cant distinguish the story from the moral of the story.

In the above you simply run to arguing the story rather than comprehending the message he intended for you to conclude from the story. He is making the point that the same methodology that we use for determining the existence of things we cant see [like the atom] can also be used to determine the existence of God. at least you read it or read it that far which is more than can be said for most people posting their opinions.

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In other words, humans demonstrate creativity but they are not capable of the creation of an orderly universe, so there must be a Big Mind in the Sky.

Meynell’s thesis boils down to nothing more than a philosophical apologia for Creationism hidden behind a critique of Kant and Hume. Nothing new here, folks.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

I understood his intention quite well. So, Meynell invented a god of the gaps in our senses (which we are closing) Improvements in technology are the bane of theists.

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

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In other words, humans demonstrate creativity but they are not capable of the creation of an orderly universe, so there must be a Big Mind in the Sky.

Meynell’s thesis boils down to nothing more than a philosophical apologia for Creationism hidden behind a critique of Kant and Hume. Nothing new here, folks.

There you go again.

No that is not what he is saying. In that snippet he is referencing the universe PRIOR to the existence of man or mans ability to conceive it and points out the logical error made by kant hume and others who in their thesis merely 'presume' man can know anything about the universe prior to mans existence in it through the use of pure reason, any more than you can establish a psitron using pure reason it cant be done.

It has been long established that your method again using pure reason is an improper means of rationally understanding the issue.

The word for your treatment of this is poisoning the well fallacy, when one must resort to skewed strawman style arguments to make their point.